One
startup CEO, male, 30 years old, 2014. Killed by his business partner
in an apparent heated argument. Business partner was arrested and
convicted, but refused to give detailed testimony as to the reason
the argument began.
Two
state senators, male and female, 44 and 41 years old. Both suicides.
One
prominent radio host, female, 29 years old. Officially missing,
presumed dead.
Mia
Fey flipped through these three latest additions to her folder once
more before setting them down.
Some
people would call what she was assembling a murder board. She
preferred keeping her discoveries, connections, and leads in this
personal case of hers organized in a neat series of private folders.
Maybe it didn’t
match the iconic imagery, but it was
tidier, and it avoided possible awkward looks from prospective
clients who might come to her law office for help.
27
years old, Mia was a comfortably experienced and skilled defence
attorney. With her own law office, a living space in the apartment on
the little building’s
third floor above, and a promising, good-natured pupil who had
acquitted his first-ever client with flying colours one month prior,
she had made a place for herself in Los Angeles even with the issues
and pitfalls it had taken to get here.
Phoenix
Wright, her former client turned-protégé,
had left the office at the end of the work day a few hours ago. Mia
had invited him to a late dinner, so he would be coming back soon to
meet up with her. Half the purpose of the dinner was to finally give
Phoenix a chance to meet her younger sister Maya, who was eager to
meet (and definitely to start teasing) the pupil Mia had told her
quite a bit about. Maya was also on her way over.
Mia’s
phone buzzed. She was halfway through brushing a lock of her brown
hair out of her face as it happened, and she blinked in momentary
confusion when she didn’t see the phone on her desk. Realizing
she’d tossed a newspaper over top of it without noticing, she dug
it out.
There
was a text from Maya. [got
a burger, be there rly soon]
Mia
laughed, putting her phone aside. Of course her sister would make
sure to pick up something to eat before arriving for a dinner.
The
newspaper, which Mia left there on her desk, sat under a beam of
light streaming in through the office’s
window. It was just the time of evening at which the sun, on its way
down, briefly shone straight into the room around the corner of the
towering hotel which stood opposite Mia’s much less towering
office.
Where
the beam of dwindling sunlight fell, the paper displayed an article
about the recent and very abrupt shutdown of a scientific research
firm.
In
the Buried Bean coffee shop, half a block down the road from the Fey
and Co. Law Offices, another woman sat with one hand twirling a straw
through a glass of iced coffee, and the other hand winding through a
lock of her hot-pink hair.
Miss
April May was having a very strange work day. As personal secretary
to the esteemed CEO of “information
conglomerate” Bluecorp, April’s average work day was a lot of
reviewing packets of personal and sensitive information from the
company’s many “clients”, making calls to those people when
necessary to remind them of their debts to the company to ensure the
continued secrecy of that information, and documenting any other
items and resources received from clients in place of cash.
Today,
she was doing none of those things. In a bag on the café’s
floor, next to her seat, April had a small device which just happened
to be one such piece of collateral; it looked more than a little bit
like some weird sci-fi movie ray gun, and she’d been more than a
little confused when her boss had told her to take it from its
delivery box and keep it with her.
The
box had come from the personal lab of some weird inventor or
something - maybe he was a doctor? Whatever he was, apparently the
strange little gun-thing was something he had made, and after a few
disputes about recent payments he was supposed to have made to
Bluecorp, it had been taken from him instead. The situation had
gotten worse until the whole research place he worked in had shut
down entirely.
(So
now I’ve
got the weird science gun.)
April’s
boss had given her a set of instructions for the day: Ms. Mia Fey,
some kind of lawyer, worked in an office near here. She wasn’t a
Bluecorp client, but according to the boss, she knew a few things she
shouldn’t have known, and so it was April’s job today to go on a
trip over to her office and make sure those things Mia Fey knew never
became a problem for the company.
April
didn’t
make a habit of showing that she wasn’t as ditzy as her boss
clearly believed she was. He knew she made a great secretary, but he
also pretty obviously thought she was a total airhead outside of
that.
She
was not a total airhead. April could tell easily that beneath all of
his big-headed blustering, her boss was internally freaking out about
whatever it was that Mia Fey had learned, and he was so desperate to
eliminate the potential problem that he was more than willing to
throw his secretary into a whole lot of possible danger with the law
to get it done. If anything went wrong, he was probably ready on five
seconds’
notice to destroy all traces that April May had ever been an employee
of Bluecorp.
Her
iced coffee was nearly empty. It was time to go.
April
got up from her seat, leaving the last of her drink behind.
Underneath the weird device in her bag was a light, grey windbreaker,
which she withdrew and threw on over her pink blazer before strolling
out the door. She headed for the front doors of the Fey and Co. Law
Offices, still thinking with irritation back to the fact that her
boss was putting her in way more danger than he would ever take on
for himself.
