Edgeworth asks the detective to state his name and profession for the court. “Sir!” he yells, chest heaving some more in Edgeworth’s heart-thumping presence. “My name’s Dick Gumshoe, sir! I’m the detective in charge of homicides down at the precinct, sir!” Calm down there, Sparky. Once Gumshoe gets a hold of himself, he goes on to explain the details of the crime, using a map of Mia’s office. He shows on the map where Mia’s body was found, and provides the cause of death and the murder weapon. Regarding “The Thinker,” Gumshoe points out, “It was heavy enough to be a deadly weapon, even in a girl’s hands, sir!” All that Phoenix can think about this? “They’re still calling it a ‘statue’…” He just hates it when curios are mis-labeled!

Moving on from that, Edgeworth asks Gumshoe about his arrest of Maya, and why he arrested her immediately. “I had hard evidence that she did it, sir!” says Gumshoe. I only quoted that directly so we could all giggle at “hard evidence.” I bet Phoenix has some hard evidence he’d like to show Edgeworth. The judge asks Gumshoe to provide testimony on the “hard evidence.” The judge would quite like to examine it, after all.

Gumshoe goes through his testimony, which is a pretty straightforward account of his arrival at the scene, where he found both Maya and Phoenix, the former of whom having been identified by the witness who called the police. Phoenix is just wondering how he’s going to look for a contradiction here when Maya chucks a piece of paper at his head. The note reads, “When my sister couldn’t find any contradictions in a witness’s testimony, she would bluff it and press the witness on every detail! The witness always slips up and says something wrong… It worked lots of times!” Phoenix is all impressed, like this wasn’t exactly what I was going to have him do.

In the anime-style split screen that precedes the cross-examination, Edgeworth is totally making fuck-me eyes across the courtroom. Rowr!

Pressing Gumshoe’s first few statements, which primarily concern him finding Maya and Phoenix when he arrived, does not go over too well, since Gumshoe knows he is playing dumb, as he himself was there. When Phoenix asks if Gumshoe is sure of who he saw, Gumshoe points out, “With her funky hippie clothes and your spiky hair? You two stand out like…like suspicious people at a crime scene!” Phoenix, thinking to himself, allows that Gumshoe has a point about Maya, but not about himself. How dare Gumshoe ridicule his hair in front of Edgeworth! That’s not making him look very good at all. Given this, Phoenix decides to be careful about pressing on any old thing. Wuss.

When Gumshoe states that he arrested Maya on the spot due to the eyewitness’s description, the music stops, so we know Phoenix might actually be making a valid point for once. “Hold on just one second!” he says to Gumshoe. “If I heard correctly… You said you arrested her because you had ‘hard evidence’ she did it, correct?” You know Phoenix is not going to mistake hearing that. When Gumshoe asks, “Did…did I say that? Me?” Phoenix, Edgeworth and the judge all simultaneously confirm that he did say it. These are men whose ears perk up at the word “hard,” clearly. Pointing his Finger of Justice, Phoenix asks, “Exactly what about this suspicious woman in pink’s claim was ‘hard evidence’!?” How could anything be hard around a lady, anyway? Gumshoe retorts, “Miss May isn’t suspicious, and she sure isn’t pink, pal! W-well, I guess she is pink…” Pink, and no cause for hard evidence, that’s for sure.

The judge asks if Gumshoe had anything to go on other than this witness. Phoenix is just congratulating himself on the awesome power of pressing when Gumshoe’s all, “Yeah, I got some evidence.” Poor Phoenix. He would rather have been “pressing” Edgeworth, then. Gumshoe claims that he got “the order of things” mixed up in the previous testimony, and asks to try again. Now, it’s not like Gumshoe is lying about anything, but the judge is just a dolt. You may as well say, “Sure, restructure your testimony! Keep trying until the lies sound right!”

‘It’s impressive…I guess.’

The title of this second testimony is “Hard Evidence,” just so you guys know. I love this. Gumshoe relates his examination of the crime scene, during which he found the note with Maya’s name on it. “Lab test results showed that the blood was the victim’s!” he says, adding that there was blood on Mia’s finger as well. We all know that Maya didn’t do this thing, and that there are all kinds of ways this could be less than what it seems: there is no proof that Mia wrote it, and no proof that the writing of the name means Maya is the culprit. But the way the peanut gallery reacts, you’d think Gumshoe had just pulled out Maya’s signed and notarized confession.

The judge, for his part, is more miffed that Gumshoe didn’t bring this up in his first testimony. That’s what happens when you let people have do-overs, genius! But, as we will see, abusing Gumshoe when he’s on the stand is just what the other characters do when they need to feel good about themselves.

