Author's Note: Yello again, readers. Apologies for the delay in the second chapter; I had hoped to get it submitted within a week of the first, but then I ended up adding a whole new scene, which is what you see below, and it became far too long for my liking, and thus, I chose to split it in two. Plus, I had Uni work on my mind on top of that. Hopefully once I've finished my last essay I can get to work on chapter 2-and-a-half right away. But anyway, it's here now, and I hope you enjoy.
Oh, and of course, many thanks to Berserker88 again (for helping me with characterisation when I PM'd him about it), Red Star for comparing my writing with John Grisham (I haven't actually read any of his work, but I'm lead to believe he's very well-regarded, so consider me flattered), and everyone else who has shown interest in the story. I wouldn't keep writing this if it weren't for you blokes and birds. Those are British sayings, by the way. They're perfectly nice, don't worry.
Outfoxed In Court
"So, Mister Finnegan Chamberlain." The words echoed throughout the huge courtroom. "You say that the defendant, Charles Barrah, had, and I quote, 'knocked your ass down and tried to suffocate your ass with a big-ass wastebasket'. Do you feel the need to clarify any part of this statement?"
The well-dressed horse speaking the words stopped and glared intently at the much smaller figure before him in the witness stand, an irritated fennec fox sitting atop a ludicrously tall stool, garbed in a much shabbier suit than anyone else. The tie wasn't even done up properly.
"Hey, come on, man, why you gotta be like that?!" The miniature fox yelled at him in an oddly deep voice. "Y'all makin' me look stupid in front o' the frickin' jury!"
He and the horse were promptly startled by the deafening sound of a wooden Gavel banging against an equally-wooden surface reverberating through the courtroom. "QUIET!" The judge, a female kangaroo, bellowed out.
This sudden double-dosage of noise was unable to faze Sam, who at this moment was sitting atop another stool not unlike the one the fox was on, albeit shorter and mounted atop another huge chair. He looked about the room during the little interval that this judge always created when she began to shout.
The courtroom was colossal, round, covered in drab, dark wood, the floor reflecting everyone's faces up at them with bright, shining granite. To Sam, it seemed like the entire city had been designed from the ground up to remind him of his insignificance in the grand scheme of things, but none more so than this courtroom. Just like the police station, it had to accommodate mammals of all sizes. The folks watching the trial, along with the jury, had the luxury of differently-sized stands for them to get comfortable in. Not so for Sam and his current client, the capybara sat next to him who was, in contrast with the fox, very immaculately dressed. He trembled like no other. He may have been the biggest of all the rodents, but that counted for nothing in a place like this.
"Przewalski, if you please." The judge continued in a much more level but no less serious tone once it looked like everyone had settled down from the shock of the noise.
Przewalski adjusted his tie in a rather over-the-top and very visible manner, like he was trying to do an impression of Sam's own tie-adjusting, swivelling his long face towards the fox. "I'm afraid you must answer the question, Mister Chamberlain."
Sam had a little trouble seeing the witness from where he was seated, but he could at least make out his uncaring slouched and folded arms. "Alright, fine. Yeah, he did try to suffocate my ass with that thing. Oh, an' stop callin' me 'Mister Chamberlain'. The name's Finnick, a'ight?"
"…Right." The horse answered, holding out a hoof to the jury. "Could you describe the events that took place to the jury?"
Finnick fidgeted in his oversized seat. "'Kay. So, I walked into his tailor's place or whatever, 'cause I needed him to fix me up a new elephant suit, and then he comes over an' tells me he ain't servin' me anymore! So I ask him why he's gotta go all un-civil on a frickin' payin' customer like that. So what 'e tell me? He only goes an' says I been usin' his work to rip off joints all over town! Now, I dunno 'bout'chu fools…"
He waved a paw at the jury himself, barely visible from his relatively isolated spot. "…But I don't take threats to my goddamn cred lightly. So I started yellin' at him, an' I admit, I mighta been a bit of an ass, but then he just up an' started screamin', an' he hit my tiny ass in the frickin' face with a steel trash basket! An' then 'e trapped my ass under there somehow, an' I couldn't frickin' breathe or see anythin'! Pretty soon my lights were right out, an' I woke up in hospital."
