PRAT

by Integral Archer

Chapter I: Due Process

Try as she might, Princess Celestia was unable to shake the feeling of apprehension for what awaited her.

As she and her carriage flew through Canterlot’s airspace, she tried to look at the city, her beautiful capital, about which she had always been unable to speak without going into raptures. “Canterlot’s unparalleled and inimitable architecture is the manifestation of my subjects’ insatiable desire for excellence and innovation,” she’d said at one time. “A city that is sober but not somber, commanding but not oppressive, noble but not highfalutin, such as our Canterlot, is the only city fit for a princess and those of her subjects tasked with the responsibility to decide the fate of a great nation,” she’d said at another. “Canterlot is Equestria’s crowning jewel whose light shines across the globe entire, a beacon for ponies everywhere, whether they be rustic or refined, to rally round in harmony” was her personal favorite. These were just a few of the many platitudes that her brilliant speech writers over the years had come up with, and she liked to recall them in her stressful moments, finding that they always gave her a certain solace.

Yet, today, no matter how many bromides she repeated to herself, Canterlot passed by, its sights and sounds growing and dying away in an incomprehensible and inconsequential blur, yet all she could feel was the cool wind in her face; all she could taste was her heart in her throat; and all she could hear was the rattle and stir of the harnesses attached to the charioteers who were pulling her through the city’s airspace at a fearful speed. She wished they’d slow down; then, maybe, she wouldn’t have to face what awaited her so soon.

No, it was not apprehension, she thought to herself; it was more of a mild vexation, bordering on indignation.

She had been groomed since infancy for her position. When she had been a foal, somepony had always been lecturing her. In the morning it had been: “Brush your hair to the left, no less than eighty strokes, and do not wear any shoes that haven’t been shined at least twice since the last time you wore them; but it’s also important to not be ostentatious, for modesty goes a long way.” In the afternoon, it had been: “Sit with your legs in front of you, and hold your head high—not so low as to suggest to your courtiers that you regard them as on the same social level, but also not so high that it suggests you think you’re a morally superior being.” In the evening it had been: “Shake like this; smile like this; bring your knees up as you walk like this. Exhaustion is no excuse.” She was Princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria, commander and chief of the armed forces and the sun itself; yet she had kept her equanimity through it all, and had never regarded anything, neither in thought nor in deed, as being beneath her. And, after a hundred and some-odd centuries of rule, after twice as many crises against her kingdom faced and finally subdued, Princess Celestia liked to think that there was, at this point, nothing she couldn’t face without an imperturbable resolve.

Yet her cheek twitched. The wisp of a how-dare-they-bother-me-with-such-trifling-matters skimmed the topmost frontiers of her mind, and the more she fought against it, the more salient it became and the more it unsettled her. After realizing that fighting it was a pointless endeavor, she did permit herself one indulgence:

Pony Rights Administrative Tribunal, she thought. What an absurd name. Tribunal. How silly. It’s as if I were some genocidal dictator being tried for war crimes.

“You might as well be, Your Majesty.”

At the sound of that high-pitched, sententious voice, all at once the world, and all its ugliness, came rushing back to her, and her first image on returning to reality was the figure of a little beige pegasus, dressed in a black pinstripe suit and a tie which he continually had to pry off his face when the wind of the carriage’s flight flung it out of kilter, sitting and looking rather uncomfortable next to her on the carriage.

His sneer struck the princess as odd. She had first seen it two months ago, when they had introduced him into her chamber and he had extended his hoof and bellowed: “Due Process, Esquire, Attorney at Law, at your service, Your Majesty.” Then he had given her the same sneer she saw now, one she had often seen from lawyers; but in his, unlike in those of the lawyers she was accustomed to, the affectation showed, and behind it she could see the nervous colt who, observing the success of those he admired, was trying to emulate their behavior. It wasn’t a good facade; his genuineness, sincerity, and desire to please showed through then, just as it did now. For this supposition of him, Princess Celestia adduced the fact that when she had extended her hoof to him in return (albeit in a very different manner), after a few seconds of pause and perplexity, Due Process’s sneer had vanished; his face had turned as red as blood, and, after rapidly withdrawing his extended hoof, had bent down on shaking knees to kiss hers. The faux pas hadn’t even surprised her, for the lawyer looked awfully young, so much so that had Princess Celestia been informed that shortly before his appointment with her he had been in tears for a want of apple juice in his house, she would have scarcely been surprised.

