He had no idea how it had happened to him, who was usually so organized, who had never missed a test, assignment, engagement, commitment, who had never failed to fulfill a promise of any kind—but now he had no time to think. He had only the energy, and just barely, to run, the slamming of his hoofs against the concrete rattling his spine, and seeming to punch straight into a sore spot of his mind, which in its agonizing pain screamed one word at him with every step in his frantic gallop: LATE-LATE . . . LATE-LATE . . . LATE-LATE . . .
Had he forgotten to set his alarm? If so, how was that possible? He always checked his clock before drifting off, his obsessiveness in so doing increasing proportionally with the importance of the event for which he had to rise. Had he forgotten the event entirely? Even less likely.
If only he could fly, he would make it on time; but when he tried to flap his wings, he felt them thin, weak, useless, sticky as if soaked in tar. Briefly, he turned his head to see what was the matter, and the sight had horrified him so much that he immediately shut his eyes, continuing to run, feeling that he was to trip at any moment in his blindness, but still not daring to look: instead of wings, he thought he had seen two scrawny sticks of skin and bone, the feathers having all molted away.
Whatever horror he may have felt at that sight and feeling was drowned by the horror of his lateness.
It did not feel like a long time, but when he reached the school, he knew, deep within him, that however long his sprint had been—five minutes, ten, sixty, a thousand—he might has well have been late by a century. Three times he tried to open the door to the auditorium; three times he failed, on the third collapsing to the ground in exhaustion, sweat, and fear. The fourth time, crying, sobbing, he heaved the door open and just managed to slide through the aperture on his belly to the roar of a jeering crowd.
He inched forward, wormlike, to his place, his muzzle dragging on the ground.
“Mr. Process,” he heard Chief Commissioner Petty Nicety say from the stage, “care to explain to the Tribunal why you’ve kept us waiting so long?”
“I don’t . . . know . . .” His own voice seemed to him distant and weak compared to the laughs of the spectators and the mumbling of the commissioners. “I tried to fly . . . but something’s wrong!” He dared one more look at his wings, and sobbed: there could be no more mistake—every feather had fallen off, and he stood in front of the Tribunal, sobbing, looking at the two scrawny twigs where his wings used to be.
“Ill-prepared!” screeched Commissioner Affirmative Action. Due Process had not heard her speak till now. He was a skeptical pony by nature, but after hearing her, he immediately believed that banshees existed. “Stupid, insolent child! And you dare to pretend to the title of Attorney at Law?” The sound of her voice was so abrasive and shrill that Due Process felt a physical pain in his chest, as if each syllable were a spear skewering him through. He could not stifle his cries of pain, which resulted only in the augmentation of the crowd’s snickers.
“I have . . . a degree . . . the bar examination . . . I did that too . . .” was all he could wheeze.
“I’m disappointed,” said Res Judicata, in her accentless lawyer’s drawl. And, turning, to the commissioners, she added: “Is this really the best you can throw at me?”
“His client’s not even here,” said Commissioner Radical Reformer, with the obnoxious rising inflection of a sorority sister. “Like, why do you even exist?”
“My client?” He wasn’t even surprised. “I thought she was—”
“Of course ‘he thought.’ He’s very presumptuous,” said Fine Print, who was sitting next to Radical Reformer on the stage. “You know that he actually thought that he had a chance with me. He tried to kiss me.”
“What,” gasped Radical Reformer, “him? You can’t be serious!”
The commissioners laughed. The crowd laughed. Res Judicata scoffed, shaking her head. And Fine Print said: “We’re just friends, Dewey; I’ll never think of you that way! Why can’t you take a hint?”
Due Process covered his eyes with his hooves, and ground his teeth till they all broke, falling from his mouth and clattering like broken glass to the floor, as he tried to will away the scene with his mind. He did this till, so it seemed, the sounds gradually died away and he was left with silence.
When he dared to peek once more, the world had melted. He could still distinguish the stage, the crowd, and the commissioners’ bench, but there forms were shady, indistinct, and colorless, as if he were looking at them through a haze.
“Where’d you go?” he called out. “Where is everypony?”
“Waiting for you,” said a voice from everywhere, and nowhere.
He turned. Through the mist, he thought he could perceive a tall figure walking down the aisle toward him. As it approached, it coalesced into a familiar, regal alicorn, who stared at him knowingly, mercilessly.
“Princess Luna!” he cried. “But where is your sister? If she doesn’t show up, the Tribunal will award everything the complainant asks for! Get her, Princess, for the sake of your kingdom; bring her here!”
“She will not come,” responded the princess. “She made that clear to you already. This task is yours and yours alone, Due Process.”
