A/N: This chapter is going up early as I will be away from my computer on Sunday. I will possibly be able to reply to any comments tomorrow; failing that, I will be able to do so at some point next week.

Antonius felt an odd roteness about Dr. Baer's objection. He knew it would be shot down, the judges knew it would be shot down, she knew it would be shot down, and yet, she still went through the motions and insisted that the tribunal did not have the authority to try them. It was exhausting to listen to, and it was only the second day of proceedings. How would he handle a hundred more, or two hundred?

Finally, it ended. Judge Sanchez politely shut her down.

"I will now call upon the defendants to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against them. They will proceed in turn to the microphone standing in front of the dock."

One by one, all of them rose to plead 'not guilty'. Antonius watched his co-defendants go. Shaw had cautioned him that drawing unnecessary attention would not end well, so he could only wince at some of the more colourful phrases they used.

"Not guilty in the sense of the indictment."

"In what sense, then, is he guilty?" Grass hissed quietly. The unspoken 'what an idiot!' was evident in her voice.

"Before Panem and the world, I declare myself not guilty."

"I answer this question negatively."

"Is this a courthouse or a circus?" Grass was whispering quietly enough for only the guard behind her to be able to hear.

Talvian said that she was "absolutely not" guilty, and then it was Antonius' turn to clamber over the others to reach the microphone. As it was being adjusted to fit his height, he looked up and was struck for the first time by how many people there were in the courtroom. And they were all watching him.

The cameras were pointed at him, and he could see that the journalists were practically falling over in their curiosity. The thirteen judges seemed to be staring down at him, and the courtroom suddenly felt horribly crammed. Antonius felt his hands start to sweat.

"Defendant, state your name."

"Antonius Chaterhan," he said in a calm voice.

"Are you represented by counsel?"

"Yes."

"Has the indictment been served to you more than thirty days ago?"

"Yes."

"Are you familiar with the charges and specifications, and have you read them?"

Even if he had not, the prosecution had just spent an entire day reading the document out loud. "Yes."

"Are you ready to plead?"

"Yes."

"How do you plead to this indictment, guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty."

And that was all. He sat back down, and Blues went up next, quietly muttering her replies. The process dragged on horribly, Sanchez asking everyone the same questions over and over in the same monotone. Finally, Slice sat down after having pled 'not guilty'.

"The Tribunal is now ready to hear the opening statement from the prosecution."

Mary took a deep breath and closed her folder. The papers were covered with Joe's notations, with a large sticky note on top saying 'HANDS LIKE FEATHERS'. Holding the folder in her hands, she stood up from the table. All eyes were on her. This was not Mary's first time in the limelight, and neither was it her first time prosecuting an important case, but the two had never intersected before.

It took effort not to smile. Dad often said that she could have been a performer. But was not a prosecutor also a performer of some sort? She paused at the lectern, taking stock of everyone's moods. The more experienced judges were completely inscrutable, the less experienced ones were obviously nervous. The audience was nearly shaking with anticipation, waiting to see what she would say, as were the correspondents and MP's. As for the defendants, they were wearing masks of apathy, but Mary could tell that they were anxious.

Good. They were not here to be happy.

Mary opened her folder. Her professors had always said that she could turn a phrase. Everyone had always wanted to be on her debate team, and professors had spent hours critiquing her writings, claiming to see great potential in them. Despite being rather mediocre at mock trials, her speeches had always been held up as the best. But would this be enough? Mary put all extraneous thoughts out of her head as she glanced down at her notes before looking directly at the defendants.

"The privilege of opening this trial," she began, "is a great burden. No words can do justice to the past seventy-five years. The defendants stand accused of crimes so atrocious, no poet's pen can describe them in all of their horrific details..."

Thumeka listened open-mouthed as the prosecutor started to speak. It was hard to believe that the handsome middle-aged woman was from Thirteen. She had never thought that out of that fortress city, a skilled public speaker could arise.

If she was shocked, the defendants were horrified. Lee resembled a sad lump. Blues looked depressed. Chaterhan appeared to be indignant. Grass was nodding thoughtfully, but the speed at which she was taking notes betrayed her anxiety. Thumeka jotted down notes as well. The speech would be airing live all over Panem and probably all over the world as well, but nobody was as close as the defendants as the correspondents and journalists.

"For three-quarters of a century, twenty-three children were murdered on live television every single year. An entire industry sprung up around this pageant of death."