When the lawyer had left, she had then erupted in a private fury to her sister, insisting that she was going to dismiss him on the spot and get proper counsel; and Princess Luna, with an outlook unusually politic for her, which came as a great surprise to Princess Celestia, had suggested that that would perhaps not be decent, for refusing a gift of free counsel and representation from the University of Canterlot, in recognition of the royal family’s generous contribution, the amount exceeding the combined sum of all the other donations the school had received that year, would not be suitable to the magnanimity of a princess. After much cursing, and some other words that would’ve probably sparked a revolution if the public had heard, Princess Celestia, unable to evade the fact that her sister was right, had given her reluctant consent to the free counsel, but, using the divers concerns that face a ruler as her excuse, had then proceeded to ignore the lawyer’s calls, to endlessly reschedule and cancel the appointments he had made, hoping that this whole “tribunal” thing was one of those issues that just went away on their own if she ignored them long enough, like the terrorist threats their administration received on a daily basis.

Yet Princess Celestia’s secretary, who had told Her Majesty twenty minutes ago that her chariot was ready and waiting to take her to the PRAT, had shown that that vague hope had been horribly, horribly unfounded.

A particularly thick air pocket struck her flush in her royally outstretched chest. “I beg your pardon?” said Princess Celestia with a gasp she could not suppress. “I might as well be what?”

“You won’t have to do, or even say, anything—leave it all to me, Your Majesty—but you might as well be told about the proceedings,” said Due Process, trying to make his voice as professional and disinterested as possible, though his vexation with his client’s complacency remained. “We haven’t really had time to prepare, but—”

“You must understand that I’ve been very busy,” Princess Celestia interrupted.

“Yes, of course, Your Majesty. It’s all right, Your Majesty; your employees have provided me with enough information to work with. They’ve been nothing but helpful, and—”

“What’s your experience?”

This is a joke they’re playing on me, she thought. They’ve dressed up an elementary school colt in a lawyer’s suit and are now trying to pass him off onto me.

“Excuse me, Your Majesty?”

“Have you ever defended anypony against alleged infringements on pony rights?”

Due Process broke eye contact, smiled, and made a peculiar gesture with his hoof as if to begin an elucidation—which Princess Celestia, having been in the upper circles of society for more than a thousand years, instantly recognized as a nervous twitch.

“Well, Your Majesty,” he stammered, “I . . .”

“Have you ever defended anypony, in any context?”

He gulped. “I defended . . . on a few occasions . . . allegations against a few students by the University of Canterlot’s . . . alma mater society . . . but I’m really not at liberty to say more than that; and I’m sure you’d agree, Your Majesty, that, given the circumstances—”

“What’s your degree in?”

Due Process blushed. “Why, Your Majesty, I’m a juris doctor; I’m sure the university already told you that I graduated second in a class size of—”

“Yes, I understand that. But permit me to ask: what kind of juris, if you understand? What kind of law do you specialize in?”

Due Process turned away. “Co . . . co . . . co . . .” he mumbled.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Corpo . . . corpor . . .”

“Corporate law?”

The little lawyer twitched on his cushion, and sat upright, staring at the princess with a gleaming eye, but also with a trembling chin.

“Your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “I can assure you that corporate law is just like pony rights law!”

“How so?”

He ground his teeth. “Simple!” he said, simpering painfully. “In pony rights law, as with corporate law, the defendant is guilty. It doesn’t matter that he did nothing wrong; it doesn’t matter that the plaintiff is a liar; it doesn’t matter that the defendant can adduce mountains of evidence to show this; what matters is that he was accused, and that itself is an unforgiveable crime. In an hour, Your Majesty, you will witness one of the most perverse inversions of justice ever implemented: where the accused—you, Your Majesty, I mean—is guilty till proven innocent.”

“So do you mean to suggest, my good sir,” said the princess, screwing up her eyes at him, “that my case is a foregone conclusion? That you can do nothing?”

