Part 27 - A New Plan
The courtroom can be a cold battlefield alright… especially for a beginner.
—Diego Armando, Turnabout Beginnings
The only time a lawyer can cry is when it’s all over.
—Godot, Bridge to the Turnabout
Turnabout Storm: Part 3/4 - Twilight
Library
June 10th, 11:55 AM
(Immediately after the first day of trial)
Twilight Sparkle was completely beside herself.
How COULD he? was the only coherent thought she could form as she left the courtroom, tears welling in her eyes as she remembered the bewildered, terrified look on Fluttershy’s face as she was led away, wondering how it could have all gone so wrong…
How she could have been so wrong.
“Twilight!” she heard Phoenix calling after her, but she ignored him, continuing her slow walk towards the exit, her head bowed low in sorrow. She heard him running after him in his odd bipedal manner, finally catching up to her just short of the courthouse doors. “Twilight, please! Just let me explain!” he pleaded, putting a hand on her shoulders.
She threw it off as hard as she could with a flare of her magic, turning her head fractionally back towards him, just enough to let him see she was crying. “Phoenix… I was wrong about you,” was all she could choke out.
With those words, Twilight Sparkle abandoned him, her head bowed low and tears streaming down her cheeks as she exited the courthouse, a second flare of her horn emphatically slamming the doors shut behind her. How could the Princess have recommended him? How could I have trusted him? How could I have LIKED him? she asked herself over and over, unable to remember the last time she felt so betrayed, suddenly having no idea where to turn or what to do.
Her indecision was short lived. As she walked back home, her shock and sadness gradually gave way to anger, leaving her incensed by the time she arrived back at the Treehouse. “I can’t believe what he did, accusing Fluttershy like that!” she vented to Spike with an angry snort, pacing back and forth on the main floor of the library in agitation. “It’s true what they say about lawyers, Spike! They’re a bunch of heartless liars!” And I thought he was different!
“But didn’t the Princess—?” her scribe began to remind her.
She cut him off hard. “Yes, I know! She requested that I use him! She said he was ‘The best there is’!” Twilight quoted sarcastically, wondering what in the name of the sun and moon Princess Celestia had been thinking, now certain her mentor had indeed been playing a prank by ordering her to summon Phoenix Wright. Was this just a big joke to her? Well, I’m not laughing, and neither is Fluttershy, Princess! she thought angrily, vowing to make her displeasure known in her next friendship report letter—which she was now terrified would be about what it was like to lose a friend.
“But he’s a human,” Spike reminded her, though what little he knew of their race came from Lyra, a slightly—and on occasion annoyingly—human-obsessed unicorn who was hardly an unbiased source of information.
She stopped her pacing and looked up sharply at that. “I didn’t know he would be a human! Why didn’t the Princess tell me that? And given he’s from an entirely different world, how does she even know him, anyway?” Twilight ranted, grinding her teeth together in anger. “None of this makes sense, Spike!
“If you trust the Princess, shouldn’t you trust him?” her scribe suggested tentatively, trying to remain reasonable in the face of Twilight’s fury, cringing a bit at the wisps of smoke he noticed were starting to come off her mane.
But true to form, Twilight refused to be dissuaded from something she was set on, shaking her head vehemently. “No, Spike! He’s no good! Oh Celestia, you should have seen him! He was at poor Fluttershy’s throat, accusing her of the murder and framing Rainbow Dash for it!” She brought her hoof down hard. “I mean, what did he think she was, some kind of secret assassin from the movies? Give me a break! Anypony with a single solitary brain cell can see Fluttershy would never do anything like that!”
Though he wasn’t sure where the comparison had come from, Spike had to agree. “Yeah, no offense to her, but I don’t even think Fluttershy could win a tug-of-war with a butterfly,” he acknowledged, rubbing a hand behind his head.
Twilight stomped her hoof hard at that, putting a divot in the floor and causing Spike to jump a bit, the baby dragon watching her nervously. “I wanted a good lawyer to defend Rainbow Dash, not shift the blame to another one of my friends! And that’s why I’m going to follow through with my original plan!” Twilight announced, standing up straighter and suddenly wearing a determined look, the wisps of smoke vanishing as her anger gave way to resolve.
“And that is…?” Spike prompted, giving her a wary look. He’d seen that expression on Twilight’s face before, and knew little good usually came of it; the last time she had it, she had spent days obsessing over Pinkie Pie’s predictive powers, determined to disprove them but only ending up in traction for it when the contents of an aerial moving van fell on her head.
Never mind what happened when Pinkie’s final prediction came true! he remembered with a shiver, suddenly thankful that as a dragon he was fireproof. But the library isn’t…
Twilight stood up taller. “I will be taking over as the defense lawyer in this case!” she declared proudly.
Far from being impressed, Spike smacked his forehead hard, more certain than ever he was the only sensible one in the room. “You? A lawyer?” he asked in a sarcastic tone. “So just how do you plan on replacing him if only his client can fire him? And even if you can, do you even know anything about being a lawyer?” Spike asked her pointedly.
