“Why is he here, Nick? Tell me why you have a little boy in your office! Are you secretly some kind of sicko? Maya’s going to be so mad when she gets back from the mountains and finds out!” Larry whined, pulling a face.

His expression was no match for the look of disgust that Phoenix gave him in return, however.

“Larry, we’ve known each other since we were kids. I’m hurt that you’d even think something like that about me,” he replied.

“That doesn’t answer my question though,” Larry insisted.

Phoenix sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to get rid of him without a definite answer; “If you must know, it all comes back to that case in England I was called to deal with last month.”

“You mean from that guy who looked like Lincoln?” checked Larry.

“Mr. Triton is the mayor of Misthallery and a very important man,” Phoenix replied, irritation seeping into his tone, “His town had been frequently damaged by the attacks of a mysterious spectre and after putting up with so much he decided that it was time to call in a lawyer to deal with it.”

“As much as this sounds like the beginning of every other crazy job you wind up with, it’s kind of strange that he’d call a lawyer and not a detective,” mused Larry.

“Not as strange as you might think. Though its stranger that he’d call me instead of Edgeworth,” Phoenix answered, “Something was destroying houses and the role of a lawyer is to find out who that person is and prove to a court that they did wrong. Apparently he heard about me through my reputation and didn’t realise I was a defence attorney, not a prosecutor, until I got there. But by that point I was interested enough to take the case on anyway.”

Larry nodded; “Okay, so I get that you flew off to England because some guy thought you were a Ghostbuster, but what does that have to do with the kid?”

“Luke is Clark’s son. He… helped me on my investigation. At first he seemed kind of angry, I’d heard that he’d tried to write a letter to some other guy to come find out the truth about the spectre but his dad had found out and stopped him before he could send it, after a while though I managed to convince him that I really did want to help. The two of us made a great team,” said Phoenix. Finding a sidekick at the drop of a hat seemed to be a habit of his.

“You’ve got me curious now. Spill the beans – what was the mystery of this house-punching spook?” Larry questioned, leaning forward on his seat.

If only it had been that simple.

In a moment, Phoenix thought about everything he’d gone through in Misthallery – about the Black Raven in the mask of a plague doctor, the two children living alone in a big mansion, one of whom was rumoured to be a witch and the other fooling people into thinking he was an old man, the Golden Garden that could cure all illnesses, and the water-pipes that had carried the sound of-

“…A giant manatee fighting against a digging robot,” he concluded.

“What!”

Larry almost fell forward. Phoenix couldn’t blame him.

“You heard me,” he chuckled.

“Nick, I’m not that stupid!” gasped Larry, “I know you think I’m a few pickles short of a burger, but there’s no way you can expect me to believe something like that!”

“Believe whatever you want, but I’m telling you that-“

He was cut off by sudden sound of yelling from the room just beyond.

“You can’t just barge into Mr. Wright’s office without an appointment! He’s busy talking to a client right now! Um, I think…”

“Nick is one of my best friends and I can see him whenever I want! Who do you think you are to try and stop me?”

Phoenix sighed.

“I should probably go deal with that…”

Excusing himself, he went through to the other room, where he found Luke and the recently arrived Maya glaring at each other. They both ceased as soon as he walked in and instead looked over at him, bursting into exclamation.

“This girl broke into your office, Mr. Wright!”

“Who is this kid, Nick? Did you get a receptionist while I was away? You can’t employ a boy as young as this, you know!”

Holding up his hands, Phoenix reasoned, “If you both calm down I can explain everything. Luke, this is my friend Maya, her sister Mia was the original owner of this law firm. Maya, this is Luke, he’s my-“

“You didn’t finish the story!” Larry butted in, coming through from the other room, “How did a manatee help you to bring this kid here from England?”

“A manatee? Did you go to Seaworld without me?” huffed Maya, puffing out her cheeks, “And you brought this English kid here so he could go with you!”

“He didn’t bring me here for that, he brought me here to be his apprentice,” corrected Luke.

“Apprentice?” Maya and Larry echoed in unison, both looking from Luke to Phoenix with matching expressions of blank confusion.

“Yes, well, after I helped Misthallery Luke decided that he wanted to learn everything there is to know about being a lawyer from me,” Phoenix sheepishly answered.

“But you don’t even know that much,” Larry pointed out.

“Mr. Wright is the best lawyer in the world! You should have seen him fighting that evil villain Descole! And then Loosha joined in and all the water came through the town,” babbled Luke, making arm motions to emphasise his points, “Then we found the Golden Garden and Arianna got better.”

It was clear that neither Larry nor Maya had the faintest idea what he was talking about.

“Kid, that’s not what lawyers do,” corrected Larry.

“Yeah, that’s more like a superhero. Though Nick does a lot of crazy stuff like that sometimes, too,” Maya added.

“Then I want to be a person who does crazy superhero stuff like Mr. Wright,” confirmed Luke.

“I think you’d have a better time just learning how to be a lawyer,” Phoenix said, before the whole discussion could derail too much, “There’s a lot I can teach you.”

“Good! Because I promise to learn everything that I can,” assured Luke.

“Between him and Maya it’ll be like you’re babysitting for two kids,” sniggered Larry.

“Three when you come over,” hummed Phoenix.

“Hey! That’s not very nice!”

“Are you saying Mr. Wright’s not very nice? Because he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met!”

“If he was so nice then why did you all leave me behind when you went to Seaworld to see the manatees?”

Deciding that there was no point to getting involved in this particular argument, Phoenix walked back through to his office, to let them get on with it. Their bickering was dulled considerably as the door closed behind him.

This was his life – Phoenix Wright and the noisy tagalongs that he was too nice to tell to leave him alone. Although that wasn’t really fair. They were all good people. Maya and Larry were his friends, and Luke showed the potential to be a good apprentice, even if he wasn’t exactly sure what his apprenticeship was for.

The best way to sum it up would be to say that the life of Phoenix Wright was colourful.

And Luke would fit right in with all his crazy adventures.