//------------------------------// // Chapter Twelve, Courtroom Chimera: Don't get cocky! // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Maries- “What… what are you talking about?!” Billion didn’t know what was going on or why Jade was suddenly free of all her charges. “You’re clearly showing bias towards the defendant.” “Oh that doesn’t matter anymore.” A calm Maria stated. “Just one more crime, among several others. You aren’t a noble and therefore you can’t acknowledge Jade as a sun priest or throw out judge Celestia. In fact you don’t have any power in the courtroom come to think of it, I wonder what other illegal things have you done lately.” “Of course I’m a noble, there’s nothing that says I’m not!” Billion Karats, you were a sad and pathetic stallion. We definitely had the arguments to show that you weren’t capable of acknowledging Jade. “So I have some authority.” “Actually you don’t. Quick question, can you prove that you are a noble? I’m sure if we looked into your background, we’d find a pony who has tried to pass himself off as a noble and doesn’t even have documented proof.” We were bringing it into the light now, telling everyone what was wrong with this situation was Mara. We slammed our paws down on the defendants table. “Among the ways to become nobles are as follows: Our personal favorite is serving in Equestria’s military where you don’t have to do anything big to get a title of nobility. You can also hereditarily earning the noble title from previous family members or be given the title for incredible noble actions and being of service to Celestia directly. Can you, without a doubt, prove that you did one of these things before the court? Since Jade cannot be acknowledged as a sun priest by you… you’ve proven that you lack the rank of nobility to make it so Celestia has a reason to be considered biased. Your pending trial isn’t a farce, it’s very much real!” “What do you mean, I did acknowledge her!” Now you were about to find out where you screwed up so much Mr. Karats. “Yes, you tried to at least, but it didn’t work. Do you even know what happens when you truthfully acknowledge a sun priest? Of course you don’t, at least some nobles would keep up with the laws to make sure they can learn how to tip toe around them. You don’t even know that much!” Marie was going to lay it out for him. “Unless Celestia has suddenly stopped being a princess for some reason, the acknowledgment didn’t take. This means only one thing, which is that you were never a noble and nobles don’t exactly have the greatest of legal authority to begin with. The only reason why you want Celestia to step down is because the defendant was about to reveal the whole point of all her actions last week. Take it away Jade.” “The truth about the Gilded Buttress is that it’s an illegally made airship and I’m the one that performed the investigation into it. If that ship were to ever crash, given its penchant for being costly in maintenance it would have eventually done so given how easy it is to damage, the results would have been quite devastating to the surroundings and many lives would have been lost or just outright endangered. The danger comes from the fact that the airship is almost entirely made out of gold and is twenty times heavier than a normal airship! That is way beyond the legal weight limit airships are allowed to have.” The jury just gasped. As Jade spoke we watched the look on Billion’s face turn downright scared and horrified. “It’s just not the airship that’s the problem though, it is Billion Karats rampant embezzlement to even keep the airship flying that’s the real trouble. Given that he’s been siphoning money from various government related jobs to keep his business going. If you don’t understand what this means, this means that he’s been stealing the money that the royal guards, garbage ponies, health care institutions and many other things this and other cities need to function correctly. He didn’t get rich by investments at all, he got rich by stealing tax money!” Half the jury, made up of guards coming off of their injuries from Jade, turned towards Billion Karats with glares upon seeing the green glow from the ‘Circle of the Concise’. Billion got up and walked up to the witness stand and slammed his hooves on top of the desk in front of Jade. “None of what you said is true, who’s going to believe a rotten little nothing like you!” The circle turned blood red, Billion’s really wasn’t getting away with this and was only digging himself deeper. “The jury will, you’re standing in something called the ‘Circle of the Concise’. It is a spell that is now glowing red because you just basically told everyone I’m telling the truth because you’re currently lying and quite loudly at that.” At Jade’s words