#i hear that apollo has a wild backstory

[pennamepersona]

i know it gets addressed eventually but honestly it would be extremely on brand for phoenix to just refuse to explain how he's acquired a 15 year old daughter during a 7 year time gap

[eligobrrrrr]

Hi! I'm gonna return the favor because I wanna hear some fun facts for your OCs, too! I'll ask it here so you can mention any of the OCs you wanna talk about, not just BG3

Omg this took longer than I wanted SO! As a challenge to myself I tried to write a fun fact of most of my characters (both D&D and BG3), some are missing due to them being generally underdeveloped

(The * means I have already played this character in a campaign, oneshot, or in bg3)

Ace Goldstring*

My beloved lightfoot halfling, college of spirits bard, sorry about getting you involved with Xanathar and the Zhentarim. So he has teal eyes with the ghost inside as a side effect of him being a spirit medium, if he wasn't his eyes would be brown like the rest of his family.

Davhomin Siannodel Brightwood*

The first one to be made and my dearest boy whom I apparently just like to put in situations. He has a garden back in his house in Silverymoon that he loves very much and gets worried about when he has toi go far for an extended period of time, usually other members of the church of Ilmater take care of it or sometimes his dad does.

Enoch Hume

Half-elf (drow) wizard. Student of Strixhaven, Quandrix School, very very tired he needs some sleep so much, one of his counsellors is a shifter werecat(mechanically a weretiger but I just wanted to make it a calico cat) for the theory side of the school.

Heinrich von Wenninger*

Ah yes, my dhampir vampire hunter. He has a cane, it was from his old teacher whom tragically passed away, he still carries it around everywhere as a memento, the cane is also quite interesting, it's part of the gothic trinkets list from Curse of Strahd/Van Richten's Guide, so the tip can generate sparks, instead of it being magical I made it like it is a small mechanism that with enough force could generate a small fire (and that definitely didn't come back to bite me in his oneshot/j)

Icarus Nephus

My scourge aasimar, sunsoul monk whom is basically a greek demigod (child of Apollo). He knows how to play the flute quite well, he learned to do it back in his monastery in Elturel. I also change his name slightly depending if I'm talking in English or Spanish (Icarus/Ícaro)

Nolan

They're the amneciacTM character, meant to be given to the dm and see what chaos unfolds, the few things I have stablished is that he has stitches and an odd scar in their chest powering their wild magic and is mortally afraid of mirrors.

Professor Meadowheart

Teacher in Strixhaven, Quandrix School, he's known to give one of the easiest classes for the first year students and one of the hardest for the last year students. He's also Enoch's counsellor embodying the substance part of quandrix. He has a raven familiar and definitely isn't conflicted about that (Shadar Kai that basically escaped the Shadowfell).

Yín Lóng/Argentum*

My silver dragon whom was cursed to be in human form. Loves loves loves books, they canonically have a library in the abandoned temple that they live in, also the story hook for their adventure is that someone stole one of the books, a very dangerous one so they're going to retrieve it (+ being stuck in human form and trying to transform back).

Thurak*

Half-Orc Wild Magic Barbarian. I have made reference to this several times but I never get tired about talking about it, he has a broken lyre cus he tried to play music and failed. On a fun fact related to his backstory, he actually doesn't know how to speak orcish and is actually still learning common.

Mayhem*

My tiefling monk, child of a cambion and grandchild of an incubus (Inherited being able to switch between a male and female form). Used to stealing people when they were younger then became part of the same monastery of Icarus in Elturel, Mayhem arrived first then Icarus did, Mayhem was dragged into Avernus while Icarus was in Baldur's Gate. They're besties.

Sergil*

Seldarine Drow (Technically an Aevendrow) gloom stalker ranger. He a lil bitch, a lil shit/pos, he doesn't know who Drizzt Do'Urden is and at this point he's too afraid to ask.

[himebushou]

I've basically been doing very little with my time besides watching Shaman King 2021 so phew, here are some thoughts on Episodes 10-32!

Episode 10

The bit with everybody hanging out at the inn was adorable, hee.

I LOVE BOZ THEY'RE SO FUNNY

It's odd that Yoh is already paying that much attention to "Hao" considering the name has come up once? But yeah...

Ryu comes back!! And damn, he already qualified for the main tournament?

Bason and Ren are too cute. Also, it's interesting to watch Ren's mindset change and hee, we get the showdown against Tao En!

Episode 11

Phew — Ren gets captured by his Pops and the Zoldyck vibes INTENSIFY.

I don't remember the Tao family having their own Super Sentai Squad, but hey, it tracks!

It's a bit of a shame that these battles were concluded so quickly, but it was cool to see Horohoro and Ryu's upgrades!

Can't believe Tao Rn squeezed that poor baby panda to death only for it to be resurrected as a zombie in the next scene! SHEESH!

Episode 12

This episode also went at THE SPEED OF LIGHT! I cant believe we got Jun's dramatic rescue and the whole Tao En reveal and fight in the same episode! I mean, at this speed, Ren's deep loyalty to the gang does seem a bit goofy, but hey, I'll deal!

Ryu saying, "Just what exactly do you think wavering is?" had me laughing so much, oh man.

Episode 13

How is SO MUCH happeningin EVERY EPISODE?

Yoh and the crew leave home!

They meet Hao!

They get dropped out of a plane!

They meet Lilirara, who's really cool! There's sone backstory!

They go on their way — AND THEN LILIRARA DIES???

Wild!!!!

Horohoro continues to be adorable and guh, I'm really enjoying watching the episodes dubbed... honestly, the dub iis really, really good!

Episode 14

WHEEE LYSERG THE DOOFUS IS HERE... to be honest he's a lil green Sherlock. Isn't it nice that everyone has a colour-coded Oracle Bell lol Yoh's is orange and Lyserg's is green... it's been like 15 years but I still don't know if I've forgiven him for what comes later. Whoops.

Anna is such a great character and I love how much bearing she has on the story.

New ending! And it's Iron Maiden Jeanne!!

Also, the goof with 6 years versus 8 years... Lyserg's parents definitely weren't killed 6 years ago, sheesh.

Episode 15

Okay, so this was one of the eps where the pacing was definitely painful. Anna got a (hodgepodge) version of Hao's backstory — honestly, why didn't Yohmei just tell her the whole deal if he was going to reveal so much? And then, she dealt with Hao's familiars SO QUICKLY that there was like. No threat to them at all. I was expecting more boom bang...

But she did use the 1080 beads! We love the 1080 beads!

Horohoro is just one of the best characters and I loved his upgrade, gosh. Again, we could have had a whole episode dedicated to his time with Apollo, rather than 10 mins. I also don't know HOW Ranger Bluebell knew bout him wanting to become the Shaman King since that wasn't discussed

For obvious reasons, Morphin is renamed Morphia in the dub, hue.

Episode 16

Not much that I can say about this episode (I was a bit sleepy when I watched it). Ryu is getting an upgrade — at lastl! And this episode had some of the humour I love from Shaman King: the whole bit with the vampiric guys was SO funny. "If there are only 5 in the group, why do two of them look the same?!" Yoh/Ren/Horohoro are such a darling trio.

Episode 17

/inhales

THE X-LAWS ARE HERE

WHICH MEANS MARCO IS HERE

WHICH MEANS... ERIC STUART!!!

And man I hate Marco (thought ťhe X-Laws are great villains who basically permanently impacted mine and my friends' psyches; they're a specific type of evil) but boy oh boy, it is sooo good to hear Seto Kaiba in an anime again, sobs.

Lyserg... tbh, I don't think I ever forgave his betrayal back from 2001; THERE'S STILL A PART OF ME THAT'S MAD. I wonder if I might feel differently this time around but I half-expected the little green bean to run off with the X-Laws in this very episode so I was a bit surprised when he didn't.