Thumeka had lived her entire life knowing that children were publicly murdered in Panem, but it still seemed strange to her. She listened to Irons describe the founding of the Hunger Games. Most of the information was not new to her, but many of her fellow press representatives were shocked to learn that after the end of the civil war, the leaders of the various rebel fractions had been forced to sign the peace treaty literally at gunpoint.

Irons called for restraint and due process with convincing words - but was she just using it as a fig leaf? The horrific history lesson she was narrating surely did not make one want justice over vengeance. But no, she was addressing that point now.

"It has been said that a house united against itself cannot stand. The house that is Panem now stands united within itself as never before, and for the nation to stand together, having thrown off the shackles of bondage, and to treat its oppressors with the fairness they themselves were denied is a sign that the new Panem will be built on a foundation of justice and integrity, rather than terror and cruelty."

Clunkier than the rest of her speech, but still - what fine words! Thumeka wondered when she had become so cynical that Irons' opening statement felt like a breath of fresh air.

Yes, tomorrow could be better than today - and Irons would do everything she could to make it so.

"I thought my days in history class were long behind me," Dovek sighed as Irons continued to describe the inner workings of the NCIA.

Antonius was not in any mood to smile. When that statement had begun, he had felt like he had been punched in the stomach, and only long faces had been visible in the dock. By now, they had recovered somewhat. Talvian was obviously irritated - Irons was talking about the survivors of various assassination attempts who would be testifying and point-blank saying that the country had been so corrupt, the NCIA had not even been able to kill someone properly.

"I'd have thought they'd try to make us out to be as efficient as possible," Talvian said quietly to Antonius. She ignored Krechet as much as possible, even though the big man was constantly trying to talk to her. The Peacekeepers to his other side refused to talk to him, and he was bored. "This will make everyone laugh at us, not hate us."

"Discreditation?" Antonius offered. He knew she had thought of that already - she always seemed to be two steps ahead of whoever she was talking to.

Talvian folded her small hands in her lap. They were light-brown, not red with blood, as the cartoons in the smuggled newspapers showed. "They're going about it wrong. Irons is here to justify our deaths - why is she making us out to have been incompetents who were so bad at our jobs, we didn't even hurt a fly?"

"People still died," Antonius offered.

"Exactly. They want to make everyone hate us and turn us into international laughingstocks simultaneously."

Antonius was not sure what the point of that conversation had been. He re-focused on Irons' statement. While he himself had only spoken in public on relatively low-stakes occasions, he had gotten thorough training. Irons also knew what she was doing. Her voice remained even despite the hours of talking, she did not trip over words or lose her place. Even the way she glanced down at her notes was perfectly timed. Antonius looked down every time her eyes met his.

When the topic changed to big business, Antonius felt all of the cameras trained on him. He fought to keep his face smooth as Irons called him and Grandma slavedrivers. Nothing better could have been expected from the prosecution's opening statement, but it still stung to be accused of all of those crimes. It stung even more that what had never been a crime before was suddenly one now.

What an absurd grouping they were. Antonius had never met seven of his fellow defendants before his arrest. And the prosecution thought they had all conspired with each other to maintain a steel grip on Panem? Could they not see that it made no sense? Irons' meticulous words, however, made Antonius suspect that the average person would soon disagree with that.

"It is not merely the nation of Panem who waits to see if the atrocities they endured will be punished," Irons said. "No nation can consider itself immune to the sort of rhetoric that gave rise to these horrors, and it is the world itself that will be so much worse off if justice fails to rise above seventy-five years of injustice. This case is not a plea of a prosecutor - it is the plea of humanity."

"The Tribunal is now in recess until 8:00 tomorrow morning," Raymond said.

"I wonder what's for lunch," Drexel whispered.

The judges filed out into the side room where they took off their robes (except for the uniformed Raymond) and hung them up. Lunch was already laid out on their table. Dora quickly washed up and made her way to her seat. Noodle soup and some sort of salad made with unfamiliar vegetables.

"So, what are everyone's impressions?" Raymond asked. He sat at the head of the table. They had an informal seating order - Dora sat on his right, three spots down, between Juan and Rosalinda.

"That is the best opening statement I have ever heard," Dora said. Granted, conventional crimes did not lend themselves to speechifying and political cases had often been prosecuted by shouting insults. "Irons is an excellent speaker." She took her chopsticks and ate some noodles. There was also a fork for the salad. Jack had never understood why there were so many different utensils.

Rose nodded. "Was public speaking even taught in Thirteen?" she asked, adding some spices to her soup.

