Standing next to a holographic projection of his client in high-orbit, Baxlon floated in his globe, watching Judge Dredd take his seat.

I know that expression, Baxlon thought unhappily. Not good.

The Judge looked at everyone and just sighed. Ranting Baxlon could handle. Angry he could work with. This? A sad, tired Judge Dredd was the worst of them all.

The judgment had already been made, and the trial hadn’t even started yet.

The Judge looked over at his client and just shook his head.

“Ok,” he said after a few seconds. “Let’s get this bullshit over with.”

“… and so, the state is charging the defendant with nine counts of first-degree murder,” the prosecutor said calmly.

Judge Dredd looked at him curiously.

“No weapons charges?”

“The state has dropped the weapons charges due to lack of evidence,” the prosecutor said with a wry smile. “The arms are um… no longer in the possession of the justice department,” he said with a smirk as he sent a document to the bench. “Because they were class-four destructive devices at worst and there were no bystanders hurt, we consider them irrelevant as compared to the more serious charges involved with this case.”

“Oh, I see,” Judge Dredd replied. “Hard to make a case when the guns have ‘disappeared’, isn’t it?”

“The state believes that there is sufficient evidence to proceed without the weapons themselves.”

“I agree,” Judge Dredd replied calmly. “the bench has reviewed the charges and approves. The trial will proceed. The defense can request all evidence and related documentation under the case number attached to these proceedings. Bail is denied. That will be all.”

Sheloran felt faint. She wasn’t entirely sure what “first-degree murder” was, but from what she remembered from her friends from the last time she was in jail, it was bad, it was really, really bad!

“Your honor!” Baxlon interjected.

“What do you want?” Judge Dredd asked in annoyance.

“While the fact that my client did, in fact, kill the individuals in question is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is also equally clear that she ultimately acted in self-defense, a fact that we will prove to a sufficient extent to exonerate her actions. She is not a ‘criminal’. She is a victim and doesn’t deserve to be held without bail, especially where she is currently incarcerated! I request an immediate review and audit of this decision!”

“Self-defense?” Judge Dredd growled. “Self-defense?!?”

Good, now there’s some life in him, Baxlon thought. Now be a good little fishy. I got a nice fat worm for you...

“Your client walked in there with the clear intention of engaging in violence, counselor, and her actions were carefully gauged and artfully designed to provoke it! She fucking knew what she was doing, didn’t you?”

“Not a fucking word!” appeared on Sheloran’s screen.

“Whether or not she annoyed those… animals… doesn’t matter, your honor,” Baxlon replied. “They struck first! She was merely defending herself, as is her right as a resident of the Republic!”

“Oh, the Republic is wise to bullshit like this, you fucking shit-loach!” Judge Dredd roared. “Do you honestly think she’s the first to try to pervert the spirit of the Republic, the first to seek to abuse the laws that protect the people of this nation? The protections under ‘self-defense’ are intended to be just that, provisions that allow an innocent, law-abiding Republic citizen to protect themselves from an unjustified assault, not so that some thug can intentionally place themselves in harm’s way and then try to hide behind my law when they succeed in doing what they went there to do in the first place! In The Republic vs. Long 3052, this was clearly decided and has been upheld time and time again!”

“The Republic vs. Long has no bearing on this case, your honor!” Baxlon replied triumphantly. The old bastard took the bait! “And I will prove it!”

“What?!?” Judge Dredd roared as he flinched inwardly. The Republic vs. Long… The shit-loach had to expect that one. He had just stumbled right out of the gate!

“In that case, the defendant was a known member of a criminal enterprise, and an intent to kill was clearly communicated prior to the incident! My client is an honest, law-abiding resident of this Republic, respected by her colleagues and by her community, and at no time has ever expressed even the slightest desire to inflict harm on anyone, much less those Harkeen thugs! My client is guilty only of having poor sense, not premeditated murder, and poor judgment in and of itself isn’t a crime! You can proceed with this joke of a trial if you want but at least let my client out of Tartarus!”

“No intent to kill?” the Judge roared. “What do you call this then?” he snapped as he started to play Sheloran singing O Fortuna in the cab on the way to the restaurant.

