Aaaand I'm back. Thank you to everyone who commented while this was on hiatus! There are a few too many to really address here, though. ':D

There is one thing I want to say, though: The trial is not supposed to be a perfect recreation of the American justice system. They put together their rules in, like, a month, tops. Libra tries to be fair, but they have no external oversight, so they miss the mark a lot of the time. It's flawed, just like everything else in the GZ.

... At least, that's the Watsonian explanation. From a Doylist perspective, I've got things I want to do narratively that I couldn't with a 'perfectly fair' trial, and I am not a lawyer of any kind. Please be kind! I don't mind if you want to point out differences between this and a real trial (analysis like that is fun!), but I have created in-story reasons for those differences. Please don't assume that it's a mistake.

Happy reading!

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Chapter 224: Charges (Modified)

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"Thank you for coming," said Themis. "Would you still like me to call you Danny, outside of the trial?"

"Yes, please, your honor."

Themis' office was a mix of 'fancy executive,' 'ancient Greek,' and 'luxurious black and white movie.' There was a desk, chairs of varying apparent comfort levels, and a bookshelf, but there were also pillars, bas-reliefs, and a sort of long reclining couch. Everything was in greyscale, which was somewhat disorienting.

"Alright. Please, make yourselves comfortable. Sit down." She put her papers (covered in braille) to one side and steepled her hands. Then she tilted her head at Clockwork. "Lord Clockwork, can I ask what is in the box?"

"No," said Clockwork, pleasantly. "It is not relevant to this discussion. Please continue, Lady Themis."

Themis seemed to regard Clockwork for another few seconds, before resettling herself more firmly in Danny's direction.

"You read the rules for this trial," said Themis. "You know that what is said here in my chambers will not be used to sway the jury. However, as the Judge presiding over this trial, I need to know if the charges the defendants are facing are correct and relevant."

Danny nodded. "I understand, your honor," he said quietly. "But it really isn't their fault. They didn't know what they were doing."

"That is for the jury to determine. Danny, did they build something else that broke a Taboo?"

"Yes," said Danny, because there wasn't much point in lying about it now. His reaction at the trial showed everyone the truth.

"Which one?"

"I—" Danny faltered. "Is it really important?"

"I'm afraid so."

Danny glanced at Hemlock. "Do I have to answer?"

"I would prefer to get the information this way," said Themis before Hemlock could answer, "instead of re-tasking junior associates to interrogating your classmates and trying to piece things together that way. I don't want to have to rely on human interpretations of events."

It suddenly struck Danny that she didn't have to rely on human interpretations, even if he didn't answer, even if Clockwork refused to answer. The wisps had been there. They had seen everything. Heck, they had warned Tucker about the ring.

He hunched down in his chair.

"I could explain," offered Clockwork.

"I would like to hear from Danny first, if possible."

"Third," said Danny, finally. "The third Taboo. Sacrilege."

"More specifically?" prompted Themis.

Danny shook his head. "I'm sorry, I can't."

"I understand. Well. There are a lot of things that fall under the Sacrilege banner. Legislative creep, you understand, to provide justification for Acts of Murder. I do hope that once you are ready to take up some of your more temporal duties as Prince that you will make clearing that up one of your priorities. Due to the variety of offenses, for the moment I will rule that the generic 'violation of Taboo' charge will remain in place."

Danny sagged in relief. "Thank you," he said.

"Don't thank me yet. Lord Clockwork, I would like a word with you. The rest of you may go."

"There's actually something else I need to talk to you about, your honor," said Danny.

"Oh?"

"Vortex and Undergrowth. I understand that, in order to get them off of the Council of Ancients, I need the approval of a Judge."

Themis nodded in approval. "It is good that you're being proactive about this. Who do you mean to appoint to replace them?"

"Frostbite and Sojourn," said Danny.

"Sojourn is sticking around this time, then?" asked Themis. "Well, you certainly have my agreement. I will send you a copy of my official proclamation of agreement as soon as possible. Technically speaking, you don't need it, but it is good to have physical copies of such things for the purposes of record keeping. Now, I'm afraid I really do need to speak to Clockwork."

"Grandfather—"

"Don't worry, Daniel. Everything will be quite alright." Clockwork passed him the box. "Take care of your siblings."

