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Title: Becoming Lifelong Friends
Fandom: Ace Attorney
Characters: Trucy, Larry (Laurice), Phoenix, Edgeworth
Rating: PG
Length: 762 words
Prompt: Old Friends

Trucy paused outside the studio, looking up at the sign, a gray background painted with orange letters that looked like someone younger than her had made them, and which read, “Laurice Deuxnim, artiste extraordinare.” She knocked, and the titular artist was almost immediately at the door, grinning that adorably soppy grin of his, clutching a palette in one hand and brandishing a brush in the other. “Greetings, gallery owners and gorgeous babes, for it is I... oh, it's you.”

Trucy stuck her tongue out at him. “What, I don't count as a gorgeous babe?”

“Not when your Nick's daughter you don't. You can come in, though, if you like. You can see some of my latest works.”

Trucy followed him into the studio, and glanced at the artworks without much interest. Larry had... spirit, you had to say that about him. “Actually, I'm here because of an assignment at school.”

“Oh, yeah, those are important too. You should study really hard because school, um, well, it's important.”

Trucy rolled her eyes. “Daddy thinks so too, even though I'm the one with the business sense, and his fancy lawyer school didn't do much for him.”

“Yeah, well... you said you had an assignment?”

“Our teacher wanted us to go to old friends of our parents and interview them about how they got to be friends and things. She wanted us to record them as kind of an oral history.” Which could be kind of interesting, actually – hadn't her Daddy been working on assembling a similar project that he wouldn't let her see or help with? Maybe after she showed him what a good job she was doing with this one...

“Sure, why didn't you say so?” Laurice Deuxnim sprawled on a couch which was covered with a paint-splattered cloth, and gestured for Trucy to make herself comfortable on any other piece of similarly draped furniture in the room. “So what exactly did you want to ask me?”

“Um, how about, how did you and my Daddy become friends?”

“Oh, that one's easy! I stole Edgey's lunch money.”

“No, seriously, Uncle Larry- er, Laurice. It's for my school project.”

“That's seriously how it happened. Man, I got so hungry, and it was there, and I thought he wouldn't miss it too bad, and then I walked home... and meanwhile, all the kids were mad at Nick because they thought he did it, and me'n Edgey were the only ones who believed him, so we got to be friends.”

“How come Uncle Miles believed him?”

“Well, it was innocent until proven guilty, and Edgey's dad was a defense attorney – did you know that?”

Trucy perked up. “I didn't – how did he get to be a prosecutor then?”

“That's a really long story, actually, and maybe Nick or Edgey'd be better at telling it than you – but back then he wanted to be a defense attorney, and so he was all protecting Nick until everyone backed off. Nick was kind of a dork back then.”

“What about you?”

“Nah, the Butz didn't care about those types of things. The Butz was too cool for all those lame labels and things.”

“But Uncle Miles was cool.”

“Not really. He was too smart for the rest of us kids, and most of the time kids don't get on well with too much smarter. I think Nick and I were his first friends, and his dad was so happy – and then his dad got killed and he got taken away.”

“Now you're making this sound like some kind of a soap opera or something.”

“Well, it was kinda like that – especially when Nick heard about him being the Demon Prosecutor and changing over to lawyer school just like that. He was going to be an artist, you know. Before that.”

Trucy kept herself from looking at the mess of paint and such around her. “Was he better at art than at piano?”

Laurice laughed. “I think almost anything is better than Nick's piano playing. Speaking of which, how is it that he makes money at it? They pay him to stop or something?”

“Or something.” Trucy hesistated, but then, “I'd better go catch up with Polly and make sure he's not getting into too much trouble without me. Thanks for helping me with my project!”

“Any time,” Laurice said, flashing a peace sign at her.

Trucy grinned as she left. She couldn't wait to see her teacher's face when she announced that stealing lunch money was the ideal way to make lifelong friends.