"Of course," Raymond said. "Everything was taught in Thirteen. We're a big city, after all."

The noodles were cheap, but well-cooked and flavourful. There were bits of meat floating around in the clear broth, as well as vegetables. The judges were lucky to be so well-supplied.

"I'm not sure I'll be able to handle the part of the case dealing with the so-called justice system," Daniel said, writing something in his notebook. Dora had no idea where he stored all of these notebooks and what he was planning to do with them.

Rose nodded. "That makes sense." She herself had looked very tense when the firebombing of Twelve had been mentioned.

"We'll deal with that," Raymond said. "Remind me this evening."

"Sure."

Dora hoped he'd be able to stay on the bench. It would not look good if the judges were so affected by what was happening in the courtroom - that would invite accusations of bias. Daniel had agreed to take the case knowing what it would be about, after all.

One day down. Dora focused on her noodles, wondering how many were left.

"I just sent off an excellent line," Xia bragged quietly as they sat in the press room on the second floor. "When we see the ruins of Lodgepole, we are looking at the result of the war. When we look at the dock, we see twenty-four of the reasons to rise up."

Thumeka nodded appreciatively. She wasn't very good at turning a phrase, but as the opening statement was showing, she recognized elegant words when she heard them.

"Yes," a heavily accented voice said. Thumeka's neighbour who hadn't spoken to her yet. "It is- good."

"That it is," Thumeka agreed. "Who are you? I'm Thumeka Makwetu, from Zimbabwe."

The man nodded. "I am pleased to meet you," he said, probably reciting the phrase by rote. "My name is Ante Pavelic." Noticing Thumeka's facial expression he added haltingly, "And I am from Croatia, of course."

Had he been from anywhere else in the region, his parents would have had to be total idiots to pick such a name. "It's good to meet you."

The unfortunately named correspondent nodded. "Interesting process."

"That it is." Thumeka tried to remember what was going on in that part of Europe. The Balkans were a poor region, but remarkably peaceful. The little countries had to remain united, or else risk getting picked off by one or another of their powerful neighbours. And, unlike Moore, Pavelic was not from a total periphery. Thumeka was still a little bit surprised that England could send anyone anywhere - but then again, maybe they were looking for advice on how to rebuild after a civil war.

Thumeka looked over at Moore, who was playing on his phone, and felt bad for thinking like that. Just because a country was being torn apart by war didn't mean it was somehow 'backwards'.

"Hello, neighbour," Krasiuk said. He added something in Polish, the lingua franca of the region. The two men began to chatter away.

Thumeka looked around the room, noticing how many countries were represented. Had someone told her when she was just beginning to learn about Panem that this would happen, she wouldn't have believed them.

The pace of work had slowed slightly - Leon now worked from 8 to 18, a whole two hours less, and given his commute, he now spent as much time at home as when he had worked at the factory. He clocked out and made his way home. The sun was still brightly shining overhead. Even when he got home, it was still light outside.

"Guess who's back?" he said as he walked into the apartment.

"You're early today," Marcellus said. Dad was still at work, of course - his shift began late and ended late.

"Hours got reduced."

Mom looked up from her computer. There were the unmistakable sounds of a soccer match. "By two? Did they cut your pay, too?"

"I already earn more than I ever did," Leon reminded her. "I hope it gets more reduced." And another day off would also be helpful. The boss had said that when the amount of documents they had to sort through decreased enough, the clerks would get Saturday and Sunday off. That was almost impossible to imagine.

"I don't understand why they can't just hire more people," Marcellus grumbled and stalked back into the kitchen.

"Because then they'd either have to make the shifts tiny or lay them off in a few months," Leon parried, kicking his shoes aside and walking to his room.

"Those few months are a long time to be hauling rubble!" Marcellus said loudly enough for not only Leon but the entire building to hear.

In his room, Leon changed into his sleeping clothes. He tossed the socks and T-shirt into his hamper, hung up his shorts on his chair, and went to take a shower. When he emerged, dinner was ready. "We weren't expecting you so soon," Marcellus said apologetically.

"No issue." Dinner consisted of macaroni with macaroni. "How are the kiddies?"

Marcellus snorted. "During social studies, one little activist demanded I put on the trial."

"Did you?"

"The others rapidly realized it was either Irons or me, so they all joined in. I couldn't say no."

