Court proceedings are either very interesting or extremely boring. I hope to make the court proceedings in this story very interesting. Partially because we are getting a diagnosis!

How is everyone Christmas and holidays going? I hope it's good. I would've had this chapter up a lot earlier but I got Mario Kart 7 and it did not want to get out of my hands, but I got it out just enough to write his for you all!

Have any of you out there ever want to slap a character for what they're doing in your own story even though you're making them do it? I've felt like this since I started writing this story. I just want to grab TJ by the collar, raise my hand and yell 'TASTE THE BACK OF MY PALM!' and deliver a nice healthy dose of whoop-ass. If only…. :P If only…

I feel like some if this is stereotypical courtroom talk that only takes place on TV. Oh well.

Read on!

Out of his ten years of working as psychologist, this case promised to be one that would stick with Mr. Simmons long after it was over. For two weeks Mr. Simmons followed TJ around, noting how he interacted with his parents, other students, his Principal, and even how he behaved when he was alone. All of this was for making a diagnosis, if there was one to be made at all. In his observations he witnessed two distinct dispositions in his patient and the both of them were very interesting to him. The one that showed the most was the hostile, disobedient, and unruly aspect of his personality that frustrated his parents and peers to no end. It was no question that that was why we he was there to watch him. The other half of his personality was the nice, calm, and overall ideal side that only showed when he was around Principal Prickly. Why TJ had the extreme contract in behavior was question that Mr. Simmons wanted to answer, so he looked for outside help. When he could, Mr. Simmons asked TJ's parents, old friends, and principal questions about what they thought about how he was acting, how it affected them, and how different was it from a few years ago. The answers offered little insight, but that little bit of insight helped him immensely with his diagnosis. The only person he didn't ask was TJ himself, but he was getting to that today. The last day he was to spend observing the boy was the day of the trial inside of a room in the courthouse. The trial was to take place in few hours, and with this last bit of time together he was supposed to make a definitive diagnosis as well as ask him more specific questions using a recorder that was to be played in court. Mr. Simmons sat across from TJ with a recording sitting in the middle of the table. From what he could make out, TJ was less than willing to be there. And he was right.

TJ just wanted this whole this to be over with. Two weeks of being followed around and observed, being stuck in the kitchen with his parents and lawyers, and having to go to court afterwards in a very uncomfortable suit was not what he wanted to do. He was just waiting for that jury to say 'not guilty' so he could get back to business. How dare these people blame him for that fire? And on top of that, how dare they make him do all this stuff that took time away from he wanted to do? Well, it was not like they could find him guilty for it if he didn't do it. Looking up from the coin he was playing with in his hands he looked up to see Mr. Simmons writing a few things down on a note pad. Today was the last day he would be followed around, that that made him very happy. He just wanted to answer whatever questions the psychologist had to ask so he could get out of there.

"Are you ready, TJ?" Mr. Simmons asked, looking up from what he was writing.

"Mm-hmm," TJ mumbled. "Sure." Pressing the record button on the recorder, Mr. Simmons started to read from the questions he had in front of him.

"What do you think about being blamed for the fire?" Asked the psychologist.

"Mr. Simmons," TJ said with a long exaggerated sigh. "Are you expecting me to lie?"

"No. I'm hoping that you'll tell me the truth."

"Listen. You seem like a nice guy, so I respect you. And because I respect you, I trust you, sir," He told him. "I don't want you to twist my words around into something that they don't mean. When you ask me these questions, I'm going to trust you enough to tell you the absolute truth. Okay?"

"That's just fine with me," Said Mr. Simmons. "So, will you answer my first question?"

"Yeah. I think it's bogus. If I'm going to get blamed for something, then I better be the one who did it, and I didn't do it. But of course they would blame me, just because I've been having fun by playing pranks on them. They're only blaming me because they want to get rid of me and that's not going to happen."

"About those pranks, why do you do them?"

"It's fun," He said. "That's the only answer I could give you for that."

"Do you know how much it hurts the other students when you to those things and how bad it is for you to do them?"

"Ha, Principal Prickly asked me that same question," TJ said. "Yes and no. It's kind of confusing, even for me. I know it's bad and that I shouldn't do it. I can write you a long list right now with every reason why I shouldn't do what I do. But it just….okay it's like this. Let's say that the reasons why I shouldn't do something is a document on a computer. You save it, close it, and put in a folder where you know where to find it. Then you get up and leave for a while. When you comeback you open a new file getting ready to do something but you need the information from the folder from earlier so you go to open it. You find it, click on it, but it won't open. You keep clicking on it, but no matter what it won't open. So you have to do what you were going to do without the information in that document form earlier. Once you're done with your new document, save, and close it, you go back to the document from before, and it can open now. And you can't figure out why. It's like that. Do you get it?"

