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.