Attorney at Halloween

     It was October 31st, and Phoenix Wright was dressed and ready to go. It wasn’t so much the costume he minded. It wasn’t even buying the girls’ costumes. It was the impending headache of accompanying them door-to-door, and then the inevitable sugar-high chaos that would ensue as an aftermath.
     Phoenix Wright didn’t, however, have a choice. Mia Fey, his now-deceased former boss and mentor, had appeared to him in a dream.
     “Take Maya and Pearl trick-or-treating, or else!”
     That had been her haunting warning, and while Phoenix wasn’t sure that it wasn’t just a dream—it hadn’t really seemed like something Mia would say—he wasn’t about to chance it. And so, he’d taken off work that day and made the long drive up to Maya and Pearl’s proverbial hideaway. From there, he’d explained what trick-or-treating was—mainly to Pearl—and once they’d gotten thoroughly excited, he’d taken them to a costume shop.
     Now it was early afternoon, and they were just setting out for their first house.
     “Hey, Nick!” Maya exclaimed loudly, swinging her plastic pumpkin through the air. Her voice was muffled beneath a pink helmet. “Will anyone be handing out burgers?”
     “If we trick-or-treat at McDonald’s, maybe…” Phoenix suggested. Pearl, who was latched onto his right hand, looked up at him with her enormous and enormously innocent eyes.
     “What’s that?” The defense attorney melted. Man, those eyes would be the death of him. Either that, or the countless burgers Maya made him eat.
     “It’s a fast-food place.”
     “What’s that?”
     “A place you can order food and you get it quickly.”
     “Why doesn’t everyone eat there?”
     “The food isn’t really healthy.”
     “Why?”
     “Because it’s hard to make really healthy food that quickly… and because the unhealthiest foods taste the best.”
     “Why?”
     “Ah… Pearls…” He looked down at her in her costume. Those amazingly big eyes looked even bigger beneath her glasses. “You’ve had ice cream, right?”
     “Yes!” she declared triumphantly. Every little thing was a great win for her. “With you, Mr. Nick!” Phoenix sighed. If this ‘Nick’ thing caught on, he’d be in a lot of trouble. Who would ever take him seriously again? What worried him most was the judge hearing it, because he knew the judge would call him that forever.
     “And you’ve had salad, right?”
     “Yes!” Another triumph.
     “Well, the ice cream tasted better, didn’t it?” Pearl looked completely astonished. Phoenix wanted to hug her into tiny little pieces.
     “Y-Yes, it did!”
     “Geeze, Pearly, it’s not some scientific miracle,” Maya inserted. The mention of ‘scientific’ reminded Phoenix of Ema and he wilted. “Pearl, let’s go here!” The girl’s exclamation made the other two stop, and the three of them looked up at the enormous house. Immediately, Phoenix’s mouth went dry.
     “No, that’s okay, let’s go to a different house…” he suggested warily, but neither one of the girls was listening. With a spiritual medium in full costume on each arm, they tugged him up the winding walkway, strewn with plastic spiders and flanked on either side by jack-o-lanterns. Their slit eyes glowed yellow and red and orange, candle flames dancing from within.
     Trees on either side of the gargantuan yard were hung with spider webs and skulls and rubber bats. The front porch had a grim reaper set up on one of the rocking chairs. In the wind, he appeared to be moving, the blade of his unstable scythe swinging back and forth.
     “Hey!” The three of them stopped, and a boy dressed up like the Steel Samurai waved his Samurai Speer at them. “Don’t bother with that house! That guy never opens his door!”
     Phoenix waved to him and thanked him, and once he and his group of friends had continued on, the lawyer bent down towards the girls.
     “You heard him—we’ll try the next house.”
     “But Nick!” Maya declared. “This is our first house! This is the first house we’ve ever approached on Halloween! We can’t just walk away from it!”
     “That’s right!” Pearl exclaimed just as forcefully. Phoenix knew he was beat.
     “B-But we’re not even at the door yet!” he attempted. Once again, no one was listening to him. In typical Maya fashion, she rolled up one pink sleeve and made a fist beneath a pink glove.
     “I’m going to go up to his door and knock so loudly that he answers! Then I’m going to say ‘trick-or-treat!’”
     “M-Maya…” Phoenix begged, but she wouldn’t listen. He knew that if he told her the truth about this stretching mansion, she’d only be further motivated to bother its sole occupant.
     The three of them climbed the few short steps up to the doorway, and Maya rang the bell, convinced someone would answer. When no one did, she rang again, and still a third time, until finally Pearl suggested she start knocking. So both of them did. They knocked and knocked and still no one showed up.