The prosecutor winced. That recording was compelling but hardly conclusive. There was a reason why he left it out.

“I don’t recall patriotism being illegal, Your Honor,” Baxlon replied smugly.

“No, but getting into a gang-war is!” Judge Dredd shot back, glaring at Sheloran.

“Gang-war?” Baxlon replied with a polite sneer. “My client has always acted within the letter of the law. That ‘gang-war’ was because she started issuing completely legal loans from her completely legal business in response to an economic emergency taking place in the Free Port area! There was no (heh) ‘gang-war’ and if that is the basis for your decision today and your future judgment, then I call into question your impartiality and objectivity on this matter and call for your immediate recusa-”

The prosecutor looked over at Baxlon as if he had lost his mind.

“You DARE question my impartiality?!?” Judge Dredd roared.

“If you insist upon calling my client a ‘thug’ and state that this whole tragic affair was the result of a ‘gang-war’ then, yes. My client has never been found guilty of a single crime, and her business is completely above-board. The fact that she was targeted by violent criminals is not her fault. As a result, ‘self-defense’ is a perfectly valid justifying factor for the horrible events of yesterday. If you have already, with no supporting evidence, made the decision that this was ‘gang warfare’ and my client was already a ‘criminal’ prior to this incident, then she has already been ‘convicted’ without due process, and as per B’veek vs. The Republic 3109, any decision you are involved with is hopelessly tainted and entirely too vulnerable to appeal, which will most certainly happen, Your Honor. As such, I am fully prepared to invoke my client’s right for a preemptive audit!”

Judge Dredd screamed in rage as he saw the predatory gleam in Baxlon’s eyes. That fucking shit-loach! He was trying to eliminate him! That was what he was going for here! This was never about bail. Only a handful of judges could take on the shit-loach when he was playing hardball, and it was an excellent chance that his replacement wouldn’t be one of them!

If that scaly little fuck manages to kick him off of this case, then Sheloran walks, regardless of her guilt.

“If you think I am going to sit here and let you and your client make a mockery of THE LAW, you have another thing coming, Shit-Loach! I’m not going anywhere, and if you want to try to make a case concerning my impartiality, then good fucking luck! NOBODY has ever...”

Sheloran sat there in terrified silence as the drama unfolded in front of her. She thought the Judge was mad last time…

It won’t work...

Sheloran squeezed her eyes shut as something started to wiggle under her skin around her orbits.

No… please… not now… please... she prayed urgently. Great Prophet! Please!

An image of her, old, sitting in a prison cell flashed across her mind…

And without her, her people failed. Nothing changed. The Harkeen came back in just a couple of months, and if it was bad before, it was nothing compared to what happened when they returned…

Craxina… Oh, Creators… What they did to her…

Baxlon and the Judge’s battle waged in the background as she tried to shake the terrible visions of the future.

The game was rigged. Everyone’s minds had already been made up. She was done for.

Who will protect her people then?

Her outer eyelids kept tightly closed as her inner ones lifted without her control.

He will, she thought as she heard Judge Dredd’s enraged voice screaming something about the Republic versus somebody and some numbers as Baxlon calmly said something that made the Judge yell even louder.

He’s a good man… he was a very good man… before everything… before the horrors consumed him… before he descended into lawlessness himself… before he started trusting only the law because he couldn’t trust himself ever again...

He’s trapped… Oh, Creators, he’s been trapped all this time... HE NEEDS YOUR HELP…

I can’t! I need to stay quiet! Baxlon said… Sheloran thought helplessly as she felt something starting to move inside her. Please stop… I don’t want to go to jail… Please…

You will help him.

“I believe that this hearing clearly proves my point, Your Honor, and I beg you to do the right thing and recuse yourself before I am forced to-”

“I fucking DARE you to try, you bottom-feeding fuck-stain!”

“Hissssssssssss Sssssssss Sssssssssss Ssssssssss”

Everyone, including the Judge, fell silent as a quiet little hissing chuckle filled the room with disdain, with complete and utter contempt.

“Do you have something to say, Ms. Sheloran?” Judge Dredd asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

“No.” appeared on her screen as Baxlon stared into it. “Sheloran, please, I’m BEGGING you.”

