Raise up a toast

Feenie's life had gone down the toilet.

It had gone so far down the toilet it had passed the pipes, floated along the sewers and was wallowing in a waste treatment plant far outside of town. That was how far down the toilet his life had gone, and he felt like getting it back wasn't worth the long trip down metaphorical shit creek.

And he didn't have a paddle, either.

It was the last day of the university semester. He had three essays due, one for Principles of Public Law and two for Legal Ethics, a total of 10,500 words. He was running low on funds, living on two-minute noodles and eggs. He didn't have a job, and his mother was currently on an archaeological dig in the Pacific so he couldn’t call for help. Larry had spilt water on his laptop and shorted the circuits, all the library books he needed were on loan, and he had a meeting with the deputy head of his course in twenty minutes to discuss his pitiful marks, and his future with the faculty as a student.

Oh, and his girlfriend had tried to murder him.

He couldn’t understand it. Dollie had been so kind and beautiful… well, okay, she had a bit of a temper and had a bad habit of making off with his possessions, but as far as first girlfriends went, she’d been just fine. He couldn’t understand how someone with such a sweet face and clear eyes could be so cruel underneath, or how someone could put up a charade like that for so long.

He supposed it was his first encounter with the criminal mind, and that scared him. It scared him that it was so easy to trust someone capable of murder, that they looked just like everybody else, friends, family, or lovers. As he walked the corridors of the Law building to the deputy head’s office, he heaved a great sigh. He might as well give it up now… if he couldn’t sense evil in Dollie, how could he go up against great criminals? Fraudsters, murderers, thieves? How could sentimental Phoenix Wright, in his goofy pink jumper even begin to understand the cruel, refined minds of these people? What ever made him think he could be a lawyer in the first place?

When it really came down to it though, what hurt the most was the betrayal. When Dollie had smiled and said she’d be his girlfriend, it was one of the happiest days in his life. It hurt to think that she didn’t care a whit for him, let alone his actual life.

He arrived before he knew it, jolting out of his pitiful reminiscing. Before him was a foreboding wood-panelled door with a brass plaque inset among the grain. It bore the name of someone who instilled more fear in him than Dollie’s attempted murder or Mia Fey’s steely glare.

Sherrie Trinker

Law Faculty Deputy Head

He’d never met the woman in charge of his course, though he’d heard the rumours. Students would come out of her office in tears. Some said that she had a big stick, others that she was a German ex-patriot from a long line of international spies. Some students would go into her office and leave the course the very next day, never to be heard from again. He’d heard that she’d won unwinnable cases, taking on the mob one week and global conglomerates the next, and that she was a bitter and unsatisfied woman angry at having to teach feeble adolescents when she’d once lived a glamorous high life.

…feeble adolescents like him.

He gulped as he raised a shaking hand to knock at the door, nervous for his fate. He jolted as a command was shouted from within- “Enter!”- he hadn’t even knocked.

The room was panelled with the same wood as the door, a dark brown hue that exuded age and mystery. It also exuded the stale smell of cigar smoke, and Phoenix hesitated to step inside, tempted to wrap his scarf around his nose. He’d never enjoyed that smell.

Phoenix didn’t see Professor Trinker at first. Piles and piles of books and essays were crammed into the bookshelves and spilling out onto the floor. Antique lamps sat beside trinkets from foreign lands… there was a spinning globe, a kokeshi doll sitting beside a series of babushkas, a garish collection of masks that harked from places as varied as Venice and Fiji. There were huge leather-bound books set beside modern paperbacks, and an old-fashioned radio seemed to tower over a sleek white laptop. It was an utter mess and compellingly glamorous at the same time, and Phoenix would have continued to gawk had he not been brought back to himself by the sound of a dry cough.

“Stop staring, and sit down, if you please.”

Her voice was as inconspicuous as her appearance. Sitting, Phoenix had to crane his neck to see her among the stacks of papers she appeared to be marking, and he fidgeted nervously as he caught her eye. She was a tiny woman, dressed from head to toe in black velour which made the chunky jewels around her neck and wrists seem to sparkle even more. Phoenix’s mother would have called her ‘salt-and-pepper’- her grey hair was strewn with black and white, cut in a severe bob that almost hid a pair of fierce black eyes. She was elderly, but by how much Phoenix couldn’t tell. He hazarded a guess of sixty, though he’d met women who looked aged at forty-five and some of the European spy stories he’d heard about Professor Trinker would have placed her birth at least seventy-five years ago.

Phoenix cast his gaze to the floor to show his respect.

“Thankyou for agreeing to see me at such late noti-“

“Your marks these few months have been terrible, Phoenix Wright.” She interrupted him with her thick German accent, tapping a long, black painted nail against the desk. The tense silence lasted for a few moments before Phoenix dared to look up, seeing her fish a magnifying glass from out of seemingly nowhere.

“Ahh, yes. Here… your Torts results of the past month or so. Unbearable, no? They had not been too impressive from the beginning, but these give a terrible feeling.”

A feeling of dread seeped into Phoenix’s stomach. It was the same feeling as when his mother found out he’d flooded the kitchen when he was seven, or when the police had wanted to interview him about Doug Swallow’s death. It was a feeling of deep concern for his future, and he was starting to feel like this was the end of the line as far as his career in law was concerned. He folded his hands miserably in his lap as he listened to a list of his failures.