"Yes. You're saying that while you do those things, why you shouldn't do them don't cross your mind."

"Yeah, that's it! You're the first person to understand that! Thanks."

"I'm glad I could help," Mr. Simmons said. "Now, I've noticed that you acted differently around you parents and your principal. Could you tell me why?"

"I dunno," Said TJ. "I think it's 'cause I respect the guy. Not that I don't respect my own parents. It's a different kind of respect, I guess. I respect my parents for giving me a home and food and all that cheesy stuff. I respect Prickly because he's kind of a role model. I look up to him, so the respect there is different. We have a lot in common, actually. Not like with my dad. Dad is always so serious; always has been, even when I was little. I guess he kind of fills that role for me. I never thought about it like that before…"

"That's a really good insight there," Mr. Simmons told him. "Thinking about relationships on a deeper level is really good for you. One last question and you can go. Did you set the fire?"

"No," He said. "I didn't. That's the simplest answer there is. Can a go now?"

"Yes, you can go now." Breathing a sigh of relief TJ stood up and walked to the door to leave. Before opening the door we turned back to Mr. Simmons.

"Do you think there's something wrong with me?" TJ asked him.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with anybody," He said. "And I don't think there's anything wrong with you. I believe for some reason the way you think is different from those around you. Does that help?"

"Mm-hmm," The Boy mumbled before going out the door. Sitting on the benches outside of the door where his parents who were waiting to bring him inside the courtroom. The room he had just come out of was sound proof so he didn't worry about them eavesdropping. Looking at the clock that hung on the wall he saw that a lot more time had passed than what it felt like. The trial would begin in about twenty minutes now. After going down a set of stairs they made it to the courtroom. The seats in the gallery were packed full of parents of the other kids from Third Street as well as the kids themselves. His lawyer and the plaintiff's lawyer were already at their respective tables waiting for the judge to come in. Before he came in the room he saw a few people sitting on benches outside, including his former friends and few other students from his class. Sitting down at the table he heard Mr. Wilson and his parents talk about what was going to happen once the trail began. Most of it didn't interest him.

"All rise," The Bailiff standing in front of the judge's bench said. "For the honorable Judge Shore." Everyone in the courtroom stood up as the door near the judge's bench opened and Judge Shore walked in. She was at least in her fifties and her ace showed each one of those years. Sitting down in her seat she waved for everyone to sit down.

"Alright," Judge Shore said. "Who wants to begin?"

"We will, Your Honor," The prosecuting lawyer, Ms. Gabor said as she stood up. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we all have kids somewhere in our family. And it goes without saying that we wish the best for those children. We want them to be successful, and in order to do that they have to go to school. And when they go to school, we expect that the school that they go to is safe, danger-free, with little interruptions to distract from their studies while they're in class. So imagine if every day that child came home after a day where one student makes that impossibility. Imagine if your child came home with something in their hair, an injury, or is disturbed because of what one student decided to go, simply for the fun of it. That, ladies and gentlemen was the daily experience of the students at Third Street School. Every day for the last year and a half they were the unfortunate victims of the pranks and plots conjured by that child sitting at that table." She paused to point at TJ who was trying his very best to not fall asleep. "Ruthless pranks and plot created by him plagued the lives of the students at Third Streets. But I can't speak for those students; they have to speak for themselves. And who else better for that then a few of his now former friends? I call Ashley Spinelli to the witness stand."

'That would explain why they're all sitting outside,' TJ thought to himself. 'Ha ha, Ashley." Turning around in his seat he watched as Spinelli walked through the doors, escorted by an officer. After being put under oath and sitting down in the witness stand the prosecution continued.

"Do you know the defendant?" Ms. Gabor asked her.

"Yeah."

"How long have you known him?"

"As far back as I can remember," Said Spinelli. "We became friends in kindergarten."

"So that's long enough to say that you were friends," Said Ms. Gabor. "Right?"

"Right," She answered. "We were friends."

"And why aren't the two of you friends now?"

"Because he kept hurting us with his pranks," Spinelli said. "He plays pranks all the time; it's his thing. But then he started to prank us too and the pranks got really mean."