his eyes widened as he looked down and finally noticed the circle. “Thanks for basically telling us that you were not of noble blood by the way, very informative how it turned red earlier. That’s why Celestia asked if you wanted to acknowledge me… since you actually can’t. We’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re not as noble as you pretend to be.” “Well… it seems that I have… maybe…” Billion Karats started backing away from the witness stand, looking all about and like he was about to have a mental break down. He turned around and started to gallop away. “Shining, bailiff, someone, arrest that stallion!” Both the bailiff and Shining jumped to their hooves at Celestia’s orders and giving chase after the stallion, they fired stunning blasts at Billion. The unicorn just stopped and smirk. The magic stunning spells didn’t seem to do a single thing to him, making both Shining and the bailiff stop and leaving us all perplexed. We could get up and do something, but it seems Jade already had it handled as she got up and approached Shining Armor with a very lazy walk. “Think of this as the day that you almost caught me, I’m wearing an artifact that can protect me from magic!” He turned around to start running. “You’ll never get me!” -Billion Karats- Damn it all, I’ve been had, that sun priest has ruined absolutely everything! The last laugh will be mine because I’m going to get away to plot my revenge and then… Something knocked the hat off my head, I then tripped on it and flipped over onto my back. I then felt something enter my open mouth and started choking me. I clawed at the object in my throat trying to get it out with my hooves, but it was hard to get a good grip on it. -Jade- The bailiff pounced on the pony and held a struggling Billion Karats down, who was currently busy choking on a rubber chicken. “… did you just pull that from my…” Shining could hardly find the words for how violated he felt about having the rubber chicken pulled from where it was placed. “Why yes, I did just pull a rubber cock right out of you. His name is Boneless by the way, he’s even kind of named after you!” I made my way over to the pinned and choking pony to help the bailiff, I left a stuttering mess of a pony named Shining Armor in my wake. “I would have named him Boner… but… yeah…tasteless...” Running forward, I roughly kicked the side of Billion’s head. I successfully knocked him senseless before I retrieved the rubber chicken from his throat with the same hand I just threw it with. I dropped the chicken off to the side and started pulling stuff off of Billion Karats. I eventually found an amulet of some kind under his clothes, which I swiftly removed from his body. It was kind of warm, it probably could only stop a certain amount of magic before it fully overloaded. The bailiff unleashed a point blank stun spell as soon as the protective amulet was removed, it seems we have just caught ourselves a pretty bad scam artist with a gold theme. -Celestia- “Well now, I can see why the rubber chicken was so important to her.” I heard Pace Set comment idly as he leered in Shining’s direction. “Now she can’t say that she honestly didn’t do anything with a rubber chicken. Though I wonder how that got there in the first place, much less how it went ignored for so long by someone who’s supposed to be an alert and well trained royal guard.” “No wonder I was walking so funny for this entire week… it would also explain my irritability among so many other things.” With a glance I could see that Shining looked very embarrassed about the situation. How long has that rubber chicken exactly been stuck up in there? I would still punish him with a week of not seeing Cadence, but the rubber chicken thing was almost punishment enough on its own. “Thank you for helping set this up prosecutor Pace.” I followed up my words by tittering into my hooves. How did Jade even throw it so accurately and was it just a lucky coincidence that Billion Karats ended up deep throating it? In any case, this was absolutely hilarious and we just caught ourselves a criminal. Thanks to an obscure law, Shining couldn't even charge anyone over the rubber chicken. “You could at least have warned me that this was a fake trial princess, this has been a waste of my time.” Pace Set should cheer up. I mean when is he ever going to see someone get stopped by a rubber chicken like that again? “Oh Jade’s trial is quite real, but now it’s someone else who’s going to put up there on the stand and she was well on her way to being acquitted of all her charges anyway. You were kind of fighting a losing battle Mr. Set.” I nodded to him amiably while smiling, not one of my daily fake plastered on smiles either. This was one of my true heartwarming smiles I’d give to