“You both sit there bickering like children over your impotent laws...” Sheloran hissed with a distant voice. “Striving and grasping for each little feather to put on your balance-beam’s dish… Pathetic...”

“Sheloran shut the fuck up right now. I’m winning! Just shut up!” appeared in huge flashing letters across her display.

“You want to know what really happened?” Sheloran sneered. “You want to know why? Well, I’ll tell you pooping why!...”

“Shut up!!! Shut up!!! Shut up!!!” scrolled across her screen.

“I tried to be good… I really really did...” Sheloran said quietly. “I was just going to sell coffee and distribute perfectly legitimate entirely legal media files… Well, legal when they left my store anyway… Then, a friend needed my help. You remember her, right? Well, she needed a place where she felt safe to engage in prostitution, which she actually wanted to do!… So… I helped her. She needed me… Then she brought a friend by, Ploxni, a really nice person, who had been repeatedly stolen from, beaten, and raped by the people she was ‘working’ for, so I took her in too… Then more and more people came to me, all with the same… pooping... messed up stories over and over and over… so I took them in… Then I found out about the Sex Workers Union and that I could get them all memberships and that they could be safe and work wherever they wanted, so I started doing that,” Sheloran said a little louder. “Your ‘gang-war’ started there, Your Honor. I started going to ‘their whores’ and getting them out… nobody else would… nobody else cared about those ‘dirty little xeno freaks’ in the Free Port… but I did!… So I kept doing it… and they did not like it. There’s your pooping ‘gang-war’! I was helping people get the protections due to them because of your worthless laws.”

“I’m telling you right now to shut up!” flashed in giant letters on her display.

“Yeah, I pooping said worthless,” Sheloran hissed. “Worthless to us because they aren’t for us! Do you know I was the first person going into those hell-holes that everyone knew about from the union? I was the first time those places got ‘raided’ not just by the union but by the pooping police?!? We’re talking about pooping human trafficking! Right here! Just a few miles from where you are sitting in your oh-so-comfortable chair! Everybody turned a blind eye….”

Sheloran’s voice rose a little more.

“But I didn’t! I didn’t look away! I couldn’t! I said ‘No!’ and I went right down there and handed out cards, put them in cabs, and sent them to my place and any other place that would take them, which wasn’t many. Who wants to be a petting zoo for xeno freaks? I sure as poop didn’t! But those people needed me, so I gave them a safe place to work, some pooping gangster I am, huh. Oh, the Harkeen HATED me and what I was doing, but they thought they couldn’t touch me because of the union, so they let it slide...”

Sheloran spat.

“Then I really ramped up my ‘crimes’! A little Garthra came in looking for (heh), ‘work’. She heard that I was the person to talk to if you wanted to suck a human’s dick for cash because, as it turns out, I am, to my everlasting horror, the person to talk to if you are a xeno and want to suck a dick. I’m not an idiot, Your Honor. I know that many people who work out of my place aren’t like my friend Craxi who actually like what they are doing. They do what they do because they don’t have any other option in this wonderful pooping Republic of yours. But this time, it was bad. She just stood there, crying her eyes out over what she felt she ‘had’ to do.”

Judge Dredd just sat there grimly. This was a confession, and he wasn’t going to stop her, but he wanted to yell, tell her that she was wrong…

But she wasn’t, was she?

“Why did she ‘have’ to do it?” Sheloran hissed, “Because she owed the Harkeen money and if she didn’t pay them she would have to go to ‘work’ for them, and she felt that if she had to do ‘it’ then she wanted to do ‘it’ for me because I wouldn’t rape her on my pooping lunch break!!! So I committed my next ‘crime’,” Sheloran sneered. “I offered her another option. She could make clothes for me, and I would sell them. I didn’t want to do this, but I had the money, and I figured I could maybe sell them… somehow… maybe… It turns out that this is ‘illegal’, so I had to file all sorts of paperwork, so I could do it legally, and she needed to pay the Harkeen that day, so I just gave her a loan instead, a completely legal loan at completely legal interest rates. And someone else came in with exactly the same story. They owed the Harkeen money or didn’t want to owe them money in the first place, so they came to me for a legal loan, something nobody else was going to pooping give them. And that, Your Honor, is how my ‘gang-war’ started with those… poopheads! I committed the unforgivable crime of treating my fellow xenos of the Free Port to the same laws that you curl up with at night, so you can forget how screwed up this world really is...”