And then a surprise! Hao chatted to Anna and Manta and Tamao! Anna looks so cool with the sunglasses, lol. Though... I feel like Manta's being from money is largely a plot device (because how else would everyone get to the States)... but I often find this with rich/wealthy characters. sighs!

Oh, also! The Shaman King timeline is SO WHACK. Like, Ryu says to Yoh: "You forgot about me in Izumo which is when I trained to be a shaman." But here's the problem. I think Ryu only went to Izumo in the he first place to take Manta there and THEN he trained with Yohmei — but the flashback reveals that Ryu had to wait for a week to get Yohmei to train him (why is Mikihisa Like That btw) which means that. Yoh would have already been back and fighting and drawing against Ren and therefore concluding prelims in the same time that Ryu was supposedly waiting for Yohemi to train him? And yet Ryu somehow had an Oracle Bell AND qualified for the main tournament? While Ren had only completed two battles?

fudjdjd stuff like this drives me absolutely cuckoo I NEED WRITERS TO HAVE CHARTS AND TOURNAMENT TABLES AND TIMELINES AND ALL ELSE. URHFJFJD

Episode 18

JOCO!!! HEART EMOJIIIS

Anna slapping Hao with her free hand!

Mihihisa being revealed to be Yoh's dad!!

And the whole bit with Ren deciding the teams fhdjd man I am CRACKING UP!

(I rewatched some scenes in English and Japanese and wow, some of the changes are completely unnecessary fjdjd)

Episode 19

I... finally caught the Mic the Jaguar / Mic Jagger joke.

After almost 20 years.

SHEESH.

(I love Boz they're so funny fjljjd)

Episode 20

I never knew that Joco's backstory was so sad... my poor little guy...

I love how Ren pointed out that Horohoro did nothing, zero and zilch in the match dhdjd

Episode 21

Phew... to say that the X-Laws are brutal is putting it lightly... and looking at Jeanne and the way she was in this episode and knowing that she ends up with Ren is very. HUH?

I kind of can't believe just how laidback Yoh is sometimes. It kinda irritates me a tiny bit? Back in the day, I couldn't choose between Yoh, Ren and Horohoro for the Favourite Character Spot, but I'm not firmly Team Horohoro, ehe.

Poor Team Niles. Gosh.

Episode 22

Crying and sobbing... why won't Shaman King just give me. A TIMELINE? So now I discover that it's been TWO MONTHS since they were in the Patch village (???) and it's already the last battle of the first round of the tournament (???) and that Anna already taught Team Funbari Hot Springs EVERYTHING in Hao's big bad book (???) and? We didn't get to see any of that? Like I understand this decision if that's how it went down in the manga and the double OS was a major, unprecedented reveal, but if not... I LOVE A TRAINING MONTAGE. Give me these arcs...

Also, the dub's choices for which terms to leave in Japanese are messy. They use words like Onmyoji and Ultra Senji Ryakketsu, but 'Mana' replaces 'furyoku'... like I'm pretty sure the 4Kids dub used furyoku because it was a term I was v. familiar with.

Anyway, its nice to see a battle span two eps!

Episode 23

Wowee... this episode got me teary. Ryu's upgrade is NICE and Anna talking about the flexibility of Yoh's furyoku was so sweet. I also love the Icemen and their design — and it was particularly cute to see Pino and Horohoro chatting together at the end.

And then Hao's whole convo with Ren (the 4Kids dub called him Len and Yoh nicknamed him Lenny which was the cutest; gah, things I miss!) was really interesting

BUT WHY HAS YOH SOUGHT OUT LYSERG THE TRAITOR... ooft!

Episode 24

WAAAA WHAT A COOL EPISODE?

Okay, so it turns out that I was wrong about all the matches being over because this ep was HAO VS THE X-LAWS and damn, Hao using OXYGEN as his medium? That's bloody cool!!!

The OST in this ep was top tiiieeer and freaking — the X-Laws being humanised? A bit? I am SHOCKED.

Episode 25

Revelations galore... and Yohmei Tries to Commit Infanticide: Extended Edition.

Blimey. This anime is getting me so emotional.

(I love Horohoro I love what a good friend he is he is my FAVOURITE.)

Episode 26

WOW I LOVED THIS EPISODE.

The senior Asakura and Tao folks coming together to discuss Hao's bigtime book and the gang finally finding out about Yoh's origins! I got to see TAO RAN again (I love her) and freaking heck, Mikihisa is so cool? I guess jury has to be out with him a liiiittle bit because I've seen people commenting that he sucks. But. I have a major soft-spot for shounen dads (Goku, Echizen Nanjiroh, Van Hohenheim, Kurosaki Isshin...) and I reckon Mikihisa ticks cool points.

And freaking Ren! Why is everyone so cool??

Episode 27

NO TIME YO RECORD THOUGHTS MUST WATCH NEXT EP

Team Flower vs Jun / Anna / Tamao yeah!!

GOTTA SAVE REEEEN!!!

Episode 28

HOWLING

HOWLING!!

The Iron Maiden will save Ren (oh my GOSH — NOW, CERTAIN THINGS make more sense) and Yoh will be withdrawing from the tournament (?) and we got a new opening AND a new ending and Horohoro had that whole speech and buuu MY TEARS!

Episode 29

Mikihisa appears and just adopts everyone on sight and oh my gosh, the babies? Forget everyone else I want THEIR happiness and dhdhd what is this stuff about a golem?

HOW CAN I GO TO SLEEP WHEN THERE IS SO MUCH HAPPENING IN THIS ANIME

Episode 30

Ahhh we're entering a flashback! So this is what people were talking about when they kept bringing up "Osorezan Arc", huh?? YOH AND ANNA'S FIRST MEETING!

AND SHE WAS SO DISGUSTED.

Once again, the timeline is WHACK because there's really no way it can be the year 2000 at the time of the Shaman Fight unless I'm missing something huuuge... Yoh and Anna really should've been 8 when they met, not 10?

And I'm finally meeting Matamune!

But he was in the last Shaman Fight dhdhd i guess Hao couldn't have participated since he was a Patch that time but what happened at the fight 1000 years ago?

SO MANY MYSTERIIIES

Episode 31

Oh man, I can see why people were so obsessed with this arc... there is just so much emotion here from all sides: Matamune (having to defeat Hao!!), Yoh and Anna, Kino — everything.

You can see why Yoh and Anna are the dream team, wow.

Also, I looked up a timeline and I think I can make my peace with it being the year 2000 in canon... but the anime did not explain it AT ALL, which is pretty poor.

Episode 32

Wow.

Yoh and Anna are very, very special.

[carbootsoul]

ace attorney :•)

omg miles thank u for sending me this ask completely unprompted <3 love wins

favorite character: apollo justice :) my little guy

least favorite character: man ace attorney has so many bad characters. a whole wealth of them. that fucking pedo puppet man from turnabout big top is probably very high on the list tho

brOTP: apollo and athena r SO funny investigating together absolute trans rights with those guys. same with ema + nahyuta + simon + klavier the dynamics between the 4 of them.. hilarious. they r in laws and partners in crime and mortal enemies and also in a band

OTP: faraskye :) and lanamia but i don't talk about it much bc.. no content :(( also hear me out hear me out valant gramarye/guy eldoon. match made in heaven. valants hair kind of looks like noodles too AND they both deserve good things (aka other middle aged men with silly little tragic backstories)

OT3: hrm hrm hrm. honestly i am not rly an ot3 person. if a character has romantic chemistry w multiple other characters i usually err on the "different ppl different times of life" thing bc i think it's more dynamic. that said. sighs kristoph/phoenix/edgeworth over the 7 year gap is a little fun maybe (i am not a freak i promise).

