4 Call of Doodie

Franziska Von Edgeworth, Maya Fey Wright,
Maggey Gumshoe, Adrian Andrews, and Ema Skye
The Ball Room, Los Angeles

“OK, I know I’m only slightly less drunk than the birthday girl,” Maggey slurred as she stared, agog at the stage. “But just so we can be sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, that is a stripper up there on stage … dressed as a Transformer, who is now pulling off pieces of very real-looking metal …”

“This is not a Decepticon of your eyes!” Adrian affirmed, her eyes twinkling behind her glasses.  “So yes, Maggey – we are all  bearing witness to the removal of the metal codpiece off his…er, junk!”

“Which, with no control switch in sight, appears to be quite mechanically functioning!” Maggey breathed.

“I’m most amused, however, that Optimus Oh SO Fine Prime is still keeping on the metal shoulder and knee pads on though…” The pretty blond snickered.

“Who cares? He’s unwrapped what’s important!” Ema raised her glass of Angel’s Tit. “Arigatō Mister Roboto!”

“This reminds me of when Ace was just a year old,” Maya reminisced fondly. “Despite my penchant for Steel Samurai, my son is a retro boy like his father, and has fallen in love with Nick’s DVD series of the 1980’s Transformers cartoon! One time, while I was cleaning out the couch cushions, father and son sat there watching the episodes of the show and Ace’s reactions were just adorable! He was always cheering for the Autobots to triumph over the Decepticons, and he would constantly do that thing where he’d babble at the screen whenever he saw Megatron. I don’t know if I completely agree, but Nick is positive that he was cussing him out because he looked so angry when he did it!”

“I’m sure if Ace could have yelled Objection at the screen at the time, he would have!” Ema grinned.

“That is so cute!” Franziska sighed wistfully. “I miss the days when my twins were still little angels like that.”

“You mean before they could talk?” Adrian quipped, causing the German woman to playfully toss her tiny little drink umbrella at her best friend.

“Don’t be foolish! I’m being serious!”  The very tipsy Franziska waved down the waiter and gestured to her umpteenth drained cocktail glass. “I remember Gregory was such a colicky baby. We had trouble getting him to sleep, as more often than not, he would just wake up crying his eyes out. Well, this one time, when they were six months old, while I was going to go check on him and calm him down, he suddenly stopped bawling. I panicked, thinking something had happened and, of course, Miles noticed too. He came running into their nursery with me and when we got into their room, we were both surprised. Gregory had stopped crying because Mila had wrapped her arms around him and snuggled him back to sleep!”

There was a unanimous chorus of cooing awwwwes at the table.

“My goddaughter takes her role of big sister pretty seriously, doesn’t she?” Ema sighed. “Even if it is only by four minutes!”

“She never lets him forget it either!” Franziska laughed. “But even though she whips him with her jump rope and he throws spiders at her, the twins, in the end, are best friends who love each other more than anything in the world!”

Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth
Edgeworth’s Penthouse, Los Angeles

“Gregory Edgeworth I hate you more than anything in this whole wide world!” Mila screeched at her brother, her hands on her hips as she looked daggers at him. “That’s not how it all happened and you know it, you big fat liar, liar pants on fire!”

“Is too!” Her twin insisted. “And I hate you more, you doodie head! Up your nose with a rubber hose! So take that!”

“You’re nothing more than a rat-faced, bug-eyed, booger-nosed, baloney-brained, beetle-butt!”

“Mila! That’s no way to talk to your brother!” Edgeworth scolded. “At least he’s attempting to tell me what on God’s name happened in your room before –”

Phoenix frantically cast a glance down at the children and realized his godson’s question hadn’t been a diversion tactic at all. Ace had disappeared! Again!

“Holy Toledo, Gregory’s right!” The defense attorney’s eyes were frantic as he turned to the prosecutor and tugged at his sleeve, disturbing the current reprimand to his daughter. “There are only three kids here! Ace is gone!”

“Your secret secondary job must be as the arithmetic man Wright,” Edgeworth retorted, displeased at having his lecture interrupted. “You appear to excel at adding trouble, subtracting pleasure, dividing attention, and multiplying ignorance!”

“Seriously?” Phoenix glared at his so-called friend the Ace Asshat! “You’re going to choose this moment to opt for the typical role of insufferable, condescending prig?”