“Yes! W-well… a little!” Twilight began, but stopped short as Spike gave her an annoyed look that told her she wasn’t fooling anypony. “Okay! Okay! I don’t know much! But if Trixie can do it, so can I!” she insisted, refusing to grant the rival unicorn any advantage over her. “Besides, it didn’t seem that hard—I just have to point out inconsistencies in information. I’m good at stuff like that!” Twilight speculated.
Spike was unconvinced. “I think there’s a lot more to it than that, Twilight.”
To his relief, Twilight conceded the point. “You’re right, Spike. And that’s why we’ll be having a good look through this!” She pulled a book off a shelf from the library’s foreign section and showed it to her scribe.
“What’s that?” Spike asked in curiosity, looking at the unfamiliar text.
She blew the dust off the cover before speaking; it was clearly a very old book. “’How to be a Lawyer in 24 hours’,” Twilight read the title.
Spike blinked. “Well, that’s certainly a conveniently titled book,” he noted dubiously, suddenly wondering if Twilight was playing a joke on him—surely nothing could be that contrived! “So, uh, just how do you plan on doing this whole lawyer thing, anyway?”
Twilight lit up at that. “I’m glad you asked, Spike!” she said, eager to tell her strategy. “I brushed up on the criminal justice laws this morning with Phoenix, and it turns out that Equestrian laws are almost identical to his, despite him being from another world. I got most of them memorized!” she claimed, her thoughts turning back to Phoenix Wright at his mention. Strangely, what stuck out most in her memory was watching him pick up and turn a single page of the book using two fingers and a thumb, marveling he could control his digits independently like that!
She blinked and shook her head hard to dispel images of him while Spike just shook his head, unaware of where Twilight’s thoughts had gone. “But that’s just laws and stuff. Being a lawyer is a totally different thing!”
Twilight gave a slightly nervous chuckle, not understanding why Phoenix Wright wouldn’t leave her thoughts. “That’s why this book should provide me with all the details I need to become a good lawyer!” she proclaimed, struggling to keep her cheeks from flushing, a task made considerably more difficult when she suddenly remembered ending up in the human lawyer’s arms that morning after Rainbow had startled them both.
AARGH! She gritted her teeth, half-considering using a memory blocking spell on herself to get the persistent and unwelcome images of him out of her head.
Spike gave her a skeptical look. “I don’t know, Twilight. It looks kind of ancient.” He ran a finger through the stubborn layer of dust still clinging to the old and musty book Twilight was holding in her aura.
Twilight was caught short. “What are you talking about? What’s wrong with it being a little old?”
Spike gave her a sour look as he opened the book to a random page and read one of the passages on it aloud. “’Smite the prosecuting knave and make the whelp feel the wrath of thy glorious voice of justice’?” he recited in a disbelieving tone. “Who wrote this book, anyway?”
Twilight checked the cover. “It says it’s written by somepony named... Waxing Moon."
"Waxing Moon?” Spike blinked. “And just when was it originally written?"
She checked the preface. “Twelve centuries ago. Huh. Oddly enough, that’s before Luna was banished,” she couldn’t help but note, getting a sneaking suspicion the author’s name was an alias. “Okay, so maybe it’s a little outdated…”
Spike gave her a look. “A little outdated?” he echoed, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms.
“Okay! A lot outdated, but it will have to do!” Twilight pouted, though Spike preferred pouting to ranting and risking her potentially fiery temper.
“Okay, then. So what’s it say to do first?” the baby dragon humored Twilight, knowing that when she set her mind on something there was usually no dissuading her, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not.
“Let’s see…” Twilight flipped back to the beginning of the olden book, looking for the first step; she had to skim through the archaic, almost poetic text several times before she finally found an appropriate verse. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “’Thou shoudst consult with thy client in melancholy, lifting wisdom from thy plea of innocence’.”
Spike facepalmed again with a loud smack. “Oh, for—”
Twilight winced as well at the archaic wording, but refused to let go of her decision to use the book. “It must mean that I need to go speak with Rainbow Dash. But I can’t.”
“Why not?” Spike asked.
“They won’t let me speak to Rainbow without an attorney badge,” Twilight explained, then suddenly remembered: “Ah! That’s where you come in, Spike!”
The young scribe raised his scaled eyeridges at her. “Me? What do I do?” he asked, strangely certain he wasn’t going to like what came next.
“I need you to write an appeal to the Equestrian Legal Affairs Council to appoint me as Rainbow Dash’s lawyer while I’m gone,” Twilight instructed her scribe. “They can overrule Rainbow and appoint a new attorney if incompetency or conflicts of interest in the current one are indicated.” She anticipated his next question.
Spike gave her another annoyed look, crossing his arms in disgust. “Oh, nice, Twilight! Make me deal with those huffy-puffy suits! Hmph!” the baby dragon groused, noticing Twilight preparing to leave. “Fine, I’ll do it. So what are you going to do in the meantime?”
“Start my investigation by going to the detention center,” she replied, pulling on her saddlebags, filling them with scroll paper, quills and ink. Come to think of it, how did that weird quill of Phoenix’s work anyway?
“But didn’t you say you needed a badge to get in there?” Spike reminded her.