NOTP: oh so many. i am ignoring all the actual freak stuff bc u already know it sucks. so my controversial opinion is i don't like nahyuta/ema because i think ema's a lesbian. i think it can be kinda fun if it's like nahyuta/ema/simon MAYBE but even then. shrug. they're more fun as friends.

favorite storyline: thinks about turnabout trump and blows up. that was so wild and for a first case?? insane. also obv every final case in the trilogy

least favorite storyline: turnabout big top <3

what I wish had happened but didn’t: AURGH AJ TRILOGY WOULD HAVE SOLVED ALL MY PROBLEMS OH MY GOD. can u imagine.. also UR-1 being a case that's handled in about the same way SL-9 was w a rfta type case except athena comes back sooner than ema does. actual character development for klavier.. apollo getting character growth without stealing someone elses game.. phoenix fucking off.....

what happened that I wish hadn’t: hrm. u know i really wish they hadn't made everyone sit though penumbra podcast type kissing noises when narumitsu canon that was kinda uncomfortable

[earthdeep]

with that bad aa take post going around, I think one of the reblogs could be referencing a post I made a few years back defending apollo's aa6 backstory and you know what? years later, after hearing the same jokes abt him having too many backstories over and over again, I'm doubling back and also doubling the fuck down.

bitch he has one weird orphan backstory and a friend he made later. that's fucking it. it's not like anything was retconned from aa4 bc there was nothing fucking there!

his mum was thalassa and his dead dad was a performer. two games later and the dad was a bit part in a foreign conspiracy. kid grew up in the mountains until at some point he was sent back to america where he met clay and grew up to be a lawyer.

there we go. there's all of apollo's many fucking backstories. it comes across as totally fucking wild, don't get me wrong, bc tying the little red shouty man to a rebel group aiming to take down a corrupt theocratic dictatorship in the himalayas was always going to be a Choice. but it's the quality, not the quantity of polly's wild ride that does that, and it ticks me off in a very writer-y way when ppl fail to get that.

srsly if u wanna talk quantity of backstory rerouting, go examine edgeworth a bit more. fucker's career's an absolute mess of false starts and surprise acquaintances, even without taking the anime into account...

[turnaboutnerd]

@xemylixa @wild-mare-of-prosecution

Who’s to say Kristoph’s return has to be cheap or that he’s even dead — yet? If a second AJ game were to take place a year after SOJ, it will have been only 3 years since the events of AA4. Dahlia Hawthorne was executed approximately 5 years after her conviction. Simon Blackquill was due to be executed 7 years after his. Following previous death row timelines, Kristoph is likely still alive in the current canon of the game.

I could envision several scenarios wherein Kristoph could make a meaningful return as a villain in a sequel game. Here’s one: Let’s say Kristoph is on death row and is days away from being executed. Then he asks Klavier, with a smile, if he’s absolutely sure he’s found everyone his dear older brother has killed.

The insinuation keeps Klavier up at night and leads to him having a minor nervous breakdown, especially in the wake of the sudden death of Valant Gramarye. Lamiroir was arrested for his murder, and the evidence points to her, except for one detail — he died by atroquine poisoning.

Kristoph could be lying. He could be messing with Klavier’s head and trying to manipulate his baby brother to delay the execution. But Klavier doesn’t believe Lamiroir killed Valant, and while it seems Valant has no meaningful connection to the forgeries that would motivate Kristoph to kill him — not to mention the seeming impossibility that Kristoph could succeed in killing a human from within his cell again — what if there’s something they’re all missing?

The other person who doesn’t believe Lamiroir killed Valant? Phoenix Wright. And he’s doubly desperate to prove her innocence because she was only in town to plan how they should tell Trucy and Apollo they’re related.

Hearing about the trouble, Apollo rushes back to the States to try to help. He’s forced to pinch his nose and take on Kristoph as a client for the sole purpose of delaying his execution, if only to buy himself, Phoenix, and Klavier time to connect Kristoph to the murder of Valant Gramarye and save Lamiroir.

Anyway, I don’t know how this all would play out, but it certainly would be a nice way to set the stage for Trucy and Apollo learning they’re siblings, to revisit the mysteries of the Troupe Gramarye, and to finally learn just what was behind Kristoph’s black psychelocks.

As a bonus, we can also get that long-awaited Gavin brothers backstory, some mending for Klavier and Phoenix’s relationship, and emotional payoff for Klavier and Apollo’s courtroom rivalry as they discard all appearances of prosecutor vs defense attorney and work together to find the truth.

[titusmoody]

2021 Q2 stuff

Games

Return of the Obra Dinn -- Very different. A great experience to play, it doesn’t use any typical “gamer” skills or knowledge. It also hit on a lot of my personally prefered sensibilities (stories self-contained to ships, non-linear storytelling, mysteries, and meticulous attention to detail)

Kentucky Route Zero -- Even more different. I’m glad I played it for the atmosphere, though it didn’t click with me the way Obra Dinn did. Extremely atmospheric and cool, but also has a strong academic curiosity to it.

DOOM (2016)-- Okay, we’re back to regular video games. Everything about this one seems very carefully crafted. I had a good, mindless time with this one.

Spider-Man -- Not as well-crafted as DOOM, but also less juvenile. I also had a good, mindless time with this one.

Metroid: Samus Returns -- Feels like Metroid. The moment-to-moment combat is different than Super Metriod and Fusion, which is a nice way to keep things from getting stale.

TV

Shadow and Bone -- Sometimes tropes exist because they make for good stories. This show was a good example of that.

Pani Poni Dash -- WTF Japan, in a good way

Princess Tutu -- Much like I felt about Cowboy Bebop, this show was very well-made and I had an easy time appreciating what it was doing, though in the end it’s not the kind of thing that’s really for me

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid -- Pleasant to watch, mostly lighthearted but could definitely have emotional moments here and there to keep you interested.

Kakegurui -- Shows like this are the reason anime fans are so self-depricating. It was thoroughly trashy, but I’d be lying if I said that the trashiness didn’t lead to a lot of fun.

Love, Chunibyo, and other Delusions -- An excellent comfort-watch. About a high-schooler trying to run away from his cringe-y middle school phase. I definitely have criticisms of it, but I’m also definitely going to watch it again.

Devilman Crybaby -- I swear, Masaaki Uasa takes the most overdone premises and portrays them in such bonkers ways that they become pretty cool. This isn’t one of the best examples of that, but it still works.

Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket -- Part of Gundam’s brand is that it shows the effect of wars on individuals. This is a great small-scale example of that. 

She-Ra -- It’s good. The plot kinda meanders and the backstory lore is presented confusingly/unclearly at times. But the central characters are good enough to carry at least a few seasons, and the secondary characters really elevate the whole thing. I was personally very fond of Scorpia as well as the way the writers used Entrapta both in the plot and as a character foil.

Chernobyl -- Second time watching this, it’s definitely a favorite. 

Movies

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again -- You already know what this is like and whether or not you enjoy the sort of thing it is. 

Moulin Rouge -- It’s hard to watch Mamma Mia without thinking of this one, so I watched it soon after.

Minari -- My personal reward for being fully vaccinated was to go to the movies by myself. This was a good movie, though overshadowed by the circumstances in which I saw it. I would’ve been very happy to be seeing anything.

My Fair Lady -- An iconic pop-culture touchstone. Not my favorite musical, for sure.

Interstellar -- This movie is in the odd position of currently being my favorite Christopher Nolan movie despite the fact that I don’t like it nearly as much as I liked either The Dark Knight or Memento when I saw those for the first time.

The Perfect Storm -- George Clooney, big wave.

Legally Blonde -- I didn’t hear the term “sitcom” until oddly late in life, and when I heard it, I assumed it meant movies like this where there aren’t a ton of jokes, but the characters are constantly in inherently funny situations. I don’t like this type of humor that much.

Jurassic Park -- A big “moral” of the movie was “don’t trust computers to do anything important” but today it’s hard not to get the message as “never underpay your system administrator” instead.

Apollo 13 -- Pretty good

ET -- I really didn’t like this movie and I don’t quite know what it doesn’t do that Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones do. Imminent danger seem to be part of it, but I don’t think that’s the whole picture.

