While Phoenix’s “lips turn purple,” according to Ema–that only happens when Edgeworth won’t let him up for air–Edgeworth tells his man to get on with the cross so they can “flush out the real murderer.” Phoenix is ready to do as Edgeworth asks, but before Lana can even get out her first bit of testimony again, a “HOLD IT!” echoes through the courtroom. After the whip-’round it’s revealed to be Gant, back from his lunch at Golden Corral. “Come now, Udgey,” he says. “This is the poorest excuse for a trial I’ve ever seen!” On that we agree. He accuses the judge of siding with our sexy attorney heroes in making him out to be “the bad guy,” and asks to speak up in his own defense. But, Edgeworth is all too happy to point out again, “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.” Gant looks ready to subject Edgeworth to a double session of organ torture as Edgeworth goes on, “You already declined testimony. That means you forfeited your right to make statements of any sort.” Phoenix derps in blue font at this, “This must be the ‘risk’ the judge was talking about…” We already established this, Phoenix! Stop daydreaming about Edgeworth rubbing your crotch and try to keep up! Edgeworth finishes, ensuring that Phoenix remains a sweaty, nonfunctional mess for the remainder of the trial, “Just sit back, relax…and enjoy the noose tightening around your own neck.” Careful, Edgeworth, Gant might be into that.

Indeed, Gant does erupt into lightning again and scream, “GGGCCKCKCCKKKK…!” Does he have something lodged in his throat? A corn dog? A pickle? A cannoli? (The Golden Corral nearest the courthouse, due to popular demand, has a lot of penis-shaped foods.) But he recovers quickly enough, asking Edgeworth, “…Ah, so what? You think I’m worried?” Gant clarifies how exactly his convenient Super Fifth Amendment rights work: he may not be able to testify, but he is allowed to present evidence in his defense. “Yes, that’s true…” agrees the judge. “Wait! You mean…you still have some conclusive evidence?” Gant admits that he does not have any himself. Then why the fuck did he even bring up this magical caveat to his inability to testify? So stupid. Gant adds, “But someone does.” He of course means Phoenix, who is still sitting on one item he pilfered from Gant’s safe, the scrap of leather. Gant openly baits Phoenix into presenting this evidence. “You do have something to show us, right?” he asks. “Something that proves who knocked over Neil Marshall, causing his death. Conclusive evidence, that leaves no room for doubt!”

The judge asks Phoenix if this is true, but as Phoenix reminds us via blue font, “If I show that piece of evidence now…Ema’s sure to be made out as the murderer!” And that’s going to look really bad on her college applications! The judge warns Phoenix that he will be joining Edgeworth in front of the Not So Itty Bitty Titty Committee (of Inquiries) if he is purposely holding something back. Nevertheless, presenting the leather scrap now damns Ema and Lana both, so Phoenix, after sweating and blue-fonting, “What do I do now!?” risks the judge’s wrath and says carefully, “Your Honor, I don’t have any evidence I can present at this time.” Gant shrieks, like a Republican at the State of the Union, “What!? You lie!” and subsequently decides the smartest thing to do is run his mouth: “You…you opened my safe! I know you took what was inside! The conclusive evidence!” Phoenix “plays” dumb, even when Ema goes, “Mr. Wright! Why don’t you show them? We found it together!” It’s their Penetrating Leather Scrap of Trust! Gumshoe has a variety of leather products he has stowed away to show his trust to Mr. Edgeworth, but he hasn’t worked up the nerve to mention them yet.