As he left the office, he heard Themis ask, incredulously, "Siblings?"

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"Mr. Plasmius," greeted Foxglove. "How are you?"

"Well enough. Certain affairs in the physical world have become… complicated. The GIW, you understand."

The advocate's eyes went cold. "Oh? Is it perhaps something I can help with? I have contacts, and we are all… disturbed by recent events regarding the Core and the actions of those particular humans."

"Actually, you can. I have the location of their main base. It is heavily defended, as one might imagine, but I am sure there are many ghosts who would take such a risk to exact justice upon those who would seek to destroy the very fabric of reality. If you could help me distribute the information, I would be in your debt."

"Nonsense," said Foxglove. "The act is its own reward."

"In this case, it may very well be. But on to business. How is the trial progressing?"

"Well, there have been a few interesting developments," said Foxglove. "Apparently, the 'Mortifier' was not the only Taboo-breaking tool the defendants constructed. We don't have any more information about that right now, but I believe we may be able to use this to implicate Jack more than Maddie, if we play our cards right."

"Oh? Do tell."

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"You don't have to wait here with us, man," said Tucker. "You can go do something else. Like, I'm sure Mikey's hyping himself up for another superpower lesson. Or work on, you know, the box."

"No," said Danny. "I want to stay here." Here being the waiting room for witnesses. He really could go. He'd been sent a note that said the other advocates had waived their right to question him, for the moment. He wasn't needed.

But he wanted to stay with his friends. Honestly, he was a little worried he was developing some kind of complex. What did Jazz call it? Co-dependence? Eh. He probably wasn't at that point, yet, and if he was, it was probably normal ghost stuff. He'd ask her when she came out.

"You guys talked to your parents, right?"

"Yeah?" said Sam.

"What do they think about all this?"

"Dad's in shock, I think," said Sam. "We had a couple heart-to-hearts, but most of the time he's just wondering out loud if 'all this' is why I'm goth."

"But you've been goth since middle school," objected Danny.

"Yeah. Dad doesn't always have a good sense of when things happened with relation to other things. Oh, the other day it finally really hit him that you're Phantom, even though it was one of the first things we talked about when he got here, and he had a bit of an existential crisis. He might track you down to give you the 'Dad talk,' by the way."

"The-? Wait. You mean the dating talk? The 'don't hurt my daughter or I'll come after you with a shotgun' talk?"

"Yeah, that'd be the one."

"Why? We're not dating!"

Tucker snickered. Danny resisted the urge to throw a glob of ectoplasm at him. All three of them were dressed up for court. Danny didn't want to ruin that over pique.

"Yeah, but apparently you having superpowers and being half-dead tips the scale."

"Does he know that you have superpowers now, too? And so does Tucker?"

"Oh, no," said Tucker, sounding scared. "No. I'm not being dragged into the 'Dad talk.' I'm not the one playing the fake-out make-out game."

"Do you want to?" asked Danny.

"Uh, what?" said Sam and Tucker at the same time.

"If it'll save me from the 'Dad talk,' I'm more than willing to kiss you in public, Tucker."

"… Pass," said Tucker. "For now, anyway."

"Fair," said Danny.

"Coward," said Sam.

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"We would like to establish something with regard to the lesser charges," said Astraea. "In an average day in Amity Park, how much time did your parents spend with you?"

"A normal amount?"

"Please, Miss Fenton. I'm sure you can at least estimate."

"An hour, maybe."

"How often, over the course of an average week, would you not see them all day?"

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"Starting from what age did your parents let you into their lab, which was dangerous enough to cause your brother's death?"

"I… I'm not sure. I don't even remember the first time I went down there… I think they had Danny in the baby carrier with them, since they couldn't leave him upstairs."

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"Miss Fenton," started Wolfsbane. "Would you say your parents love you and your brother?"

"Of course, they do!"

"Have they ever knowingly hurt you or your brother?"

"No."

"To the best of your knowledge, have either of them ever purposefully inflicted a serious injury on another human being?"

"No."

"In the course of their ghost hunting, have they ever seriously harmed another human being, not including your brother or Vlad Masters-Plasmius?"

"Not to the best of my knowledge," said Jazz.

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"Well," said Jazz, scowling at Vlad's advocate. "I wouldn't say that Mom and Dad's beliefs or findings were accurate, but—"

"No buts, Miss Fenton. Please limit yourself to answering the questions."