The Day After Tomorrow -- *shrug* I had fun watching it

Pearl Harbor -- expected it to be bad, it was bad. It was definitely bad in interesting ways, and was almost good a lot of the time.

Die Hard -- I was looking for suspenseful movies with clear character motivation and this fit the description. It was good, though I didn’t like it quite as much as I hoped to.

Star Trek V -- Star Trek is often silly and I just can’t get on board with some of the silliness, like the last part of this movie.

Terminator 2 -- Yeah, I do like suspense. I don’t think I’ll look back on this as a favorite, but I was pretty into it. Moreso than Die Hard.

Cast Away -- Pretty good

Predator -- Somewhere between Die Hard and Terminator 2. I was a bit bored by the end, which ironically was the part that most closely resembled what I was looking for.

Braveheart -- I think romanticising medieval Europe is fun and cool. Unfortunately this movie has some creepy sexual hang-ups as well as rampant “no step on snek” energy that ruin the whole thing.

Redline -- Just a cool looking movie

State of Play -- I forgot the whole plot of this already, but I enjoyed it

Troy -- It’s not as bad as its reputation suggests, though the end does get really over-the-top cheesy

Demon Slayer -- I liked going to the movies by myself so much the first time that I did it again. This time it was in a much more full theater and I was one of very few people over 17. Fun action anime movie, though.

Gladiator -- I’m so disappointed that I didn’t connect to this movie, since over and over I felt like I was very close to loving it. I think the revenge motivation was what ultimately prevented me from really getting into it.

K-19: The Widowmaker -- Hell yeah, extremely tense submarine scenes, that’s exactly what I wanted.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004) -- The movie felt like it wanted its premise to feel plausible, but it really didn’t. Still pretty good, though

The Big Lebowski -- Still not a big fan of this one. 

The Naked Gun -- This confirms that my sense of humor has not gotten more refined since age 17 or so. I still thought this was pretty funny.

Dances With Wolves -- Mostly just boring. 

Angels and Demons -- Even at age 15 the book’s riddles and clues premise felt a bit too contrived. The movie has the additional disadvantage that verbal explanations are the most boring way to resolve questions, unlike books where words are all you have.

Chinatown -- Meh, a fine detective story but nothing really clicked with me. The director’s life is wild, though. He escaped the holocaust, had his pregnant wife murdered by the Manson family, and is currently a fugitive from justice for raping a 13 year old.

The Core -- Like The Perfect Storm, appealing in the “so bad it’s good” way.

Porco Rosso -- Think the type of character study of Kiki’s Delivery Service, but about a middle-aged man, so it doesn’t resonate with Miyazaki’s audience enough for many people to talk about it.

Uncut Gems -- My second time watching it, it’s definitely a favorite. Between this and A Serious Man, I seem to love extremely stressful movies about mediocre jewish men.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) -- Interesting to compare/contrast with the other version. I like both

Galaxy Quest -- another movie that fits my personal definition of what “sitcom” should mean. Again, not my favorite type of humor

Fantastic Planet -- Looks like something between the animated sketches in Monty Python and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Very weird, it personally really worked for me.

Scarface -- I think romanticising organized crime is fun and cool. 

In the Heights -- colorful, catchy, happy and fun. 

Books

The House in the Cerulean Sea -- a good comfort-read. very simplistic and a little clunky and amateur-ish, but ultimately pretty cute.

There There -- not a comfort-read at all. A super raw look at the modern life of a variety of Native American situations. Very harsh but also interesting.

Six of Crows -- Fine YA fantasy fluff.

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 19: yeah there’s actually still one last little bit of investigation left in this case. I’m sorry too. Now who wants backstory for side characters in a DLC case!

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

For all her bluff and bluster about getting back to investigating in the face of Blackquill’s disdain, Athena doesn’t seem to have a clue what they should do next. She tromps in stocking feet back into the aquarium, Phoenix and Pearl trailing behind her, and stares at a poster on the wall with life cycle facts about penguins for five minutes before she suggests that they go visit Sasha, because if Blackquill was here, then he had to be done interrogating her, right?

Pearl remains behind at the aquarium to get settled in, and Athena complains the whole drive to the detention center because Phoenix made her put her wet shoes back on instead of driving barefoot. “I’m wearing tights!” she insists. “It’s not barefoot!”

“Shoes, kiddo.”

“They’re wet! It’s gross!”

“Should’ve thought of that before you threw a bucket of water at a witch.” Or whatever he is. Fae-adjacent, the same vague broad classification to encompass Phoenix and Trucy and Klavier and Thalassa. Apollo’s not quite there yet.

“Wicked witch of the bench afraid he’d melt if it hit him, you think?” She steps out onto the parking lot asphalt and winces at the tiny rocks digging into her feet. “Okay,” she sighs. “Shoes.”

As they wait at the detention center for Sasha to be brought out, Athena turns, very seriously, to Phoenix. “Alright, Boss, we’ve gotta cheer Sasha up! If you’re feeling bad about the investigation, don’t you dare show it!”

The door on the other side of the glass opens and an officer escorts Sasha in. She wears a grin on her face but has a wild look in her eyes. “Ahoy, me buckos! Worry ye not about me! My spirits be good and ol’ Prosecutor Nostache won’t keep me down!”

“Uh.” Athena blinks and turns to Phoenix. He shrugs. 

Sasha’s entire posture collapses. “Well that was an anchor,” she says. “Straight to the bottom. I wanted to make you feel better for all the trouble I’m causing…”

“We were hoping to cheer you up,” Athena says. 

“Maybe you both can just act natural,” Phoenix says. Not that telling anyone to “act natural” ever leads to any normal or natural behaviors. Certainly not if he ever told Maya that, though after the first time he learned to add the qualifier “act what might be natural for a human”. 

“Anyway.” Athena inhales deeply and the large, forced smile that she had put on calms down into something still friendly, still smiling, but closer to neutral, and much more natural. “What we’re here for, Sasha, is to tell you that we’d like to represent you in court tomorrow!”

“What!” Sasha shoves herself backward from the sill, her chair screeching horribly across the floor until it gets stuck, and she still pushing tips herself and the chair over backwards, thudding out of sight to the ground.

“Sasha?” Phoenix asks. “Is - is something wrong?”

She doesn’t stand back up. Athena pushes herself up on the sill and presses her forehead against the glass, trying to peer down to see if she’s okay. “Pros - Prosecutor Blackquil s-said--” Sasha’s shaking, shuddering breathing interrupts her words. “Said that you w-wouldn’t show up. You’d abandon me.” She’s definitely crying now, loudly and messily. “And you’re here! You - you’re - you’re h-here. To rescue me.” She rights the chair, rubbing tears off of her cheeks and out of her bloodshot eyes. 

“No, Sasha!” Athena still has her face up close to the glass and she presses her palms up against it, too. “We would never! Even Prosecutor Blackquill should know that! I would never! Don’t cry!” The next loud sniffling comes from Athena.

Oh boy. 

“These are happy tears.” And Sasha is smiling, beaming really, even blinking furiously to stop further tears from falling. “I’m so so glad I met you both! For Orla and me a-and—” Another shaky breath stops her for a moment. “Okay. I’m okay. I’m okay! You’ve probably got questions, right? Fire away!”

What she tells them of cleaning the orca pool that early morning is a review of what they’ve already heard, up to the point that she readily tells them she was arguing with the captain. She talks more about Orla’s tricks, says that the calendar with the seven am meeting with the captain is definitely not hers, and when they tell her that they dropped off her medications - it was Fulbright who tasked them with this, but it still had to be cleared with the prison so that they know no one is trying to smuggle in something illegal like white powder (Apollo is way too straight-laced for an Anything Agency and it’s hilarious every time he smacks inconsequentially up against that wall) - she starts getting weird. Like she’s trying to distract them from the fact that she’s on medication at all, which isn’t really working. “Are you sick?” Athena asks. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s all just peachy!” Sasha says with false, feigned cheer; the fact that she couldn’t drum up a fish pun to use really seals it. (Wait, isn’t a drum a kind of fish? Why’s he know more about fish than flowers? And seals - god damn it.)