Before, no eleven-year-old would have dared demand something of a teacher. Some of Marcellus' coworkers continued with that strict discipline, but Leon's brother sincerely liked letting his students express themselves - even if he then complained about how wrong they were to Leon. "What did they think?"

"They got into a massive argument parroting their parents' words about the trial." Marcellus glanced at Mom, who was still not writing code. "Mom, you should eat."

Mom looked at Marcellus. "Oh. Yeah. I guess I should." She muted the soccer match and sat down at the table. "That sounds chaotic."

Marcellus shrugged and ate a spoonful of macaroni. "If I hadn't wanted chaos, I wouldn't have become an elementary school teacher."

That was true. It was sometimes hard for Leon to imagine his brother teaching grade six. Weren't elementary school teachers supposed to be cantankerous old people shouting at the kids to be quiet and smacking them with rulers? Even now, Marcellus didn't feel comfortable talking about serious topics in public.

"What did you think?" Leon asked.

"Nice words, but I don't trust them."

"I liked it," Mom said, stirring her macaroni. "It was nice to see them be the scared ones for a change."

Marcellus huffed. "That won't be enough to win me over. They're using this to make us accept Depuration."

If so, they were failing. Depuration was clunking along, irritating everyone who had to deal with the bureaucracy. Leon had read that over eighty percent of people in the Capitol supported the IDMT, but the same percentage disapproved of Depuration. Leon was one of them. The big malefactors had to be punished, of course, but why chase after people who were perfectly willing to live in the new democratic Panem and play by its rules?

"Let's watch the news," Leon offered, glancing at the clock.

He had expected the trial to be prominent, but not to that extent. Everyone was lauding Irons' speech to the skies. Apparently, she had drawn a clear dividing line between the real criminals and the average person who had to applaud to get by, which made everyone feel much better. Her opening statement was being considered to be the speech of the century. Watching selected clips, Leon understood why. She really could speak.

The defendants sat glum-faced, occasionally whispering to each other. Some of them were completely unrecognizable, others, Leon had never heard of before in his life. Who in the world was Bright, or Blatt? And why couldn't they have tried Snow like that, instead of that strange closed-door proceeding?

"Well, then," Marcellus said. "They're certainly delusional. Since when have political trials been fair?"

"This isn't a political trial, it's a criminal trial," Leon shot back. "They're being tried for actual crimes, not like that stuff after the Dark Days where they all confessed to everything and were shot within the hour."

"I guess," Marcellus admitted as Talvian appeared on screen. She seemed to be plotting something. "They did let that lawyer speak, even if they shot her down. I guess we'll see."

After that opening statement, Antonius had been half-paralyzed with fright, wondering what next. His fears had not materialized. The prosecution had launched into explaining the history of Panem starting with the Treaty of Treason which, Antonius had been shocked to discover, the Rebel leaders had been forced to sign at gunpoint.

Seventy-five years was a long time, and the prosecution wanted to go over all of them. Fortunately, they did not go into as much detail about the early years. They only presented the most recent organizational charts of various structures - the one Antonius had helped draw would probably be presented soon as well.

The only element that all of these years had in common were the Hunger Games, so the prosecution was adding into the record endless transcripts of speeches and minutes of conferences that were supposed to somehow prove that there had been a great conspiracy to keep the Hunger Games going. Shaw had explained that the conspiracy charge would be mostly documents-based, and there were plenty of those.

To his own surprise, Antonius was learning a lot about the early years. He had never needed to think about the Games, so the details of its beginning were new.

Before the Dark Days, various kinds of potentially deadly sports, such as fighting with sharp blades (though that was still popular in student organizations, Antonius still had a faint scar on his cheek as did many of his codefendants) and climbing mountains with no harness, had been popular. The prosecution alleged that dissidents had been forced into them as a way of regaining their honour - that sounded doubtful to Antonius, but that had been nearly a century ago, perhaps there had been some isolated excesses. After the Dark Days, the then-president John McCollum and his advisors had combined it with conventional hostage-taking to create the early Hunger Games, where twenty-four children were tossed into an empty stadium with cold weapons and one would come home. How that had transformed into what Antonius had known was a matter for another day.

It was finally Friday. The prosecution had managed to wrap up its presentation fast enough for the Saturday half-day to not be needed. Antonius had just come in from talking to Shaw. The lawyers were being given a surprising amount of leeway - when they complained that something was irrelevant, the Chair usually agreed with them. Perhaps the judges were also bored by the deadly-dull documents.

The door opened and Dr. Mallow walked in. "Good afternoon," Antonius said.