Sam surveyed his every word as he gazed upon the witness, thinking. He could already tell that this fellow had something of a bad temper; a complex relating to his small size, perhaps. It was a bit underhanded, but he reckoned that he'd need to defuse any sympathy he might hold over the jury right now. He was a fox from the inner city, and while there was a time that they probably would have ignored him solely because of that, Bellwether's scheme putting up a mirror to all the discrimination going on in the city would probably have made them much more receptive; possibly even more so than the middle-class Prey that was his client. Just the way things should be; he'd have to get them to recognise untrustworthiness through a test of character alone.
Sam stood up, speaking into the microphone attached to the collar of his shirt. "Your honour, I'd like to ask Mister Chamberlain a few questions, if I may."
"I just told y'all, it's FINNICK! Stupid-ass lawyers…" An irritated Finnick felt the need to blurt out, making Sam smile a little. It was working already.
"Ahem…" The judge loudly cleared her throat, resting her head upon her wrists as she glanced over at Sam in deliberation. It was only from this angle that Sam could see, under her well-kept short hair, an eyepatch covering her right eye. "You may."
Sam glanced over at Prosecutor Przewalski, adjusting his own tie as if to show him how it's done, before looking at Finnick. "Thank you, your honour. First of all, Mister Ch- 'Finnick'" He quickly corrected himself, if only to remind the jury that the witness dished out consequences for something so trivial as a term of address. "…You keep saying 'your ass' was knocked down, suffocated, et cetera. But I don't see any donkeys among the witnesses or victims of this crime, let alone donkeys small enough to fit underneath Exhibit A."
Sam pointed over at the table in front of the judge's stand, directing everyone's gaze towards it. The object on the table, Exhibit A, was a steel wastebasket turned upside-down, big enough to fit three Finnicks inside, with a series of dents on the outside. On top of that was a thick book used to weigh it down.
"Objection, your hon-" Przewalski attempted to put a stop to Sam's (admittedly deliberately irritating) opening questions with a surprisingly quiet voice. It was no wonder, then, that he couldn't even finish his sentence before it was cut off by the much louder tone of the creature far too small to be that loud.
"Oh, I see how it is!" Finnick belted out, standing up on his stool, as if it'd make him look bigger. "…Y'all tryin' to feed me one o' them Chewie Bear defences, or whatever the hell they're called! Tryin' to mess with my brain! Y'all know what I mean when I said 'my ass!' I mean ME!" Finnick pointed to himself with both paws. "My ass is ME! Guess I shoulda seen this comin' from the defender o' that Bellwether bitch."
The entire courtroom gasped. Murmurs filled the air, but Sam didn't really hear any of it.
His eyes had widened considerably at that literal eye-opener of a line. His whiskers even twitched slightly. He had to mentally check himself just then so he wouldn't start trembling like he had been back at the police station.
One thought raced through his mind at that moment, to the exclusion of anything else. How did he know? How did anyone know? lawyers aren't celebrities, or at least not the ones who actually do a lot of lawyering instead of posing for reality TV shows. It was in that moment that he felt that rarest feeling for a cat of his position; of vulnerability. Surrounded on all sides by creatures he could see were beginning to glare intently at him…
He scrunched his eyes up as he forced his mind to reboot, like a kick to a stubborn computer. This was not the time to be worrying about this, he knew. He had someone to be defending, and he made sure that Finnick's own attempt at shocking him down would be repaid in full.
His focus was brought back to speed by the judge's banging of the gavel to bring all the murmuring to a close. Sam looked Finnick straight in the eyes before casting an aside glance to the judge, and said:
"…Your honour, permission to treat the witness as more hostile than before?"
Finnick's own eyes widened and he began to wave his paws in front of his face. "N-n-n-no wait, I want y'all to, uh…"
Finnick squinted his eyes, attempting to look at something without drawing too much attention to himself, apparently. That something being Przewalski, looking back at him while miming a line of writing getting scribbled out.
"…Scribble out what I just said. Forget about it."
The judge sighed to herself quite loudly, resting the side of her face on her fist. "You mean, you want it stricken from the record?"
"Uh, yeah. That." Finnick said, scratching behind one of his big ears.
"Overruled." The judge said with a degree of force that would be surprising from someone who isn't shouting. She turned to address the horse before her, who had made sure to hide his hooves in case he caught himself miming at the wrong time.
"Przewalski, don't think I can't see you playing charades over there. I believe you were supposed to have told the witness about all of this before the trial, precisely so you won't make an arse of yourself."