“Are you always an idiot or just when I’m around?!” Edgeworth returned, glowering right back. “How else am I to react when your foolish self has now lost his son for the third time in less than an hour?!”

“You know, despite being a father now, you still haven’t changed a bit! If anything, your caustic, dismissive attitude towards my plight is evidence that you have drastically regressed in all these years!”

“Hold it! Daddy! Uncle Miles! Will you two stop fighting like an old married couple?!” Mia yelled, putting her hands over her ears.

“Mia’s right! Both of you – zip it!” Mila nodded earnestly, looking sternly at the suddenly shame-faced fathers.

Phoenix and Edgeworth exchanged sheepish looks and became silent.

“Now Daddy,” the blue-haired girl turned to Edgeworth. “You know that I know that you know that I know that that dork pie has been a burr in my butt since he was born!” She crossed her arms and scowled at her twin. “This is all his fault!”

“I hope gummy bears pee in your hair, Streber!” Gregory screamed back. “It’s not my fault Ace is missing!”

“I meant everything that happened before now you, Pinocchio! But for the record, since you only told Uncle Phoenix just now that Ace is gone, that too is your fault Sie dumm fuhrt!”

“Is not!” Gregory hollered back.

“Is too!”

“You fart pick! You’re so ugly Hello Kitty said goodbye to you!”

“Shut up you lying cry-baby snitch! You’ll never be the man your mother is!” Mila shouted.

Despite the dreadfulness of the current situation, Phoenix barely stifled a snort of derision about the truthful validation of that statement!

Hmmm, or is Edgeworth’s fastidiously fussy self is more of a woman than his wife…? He wondered with a wicked grin, never getting to finish the thought as the next explosion erupted then.

“YOU!! YOU!!” Gregory shrieked at his sister, pointing his little finger at her, courtroom style. “YOU DO THAT THING DADDY ONCE SAID BUT HE TOLD ME I CAN’T SAY! THAT! YOU DO THAT!!”

Edgeworth buried his magenta-colored face in his hands, looking as though he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, making Phoenix belatedly realize that things had come to head, and this was no laughing matter!

“I’m going to leave you to handle this one!” The spiky-haired man cried, spinning on his heel as he dashed out the door. “You uncover the truth behind all this calamity and fill me in later, Edgeworth! Good Lord, I’ve got to find Ace! He’s still missing!”

Franziska Von Edgeworth, Maya Fey Wright,
Maggey Gumshoe, Adrian Andrews, and Ema Skye
The Ball Room, Los Angeles

“This is what I’ve been missing out on for the past nearly 20 years as a housewife!” Maggey crowed as she chugged back her Bend Over Shirley and was all but drooling at the strippers now. “It’s like every naughty dream of mine has come to life!”

The gimmicky dancers had merely been crowd warmers and the main events were out now, and there to squeeze, tease and please! The last three sets had been performers who were part of the Hunk-O-Mania set. The Village People’s song “In the Navy” began to play, and things kicked off a naughty Navy Seal, who had had women come up and mix a drink in his mouth and then wowed them all by showing off how he could tie a cherry stem into a knot using just his mouth!

“That’s one talented tongue he’s got!” Maggey noted dreamily, ignoring the disapproving look the birthday girl shot her.

Apparently, even in her somewhat loosened, liquored-up state, Franziska was still going to play the semi-outraged, respectable, married mother dignity card!

Maya had to admit that the tongue-twisting technique was hot…and allowed herself the free pass to eye-bang the hell out of the dancer! However, she nearly gagged when he then presented his creation, from the tip of his tongue, onto the eagerly extended one of the rowdy bridesmaids at the stagette table next to them!

“This is a disgusting narrative of sordid filth and the very basest of louche immorality!” Franziska frowned disapprovingly. “That man has no idea where that woman’s lips have been!”

“And vice versa,” Ema added, wrinkling her nose. “Some of these guys are just…dirty! Doesn’t she know she could contract mononucleosis that way? If he does that with her, he does it with God knows who else! Hello – it’s called the kissing disease for a reason!”

Adrian, who was still sober, was tittering now. “If you think the military man was bad, check out what Officer Hottie is up to now!”