Twilight, Spike or anyone else who's worthy. Currently, Pace Set truly deserved it. He’s gone miles in this trial and was stopped at the very edge. Miles Edge Worth… nah, that wouldn’t be a good name for Pace Set. “By the way, Jade never pulled her knife or used her claws, so she never caused anything close to life threatening injuries or attacked with intent to kill. So that would have been tossed out as well. Who’s going to accuse her of stealing an illegal ship and safely getting it away from any inhabited areas now, especially without implicating themselves of knowing about what the ship is made of in the process?” “I…” Pace Set huffed audibly and looked at the floor. “You’re correct your majesty. We won’t have anyone left that can actively press charges against her activities… I would try, but I don’t want to be implicated as having known the ship was made of gold. I already told everyone I don’t take bribes, I’m an honorable stallion and I know when I’ve lost a case. I won’t lose this next one though… is there a particular reason why there are no other lawyers around today?” Shining came back to the witness stand with a tied up Billion Karats and slapped him into the seat angrily. He was quite upset with Billion, he wasn’t the only royal guard who was upset. Had the guards in the jury been capable and weren’t still figuratively licking their wounds, they would have jumped on Billion Karats themselves. “Yes, I believe Billion Karats has the right to an attorney. Why, oh my goodness, there’s three right over there!” My left hoof pointed out Mara, Maria and Marie who all gave us three evil smiles. “You’re making this way too easy Celestia… I’ll cherish this gift of putting a criminal where he belongs.” There was a smug smirk on Pace Set’s face. -Ten minutes later, Jade- “Were you the one that sent those assassins after me?” I asked seriously. I washed off my hands and had Boneless completely magically cleaned, I planned to give the chicken away to the first colt I saw. “What, no, I never sent assassins after anyone…” A broken Billion Karats was sitting in the box and he was whining about it quite a bit, he was at least telling the truth on this matter. “Could any of your friends have possibly sent them, the ones who knew I was a priestess?” Billion Karats’ trial was actually kangaroo court flavored and more of a farce than my trial had been, everyone knew he was positively guilty. He couldn’t hide try and hide it either now. We’ve been asking Billions about everything. We asked him whether certain royal guards were being paid off, if the crew knew the ship was made of gold and even how he started this whole set up to begin with. None of the other nobles apparently knew about his duplicity. I so wanted to get Blueblood on criminal charges too… ah well. You can’t win all the time. We still had an airship made of gold sitting at Airship Mauled and as long as nobody remembered it was there… well… nobody said that we couldn’t keep it yet... “Yes, but I don’t know who among them did, I just wished they were successful!” There was a bit of bite in Billion’s words as the circle turned green. “You know, it’s not very easy to defend you when you make comments about wishing someone was dead.” Maries was actually making somewhat of an effort, but they knew that they couldn’t defend Billion Karats at all. “Like you’re even actually defending me at this point!” Well she was actually, it was Maries job to be impartial and try to argue a lesser punishment for him. She was arguing, but it was clear cut that Pace Set was going to win this one and my case had taken longer than this one has. “You could enter a plea bargain for a lighter sentence you know.” They actually were trying as I told them to not fake it, it was just that bad of a case that no lawyer could find legs to stand on to get him acquitted. “You could tell us about those ponies you met with and what they are doing.” “They’d kill me if did, I’m not squealing on them.” Yep, this about wraps it up, but if Nil-ion didn’t send those two assassins after me, then who did? “I’d rather do my time thank you very much.” -Airship Mauled, Jade- “Guess what guys, Maries got me a not guilty verdict and even held her own in the courtroom!” I walked into The Witch’s Fare attracted to the smell of food, it was just unfortunate for me that I was going to be accosted before I could get anything eat. “You, me, bed… now!” I was being dragged away by Fizzle, who obviously missed me and had a very strong grip on my left shoulder. My favorite unicorn looks a little perturbed and tired, it’s like she hasn’t gotten any sleep lately. I guess we were having a good nap together. -Cheese Sandwich- Hello, I’m Cheese Sandwich, I like accordions and this rubber chicken that a cat gave to me!