nahyuta propaganda

Perhaps it’s only because of this that Valant’s smile remains set in place when Trucy appears amidst the crowds watching him run through a few of his smaller tricks outside Sunshine Arena.

Ever since she was a child, Trucy has had the ability to light up whatever space she’s in, and Valant swears that the sun shines a little stronger in an attempt to compete with her.

He won’t be outdone. Valant forces his grin wider as he throws his silk hat upwards with a flourish, letting it whirl through the air, catching it on the end of his cane. A simple flick of the wrist casts it back into his free hand once more, before he taps his cane on the brim sharply twice. A rabbit pokes her head out from inside the hat to oohs and aahs from the crowd, giving Valant a smattering of applause in appreciation.

Valant bows deeply. “Thank you all!” he calls, fishing the rabbit out so that he can place her back into her cage. “Please, there will be more to see in the show! Three days! Get your tickets while they last!”

Show over, the crowd begins to disperse, giving one particular mini-magician a clear path towards him. Instinctively, Valant finds himself in search of an escape route— but disappearing acts have never been one of his strong suits.

(They were always instead the speciality of one Zak Enigmar.)

Besides, there is still an audience, even as it thins; so he has a role to play.

“Miss Trucy!” Valant greets, holding his arms out to her. She doesn’t leap at him like she did when she’d seen him three months ago, but she bounds up all the same, entire face bright.

“We came to wish you luck, Uncle Valant,” Trucy says, almost breathlessly. “And congratulations on such a big show!”

We? Ah— that Apollo boy trails behind Trucy, glaring at their surroundings, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.

That may as well be something Valant can relate to.

“It is exciting, is it not?” Valant agrees, continuing to pack away his act pieces as he speaks to Trucy. He tosses his hat, easily catching it atop his head, giving Trucy a wink, much to her delight. “The world has been lying in wait for seven long years, and now they may finally see the miracles of Magnifi Gramarye with their own eyes once more!”

Apollo’s gaze slides over to Valant, and he must take so much after his father, because Valant can barely see Thalassa in him at all.

Valant knew his identity the moment they’d run into each other backstage of that concert a scant few months prior, of course— though he thought himself mad for it. Thalassa’s first child, alive and well? Surely impossible.

But still, Valant knows it to be the truth— and proof lies indisputably upon the young man’s wrist.

There are only two of those bracelets in existence, after all, and Magnifi himself always claimed they would never belong to anyone but a Gramarye.

Apollo Justice does not carry the name, but that does not stop it from being his.

(The thought is ironic— the only one in current company to use the name Gramarye is the one with the weakest connection to it, even though he’s had it longer than the other two have been alive.)

(It’s strange to think it wasn’t always his.)

He carries the blood, and blood is some of the strongest magic there is— yet he is not a magician like Valant and Trucy, not trained in the art of misdirection.

(Would he have been, had he never been lost?)

(… There is no point pondering prospects that have passed.)

Apollo is a lawyer, and lawyers are straight to the point, ever reaching for the truth, pushing through layers of glitter and shine to find what lies underneath.

Apollo will always tiptoe that line between magic and logic, but he falls more to one side than the other. They are of two worlds, and an irreconcilable difference will forever lie between them.

Though it seems it is because of his unique position that he threatens to upend everything that has been and will be in several ways. Between Apollo sniffing around and the reporter constantly chasing him about in an attempt to pry any particular peculiarities out, Valant is at risk of losing everything all over again.

(Perhaps he cannot say he lost anything the first time— not when it was never truly his.)

(But it is always about what the audience sees, not what is happening behind the curtain.)

Yet here is something Valant forgets: sometimes that audience has sharper eyes than anticipated.

“Why seven years?” Apollo asks, and Valant knows that there is no point in dancing about it, not with the way Apollo’s stare cuts through him.

“That would be the matter of a little law known as performance rights,” Valant says. Trucy tips her head to the side, confused. Valant tuts, giving his cane a twirl. “You’ve been away from the magic for far too long, Miss Trucy— you’re starting to forget your roots!”

What a performer the young miss is, that her smile doesn’t even waver. “Perhaps,” she says pleasantly. “Explain them to me.”

