((Mia is taken from after Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, so beware of moderate spoilers. I'll label major spoilers in the comments if at all possible. Also: important clues are indicated by colored text in the game. I will keep this to a minimum.
Permission has been obtained from the other active PW muns. Can you say "workninja?" I knew
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"I'm afraid the only kind of bar you'll find around here isn't the kind you're used to," he told her, with a rueful smile. "Charles Macaulay, happy to meet you," and he offered his hand to shake.
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Mia eyed the Dictaquill. "I'd be a bit concerned if that wasn't the case." Smiling, she accepted the handshake. "Mia Fey. The pleasure is all mine, Mr. Macaulay. Where might 'here' be, if you don't mind my asking?"
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She cocked her head. "Well, I suppose I've had to pull off enough magic tricks in my time for my clients. Hopefully the real thing will be just as challenging." Without the part where an innocent person's life was on the line.
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The last part was crucial. Because if that was the norm, she could think of a certain psychotic little someone who would jump at the chance.
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"I appreciate new perspectives," said Charles.
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"What kind of law is your specialty? My uncle was a lawyer. He mostly took care of estates and that kind of thing. Probate." Enough about me, let's talk about you, said that smile.
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Oh, she knew that smile, all right. She'd learned it from Diego. "Criminal law, primarily. Not exactly glamorous, but not dull either." She hadn't gone into law for the money. If money and power were what she wanted, she could have stayed home.
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Unlike some of his friends, Charles wasn't rattled by this. He was the one who'd had to run interference with the FBI. He was the one who'd had to spend countless hours chumming around with the Hampden cops, drinking their coffee and accepting shares in their Chinese takeout. He'd let them buy him Cokes from the Coke machine. Really sorry to keep dragging you down here. We know it's got to be hard on you kids. And he'd given them his rueful shrug and his innocent look, and maybe he'd downed Scotch by the quart when he got home but it was all okay for him, he'd have been just fine if he didn't need to cover for the others. Henry, who looked like a gangster. Francis who'd go to pieces under questioning, Charles was sure. Camilla most of all.
He'd have been just fine on his own, because the cops liked him. And he was on his own now. Sort of. He had Camilla to think of, but the situation looked much different on the outside. She would be the helpless innocent wife now; anything Henry got nabbed for, Camilla ( ... )
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Making friends with a criminal lawyer was a good idea, although not for the reasons Charles might have thought. Mia had seen where that line of thought could take you, if one allowed it to spiral into obsession. Charles did not want to turn into another Dahlia Hawthorne.
"Well, law school wasn't exactly a thrill ride, either," she informed him. Except for that year she met Lana, but that's neither here nor there. "Honestly? The most useful things I learned I picked up from internships and after I passed the bar. Everything else... the only way how to truly learn how the system works is to actually be part of it." No law school Mia had ever heard of could prepare you for having to cross-examine a parrot.
"Sounds much like my old mentor's office," Mia mused. Although the books in the uncle's office probably got more use than Grossberg's. "So what did you choose to study, then?"
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Charles was certainly in no danger of obsession with any branch of the law. When it came to obsession, his dance card was already full.
He nodded at Mia's assessment of education against practical real-world experience. "There's really no substitute for actually leaving the ivory tower and getting your hands dirty. I imagine you'd have learned a lot from clerking for judges and whatnot. If you ever find a little time on your hands, I'd be interested to hear about what those internships were like. Don't imagine it was heavy on parasailing or car chases or anything, but I like to hear about things like that. The way people really live. How things really work. I studied classics in college, myself; I've had enough of ivory towers."
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Obsession with the law wasn't a concern. To put it another way: if Charles' fixation got to the point where he was plotting with someone else to have himself channeled after his execution by an unsuspecting child in order to murder a total stranger just to get back at Henry... he would have reached the level of Dahlia's crazy. So he probably had a long way to go.
"Oh, there certainly isn't." She wasn't merely referring to law school versus the actual practice, of course. "Parasailing or car chases? No, not that exciting. Most of the stories I can tell are better suited to a comedy of errors than an action movie." Given that she technically wouldn't be starting her career for at least five years and she's a Phoenix Wright character, most of her stories probably wouldn't seem ( ... )
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No plan of Charles Macaulay's would ever hinge on his own execution. By anyone. Ever. Especially if that son of a bitch Henry Winter was still alive at the time. All unsuspecting children and total strangers were at least safe from Charles in this regard. His kind of revenge didn't employ so many levels of displacement and circumlocution.
He chuckled too. "A comedy of errors is preferable, really. Comedies always end well. Hm, if you've got friends in Ravenclaw anyway, I'll vote you there. Not coincidentally, I happen to be a Ravenclaw myself. Won't run into me much in the common room, though, I'm afraid. Half of it's a laboratory, which is fine by me, but the other half's a bar, which is bad for my health. So you'll have to look me up on purpose, to which I wouldn't object at all. That, or I tend to hang around the library a lot."
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Any plan of Charles' would probably not reach the levels of epic failure that made it necessary to rely on one's own execution to carry out revenge. What she had told Dahlia in court that day was spiteful, yes, but it had also been the truth.
"A laboratory, you say? Might be interesting to watch. From a distance," she added, remembering Lana's stories of her own little sister's more explosive forays into scientific investigation. (If Ema and Maya ever met, they'd probably level half of Los Angeles.) "That sort of bar isn't much of a draw for me, either. I'll definitely - call you? - once I'm Sorted. Unless that requires magic spells as well here."
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