It had been difficult, but after years of planning, they had done it: Canterlot’s finest civil engineers and architects, given a piece of land that had been deemed inutile due to its size, which ponies at first had said would be suitable only for a colony of slightly-larger-than-usual ants, had managed to construct a school, complete with classrooms, a gymnasium, an auditorium, an office, bathrooms, and all other accommodations necessary to the facilitation of learning, that was able to contain the fifty-five ponies who were the staff and the nine hundred fifty who were the students. And, furthermore, after the chief inspector of the city had made his circumspect tour of the building, sedulously applying the full extent of his professional insight, he concluded that not only had the engineers succeeded but had gone beyond: though the school had to only, at the most, be able to hold one thousand and five ponies at one time, the building and its environs, in accordance with building codes, could safely hold up to five thousand.
At present, the number of ponies in Canterlot High’s halls, rooms, lawns, and immediate vicinity numbered ten thousand.
Well before the school itself came into sight, Due Process, leaning over the side of the carriage, could see the streets below beginning to become congested, and could hear the growing roar of thousands of voices. Around a building, over a hill, and there was his old school in full view beneath them—or, rather, there was the shape of his old school. He couldn’t see the grounds themselves, but he recognized each one of the peculiar dimples, rises, and falls of the property, by the dimples, rises, and falls of the mass of ponies packed into that small area.
“Wow!” he exclaimed, as the carriage passed overhead, and a sea of flashes, from the cameras of the reporters who had just caught sight of the princess’s carriage, erupted from the crowd. “I’ve never seen the school so packed! Are there usually this many ponies whenever you make an appearance?”
Princess Celestia took a quick peek over the side. “Oh no, not at all,” she said flatly. “There are usually many more.” Not even my subjects think it worth their time to follow these ludicrous proceedings, she thought bitterly.
“A high school,” she droned. “I take it the court’s usual building is under construction?”
“Tribunal, Your Majesty,” corrected Due Process. “And this is the Tribunal’s usual building. A combination of budget, logistics, compromises, and politics means that the Tribunal was not allocated its own location, though it fights to this day to get one.”
As the carriage approached in for landing, Due Process could see that not all of the yard was filled: A small, narrow clearing, one end terminating at the stairs to the school, the other large enough to permit the landing of a chariot, was plainly visible. Two rows of armored police barely held the undulating crush in check; here and there could be seen the gaudy yellow armor and overblown crests of the Royal Guards, interspersed here and there in the clearing behind the police.
The carriage landed. At once, a bevy of Royal Guards swarmed them, forming a protective shield all around and above, composed of tall, meaty earth ponies on the ground, and pegasi in the air so corpulent that Due Process wondered how it was possible for such tiny wings to lift such a great mass of muscle and armor from the ground. The vigorous flapping of their wings undid what remained of the knot of his tie.
Through the sound of their grunting, flapping, wheezing, and unintelligible orders, Due Process could hear the roar of the crush outside.
“Uh . . .” stammered Due Process, trembling, “after . . . after you, Your Majesty.”
“You are my lawyer, are you not?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, but I don’t see—”
“You represent me to the public. For as long as you are under my employment, you are I; you speak for me; everything that you say is the same as if I were to say it. Go on, I’m right behind you. Don’t worry; my guards may look silly, but they’re highly trained, committed stallions. Nothing will happen; I promise.”
She gestured to a small opening in the wall of flesh that the guards had just made, through which there could be seen the path, which the policeponies had carved out and were now desperately trying to maintain, toward the front steps of the school. Due Process gulped.
But there was nothing for it. After taking a deep breath, pungent with the sweat of a score of soldiers on their twelfth hour of duty, he squeezed his way through their mass, becoming a little bit too intimate with the anatomy of a Royal Guard than was comfortable as he wriggled himself through.
He stepped out on the ground, and around him the air burst into blinding flashes. A deafening cacophony of ten thousand voices pierced his ears. In a panic, he collapsed, covering his eyes with his hooves and wings.
Divers worst case scenarios passed through his head, each one more terrible than the last, each bumping up his blood pressure a few more points in both systolic and diastolic.
But somewhere in that confusion, the words of his therapist prevailed. There’s nothing to be scared of, they said. You’re fit for life and your job. Look deep, Due Process, and in you you will find your power, unique to you!
But what have I done? he screamed to himself. Who am I? Just a little, inexperienced, ignorant attorney! And I’m supposed to represent the Princess of Equestria . . .
The words of his client a minute ago echoed in his ear. “You represent me to the public. You are I. You speak for me.”
I’m Princess Celestia, he realized, with all her rights, powers, and offices. Would the Princess of Equestria cower like a little colt?
“No!” he said aloud. He felt the power of a princess and demigod rise in him, first in his legs, then in his torso, and at last in his wings, and thereupon he took flight, above the line of police to see the ponies clamoring for the princess’s—his—attention.
“No!” he repeated, moving toward the front doors of the school at a confident pace. “The princess has nothing to say to you! . . . No questions, no comments, no comments! . . . Back off, and make way! . . . No, I will not say anything—that is my right in this free and democratic society!”
“Make way for your sovereign, your divinely-appointed head of state, who literally brings the light of day to ye, ye peasants!” cried a Royal Guard right behind the lawyer, breaking the nose of a particularly eager reporter who had crossed an inch over the police line.