Athena stares doubtfully at her. Her shoulders slump. “I guess I could just tell you, huh,” Sasha says. “It’s for a heart condition but—”

“A heart condition?” Athena cries, her voice high and shrill. 

“—but it’s not that serious—”

“Not that serious!” Athena’s second echo isn’t quite as much of a piercing shriek, but it’s even louder, an angry yell. “It’s your heart! Don’t tell me not to worry!”

Sasha heaves a sigh. “This is why I don’t tell people,” she says. “Because you freak, and then I’m trying to reassure you that you don’t need to treat me like I’m fragile, and I’ve got to explain that I’m not dying, so on, so on.”

“Oh,” Athena says. “I’m sorry.”

“Nah, it’s okay.” Sasha shrugs. “I’m sorry for snapping at you like that. It’s not you. It just gets a little tiring going through the same song-and-dance every time I tell someone. Much less fun than putting on the same song and dance with Orla every show!” Athena laughs and Sasha sticks her tongue out at her. “And I’d just had that argument with the captain the other night, too. The one that came up in the trial this morning. He knew about my condition, and I’d told him that I’d scheduled the surgery that would fix it, and he was worried and he told me that’d been thinking, and he was taking me out of the show. You saw the new flier, right? That I’m not in it?”

Phoenix nods. 

“And it was supposed to debut yesterday. But I needed to go out there and perform yesterday. It was the anniversary of Azura’s death, and I had this crazy idea that I would go in front of the audience and tell them all that her death was just an accident, that Orla didn’t kill her, and now the captain wasn’t going to let me out there. So what I did” - her smile is somewhere between devious and sad - “was move the skull rock from the show stage. Put it back in the orca pool, figured the captain probably wouldn’t look there, and if he couldn’t find the major prop for the new show, we’d have to do the old one again, right? Marlon gave me a hand with it, while he was watching Orla at the stage pool.”

It was a bold plan, is about all Phoenix can say to that. “Azura is the orca trainer before you?” he asks.

“Yeah. Azura Summers. She taught me everything I know - she was a year older than me and we were like - anemone and clownfish. Remora and shark!” Phoenix doesn’t speak marine biology but Athena is nodding in solemn understanding. “She was a year older than me. She was the best - you ever meet someone and just, hit it off immediately, you just know that they’re someone who’s gonna be so important in your life?” Sasha stares down at her hands, fiddling with something. “And then she was gone.”

“That must’ve been awful,” Athena says. “Losing someone you loved, and then having everyone else say that your friend was the one that killed her, and no one believes you when you know otherwise.” She sniffs again. Poor girl and her sensitive hearing and hyperempathy. 

Sasha nods. “Azura was like family, since my own family was never exactly supportive of my career path.” And not that Phoenix wants to downplay the severity of family disapproval, how much of a mess of hurt their influence can make, but he can’t exactly say he’s surprised to hear that a selkie’s family might think that her getting a career with an orca was bad news. “I can only imagine what they’re saying now after the captain’s death now too.”

He doesn’t want to pick at a reopening wound, but he never knows what strange little pieces of information will help, and so he asks, “Were you and Ms Summers - involved?”

“Huh?” Sasha blinks at him. A moment later the meaning clicks. “Oh! No, she was straight. She had a boyfriend that I never got to meet, but I’d help her send him videos of some of our orca-training sessions, because I mean, getting to see your cute girlfriend hanging with a cute orca, what could be better?”

“Toss a cute penguin in there too!” Athena suggests. “And then you’re golden!”

“Athena, I love the way you think!”

Phoenix clears his throat. Something more for his “legal etiquette Athena needs to learn” list: the detention center is not a place for hitting on people. Or maybe it’s more Sasha hitting on her. Or maybe they’re just like this. 

Sasha’s face falls and her eyes turn downcast. “She had this matching charm with her boyfriend that I’d wanted to return to him after she died, but I didn’t know enough about him to find him, so I just hung onto it myself. Swore on it that I’d become the best orca trainer ever, for her.” She holds up the charm; it hangs from a cord with a bead strung on it, and looks like a little talisman or envelope one would find at a shrine. “Just like the captain always used her walkie-talkie after that. It had teeth marks from Orla in it, when she brought Azura back up from the water…”

Jack Shipley’s death must be like reliving a nightmare for her.

(But also, remembering the photo of the body, Phoenix did not see a walkie-talkie in the victim’s holder for it.)

“Wait, you didn’t even see her boyfriend at her funeral?” Athena asks.

Sasha shakes her head sadly. “She didn’t even have a funeral. We held our own memorial for her at the aquarium, but her family just sort of - showed up and took her away. I’d suggested that we get an autopsy or something done, to know how she actually died and that it wasn’t Orla, but we needed her family’s permission for that and they wouldn’t give it.” 

Her face is turned toward them, and her eyes are, or should be, but she has the spaced-out look of someone not seeing what’s right in front of her. “They had this huge row with Dr Crab about something, too. I wonder if that’s part of what changed him. He and Azura were pretty close, and he started acting so different after she died - talking about how he was going to euthanize Orla, when before he said he’d never do such a thing. He thought she did it! He still always keeps poison on hand, ready to put her down at any moment! If she’d been found guilty today he would’ve just done it, right then!”

Phoenix has a very good idea of who they need to talk to again, next.

-

Back at the aquarium, they find Dr Crab in his laboratory, with Pearl, who is holding a furiously a squawking Rifle in her arms. “—correct, she does hate me. Since this little annoyance” - Dr Crab gestures at Sniper, who is for once free of the nest of his hair and waddling about the lab - “imprinted on me right out of the egg, she thinks I stole her baby. I didn’t want to steal her baby! But I guess she feels like the human parents of a changeling would.”

“That’s very sad for both of you,” Pearl says seriously. Rifle’s wings flap against her hands. “Your job involves inducing animals to vomit a lot, doesn’t it?”

The doctor snorts. “Today’s just been a hell of a day.” He squints down at the strange machine in his hand, something too boxy to be a regular tablet, with a small screen that flips back on a hinge. “Now let me see if I can find out when she ingested that foreign object.”

“Hi Mr Nick!” Pearls releases Rifle to the ground and the penguin makes an immediate beeline for Dr Crab’s shins. Absorbed in whatever he’s looking at on his machine, he doesn’t seem to notice. “Watch the penguin vomit! It’s for Sniper to eat!” She directs his attention to a pile of, yes, penguin vomit, that he doesn’t want to consider any further, but that Sniper is pecking at. “Mr Doctor told me that mama penguins partially digest and regurgitate fish for their babies to eat, because it’s easier for them to eat that mush!”

“You two seem to be getting along well,” Phoenix says. “You and Dr Crab, I mean.” They already knew that Pearl hit it off with Rifle, somehow. 

“Rifle ate something she shouldn’t so I was helping him get that out of her.” Pearl gestures now at the corner of one of the lab tables, where an object, familiar though it’s partially covered in mushed-up fish, lies. Phoenix takes a few more steps forward. The mess doesn’t smell as fishy as he expected, or perhaps he’s lost all sense of smell, and yes, whatever it is that Rifle ate looks a whole hell of a lot like the little talisman Sasha had, that once belonged to Azura. And there was supposed to be a second one, that Azura’s boyfriend had, wasn’t there?

“Excuse me, Dr Crab?” Phoenix says. He grunts. “Can we take a look at that charm that Rifle swallowed?”

He grunts again. Phoenix decides that’s a “yes”. Investigations don’t get anywhere fast, otherwise. He gingerly picks up the cord on the charm and lets it dangle. Yeah, that’s definitely the same thing as—

“Hey! What are you doing with that?” Dr Crab snaps out of his reverie, with all the anger of a man who’s only just realized something is happening that he would’ve liked to have stopped sooner. “Put that down! That’s Azura’s!”

