Showcase your artistic creations, whether that be sprites, music, drawings or literature, and whether they be related to the Ace Attorney universe or not.
This is a spin-off fan-fiction series of the only currently-running sprite comic on this site: Robert Civil: Ace Attorney, which you can check out here. Because Civil is technically the main star of the sprite comic, Rachel's role is rather limited. I have tried to focus on her character more, but in order to progress the Turnabouts, this too is a limited feat. This will run alongside the sprite comic, albeit it on a less-frequent basis.
I had a few ideas for how our favourite potato chip's life progresses after the sprite comic. More notably: the tale of how she goes through college and eventually does the bar exam. I do not know how often this will be updated, nor how far this story will advance (I have outlines, but outlines change.) For now, I just hope that you enjoy reading!
Synopsis:
After a four year internship with Twain & Co Law Offices under Ace Attorney Robert Civil, Rachel is studying for her bar exam in another state. She misses Civil and (by association,) she misses solving murders and winning trials.
Spoiler : Chapter 1: Perpetual Lateness and Torn Tights :
Rachel shuffled through the lecture theatre’s doors and subconsciously pushed her jet black hair behind her ear. She immediately cringed as she did so as this only made her identity more clear to her professor, who of course pointed her out. “Miss Rushton…” He muttered like a disappointed father through his thick greying beard. Rachel turned her head and glanced over at her elder, switching her attitude from apologetic to passive-aggressively confrontational.
“I can only apologise for being late, Professor.” Rachel diverted her weight to the heel of her foot and swivelled into an empty seat on an empty row. “That was polite, grammatically correct and civil. You can’t criticise a girl for that.” The Professor continued his lecture as though an interruption had not taken place. His class was far too challenging for a Tuesday evening. Somehow, Rachel was expected to learn the ins-and-outs of a lawsuit over thirty years old. This felt all the more difficult because her mind was preoccupied with the stress of her day job. It took all of the power she had not to reply to law-related questions with “yes, the Italian bread is fresh.”
As the professor spoke of murder and trials, Rachel’s peers merely stared in acknowledgement. Only she had seen both of these first hand, yet she quickly found that this did not affect her grades. First-hand experience meant nothing to the professor who marked Rachel’s papers. Apparently, correcting the source material because “I worked on that case and knew that Lore did it all along” was more of a hindrance than a statement deserving extra credit.
In a bid to distract herself, she hitched up her black dress and stared at the pull in her tights. Amongst a mutter or two of disdain, she smoothed the frayed fabric with the back of hand and very quickly forgot about it, as she had an hour ago. As much as she had been excited by her acceptance letter to the law college of her dreams, part of Rachel wished that Ivy University had insisted on her presence. Despite her attendance at college, her heart and mind frequented the hallways of Twain & Co Law Offices.
“This is depressing,” she muttered to herself, having reached the peak of her self-allocated reminiscing time. Pushed to her limits, she made a decision that she needed either a nap or a walk accompanied by the Talking Heads tune of her choosing. This short selection of choices was cut short when the professor once again turned his attention to her. Little did she know, she had been muttering the lyrics to ‘Heaven’ at a volume which was disturbing to the class.
It was just one of those days.
Spoiler : Chapter 2: Make-Up :
Having to apologise to both her tutor and her class was the rotten cherry on top of the melted-sundae which was Rachel’s day. She had already accepted that she was the damsel in distress on the train tracks and her morning was the incoming train. Overcome with stress and exhaustion, Rachel dropped her head and sat through the lecture without any more interruptions.
The only thing which had drove her through the day so far was the knowledge that her next shift would end in a party. Her friend Shannon had spent a week pushing her to attend her get-together and she had no intentions of cancelling.
Rachel was not the type of person who spent too much energy cultivating friends. The consequence of being physically attractive meant that little effort was necessary to grab the attention of a room. She knew this, but very rarely acknowledged it. After all, she wasn’t the first woman to cast a shadow in her college. Hundreds had studied for the bar exam there and almost all of them left without their picture on the walls. Meeting society’s expectations of beauty was helpful everywhere except for the courtroom. In fact, it was often a crippling factor. The head prosecutor for the state was incredibly beautiful; yet she had to work twice as hard as her less-attractive counterparts in order to get where she was today. “The jury hate an attractive person telling them what to do” she once told Rachel. It was no longer a ‘man’s world’: but it was a world where beautiful women could not wear makeup. Rachel remembered this as she walked through the courtyard, shuffling through her makeup-free handbag for her bus pass.
Her day did not improve with the change in scenery. The move from behind a law book to behind a deli counter made it clear to Rachel that she was the problem. There was an innate issue which she was yet to address. Perhaps it was that she missed home, as she suspected… Or perhaps there was something more vital missing from her life.
Spoiler : Chapter 3: Her Taste In Music :
Rachel’s heart beat out of time with whatever song was blasting through Shannon’s speakers. She scowled at her friend’s choice of music just as she had done to the homework assignment issued by her professor. Unlike most people, Rachel never felt the impulse to tap her foot to any and every tune which just so happened to grace the charts.
This ideology often landed her in heated conversations with people on both sides of the musical scale. Those who solely listened to modern music (which was essentially lyrical masturbation glorifying certain parts of the female body) mocked her in the way they were all too used to doing. After all, thirteen year old girls dominated the musical charts through their parents’ iTunes purchases. That group had had plenty of times to defend their poor taste in so-called ‘art.’ The other group which Rachel found herself in conflict with was the romantics. Those who found solace in the lyrics of Bob Dylan. They recovered from the failures of their love lives by singing along with the words ‘if you see her, say hello.’ Neither group’s interests satisfied her. Instead, she preferred the music of lesser-known bands. She would turn her nose up at the old and the new in exchange for the peculiar. This made her different from every other girl her age.
Rachel had no intention of being romanticised. She had accepted who she was and was not comfortable with anyone else changing that, albeit it even in their own mind. In fact, Rachel was proud of the fact that she was far from being a manic pixie dream girl. She had spent the previous few years of her life in the shadow of one of the state’s finest attorneys. This had supressed her individuality as was the case with every intern. Rachel knew that these were the days she could shine. She could break free from the constraints of a nine-till-five unpaid day. She could stay up too late, drink wine from a coffee mug and then stumble into a lecture late the next day without an ounce of regret. On paper, her life was finally the way that she had always wanted it to be. Exactly why she felt like she was losing out was a mystery. If only she could identify exactly what was missing: only then would she be happy.
There had to be a reason why her life was not complete. The little moments of her day accumulated in her nightly thoughts and ultimately gave her dissatisfaction. She decided to dedicate her night to discovering what it was that she was missing, as she pulled her weight on top of the kitchen counter and leant her head against a kitchen cupboard.
That is all for today, folks! As always, if the reception is decent, then I will continue. If it is negative, then... I will probably still continue. After all, I love to improve and am eager to create something somebody enjoys. After all, I am here for you, folks! :will:
All the best, people.
Last edited by DefenceLawyer on Sat Oct 03, 2015 4:19 pm, edited 3 times in total.
SolMasterzzz wrote:That was great! This gives Rachel the characterization she kinda lacks in the comic. ^^
I'm not sure if you intended it that way, but I can only think her college is Themis and her teacher is Aristotle Means.
Yeah its difficult to translate a character from their character profiles to the sprite comic because I limit myself to so many comic panels per case. At least this way I will be able to show off Rachel's personality outside of the cookie-cutter assistant role
I think I'll have to do some googling to get that reference :')