Due Process touched down upon the steps of the school, hoarse from his shouting, blind from the flashes, tired, bewildered, but triumphant. When he regained his vision, he saw beside him on the front step, her face mostly obscured by her wings which she had placed over her brow to preserve her eyes from the cameras, an old pegasus mare. The wrinkles around her mouth, eyes, and cheeks, imparted to her countenance, remarkable in one of her sex, not the signs of a white collar geriatric, but the augustness and wisdom of an emperor. Even as she stood silently still, staring at him with a coy, calculating smile, Due Process could tell that age had only sharpened her mind; and while case after case had wearied her peers and forced them to retire, she, like a changeling which becomes thirstier the more it feeds, had to argue, speak, attack, defend more, her rapacity, her need to be right, ever becoming the more keen as she consumed, and she looked upon the young lawyer with much the same way a lioness would at a weak, young antelope.
Due Process, his joy and wonder overwhelming him, could barely manage to squeak: “Ms. Res . . . Judicata.”
“Dear me,” she said, with the self-assured, matter-of-fact tone only long experience can give a professional, “why, the university is puttin’ them out younger and younger, seems.”
“Careful, Ms. Judicata,” said Due Process, the attention he had absorbed with his walk down the aisle giving him the hubris to venture a quip. “Make too many comments about my age, and we shall soon see each other as opponents once again, but with you as the defendant and I as the complainant seeking reparations for age-based harassment and discrimination.”
Her laugh gave him singularly pleasurable tingles. “Young, handsome—and witty too!” she chuckled in her pleasing Manehattan drawl. “A winning combination. Kid, you gotta lot goin’ for ya.”
“Ms. Judicata . . .” he breathed, “I . . .”
“Please, son,”—gently touching him on the shoulder—“call me Judy.”
A particularly astute, fast-thinking, and fast-acting Royal Guard leaped over to Due Process and caught him before he smashed his skull against the concrete in a faint.
Her next comment brought him back to an alert, agitated consciousness. “Yes, a lot goin’ for ya kid. Losing’ll be good for you—a much needed lesson in modesty. Winning too many cases too early in a lawyer’s career gives him a false sense of order—can drive ’im to the bottle later.”
“Do not be presumptuous, Ms. Jud—Judy. It’s not over till the commissioners give their opinion.”
“What an imagination! But look at me; look at me now, kid,” she said, drawing closer. “Shake my hoof. Smile.” Without thinking, this he did, and when she turned to look at the crowd, he did too, if only out of reflex. The flashes of the cameras erupted with a greater intensity now, capturing the charming, attractive, stately grin of Res Judicata, and the bemused, half-formed, slightly indignant gape of Due Process.
When they separated, Due Process opened his mouth to speak, but already Res Judicata had forged ahead, holding open the door to the school for him, gesturing him through. He had half a mind to open his own door; but, seeing the princess following up behind him, and remembering whom he represented—or, rather, who he was—he curtsied slightly to his opponent, and went through, she following closely behind.
“That’s funny, what you said earlier,” he said to Res Judicata, when the two of them were inside and out of view of the cameras. “You speak so certainly!”
“I can tell you’re smart, my dear,” she said. “I know you’ve studied hard, both my cases and the Tribunal’s, and I know you’re smart enough t’know, without me havin’ to tell ya, given what the princess has been accused of and what you have t’work with, you mighta’s well try’ta settle now. Little Hearty Bucks and his mommy don’t need me to win. Ya know all they hafta do is show up, maybe mommy tells ’im he gets no ice cream; he cries; she gets indignant before the Tribunal, and then what are the commissioners going to see? The broke earth ponies on one side, in their unwashed, stained working clothes; and on the other side a princess of Equestria, the diamonds on her shoes newly polished. Even if you can prove without a doubt your client’s case, they’re gonna rule in favor of me. Why not? The princess can stand ta lose a few thousand bits and perhaps hold only fifty balls this year ’stead of fifty-five.”
“I like to think,” riposted Due Process, “that the commissioners are a little more disinterested than you would have me believe.”
Res Judicata gave a wistful sigh and tousled Due Process’s mane. “Ah!” she cooed. “So long has it been since school! But still I remember the idealism I had when I was in your shoes: I remember thinking that our society and our law, though flawed, were fundamentally just. I remember when I genuinely believed that there’s no satisfactory conclusion that two rational, reasonable ponies couldn’t come ta, both of them usin’ their reason alone. Yes, I believe I can remember when I thought that a pony, qua a pony, though he could commit evil, nevertheless carried a fundamental idea of justice that he, to the best of his ability, endeavored ta effect. Ah! Such naïveté of youth!”
Due Process frowned. “I don’t think it’s naïve at all,” he said. “If you look at all the oppressors and tyrants in history, they all were trying to address terrible injustices. They all unanimously identified what was unequivocally wrong; they just were even more wrong in the ways they tried to fix it. But the fundamental concepts of the just and the unjust were there in them. If they had been raised and educated better, they would have found better ways to act on them.”
When Res Judicata laughed, once again Due Process shivered; only this time, it didn’t feel so good. “Oh, you’re so adorable!” she chirped. “If I weren’t old enough ta be your grandmother, I’d kiss ya, yes I’d!” Again she tousled his mane.
“Ribbing!” she said, noticing his scowl. “Healthy ribbing between two lawyers on opposite sides. We’ll both be laughing once it’s done, I can assure ya. Best of buddies I’d hope us ta be. Well!” she said, “I believe this is the auditorium. After you! No, no, you first, I insist. I’ve already been there many times. Go on, my dear; go on and see your future!”
Due Process, obeying, opened the door and stepped inside.
A long, empty chamber. Rows upon rows of cheap, fold-up plastic chairs served as the pews. Pupils’ desks served as the seats for the complainant and defendant; on the slightly elevated stage were teachers’ desks for the commissioners. And all along the walls, layers upon layers of crudely cobbled together posters advertising divers meretricious musicals, the plots and songs of which nopony in Equestria could still summarize or sing.