"Objection, your honor," piped up Ivy. "We would like to hear what she has to say."

"Granted. Please continue Miss Fenton."

"But they were the foremost human researchers in the field. Almost the only legitimate researchers, outside of the GIW, and everyone here knows what they're like. You wouldn't track down J.J. Thompson and take him to task over the plum pudding model, would you? They did the best they could with the information they had on hand."

Jazz glanced at the jury, then over Foxglove's shoulder at her parents. The jury looked intrigued. Jack and Maddie, hopeful.

"But, even so, they ignored evidence that was directly in front of them, didn't they?"

"You'll have to be more specific," said Jazz.

"Phantom's acts," said Foxglove. "Why didn't they take his good deeds into account?"

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Not consistent, from their point of view. If you guys did anything like a decent job of interrogating Danny, it would have come out that he's been framed or mind-controlled into a bunch of sketchy situations. And there haven't been a lot of other ghosts jumping at the opportunity to prove Mom and Dad wrong. I mean, your client could have—"

"That's sufficient, Miss Fenton," interrupted Foxglove.

"Objection," said Nettle. She and Ivy were taking turns. "Your honor, I want to see where this goes."

"Granted," said Themis.

"Your client could have proved half of their theories wrong at any time, at relatively little risk to himself. But he chose not to. I think you and Vlad can get off your high horse and—"

"Objection!" This time it was Foxglove. "Miss Fenton's value judgements concerning my client are not relevant!"

"Granted," said Themis.

She looked tired.

"Save it for the custody hearing," Themis continued.

Foxglove didn't quite blanch. Jazz beamed.

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"Is anyone else confused?" asked Connie. "Or is it just me?" She poked at her sandwich, which she didn't trust. She might not live particularly close to the Fentons, but she knew all about their 'Traditional Fenton Family Thanksgiving Throwdown,' and the tendency of ectoplasm to bring foodstuffs to life. True, nothing of the sort had happened with any of the other food served to Connie, with the exception of the things the Lunch Lady had animated during the first jury meeting, but Connie didn't know how long that would last.

The jury was out for lunch break, in deference to its human members.

"Just eat it," said Tristan around his sandwich. "It's just a sandwich. It's not going to hurt you."

"No, I mean… This trial. All of them seem to be making the same points. At least about the gun. The prosecution and the defense, not to mention all the others."

"Not particularly," said the Dairy King, who had stolen the cheese from all the extra sandwiches, much to the exasperation of the Lunch Lady. "You see, they've all accepted that the Fentons, Jack and Maddie, did force Danny to relive his death, doncha know? Now they're trying to put a spin on it, so it'll spin their way. The prosecution wants to make it look malicious; the defense wants to make it look like it was an action taken largely out of ignorance. The others have their own agendas. Like Plasmius." The Dairy King's eyes became hooded. "I do dislike that man. He chased me out of my own haunt, doncha know? My own descendant!"

All the jurors turned to stare at the diminutive cheese-eating ghost.

"WHAT?"

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"Can we just declare them guilty on the child neglect already?" asked Tristan as they waited to be called back in. "The ghost law stuff is still a little opaque to me, but the rest seems pretty clear-cut. Maybe a bit on the child endangerment, too, considering they brought that thing into a school of all places."

"It wasn't supposed to hurt humans, though," said Connie.

"That's not the only thing they brought, though," said Eric Marsh. "And they've broken a lot of things in town… Even though no one's gotten badly hurt, not like with the GIW."

"Do you think Libra will have a hearing for the girl's custody, too?" asked Ryu. "I don't know exactly how much elder siblings are supposed to have to do with the rearing of their younger counterparts in this day and age, but that seemed somewhat extreme."

"It is," said Mrs. Ormolu. "Especially since Miss Fenton is less than two years older than her brother."

"These kids have been through so much," said Mrs. Holiday with a sigh.

"This isn't about them," said Lacuna, harshly. "What we must focus on is whether or not the defendants are guilty of the crimes they stand accused of, and we cannot properly assess that until we have all the evidence, so this chatter is pointless."

"What Lacuna means to say, is that she would like us to be quiet," said Mrs. Ormolu, pleasantly. "In any case, we have a lot to think about."