Phoenix drops it back on the table. Dr Crab, with no regard for penguin barf, snatches it away. “What the hell was it doing in Rifle’s stomach?” He drops it back into the pocket of his lab coat.

“Would this one happen to have belonged to Azura’s boyfriend?” Phoenix asks. 

“I don’t make it a habit to discuss the affairs of the deceased! Especially not with you people!”

Bit of a fraught subject, there. Sasha did say that they were close. “Yesterday was the anniversary of her death, right?”

Dr Crab’s sigh sounds more like a growl. How close is Phoenix to being kicked out of the lab? “That’s right,” Crab says. “A year since the orca killed her.”

“You really think Orla did?” Athena asks. “I don’t believe it!”

“And I was there, Ms Lawyer. I saw Orla bite her. Maybe she didn’t mean to kill her, who’s to say - but what I do know is that Azura is dead.” The point he puts on his last several words closes down the topic even more firmly than his outraged yelling did. Satisfied that he’s shut Phoenix up - for the moment, because Phoenix refuses to be done until he’s run out of questions and he’s still got plenty - he returns to studying the data on his machine.

Who knows what might be important information for a trial? “So what’s that there?” Phoenix asks.

“Monitoring system. Collection of medical records for all the creatures. Between it and the cameras I can monitor them all constantly, twenty-four/seven. Company secret, that’s all I’ll tell you.”

“Really?” Phoenix asks. “Aren’t medical records just like - past exams and stuff? How can you get present, constant data from that?”

“Good point,” Crab says, after a slight pause. A sneered, thin smile stretches out across his face. “I can see there’s no fooling you.”

“Are you trying to fool me?” Phoenix asks.

The two Psyche-Locks that clang into place answer that question for him.

“You tell me,” Dr Crab says.

“Clearly,” Phoenix says.

“Excuse me, Mr Doctor?” Pearl asks. She scoops Rifle up into her arms to stop the penguin from resuming an attack on Dr Crab’s shins. “Mr Nick is a very good lawyer who always finds the truth but he needs to know everything he can to do so. Even if you don’t think your monitorings have anything to do with the case, it might be the information that Mr Nick needs to bluff himself into a better position to win!”

Dr Crab stares at Phoenix, his eyebrows raised. Phoenix wishes Pearl had found any other way to phrase that. “And it would be very kind and helpful of you to do,” Pearl adds.

The lab is far from silent - the hum and murmur of computers, Rifle’s struggles to break free and attack, Sniper eating, Athena cooing at Sniper. But it still feels quiet and empty as Pearl waits for any response and reaction at all from Dr Crab. He says nothing. She narrows her eyes, glancing from Rifle to the floor, like her next step in convincing him will be to sic a penguin on him.

Instead she simply readjusts her hold on Rifle, pulling the penguin up further in her arms, and says, much more seriously, no longer with any sort of pleading edge, “You asked for my help to examine Rifle and I gave it to you, remember? It was just a few minutes ago, right before Mr Nick came back, but I didn’t just offer that on my own.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dr Crab hisses. “That’s exactly what happened, isn’t it? I asked her if you could grab her for me and - damn, now I owe you, don’t I?”

He and Athena both glance over at Phoenix’s sharp intake of breath. Pearl doesn’t do this; she cares about human standards of fairness and tends to cancel debts made out of careless words of people who don’t know better and don’t know what she is. This situation, this case, she thinks is desperate. And Dr Crab saw what she is. It’s fair. 

Pearl, unblinking, hollow-eyed, nods. “And I think you should answer Mr Nick’s questions about your monitoring,” she says.

Dr Crab shakes his head. “Well,” he says. “Shit. I got careless and that’s on me - to the victor go the spoils. So if I answer whatever questions our Mr Lawyer here has about my monitoring equipment here, then we’re settled, yes? No debts after that.”

“No debts after that,” Pearl agrees.

They both wait for Phoenix to say something; it’s a bit tricky, he thinks, to follow up a top-tier negotiation such as Pearl’s. “So. Twenty-four/seven monitoring. How’s that work?”

“It’s an ecological data organization system developed in Europe. Teleobservation Realtime Pertinent Data Organizer, TORPEDO for short.”

Phoenix decides not to try and suss out how well that acronym actually fits it, and not just because the whole name has already been ejected from his brain and he couldn’t repeat it back if he tried. Tele-pertinent real-time data what? 

“It records information on its subjects constantly - heartbeat, vocalization, movements, temperature, and so on - through sensors placed on or near the subject. All that gets sent to me and my equipment here. Rifle has her sensor attached to her flipper ID tag.” Pearl takes Rifle’s wing in her hand and holds it out to examine the tag in question. “For Orla and the fish, it’s attached to the side of the tank. Now here we go, what’s it say about Rifle’s feeding?” Dr Crab glares down at the terminal in his hand. “Four am on the nineteenth is when she swallowed that. What a weird time. And - shit, Orla didn’t eat at all that night until the next afternoon.” He shakes his head. “What is going on here?”

“Maybe that’s why Rifle wouldn’t eat my fish but Orla would.” Athena sounds slightly cheered at the prospect that it wasn’t her causing personal offense to Rifle - Rifle just wasn’t hungry. 

Phoenix clears his throat. “Why keep it a secret?” he asks. “This monitoring system - it’s clearly helpful and it’s not like we’re competitors trying to come in and steal your secrets.”

“Let me preface this by saying” - nothing good ever starts that way - “that this system has been tested rigorously and approved as safe and legal in many countries. Just not this one.”

Ah, that would do it. “You’re breaking the law?” Athena asks, startled. 

Dr Crab grimaces but it ends as something more like a grin. “That’s why I keep this terminal with me at all times. Lucky, else the police might’ve been poking their noses into it yesterday. None of the rest of the crew knows - keeps them safe from the legal repercussions, but I had Jack’s permission for this. He felt, and I agreed, that giving the best care possible to our animals was more important than legality.”

“But - but you’re breaking the law! And that’s—” Athena sputters, searching for a solid objection. “That’s breaking the law!”

Yeah, she’s a smart kid but hopefully she’s not going into a trial without a co-counsel any time soon.

“And if breaking the law betters the lives of our animals? Are we supposed to just sit and wait for the law to change, when in the meantime we can have more information and act quicker to help them - to save their lives?”

“But…” Athena glances to Phoenix for backup she won’t find. Not that he’s not a hypocrite, but he’s not going to step into this debate just to be one. It’s disconcerting, again, every time he realizes that part of Athena’s admiration of him comes only from the fact that she doesn’t know him as well as Apollo does. She’s arguing against the logic that bore him his ace in the hole. And he can’t blame her; it took him a long, bad time to get there. “You’re just - twisting it around, now.” But she looks rattled, not sure how to square this away with the foundation of her career. 

“Dr Crab,” Phoenix says. “I might need to use this information in court tomorrow. But that would obviously cause serious problems for you and the aquarium.” He isn’t asking permission, but this isn’t quite an apology, either. It’s just a statement of what it is, regrettable, inevitable.

“You’ve gotta do your job, Mr Lawyer, and I do mine.” Dr Crab shrugs, more resigned than bothered. This must be a prescient concern, for however long it’s been since they installed this system at the aquarium. Maybe it’s even a relief by now, to no longer be hiding. “I stand by my convictions and don’t have regrets, and I hope you won’t, either. I can’t blame you, or her, for that.” He nods at Pearl. 

“I appreciate it.” Nice to not have a witness biting his head off, even if in this case it would be - not deserved, he’d like to think, but understandable. 

“Hmph. Any last questions on that or can I—”

A loud peeping begins, like the chirps Sniper made but louder and constant. Dr Crab frowns and slips a phone out of his pocket. “Hello? Crab here.”

