Canterlot City Municipal Courtroom 86 was a simple and relatively small room. It was decorated in sensible browns with a blue carpet, and reliable, soft furniture provided a friendly environment.
Judge Balance Pan considered herself a reasonable person. Hard, but fair, and certainly willing to compromise once it was earned. She had been well aware that there would be a media circus outside her court that day, and she’d been ready for the police commissioner to overreact to the recent prison break with overreaching additions to the building’s security… especially after his absurd phone call at no o’clock in the damn morning.
What she hadn’t been ready for was for the defendant to be wheeled into her courtroom on a mechanized two-wheeler like Hannibal For God’s Sake Lector, secured with steel straps keyed to a voice lock, flanked by two shotgun-toting SWAT officers and a pair of almost identical attorneys in pinstriped suits.
She glanced at the court reporter, then raised an eyebrow at the small group of circus turns invading her court. Mercifully, there were no civilian spectators. Once the usual court preliminaries were out of the way, defense started in immediately.
“Your Honor…”
She regarded the speaker – a yellow man with a red handlebar mustache – with the exact degree of disapproval due to anyone foolish enough to rush things in her court.
“I take it you are counsel for the defence?” she asked.
“Yes, Your Honor,” he nodded, straightening his tie. “We both are. Flim and Flam, attorneys at law.”
“I see. And I take it you already have an objection?”
“We do, Your Honor,” his brother answered, also stepping forward. “Defense objects to this Hollywood armed camp attitude towards our client. This is blatant overkill, and obviously intended to intimidate our client and sway Your Honor against her appeal by portraying her as some kind of B-movie monster.”
“Your client, who is innocent, I take it?” the judge asked in the same voice.
“She’s a lamb, your honor,” said the mustached one.
“Of course she is.” Having satisfied herself with the exact grade of slime the pair oozed, she turned back to the district attorney.
“All other considerations aside, where it comes to the restraints I am inclined to agree,” she said. “Do you believe you can offer any justification for this rigmarole?”
“Yes, Your Honor, I believe I can,” the purple man replied, handing her a thick folder. Frowning, the judge accepted the folder. The SWAT escort remained monolithic, unmoving in their armor, as the Flim Flam Brothers exchanged a worried glance.
Meanwhile, the Judge leafed through the folder, her frown continuing to deepen as her hands slowed their motions, her reading becoming more careful. Finally, she looked up again, her stony countenance stained with incredulity.
“Three hundred. And eighty-seven. Murders,” she said. “All of them murder in the first degree.”
“With respect, Your Honor, Miss Dash’s charges are not relevant to our objections to her inhumane treatment,” said Flim.
“Especially since we can demonstrate numerous improprieties regarding not only the court proceedings but the investigation leading to it,” Flam added hastily.
From within her restraints, Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Besides, I figure with the statute of limitations, it should really be closer to two-fifty.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, the gavel came down, sharp and loud.
“There’s no statute of limitations for murder!” the judge shouted.
“Well, why the fuck not?”
While all three attorneys stared in impotent horror, the judge’s eyes narrowed in barely contained anger.
“Watch yourself, Miss Dash,” she growled.
“Or what?” the blue woman demanded. “Three hundred counts of first degree murder? I mean, come on. Even an idiot can tell I’m being railroaded! I’m looking at the chair and you’re gonna what, hold me in contempt?”
Again, the gavel came down.
“I am inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt during these proceedings,” the judge seethed, “but I advise you not to try my patience!”
“Yeah, I know! If you don’t like me, you’ll just let me die!” Rainbow Dash yelled. “Thanks for the warning! Congratulations, you’re the most honest crooked asshole here! What do you want, a fucking cookie? Fuck off!”
Rising to a half-standing position, Judge Pan heard herself shouting, “I’m genuinely curious if you can maintain your rebel attitude while two thousand volts are running through your body!”
Rainbow Dash, straining against her restraints, screamed, “And I’m genuinely curious if you can keep being a douchebag when I bury my foot up your FUCKING ASS!”
Both brothers cried in unison, “My client would like that stricken from the record!”
Ignoring the lawyers, judge and prisoner both opened their mouths to shout over each other when gunfire erupted in the hallway. Immediately, both SWAT officers aimed their shotguns at Rainbow Dash’s head. While she blew her bangs away from her eyes, the bailiff crept towards the door in a crouch, gun drawn.
Suddenly, the door burst inward, flying off its hinges and into the face of the bailiff. Even as the zebra-striped girl rolled into the courtroom the guards were firing, gouging massive holes into the spectator pews she had hidden behind.
“What in the hell--?” the judge began, even as the crouching girl screamed the phrase from her earbud:
“Strawberry albatross!”
The tinnitus caused from firing their weapons caused a slight delay in the SWAT officers’ ability to hear the telltale hiss of Rainbow Dash’s magnetic restraints deactivating. Later, they would blame that for their failure to prevent her escape. It would look good in their report, a combination of accountability and diligence to duty.
But in reality, they had lost any possible control of their prisoner the moment Apple Bloom had spoken.
The instant that its programmed code phrase had registered in the small computer near the base of Rainbow’s back, the flow of electricity in her restraint system had ceased. Now, the blue woman’s body blurred in a rainbow of color as she wriggled out of the loosening bonds at super speed, the act of forcing the magnetic straps back generating the hissing sound the guards were finally hearing.
From Rainbow Dash blurring into motion to her guards’ responding to her took almost three seconds. Three long, slow seconds. It might as well have been days.