“And the same for Procedures… Property… though I could never bear that one myself, it’s true. Terrible marks for sloppy work, but the concepts are there. It’s like there is no heart in the piece, like it has not been there for some time.”

She looked up at him, her black beady eyes boring into his own. He wanted to open his mouth to say something, though nothing would come. It was true. His recent work had been terrible, due in part to the horrible case with Dollie- no, Dahlia, and the feeling that he was too silly and naïve to really go through with this.

“It’s an odd name, Phoenix.” Professor Trinker remarked suddenly. When no response was forthcoming, she felt compelled to repeat herself.

“Phoenix. Phoenix Wright. It’s an odd name.”

Phoenix realised with sudden clarity that he was meant to respond and kicked himself inwardly. “Er… yes. My mother kind of liked old legends, and it was her who uh… she decided that…”

He tailed off as the Professor disappeared from sight, scrabbling beneath her desk. When she reappeared, she was holding an enormous bottle of brandy with one manicured hand and two glasses in the other.

“Continue,” She said, and Phoenix watched incredulously as she filled both glasses with ninety percent proof.

“Er… yes, she liked the idea that… um, a phoenix could be reborn. She raised me on her own, and said that I was like her phoenix, like a new life emerging for a new start.”

He squirmed in his seat, wondering why he was sharing his mother’s hippie philosophy with the woman who was about to decide if his education and future prospects were to be terminated. He stopped squirming when Professor Trinker handed him a glass of brandy and told him to drink up, opting for still-bodied awe instead.

“Your mother is right,” She declared in her unusual english, taking a sip of her own brandy. “Your papers are like catastrophe, like a burning disaster. Worst I have seen in a long time. But you… you can rise from it. I’ve seen it in your other work.”

She selected an essay from Phoenix’s pile, one liberally covered in red pen marks. He hadn’t scored exceptionally well, but he’d been proud of it, having worked long nights in the library.

“You need spellcheck,” Professor Trinker said, “You have a habit of carelessness. However. Drink up.”

Phoenix hurriedly drank.

“I have not seen ideas like this in many students. You are still young, and naïve, but your heart is beating hard. You are passionate. I don’t see that in many who come in here. Stay the way you are, with your big mind and your big heart, but sharpen your thought. Tighten your skills, and discipline yourself. It is a blessing and a curse, to be so earnest, but there is one thing you can do to give the best of yourself to the law.”

He hadn’t realised, but he was leaning forward eagerly, waiting for what she had to say.

“Your girlfriend,” She said, and Phoenix held his breath, cheeks flushing in shame. “It has been a hard time for you. So much passion. I understand. Too much energy focused here…”

She put her hand to her heart.

“And not enough… here.”

Phoenix watched as Professor Trinker reached into her drawer, and presented to him what looked like a jewel. On closer inspection, he realised it was a small golden badge.

“Make the facts your passion. Make the truth your passion. You will love people, not always by choice, and the best thing you can do by them is put your energy into the truth. You won’t be able to help yourself, it’s in your heart. Show your heart how to reveal the truth of people.”

The little badge glinted in the light, and Phoenix recalled looking at another one just like it, one that belonged to the father of his best friend.

“Someone… someone I knew once said something kind of the same,” He volunteered, and a smile worked its way onto Professor Trinker’s lips, the first he’d seen. Emboldened, he took a sip of his drink. “The truth is your ally. Or something like that.”

“You know some wise people, Phoenix Wright,” the Professor said as she stood, reaching beneath her desk again for something. She pulled out a small metal bin, plonking it onto the desk before them.

“Make use of them. I would like to be one of those people, but there is something we must do first.”

Phoenix found himself grinning as he watched Professor Trinker put a collection of papers into her bin, flushed more from alcohol than pride perhaps, but flushed nevertheless. Something had been let loose inside, not only the realisation that she wasn’t kicking him out of law school but something else. He couldn’t tell, exactly, but it felt good. Professor Trinker, mysterious black-wearing powerful international lawyer extraordinaire had seen something in him, he wasn’t just stupid Feenie playing at something he wasn’t. He just had to trust in himself, and trust in finding the truth. And that couldn’t be harder than surviving death-by-poisoning, could it?

He was so caught up in feeling relieved that he realised too late that the papers Professor Trinker had put in her bin were his old essays, and that she had set them on fire with an antique lighter.

“Rise from this, Phoenix Wright!” She cried, looking slightly mad from behind the flames. “From this old you comes a new one! Don’t let me read this sort of rubbish ever again, do you hear me?!”

Phoenix was too mesmerised by the flames to wonder why the sprinklers weren’t going off, and wondered instead if this was where the smoky smell of the office came from.

That evening, still a little buzzed from the alcohol, Phoenix took one last look at his knitted pink jumper before throwing it in the bin, along with the empty packets of two minute noodles. He’d been given a new chance, and he wasn’t about to screw it up.

It still hurt. For sure, it still hurt that he didn’t have a girlfriend, or his laptop, or any money. And it hurt that Larry was on his bed, eating the last of his hard-boiled eggs and two minute noodles. But he had something that not many other people had… the key to a world where he could do good by himself, and good by other people.

The right kind of heart.

He wasn’t about to set his bin on fire to prove it, but he had it.