 “That’s a ringtone?” Pearl asks. “That’s adorable!”

“I don’t think Maya’s gonna let you change mine,” Phoenix says to her. 

“I didn’t think that Dr Crab liked the penguins that much,” Athena whispers. “But I guess he’s just a big softie, really!”

Were he actually listening to them Phoenix has no doubt the doctor would consider those fighting words. As it is, his fighting words are for whoever is on the other end of the line. “Son of a bitch, you people again! What more do you—”

He storms from the lab and slams the door behind him. Athena looks at Phoenix. He nods. She creeps closer to the door to listen, crouched with her ear by the crack where it closes, though Phoenix isn’t sure she needs to be that close to actually hear. “He’s saying that Orla was found not guilty,” she says, “and that should be enough - stop harassing him, he knows that - if it comes to it he - Mr Wright!” She tried to spring back up but smacks her head against the bottom of the doorknob on her way up, and wincing and grumbling to herself, stands tall again. “He said - that if he has to he’d euthanize Orla!”

“No!” Pearl gasps. Rifle wriggles around in her arms and Pearl sets her on the table. “She’s not guilty! In a court of law! She can’t be punished!”

Knowing that the whole orca pool can function as a faery ring makes Phoenix even more nervous that she’s going to commit larceny as soon as anything starts seeming tense. Grand Theft Orca. This is not something he ever thought he would have to consider. 

The door swings violently inward, banging hard into Athena’s shoulder. She stumbles away, cursing under her breath again. Phoenix picks out pieces of several languages. (He really should ask her how to say “fuck you” in German. It would be funny.)

“Where’s my goddamn calendar?” Dr Crab storms back in, sweeping a dozen takeout containers from the desk in front of the largest screen into the trash can strategically positioned right next to it. A few fliers for the orca show drift to the floor. “Son of a bitch, where did I leave it this time?”

“Calendar?” Athena perks up. “It wouldn’t happen to be one of those cute penguin ones, is it? Mr Rimes found one in the nap room and—”

Dr Crab snatches it away from her and scans the mess of his desktop for a pen and scribbles something on it. “Yes, that’s mine. It was a gift, all right?” He sighs. “From Azura. She designed the calendars for this year and this was the prototype.”

“Oh.” Athena’s smile vanishes. And then, seeming to take a cue from Phoenix’s line of questioning of Sasha back at the detention center, she asks, “Did you and Ms Summers happen to be, erm, romantically involved?”

“Of course not!” He bristles at the suggestion, almost weirdly defensive, so while he sees no Psyche-Locks, Phoenix still won’t take it as the end-all-be-all. Maybe he’s defensive about the calendar for what’s written on it, that meeting with the victim at seven am. Could he, at that time, have committed murder? “Were I even so inclined to partake of ‘romantic feelings’” - he doesn’t make them with his hands but Phoenix can hear the air quotes - “I certainly would not involve myself with—” He stops. He glares at Athena and Phoenix in turn. “What business of yours is it, anyway?”

“I just heard a lot of sadness in your voice when you mentioned her, and the calendar,” Athena says. “And I wondered—”

“She was a good friend and now she’s dead, of course I’m sad!” Though he’s probably not sad now, just mad at them and their prying questions. “How can you possibly think that’s related to your defense of Sasha, or do you like using the excuse of being lawyers to pry into people’s personal lives?”

Seems like it’s time to redirect; this thread when pulled on isn’t going anywhere good. “Your phone call just now - what was that about?”

“Heard all that, did you now?” Dr Crab sighs. Phoenix skips the part where he clarifies that Athena did, because she has better hearing than the human and fae also in the room. “That’s the Center for Dangerous Animal Control, insisting that if Orla ever attacks anyone again, we’d better not bother with this rigamarole and just put her down immediately.”

“But that’s not fair!” Athena has her fists raised, ready to fight the shadowy specter of this vague organization. “Did you agree to that?”

Dr Crab is quiet for a very long time. “Sometimes,” he says finally, “unfortunately, things happen. As a veterinarian, I am prepared to do whatever needs to be done.”

“Sasha says you keep poison on hand to always be prepared to put Orla down!” Athena levels the accusation with fury that Sasha would be proud of. 

Dr Crab reaches into one of the pockets of his lab coat and pulls out a tiny plastic bag that contains within it a red and yellow capsule. 

One that looks exactly like that they found mixed in with the contents of Orla’s stomach.

Phoenix is very, very glad they didn’t show it to him. 

“That’s awful!” Athena says. “How dare you!” She’s livid enough that Phoenix isn’t sure she realizes this pill is like the other one, and while that’s something they’re going to have to work on - making sure she’s clear-minded enough to make all the connections that matter, for now she’ll have him or Apollo with her, and Phoenix is just glad she won’t blurt it out to Dr Crab. He wants to keep this one close to his chest until he sees the best opening to play it. 

“Sasha thought the same thing.” Dr Crab drops the pill back in his pocket. “When security around Orla was tightened last year, she insisted that I not be given a key card to access the orca pool room. Thinking, I imagine, that the chances of Orla having a medical emergency when either she nor Jack were here to let me in were lower than the chances of me doing something to her.” He huffs derisively, Athena still seething.

“Dr Crab, I have a last question for you,” Phoenix says. “This - Center for Dangerous Animal Control.” Or however the words were ordered. “Ms DePlume told me something interesting earlier today.” That the Center had made this same demand a year ago, and for some reason relented, but the aquarium has been making large monthly payouts to someone or somewhere ever since. Phoenix repeats this fact to Dr Crab’s expressionless face, and adds, “It’s clear that there’s something going on behind the scenes here, and I suspect that it has something to do with this murder.”

“Do you.” He’s good at responding by saying nothing, but any words at all are sometimes enough to trip the trap, let Phoenix know exactly how much a witness is hiding.

Five Psyche-Locks this time, the appearance punctuated a moment later with loud footsteps and a louder yell. “Dr Herman Crab! Sorry to interrupt, but Prosecutor Blackquill wants to speak with you!”

“Son of a—” Dr Crab punctuates his speech by smacking his calendar down hard on the the table. “What the hell else could you possibly have to ask me?”

“We were hoping to have Mr Rimes testify at tomorrow’s trial, but we’ve been having some trouble getting him to cooperate. As such, Prosecutor Blackquill would like to call you instead!”

“Hmph.” Crab takes a moment in which he clearly is sizing up and assessing Fulbright, deciding whether he can get out of this and if he wants to tangle with Blackquill in that way. Surprising that he didn’t manage to coerce (or threaten) Rimes into talking and has to go for a backup. “Fine. But I’m not giving my opinion on what happened. I’ll tell you what I know, but I’m not taking sides.” He turns to Phoenix. “Until tomorrow, Mr Lawyer.”

-

Neither Trucy nor Apollo notices when the office door opens. Trucy has her laptop in her lap and is furiously scrolling, glancing between the screen and the notebook Apollo is still trying to write it. It’s a silent and periodic scuffle between the two of them as Trucy grabs it and yanks it toward her to check something, and Apollo pulls it back to continue writing. Phoenix shudders to think how unreadable his handwriting is from this. “Commonly for a number of heart conditions,” Trucy mutters. “Is this relevant, Apollo?”

“Of course it is!” He reaches across her keyboard and turns her screen toward himself. “Go back to the book - the picture. If she had a heart condition and a physically intensive job—” He taps his pen against the screen. “There’s no visible injury, look, wouldn’t you think a killer whale could cause some damage—”

“Oh! You think that—”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, guys,” Phoenix says. “What are we working on?”

They shriek in tandem, Apollo flinging the pen and Trucy knocking the notebook to the floor and almost dropping her laptop. Athena claps her hands over her ears, belatedly, and braces herself against the doorframe. “Yes, we’re back now,” Phoenix adds. “What’ve you got?”

