That catches him off guard, and it shows in his face, his calm poker face pierced for a moment with widened eyes and a slackened jaw. That statement has driven straight through any armor he has.

He remembers when he said something very similar to his old friend. I want to save people. That's why he went into defense in the first place. Don't be ridiculous. We're lawyers, not superheroes. We're not in the business of saving people, Edgeworth had said, and he'd been right in a sense. Attorneys and prosecutors are in the business of finding the truth and directing the sword of the state in the right direction, no more and no less.

Phoenix clears his throat, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck. But isn't the business of finding truth also the business of saving people? So many times he's pulled an innocent person from the fire and pushed the guilty person in. Not easy, given how the system is tipped in favor of prosecution. If he'd never taken their cases, a lot of innocent people would be dead now, mostly at the hands of the state.

Even so, hearing someone who's clearly been through so much say so plainly that maybe that's enough to save the world... it hits somewhere old and thought forgotten in him, that wide-eyed college boy who was rescued by a rookie attorney and diverted the whole course of his life to do the same for someone else.

He clears his throat again, gathering his composure before slipping his calm face back on again. "Well, we can only hope."

Because he'd really rather not try to save a world by killing people. Frankly, he's not sure he has it in him to kill someone, even in the context of battle.

"Are you a soldier?" he asks Sunny, because it certainly seems like he might have made a profession of it if he'd been in multiple wars.