     “H-Hey, guys, I think we should leave now. We’ll go to the next house and you’ll get really nice candy there, and you’ll forget we ever visited his place…”
     “Huh?” Maya paused, but Pearl kept on knocking. Luckily, her hands were too small to make that much of a racket. Phoenix’s unscrupulous assistant, however, looked up at him with eyes that clearly demonstrated a blood relation to Pearl. “You know who lives here, Nick?”
     And Phoenix’s options of whether or not to tell her were suddenly stolen from him when the door swung open.
     “I’ll prosecute you all for trespassing if—”
     Miles Edgeworth’s irate threat caught in his throat the moment he saw them. More precisely, the moment he saw Phoenix and his nervous, lopsided grin. Slowly, slowly, the prosecutor shut the door. And from behind it, Maya and Phoenix and Pearl listened as Edgeworth burst out laughing.
     “Wow, Nick!” Maya cried. “Is that the first time Mr. Edgeworth has ever laughed in his life?” Phoenix, completely deflated, wished he could have egged Edgeworth’s house when he had the chance.
     “Probably, Maya. Probably.”
     Once the laughter had abated completely, the door swung open again.
     “Wright!” Edgeworth snapped. “What in the hell are you supposed to be?”
     Phoenix had to admit, his adversary was one attractive man. While it was quite obvious he’d gone to work that morning, it was also clear that he had the rest of the afternoon off—to protect his house on Halloween, no doubt. He’d kept on his black slacks from the office, and his polished shoes were still on his feet, but a maroon t-shirt hugged his upper body and gave away Edgeworth’s secret—he worked out.
     Phoenix grinned.
     “Can’t you tell?”
     “No.” An icy response.
     “Don’t you own a television, Edgeworth?” Phoenix questioned skeptically.
     “Of course I do,” the other man scoffed. He pointed at Maya. “She’s the Pink Princess.” Maya gasped and started jumping in place.
     “Wow, Mr. Edgeworth! You watch the Pink Princess too?! Do you have the cards? We can trade!” From her belt, she whipped out a handful of holographic Pink Princess cards. The prosecutor’s face contorted until it looked the way it did whenever Phoenix defeated him soundly in court.
     “I don’t watch the Pink Princess! My knowledge of who you are and Wright’s imbecilic inquiry as to whether I own a television were not meant to be related.”
     Phoenix thought he might faint. Why, Mia, he silently bemoaned, why?
     “Okay, Mr. Edgeworth! Who’s Pearly?” Maya pointed at the little girl with a challenging grin. Edgeworth looked over the costume. A pair of baggy dark shorts, sneakers, a blue jacket, huge glasses, and a sports watch.
     “…A miniature, blind, far better looking, smarter Phoenix Wright?”
     “I hope you like pulling toilet paper out of trees, Edgeworth…”
     “N-No!” Pearl cried, right over Phoenix’s utterance. “I’m Conan! I’m Conan Edogawa! He’s a boy detective!”
     “Oh.” Edgeworth didn’t sound particularly interested as he looked back up at the defense attorney before him. “Now, back to my original question, if we could. Who are you?”
     It was a perfect outfit, really. Not one that Miles Edgeworth would appreciate, but perfect nonetheless. Phoenix was in a black suit with a red tie—not all that dissimilar from what he wore to work everyday. A yellow crest covered his hair; attached to it was a black eye-mask. On his back he wore a pair of blue wings.
     “I-I’m… I’m Harvey Birdman.” Then he gave that nervous, lopsided grin again. “Attorney at Law! Get it…?”
     Edgeworth just stared at him for a moment.
     “Yes. Yes, I get it,” he answered flatly. “Now… I think you should get off my property.”
     Phoenix was more than happy to oblige him—or he would have been, anyway, had Maya not stepped forward.
     “No!” she said stubbornly. “This is our first Halloween trick-or-treating, and you’re the first house we’ve stopped at, so you’ve got to give us candy!”
     Edgeworth’s eyes widened. Was she… serious?! But Maya just held out her plastic pumpkin and waited. Pearl looked between the other girl and the prosecutor, and finally held up her own pumpkin. Phoenix gave an apologetic shrug. Finally, Edgeworth glared at him and slammed the door shut.
     “H-Hey!” Maya cried, but almost as suddenly as he’d closed it, he opened it again.
     “Here,” Edgeworth uttered, and he dropped something into each of their pumpkins. “Take them and go. And don’t come back.”
     The door closed a final time, and the three of them shuffled back down to the sidewalk and out of view of Edgeworth’s house.
     “What’d he give you?” Phoenix questioned. Maya held up her pumpkin for him to see. “W-Whoa…”
     Each girl had received two large Hershey bars of varying flavors.