To the tune of Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys”, the current hunky the man in uniform was followed by the cocky Cop, who had had zero qualms with handcuffing the eager ladies who’d come on stage to the dancer pole upon it and whacking at their buttocks with … two very different types of nightsticks!

“Have these women no shame?!” Franziska shook her head in despair. “Such a high level of debauchery is quite unseemly, not to mention unladylike!”

Then out came out the fiery fireman, to the Sean Kingston tune of “Somebody Call 911!” He was thus far the sexiest peeler that night, and even Franziska couldn’t completely stifle an appreciative smirk as he stepped off the stage, shirtless now, and in nothing else but his fire hat and briefs, grabbed the pitcher of ice water off the rowdy bachelorette’s table and poured it onto himself and allowed the cool liquid to trickle down his glistening, bronze, chiseled pecs and rippling abs.

The fireman went back onto the stage, and Maya, while no fragile Mary, was gobsmacked and completely blown away at the effect the man with the hose had on the women! He truly took shit to the next level, and gave the horny ladies who jumped up onto the stage, unable to contain themselves, quite the interactive experience! Each one was flipped upside down, twirled, and had all kinds of graphic, simulated sex with the hunk, looking almost more flushed and blissfully post-orgasmic than most women appeared after doing the actual nasty with their partners!

“Wow, some of these broads look like they’re bathing after a year in the desert!” The spirit medium gasped.

“Fire Marshall Bill there can cool me down and put out my fire any day!” Maggey declared, sounding envious. “Those lucky dames! That man is doing things on that stage with them that I haven’t even done with my husband!”

“Really?” Adrian arched an eyebrow. “I think you and Dick need to cut loose a bit there, Magpie!”

“Oh leave her alone, Little Miss Hot Yoga contortionist!” Ema teased. “Not everyone’s sexcapades need to entail the crazy stuff, like swinging naked from a doorway!”

“Those are some loose lips you get when you’re drinking, Science Girl!” Adrian waved her finger mock-disapprovingly at her. “There are some things I’ve secretly confided to you that I don’t necessarily think we need to scandalize this table of respectable married mommies with!”

“Hey!” Franziska looked at her with indignation. “Are you telling me that you withhold information about shaking the sheets from me, of all people, Adrian? I thought we were best friends!”

Adrian shifted uncomfortably in her chair and shot a sidelong glance at Ema, who flushed guiltily at her tongue slip and slumped a bit lower in her seat.

“Well, Franny, you’ve always seemed so…tight-lipped about these matters…” she mumbled awkwardly. “And now that you’ve got kids and all I just figured…”

“What, that I had no interest in hearing intimate details of your relationship with your fiancé?” Franziska affixed her with one of her best stares. “Or that I did not know of the fun copulation times that came before motherhood? Just how did you think my children were created in the first place, Adrian? Via immaculate conception or swimming in a basket upstream?”

“Well scientifically speaking Franzy…” Ema began weakly. “You know that in your particular case…”

“Hush yourself, Ema, go by what I mean, not by what I say, you fool!” Franziska shot her an icy look then turned back to her guilty-looking best friend. “The point here, Adrian, is that we are all good friends, and nobody here is a blushing maiden virgin sitting in a wildflower field with a unicorn’s head in her lap! Being married with children does not at all mean I can no longer relate to matters of sexual intercourse anymore! However, I can concede that having children may perhaps mean that Maya, Maggey, and I may not have coitus with our spouses as often as you and Ema do…”

“Sexual intercourse? Coitus?” Ema recoiled at the word use. “Seriously, why you gotta make this sound so cold, clinical and …scientific, Franzy? And yes, that’s coming from me! Must you be so formal and proper?!”

“What would you have me say then?” Franziska snapped. “Is it better if I say I feel slighted? Left out? Incredibly hurt that my close female companions believe me to be such an uptight prudish sort that they balk at sharing with me the more intimate details of their lovemaking sessions?”

“Ugh, what is this, Euphemisms 101 for primal instincts, Fabio romance novel styles?” Adrian groused. “Can I get a hell to the no on that one?”

“Is churn butter a better alternative to describe my wifely duties, er, in the biblical sense?” Maya offered with a shit-eating grin. “Or rock the casbah? Feed the kitty? Makin’ bacon – hmm can you use that last one if you’re of Jewish or Islamic faith…?”