"Would you care to tell us about a few of those pranks?"

"A few weeks ago he spread itching and sneezing powers all over the playground by putting it in over inflated balls," She explained. "It got on everything and everyone. Then he did something to the desk and made them blow up that same day. Then a week later he infested the school with rats and cockroaches, electrified the fence around the playground, gave the kindergarteners paint guns to fire on everyone, blew up the Ashley's clubhouse and the digger's filled holes and used fireworks to spread paint across the playground. That was after we got back at him for trying another prank the week before that."

"So over time those acts became more and more dangerous," Ms. Gabor said, acing the rest of the courtroom. "And with them becoming more dangerous, it makes perfect sense, and is almost expected that he would take it another step further and do something deadly, such as starting the fire especially with the last prank. In the police report it says you were burned in the fire," She said handing the judge a copy of the police report. "Can you show us the burn?"

"Yeah," Spinelli said as she rolled up the sleeve to her dress exposing the scar that ran up her entire arm left there from the burn.

"You see that, ladies and gentlemen?" Ms. Gabor said. "That is the result of an out of control child. You can step down now, Ms. Spinelli. With behavior like this that will not go away, one would wonder exactly why the child was acting like this in the first place. This ongoing antisocial behavior has to be a sign of something mentally wrong with him."

"Objection," Mr. Wilson said. "The prosecution has no proof of this and is suggesting something purely based on assumptions."

"Your honor, we requested that he child be evaluated in the two weeks before the trial," Ms. Gabor explained. "The psychologist is here and I was getting ready to allow him to discuss his findings."

"Alright," Said the judge. "Where is he?"

"I'm right here, ma'am," Mr. Simmons said standing up from his seat.

Are you ready to tell us about what you've found out?"

"Yes I am your honor," He said. "Can I begin?"

"Go ahead."

"Okay, this is going to be long so bear with me here. Like Ms. Gabor said I was asked to follow TJ around for the two weeks before this trial and there was a lot to find out," He began. "He has ODD. That was the first thing I noticed. ODD stands for Oppositional Defiant disorder which is an ongoing pattern of anger guided disobedience, hostilely, and defiant behavior that goes beyond the bounds of normal behavior that is expected in a child. All children usually disobey and act out every now and then; a little back-talking here and some getting into trouble there is normal and is to be expected. That behavior is fixed with discipline. But when the behavior continues and gets worse despite multiple attempts of punishments by the parents and last longer than 6 months it become ODD. Some of the symptoms that I observed were excessive arguing with adults, often questioning rules, refusing to comply with adult requests and rules, deliberate attempts to annoy or upset people, frequent anger and resentment, mean and hateful talking when upset, and revenge seeking. Like Ms. Gabor said his behavior is disrupting the school lives of the other students which is another characteristic of ODD. As far as him being as she described as 'an out of control child,' it's fifty-fifty on that. On one hand his environment made him like this. One the other, he should be able to know right from wrong. But that's not what I'm really concerned about. What I'm concerned about is the developing into a bigger problem.

"ODD is a precursor to Conduct Disorder, which is a precursor for Antisocial Personality Disorder better known as Sociopathy. A child with ODD has a 53% change of developing Conduct Disorder if it goes untreated, and he's already showing signs of that. Just punishing him if he did start the fire won't help. It's only make things worse. There are treatments and therapies available to help him. What I have here on the projector," He paused to push a button that made an image appear on the white screen in the corner of the room. "Is a picture of the brain. Right here on the big spot that's lit up, that's the spot that lights up when were about to make a decision. And over here in the little spot that's lit up is the area that lights up when we think about cause and effect. That little spot right there isn't turning on for him. He knows that he shouldn't do what he does but not when he's doing it. It's like your rushing to do something but you forget a vital part of that, only that happens all the time for him. In a way it's out of his control. But what I want you all to remember is that he is thirteen years old; his brain is still growing. It might've not finished build the so-called 'bridge' to make that connection. I have seen kids who did what he does and it spontaneously stopped as they became older and I've seen kids who turn out to be serial killers. What I'm trying to say here is that punishing him the way the prosecution wants to isn't going to help at all.

"I also noticed this almost obsession TJ has with fire. I watched him stare at a lit fireplace and play with a lighter in his hand with fascination a child would have with a hobby or something else they like to do. If he did set the fire then he could be a child pyromaniac which is a separate issue in itself; I don't think I have to go into more detail than that for you all to know what that would implicate. All in all, He as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, is developing Conduct Disorder, and has the possibility of being a child Pyromaniac."

