/sits

That was fast! XD

I happen to be on a laptop rn.

And right off the bat, Edgeworth sees where we plan to go with this.

:< Awww, Ellen, no...

You can actually see the light die in her eyes...

And she doesn't even get her usual Usagi bangs and start the waterworks or bang the frying pan and ladle together. She's still a beautiful, polished bride on the outside, but that's even worse.

Even the judge thinks Edgeworth's being a bully here!

(Meanwhile, Edgeworth is probably wondering when they moved the "Kick Me" sign to his desk instead.)

Aha! I was wondering why Sorin didn't leave a blood trail on his way to the hold and vista deck, and it's because he clearly didn't go there at all!

Or the fact that he didn't use his keycard to access the hold is what we're looking for.

I still think the lack of a blood trail aside from what we saw at the lift is kinda big, but whatever.

So he took another route. The emergency escape hatch, maybe? And then he Spider-Manned across the outside of the airship to the vista deck?

Got it in one.

Now to prove it... somehow.

I am really enjoying how the judge is clearly on our side more often than not in this case.

Meanwhile, Edgeworth presents more evidence that he is asexual and/or aromantic.

Or you could interpret it as him having no interest in marrying a woman...

The writers are clearly having fun fueling all the shipping fires here.

Phoenix: Time to turn my thinking around!
Edgeworth: Oh boy, here we go again...

Well, we've got three options here. A broken propeller wouldn't have ended well for anyone...

So either the airship wasn't actually flying at that point or Sorin found another way to get to the deck.

Possibly by climbing up and going along the top? Though given the placement of the propellers, I don't know if he would have even been able to get that far before being blown away.

Also, looking over the pamphlet some more, they hold the ceremony itself on the vista deck? Please tell me they at least do it before taking off, or this will be the Battle City finals all over again.

So that leaves us with option 2: the airship wasn't in flight at the time.

Pffft, and Sorin stabs himself in the thumb with the mechanical pencil. Nice.

And Larry's "pterodactyl" comes into play!

I'd been thinking he saw the propeller plane in the hold, but that never really made any sense, given the distance between the cabin and the hold and the fact that the cabin window would be facing outward, not inward.

But what if he saw the smashed map through the window instead?

And now that we're looking at the mooring dock again, you can see the pterodactyl shape in the map. Yay!

"Pop culture junkie?" You're one to talk, given what show you fanboy over, Edgeworth. (Not that he'd ever admit to fanboying...)

Okay, so Ellen claims she saw a third person appear right before she blacked out. Sorin claims that by the time he and Pierce got to the vista deck, Gloomsbury was already dead.

We know Gloomsbury was bashed in the head twice, with the second blow being the fatal strike.

So going back to my earlier theory during the investigation, I'm guessing that somebody hit Gloomsbury with the Time Keeper out there on the vista deck, which knocked him out but didn't kill him.

But he looked dead enough for someone to shove him in the Pegabull lantern in the hold.

At this point, Pierce began organizing the second reception as a coverup.

Meanwhile, Larry broke out of the cabin he'd been locked in and managed to switch the Pegabull containing the unconscious Gloomsbury with the one in the reception hall.

At some point, Gloomsbury came to and opened up the lantern, transferring some of Sorin's blood from his hand to the handle. But the killer found him and bashed his head in again.

Then the killer closed the lantern back up and went on their way until Ellen accidentally smashed it and found Gloomsbury's body inside.

(I... don't think Gloomsbury was ever actually put in the fog machine? Because you use cold to make it look like someone died later than they actually did, not earlier...)

Eh, whatever, doesn't matter at this point. We still need to cross-examine Sorin!

...Knife wound? But he was stabbed with a candelabra...

...Oh jeez, I just had a thought.

What if the reason Sorin takes such ridiculously meticulous notes in his journal, the reason he was so frantic when he couldn't find it, is because the accident gave him anterograde amnesia?

He can't form memories, so he has to write everything down.

When we gave Pierce the journal, he didn't just remove the bloodstain, he changed what was written about the incident!

...And it looks like I'm right about the amnesia. :<

Though apparently the bloodstained page wasn't replaced? Sorin just couldn't read it and had to assume he was stabbed with a knife.

:< Sorin...

Ellen, no!

And Sorin blames himself for causing the car crash that killed his sister.

This case just keeps getting more and more tragic!

Yep

Oh, because he was the one behind the wheel... okay, then.

No, we can't accept the notebook as entirely valid, because there was a period of time when Pierce had control of it.

Even if he didn't change the details of the stabbing, he still could have altered the details of how he and Sorin supposedly went to the hold together.

Or he just tore the page out.

But instead of lightly rubbing a pencil over the next page to get the impression of what was written, let's use that fingerprint powder Ema gave us!

Welp, that's nice and incriminating!

But we can't let things end here! Onward! For love!

And we finally bring Pierce into the matter.

We go from Sorin's nightmarish doubt that any of his notebook can be trusted to contain his actual memories... to his stress activating his steampunk jetpack.

........Way to kill the mood, there.

But with that, we take a break before moving on to the next part of today's trial!