My Little Ace Attorneys

Apollo was thoroughly sick of Rarity on day 2. She had insisted on him standing there while she designed various capes and vests using him as a model. Of course this involved waiting around for her to decide which fabric to use, and being at the receiving end of her tantrums when things didn't go right. Not to mention getting stabbed and cut by the needle. For whatever reason, Rarity had decided that she couldn't just test the patterns on Apollo, no, she had to assemble them on him too. This was something that worked on her mannequins, but didn't have the desired effect on a live stallion.

All in all, the last thing Apollo needed was a small filly bowling into him and knocking him over when Rarity had given him a break. Sweetie Belle looked down at him, thoroughly confused. As she saw the half assembled cape he hadn't bothered taking off, confusion turned to rage.

"RARITY!" she screeched, her voice cracking slightly, "You won't let me help you but you'll let some random stallion model for you?"

"By all means, take my place. I'm fed up."

"Who are you?"

"Apollo Justice, attorney at law."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"What, no comments? You seemed so chatty before," said Apollo, trying to be as polite and charming as Edgeworth, and failing miserably.

"So, what's your name?" Now that he had picked himself up, Apollo took in the little unicorn's appearance. Yet another white unicorn to add to the list. She resembled Rarity, Apollo assumed she was her sister, since Rarity had talked about one.

Silence. Apollo waved a hoof in front of her face. She didn't even blink.

"Hello?"

Slightly concerned for her well being, Apollo shook the small filly.

"Huh, what? Oh uh...I wasn't sleeping in class, honest!" she gabbled, as sluggish as someone waking up from a two hour nap.

"Wow, she's really perfected the art of zoning out," Apollo thought to himself.

"Your name, what is it?" he asked.

"I'm Sweetie Belle, and I'm a Cutie Mark Crusader!" she said with glee.

"A what mark what now?"

"I do crusading to find my cutie mark! I really want to be a designer like Rarity, but she never let's me help her. It's so unfair!"

"Excuse me for a moment."

Apollo went to where Rarity was measuring lengths of thread and various ribbons. Apollo could only hope that he wasn't going to have to model the outfits she planned on using them in. She was completely absorbed in her work and hadn't even noticed Sweetie Belle's arrival, or her conversation with Apollo.

"Rarity, what's a cutie mark?"

"It's the symbol on your flank, dear. It represents your special talent and your destiny."

For the first time, Apollo noticed the gems on Rarity's flank. He didn't get what they stood for, but she seemed to be good with fabric and sparkly things.

"Your sister's here, and she doesn't seem to have one."

"Yes, she hasn't earned it yet. Poor thing, she's so desperate to discover it that it's become an obsession of hers. I fear that it may be hazardous to her health. She tries too hard. She doesn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of 'waiting'."

"Thanks Rarity."

"You're quite welcome dear."

Rarity resumed working, and Apollo twisted his neck to see if he had a cutie mark. Indeed he did. It was an eye, with his bracelet surrounding the pupil. It reminded him of his Perceive ability, which he guessed it was referring to. As he looked at it, he felt bad for Sweetie Belle. Here he was, a pony for less than 48 hours and he had his cutie mark while this little filly didn't.

"Sorry about that I was just asking Rarity something," he said, returning to Sweetie Belle

"What did you ask her?"

Problem. Apollo and the others had been told to keep the fact that they were humans a secret, but what pony didn't know what a cutie mark was?

"Ummm...I asked her for a longer break...?"

"Hey! Can I see your cutie mark!?"

Before Apollo had a chance to answer she had rushed up and was staring at his flank. Apollo couldn't explain why, but he felt dirty with her so close to him.

"Hey Apollo! What's your special talent?"

"How do I explain it to someone who hasn't seen it? Um, ok, say something to me, a lie or the truth. It doesn't matter," he said

"Diamond Tiara is my best friend."

Apollo's bracelet tightened, and as she spoke, Sweetie Belle shuffled her left forehoof just the tiniest bit forward.

"Gotcha!," Apollo yelled, loud enough to make Sweetie jump, but not so loud as to give her a heart attack.

He focused on her, and began Perceiving her movements.

"You're lying, Sweetie Belle. When you said 'best friend', you shuffled your hoof forward. I'm willing to bet that this 'Diamond Tiara' pony isn't your best friend. In fact, she's your worst enemy!"

"Awesome! You're good!"

"That is all, Sweetie Belle."

"Wow! That's amazing! Could you really tell all that just 'cause I shuffled my hoof? I didn't even realize I did that!" she said with excitement.

"That's my Perceive ability. If somepony is lying or hiding something from me, the bracelet I'm wearing tightens, and if I focus and look and listen close enough I can see small, subconscious twitches. Sometimes the nature of the twitch itself tells me the truth, and sometimes just the fact that they were twitching isn't enough, and I need to present evidence to back my claim," explained Apollo.

"Well that was super interesting! I have to try that with my friends right now! We can be 'Cutie Mark Crusader Lie Detectors'!" Sweetie squealed, and ran off to go find Scootaloo and Applebloom.