"Good afternoon to you, too," the psychiatrist replied. Despite being from Eleven, she spoke with a proper accent. "How are you doing?"

"Bored," Antonius replied honestly. "And worried. What do you want me to talk about today?"

Dr. Mallow shrugged. "How about-" she glanced at the letter lying on the table "-your family. Is that your cousin?"

That was indeed a photo of Cousin Aimee, wearing her uniform and standing with two other POWs by a bombed-out building in Eight's Centre. They were identified as a factory worker from the Capitol and a career Peacekeeper from a Two quarry. The three's backgrounds could not be gleaned from their identical oufits, shaved heads, and worn faces. One was female, one was male, one could have been either or neither. They had different skin colours and hair textures. That was it for what made them different - tiny, superficial variations in appearance. Was this the new classless society the government was going on about?

"Indeed," Antonius said. "All of my cousins enlisted, save for two who were rejected as unfit." Cousin Gina had no arms and Cousin Boreus could not handle loud sounds.

Dr. Mallow nodded and jotted something down. "I don't think you've told me about your cousins before," she said. "Could you perhaps tell me a little bit about them?"

That would certainly be better than her strange tests. The last time, she had made him look at cards with inkblots and make up stories about what he saw in them. It had been surprisingly enjoyable, but he was not quite sure what the point of that was. Perhaps she would tell the prosecution that he was creative and thus a dangerous and crafty liar. "Well." Antonius sat back against the blanket he had propped up to make himself a softer seat. "I have a lot of cousins."

"How many?"

To his shame, he had to pause and count. "Used to have eleven first cousins. Now I have ten - I suppose we were luckier than most." Cousin Andreas had died somewhere in Four.

"That still hurts," Dr. Mallow said. "And you are an only child, right?"

"I am. My parents wanted more originally, but my father had fertility issues. They were able to conceive me via IVF, and then, I suppose, they decided one of me was enough." Antonius remembered begging his parents for a little sibling. He had watched Uncle Albinus and Uncle Drew adopt child after child and was annoyed his own parents could not do the same. "In hindsight, they were right - I have one, and that is enough for me!"

Dr. Mallow smiled. Antonius wondered if she also had a big family. She was so much like a real Capitol professional, he assumed that she probably had three running around in Eleven, or maybe even four. More could not be expected in a family where her husband also worked. "How old are your cousins?"

"My younger uncle's children are forty-four, forty-two, thirty-nine-year-old twins, and thirty-seven. My older uncle's are thirty-six, thirty-four, thirty-four, thirty-two, and twenty-eight, and Andreas was thirty-two when he died."

"Three sets of twins?"

Antonius shook his head. "No, my older uncle adopted."

Dr. Mallow did an admirable job of pretending she understood his family tree. "All six adopted?"

"Yes. He and his husband took them in when they were between two and ten."

"That's admirable. Not everyone is willing to adopt a ten-year-old."

Antonius thought back to when he was twenty-two and Cousin Lepidus had arrived to the big house for the first time. He had suffered from the worst behavioural issues back then, but he had gotten better with time. "I suppose," he said neutrally. "I remember when I was little, I asked my uncle for a big cousin. I knew my younger uncle could only give me baby cousins, so I went to my older uncle and asked him. Unfortunately, his eldest child is ten years younger than me!"

"That's so sweet!" Dr. Mallow said with a laugh. "What was it like to be the oldest out of so many?"

This was certainly easier to talk about than the trial. Antonius thought back to his early childhood, when his biggest concern had been that Uncle Augustus' annoying kids kept on taking his favourite dolls and breaking them. "I suppose it reinforced my feelings of responsibility," he said. The psychiatrist probably wanted the analysis. "Had my cousins been older, I still would have been the 'heir-apparent' - my grandmother is very traditional - but the dynamic with them would have been different. As it was, I was the oldest, which meant I was in charge. Whenever I fought with them, I was always told that I had to protect them."

"You were always the one in charge."

"Exactly. I took the lead in our games and I was the one expected to take over the Steelworks one day."

Dr. Mallow smiled. "With such an age difference, you must have been often exasperated by your cousins."

"Oh, of course! I was in my mid-teens when I stopped feeling like I was big and they were all little - my eldest first cousin is two years younger than me. I have more distant cousins that are older than me, of course, but I saw them less often."

The psychiatrist seemed to find that significant, jotting down some notes. Perhaps she was building a grand theory about the correlation between birth order and rising to a position of prestige. "How was your relationship with your first cousins in later years?"

