[Apollo was more than ready to give a couple of punches. He could've asked someone to check after the number, but he'd rather go get Clay's phone back himself. He'd gotten a hospital room number, so he'd go check first. The voice in the back of his mind kept telling him 'what if it's true', but he didn't want to raise his hopes to then see them crushed. He couldn't ruin the Christmas spirit for the rest of the Wright Anything Agency.]
...
[With quick steps, he ran up the stairs, looking for the room with the numbers he'd been told in the text, and when he got to it, he didn't even bother knocking. He just pushed it open, and not exactly in a calm manner.
A quick scan around the room and-
And...
No...
(No... no way...)
[The very person Apollo had been mourning for days was now in front of him, over a bed.
[He's in the hospital bed, staring at his phone and at the half-written message. The reciever has been offline since the bombing day. Apollo sighs at he sees the date.
December 16th-Case 4, part 1. [Flashback: Dec 15th]
"No..."
"N-no, it can't be."
It was too much to take in.
His best friend, the one who had been by his side since junior high, was dead.
Dead.
Simply put.
The call he'd gotten from GYAXA, combined with the news report he had just seen, made his mind go blank, and Apollo wished this was just a stupid dream and he could wake up right now, in a world where his best friend wasn't dead and what he had just heard was nothing but a nightmare.
But nothing happened, as much as he wished for it. His breathing sped up, and he fell backwards on the nearbiest chair, phone falling from the armrest. He buried his face between his hands.
Murder. Clay had been murdered. Stabbed in the chest, according to the news. And Solomon Starbuck, Clay's mentor, was being accused of said murder.
It only made Apollo's blood boil. The raising anger, mixed with the anxiety he was feeling and the sadness made a swirl of emotions he wasn't able to take in completely, so he just remained there, sitting alone in his apartment for three more hours that went by almost like flying, before he sat up and decided on it.
He was going to take his case. He was going to defend Mr. Starbuck, and find out who killed his friend. He held everything back, and picked up the phone. There was no time to give in, he had work to do.
Took him a few seconds to call Athena up, and ask her to help him to go investigate to the GYAXA station.
But he'd so regret calling her.
When the bracelet reacted for the first time, he couldn't believe it.
They didn't have so much time to investigate, and when it was time to go home and realized the trial was on the next day, he boiled up some coffee, and started to prepare as much as he could. But there was something bothering him in the back of his head about his companion, something he couldn't take.
With a growl, he got up of the chair and bandaged his percieving eye.
It was strange for him, the next day on December 16th, when he took up the trial of Solomon Starbuck, to act as if nothing had happened. Even when the judge asked him about his bandaged eye, he just brushed it off. He was too focused on proving Starbuck's innocence so they could catch the real killer, the real murderer. The one that had killed his best friend.
Then the bomb.
He had jumped to save Juniper from getting crushed, but it ended worse for him...
And now, the lawyer is laying in the hospital bed, covered in bandages, and with the news about Juniper being accused of the bombing, to boot.
Funny. He had just bandaged his eye the day before, but he didn't think he'd get a "matching suit" for it.
There's only one person in his mind.
Apollo's thinking of visiting the space center again once he gets out. The jackets of the deceased ones are put up on display as a memento, but he has other plans...
A fewpeopleyoudon't know started following you - and some familiar faces, too - wait, THREE PHOENIXWRIGHTS? TWO EDGEWORTHS?
Now, after that...curious discussion with a kid who said his name was 'Simon Blackquill', Hugh had brushed it all off as nothing more than a weird dream, his mind being so dull and 'inexperienced' (in his own words) that it had gone into a daze from studying so hard, and so he'd promptly decided to try and rest and give himself a break from studying - except, no, there were a ton of strangers around the school now, a kid who LOOKED like Phoenix, and to top it all off, two 'adult' Phoenixes and Edgeworths.
The re-appearance of Athena was a welcome distraction, at least, but if there was a prize for most outlandish 'fabrications of the mind'...Hugh reckoned he would have won it easily right here and now. "...Alright...alright... is this one of those 'mid life crises' things Robin jokes to me about these days? I mean, the things I've seen around the Academy recently are so odd... I think I might have a headache and have to sit down."
He couldn't even FIND the strength to be snarky or smug right now, with the state of utter confusion in the air. Perhaps one of the strangers in the group might be willing to dispel that confusion, but he doubted it, and Athena? Even less likely to help HIM, for obvious enough reasons.
