Fanfic / Badge & O'Possum: Ace Attorneys

Bringing a whole new meaning to ‘legally-distinct’.

Badge & O’Possum: Ace Attorneys is a Crossover fanfic co-authored by Berserker88 and JackofMinds that reimagines the Ace Attorney series taking place in the world of Zootopia.

It stars Eric Badge and Delilah O’Possum, a pair of fledgling civil lawyers who end up taking on a murder trial for the first time. After making a somewhat unwanted name for themselves, their new office becomes faced with even tougher trials, facing off with both arrogant prosecutors and rival defense attorneys from the much larger, much shadier law firm known as Tooth & Claw.

But of course, their biggest obstacle is Ace Attorney’s notoriously flawed legal system.

Badge & O’Possum is heavily structured around its inspiration. Listening to testimonies, presenting evidence, and shouting objections is all done in a similar style to the games, and each chapter ends with a continuously updated Court Record to help readers keep track and play along if they so choose. In essence, the fic aims to be as interactive as possible without being an actual fangame.

It can be read on AO3 here or Fanfiction here.

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Object to the following tropes below:

• Accuse the Witness: Par for the course. Nearly every witness that takes the stand is either guilty, hiding something, or just being dumb.
• Affectionate Parody: Of Ace Attorney natch, taking no small amount of digs at the many oddities of its legal system while also playing around with them as much as possible.
• Always Murder: Subverted, as the title characters were originally civil lawyers with a lot more experience in that field, only taking on their first murder trial because the defendant was a close friend of theirs in law school. However, that particular case brings them quite a bit of attention and soon more murder cases get dropped in their laps…
• Amateur Sleuth: Naturally, the protagonists end up investigating crime scenes themselves just as often as the actual police, if not moreso.
• Amoral Attorney: While the series has no shortage of the usual Jerkass prosecutors, the most prominent example is Tooth & Claw, a large firm of defense attorneys who represent the other side of this trope. Among other things, they have a reputation for defending Obviously Evil criminals and bending the rules to suit their needs.
• Ascended Extra: Eric and Delilah themselves, who were extremely minor characters in Born to Be Wilde, mainly serving to advertise this fic. Kyle VanDal had a slightly bigger role, but not nearly as prominent as the one he has here.
• Big Word Shout: Objection!, Hold it!, Take that! and such are all used of course, including some of the more obscure variants. Each major character also tends to have at least one unique interjection associated with them.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Kyle Vandal, earning him the nickname "The Apathetic Attorney". According to MacTalon, he will blatantly mishandle evidence and walk out of a trial before it's even finished. He even falls asleep during trials. MacTalon outright says it's only because he's so good at what he does that he hasn't been outright fired.
• Courtroom Antics: Comes with the territory. It’s even one of the tags on the AO3 version.
• Crusading Lawyer: Both attorneys quickly fall into this, adamant about pursuing the truth and not defending anyone obviously guilty, in opposition to their main rivals at Tooth & Claw.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: Every piece of evidence is given to both the characters and the readers at the same time, and it’s all logged in the Court Record just in case you forget any. It also signals any point where evidence is about to be presented or a question needs to be answered so that the reader can pause and make a guess before the characters do, basically playing along like an actual Ace Attorney case.
• First-Person Smartass: You can expect the lead attorney at any given time to constantly make snarky and disparaging remarks in their head. Unless that lead attorney is Delilah, in which case she’ll sometimes follow it up by immediately saying the same thing out loud.
• Frivolous Lawsuit: The story behind Remus Legal Academy tells that the co-founders were brothers who couldn't agree what hill they wanted to put the school on, and so decided to sue each other for it. What followed was described as both the most spectacular and most petty courtroom battle in history.
• Furry Reminder: The animal traits of the characters get brought up frequently and are sometimes used as evidence to help solve the case.
  • Fingerprinting as a whole isn’t used in this universe, as most non-primate mammals don’t actually have them. Pawprinting takes its place, but it isn’t nearly as precise, only able to accurately identify the species of the mammal in question. This becomes a problem when multiple mammals of the same species are involved in the same case, as happens in A Study in Turnabout.
  Delilah: "Wouldn't it be neat if every pawprint left some kind of unique signature that let you tell more than just the species?"
  Eric: "There's no point fantasizing about the impossible, Delilah.''
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: Comes with the territory. Some characters spice it up a little, like Kyle using a Finger Gun and Delilah combining it with her Prehensile Tail.
• Jerkass to One: Sigrid MacTalon to Delilah. It's mentioned that they somehow got off on the wrong foot in college and now MacTalon seemingly makes a hobby of tormenting Delilah while on duty. She's perfectly fine with Eric, though. Delilah says this is because of their days in the boxing club together making them "thick as thieves".
