Follow the Fool (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Fanfic)

Chapter 6

"You are not my daughter."

The voice was deep and rough, a rumbling, gravelly bass that one felt as much as heard. It was oddly calm, though anyone who knew the voice well could pick up the inflections that suggested a deep, hot streak of anger and disappointment. So much was contained in the subtle tones, that the voice would often influence people's emotions and attitude without them being aware of it. It was a hypnotic, powerful voice that wormed its way past one's defenses before striking like an unseen serpent at its prey.

Franziska von Karma knew those hidden inflections well. Her father's voice was maddeningly calm on the outside, but carried with it undercurrents of rage and disappointment. In her mind, the bass rumble was the dark thunder-clouds looming ominously overhead, the harbingers of the coming storm. The little girl willed herself to stop trembling in abject terror and didn't entirely succeed. Manfred von Karma's infuriatingly calm voice was as potent a psychological torture as ever devised, and an increasingly vocal side of her wanted to break down and beg for the punishment to come, to be over with. Franziska knew that if she did that, though, it would be even worse.

"You are not my daughter. You are not what I have raised you to be," her father repeated, holding up a piece of paper in front of the young girl's face, silently demanding that she look up and face it. Though every nerve in her body screamed at her to look away in shame, Franziska forced herself to look up at the red line angrily slashed across the middle of the page.

In his efforts to forge a worthy successor, Manfred von Karma would often test Franziska and her companion, the young man standing off to the side silently. He would ask them questions that they should know, and they would answer them. The questions were always precise and exact, and their answers were expected to be equally as precise, exact, and perfect.

There was no praise, should they answer everything perfectly correct. Manfred would look at it, nod, and toss it into the fireplace where it would be consumed by the flames. "Adequate," he would say. There was no praise, no congratulations—only adequate. Perfection was what was expected, what was demanded.

This time, Franziska had not been perfect. She had briefly confused the order of the laws of proper evidence introduction. It was a minor mistake, and in court would likely not be pressed or even matter at all, really. But it was a flaw nonetheless, and that was absolutely not acceptable. The harsh, blood-red line across the page marked that flaw and exposed it to all the world to see—or at least her papa and Miles, which to the young Franziska von Karma, was effectively all the world. She wanted to break down and cry in shame, but refused to let herself succumb... for it would be worse if she did.

Another part of her wanted to explain that she had been up so late studying that she had been exhausted, and that was the reason for her mistake. Franziska knew that her father would never accept any excuses, though—whatever the reason, the mistake had been made, and there was no judge or court of law that would say "It's okay, Prosecutor von Karma, you're tired, we can hold this trial tomorrow." There were no excuses. There was perfection—adequate—or there was nothing.

"Failure," said her father in that hateful calm voice, tinged with insidious fragments of disgust. "Abject failure. You are weak, and do not deserve your last name. You are no von Karma." As Franziska forced herself to watch, her father slowly tore the paper down the middle twice, ripping it into quarters, then letting the pieces fall to the carpet. "Look at me," he commanded, and Franziska obeyed, no longer to stop from quivering in fear at what she knew was to come.

For a moment, the little girl swore she could see a sadistic grin cross her father's face as he raised his hand high—but that was foolish to think—and slowly, inexorably, that hand descended.