It had been years since Rainbow Dash had used her magic. Moving faster always made time go slower, after all. At least, that’s how it seemed to her. And once she’d established that she could not escape her seven foot cell by using her powers, more time was the last thing she’d wanted.
But now, watching her captors slowly begin to turn towards her, seeing their faces slowly shift as they realized what had happened, it was just like old times again.
God, but that felt good!
Once out of her bonds, she stood almost still, vibrating in a rainbow blur as she took in the scene. Yeah, that was definitely Apple Bloom under all that body paint. Holy crap. And while she couldn’t tell for sure, it looked like there was movement in the hall, too. Figures moving in the… fog? No. No, that was the sprinkler system. And she could hear the alarms slowly grinding away somewhere downstairs, but nothing on this floor, just like the sprinklers hadn’t activated in this one room.
She grinned. Twilight. It had to be Twilight. Twilight had finally woke up, and teamed up with Apple Bloom. And now, the two of them had broken her out.
Rainbooms, back in action at last.
Awwwww, yeah.
But, first things first.
Refocusing on her two guards, she saw they were about halfway turned, and so might start firing any second. That was a problem. Even when she’d been in practice, dodging bullets had always been a risky business. It was always better to dodge the shooter than the bullets they’d send after you.
And, of course, they weren’t necessarily the bad guys. If they’d been prison guards, there would have been no question. Three years in solitary had taught Rainbow Dash that there was no life form lower than a prison screw. But these were just cops. Maybe dirty, maybe not.
Inwardly, she sighed.
Dammit.
Then, she started to really move again.
Stepping forward, she shoved both shotguns upwards, letting their next discharge blast into the ceiling. Then, she jerked their lead hands off the pumps and smacked their face plates with their own weapons.
Mercifully, they were both stunned enough that their grips relaxed, and she removed their fingers from the triggers and took the guns for herself. Uncoiling a tensed finger and pulling it out from a trigger guard was a delicate business at high speed, and a mistake could tear something off. Relaxed digits were much easier.
Then, leveling both shotguns at their previous owners, she let time flow at its normal rate again.
They stared at her through their cracked visors. Then, each other. Then back to her again.
Behind her, one of the Flim Flam brothers poked his head partway up from behind a heavy table with a quick, “Um, anybody hit and need a lawyer?” before the other brother grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back behind cover.
“Yeah, that’s right,” she smiled, “I’m back. And if I were you guys… I’d run.”
They ran.
Mindful of the open door, Rainbow Dash zipped to where Apple Bloom was, helping her to her feet and handing her one of the captured weapons.
“So, you just had to knock it right off its hinges,” she grinned.
Apple Bloom shrugged. “I was expectin’ a heavier door.”
“Uh-huh. You and your sister. Sorry,” she added with a wince.
“S’okay.”
Rainbow Dash nodded, then turned to the bench. “Hey, judge, you want to get outta here? It sounds like they’re getting past the barriers. This place is gonna start heating up pretty soon—”
“No, don’t,” Apple Bloom interrupted.
Rainbow Dash turned to her with a frown. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t send her out there,” Apple Bloom said urgently. “It ain’t like when you got locked up. Things’ve gotten worse.”
The other woman stared. “How worse?”
As if in answer, a smoking, fist-sized object shot into the room. In a multicolored flash, Rainbow Dash scooped it up and hurled it back into the hall. Less than a second later, a burst of light and sound filled the hall, even as the doorway filled with indiscriminate gunfire. The Flim Flam brothers and the other attorney quickly found themselves huddled behind the judge’s bench, away from the door’s area of vulnerability.
Then, a moment later, the gunfire stopped.
“Oh,” Rainbow Dash said quietly. “That worse.”
Zipping to a position opposite the door from Apple Bloom, Rainbow carefully pulled the unconscious bailiff out from under the door and away from the doorway.
“Hey, judge?” she asked. “You don’t have a gun you’re gonna try to shoot us with or anything, do you?”
“I am unarmed, Miss Dash.”
“Awesome.” Rainbow relieved the court officer of his weapons and deposited him behind the bench with the judge. “You guys stay here and don’t get shot, okay?”
“I give you every assurance that has always been our intention.”
“Perfect.”
Rainbow Dash walked back towards the open doorway, regarding the young lady across from it. Her voice was almost nonchalant as the two of them took up sitting positions to either side of the courtroom’s door, backs to the wall.
“So, Twilight’s awake.”
“Uh-huh.”
The blue woman nodded. “’Bout fuckin’ time. So, how’re we getting out of here?”
Apple Bloom looked uncertainly at the open doorway between them, and the sounds of repositioning armored personnel emerging from beyond it.
“Um, she’s workin’ on that?”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes as she hefted one of the captured shotguns. “Of course she is.”
Another volley of gunfire interrupted them, and when it paused Rainbow Dash was kneeling in the doorway in a multicolored burst, firing away. Then, in a burst of light, she was in cover again, waiting out the next hail of bullets.
When it finally stopped, Apple Bloom yelled, “Twilight said t’keep the bloodshed down!”
“They’re shooting at us!”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Yeah, an’ I hear ya! But there’s folks on this floor who ain’t got nuthin’ to do with this. An’ you seen how the cops ain’t gonna be careful! We keep firin’ back an’ forth, somebody that ain’t in this may panic an’ do somethin’ stupid…”
Rainbow Dash sighed, running a hand through her polychrome hair as she lowered her weapon.
“Yeah, okay, point taken. But these fuckers better not get too close.”
Apple Bloom hefted her own shotgun, looking grim.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m right there with ya.”