Since my thread got lost in the last forum reboot, here I am making it again, for I cannot deny that it feels actually quite nice when people pat you on the back for the stuff you've done. Thus, as I pray, give me Unlimited Ace Attorney Works.
Hold It! An Ace Attorney Scanslations Archive: All my Ace Attorney doujinshi scanslations are archived here. I've been toying with the idea of creating download links of them as well. What do you guys think?
DZ's Ace Attorney Story Corner: I myself can't believe I actually own this place. DZ? Writing fan fiction? It's more likely than you think.
I'd post all the stories in the place, but seeing that they're quite lengthy, it'd make for one long-ass post. Therefore, I'll only post the latest one here (warning: angst and violence alert!).
[spoiler=Of pain, fear, love and tears]It had been a bad day. A VERY bad day.
The meeting with the people from the Bar Association regarding the latest trial run of the Jurist Legal System had gone all kinds of wrong; halfway home, it had started raining so hard his small umbrella had literally undone itself, screwing the papers he was carrying beyond any hope of salvation; at home, one of his keys had broken inside the doorknob, forcing him to get in through the back; the water heater was broken, which meant he had to take an extremely cold shower, and to top it all off, he had had an absolutely horrible argument with the only person he really trusted, his closest friend and confident, his only source of emotional support. Today, things had, in the most literal of senses, gone to [parasitic bomb]. Any normal person would have broken down. And while he was not a normal person by any account, even his patience had a limit.
That limit had long since been gone past for the day.
After he got out of the bathroom, shirtless and still dripping, he sat down in the living room. He tried to steady his breaths, slowly. Breathe in, breathe out. Useless.
He tried driking a glass of milk and taking a nap. Useless.
He tried sitting around, reading all his past cases — it regularly served as a measure to get him to calm down whenever he got too excited for any reason. Useless.
He tried laying on the couch, turned on the TV, and started zapping the channels, in a futile search for something worth watching. Utterly useless.
"DAMN IT!"
He could not concentrate on anything — anger was taking his toll on his psyche. And standing up, he did the only thing that felt logical (or illogical) in his riled-up state. He kicked the couch.
Curiously, the jolt of pain felt actually rather good. So he continued kicking the couch until he could barely feel his toes, at which point the pain was threatening to overcome him.
But he wouldn't stand for that. And thus, moving away from the couch, he started on the closest thing he could find able to withstand his blows: the nearby wall.
Punching it rabidly, his rage unconstrained, he felt slowly as the pain climbed up every bone of his arms and his knuckles with every hit. Pain, glorious pain, seemed to drive his thoughts of anger away. Pain, powerful pain, seemed to clear his mind of everything, good, bad, inane thoughts, all of it. Pain, masochistically delicious pain, seemed to be a way to vent every single atom of frustration contained inside his being. Pain, sadistic physical pain, seemed to be the cure for the very acute stinging sensation of pain in the deepest parts of his heart and soul.
His hands felt numb. He knew he was hurting himself, yet he didn't care. By now, each hit produced a slight, almost mute splatter, his knuckles broken and bleeding. The wall was painted in random strokes of shiny dark red marks, his blood dripping from his fists and wherever they connected to the wall. Somehow, he knew this wasn't going to pass unnoticed by anyone who knew him, but he didn't care about this either. All he cared about right now was the fact that the harder his punches made the wall rumble, the clearer his mind was. The pain was there, but he was master of it: it drove thoughts away and led him to act purely on impulse, on instinct, overwhelming instinct.
The stronger the pain, the harder he'd attack; it was an uneven fight, if it could even be called that, but it drove a strange comfort through his veins. By now, his fists weren't the only part of his body feeling pain; his eyes had started to sting, and much to his annoyance, he felt white-hot tears searing through and dripping down his cheeks. He assured himself that it was merely because of the pain he was feeling, as punch after punch, blood splatter after blood splatter, he continued to crush his knuckles against the wall in a fast, constant barrage. The tears were starting to feel obnoxious, but being completely unable to stop his fists, he resorted to the only measure he had to placate the stinging and the pain: screaming his lungs out.
And barely he had started letting whatever was left of his voice out, the front door of the little apartment swung open with a crash, showing Trucy standing there, white as a sheet, with an expression that clearly showed she was terrified of what was before her eyes. Her voice barely a whisper, she tried to address the man in front of her, unsure if he was the man she knew and loved as her father.
"...D-dad..?"
Even more anger filled his insides; not at her, but at himself, for letting himself be caught in this fashion by the last person he'd wanted to see this darker, irrational side of him. Before he could stop himself, he screamed "GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!" while throwing the little beanie hat at her with all the strength he could muster, missing her by mere inches on purpose, but still enforcing the point of his words. In his pain and his inhuman rage, all his senses were heightened; and this would prove even more painful and enraging, for he saw very clearly the sparks of light reflected by the tears left floating in midair by her daughter, and heard very clearly a sob that she was unsuccessful in trying to suppress. He'd made her daughter cry, and he could not forgive himself for that. And that only served to further fuel his fury, and with renewed strength he resumed his one-sided fight.
His knees failed him. He fell to the floor, kneeling, but unrelenting. His body ached, but he wasn't slowing down. His forces were threatening to run out at any minute, and yet each blow was as fierce as the first. Deep in his heart, he knew this was stupid, but at the same time, it provided with the peaceful feeling of not having to think.