Przewalski looked back at her and rubbed his hooves together.
"But I'm a horse, your honour."
It was at this point that Sam really wished they had echo-proofed these rooms. A good two-thirds of the court burst into hysterical laughter at Przewalski's hi-larious quip. Sam did smile a little, he got the joke, but it wasn't that funny. It certainly wasn't worth a contempt of court charge from this judge, of all Judges. Sam even noticed that the prosecutor was starting to look a bit smug, drinking in all of the laughter like he was the lead actor in a pantomime. Poor bastard, he thought.
Sam hadn't actually gotten a chance to meet the young stallion before the trial, but at the moment, it seemed like he thought he could win over a jury with well-timed quips alone. Too many movies, probably. In any case, Sam knew what the next step would be.
"ORDER!" The judge bellowed out, slamming her gavel onto the stand five times. That painfully deafening clang sound was mercifully enough to get everyone to shut up.
"…So apparently I'm at the mercy of a courtroom full of dozy drongos!" She yelled at the audience, before suddenly and unexpectedly turning to face Sam. "That includes you, Burmowitz, but for the sake of not wasting any more bloody time, I'll grant you your permission." She then quickly swivelled round to face the prosecutor. "Przewalski, you better watch it if you don't want to get slapped with contempt o' bloody court!"
Przewalski cast his eyes at the ground and mumbled something under his breath, clearly regretting his movie tactics. This was a good sight to Sam. It meant he was learning something.
"Thank you, your honour." Sam said with sincerity, once again turning to address the fennec witness. "So, Finnick… having confirmed that it was you and not a hypothetical donkey accomplice, might I ask what exactly provoked my client into violence against you?"
Finnick folded his arms again, looking over at the still-trembling capybara in the dock. "Well… I dunno, I mean, sure, I called 'im a dirty little son of a bitch, an' I mighta ran at him, but I was only tryin' to piss him off! I weren't plannin' on attackin' him!" Finnick began to gesture wildly to accompany this raise in volume. "A-an' o' course when I got stuck under that trash can, I tried punchin' my way out! Who wouldn't?!"
Sam stood up and leaned forward on what would, for a bigger creature, be a simple desktop, but for him was a raised catwalk. "…But you made a move towards him that could have made it seem like you were about to attack him, yes? Did you have your claws out, at all?"
"Objection!" Przewalski raised his hand like an angry schoolboy, making a conscious effort to be louder after he botched his last objection.
"Yes, Przewalski?" The judge practically sighed out.
"Our vulpine witness is not on trial!" He shouted in response, slapping one hoof over the other.
Sam rolled his head about in an odd hybrid of shaking and nodding, for he was both relieved and quite dumbfounded at the prosecutor's objection. Not the 'witness is not on trial part', but the fact that he felt the need to point out how vulpine the witness is. It's almost like he was playing the fox card. Perhaps he was more savvy and pragmatic than Sam had taken him for, although it was the sort of savvy pragmatism that left a bad taste in his mouth. A taste he would have to spit out, which he knew would work to his advantage. Hence the 'relief' side of the equation.
"I object to that objection!"
"Wait, what?!" The judge found herself shaking her head between the two lawyers in disbelief. "Why?!"
"Prosecutor Przewalski is being Prejudicial by highlighting the witness' species, implicitly drawing a comparison between it and the species of my client." Sam clasped his paws and turned to address the jury. "Vulpine or not, Predator or not, I'm sure the ladies and gentlemammals of the jury would agree that the prospect of being attacked with claws is no laughing matter."
"I object to the objection of my objection!" Przewalski butted in barely after Sam had finished his last breath, dramatically pointing in the air. "Finnick is still not the one on trial! And now he's assuming facts that are not in evidence!"
In response to this, the judge could only clutch her face in one paw and start aimlessly banging her gavel with the other. "Alright, just shut the bloody hell up, both of you! All objections overruled!"
Sam managed to brush off the following burst of gavel clangs as he looked expectantly back at Finnick and smiled a little, the judge having been disoriented enough by that flurry of counter-objections that she seemed to have, without realising it, allowed him to go ahead with his earlier question.
"So, Finnick. The question. Please answer it."
"A'ight, cat. Calm y'whiskers or whatever." Finnick replied. "Yeah, I mighta had my claws out. So what? My momma always taught me that us foxes have gotta take advantage o' every natural resource at our disposal when we're in danger, even if we ain't. Y'all always gotta be ready."
