It’s always absitively great getting to see Pops work. This ridiculous man in his ridiculous red coat with his ridiculous neck frills, he keeps trying to make his case but far better men than him have tried. If he was really as smart as he thinks he is he’d know nobody’s safe going up against Pops. You simply cannot argue with perfection Pops knows the truth better than anyone, and the truth is once he’s been disappeared there won’t be anything left in the way of me being The Best prosecutor there is.

Your thoughts are racing. It seems like they always are, running a mile a minute, so fast they all run into a single blur of pure brilliance, so fast you can’t quite tell them apart... But you know in your heart of hearts it’s this train of thought that will produce The Best logic you can offer. The Best way to think creates The Best conclusions, and you are nothing if not De Beste.

Focus Sebastian, this is your chance to prove yourself! Pops is on melody all you need to do is back him up. Focus on the conversation, you can prove that thief girl is the culprit if you just-

“...ing to hide the burn mark, y’see?” A quick chill runs down your spine. Something about the way Pops says the word burn always makes you feel like… But why are they talking about burns, again? The victim had an old burn mark on her... hand, right? “I understand how sensitive a woman can be about these things, y’know.”

“...I would like you to add your so-called sensitive understanding of a woman to your testimony.”

“What’s so wrong with being sensitive?” you want to say, “Why wouldn’t she want to cover that up!?” but you bite your tongue. Fancy-boy always decides to pick out the stupidest things in testimonies, but whenever you call him out on it he always finds a way to make you sound like the stupid one. Hmph, such an outburst would be below someone of your obviously superior caliper anyway, so you can let it go. Just this once.

“Maybe she was always wearing gloves to hide the burn mark, y’know.” Another chill. Without thinking you rest your baton in the crook of your arm and adjust your own pair of gloves. “Why does it matter if she wore gloves, Mr Edgeworth!?!” You don’t care if he makes you look stupid, you know he’s wrong. “What’s wrong with someone with a burn wanting to wear gloves!” You take a deep breath, and another, because you want to yell at him but-

“OBJECTION!” He beats you to the punch, and in an instant all that rage and self-rightedness that was building up inside you goes flat. “Jill Crane regularly wore gloves… If that is true...… huge contradiction……”

You fade out of the conversation. A-all you have to do is review that facts. That’s what The Best prosecutor would do. Pops said that girl is the culprit, so she must be! Pops would never steer you wrong, he’s never been wrong a day in his life!

“..that burn...”

Th-there’s still the note, and the mask, and, and-


“... the burn on her hand…”

And the fact she was here at all should be enough to arrest her!

“... gloves come off…”

She knew the victim, and it doesn’t matter where the murder happened because that girl is a thief!

“... wearing gloves…”

Calm down, Sebastian, you can win this! Mr. Edgeworth hasn’t disproved anything yet. Shouting his theories doesn’t make them right, and you can shout louder than he can!

You feel the entire room gets 10 degrees hotter as pops lighter roars to life with a sadly familiar fwoosh. You’ve never seen him look angrier in your life. “Seems you all want to dissappear… Permanently!”

“The only one who will be disappearing here is you… Blaise Debeste!”

“OBJECTION!” To your surprise as much as anyone’s, that was your voice that time. You can feel Pops glaring at you from his seat, but now’s your time to shine! You take another breath to compose yourself and... “H-hey! How dare you say that to Pops! Does it really matter if the burn mark was visible or not?”

“OBJECTION!” Damn it! You start bending your baton in frustration. He has no idea what kind of situation he’s in! “...It certainly does matter. If the burn mark was visible, then we’d have a complete turnabout of the situation!”

Your baton slips from your hand and whaps you unceremonially across the face. It stings, to say the least, but by now you’re used to it. “Wha… What are you saying! If the victim’s burn mark wasn’t visible, what exactly does that tell you?”

“Sebastian… Turn your way of thinking around. If the victim was wearing gloves, then her burn mark could not have been seen. In that case, whose burn mark was seen?”

“Someone elses…” No, how could he... “burn mark...?” That’ stupid, I wasn’t even there!

“Precisely. The culprit must have had a burn mark as well.” A long list of people with burns start flashing through your head. Most of them are family friends. “In other words, ‘I knew who you were right away, you can’t hide that burn from me.’ The person who said this was not the culprit, but the victim!”

“Wha.. Whaaaaaaaat!?” That time you weren’t even paying attention. At some point you had started bending your baton again and, again, it snapped against your cheek. You didn’t even feel it.

“OBJECTION!”

Pops!

click… click… FWOOSH.

“...Sebastian. Could you please step aside?” Pops sounds real polite. Somehow, that doesn’t make you feel any better than when he was angry a few minutes ago. You excuse yourself to the side of the room to nurse your wounded pride and the new baton-shaped welt you feel forming on your face. You try your hardest to focus on the conversation happening across the room but your eyes stay fixed on the lighter, Pops waving it back and forth as he talks, and again subconsciously move to adjust your gloves. You run your right thumb across the back of your left hand and you can feel a large and familiar scar through the thin white material.

You sniffle back a tear as your racing thoughts slow down just enough for you to think to yourself that maybe the only thing you’re The Best at is embarrassing yourself in front of Pops again...


((Author's note: I wish I could give credit to whoever inspired me but I have no idea where I saw the post. I saw someone on Tumblr say that they headcanoned that, since Blaise is most likely abusive and clearly a pyromaniac, Sebastian wears his gloves to cover a burn scar just like Jill Crane did. I immediately thought that hearing people talk about a similar situation would mean Sebastian was probably quietly freaking out in his head well before his Pops yelled at him. So, thank you random Tumblr user. You gave me one of my saddest headcanons to date.))