“That’s not how the PRAT works, Princess! Without her, the proceedings can’t take place. Without her, they’ll consider the complaint without a response, and without a response they’ll consider all the complainant’s points conceded. Without her, they’ll see. And . . . they see everything! I know nothing, can do nothing. My arguments are hollow. I don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s too late! The fraud that is Due Process, Esquire has been exposed to the world!”
Princess Luna nodded. “Indeed. A nightmare is merely the manifestation of our worst fears. But it’s usually the primal ones that are the most powerful. Most ponies dream about being buried alive or drowned or abandoned by their friends and family. But you, Due Process, dream about legal proceedings. Take heart at this, if at nothing else: you are a lawyer to the core, and the proof thereof is that your most basic, animalistic fear is that of a case going awry.”
“Dream?” said Due Process. “You mean this a dream?” When he realized its truth, he collapsed onto the floor. “Oh . . . .” he moaned, “thank . . . goodness! Bless the earth, the heavens—the universe! Only a dream!”
“Aye, a dream,” responded the princess. “But, take heed, Due Process; you’d be wise to be more judicious when using the word only. For, in dreams, our deepest, most repressed thoughts—”
“Yes, yes, Princess,” said Due Process, rising to his feet. “Subconscious fears and hangups, have to face them—all that good stuff. But Princess!” He straightened his tie. “I might as well ask you, while you’re here: have you given any thought to what I said last night . . . er, I mean, just a little while ago, at the Gala?”
Princess Luna blinked. “What are you talking about?”
Due Process straightened himself up, slightly raising his head as he always thought a lawyer should do when addressing a judge. “At the Gala I asked you if you would, in your graciousness, ask Her Majesty, Princess Celestia, that she, for her sake, as well as for mine, might reconsider her decision to settle.”
“What?”
“The PRAT, what I’m dreaming about. Your sister, as you may remember, Your Majesty . . . I represent her, yet she wants to give up, and this, in my opinion, will inevitably result in—”
“I . . .” stammered Princess Luna. “I . . . no!” In the dream world, her voice was a lot less pleasant, a lot more shrieky than he remembered.
“No!” cried she, as if at the sight of a particularly odious, encroaching insect unexpectedly encountered in a place to which it had neither business nor right. “No, that’s not how this works! It is I who am the sentinel of the slumbering, I who issue warnings in the realm of dreams. It is I who am privy to the signs of the subconscious, I who have the insight, and it is for me, me alone, to interpret them and give my premonitions. Attempt to usurp neither my office nor my domain!”
“I understand . . . I understand. This is your world,” said Due Process. His words spoke of deference, but his countenance suggested a challenge. He took a step closer. She recoiled. “But, given the most unusual circumstances, Your Majesty, surely even you can understand that my approach, as unorthodox as it might be—”
“I said no!”
Due Process watched, tapping a foot impatiently, as the princess all at once grew ten feet above him, through the roof of the building, the structure melting away.
They stood upon the summit of Mount Everhoof. A great cumulonimbus, the wind churning it into a gaping funnel leading directly into a celestial abyss, threw down spears of lightning behind her. Her eyes blazed red with the fire of the inferno. A snowstorm swallowed up the world around him, freezing and boiling him at once, leaving visible only the creature, a pony no longer, towering above him.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“Submit! Submit!” roared the sky. “Submit to me!”
“Hmm.” Due Process scratched his chin. “You know what?” he said at length. “No, I don’t think so.”
The princess had shrunk. Now it was she who was looking up at him. He looked down and saw the mountain she was standing on, more like a molehill now from his perspective.
He saw a saddle on the little pony beneath him, and, without a second thought, he leaped onto her back, straddling her.
“Degenerate wretch!” she squeaked, as she tried in vain to buck him off. “How . . . how dare . . . you will be hanged by your entrails, eviscerated, drawn and quartered, your mutilated corpse paraded around the city as an example—an example to those who would dare even think to treat a princess with anything but the utmost deference!”
“It’s a dream,” said the lawyer. “I can do whatever I want.” He slapped her right haunch. “Gee up, Princess!”
Another shriek and she was off. Due Process threw both his hooves around her neck as she galloped off through space and time, shrieking all the way. To any broken word of protest she tried to offer, all she heard, drowning it out, was: “Will you think about it? Please, Princess, just one word is all I ask!”
Her strength failing her, she fell. He, holding onto her, fell too. She did nothing to check their descent, and she plunged with the certainty, conviction, and satisfaction that her death, pain, and suffering would mean his too.
They crashed into the earth.
In Canterlot, two ponies awoke in the middle of the night, one in a cold sweat, the other feeling oddly satisfied. This latter pony threw off the covers, and rose, whistling as he trotted off to the kitchen to make himself a nice mug of hot chocolate.