"So you don't deny having your claws out?" Sam leaned forward even further with his question.
"No, I damn well don't!"
"I see." Sam turned his head at the judge. "No further questions for the witness, your honour."
"Noted. What about you, Przewalski?"
Sam looked over at his opponent. The horse seemed to have frozen in place with one hoof-finger raised, and though his face was relatively featureless with confidence, Sam could see his eyes darting around the room, the one flaw that gave the game away.
Suddenly, the horse's stance seemed to droop and he began to frown in resignation. "…Nothing more, your honour."
"Then you may leave the stand, Mister Chamberlain."
'Mister Chamberlain' stood up on the stool and, for just a brief nanosecond, twisted his face into a violent snarl while pointing a claw up at the judge. Fortunately for him, the judge didn't seem to notice this considerable lapse in Finnick's own judgement, and he soon corrected himself back to normal once he remembered the reality of the situation; or rather, the reality as far as Sam was concerned. He wasn't a victim, he was an instigator. He promptly disappeared down the regulation ladder on the side of his stool, soon swallowed up by the enormous wooden facade of the stands.
Sam adjusted his tie yet again. Both the prime witness and the prosecutor had been disarmed of their confidence in their own case, he could see. This was the perfect opportunity to strike.
"Your honour, if I may, I would like to take this opportunity to call in Exhibit B." He said to the judge.
The judge, meanwhile, had gone back to resting her head on a paw, having apparently been disarmed of her ability to remain invested in anything the two lawyers had to say. Of course, Sam knew this judge, and as he momentarily checked his watch, he noticed it was almost lunchtime. He knew that if he could slip this last flourish in before then…
"…You may. Call exhibit B." The judge said. This was duly followed by a hippo in uniform at the back of the courtroom walking on with a big stack of papers. The hippo walked up to the jury and began handing out the sheets; or rather, he gave individual sheets to the bigger creatures, settling for mounting other sheets on provided stands for the smaller ones.
Sam wasn't paying much attention to that, however, as he was focusing too much on his opponent, who looked like he was exerting a considerable degree of strength just to stay standing, his equine lips pursed shut with anticipation, his eyes darting about the room again.
Finally, the hippo walked into Sam's line of sight, blocking the view of his opponent, as he handed another sheet to the judge. Sam took a good ten seconds to wait for everyone to start reading through the paper as he climbed up onto the desk-the-size-of-a-catwalk. Holding a cat-sized pen in his paw like a sceptre, he began to pace up and down as he began his accompanying speech.
"This, ladies and gentlemammals, is a psychological report on my client, as conducted by the Bushveld University Access Centre at my request by the esteemed Professor Gnu. You'll see it confirms that my client has a noted history of experiencing panic attacks when he perceives himself to be in danger. The Professor also recorded an interview with my client. As you can see from the transcript, Mister Barrah made it clear that he, having heard the news reports of the creation of a recreational market of the infamous night howler, gained a fleeting suspicion that the witness was under its effects once he saw claws pointed threateningly in his direction."
Sam paused for a moment to fix his gaze upon the jury, who were beginning to get slightly restless and murmur-happy after he had brought up night howler. It had only been a few months since the… no, better not think about that, he thought. Everything was going perfectly.
Sam continued pacing. "…Consciously, he knew that this couldn't be the case, as Finnick did not exhibit the characteristic eye discolouration associated with night howler use. But his subconscious overpowered him and he lashed out in what he perceived to be self-defence. The symptoms described all match the characteristics of a panic attack."
Sam stopped pacing once again; and briefly thinking of his friend and business partner Runne, he was a little tempted at this point to spin his pen around like it was a martial arts staff as a final flourish to his defence, but he decided against it. Partly because he thought it'd set a bad example for the poor bastard that was his opponent, but mostly because he had just noticed Finnick, who had been small enough to slip by his notice as he left the witness stand earlier and was now sat upon another stool on the benches across the central walkway from him. Finnick briefly glanced back at him, his eyes half-lidded and his small mouth even more pursed than Przewalski's.
"…This is most interesting." The judge eventually spoke, sounding like she was very absorbed indeed in the contents of the report. The truth of the matter, Sam had figured, was that she had glazed over it because she already knew what it said, as evidence like that always has to be disclosed in advance. Her sounding absorbed was just an act for the jury.
