Two Machines
is an Ace Attorney Fan Fic written by Elchikaah Haly set some time after the events of Dual Destinies. A car accident in the woods leaves half-siblings Apollo Justice and Trucy Wright dead. With two corpses on his hands, the first idea that comes to the driver's mind is to bring them back to life through artificial, twisted ways as two machines.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Always Murder: Subverted with Apollo and Trucy. They're victims of a fatal hit-and-run accident.
- And I Must Scream: Apollo and Trucy's souls are still trapped in the machinery, and they're aware of what's going on and pleading Phoenix to pull a Mercy Kill on them.
- Asshole Victim:
- The numerous victims of the "antagonist murders" are never really missed by anyone.
- Arthur Edwards killed Apollo and Trucy in a hit-and-run accident at the beginning, and then brought them back as killing machines to kill all of the above people. Fittingly, he finds himself killed at their hands when he doesn't give them a target.
- Big Bad: The man known only as "Papa" by Apollo and Trucy. His real name is Arthur Edwards, a former brilliant engineer.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Athena, Blackquill and Gumshoe arrive just in time to save Phoenix, unwittingly resetting Fleur who proceeds to shut down the siblings, allowing the three to get Phoenix to a hospital, just barely in time to be saved.
- Fleur knocks Edwards' remote out of his hands, preventing him from resetting and reformatting the siblings.
- Came Back Wrong: Apollo and Trucy were brought back as robots after being killed in a hit-and-run accident and forced to become night time vigilantes killing numerous Asshole Victims. They still have their souls, which is why Phoenix can see psyche-locks. However, their spirit are trapped in the machinery, and neither can be channeled.
- Co-Dragons: Though unwilling, Apollo and Trucy are forced to become the soon-notorious "antagonist murderers" during the night.
- Dissonant Serenity: During their night time hunts, Apollo and Trucy act cheerful, which adds to the creepy factor when you remember that they're there to murder whoever they're currently speaking with.
- Death by Adaptation: Apollo Justice and Trucy Wright.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Arthur Edwards had a wife, Helena Fox, and two stepchildren, Alex Fox and Tania Baily-Fox, who were murdered twenty-four years earlier.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Edwards is killed by his own creations due to being the closest example of evil men they were tasked with killing, and not having a target on their hit list that night.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each chapter has a variation of "Two X" in it.
- I'm Going to Hell for This: In his final moments, Edwards muses that his family will be seeing him soon - before retracting that and thinking that they're more likely to see him go to hell instead.
- Innocently Insensitive: In the epilogue, Larry happily explains to Phoenix and Thalassa how a garbage incinerator works, forgetting that the "trash" in question is going to be Apollo and Trucy's robotic bodies, which need to be destroyed so their programming can't make them kill people.
- Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Phoenix narrowly avoids this fate thanks to Athena, Gumshoe and Blackquill trailing him when he left on his own to coordinates he believed were given to him by Trucy.
- Near-Villain Victory: A few seconds more, and Edwards would've reset Apollo and Trucy, leaving no hope at all at saving them. Even without the remote, he still had the siblings crush Phoenix and Edgeworth until midnight struck.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: When in "robot mode", the siblings' eyes glow red.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: "Papa" specializes in such creations. Apollo and Trucy both appear so lifelike that even Phoenix can't immediately tell what's going on. However, the advanced AI and robotics technology can't dupe Athena's enhanced hearing, and she notices the absence of heartbeat.
- Spanner in the Works: Gumshoe zapping Fleur resets her and cuts off Edwards' control, allowing her to divulge all the information she has on him and the siblings to Phoenix & co.
- The Dog Bites Back: Edwards clearly never read the Evil Overlord List. As soon as Fleur is cut off from him, she tells the protagonists everything they need to know. And the first night he doesn't assign Apollo and Trucy a target, they assign themselves the closest one they can find: Edwards himself.
- Unwilling Roboticization: Apollo and Trucy suffer from this.