To
her surprise, the front door was unlocked. Going in, she found a
short entry hall with a stairway leading up to the second floor. Just
past the top of the stairs, a door on the left sat beside a small
plaque with the office’s
name stamped on.
Go
inside, find Mia Fey, use the weird science gun on her, and then take
her out of the office and leave.
The instructions sounded crazy, and if the little device in April’s
bag could really do what she’d been told it could do, things would
only get crazier…
She
almost knocked on the door. Shaking her head and trying the doorknob,
she found the entry to the actual office also unlocked. This whole
thing felt off, and for about two seconds April mentally considered
the idea that she was being set up. Whatever; she just needed to spot
Mia Fey in here, that was her first step. April withdrew the weird
device from her bag, glancing it over one more time. She remembered
the quick explanation of how to use it, but a lot of her mind was
still telling her it was crazy to believe it would actually work when
she followed those directions.
The
office was on the small side. April scoffed at the cheap couch,
blown-up movie poster on the wall, and general desperate tidiness of
the place. Did Ms. Mia Fey get so little work that she had time to
obsessively clean every inch of the place but also needed to skimp on
the decor?
There
was another door nearby, and April could see light from beneath it.
There; that was where Ms. Fey was. Putting all of her hopes on the
lawyer beyond the door being alone at the moment, April approached.
For a moment she wondered about actually directly confronting Mia to
get more of a reaction, but dropped the idea. It was better to be as
quick as possible here.
April
faltered, thinking she had just heard something from somewhere behind
her. Momentary panic flashed in her mind; sure, nobody else had been
in the building when she entered, but there was no guarantee of no
one else coming in behind her.
Just
be quick, she repeated to herself. With her fingers closing tight
over the strange item in her hand, April raised the gun while her
free hand pulled open the door to the next room.
For
a second she saw tall bookcases, a potted plant, a large window with
its blinds mostly closed, and then…
“Er-
who are—“
Mia
Fey didn’t
make it through another syllable. April had trained the gun on her
the instant she saw the lawyer, and squeezed the trigger less than a
thought later.
And
then Mia Fey was gone.
Not
killed, gone;
like she had instantly turned invisible, a light switch flashing her
out of existence, she just disappeared from April’s
view with only the briefest flash of light. April froze, somehow
feeling stunned. It looked so far like the gun had done exactly what
it was supposed to, but…
Still
she struggled to believe it had really just happened. With her heeled
shoes silent on the carpet of the office, April walked to Mia’s
desk. All over it were pages with newspaper clippings, notes, photos
- April only faintly acknowledged any of them. She was far more
interested to look down at where Mia had just been, behind the desk.
Mia
Fey sat on her office chair, legs splayed and her hands braced to the
cushion at her sides. She was barely over two inches tall.
With
her heart thudding aggressively in her chest, April stared. It had
actually worked; just like she’d
been told, the gun in her hand had just shrunk
Ms. Mia Fey to a size smaller than a doll. The now-miniaturized
defence attorney was staring up at April above her, her tiny face too
small to read an expression any more specific than “utterly
dumbfounded”. Some of her lengthy dark-brown hair had fallen out of
place, now hanging awkwardly over part of her face.
You
could pick her right up,
a corner of April’s
mind told her. Yes, she could
just grab Mia Fey off her chair and carry her right out of here.
Exactly how she’d
been meant to “remove” Mia from the place was clear now.
“H-how
did-… I-I’m…!!”
April
had her free hand hovering a little over Mia Fey’s
position, and it twitched as she nearly cracked up laughing at the
sound of the newly-diminished defence attorney’s voice. Mia had a
confident, clear voice with a tone of gentle, dependable authority.
… Or
at least it sounded as if she would
have had that tone, if her reduction in size didn’t
make her sound like someone had their TV speakers turned much too far
down. Despite the importance of the job she’d been sent here to do,
April felt a sudden, bubbling urge to poke fun at her shrunken victim
and tease her. She was about to poke a fingertip at Mia when she
suddenly heard a noise from somewhere behind her and locked up, her
body going instantly still.
Glancing
back at the office door she had come through barely fifteen seconds
ago, April only had to listen for a brief moment before she heard
another sound and became immediately alarmed. Footsteps - there was
someone else coming into the office.
She
moved quickly; her fingers closed around Ms. Mia Fey’s
puny body. It felt unbelievably strange to effortlessly scoop the
diminished defence lawyer right up in her grip. Whoever had just
arrived in the office could be heard moving around; April kept quiet
on her way to the door she’d just come through, and pushed her back
up against the wall.
Beyond
the door, a voice called out. “Sis?