"Do you have anything to add, Mister Barrah?" She said, audibly placing her paper down and staring at Sam's client, who up until this point had gone relatively unnoticed. Sam, too, looked over at the capybara, as did everyone else. It certainly didn't seem to help his trembling problems, but like he was trying to vomit, the giant rodent soon forced some words out of his mouth.
"Uh… yeah, it's true." He began to speak in a raspy voice. "…I've had panic attacks ever since I was a pinky. I knew that Mister Finnick didn't mean to hurt me, but… I couldn't help myself. I felt like I needed to do something, or else he would rip me apart. It had nothing to do with his species; I had served him many times before, and I can name at least five regular customers of mine who are foxes! I didn't want to serve him because I had heard rumours he was using my work to partake in, uh… dishonest ventures, but it was only a hunch."
The judge leaned forward. "Mister Barrah, you are aware that dressing up as another species is not a crime?"
"I know, your honour!" Charles Barrah yelped out like he had been pinched on his toe claw. "But I never would have attacked him just for that! Once I had calmed down, he had already fainted and I could see he hadn't taken any night howler. I took him to hospital right away. You have to understand, I would never try to kill another mammal!"
By this point, Charles had clasped his paws directly in front of his face, as if he was praying to the kangaroo that, even though she was small for the courtroom, seemed to project a colossal size across everyone, but especially him.
Sam looked over at the jury; they had definitely gotten quieter than before, and less fidgety. A few of them were beginning to look at his client with wide eyes, a fair number seemed to be looking down at the floor, and a couple at the back had turned away in disgust at such blatant pity-farming. Of course, Sam had never planned for such pity-farming to come into play. He would have preferred it if he didn't have to do it, but, it always amazed him after all this time how malleable the law really was. As he looked back at the judge, he scratched behind his ear, thinking of how far he'd come since those days when he thought that mammals could just empty out all their emotions when they entered court. He smiled to himself, in an ironic sort of way. Those were fun times. Happier times.
"I see. Burmowitz, is that all?"
Sam came back to his senses just in time to catch the last part of that. He didn't have to think much about what to do next. The ending flourish to a defence, while not something they spoke about in law school, was like a mark of each lawyer's individuality, he knew. You could tell a lot about a lawyer from how they closed their statements. Thus, Sam had drilled the blandest, least remarkable ending flourish into him, so that nobody could read him. It was the feline way.
"It is, your honour. The defence rests." He said, plainly, nodding equally plainly before clambering back into his seat.
Unfortunately for him, things were going to be a little different for him today. While his defence was now resting, with it, the mental block his professionalism had installed also began to rest. Like a dam breaking in his mind, it all came flooding back.
Bellwether. They knew about he was going to defend her. He was going to be on the news, no doubt. He would be name-dropped in the routines of hack comedians who think they're being topical. The newspapers would read 'PREDATOR DEFENDS MAMMAL WHO WOULD HAVE HIM WEAR A MUZZLE'. But even without all of this, he would go down in history as a wide-eyed fool who tried to repeat the very same mistake he had made with Will Schnellshog. Or worse, he would succeed…
Sam subtly slapped himself on the forehead to empty out this flood of irrational paranoias, hoping that whatever it was that was happening in the trial now was too exciting for anyone to notice it. But then he saw something at the very corner of his eye. Bellwether. Standing there in her prison garb, right next to the judge, smirking.
His gaze darted over to her immediately, but it was only then he noticed that she was never there at all. Just an empty space next to the big kangaroo. He balled his paw up into a fist and began to squeeze it against his head. Was he seeing things now?
Sam tried to look straight ahead of him, at the dark wooden wall of the courtroom. He had already thought about all of this. He had thought about it thousands of times. He had considered it carefully. He had counted sheep at night to make him stop thinking about… sheep.
He looked back up again, and it seemed that Prosecutor Przewalski had noticed his anguish. The horse wasn't saying anything, he just stood there with his arms folded and his eyes narrowed in his direction, a smile slowly forming on his long face. Telepathy may have been a load of crap, but Sam could practically sense what the horse was trying to tell him.
'Keep counting sheep, and yourself among them. That's all you'll ever be, Samuel Dee Burmowitz. A sheep. A gullible, undersized sheep.'
But that voice in Sam's head wasn't his. It was hers.