“Fuck, Sheloran….stop…. Please...” scrolled across her screen. She didn’t care anymore.

“And for my ‘crimes’, they burned down my business!” Sheloran started to yell. “They burned it down and damn near burned one of the nicest, most innocent people you will ever meet to death because I dared to cross them. That Garthra, they grabbed her and they… They RAPED her over and over and over again because she dared to tell other people that I was offering legal loans and that they didn’t have to deal with those animals anymore… Yeah, I’m a real hard case. An unforgivable criminal who did unforgivable things….”

Sheloran raged, her voice filling the courtroom.

“You go to Uhrrbet. You see what they did to her, what they were going to do to others, what they were going to do to my people… what they said they were going to do to me if I didn’t stop… And don’t even say some poop about the police. Do you know how many of us have tried? Do you know what happens if we do go to the police about them?”

Sheloran looked straight into the camera.

“So, yeah, I went down there,” she said with a smirk. “I went down there to say, No! No more! This… poop ends right pooping now! I’m not backing down! If you say that I’m going to be ‘next’, then fine… make me next… I pooping dare you… And I’m not going to lie, I wanted them to try to ‘make me next’... And when they tried, they got what was coming, what had been coming for years! And yeah, I did take one of them apart, piece by piece by flushing piece the same way he had taken people apart piece by piece for years… the way he would still be doing it if I didn’t... And I’m the one making a mockery of your precious little laws? I’m the ‘perversion of the spirit of the Republic’?… Well...”

Sheloran threw her head back and yelled,

“FUCK THE REPUBLIC AND FUCK YOU TOO!”

And just as quickly it had grabbed ahold of her, whatever it was disappeared, leaving Sheloran sitting there in shock.

Oh, Great Prophet… what have I done? she thought as she grabbed her mouth, no longer trusting it.

There was yelling and shouting filling her little cubicle, but it wasn’t Judge Dredd…

Not yet.

“Wooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!! Holy Fuck!!!!!!!!” scrolled across the side of Baxlon’s tank.

Judge Dredd started to shake as a low rumble began to issue from his mouth that quickly grew into a roar of pure rage.

“ORDER!!!” He shouted, breaking his gavel with the first slam on the desk. “ORDER!!!” He yelled again, ramming his metal fist into his tall podium over and over, cracking it and throwing splinters of wood up with each strike.

Enraged, he leaped to his feet, throwing the shattered podium to the floor.

“CLEAR THE COURT. GET ALL OF THESE FUCKERS OUT OF HERE!!! BAIL IS DENIED!!!” Judge Dredd screamed as he lunged towards Sheloran, trying to grab her through the screen.

He grabbed the holo monitor and raised it above his head, pulling it in close so that his entire rage distorted face filled the entire field of view.

“DENIED!!! YOU HEAR ME, YOU LITTLE SHIT!!! BAIL IS DENIED!!!”

Sheloran was terrified… He was so angry…

But he wasn’t just angry…

He was in pain…

She wanted to help him so bad.

Her inner eyelid lifted.

“You’ve suffered enough,” she murmured in a quiet, dreamy voice. “You’ve served your time long ago...”

Judge Dredd froze, just staring at her as a knife shot through his soul… She knew... He didn’t know how she knew, but she did…

“You need to forgiv-” Sheloran started to whisper.

Judge Dredd slammed the monitor to the floor with a howl of pure pain and rage, shattering it.

As the screen went dead, a low whistle behind her came from the two guards in the room.

One of them silently opened the door, and the other gestured toward it.

“This way, please… ma’am.”

Cheers, applause, and stamping of feet greeted her as she stepped into the hall as the other inmates, awaiting their turn, saluted her.

Oh, that can’t be good, Sheloran thought as she nervously waved at them as she was ushered quickly down the hall.