“Rolling the newspaper?” Maggey twittered. “Quimsticking? Thumping thighs? Slap bellies?”

“Wind the clock?” Ema chimed in. “Make feet for children’s shoes? Post a letter? Buzz the brillo?”

“Enough already!” Franziska slapped her hands forcefully on the table, making the glasses all bounce and glaring at the group. “This is a once in a blue moon girl’s night out and I want to hear the fun details about when you and your men knock mops! There, is that better?”

“Sounds like carnal encounters between Cinderella and her dream janitor,” Adrian quipped. She was subjected to a glare that could have bored holes through a wall. Flushing, she put up her palms in the surrender gesture. “Sorry, Franny! Kidding!”

Nobody spoke after that and everyone lapsed into an apprehensive silence.

Franziska crossed her arms across her chest and sulked.

Ema crushed the last of the ice cubes of her fully consumed cocktail with her straw, over and over again, until they were melted into a pool of pinkish-colored water at the bottom of the glass.

Adrian fidgeted with her cell phone.

Maggey took off her glasses and focused on wiping lenses with a clean dry napkin.

Maya slurped up the last remains of her grape juice, fervently wishing it was something stronger and cursing her noble offer to be designated driver.

The awkward hushed atmosphere amongst the friends, with only the gyrating beats of the performance music blaring in the background, continued for what seemed like eons.

The Kurain Master looked around the table and saw four sets of nervous eyes uncomfortably darting back and forth between herself…and then the tabletop. The five women were still being subjected to the world’s most pregnant pause.

Ema guiltily caught Maya’s eye and looked at her with an openly naked, pleading expression.

It appeared the onus of salvaging this birthday party had fallen upon her.

Great, she thought wryly, heaving a soundless sigh. I guess since I can temporarily resurrect the dearly departed via channeling, it looks like the onus is on me to try to bring this party back to life as well! Gah! Sweet Jesus…why me?!

Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth
Edgeworth’s Penthouse, Los Angeles

“Why me?!” Phoenix wailed, clapping a hand to his forehead – the same one that was still slightly tender from the self-inflicted prior harm via the TV remote – and looking at the scene before him in complete horror. The impact stung like a hive of bees on the abused area.

Ow! Probably shouldn’t have done that.

He needed to keep his wits about him, along with a clear, non-throbbing head to get him through this latest catastrophe!

The good news – he had, at last, found his Speedy Gonzales son, who’d run off to the Edgeworth’s guest bathroom, a large, majestic space that was roughly about the size of Phoenix’s master bedroom at his apartment!

The bad news – not before pure, unmitigated disaster had ensued!

“I don’t know what my cause of death will be after all is said and done!” Phoenix was near hysteria now in his fretting. “The plumbing bill, which in itself will be murder, and Edgeworth will undoubtedly bill me for… or death by cravat asphyxiation once he gets a load of this!”

“Daddy!” Ace squealed excitedly upon the sight of his father, cheerily oblivious to the aghast look on the defense attorney’s face.

“Ace!” Phoenix moaned, his eyes round with disbelief. “What have you done?!”

His son, Roc Ace Wright, had decided to do some redecorating and simultaneously attempt to ensure his father no longer had a single black hair left on his now surely purely white – from shock and terror! – head!

Ace had placed a bunch of toilet paper into the loo… presumably to make his very own Game of Thrones … and then had attempted to flush it down!

Of course, the commode, unable to handle such a vast amount of toilet paper, had overflowed…

She’s rising like the mighty Mississippi! Phoenix noted with dread.

The bathroom was now essentially a wading pool! Ace was happily splashing about on the puddled floor like a little duck, completely naked from the waist down! He had decided to paint the shiny, white, marbled tiles of the bathroom walls… with the insides of his diaper, which he’d since removed, along with his socks and pants. All items sat in a curled up, soggy heap on the drenched jade-tiled floor!

How in the name of all that is holy, did my son manage to create such a calamity in what, 5 minutes?! When they call it the Terrible Twos – they’re not freaking kidding!

“Ew, it stinks in here! Daddy did you fart?!”

Phoenix looked up and saw Mia peeking into the bathroom from the safe, and still mercifully dry, outskirts of the guest room, to which the bathroom was attached, her button nose wrinkled at the ripe aroma of festering baby poop!

