Morix: Web of Mistrust

Turnabout Abduction, Part 9

September 15

Courtroom No. 5

10:45 AM

Sky Amaya

For a while, there was only silence as the court watched 'Prosecutor Wood' carefully. She let out a heavy sigh before shaking her head. "Really can't have anything around here, huh?" she questioned. Her voice was different all of a sudden, being far rougher and deeper than it had been just a moment before. She shoved her hand beneath the hair that was covering her eye before she shoved it away, and she shook her head once again. "You're all getting in the way of this. You really don't know what you're getting into."

I frowned to myself as I watched Nevada fully shift into her regular persona. She was glaring at the ground angrily, though it didn't seem to me that she was mad at any of us in particular. It seemed as if she hated the world at large more at that moment. Nevada crossed her arms before glancing up, and she addressed me, Victoria, and Lily a moment later. "Well? What is it that you want to know?" she inquired, her words still bitter and filled with chained rage. 

"Why did you hide all of this from us?" Prosecutor Burke asked, jumping in before any of us had the chance to respond. "This is complicating everything about the case, and if you had just been honest from the beginning--"

"I have my reasons, okay?!" Nevada suddenly snapped, shooting an angry glare at Prosecutor Burke before managing to compose herself. She seemed more like a caged animal than before, as if stripping away the mask of being Prosecutor Wood had completely changed everything about her. She was no longer anywhere near as comfortable or strong as she once had been, instead falling into something that was nervous and constantly on edge. It was certainly a drastic change, and I have to admit that it caught me by surprise. 

"Why don't you give your honest testimony about what happened at the time of the crime?" Lily asked with a light smile on her face. It was clear to me that she was trying to calm Nevada down enough for us to talk to her. After all, getting confrontational when Nevada was already upset wasn't going to get us anywhere closer to figuring out the truth. We needed her to take a deep breath so that she would actually be willing to say anything about what happened. 

Nevada hesitated for a long moment, staring down at the ground as if she had been filled with the rage of a thousand people. She took in a slow, careful breath, almost as if she was scared that she was going to break something if she wasn't cautious enough. Nevada eventually glanced up, allowing her arms to fall back by her side as she did so. "Sure," she said, though I could tell that it had taken far more energy than it should have to ensure the syllable was calm instead of snappish and angry. 

"Something must have happened to upset her to this degree..." Victoria commented from my side. "I'm not sure what it could have been, but... She's been pushed too far by something bad. If you want my opinion, she isn't even mad at us. There's something else that's got her upset to this extreme degree. We need to make sure that she's honest about what that thing in particular is."

"I remember hearing before that Nevada comes out because of Prosecutor Wood's fear of knives," Lily said, nudging me gently with her elbow to make sure that I was paying attention. "I can't be the only one who thinks that the knife at the scene of the crime, the one that was hidden underneath the victim's body, was what brought her out in the first place, right?"

"The knife was shoved so far underneath the body, and if you want my opinion, Nevada did that on purpose so that none of us would realize that she was the one that was out. After all, without the knife, there would have been no reason for her to swap in. She's been dormant for so long, but the sight of the blade was enough for her to finally step in after being away for ages," Victoria remarked. "She was trying to hide that she was here."