HOLD IT!

[wright_attorney]

There was no reason to visit Vera Misham once her verdict had been declared. No, he didn’t know what she must be feeling, but he could guess. Any half-decent ex-attorney would save a little girl the embarrassment of admitting she’d had an unwitting hand in ruining his life. She was a good kid, after all. And all’s well that ends well, right?

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[chris_cutter]

Stepping out of the rink, Chris squinted into the sunlight and gave his eyes a second to adjust, the heat of the sun immediately sucking up all the nice coolness on his skin.

A flicker of movement up ahead caught his attention and he looked over, his brow furrowing as he watched an unfamiliar person stumble away from the ferris wheel.

"Hey, you alright?" he called out, heading over.

[wright_attorney]

"I don't think there's any permanent damage," muttered Phoenix as he regained his footing and straightened. For a minute, he seemed so focused on scrutinizing the Ferris wheel that he could have been referring to the possible destruction wrought by his head.

[chris_cutter]

"Well, that's a good start," Chris replied with a quirk of a smile, still squinting as he walked closer. "How the hell'd you run into it, anyway? It's sort of... hard to miss."

Judging by the situation, Chris could think of two reasons, but he was already willing to hedge his bets on only one of them.

[wright_attorney]

"I've been trying to figure that one out myself," he admitted, tipping his aching skull to look at the stranger. "I don't think it was there two seconds ago. That's the best explanation I've got."

[chris_cutter]

"Ahhh," Chris remarked, nodding knowingly, one hand lifting to scratch thoughtfully at his eyebrow. After two years, it seemed he was finally getting the hang of the new arrivals thing. Or, at least how to spot them.

"Well," he said, dropping his hand and holding it out to the man, the new arrival. "I'm Chris. Welcome to Tabula Rasa."

[wright_attorney]

Apparently he'd given the right answer. Too bad the response only really served to raise a thousand more questions. "Phoenix," he said, taking the guy's hand warmly. "Phoenix Wright. Uh. I don't suppose you know how I got here, do you?"

Hey, it was worth asking.

[chris_cutter]

"Not a fuckin' clue," Chris replied brightly as he shook Phoenix's hand and then stepped aside, motioning for Phoenix to follow him with a tilt of his head. "And nobody else here will be able to tell you either."

It sounded a little depressing when he put it like that and definitely hard to believe, but it was no less than the truth.

[wright_attorney]

See, he knew he should be a bit more wary of following a strange man on an island that shouldn't have existed into who knows where. But if Phoenix Wright had one fatal flaw...it was, without a doubt, that he trusted people.

"So there are other people here, too," he said, curious as he turned to follow.

[chris_cutter]

"Oh yeah, hundreds," Chris assured him as he led him up toward the Compound. It wasn't a long walk, luckily, which Chris was sort of grateful for, if only because he knew Phoenix would soon see for himself just how not alone they were. "I don't think we ever actually have an accurate number because people arrive and disappear too quickly to keep up any kind of census. It just sort of hangs around a couple hundred."

[wright_attorney]

"They...disappear too, do they?" He thumbed the Magatama in his pocket - more a habit than anything, as the man didn't seem to have any reason to lie to him.

As they moved nearer the building, Phoenix looked up, acknowledging its dull gray shell for the first time, really, since he'd appeared.

[chris_cutter]

"Yeah," Chris answered with a twist of a smile that didn't very effectively hide an undercurrent of bitterness regarding that. "There are a few who've been here since I guess what we consider the beginning, even though nobody really knows what the beginning is. It's... sort of hard to explain."

Still walking, he nodded up ahead. "That's the Compound. Sort of the center of things here. It's got a kitchen and beds and showers. That kind of thing. Clothes."