     “That’s a great haul for your first house,” he said. “Don’t expect that from anyone else.”
     Maya grinned.
     “Nick! Do you think Mr. Edgeworth bought candy for trick-or-treaters after all?”
     Phoenix was leading them up the walkway of another house when she said it, and he turned it over in his head as they rang the bell and called out ‘trick-or-treat!’ in unison.
     As they continued on their way, Phoenix smiled to himself. Could it be that his long-time friend and fierce opponent… had a sweet tooth?

     Two hours later, Maya and Pearl had emptied two pumpkins full of candy out on Phoenix’s living room floor and still wanted to keep trick-or-treating. Now halfway through their third pumpkins, Phoenix was taking them up one of the main streets of the city, where businesses and storefronts were giving away bigger candies or free samples of cookies and ice cream.
     Phoenix’s feet were heavy and terribly sore, and he wished more than anything that his wings could be real—if he could fly, he stood a chance at keeping up with the boundless energy these two exhibited.
     Ahead of them was the police station, and Phoenix looked between the two girls.
     “Hey, do you guys want to stop in and show Detective Gumshoe your costumes?”
     “Great idea, Nick!” Maya agreed. “I wonder if all the cops are in costume, too.”
Phoenix didn’t think so, but he wasn’t sure he should really be giving these cops the benefit of the doubt.
     Pushing open the front door of the police station, Phoenix shook his head slowly. Of course. Costumes everywhere. There were Batmen and Robins, Supermen and Wonder Women. There were cowboys—was that a costume?—and even a few judges. Phoenix caught a glimpse of a man in a maroon jacket and bit his lip to keep from laughing. That was definitely supposed to be Edgeworth. And over there, a man in a blue jacket with his hair slicked back—
     “Is that supposed to be me?” he uttered.
     “Hey, pals!”
     And, the coup de grace, Detective Gumshoe. He looked surprisingly normal, however; instead of his usual green coat, it was grey, and he had a matching grey hat on his head. A few metal gizmos—including his metal detector and bug-finding device—were jammed into the belt of his coat.
     “Hey, Detective Gumshoe,” Phoenix greeted, and was about to say something else when Gumshoe got defensive.
     “That’s not right!” he insisted. “It’s Halloween, pal! I’m not Detective Gumshoe today!”
     “Who… are you then?” Gumshoe grinned proudly.
     “I’m Inspector Gadget!”
     “Inspector… Gad-jet…?” Pearl repeated softly.
     “I love your costume, pal!” Gumshoe—or Gadget—was talking to Maya. “Hey, do you have the cards?” And from Gadget’s pocket, he pulled a stack of holographic Pink Princess cards. “Do you want to trade?”
     “Sure!” Maya agreed instantly, and suddenly, the trade was on.
     “This is ridiculous,” Phoenix lamented to himself. Suddenly, the officer dressed up as him, dressed up as Phoenix Wright, approached.
     “Hey, great costume, Mr. Wright!” he cheered while looking proud of himself at the same time.
     “Hey! He’s Mr. Birdman, pal!”
     “S-Sorry, Detec—Inspector…”
     “He’s always Mr. Birdman!” someone called out from the depths of the department. The room burst into laughter. Phoenix felt like bursting into tears.
And then, just when he thought his Halloween couldn’t get anymore hectic, he heard it. That slow, haunting melody that he’d had stuck in his head for weeks after the Goodman murder.
     “W-Where’s that song coming from?” he demanded, looking around frantically. It was obvious that someone was singing it—it was off-key and broke often, but it was definitely that song.
     “Oh, that’s just Meekins, pal,” Gumshoe told him distractedly. He was torn over a possible trade. “He lost a bet, so he’s got to be that.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and Phoenix peered around him.
     “Doo doo doo doo doo doo dun! Dun dun, dun dun—oww!” The song came drifting out of the back room, followed by the sharp exclamation.
     “Meekins!” snapped another officer. “Get the hell out of here!”
     “Yes-sir-sorry-sir!” came the familiar, shrill shout. Then the song started again. “Doo doo doo doo—”
     And then, from the back room, Meekins came tumbling. He tripped over his own feet and fell flat on his face, and when he picked himself back up, he swayed back and forth and kept singing. He bumped into desks and fell over air, but slowly and surely made his way over to them.
     “N-Nick!” Maya cried in horror. Phoenix realized that Maya hadn’t ever seen this catastrophe spawned by Gumshoe. “What is that thing?!”
     “Doo doo dun! Hello, Mr. Wright, sir! Dun dun, dun…” Phoenix sighed.
     “That, Maya, is the Blue Badger.”
                                                            ~