"Well that was a productive waste of time," thought Apollo.

"Oh Apolloooooo!" called a sing-song voice with a posh accent, "I have a new idea that I think you'd look positively dashing in!"

"Oh joy..."

~~~

Phoenix clung to the cloud and refused to let go. He was being ravaged by vertigo, and wanted nothing more than to be sick all over his fluffy life raft. He still didn't quite get how he wasn't falling right through it, but basic laws of nature seemed to have been flung out of the window here, so he was rolling with it.

He wasn't enjoying his time in the sky so far. Rainbow Dash was a mistress as cruel and unforgiving as the ocean, calling him a wimp and telling him to toughen up constantly. It wasn't his fault that he was scared of heights. He wasn't always quite this bad, but if falling off a bridge isn't enough of a bad experience, then Phoenix didn't know what was.

"Come on, Nick!" Rainbow called. She had insisted upon calling him by his nickname, because she claimed that 'Phoenix' would 'confuse ponies' because apparently there were actual phoenixes here.

Phoenix had received a similar education on cutie marks, and his happened to be his green magatama, with chains crossed in front of it, and a Psyche-Lock that was split down the middle on the point where the chains crossed. The magatama itself had been tucked under a wing when he arrived. It now hung around his neck on a string, glowing faintly with its comforting light.

Phoenix decided to try again to fly and get Rainbow off his back. He spread his blue wings and flapped unsteadily towards Rainbow.

"Took you long enough! Come on, I have to show you how to move the clouds around. All pegasi are expected to know how," the irritated sky coloured pegasus said, flicking her tail.

Phoenix sat himself down on a cloud, landing heavily with vertigo scouring him mercilessly once more.

An angry shout from below drew both Phoenix and Rainbow's attention groundward. A magenta Earth pony stood dripping wet with a purple unicorn fighting to suppress her laughter. Phoenix hadn't realised that the cloud had been full of rain, which he'd dropped all over Edgeworth, and only Edgeworth, missing Twilight somehow.

"Is there room for two more at this festivity of cruelty or is the party fully booked?" asked Edgeworth, his tones completely deadpan.

"We need to get some stuff from your cloud house," called Twilight. She glanced at Edgeworth, "Well I do. He's just here because I couldn't trust him on his own in the library. I mean, what if he damaged the books?"

"Yet you'll leave the coffee addict who spent the whole morning looking for something to make his Godot Blend #107 with alone without batting an eyelid. You even went and got coffee beans for him!" countered Edgeworth.

"I couldn't help myself, that Godot Blend #107 is good stuff. But hey, that's what you'd expect from a guy whose cutie mark is a coffee bean."

"Cutie mark... I've heard the term several times now, but no one has actually explained it to me," mused Edgeworth.

"Picture on your butt, Edgeworth," Phoenix said from his cloud, trying to provoke more rain from it.

Edgeworth stole a glance. A Logic Chess piece. Simple and to the point.

"Come on, cut to the chase already. What do you need?" asked Rainbow impatiently.

"I need some-"

CRASH

Twilight was cut off as the sky lit up with a flash of lightning and the resounding boom of thunder. At first all eyes were on Phoenix, but he shook his head and pointed a hoof in the direction of a black cloud, which had a gray pegasus with a yellow mane bouncing on it. The lightning had set a tree on fire.

"I just don't know what went wrong!" the gray pegasus exclaimed as she continued bouncing nonchalantly, seemingly unaware that it was her jumping that had caused the problem in the first place.

The four ponies dragged their eyes away from the spectacle. Twilight's horn glowed and she and Edgeworth were momentarily surrounded by her magical aura.

"I'll tell you what I want when we get there. I just cast the cloudwalking spell, so Edgeworth and I won't fall through."

Her horn remained glowing, but Phoenix couldn't tell what she was carrying. He and Rainbow flew overhead, while Twilight and Edgeworth trotted below. Phoenix made the mistake of looking down. He panicked momentarily and found himself plummeting that direction. He had a surprisingly soft landing; Edgeworth wasn't as bony as he looked.

He fluttered back up sheepishly.

"Thanks for the safety net, Edgeworth"

Edgeworth dusted himself off and grunted.

They reached Rainbow's cloud house without incident. The problem of figuring out a way to get the two ground bound ponies up persisted. Rainbow claimed that she wasn't quite awesome enough to carry a pony upwards on her own, but nopony trusted Phoenix to help her.

"I already got this covered," said Twilight. "We'll use this stepladder"

She floated the object into view. Phoenix realised that it had been what she was carrying earlier. Still he just had one comment to make...

"That's a ladder."

"That's what Twilight said. Didn't you hear her?" said Rainbow.

"She said it was a stepladder."

"Does it matter Wright?" asked Edgeworth.

"Wait, I'm confused, there's a difference? Which one is it?" said Rainbow, clearly as confused as she claimed to be.

"A ladder," Phoenix stated.

"Phoenix. You need to stop judging things based on narrow-minded cultural assumptions," scolded Twilight.

"Why do I feel like I've heard that line before? " thought Phoenix.