| “ | Funny. This isn't the way it was supposed to turn out. Oh well. Too bad. | „ |
| ~ Alita Tiala after being exposed. |
Alita Tiala (in Japanese: 奈美波, Minami Namina) is a minor antagonist in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. She is the culprit of Turnabout Corner and was responsible for the murder of the doctor Pal Meraktis, whom she once worked as a nurse alongside. She was the fiancé of the defendant during the case, Wocky Kitaki, and attempted to cover up her involvement in a failed operation on Wocky to extract a precarious bullet near his heart by silencing the corrupt doctor.
Biography[]
During the operation to remove the bullet from Wocky's chest, Meraktis found difficulty in removing it. Meraktis and Tiala both agreed not to tell the Kitaki family about their failure. They told the family the operation had been successful, while locking the real report inside a safe in Meraktis's office. Shortly after, Tiala proposed to Wocky in order to gain all of his inheritance the moment he died from the wound.
Six months later, however, Wocky was still alive, and a health checkup revealed that the bullet was still in his chest. Enraged, Wocky took a pistol from the family stash and was ready to give Meraktis "a taste of his own medicine." At one point, however, Tiala managed to get the gun away from Wocky and went to see Meraktis herself.
Tiala threatened Meraktis with the pistol, telling him to open the safe and give her the medical report so she could dispose of it. She knew that if the Kitakis saw the report with her name on it, her plan would fail.
Meraktis opened the safe, but then suddenly turned on Tiala, tackling her. She managed to get a shot off, but it missed and impacted the inside of the safe. Meraktis then strangled her with the cord from a lamp on his desk, causing her to black out. In a panic, Meraktis assumed that he had killed Tiala, and prepared to dispose of her "body" by throwing it in a nearby river.
When she awoke, she was in Guy Eldoon's noodle cart, which Meraktis had stolen after his car failed to start. She heard Wocky and Meraktis talking, and realized that Meraktis was about to reveal that she was in on the plot. She quickly grabbed the pistol that was in the cart with her, aimed, and fired, shooting Meraktis in the head and silencing him permanently.
Tiala heard running, then silence. Leaving the pistol in the cart, she got out and made her escape, throwing the clinic slippers she was wearing into the trashcan when she stepped in a mess of paint caused by Meraktis' earlier hit-and-run on Phoenix Wright.
When she heard that Wocky was arrested for Meraktis's murder, she hired rookie attorney Apollo Justice, believing that he would fail miserably and get Wocky convicted.
Desperate to protect herself, Tiala would later break into the Meraktis Clinic again to try to get the Medical Report from the safe. However, Apollo and Trucy Wright heard her and broke into the office, forcing Tiala to flee once again. She then offered herself as a witness in a last-ditch attempt to use her testimony to get Wocky convicted. This failed, however, as Apollo ensured that she was exposed as the real killer, and even prosecutor Klavier Gavin took his side.
Breakdown[]
Unlike most Ace Attorney villains, who have their breakdowns right when they are exposed as the culprits, Alita has the distinction of being the only one to have her breakdown well before her exposure is official. Upon learning that Meraktis had been planning on killing her, she simply throws back her head, clutches it in her hands, closes her eyes tightly, and screams in fright over the knowledge of her barely-avoided death while feathers fly all over the screen. When her crime is fully exposed, however, she simply confesses to everything very calmly.
Personality[]
At the outset of the Turnabout Corner case, Tiala comes across as kind and innocent in her interactions with Apollo and Trucy, as Wocky occasionally calls her an "angel." In spite of this, however, her sweetness is an intentionally false statement. In fact, she was truly greedy, cold, deceitful, and manipulative. She does not care about Wocky, as she refers to him as a "spoiled brat" and purposely keeps the truth about his horrific gunshot wound from him. She is willing to allow him to die so that she can inherit his money, a truly despicable motive.
Trivia[]
- Alita is the first female villain in the Ace Attorney series to be defeated by Apollo.
- Alita's first and last names are anagrams of one another.