“Magnifi’s best tricks are considered his intellectual property,” Valant says obligingly. “He bequeathed the rights to a single person within his will… your father, who as we know disappeared seven long years ago.”

Apollo frowns. “And after seven years, a missing person is…”

“Decidedly declared deceased, yes.”

This has nothing to say about the man in front of him. From what Valant knows, he should’ve died some twenty years ago, a page stained in dark ink and left in Thalassa’s past.

“And in the absence of a formal will, the secrets of our mighty mentor Magnifi fall instead to me.”

Trucy’s smile remains fixed, but it doesn’t reach her eyes anymore. “Is that true?” she asks Apollo.

He nods with a slight grimace. “Death in absentia.”

“Oh, Daddy…”

Apollo looks as if he wants to comfort Trucy, hovering awkwardly beside her for a moment before his attention is once more laser-focused on Valant.

He’s searching for something. The way his eyes pierce through Valant’s carefully crafted layers is all Gramarye.

(And perhaps Valant was lying to himself before. He can see Thalassa in his eyes, in his hard stare and furrowed brow.)

“Do you have any information on this?” he asks, pulling an envelope out of his bag.

Valant gingerly lifts it from Apollo’s hand, spinning it between two fingers. The silk hat of the Gramarye autograph flicks in-out-in-out of view. He stops it in front of his face, covering one eye, the other looking at Trucy.

“... Where did you get this?” he asks quietly.

“Oh… um, Daddy gave it to me.”

He cannot stop the flinch as it comes, cannot hide the way he almost reels back, heart rate spiking. “Z-Z-Zak–?”

Trucy blinks up at him in confusion for a moment, before her smile widens. “No, silly! My other daddy! Phoenix Wright!”

“Ah…” Her words are enough to bring heat to his face, and he coughs awkwardly. “Right. Ahem… of course.”

Trucy— merely fifteen— has had nearly as many names as Valant has, in a third of the time. Despite being a Wright now, she still childishly clings to the Enigmar part of her identity, silk hat upon her head and cape around her shoulders.

Does Trucy remember that blue was her mother’s colour, or does she wear it for another reason, now, emulating the man that stayed?

Apollo is staring at him again. Valant dutifully ignores that, instead looking at the envelope. There’s a second scribble below the Gramarye signature, a mark that Valant has not seen in a long time.

He forgets how to be a performer in that moment, frowning deeply at the mark that Zak Gramarye has left behind, the only trace he has seen of the man since his disappearance seven years prior.

(How does he cast a shadow, even now?)

Valant suspects he knows exactly what lies within the confines of the envelope, and if he is correct, it threatens to ruin everything he’s built towards, everything he’s fought to earn over the last seven years.

He makes to slip a finger beneath the seal. “Might I be so bold as to—”

Before he can go any further, the envelope is snatched out of his hands. “S-sorry!” Apollo stammers out, shoving it deep into his bag once more. “I can’t let you do that!”

Valant tries not to mourn such a monumental mass of magic moving out of his mitts. Instead, he admits defeat and does not give chase, fluffing out his cape and clearing his throat, appearing once more stage-ready as he always strives to be. They do not yet know what power is within their grasp.

Trucy tugs on Apollo’s sleeve and they begin to bicker, quick-fire and quiet, seemingly forgetting whose presence they are in. Valant simply watches on, idly spinning his cane as he is caught in his own musings.

Nobody witnessing this would ever believe that they’ve only known each other for a brief time, with how they match each other’s energies; a push-and-pull of tides, an electrical current running circuits through them.

Does he know?

Does she?

…

No.

He knows Phoenix Wright enough to know that the man is always playing his cards close to his chest. This is not one secret he would easily part with.

Valant has never been a gambling man— that was always Zak’s vice— but he is acutely aware that the less known to these two, the better his chances, especially when a certain ex-attorney is evidently entangled. Valant may be a meddler at heart, but this is one affair that he will not have a hand in.

He knows when to pick his battles, and when to lie in wait for the right moment— he is a Gramarye, after all.

Neither of the two before him may ever take the name for themselves, but if they do he will forever be outshone, forever doomed to stand in their shadows.

He’s been patiently waiting for his chance to rise for far too long for something as simple as this to stand in his way. There are plenty of battles still to fight.