Are you still busy in there? C’mon, let’s get going, I’m
starved!”
Mia’s
sister, then? April very quietly swore, her mind running the risk of
turning to panic. She could run, bolting past the newcomer and just
getting the hell out of the office as quickly as possible. Still,
hot-pink hair, a similarly pink blazer showing off a deep pit of
cleavage - she didn’t exactly style herself in a “forgettable”
way; anyone who saw her rushing out of here would remember her
appearance, especially when her presence here coincided with the
sudden “disappearance” of the office’s owner.
She
almost jumped at a sudden sound from her hand; Mia had been so
stunned by her sudden trespasser and instantaneous reduction in size
that she’d
been nearly silent in the moments since, but now she was trying to
yell. Her frozen state of shock had also given way to a furious
squirming in April’s grip. April’s fingers around her were
muffling the puny lawyer’s voice, but it wasn’t something she
could just let continue.
A
bold move entered April’s
mind.
“Sis,”
the voice in the other room said again, a cheery laugh in the
inflection.
At
the same moment as she heard the voice again, April brought the hand
holding the struggling Mia Fey to her chest. With a solid shove, she
pressed Mia’s
puny body down against the expanse of cleavage in her unbuttoned top,
and her middle finger shoved the shrunken defence lawyer out of sight
entirely.
April
had no time to reflect on the fact that she’d
just stuffed an entire person down between her prominent breasts;
Mia’s sister was still speaking in the other room, and most likely
approaching the door.
“Unless
that dweeby new guy you hired is gonna be crazy late or something,”
With
Mia stuffed out of sight, April swung her body away from the office
wall and pivoted to a position directly in the open doorway, raising
her other hand with the strange gun directed forward.
“O-oh,
uh--“
April
had a fleeting moment to take in the appearance of Mia Fey’s
apparent sister; short, mousy, with very
long black hair, and - what the hell was that getup she was wearing?
Then
the instant was gone as April’s
finger squeezed the gun’s trigger again and the girl before her
vanished, just as rapidly as her sister. April’s eyes swept to the
carpeted floor, and after a blink she spotted the puny figure she was
looking for. Striding forward, her pink heels still silent on the
floor, April arrived to stand over the second person she’d shrunk
in the last minute.
She
peered down for a second or two; she could feel a surging rush all
over her body now, and her heart was thundering in her chest. Mia Fey
had been reduced to a little squirming tickle between her tits, and
down past them, on the office floor, an equally puny figure was lying
in a heap in the fibres of the carpet and staring back up at her,
frozen completely. April could barely imagine how she had to look
from down there right now, towering over the shrunken girl like a
huge, gorgeous statue. Two people, both zapped instantly down to a
size smaller than her thumb.
Stooping
to the floor and closing her fingers easily around the puny figure of
Mia’s
sister, April carried her away from the carpet as she stood up, and
after a second or two to dangle the helpless little thing before her
face for a look, April stuffed her away in her top with her lawyer
sister. One more human being now reduced to a weak tickle down her
shirt, and finally April’s mind was starting to wind down from the
racing string of impulsive decisions she had been on since entering
this office.
This
part of the job was done. April hastily tucked the weird shrinking
gun back into her bag, and her thoughts refocused. She had to leave,
and be quick about it. Then it was back to see the boss and find out
where this whole thing went next.
Stepping
back out of the office and snapping the door shut behind her, April
looked around.
She
could still feel both of her new captives squirming between her
breasts, out of sight, and it tickled.
Heading
to the stairs, she went down and was relieved to find the entryway to
the little building still vacant. Considering when Mia’s
sister had arrived, there couldn’t have been more than about a
minute’s difference from when she got in for herself. Bad luck had
nearly thrown this entire thing out the window, and she felt another
stab of anger at her boss putting her at so much personal risk while
he sat back in his office a few dozen floors above here and a mile
away.
Outside
again, April went the opposite direction from the coffee shop she’d
been in just minutes prior. Her car was a short walk away.
Someone
passed her; it was hard to miss the bizarrely spiky black hair and
blue suit. Had she spotted a pink
tie? It was a fashion choice she could get behind. Whoever the guy
had been, he had been in a hurry, double-checking (or maybe
triple-checking) his watch as he passed by her.
April
shrugged to herself and continued to her car, getting there after a
couple of minutes of walking. Once she was in her seat, she finally
gave a long sigh. Her shoulders sagged, and her lips twisted into a
grin. Off without a hitch.
… Well,
alright, there had been one hitch; the plan hadn’t included Ms. Mia
Fey’s sister suddenly making an appearance, but now she was coming
along for the ride, too.
Just
what kind of ride that would be, April could only wonder. Wonder, and
greatly
anticipate.