An AU from "The Penultimate Peril". What if the Baudelaires had gone with Justice Strauss at the end? All characters belong to Daniel Handler, not me. Spoilers for Book the 12th, naturally.
The Law is an Ass
In the novel Oliver Twist, a character exclaims "The law is an ass!" This is not quite as bad as it sounds, since the word "ass" here means a donkey, as an metaphor of something foolish. Due to an unfortunate turn of events, the Baudelaires were about to find this out first hand.
"Climb aboard!" Violet called, giving her knots one last tug.
"No!" cried Justice Strauss. "It's not right to run from the scene of a crime. It's against the law!"
"The law is an ass," said Olaf. "You can burn to a crisp if you want. I'm going! I'm the captain of this boat!" He threw his spatula onto the deck, hitting Klaus and Sunny, and leaped onto the ship, making it teeter wildly edge of the building. Klaus and Sunny were both bleeding from shallow cuts made by the edge of the sharp spatula.
Violet was furious. "You hurt my siblings! I must have been crazy to think we should go with you. We'll take our chances with the law!" She grabbed her siblings and jumped back onto the roof.
The ship overbalanced and went over the edge. Olaf, not knowing the principles of the drag chute, did something wrong. The ship nose-dived and shattered in a spectacular crash.
"Oh my, it's good thing you came back," said Justice Strauss. "You did the right thing."
"We could have made it work, but we would have been in the clutches of that monster," said Violet. "Now I just have to figure out how we're going to get out of this building alive."
"Stairs?" suggested Sunny.
"Smoke inhalation will kill us if the fire doesn't," said Klaus, pointing to the clouds of smoke pouring from the stairwell.
Violet grabbed a slippery tanning mat and ran to the top, lake-side edge.
"Come on!" she said. "The front is starting to tilt at a 45-degree angle now. We can slide down the wall using the mat!"
"Are you sure about this?" said the Justice.
"It's our only chance," said Violet. "Grab at the plants and moss on the way down. We can't get sliding too fast."
The four of them sat on the mat and pushed off. The slippery surface of the mirrored mat made a perfect sled. With all of them grabbing, they managed to keep slow at first, but by the end they were going so fast they slid across the road and splashed down in the pond.
"Whew! We made it," said Klaus, as all of them stood dripping on the shore.
Two grim-faced police officers approached. "Baudelaires? Did you start the fire?"
"Yes, sir, they did," said Justice Strauss. "But they have an explanation. Go ahead, children."
"Signal," said Sunny.
"A signal? You destroyed a hotel and killed who knows how many people for some sort of signal?" asked the officer angrily.
"It was more than that," said Violet hastily. "Count Olaf was going to poison everyone if we didn't force him out of there quickly."
"It was the lesser of two evils," said Klaus.
"Looks plain evil to me," said the other officer. "You'll have to tell it to the Justices."
"That's another thing," said Justice Strauss. "The other two Justices are in league with Olaf. They let him kidnap me! I want to file a complaint."
"She'll do nothing of the sort," said a familiar deep, low voice which made the Baudelaire's hearts sink. "Justice Strauss deserted the trial in mid-session. I called the Ministry and had her declared unfit for office. Arrest her! She's in cahoots with the Baudelaires."
The woman with hair and no beard and the man with a beard and no hair stepped forward. With ample warning and no blindfolds they had easily escaped the fire. The two policemen obeyed them and handcuffed Strauss along with the Baudelaires.
"We already have a replacement for you appointed," said the man with a beard and no hair in his hoarse voice. "An old friend with legal experience on a village council."
The children's hearts sank even further as they saw the third Justice come forward, a woman wearing a crow-shaped hat.
"The Baudelaires are already under sentence by the laws of the Village of Fowl Devotees," said the newcomer. "I say we send them back there and have their punishment carried out immediately."
"Excellent idea," said the woman with hair and no beard. "As for you, Strauss, your inadvertent services as an informant are no longer required. Since you've obviously gone mad, aiding arsonists and accusing respected justices, you'll spend the rest of your life in a straightjacket in a padded cell."
As the Baudelaires and the ex-Justice Strauss were dragged away from each other, Violet called out to Strauss in rage and despair, "The law said this was the right thing to do? The law is an ass!"