The contradictory statement here is the single gunshot, and Phoenix can prove it using the DL-6 case file. I wish he would just say, “This file says right here that the gun had been fired twice.” But that would be easy and wouldn’t add another million text screens of filler dialogue. Von Karma interrupts Phoenix to give him shit about constantly whipping out this file, like Phoenix has a ton of other DL-6 evidence in the court record, and forces him to point out the exact page again. This time, it’s on the Victim Data page, coincidentally the only page Phoenix hasn’t presented so far. This is so unnecessary.
Dang, Edgeworth must be hung like a giraffe.
If Edgeworth only heard one gunshot, but the murder weapon had been fired twice, Phoenix posits that the first shot actually missed, and there was a second mysterious gunshot that killed Edgeworth’s dad. The Judge starts to ask about the possibility of a second shooter when von Karma rudely interrupts him again with another objection. To be fair, his objection has merit — sure, the gun was fired twice, but there’s no way to tell when the other shot was fired, and hence no proof that it had anything to do with DL-6. But von Karma is underestimating Phoenix’s intermittent ability to figure things out, so when Phoenix claims he does have proof, von Karma is surprised. I’m sure he’s even more surprised that the evidence in question is not the DL-6 case file for once. It’s one of the few other relevant DL-6 things in Phoenix’s court record — the crime scene photo with Gregory Edgeworth bleeding from the chest and mouth. I really hope Phoenix is not waving this around front of Edgeworth — talk about a boner killer.
As Sam mentioned in her recap, this photo also shows a bullet hole in the inexplicable glass windows of the elevator. Although it’s on the edge of the photo and not the exact center with a blinking arrow pointing to it, it’s still hard to miss. But the Judge just goes, “So, let me get this straight. This photo proves two shots were fired? Where?” Even Phoenix flop sweats over how dumb the Judge is being, but then blue-fonts, “Show the Judge the contradiction in the photo!” like his inner monologue has suddenly turned into the Invisible Narrator. I tap on the bullet hole on my greasy iPad screen, causing Phoenix to scream, “TAKE THAT!” at the Judge. Yeah, show him that greasy iPad screen! The Judge isn’t quite connecting the dots, so Phoenix provides the following explanation: “Gregory Edgeworth was killed by a shot from the pistol! Yet, there is also a bullet hole in the elevator door! We also know that the murder weapon was fired twice! Thus… Someone other than Edgeworth fired that second shot!” Phoenix gets an intense facial close-up here, along with the congratulatory music. I only bothered typing out that entire explanation so you can understand how frustrating it is for me when the Judge responds, “Mr. Wright! What are you driving at?” Sigh.
No one would blame Phoenix, not even Edgeworth, if he just said, “Fuck this” and walked out of the courtroom and into the ocean. But Phoenix, ever the masochist (or sadist, if we assume he’s doing this all to piss me off), explains the whole thing over again in more detail. “In conclusion… We must agree that the second shot was fired by someone else!” he claims again, hoping he won’t have to dig out the digital crime scene reenactment software to explain a third (fourth?) time. The Judge wants to know who is responsible for the second shot. “The murderer, of course!” Phoenix responds in his smug hands-on-hips pose. So specific!
Phoenix would like von Karma to stay out of his wild fantasies.
Von Karma just can’t resist the urge to shit all over this latest theory, too. He tells Phoenix to look at the DL-6 case file again, and even points out the specific page, just so we know he’s been playing dumb about this page number business all along. What a jerk. The sentence von Karma wants Phoenix to look at is the one that reads: “Not a single clue was found on the scene.” In other words, no second bullet was found anywhere. Therefore, that bullet hole in the glass door must have been there from some other accidental discharge that happened on another day. It’s true that Phoenix has no way of proving when this bullet hole happened, and that there are enough incompetent buffoons in this courthouse to have bullets randomly ricocheting around the building. I haven’t been mentioning every single peanut gallery outburst during the trial because there are only so many ways I can find to describe them, but another one happens here, as if every one of these overexcited buttholes wouldn’t be dead from a burst blood vessel already. The Judge calls for order, and then lays out the current situation. He says that Phoenix has proven that the murder weapon was fired twice during the incident, which he technically didn’t prove at all. At the same time, no second bullet was found, and it would have been impossible for the crack forensics squad to miss such an important piece of evidence. No one — especially not Phoenix — comes up with the very obvious suggestion that the murderer removed the bullet from the scene himself. Based on his deep trust of the shitty detectives, the Judge must side with von Karma here. Shit! I’m saying that as much for myself as for poor Edgeworth.