"It was great. We were very close - they still write to me. I was horrified when they all started enlisting. Even my oldest cousins' children signed up. I knew it was the patriotic thing to do, but over the course of a single week, everyone who could put on the white, did." Antonius had approved, but deep down, he had wished they did not have to go. "One fell in battle, three are still prisoners of war, the rest trickled in over the months."

Dr. Mallow nodded contemplatively. Antonius wondered who in her family had fought. "Did you want to enlist as well?"

"To be honest, I felt some relief that I could not be spared. But yes, I felt like I was letting my family down. I would not be able to protect my little cousins this time." The twenty-eight-year-old Jo was by no means little anymore, of course. Perhaps he was slipping into nostalgia.

"How did your grandmother react to so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren going off to war?"

Antonius remembered the family get-together they had had the day when Thirteen had come into the open. Mom had not been able to look her brothers in the eye. "She was already quite unwell then," he said softly. "I am not sure if she forgot how old they all are or if to someone over a hundred, even a thirty-year-old is a baby. She kept on asking why her little ones were going off to war when the war had ended a long time ago."

"How old are your mother and uncles?" Dr. Mallow asked, eyes betraying a hint of sadness.

"Seventy-eight, seventy-four, seventy. I am not sure what year Grandma thought it was."

Dr. Mallow nodded sympathetically. It was hard for Antonius to wrap his head around the fact that a District person could be so normal. The local managers he had dealt with had been just like what Grandma had told him about the Districts, but Dr. Mallow was a well-spoken psychiatrist who could have pretended to have been from the Capitol had she wanted to. Some of his co-defendants had not figured out her real origin and thought she actually was one of them.

"That must be a photograph of one of the POWs?" she asked, gesturing at the letter. They were allowed family photographs - he had an entire little gallery on one wall. He would put Aimee as she was now next to Aimee last year, as a reminder that he was not the only one suffering.

"Yes. She is the one in the middle. She is in Eight, rebuilding."

"Why don't you tell me about her? Does she write to you?"

Antonius remembered how Aimee had always been a sore loser at Monopoly. Granted, none of the cousins had ever been able to beat him. "Of course," he said, wondering what to start with.

The very second Stephen sat down to have a cup of tea, another crisis. Before him in his office now sat the man who, for weeks, had served as the Catholic chaplain at the jail, ministering to guards and prisoners alike.

George Williams was not, in fact, a priest.

"It was the only thing I could do," Williams said, leaning back in the chair, a serious expression on his face. He was around thirty-five, light-skinned and with curly black hair and short beard. "The soldier in the foxhole next to me was dying. Someone asked if there was a Catholic priest nearby, to perform last rites. There was none. I am Catholic and have seen last rites given. What else could I do?"

"And why did you continue the charade afterwards?"

Williams spread out his hands. "Everyone thought I was a priest. I couldn't disappoint them."

"Do you have the qualifications of a priest?"

"Of course not. I-"

"And how do you think your charges felt when they realized they were being counseled by a fake?" While Williams had been able to fake his way through Mass and listening to confessions, several of the guards had noticed something was off and alerted Stephen, who had tried to look up the man's credentials and had not been particularly surprised to discover there were none. At least Williams hadn't posed as a priest to scam pensioners out of their money.

"But what could I do?" Williams asked, dropping his head in his hands. "They trusted me. I couldn't just abandon them. I just wanted to help them, Lieutenant. I know I'm not trained, but all they wanted was a kind word, a few relevant Bible verses - nothing more."

Stephen's father was a fairly devout person. Had his pastor turned out to be an impostor, even a good-hearted one, Dad would have felt so betrayed.

"Fine," Stephen said. "You have a choice. Enrol either in a seminary or as a psychology major in university." Williams looked up, startled. "Why the shock? You said you wanted to help people. Then fine - go help them. Either through religion or a secular institution, I really do not care. I will get everything taken care of." Now that would be a massive hassle.

"Can I do both?" Williams asked quietly.

"Of course."

"Thank you."

"Dismissed."

Williams left. Now if only all of the rulebreakers Stephen had to deal with were motivated solely by the desire to help others, that would have made his life so much easier.

A/N: All of Antonius' cousins having rushed to enlist is inspired by how all of Alfried Krupp's younger brothers fought in WW2. Two fell in battle and one was stuck as a POW in the USSR for ten years because of his surname. Ironically, he spent more years in captivity than his war criminal big bro.