Gant, meanwhile, keeps on dishing out information he does not need to provide, because he’s one of those men who have to have the last word at all times, and because the plot requires him to put his foot in his mouth. He guesses that Phoenix knows whose fingerprints are on the scrap and that’s why he won’t show it to the court. Phoenix stays mum, leaving Edgeworth to ask what the hell he’s talking about. “Can’t you figure it out?” Gant asks. “Take a good look at this picture.” Waving Lana’s photo of the impaled Marshall in Edgeworth’s face, he goes on, “See the victim’s vest? Notice anything odd about the chest area?” Sadly, no one answers, “The really ugly vest? Yeah, we noticed.” Instead, the judge says, “It looks like part of it’s been cut off for some reason.” Edgeworth and the judge deduce from here, while Phoenix stays uncharacteristically silent, that Gant was the one who cut the piece off and kept it in his safe. The judge is scandalized, obviously, and is probably not putting out tonight, but right now Gant only has eyes for “Wrighto,” who hasn’t said a word in quite a while. “Impressive…” Gant mutters. “To be honest, I didn’t think you had the gall, Wrighto.” The gall to not present evidence that would make Ema look guilty? To be honest, I didn’t either, since he never seems to consider the implications of his allegations until after they’re done. This is new territory for all of us. “Well,” Gant says, “I can’t just let you pin me up as the murderer. I’ll tell you what really happened.”

Just wait until Gumshoe writes a tell-all about his wages and working conditions.

This irritates me for two reasons: 1) I am sick to death of Gant talking, and 2) if he just shut up, he would be fine. Had he just left well enough alone, yes, Lana would have testified, but there was nothing that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gant was involved. But no, he’s going to start talking and let Phoenix ruin him, when otherwise he would have had no such opportunity. The master criminal!

Anyway. Gant isn’t really testifying, since he’s not allowed or whatever, but he does tell his story. “I was the first person to arrive at the crime scene that day,” he says, pulling at his forelock like it’s Edgeworth’s turtling penis. “It then occurred to me that I could use the situation to control Lana.” He must have really been on the lookout for situations through which to blackmail Lana if it so quickly occurred to him to do so here. I bet he’d been trying to blackmail her for years for not chipping in to the criminal affairs coffee and donuts fund. “I knew Lana,” he explains. “If I made it look like the blame lay with her sister… That when she saw the scene, she would ask for my aid.” Lucky for him, nobody else happened to show up before Lana. Again, I would be so happy if Gant had this scene all nicely set up for Lana to discover, only for Gumshoe to wander in with Gant’s dry cleaning. Regardless, Gant says he instructed Lana in how to arrange the scene, including breaking off the knife tip in Neil Marshall’s wound and moving the body. I am still totally at a loss as to how they got the blood off of that side of the floor and the suit of armor, but whining about it isn’t going to magically force any member of this brain trust to explain it to me.

Gant also notes that he hid two pieces of evidence, THE JAR FRAGMENT and the leather scrap, before Lana arrived, “For insurance, of course.” The judge is dumbstruck that anyone could plan this far ahead, when he has trouble deciding which pant leg to put on first every morning. To make certain that nobody could accuse him, at some future point, of being the murderer himself–and let’s be clear, this still has not yet happened–he preserved “the most legible part of Ema’s name” on THE JAR. Dude, it was three block letters. He took half of the “M.” I can’t even. “I didn’t expect Lana to go and wipe the blood off all the pieces,” he says, even though this did not end up mattering for his supposed insurance evidence. And when Edgeworth accuses him of fabricating the message on THE JAR himself, he replies, “Ho ho ho… Some people just don’t know when to quit, do they? That’s why I kept one more item for ‘insurance.'” Because Ema’s handprint on Marshall’s vest could not possibly have convinced anyone on its own, so he had to make sure to hang onto a piece of his high school art project that had half of a big bloody “M” on it. Why, that’s such a smoking gun that Edgeworth is compelled to pick it up with his bare hands right now.

Also, let’s keep in mind that Gant said he removed these items before Lana arrived, which is consistent with her testimony that she didn’t miss any pieces of THE JAR. Why, then, did Lana think Ema was guilty? She did not see the writing on THE JAR, and even if she had, the legible letters would have just been an “E” and an “A,” which are also in the name “Darke.” And there was no tiny girl handprint on Marshall’s vest. When she came in, she would have seen Marshall impaled on the sword, and a serial killer and her sister unconscious. Yeah, obviously Ema did that shit.

