((OOC: Huh. "Mr. Wright." I wonder... if I'm playing the role of Phoenix Wright, it might be helpful to get into the character of Phoenix Wright. I'll see if that helps. At the very least, it'll make this more interesting...))
Well, when Larry was a kid, he set a trap once with a bucket on a door, and then it ended up falling on his own head... crazy schemes and Larry are a pretty classic combination, so some kind of weird trap isn't out of the question.
Which reminds me: who are we dealing with? I know Larry, I know Edgeworth, I know Maya. They aren't murderers. Now, let's turn that around:
You've said these people are "acting roles." You showed them alive afterwards. That means... you've given me clues that these aren't really Maya, Larry, and Edgeworth. And you wanted to teach me a lesson about not rushing in and trusting people when I shouldn't.
You're going to make the culprit someone I care about, to see if I can get past my emotions and think logically. So the culprit is probably NOT Lisa.
I saw in my second case that Edgeworth forged an autopsy report. What if he did the same thing here when he discovered Gumshoe?
Gumshoe DID die instantly, and he DID die with the culprit in the room, and he did die from "being stabbed with the knife." But he didn't die of the wound we thought we saw. He died when Edgeworth either pushed the knife in, or secretly stabbed him with on finding the body!
But then, how did Gumshoe get stabbed the first time, and why?
Gumshoe could have tried to fake his own death. This would have created confusion and given him a chance to smuggle out some electronics he really wanted from the building. On "recovering" from being stabbed, he could make up some story about an assailant and insist on leading the investigation and collecting evidence.
That would make Edgeworth the culprit. Do we have other clues pointing to Edgeworth? Yeah...
There's something else that was suspicious - the stolen Steel Samurai figurine. It makes no sense that Edgeworth would try to carry the figurine through the metal detector to steal it! Even if he were the kind of guy to steal things randomly, he'd just seen the metal detector go off. So why did he take it from that room?
Well, it covered up the metal detector going off for a second time, so that would make sense if he were carrying the second knife. But it also works if he actually had the figurine before he entered the room in the first place, and Larry's entry covered that up. Or why not both?
Hmm. If he didn't necessarily get the figurine in nanotech, he might have picked it up in robotics. Could it have been a robot samurai? If he put it down in the confusion when Larry got stuck, or even before then, it could have snuck into the storage area and hidden there. When Lisa Basil arrived, it slit her throat, acting as the murder weapon. It could have used the samurai spear for this. We were never told in red that her throat was slit with a knife - that was just my guess based on what I saw. But it also could have been armed with the second knife.
So Lisa Basil was murdered before everyone left Nanotech, as we're told in red.
But she didn't die instantly! She died when we came in, and Edgeworth was there at her moment of death!
The only real problem is how Edgeworth got back the Samurai so it could set off the metal detector. But wait... when I brought up that Lisa and Larry were missing, he was the one to hurry us out the door.
He could have stepped out first, grabbed the robot as it waited around the corner, and hidden it! The only problem is that it would have had to sneak past Larry, who didn't see a single person leave that corridor. That would be consistent with the red, and it's small so it could have been stealthy... but is Larry that oblivious?
Either way, let's go with this. After all of this happened and the lights went out, we ended up with everyone but me dead. But why? Why would the killer leave me alive? Why would they kill themselves? And why were they strangled, not stabbed?
Okay, what if they didn't kill themselves deliberately, but by accident? What if, in the dark, the robot finished them off - their own murder weapon did them in?
All right, I'm ready for a new blue theory!
* Gumshoe faked his death.
* Edgeworth killed him on examining the body; Edgeworth is the culprit.
* Edgeworth stole a robotic samurai from the robotics room. We've been told the place builds robots, and it makes as much sense to have a samurai robot as it does to have a perfect nanotech samurai.
* To cover up his crime, Edgeworth sent the robot to hide in the storage room. Perhaps it takes whispered voice commands - we know Blue Screens is pretty advanced.
* The robot slit Lisa's throat, murdering her (acting as murder weapon for Edgeworth), when we were in nanotech, but she did not die instantaneously. I know you've got more than one big artery or vein in there - what if only one of them was cut? Anyway, it was able to reach her throat by climbing shelves in spite of its small size.
(OOC: Phoenix doesn't know the details, maybe, but I'll add that cutting the carotid artery would be very fast death, cutting the windpipe might not be.)
* The robot returned to wait for its new owner, waiting outside nanotech behind Larry, who was watching the passage expectantly. To sneak past him, it hugged the wall or... the ceiling? This part is tricky.
* Edgeworth left the nanotech room first, and before we stepped out, he snatched up the robot and held it in his arms, setting off the alarm. This made it look like he stole the robot from nanotech.
* Lisa died just as we reached the storage room, so she died with the culprit in the room.
* The lights went out and he tried to kill the remaining witnesses. But the robot was not very good at discriminating and, after being disarmed of its knife, strangled Edgeworth in the fight when he was down.
EDIT: And while I'm at it... I'm the detective in this game, so I should know anything I saw with my own eyes, right? So how did I know that the bodies I found were strangled? Were there finger marks, or signs of a garotte? If they were just clutching their throats, they could have choked on ramen for all I know!
Take that!