On and on, this continued so... Until at last the last ounces of his strength had been consumed, and he merely slumped against the wall. The wall around his mind, blocking all thoughts, fell with a loud crash, and the first thought that crossed beyond the crushed remains was the acknowledgement of how pathetic he was, giving in to senseless anger like that. More and more remarks of his own ridiculousness stepped over the fallen bricks and mortar, mocking him, and yet he had no will, no desire to fight them, for they spoke nothing but the absolute truth.
And it was in this shape that she found him. She, his love, the one closest to his heart, had found him utterly in pieces in his anger and his fury.
His eyes glowed for a second, and his first impulse was to stand up and punch her too... But his body wouldn't respond anymore, and all the visible acknowledgment he gave of her presence was a pained, noncommittal grunt.
On the other side of the room, she could not believe her eyes, now wide as tennis balls. She carefully stepped towards him, avoiding the broken debris that his attack on the couch had left as war spoils — shards of a broken glass, the batteries of a remote that had long since gone flying, and other things. Like his daughter before her, she was entirely unable of digesting the scene that was currently being displayed for her, and cautiously approaching his fallen remains of a body, barely had the strength to mutter in an almost unaudible tone, "...Nick?", to which he once again grunted, the strength of his body drained, and that of his resistance as well: without restraints this time, he began to cry in earnest, and raising his eyes, he shot her a look of deepest anger, and deepest self-loathing. He'd take whatever she threw at him, he knew he deserved it.
And barely had these thoughts crossed his mind when his head turned aside against his will, and his cheek prickled and felt very hot, the shadow of her hand etched in his face. Her expression was that of anger, but not the pathetic anger of which he'd made such a splendid show merely minutes before, but righteous anger for being so stupid as to do what he had done. He raised his sight again, and saw beads of water starting to form below her eyes, as she screamed in the most hurtful tone he had yet heard from her mouth, delivering more and more slaps with each word.
"YOU COMPLETE IMBECILE PHOENIX WRIGHT!! HOW DARE YOU SCARE YOUR DAUGHTER LIKE THAT!! HOW DARE YOU SCARE
ME LIKE THAT!!"
And none but a few seconds had passed after she had slapped him with all the force she could muster from her petite body frame, before she was kneeling down before him and hugging him with all the strength in her heart. He could only feel the wetness of her tears on his neck, and by an otherworldly effort, he achieved the superhuman feat of lifting his arms and embracing her. She shivered, feeling his cold, aching arms on her, and all that came to her mind was to throw him onto the floor and kiss him wildly, like a savage animal, and punch him wherever her hands could reach, in revenge for the terrifying feeling she had felt earlier. He took both in stride, without a word, not knowing what had earned him the kiss, but with full knowledge that whatever revenge she wanted to take on him, she was entirely in her right to do so.
She broke the kiss, and never stopping her barrage of blows, rested her head on his chest, her tightly closed eyes overflowing with tears that cascaded down her face. "How could you... How could you..."
He could barely hear the croaking noise that was his own voice.
"It was a bad day..."
Suddenly, her sobs stopped. She slowly raised her head, amazement dawning in her face.
"...What?"
"It's been a... Horrible day... And I... I said... Awful things to you... That I shouldn't have..."
Her face pulled an expression from god knows where that made him shiver in fear. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, indeed. Thus, the resounding echo of yet another inhuman slap on his untouched cheek boomed through the place.
"YOU GODDAMN IDIOT!!" Slap. "Is that" Slap. "a reason" Slap. "to hurt yourself" Slap. "like this?!" Slap. "Do you think" Whack. "I'd be so shallow" Whack. "as to WANT" Slap. "to see you hurt" Whack. "over a stupid argument" Slap. "like this?!" Slap. "ARE YOU [tornado fang]ing OUT OF YOUR MIND?!" And with her final words, a punch stronger that anything she'd managed before crushed his chest.
More than the burning pain of her hands constantly leaving marks in his face, more than the stinging ache of her fists colliding with his already weakened body, her words pierced him like steel on molten lava. And when her screaming tone abruptly changed into a whisper, a pained murmur, it made them even more painful for his heart.
"Nick... Seriously. Sometimes I even wonder myself how or why I fell in love with you. Nick, I know who, what, and how you are; I know you didn't mean the things you shouted at me. I know it was a spur of the moment; I've yelled my fair share of crap at you too. But that doesn't mean that just because you think your words were hurtful to me you have the right to hurt yourself like this. Or are you forgetting something key here?"
He gazed at her. With no idea what she was talking about, his quizzical expression asked the question for him. She wasn't crying anymore, but her voice remained broken as if she was.
"You're mine, Nick. Completely mine. And I'm yours, totally and entirely yours. Thus, you have no business hurting yourself without my permission, and as you very well know, I wouldn't have given it anyway. Because I love you whole, however twisted you are, however deranged, however mad, but whole."
And once again, she leaned down on him and kissed him, this time sweetly, slowly, delicately.
And as Phoenix's eyes, swollen and red, started sprouting tears of their own again, he thought that maybe, just maybe, the day still had a chance to change for the better.[/spoiler]
Oh, and I forgot to mention, due to the never-ending "shipping wars" in the fandom, I ended up writing a Magical Random Pairing Generator, located
here, which is also one of the things that keeps the AA fandom moving nowadays.
EDIT: LOL, my brain feels like scrambled eggs right now, keep forgetting things.
One question, guys: I've been toying lately with the idea of offering my scanslations available for zipped download along with the online reading system. What do you guys think? Should I go ahead with that, or leave the online reader only?