She shook her head. “Correction: I only need one to speak with Rainbow Dash as she’s already charged with a crime.”
“Then who—” Spike's eyes widened as understanding dawned. “Ohhhh! I get it! You’re going to go see Fluttershy, right?”
She nodded quickly. “That’s it exactly! Since she’s not charged and only detained for questioning, they’ll be much more lenient with visitors,” Twilight noted, floating the how-to tome back up and turning to the next page of text. “And after I’m done with that, according to the book I should then… ‘Scour the land high and low for evidence pertaining to the guilty culprit with the aid of thy loyal assistant at thy side’,” she quoted, taking on an archaic accent that would have sounded pretentious on anypony except perhaps Princess Luna.
“Footnote: Preferably an adolescent filly,” Twilight belatedly spotted the fine print at the bottom of the page, thinking that was odd and more than a little creepy.
Spike clamped his hands over his ears. “Twilight! Please stop talking like that! It hurts just to hear it!” the baby dragon pleaded with a pained look.
Twilight ignored him, pondering the wording. “It must mean investigate,” she guessed, closing the book and putting it in her saddlebags.
Her scribe instantly perked up at that. “Oh! Oh! Can I be your assistant? Detective ‘Hard-Boiled’ Spike, reporting for duty!” an excited Spike offered, saluting and twinkling through his big dragon eyes.
Though gratified at his enthusiasm, she shook her head. “Sorry, Spike, but I need you to write that appeal for me and run the library while I’m gone. Besides, I don’t think I need an assistant for this. This book is more or less just guidelines,” she told him, certain she could get along without one.
“Come on, Twilight! Pleeeeease?” Spike begged her, immensely preferring the idea of doing something cool like detective work to staying home and doing chores, or worse, dealing with Canterlot bureaucrats.
“Sorry, Spike, but you’re needed here,” Twilight apologized again, making him pout a bit. She felt sorry for her scribe, but knew something that might cheer him up. “Hey, maybe when I’m done, I’ll come home with a nice big sapphire with your name on it?” she offered with a grin.
The gemstone-eating baby dragon instantly changed his expression. “S-sapphire?!” He took on a begging pose and stuck out his tongue, all but drooling at the thought of eating one of his favorite crystal treats. “’Stay-at-home Spike’, reporting for duty!” Spike announced with a huge and eager grin on his face, giving her another salute.
I knew that would work! she thought in satisfaction, allowing herself a brief smirk which quickly disappeared as she thought of something else. “Oh, and Spike? If Phoenix comes by here, I want you to tell him to stay at the library until I get back. I don’t want him causing a ruckus in Ponyville.” He’s done enough damage for one day, she knew, deciding to stay away from him until she’d cooled off a little more, finding herself worried about what she’d say or do to him if she saw him too soon.
“Yes, sir! Err… Ma’am! Sir/Ma’am!” Spike fumbled with a proper title.
Protocol? He’s really getting into this! Twilight gave her scribe an approving nod and smile, vowing not to think about Phoenix Wright again. “Alright, Spike. I’m off to investigate now. Take care of that letter, and keep the library open. I’ll see you later!”
“Goodbye, Twilight!” Spike waved to her with a huge grin on his face, anticipating a wonderful evening meal.
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I love the part in Applebloom’s testimony when she talks back at Trixie.
1444181 lolz
115886 You're one of the AWESOME VA's
Which voice?
WANT!
That one pony in the picture looks like a G1 Pinkie Pie but that can't be, Pinkie Pie is a G3 name, so what is that pony's name?
As for the other pony and the dragon they are the original Twilight and the original Spike.
1444435 He was the voice of Phoenix Wright...
1454378 and tell that to the one who approved me to make the written version of the youtube version you creep...
Any eta/progress update on part 4? Going crazy without it
Maya. Pearl. Trucy. And now Pinkie. And Spike.
Smite thy prosecuting knave and make the whelp feel thy wrath of the glorious voice of justice’?”
That earned you a follower.
You win, Twilight, I can't either. That was pretty brutal.
Give that man a cigar! That was the best Spike line in fanfiction history.
True, there is the matter of checking the court record and running like hell when you can't answer the psyche-lock questions.
G1 ponies! Oh, the cringiness! Gouge out my eyes!
I think this was around the point where I actually PM'd Firesight and asked... "how the hell is this Flying Dutchman of a ship going to sail?" Ahh memories.
Fetishes are for other weirdos, not me!
That closet may hold me for now, mortal, but I am merely biding my time.
Just have GoldCrow handle it. Good plan!
Oh this chapter... now this chapter really benefits heavily from the Firesight edits! You got a pretty simple concept: Twilight Sparkle is desperate and miserable while Spike cracks wise about the situation. By adding a layer of sexual frustration to the mix, it amps up the glorious schädenfreude of it all to even greater heights. It's the best chapter up to this point in terms of deviating from the videos. Great stuff!
Oh hey Luna wrote this.
The mystery deepens...
7528463
OBJECTION!!!
at that
I believe the word you're looking for is "footnote". CliffsNotes are summaries.
9132147
Fixed, and you’re correct. I used cliffnote since that came from the videos. But you’re right; it’s the wrong word.