***

After sitting a while on a bench with some really scary-looking people who were all smiling big smiles at her and being really friendly, a guard came by.

“Ms. Sheloran,” the guard said with a big smile. “Your lawyer wishes to speak with you… urgently.”

“Bye, Sheloran!” a huge burly human said. “Come dinner, you sit with us, ok?”

“Ok, Rob!” Sheloran squeaked as she was led into another cubicle.

Baxlon just looked at her and released a single solitary bubble. (bloop)

“That was the single… most….” Baxlon said slowly, “AMAZING thing I have ever seen in my fucking life! By The Great Ocean itself! I thought he was going to have another fucking stroke!”

Baxlon started shuddering with laughter.

“Do you know that he actually quit for the day?” Baxlon howled. “He just fucking walked out! He’s never done that!… Ever! I don’t know what you whispered in his ear, but it hit fucking bone. God, I love you!”

“So I did ok?” Sheloran asked.

“What?” Baxlon said as he started laughing harder than ever. “Oh no! You fucking confessed to murder!” he said, continuing to howl with laughter. “You are going to prison for a very long time! ‘So I did ok?...’ Gods, you are priceless!”

“Eeeeeee,” Sheloran squeaked, her life flashing before her eyes (the boring old way, not the scary new way).

“But it’s going to be the highlight of my career!” Baxlon exclaimed cheerfully. “I’m going to take this one all the fucking way! Jury trial! Media! Appeals! Oh, you are going down in flames, but they are going to be big giant Day-Glo fucking Terran flames!!! The Vengeance during the Battle of All the Marbles flames!!! Finally! Something truly worth a jury! Oh, this is going to be so much fucking FUN!!! Wooo!”

Baxlon spun happily in his globe.

“I am so glad I hooked up with you!” he exclaimed as he rushed forward, his eye filling the entire screen. “I’m not going to make a single fucking credit, but damn, girl, you have been nothing but a hoot to work for. Never a dull moment with you hopping around.”

“I’m really going to prison?” Sheloran squeaked miserably.

“Nothing’s certain,” Baxlon replied. “I’m going to be every bit of the bottom-feeding shit-loach that metallic butt-plug thinks I am on this one, but I’ll be honest… You’re kinda fucked.”

Sheloran just squeaked.

“Now, normally, I would tell you to do exactly what I say but let’s face it, that’s not going to happen, so you just be you and do your thing. I’ll try to make it work somehow,” Baxlon laughed. “Oh, I know! Chewbacca defense!”

“Chewbacca defense?”

“Don’t worry!” Baxlon laughed. “It’s an ancient time-proven strategy, and it is almost as if it was written just for you! You’re going to be you no matter what, so we weaponize it! Weaponized you! Judge Dredd will fucking LOVE it!”

“That can’t possibly work!” Sheloran squeaked so high it was almost inaudible.

“After that little stunt, you pulled,” Baxlon laughed, “It’s the only thing that will work!”

“So… What do I do?” Sheloran asked miserably.

“That’s the beauty of it,” Baxlon laughed. “All you have to do is be yourself. Be you, earnest, lovable, good-natured… guilty as hell… loving, caring, absolutely adorable… Do the rest of it loud enough, and they might just miss that one little detail. You are a mass-murdering psychoplath but damned if you aren’t a photogenic one! The jury will love it, and we are totally doing a jury trial! Do you know that you almost started a riot at the courthouse? People love you!”

Sheloran just sighed and shook her head. Of course. Of course, this was pooping happening. Why was she even surprised? Drop her whole life and cross the pooping galaxy to avoid life behind bars in a Plath prison only to wind up in Tartarus for her entire life.

It was horrible..ly…

funny… It was absolutely pooping hilarious.

She started to laugh.

“Alright,” She said, still laughing, “Talk to me about this Chewbacca and how he is going to save my stubby little tail.”

“Wait. You’ve never heard about Chewbacca?” Baxlon said in surprise. “I thought you were a Terran fangirl.”

“I am,” Sheloran replied. “That’s one crime I’m actually guilty of… well, that and murder, it seems...”

“Then boy, do I have a treat for you!” Baxlon exclaimed happily.