"As you all can see, even without knowing with diagnosis one would assume that something was going wrong in his head," Ms. Gabor said to the jury. "And if one could do that, then their actions must be at an extreme. An extreme that puts lives in danger such as setting a school full of children on fire. When the investigators located where the fire started a backpack belonging to the defendant was found nearby. No other items were found. Now before you all say, 'that doesn't mean anything,' I want to call another one of his friends to tell us a little more. I call Vince LaSalle to the witness stand."

"God, she just keeps talking," TJ mumbled. "It's time for her to shut the fuck up, seriously." He was quickly hushed by his lawyer before anyone could hear him. He watched as Vince, like Spinelli, was put under oath and sat down in the witness stand."

"Mr. LaSalle, do you believe Mr. Detweiler started the fire?" Ms. Gabor asked.

"Yeah," Vince said.

"And why do you believe that?"

"Because the recess before the fire started he said he would set it on fire so we wouldn't bother him anymore. Then earlier that day he was playing with a lighter in class. And a couple weeks before that he said on top of the junglegym that if everyone wanted him to do something when he didn't have anything to do then he would set it on fire."

"So he said that he would," She told the jury. "He said that he would set a fire, ladies and gentlemen. Is there any other reason you think he set that fire?"

"Yeah. I don't know if anyone else in the class saw it, but I saw him walking to and away from the side of the school a little before the fire started."

"The side of the school where the garbage bins are?"

"Yes."

"That's quite a coincidence since that was the area where the fire started. No one else was seen walking to and from there. No one else gave everyone a threat to do something that happened soon after. No other student made like at school of living hell and hurt them. Nd no other student is capable of setting a school on fire. Like Mr. Simmons said, his ODD is becoming something that is putting other's lives in danger and we don't want our children exposed to that, do we? He is danger to others and is not safe in the general public. A juvenile delinquent such as him needs to in a facility where he isn't a threat to those around him; a place like this would be called a juvenile detention center. Now I'm not saying that I don't care if he gets help or not; I'm not saying that at all. But this is a case of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. That ladies and gentlemen is my case."

"I was wondering when you were going to stop talking," Judge Shore said. "Bailiff, what time is it?"

"4:30, ma'am." The bailiff said.

"That late? Well I was hoping to hear some of the defense today but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. We'll meet here tomorrow same time. Court is adjourned." She said before hitting the gavel.

"I gotta come back for more of this stuff tomorrow? I can't get a break can I?" TJ said as the court began to empty. Standing up he headed outside the room as well to meet the small group of peers sitting outside and talking amongst themselves. "What's the big idea saying that I started the fire?"

"Because you did," Said Spinelli. "You told us and everyone else that you would and then it happened!"

"Just because I say something that doesn't mean I'm gonna do it," He snapped. "You don't beat up everyone you threaten do you?"

"No," She said. "But I'm not the one who was playing with a lighter in class!"

"I saw you walk away from where the fire started," Said Vince. "How do you explain that?"

"I walk from that area every day! That doesn't mean anything! You guys just want to get rid of me for the other stuff!"

"Well after being burned I think any one would want you to be very far away from them," Spinelli said. "You didn't even say you were sorry for that!"

"I'm not going to say sorry for something that I didn't do! I suggest you go find whoever did start the fire and harass them!"

"I did. He's standing right in front of me!" She snapped. "You know what we think? We think you started it, and your lying about it. We think you're a danger to everyone around you and that you need to be locked away so you can't hurt anyone else."

"Yeah whatever," He said as he started to walk away. "See you guys in hell."

What do you guy's think about the diagnosis? Do you think it makes sense? I hope so. Feedback is welcome. Next chapter will be the defense!

I'm thinking of writing another King BobXTJ fic just 'cause I've fallen in love with the pairing and so have a lot of people, surprisingly. I just don't know what it should be about.

Donna Nnov: I should invest in a baby name book, shouldn't I? :P As a poor college student I'll have to stick with the websites like names books as a replacement. I didn't use MPD (although I considered it before I wrote this story) but something else that took me forever to find. But I did kinda sneak it in there with 'Alex' in the last chapter.

RandallXSpinelli: Mr. Simmons was the sweetest teacher ever :D He's like the Ms. Grodke of Hey Arnold.

Please Review!