The entire room was pitch black, except one single spotlight, illuminating a wooden elevated pulpit. It was deathly silence.
Then, echoing footsteps on marble floors as the judge, wearing in long black robes, took their seat on the high-rising bench in the dark courtroom. They banged their gavel. "This trial begins now," they declared. "The defendant has been accused of a mass case of that most heinous of crimes: murder. Jurors, are you all present?"
Around the room, in the darkness, an answering "Yes" sounded in unison. There were exactly 100 voices.
"Good. And now, the accused. Have we procured the alleged murderer?"
With a loud pow, a second harsh spotlight shone down on the defendant's stand. Inside the wooden box, stood a young woman with long red hair.
The judge looked down on her from on high. "You have been accused of ending the lives of 400 odd humanoid beings in a slaughterous rampage on the planet of Gallifrey on the Terran stardate of November 23rd, 2004. How do you plead?"
The Red Lady looked up at them, squinting in the bright light, and replied. "Guilty."
GLZZRT.
One of the Dalek's death beams struck Darla Woscal in the chest. With a small utterance, the young woman fell to the ground beside her lover, dead immediately.
The Red Lady's head snapped up from where she was taking aim at an enemy Dalek. She gasped in horror at the sight of her lover lying dead beside her. "No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" she cried, tossing her gun aside and taking her body into her arms. "Darla? Darla, love, it's me! DARLA!" The Red Lady pressed her ear to Darla, checking for a heart beat, but was met with only silence. "Darla...oh, God, no, Darla!"
The Red Lady burst into tears, curling her lover's lifeless form close to her. "Darla, please, no. Please don't do this. Please...please..." She wept heartbrokenly for several minutes over her, pressing kisses to her face desperately.
Something was building inside the Red Lady, causing her to shudder. Her entire body began to glow golden yellow, then hot white. The energy building around her crescendoed to a dramatic climax. The Red Lady threw her head back and screamed, "NOOOOOOO!"
The energy burst, blowing up all around her, hitting everything like a tidal wave. The Resistance soldiers, the Dalek numbers, the Gallifreyan civilians hunkered in fear in their homes, all fell down. Anything that was living immediately had the life siphoned from them. The area fell very quiet and very still.
The Red Lady gasped, looking up. She looked at all the destruction around her in horror. She set Darla's body down and ran over to the nearest soldier, checking his pulse. She found nothing. She checked her friend, Percival. He too was dead. She looked around and spotted two of her other friends, Cromwell and Henley, a young married couple, lying dead beside each other, their hands outstretched for each other.
The Red Lady trembled. "H-h-hello?!" she cried out fearfully. She was only answered with silence.
The Red Lady, frantic, ran into the villagers' huts, and to her continued horror, found that they were all dead too. The Red Lady looked down at her shaking hands, which crackled with golden electricity. "Oh, no," she said, sinking to her knees. "What have I done?" The Red Lady began to cry all over again. "What have I done?"
"I plead guilty," said the Red Lady. "I did it. I killed all those people. Now give me my sentence so I can start serving it."
"I can't just 'give you a sentence'," said the judge imperiously. "First we must determine what you are guilty of."
"Murder," said the Red Lady in surprise. "We both just said it."
"But to what degree was it murder? First? Second? Involuntary manslaughter? And to what extent are you responsible for the crime?"
"Completely," said Red disbelievingly. She was starting to get huffy. "I've admitted to the crime, so pass judgment already so I can bypass this damned kangaroo court and start serving my sentence. I'm sure it's several lifetimes, so I'd like to get a jumpstart."
"Do not take these proceedings lightly, young lady," warned the judge. "The Shadow Proclamation takes crime and punishment quite seriously. We shall proceed as tradition."
Red sighed.
"Now, where is the accuser?" the judge asked.
"I'm right here," growled a familiar voice, as a grizzled, grey-haired, human man stepped into the light. He shot the Red Lady a despising glare.
"Hello, Nahue," Red said evenly.
"You don't seem surprised to see me."
"My mistakes have a way of catching up with me."
"Mistakes," Nahue repeated scornfully. "You're a murderer."
"That's what I tried to tell them," Red gestured to the judge.
"Jokes!" spat Nahue angrily. "All you have are jokes. Are the lives of 75 soldiers that you ended a joke too? Or the three hundred innocent Gallifreyans you annihilated?"
"You didn't care so much about those Gallifreyans when you were willing to drop a bomb on them to wipe out the cult of Skaro!" the Red Lady shot back.
"Enough," declared the judge. "This is not a bickering session, this is a court of justice. You will each have a chance to state your cases. You will be jointly interviewed by the court inquisitor, and whoever is addressed will answer truthfully and succinctly. The opposing party will say nothing, apart from "objection" when appropriate. Together, you shall build the events, and the jury will decide if the defendant is guilty. Then, I will give punishment. Are there any questions?"
"Don't I get a lawyer?" Red inquired.
"The purpose of the inquisitor is to carry out an unbiased examination of both accounts. This both protects you and allows us to seek out the truth. And be warned, both plaintiff and defendant, that the inquisitor is empathic and will announce if you are lying or hiding anything. Now...are we ready?"
Red sighed and slumped against the back railing of her defendant's stall. "Let's get this damn case underway."