Phoenix has blown his entire wad of ideas, and finds himself spent and filled with shame. It doesn’t help that von Karma is tsk-ing at him and grinning in a very unnerving manner. As Phoenix stands there dripping sweat and inner monologuing like he’s lost the ability to speak, Maya slaps him on the back of his head and tells him to object already. Like a complete limp noodle, he ignores her advice and just gives up. “But you said you’d do it, Nick! You said you’d get Edgeworth declared innocent!” Maya insists. I’m sure this isn’t the first time Phoenix was unable to deliver on a big promise made to Edgeworth. To make matters worse, Phoenix has to stand there and make his own scenery-chewing speech. God, I can just feel my life slipping away. He blathers on about how he was so certain his theory of a second shooter was correct, but there must be a reason the case was unsolved for so many years and now he’s going to be forced to desperately hook up with Larry Butz while pretending he’s Edgeworth for the rest of his life. It’s a sad, sad day.
Riiiiiiiiiight.
The Judge figures everything is cleared up now, so he decides to pass judgment. Of course he can’t do this quickly either. He even asks Edgeworth if he’s been paying attention to the trial. No, he’s been paging through a gay porn mag the entire time. After the Judge reiterates the details of the crime again, Edgeworth admits to it again. Christ. “Oh no… He’s confessing…” Maya panics, like this isn’t the fiftieth time he’s confessed in the last half hour. After blathering on even more, the Judge asks if anyone has any objections. I have a whole shitload of objections. Phoenix has a host of blue-font commentary about this too — he says he feels just like he did his first time (in court), tongue-tied and sweaty. “Mr. Wright?” the Judge prompts, giving Phoenix way more time than he deserves to come out with his objection.
Once again, I get a choice whether or not to object. I’m sure this will shock the shorts off of you guys, but this choice isn’t really a choice either! If Phoenix just lies back and takes it, there is some amusing Wankese where he asks, “Wasn’t my whole life leading up to today?” proving that indeed, the purpose of his existence is to act as a knight in shining armor for his true fuchsia love Miles. But even though Phoenix has angered me greatly throughout this entire recap, I’m going to let him be a man here and fight for the right to scale Bone Mountain with Edgeworth.
“OBJECTION!” Phoenix roars in the manliest voice he can muster, which still sounds like a woman. After that, things get a bit iffy, because he has no basis for his objection. Before the Judge can just scoff at him and von Karma can suck his battered soul out of his limp peehole, a brief vision of Mia flashes over a black screen, and what I assume is her disembodied voice utters the words, “…it must exist… …the second bullet…” Phoenix must not have seen the same hallucination of Mia that I did, because he thinks Maya said it. “The second bullet must exist? But where!?” Phoenix urgently blue-fonts. Frighteningly, the ghost of Mia can read his mind — this opens up all sorts of uncomfortable scenarios — because she answers, “…Someone took it…” Well, I bet Phoenix feels like an ass for not even thinking of that possibility. So now that his dead boss has come to his rescue yet again, using her psychic powers to magically determine what happened during DL-6 even though she wasn’t present, Phoenix has renewed confidence in his earlier theory of a second bullet. The Judge gets tired of waiting for Phoenix to converse with the voices in his head, and starts to proceed once again, but Phoenix slams his hands on the desk, triggering the dramatic organ music. “Wait, Your Honor! I, uh… The-the second bullet! It, uh, it exists!” he stammers, alternately flop sweating and pointing. Edgeworth is experiencing myriad conflicting feelings right about now. It’s like he doesn’t know whether to pop a boner or cry. He could take a cue from Larry Butz and do both.
“But we’ve just heard proof that it did not exist!” says the Judge of the second bullet, which isn’t true. They just didn’t prove it did exist. It’s not the same thing! Phoenix admits to himself that he’s just “grasping” as if it wasn’t completely obvious from his nervous demeanor. “I-it’s just, someone took it from the scene of the crime! That’s what happened!” he squeaks. Did von Karma suck his nuts out through his peehole, too? Jesus, Phoenix. The Judge wants to know who could have possibly removed the bullet from the crime scene. Phoenix should say, “The murderer, dumbass.” Instead, he says, “Th-th-the murderer!” like he’s having a seizure. Okay, this is just silly. First of all, it’s dumb that Phoenix needed a ghost to tell him about this possibility, and it’s dumb that the Judge can’t figure out who might have a motive to remove evidence and that he thinks said evidence removal would be so difficult to do. Dumb, dumb, dumb all around with these people.