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Generally averted, as most evidence is either given to B&O by the police or recorded by camera. Doesn’t stop Delilah from digging through the trash at crime scenes though.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Goes out of its way to avert this, in a manner not dissimilar to the Ace Attorney games. While the story technically takes place during the Time Skip between Born to Be Wilde and The Dark Side of the Moon, it mostly ignores both in favor of forming its own continuity with a new OC cast who weren’t really around for all that anyway. Any major characters making a return such as Lucy Sang are reintroduced to the new players to keep everyone on the same page. So aside from the occasional Cameo or Continuity Nod, it remains accessible for anyone not familiar with those works.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Eric and Delilah lack any sort of powers, since the story takes place in a fairly grounded setting without any magic or technological advantages. To make up for this, each of their "mechanics" are just an Imagine Spot with flashy visuals employed by the authors. As a result, the audience views a stage play or boxing match substitute what's in actuality just the main characters using logical reasoning or leading the witness to make an error in their testimony.
• Mythology Gag: Almost too many to list:
  • Delilah preemptively refuses to accept the prosecution revealing an updated autopsy report, stating that she's "seen the memes".
    • Later gets another Call-Back when Eric requests the coroner to reexamine the cause of death. Delilah genuinely asks her partner if updating the autopsy report makes them the villains.
  • Delilah also comments on the fact that they're using a VHS player, a reference to the fact that the Ace Attorney games typically use outdated technology considering the fact that most of them are set a good several years into the future, chronologically speaking.
  • In the second case, Delilah examines a bottle, briefly considering the possibility of it being grape juice before stating that it's definitely wine. This references the frequent occurrence of grape juice in the series, and how it's often (mistakenly) assumed to be clumsy censorship.
  • Before the first Summation Examination scene, Delilah proclaims, "Just call me Herlock Shounds!" A nod to Herlock Sholmes from The Great Ace Attorney. Eric corrects her that it's actually "Sherlock Hounds" however, possibly because the Japanese version of the game simply uses the original name for the great detective.
    • Likewise, Eric and Delilah's bickering over whether to call the procedure "Summation Examination" or "Closing Argument" also references the different translations of the game.
• No Indoor Voice: As to be expected, everyone in the courtroom from lawyers to witnesses is prone to the occasional Big Word Shout. And just screaming in general. Lots of screaming.
• Noodle Incident: The reason for MacTalon's dislike of Delilah has something to do with their first meeting in law school. Not many details are given, apart from Delilah trying to recruit MacTalon into her sorority. Whatever happened, it could not have been good judging by their current relationship.
  • Eric also left somewhat of a bad impression during his last encounter with Kyle VanDal. Said "impression" being knocking the trash panda unconscious with a punch. Why he did this is never explained, but VanDal has most certainly not forgotten about it.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: The story's writing style aims to be as true to text as possible. This includes things like actual self-revising descriptions in the Court Record and marking testimony and intentionally marking pauses where the player would present evidence. Overall, it almost resembles a playthrough of an Ace Attorney game moreso than a fanfiction. That being said, it does take certain divergences on account of it not being actually interactive. For example, during the first trial, the player would usually be asked to name the victim and present some form of evidence as an introduction to the controls of the game. In the first chapter, however, the judge skips that part completely as the reader has no input or control, rendering a tutorial pointless.
• Punny Name: Wouldn't be an Ace Attorney parody without lots of them.
  • Eric Badge: Lawyer's Badge, a signature item in the Ace Attorney series.
  • Delilah O'Possum: Opossum.
  • Bea. F Wellington: Beef Wellington
  • Bailey Oates: Bale of hay & Oats, both things horses are known for eating.
  • Megan Skinner: She's a Sphinx cat, a breed known for having bare skin, also a nod to the phrase, "there's more than one way to skin a cat". Also may reflect her job as a coroner, getting underneath a corpse's skin.
  • Monty Gosland: Mongoose
  • Dominic Tigre: Possibly chosen as a corruption of "Demonic", fitting his repulsive personality.
  • Lila Lilac: An ironic name for a skunk, maybe to represent how defensive she is about her scent.
  • Pierce Pierson: A porcupine with piercing quills
  • Sunny Urshine: Sunshine, but also Ursine, befitting a Sun Bear.
  • Ria Nepeta: Cataria Nepeta, the taxonomic name for catnip.
• Repetitive Name: Pierce Pierson and Lila Lilac, the rivals of the Badge and O'Possum law firm.
• Rotating Protagonist: In the vein of later Ace Attorney titles, the role of lead attorney bounces back and forth between Eric and Delilah. They apparently decide this through a game of Rock–Paper–Scissors.
• Unconventional Courtroom Tactics: Well, unconventional in real life, but completely par for the course in a fic based on the Ace Attorney court system. Even then, Delilah trying to solve a murder by bringing an actual convicted murderer to the stand as an “expert witness” stands out.