“Hi, Princess!” He called, reaching down to take off his now sodden socks and carefully rolling up his pant legs to his knees as he waded across the bathroom to grab Ace.

Unfortunately, the toddler seemed to think he and his father were playing some sort of tag game, so he kept laughing and running even further away from Phoenix, creating little splashes in his wake as he did so.

“Um, no Mia, Daddy didn’t pass gas… Ace had to er, take a boom-boom and um…just stay there on the carpet, OK? Don’t come in here!”

“Pee-yew! What did you guys feed him?! It smells like something crawled up Ace’s butt and died!” Mia held her nose with one hand as she craned her neck to see into the sodden bathroom without having to step inside.

I have no idea what Maya fed him for dinner! Phoenix thought helplessly, trying to breathe through his mouth so he wouldn’t wilt from the wafting aroma. Or even how something so tiny could make such an eye-watering stench this large, putrid and vile! Although based on color, texture, and stench…I’d say Ace had either beef and bean tacos and/or mommy’s homemade chili! Way to make sure my punishment outweighs the crime, wife of mine! Nice one!

“Don’t worry Daddy, I’m not coming in, it reeks like rotten, poopy in there anyway!” Mia’s jaw dropped as she saw the evidence of her brother’s artwork on the walls. “Oh yuck! Ace! You smeared your smelly doody all over Uncle Miles and Aunt Franny’s walls!”

“I painting, Mee-ya!” Ace announced merrily as he pointed to his wall decorating and clapping his hands delightedly. Boy, was he proud!

“Bad boy!” His sister waved an admonishing index at him with her free hand – the other was still holding her nose. “Very naughty! Boys are sooo gross, Daddy!”

“Mia…” Phoenix barely resisted the urge to yank at his spikes in frustration as he leaned over to grab at his son again, only to have the toddler slip through his hands yet again. “Could you, um, grab me some towels from the guest hall closet, please? And then perhaps ask Uncle Miles where the mop is? Maybe in the utility closet by the kitchen?”

“Wright!” A howl of fury thundered just as Mia scampered off.

Oh crap! I was hoping to get some of this water mopped up before Edgeworth found the worst of the damning evidence…

Phoenix winced at the sound of Edgeworth’s infuriated roar behind him. While never quick to anger, his friend’s temper was a slow-burning fuse. There was no problem while there was still more to burn, but then the explosion would catch you by surprise, leaving you shattered and vulnerable.

Desperately, he made one last grab for his son and finally scooped him into his arms. As he turned around to face the music, holding Ace in front of him as a makeshift human shield, Phoenix idly wondered, as he saw the homicidal look in the other man’s eyes, if he could delay his frilly, fluttery napkin death by strangulation just a tad.

After all, he was holding a toddler in his arms at the present moment!

Edgy surely wouldn’t murder me right in front of my near infant son, would he?! I don’t care how justifiably he argues his case to the jury – that would just be plain old, good old-fashioned…mean!

“Hi Edgeworth,” Phoenix flashed a sickly grin as he held out the giggling tot to the stormy-eyed prosecutor, hoping that his friend wouldn’t blow his stack in front of his son. “Look, um, I found Ace, as you can see…”

Edgeworth’s visage resembled one of the faces of Mount Rushmore as he eyed Phoenix stonily.

Somehow, I don’t think Edgy’s going to congratulate me on the success of my quest in the case of the missing toddler…  

Edgeworth’s temper was a simmering pot, slow-burning, ready to bubble up at any moment. His normally composed face was scarlet, and Phoenix swore he saw actual steam coming off his cheeks!

“Wright!” The prosecutor finally bellowed.

Phoenix cringed as he braced himself for what came next.

Edgeworth extended his arm and accusing pointer finger, courtroom style, not at Phoenix, but something just behind him with a look of utter revulsion.

“I demand an explanation why my bathroom is now bloody Niagara Falls, why my alabaster walls are no longer white…and…” The blood drained from the Chief Prosecutor’s face then and he could barely squawk out the rest of the words as they appeared to have died in his throat. “Oh dear Lord…did your son… not only overflow my toilet…and…paint the walls with his stool…but then… defecate in my bidet?!”