Phoenix now gets to cross-examine this bit of testimony, and skips straight to Gumshoe’s statement, “I found a memo written on a piece of paper next to the victim’s body!” Pressing here lets Phoenix bring up the possibility that Mia did not write the note. Gumshoe asks who could have written it, if not Mia, and Phoenix gets three choices: the killer, April May, or himself. Trying not to poke myself in the eye with the stylus while inputting the answer, because semi-sharp things are dangerous to stupid people like me, I choose to say the killer did it.

Gumshoe, infuriatingly, responds, “You’re saying the killer wrote her OWN name!? Buddy, please!” Yeah, that’s exactly what he meant. Ass. Phoenix clarifies that he thinks Maya was framed, but Edgeworth points out–via a manly cry of “Objection!”–that he has no evidence to support this. Well, you guys don’t have any evidence to support your own claim! So there! Of course, since it was Edgeworth who shut him down, Phoenix just clams up, defeated.

After pressing on every single point, and making Phoenix look like a total idiot in the process, I am forced to actually look for contradictions. Not that this is difficult. At Gumshoe’s final statement, “Before she died, the victim wrote the killer’s name!” Phoenix presents the autopsy report, which indicates that Mia died instantly. With his bedroom eyes on, Phoenix taps the document in his hand and says, “The victim is the only person who absolutely could NOT have written it!” Yes, yes, she died instantly, so she couldn’t have written anything. Phoenix has known about the cause of death and the note this entire time, and yet he’s only coming to this conclusion now.

Edgeworth objects, asking Phoenix when he got his hands on the autopsy report. Phoenix says that it was obtained the day after the murder. Edgeworth taps a finger to his temple, smirking in a way that is simultaneously infuriating and arousing to poor Phoenix. “That autopsy report is outdated, Your Honor,” he says. “A second autopsy was performed yesterday, at my request! ‘Death was almost immediate due to a blow from a blunt object… But there is a possibility the victim lived for several minutes after the blow.'” What a cheater. Phoenix, are you sure you want a man who is so unfaithful?

Edgeworth points out that, according to his totally doctored autopsy report, Mia could have lived long enough to dip her hand into the blood oozing from her head and write down her sister’s name. You know, Phoenix should just say that in front of the court, because put that way, it sounds completely stupid. Bowing–no shit, bowing–Edgeworth says, “That is all.” Phoenix may be happy to see the top of his head like that, but this is not the time for such thoughts.

Phoenix is given a choice of retorts when Edgeworth asks him what’s wrong. He chooses to blurt out, “You’re a sham, Edgeworth!” He accuses the dreamy prosecutor of doing anything to get his verdict, and asks him why he would have need of a second autopsy report. The judge, all semblance of common sense long gone, doesn’t wonder this same thing, but tells Phoenix to lay off the personal attacks against Edgeworth. Edgeworth smirks, “No matter, Your Honor… Mr. Wright. Say what you will, the evidence in this report is undeniable.” Phoenix can do nothing but sputter as Edgeworth submits the new autopsy report into the evidence. The judge is all, “Yes, I see nothing wrong with this, Mr. Edgeworth, baby, honey-doll.” And if that isn’t bad enough, Edgeworth has another witness to call. “This poor, innocent girl saw the murder with her own eyes!” he tells the court. “Exactly what part of her is ‘innocent’…?” Phoenix wonders with his Sweaty Constipated Face on. And now Phoenix is jealous of April May potentially getting her paws all over his man. He has sunk low this day.

When Edgeworth asks the witness to identify herself, she wags her tongue at him, bounces her cleavage–ew–and, with a wink, says, “April May! At your service!” I’m sure she isn’t. The peanut gallery erupts at this for some reason, like they cannot believe the witness having the audacity to hit on the obviously gay Mr. Edgeworth. “The witness will refrain from wonton winking!” orders the judge. Yes, “wonton” as opposed to “wanton.” The judge must be hungry.

April is all apologetic and doe-eyed about upsetting the judge, so Phoenix is now worried that she’s going to be a sympathetic witness. “She’s already captured the heart of every man in the court!” his blue text freaks. The way this game is shaping up, I really don’t think so–straight guys who want to comfort busty young ladies seem pretty thin on the ground around here. After establishing the facts–on the night of the murder, April was in her hotel room, across the street from Mia’s office–we get to April’s testimony of what she saw. To her credit, April doesn’t embellish much–she keeps her lies nice and straightforward, saying that she saw Maya hit Mia over the head and that Mia slumped over immediately. She adds another wink-boob-bounce combo at the end of her testimony. Beyond the grave, Mia is rolling her eyes in contempt right now. The judge proclaims April’s testimony to be completely beyond reproach, and doesn’t even want to let Phoenix cross-examine her, adding that the testimony was “quite…firm.” Get it? He was looking at her tits! Oh, that wacky judge.