Von Karma objects to Phoenix’s vague statement about a murderer. He wants a name, damn it. Someone can’t be innocent of a crime without someone else being found guilty! Of course Phoenix has no clue yet, because there’s no reason for him to think anyone in this room has a criminal background and a grudge against the defendant and his father. The Judge also wants to know why this very mysterious murderer would even bother to look for the bullet. He could only do it if there was a “pressing need”! And it’s hard to find a stray bullet! So impossible!
YES WHO ON EARTH COULD IT BE?!?!
The Judge wants Phoenix to provide him with a believable reason the murderer would have removed the bullet from the scene. Phoenix is presented with a choice that is actually a choice for once. Either “the murderer had to find it” or “the murderer didn’t need it.” Now, I’ll jump ahead and say that the second one is the correct choice, but I need to focus on the dialogue that happens with the other choice because it is my job to nitpick this shit to death. So if Phoenix says the murderer had to find a reason, he needs to then clarify — either the murderer was just being cautious or the bullet could be used as proof. Phoenix gets shot down for any of these options because von Karma claims (and the Judge agrees) that any reason the killer had to take the second bullet would have applied to the first bullet, too. Von Karma actually says that the murderer would have dug the bullet out of Gregory Edgeworth’s chest. Because he didn’t, he must not have had a reason to take that bullet, thus he would not have had a reason to take the other bullet. I don’t even know what to say about all this faulty reasoning. Especially since the whole reason the murderer got away with this crime for years is because of the missing second bullet. Obviously von Karma can’t be expected to point out that possibility, for a number of reasons, but at the very least Phoenix should challenge him on his ridiculous claims.
But none of that stupid conversation actually happened because Phoenix chose the correct option from the start — the murderer did not need to find the second bullet. Phoenix doesn’t actually say this, he just sits around blue-fonting cluelessly while von Karma insists there was no reason to take the bullet. Phoenix, foiled again, starts to choke but is saved for the second time by a split-second appearance from his dead boss. She’s kind of like a ghost Naggy, the way she keeps blinking onscreen and basically going “HEY! LISTEN!” But she’s also the exact opposite because she’s telling Phoenix things he needs to hear. “…had to take it…” she whispers, failing to trigger any revelations from Phoenix. She tries again, “…you’re thinking too normal…think crazy…don’t think why the bullet was taken……think why the bullet HAD to be taken…” Okay, clearly Mia’s spirit has something specific in mind, so why doesn’t she just fucking come out with it? Phoenix has already needed her help to win this trial, it’s not like he gets extra points for figuring it out himself at this exact point. I also don’t know what’s going on here with Mia — she’s clearly not being channeled by Maya and her flat chest. Does this mean Mia can just randomly show up to throw ellipses at Phoenix and spout random advice through Leknaat’s reverb filter? Is she purely a figment of Phoenix’s imagination created as some type of crutch to get him through tough courtroom situations? Whatever the case, Phoenix is not firing on all cylinders here, as his increasingly desperate blue-font interjections indicate.
Oh, none of us could tell.
Meanwhile, in the world outside his head, Phoenix is doing the world’s poorest job of stalling the Judge while he pieces the facts together. You know how Sam said Phoenix has a condition where he can’t figure things out until he’s saying them out loud in court? That’s exactly what he’s doing here, and it shows. What he comes up with, through much stammering and stuttering, as well as some Gollum-style self-arguing, is that the murderer didn’t intend to take the bullet, but he had to because it hit him. “J-just saying, for instance. I mean, if it hit you, you would have to take it with you, wouldn’t you? It’s not like you could perform surgery right there. Y-y’know?” This entire time, Phoenix has a dippy grin plastered on his face while gripping the back of his head. Such sexy confidence. The Judge, von Karma, Edgeworth, Maya, and the entire peanut gallery just stare at him like he admitted he loves fondling boobs. I don’t know why von Karma hasn’t objected about a thousand times by now. For the sake of Edgeworth’s attraction to Phoenix, that would have been for the best. “Wait a second…” Phoenix blue-fonts as the disapproving glares continue. “I was just talking off the top of my head, but what if that’s really what happened?” Oh, Phoenix.