| “ | Kanis was the evil one! I didn't do anything wrong! | „ |
| ~ Fifi Laguarde. |
Fifi Lagaurde (Japanese: Mari Miwa) is a major antagonist in the game Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit, and is also the main antagonist of the second case "The Captive Turnabout" and a minor antagonist of "Turnabout for the Ages".
History[]
Assassination Plot[]
Before becoming a prison director, Fifi Lagaurde was the director of the Happy Family Home orphanage. In 2007, she was bribed into conspiring with then Chief Prosecutor Excelsius Winner and a body double of President Di-Jun Wang of Zheng Fa to assassinate the real president and replace him with the body double. The conspirators hired the infamous blind assassin Bodhidharma Kanis to carry out the killing itself. They planned to betray and kill Kanis after the assassination so as to cover their tracks. However, a young boy at the orphanage named Simeon Saint, who had been saved from death by Kanis a number of years previously, had overheard the trio's plot to then murder him afterwards. Kanis was then able to escape with his life.
Laguarde and Winner then went to dispose of the corpse. However, a photojournalist stumbled onto the crime scene and sent a voicemail message to his girlfriend about what he believed was a kidnapping in progress. He was swiftly killed by the body double, and his corpse placed near where Wang's body had been lying in the snow in order to cover up their tracks. They then replaced the photographs on the reporter's camera with that of a scene they staged of Laguarde, disguised in a trenchcoat and with her face hidden, pointing a gun at the body double. This was done in order to make it seem as if a kidnapping had occurred outside the orphanage.
For the subsequent investigation into the "kidnapping", now referred to as the SS-5 Incident by law enforcement, Laguarde was the only suspect that the police, led by Da-Long Lang, could find, due to it happening outside her orphanage. However, since Winner was the one set to prosecute the case, the evidence was soon manipulated. Thus, Laguarde was acquitted and the case went cold. Laguarde later interrogated Simeon repeatedly, knowing that he had seen the murder, but he eventually ran away.
The Captive Turnabout[]
In March 2019, Bronco Knight was arrested and detained in the holding cell. Laguarde soon discovered that he had been engaging in correspondence chess with Kanis. Convinced that he was one of Kanis's "dogs", Laguarde resolved to deal with him. She wrote a report on her suspicions of Knight to Winner, and told him to recover the real president's body. She then waited until March 27, when she would be scheduled to smuggle goods into the prison, and when the Berry Big Circus would arrive to perform for the prisoners.
Early in the morning, Laguarde interrogated Knight. During the session, she searched his belongings and found a small chisel inside a chessboard. Laguarde saw this as a sign that Knight was indeed in cahoots with Kanis, and killed him using the knife that had been confiscated from Kanis by the police, which had custom-made bells attached to it. Lagaurde decided to frame Kanis for the crime so that he would at least be transferred to a different prison.
Laguarde took the bells from the knife and attached them to the chisel. She then repeatedly stabbed Knight's neck with the chisel and planted it there to make it seem as if it were the murder weapon. When Sahwit cut the power as usual, Laguarde wrapped the body in a sheet to prevent a blood trail and tied it to a contraption that had been set up over the well for the circus's performance. During the subsequent circus show, the contraption was unwittingly used to send the body to the bottom of the well. Helmut (Kanis's guide dog) then picked up the body, which was eventually found in one of the workrooms. Lagaurde specifically chose this method in order to give herself an alibi.
Miles Edgeworth, the prosecutor in charge of Knight's case, visited the detention center only to discover that his suspect had been killed. The murder weapon became a large point of contention between Edgeworth and Verity Gavèlle, a member of the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee, who had Excelsius's son Eustace take charge of the case. During the investigation, Laguarde hid the real murder weapon inside her pet alligator Ally. Despite these efforts, Edgeworth found the knife, and Lagaurde was arrested for the murder.
Turnabout for the Ages[]
Because her lawyer, Rosie Ringer, was dead, and the prosecutor, Eustace Winner, had escaped, Eddie Fender, the defense attorney, and Franziska von Karma, the prosecutor, did their job, and Verity Gavèlle acted as a judge. The trial was going well until Gavèlle was about to hand down a not guilty verdict, despite having been at the crime scene where Miles confirmed that Fifi committed the crime. Both Franziska and Eddie were confused, and they demanded a break so that Miles could assess the situation. Verity's son, Shaun Fenn, had been kidnapped by Excelsius's underlings, so she had to pass the time until he was rescued.
After Miles went into action, he discovered that the one who was kidnapped was not Shaun, but rather Excelsius's son Eustace, who had an emotional meltdown. He discovered that Excelsius's underlings had accidentally kidnapped Eustace instead of Fenn, and that Fenn was kidnapped by another person.
Gavèlle was about to give a not guilty verdict to Fifi, but after Kay and Gumshoe rescued Shaun, Gavèlle gave Miles the right to prosecute Fifi, and after that, Eustace showed up in the courtroom. He confessed that the "child" who was kidnapped was him and not Fenn. After hearing this, Fifi loudly blamed Excelsius for being confused about which child he was supposed to kidnap, and thus made her worst mistake, which led to her being jailed. Thanks to Eustace finding the evidence Excelsius had thrown away in the dump, his father was sent to jail too.
External Links[]
- Fifi Laguarde on the Ace Attorney Wiki