*loud slurping sounds*

Since Gant has been obliquely mentioning the leather scrap but it has not been ejaculated out of Phoenix’s court record, he asks Phoenix to get on with it. But before he does so, Phoenix asks, “So you admit to it then, Chief Gant? That you were hiding the cloth you cut off the victim’s vest in your safe?” Gant probably treated this scrap as his very own Shroud of Turin, by which I mean his most holy and sacred jizz handkerchief. “Yes, I admit it,” Gant says. To Phoenix, not me. Sigh. “I didn’t want to have to do that, being Chief and all, but it’s a lot better than being portrayed as a murderer!” The only reason anyone would jump to the conclusion they’d be fingered for murder in this situation is if they did in fact do it, but Phoenix keeps that to himself for now.

The judge scolds Phoenix for keeping this piece of evidence to himself, with Gant piling on, but Phoenix only thinks to himself, “It’s been a long battle…” God, you think? The court stenographer, my closest in-game equivalent, should be given a Congressional Medal of Honor for sitting through this. Oh, Phoenix wasn’t done blue-fonting: “But the moment of truth has finally arrived! As long as I don’t mess up here, victory is mine!” This is the game’s attempt to paint Phoenix’s actions as deliberate: a trap of legal technicalities he is about to spring on an unsuspecting Damon Gant. I have gone along with that narrative up to a point, but I would be remiss if I didn’t point out at least once how stupid this is. First of all, the choice was left up to me whether or not to present the scrap earlier, and Phoenix’s thoughts at the time were panicky and not composed at all. Second, Phoenix has shown time and again he is totally incapable of formulating even rudimentary thoughts in the moment, let alone of thinking far enough ahead and anticipating Gant’s reactions enough to put himself in an advantageous position. He can’t even put himself in an advantageous position on Edgeworth’s sofa. Nonetheless, spring his trap he does, as he finally presents the leather scrap.

‘As opposed to that knockoff garbage Mr. Wright thinks looks just like designer evidence.’

Before anyone can react to the evidence, Phoenix makes sure to ask Gant one more time, “Let me verify this once more. On the day of the crime, you personally cut out this piece of the victim’s vest?” Gant claps with glee, now that he thinks he has Phoenix over a barrel of holy water. “Oh, yes!” he replies. “At last you’ve brought it out into the open.” Edgeworth, upon seeing this evidence, immediately calls for lab analysis of the handprint, telling the judge, “There must have been a strong impact for it to be left so clearly!” and adding that the force of Ema’s Thousand Hand Slap means, “It could not have been forged. It must be authentic, conclusive evidence!” The poor man does not realize that Phoenix has kept something crucial from him in their all-day, tantric truth-searching session. Gant lets him in on that fact: “You’re as slow on the uptake as ever, Worthy!” He goes on, after sweet, unsuspecting Edgeworth’s admission of ignorance, “Think about it. Wrighto had all this time to present this evidence… Yet he was reluctant to do so. Why would that be?” Edgeworth realizes Phoenix already has his answer, putting him on the spot with his boyfriend and his teen girl assistant. To the court, he says, “Very well. I’ll tell you.” To himself, he says, “It should be okay now. Everything’s proceeding as predicted.” Sure it is, Phoenix. He had a plan ALL ALONG!

All in keeping with his brilliant plan that totally exists, Phoenix identifies the fingerprints as belonging to Ema Skye. The judge totally has this look on his face like, “Then why the fuck have you been wasting my time?” while poor Ema blurts out, “What!? They’re mine…!?” Remember, at no point has Ema recanted her testimony of shoving Marshall, so this should not surprise her. Phoenix apologizes, but all Ema wants to know is, “But why… Why didn’t you tell me!?” It is kind of funny that he told Gumshoe, who is a total blab, but didn’t tell Ema. But she’s just a child, et cetera. Gant applauds again, as he clearly considers the distraught look on Ema’s face the cherry on his sundae of Phoenix’s agony. (The hot fudge is the fight Phoenix and Edgeworth are totally going to have tonight about how lies destroy relationships.) “You’re really something, Wrighto!” he says. “You knew this girl did it all along, and you still tried to pin the murderer [sic] on me!” It is entirely likely that’s not a typo and he enjoys being pinned up against murderers.