“First: the capsule!” Apollo moves his hand like he means to gesture with the pen to the capsule in a bag on the coffee table, except the pen is no longer in his hand, so he’s just sort of waving, and his voice still as enthusiastically loud as ever. “It’s a sleeping drug! That’s the brand name on it, ‘3 Zs’. The Shipshape Aquarium vet recently bought a bunch of it from Hickfield Clinic - it’s meant for people, but apparently would work on other mammals.”

“A sleeping drug?” Phoenix repeats. 

Apollo nods. 

That had been Phoenix’s first thought, when he first saw that capsule, but Dr Crab called it poison - sure, enough of it could certainly kill, but he’s a veterinarian. He’d be legally able to get some kind of actual euthanization drug instead of trying to overdose an orca on sleeping pills - if that was actually what he intended with it, and not something else. Why pretend it’s poison?

“And the other thing - Shipshape Aquarium had the woman who died last year, Azura Summers, right?” He doesn’t wait for Phoenix to confirm he knows and barrels on, “She was getting medication prescribed by Hickfield Clinic to help her manage a heart condition.”

“I found an illegal download of that writer lady’s book!” Trucy pipes up. Bless that girl. 

“A heart condition?” Phoenix can’t do much but echo right now, but his mind is racing. What was Apollo saying when they walked in? Jack Shipley removed Sasha from the show for fear that she would come to harm because of her condition - theoretically, that could’ve already happened. “Do you know what the medication she was on was called?”

“Uh…” Apollo glances down at his notebook. “I wrote it down? It’s like—”

Phoenix takes the notebook from him. The writing is exactly as messy as he imagined, jagged pen lines trailing off across half the page when Trucy grabbed it. “That’s the same medication that Sasha is taking,” he says to Athena. 

“So what’s that mean?” she asks. 

“I have no idea.” That’s a hell of a coincidence, but he doesn’t really see how it could be anything but an unfortunate coincidence, even as a man whose policy is to not believe in coincidences. Orla isn’t on trial now, and wasn’t on trial for Azura’s death, either, yesterday. But maybe this information could offer some reassurance, and closure, to Sasha and the rest of the aquarium crew. “But that capsule, now that’s something. Nice work, Apollo.”

Apollo gives Phoenix a wide-eyed, startled look. Has Phoenix really complimented him so rarely?

“Where’s Pearly?” Trucy asks. Her face falls. “Did she go back home already?”

“She’s staying at the aquarium to help out with Orla, with so many of the staff dragged out to testify and everything.” There she goes again, slotting herself perfectly, naturally, in somewhere, like she’s meant to be there, so that no one even questions letting a strange little faery girl in so far behind the scenes. 

The only thing to put him slightly at ease is that she said she would be ready to call in, from the aquarium, through video phone during the trial tomorrow, which holds the implication that she’s not going to spirit Orla off to the Twilight Realm in the middle of the night to keep her safe.

Though she didn’t promise for sure that she wouldn’t, so he should probably call her and extract that promise from her, before he ends up defending in a case of orca larceny. 

[ellicttsc-blog]

hello friends!! uh... listen, so uh... so i’m fckin awful at intros, but we’re gonna try this!! i’m b, and i’m from the est where the night as gotten suddenly very late which is very unfortunate aNYWAY... i’m very excited to be here, and let’s.... dive into leo~!! who i definitely named bc i just finished the punisher and i love this name

A BRIDGET SATTERLEE LOOKALIKE WAS STROLLING DOWN BROADWAY STREET IN THEIR JORDANS. ELLIOT "LEO" CONNELLY JUST HAD A BIRTHDAY BASH FOR HER TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY. SHE HAS BEEN LIVING IN NEW YORK CITY FOR FIFTEEN YEARS. I HEAR SHE TENDS TO BE UNABASHED AT PARTIES, BUT ALSO KIND OF ARDENT. ( CISFEMALE & SHE/HER ) [ B, 19, EST & SHE/HER ]

backstory: 

leo was born in england to relatively well off parents. she grew up with two brothers, living in the countryside, never wearing shoes probably, and running wild. she was a handful as a child and .... still is sometimes!! but when she was little the energy was a bit too much. luckily mama connelly was Smart™ and found something leo loved that she could channel all of her energy into, and that was dance!

when she was six, her father–– an author–– got picked up by a big publishing house in america and the fambam moved to new york city, as it is a massive city for publishing. it was an adjustment to say the least, harder for her brothers, but leo got used to it. she’s fairly... adaptable. and she honestly didn’t mind her new city. she felt like eloise at the plaza only... not at... the plaza... anyway!!

each of the connelly kiddos were good at their own things. her eldest brother was a genius of some sort. the middle brother was a star on the soccer field. leo had dance, ballet to be more specific. it was wild to people, even as she grew older, that someone so rambunctious could be so dedicated and so... good... at something so disciplined. but mama and papa connelly just smiled and supported her. she wasn’t very good at school, smart but too fidgety and distracted for a classroom, but she excelled wildly in a pair of pointe shoes.

by the time she was a junior in high school, leo was... exhausted. she’s lively, so her social life was fairly active. school took up a lot of her time. dance took up the most. combined with attempting to main solid mental health and a steady sleep schedule was.... difficult to say the least, so she sat down and talked with her parents, deciding that she had to cut something out. naturally, school was her choice. (listen leo hated school sm ok).... so they agreed that if she auditioned and got in, she would be allowed to cut the school bit out and study just dance. she pushed herself harder than every and ultimately got into *sharpay evans vc* julliard!!

things were really really good for a while! school was great. social life was great. family was great.... until they weren’t. her senior year of hs, her parents divorced in a nasty split, an affair ripping the house in two. three short years later, just after leo turned twenty her mom was diagnosed with a terminal illness. it was a struggle for leo, as they hadn’t spoken since the divorce, but she’s.... working with it as best as she can.

ANYWAY currently, leo dances as a soloist with american ballet theatre and she’s... working her ass off to become a principal dancer. she still loves it more than anything in the world. she’s... obsessed to say the least.

personality:

she’s super passionate about... life in general. ballet is obviously... first and foremost on her list but she kind of?? loves life? or tries to. when she’s able to, she likes to travel to places that are quieter than new york city and reminiscent of her childhood because she really loves nature. she loves the feeling of smallness when you stand next to the ocean.

firm believer in treating others how they treat you. she’s... rather optimistic even though that’s been tested in recent years so she likes to assume the best of people, but when you burn her don’t expect her to allow it to fly without repercussions. she genuinely enjoys making people happy, but if you’re out her making her sad,.... she’s... not about to be kind to you just because. 

unabashed!! oh this poor girl’s family.... the people who are close to her... the things they have to deal with. she has no shame. zero. she just.... exists in a very genuine way and is sometimes a little too unapologetic. she’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind which... doesn’t always end well.

that being said, she’ll blurt out whatever she’s thinking to a certain extent. when it comes to deeper feelings, some of the uglier ones, she likes to kinda keep them to herself. she’s... a lil bit of a control freak so vulnerability isn’t her thing. unfortunately this makes for very shallow relationships, even more so since her parents split. she just doesn’t always say how she’s feeling.

loves being outdoors and being active, still loves new york city but wouldn’t... hate moving back to england to dance w the royal ballet man oh man what a dream

she is constantly in awe of other people and their talents especially if they can sing. if she could sing, she’d be on broadway no doubt. with her personality and musicality.... and being able to carry a note?? she’d be a walking showtune. but she can’t sing for shit!!

loves old movies and used books and dressing like she’s still in 1993

has a dog named apollo who is ... her son. and she takes her motherly role very seriously

can’t hold her alcohol but loves to drink it

born on hell night aka october 30th

i think that’s it????

ANYWAY THAT’S.... leo... i’m still trying to work out her kinks and i hope to develop more... flaws and perks to her character bc that’s my fave part about rping tbh i love development. ok!! so!! like this or hmu for plotting bc i have a world of ideas and I’M SO EXCITED TO RP W YOU GUYSSSSSS