“Mr. Wright…” Edgeworth suddenly says, and Phoenix’s pulse starts to race a little, “I understand you were Ms. Mia Fey’s understudy, were you not? You must know her techniques well.” Phoenix reddens–what is Edgeworth trying to say? He’s not into that. But of course, Edgeworth is referring to Mia’s courtroom exploits. “Her cowardly way of finding tiny faults in perfectly good testimonies…” Yes, it’s very cowardly to point out when a witness is lying. Phoenix is all offended, and insists on going forward with his cross-examination more out of spite than anything. And does it annoy him that he has to defend his dead female boss’s honor to this hot specimen of man in front of him? Hell yes. That’s just making the whole experience more sour.

Pressing April’s very first statement–that she looked out the window around 9:00–immediately catches the witness without a ready response, as she can’t explain why she looked out the window, which makes Phoenix suspicious that she was expecting to see something when she looked. Even hefting her boobs in his face and saying, “I had a feeling!” doesn’t get her off the hook. Not that that would do anything to Phoenix. He has the option to keep pressing April on this detail, and does so, since she’s clearly faltering. Edgeworth points a finger in Phoenix’s direction and objects, “Mr. Wright! I will not have you badgering my witness!” Phoenix is all, “B-badgering?” like he’s never heard the word in his life. The peanut gallery is with Edgeworth on this one, and is yelling for Phoenix’s head for his harassment of this poor young lady. God. This whole testimony is like the entire courtroom collectively crying out, “Chicks! CHIIIIIICKS! WE LOVE WOMEN!!!”

Pressing pretty much any of April’s statements involving Maya sets off Phoenix’s Making Shit Up Alarm. April specifically says it was the defendant she saw, so Phoenix asks how she knew. “Huh? Well…y’know! S-she had a girlish physique. Women know these things. Look…I-I just know, okay?” Edgeworth adds that Maya was the only one found at the scene with a girlish figure. Phoenix is glad that Edgeworth notices he’s been working out. Meanwhile, Phoenix knows Edgeworth is right, but chooses to keep pressing. Declaring that the testimony “stinks” (rawr! hiss!), Phoenix alleges that she didn’t even see the defendant that night. April’s “Urp!” pretty much gives the game away.

So how did Phoenix come to this conclusion? Well, let’s remember that Phoenix has an eye for design, despite his bad hair and pink tie, and his inner fashion plate simply cannot believe that Maya’s figure would be the first thing anyone noticed about her. “If you had really witnessed my client, Maya Fey… You would have noticed her clothes before noticing her physique!” The Startling Revelation Music thrums in the background as Phoenix notes how odd Maya’s wardrobe and hairstyle are. “However, the witness’s testimony mentions neither of these things!” he yells, all pointing fingers. And that, per Phoenix, is enough to render the whole account “bogus.” How dare the witness not comment on the fashions witnessed at the scene of the murder!

Again with the lying.

April begs off that she just didn’t mention all the details, so the judge–sigh–reprimands her and gives her a do-over. With which, of course, she makes sure to mention all the details Phoenix just pointed out. In addition to the stuff about Maya’s clothes, she says, “That…that clock! Um…the kinda statue-y clock? ‘The Thinker,’ I think?” April smirks at Phoenix over how accurate her testimony is now, but even Phoenix can’t be too worried now–she just made a huge mistake.

After pressing everything else just to see if Phoenix says anything gay (and he does get miffed when the witness makes fun of his haircut), Phoenix cuts to that last bit about “The Thinker” and presents the murder weapon to her in the form of an objection. “Miss May,” he starts, all seriousness now. Note that Phoenix almost always starts out with using someone’s name when he actually has something of note to say. So he doesn’t do it all that often. “What you said just now was quite…revealing.” The music gets all dramatic again while April May quips, “Revealing? Oooh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you. Naughty Mr. Lawyer…” She’s trying to hit on Phoenix now, so she must be very desperate. Phoenix ignores her and goes on. “You just said that this statue of ‘The Thinker’ was a clock. But there’s no way of knowing that just by looking at it! Another person in much the same position as you recently called this a ‘clock,’ too… And he was found guilty…of murder!” Phoenix has this self-satisfied smirk on his face, and puts his hands on his hips, as he says that last part. That’ll show this bitch for making fun of his hair!

Phoenix demands to know how April knew the murder weapon was a clock, and not a statue. Edgeworth offers some weak objections about the relevance of whether it was a clock or not, and the dipshit judge totally goes along with it. “You will withdraw your question, Mr. Wright,” he says. But Phoenix, slamming his hands on the table, yells, “But questions are all I have, Your Honor! And as you may recall, I’ve caught murderers with these questions before!” He so wants to pin this on April. Her femininity offends him. Meanwhile, the judge proves once again pliable and allows Phoenix to keep going.