“Yes—I mean no! No, not at all! I mean, I will certainly try my best to represent you, Your Majesty, to the best of my ability, for the sake of your honor and mine. And I do think that, given the nature of your case and the good reasons you had for doing what you did, Your Majesty, I do believe there’s a good chance the tribunal will see and understand after I’ve carefully laid out the facts for them.”

“That might be difficult,” coolly drawled the princess, unable to suppress the trace of a scowl appearing on her lips, “considering that this law is completely out of your field of study.”

“Your Majesty, please!” said Due Process with a hearty, excruciating laugh. “In school, they don’t teach us the law; it’s simply too big and abstruse. Rather, they teach us how to read, interpret, and apply the law. And I’m proud to say, Your Majesty, that for the past month, I’ve done nothing but read, interpret, and memorize the Equestrian Pony Rights Act.”

“You have it memorized?”

“It wasn’t hard!” The lawyer withdrew from the breast pocket of his jacket a small, thin booklet, looking quite like one of those meretricious flyers destined for the trash that divers special interest groups handed out to passers-by downtown. “It wasn’t very long,” he said, balancing the book on the bottom of his hoof and extending it to her. “And I’m proud to say—ah!”

A slight, but unexpected, gust of wind had caught the folds of the paper in the book, snatching it from the lawyer’s tenuous hold, and he at once had dived headfirst out of the carriage after it.

Princess Celestia, a second or two after he had disappeared, leaned slightly over the side of the carriage and looked down but saw nothing but the confusion of pegasi, coaches, and the general traffic of the city.

The coachpony on the raised seat of the carriage looked over his shoulder at her; she returned the inquiring stare with an insouciant shrug, which he answered with one of his own before turning his eyes back to the sky.

It was markedly quieter in the carriage now, giving her a brief moment to collect her thoughts. Perhaps, she thought, I should take this opportunity to plan what I’m going to say. Put tactfully, I’m sure a kind word of mine could change the court’s mind, and could make them dismiss this silly complaint. They’ll respond to reason, especially when coming from their merciful, generous, and beneficent princess.

And then she immediately thought of Discord, and the long, arduous, bloody war she and her sister had had to fight to regain their thrones and restore their land to law and order; then she thought of Tirek, how the fate of Equestria, unbeknownst to all, had been situated on a tipping point, on one side the status quo, on the other the abyss, and how narrowly a crisis had been averted, and how hard it had been to keep up appearances the next day when she had had to go about her usual royal duties, with Parliament clamoring in one ear and the gentry in the other, as if they all had not been a breath away from eternal suffering and slavery the day before; she thought of Nightmare Moon, and how she had had to take the role of two princesses for a thousand years; she thought of the tumultuous and fragile relationship Equestria had with Saddle Arabia, conscious how a single, “infidel” word she could inadvertently speak in the ultra-conservative ambassador’s presence during their weekly meetings could spark a world war; and now she thought of Queen’s Chrysalis, the Elements of Harmony, the prime minister, the cabinet, the Senate, and the upcoming summit of world leaders she had to attend in a week which she knew, from long experience, would be six hours of talking and would yield precisely zero results.

And all at once, in a stentorian cry that made the coachpony jump, and the charioteers start, giving the carriage a violent jerk, she screamed: “No!”

“Hggmmmmfffff!” came a muffled voice from somewhere.

She looked back, and saw the lawyer clinging feebly with his teeth onto one of the ornamental sashes that trailed from the back of the carriage, his wings twirling uselessly in the overwhelming speed of the chariot.

She let him dangle there for a few seconds, as she deliberated upon something. Finally, sighing, she lit her horn, and levitated him back to his place beside her.

“Thank . . . thank you, Your Majesty,” he stammered, smoothing the myriad creases of his suit covered with the dust that seems to permeate the air and streets of every major metropolis, and making a feeble attempt to readjust his tattered tie. “My word, your charioteers are fast!”

“At least,” she said, with a slight smile, levitating a handkerchief out to him, “you got your book back.”

He used the proffered cloth to blow his nose. “I’m afraid to say that in that particular endeavor, I was unsuccessful, Your Majesty.” He handed the soiled rag back to her on a hoof.

“No matter,” she replied, taking the rag in her magical aura, and applying a quick incineration spell to it, instantly turning it to ash. “After all, you have it memorized.”

“But not my annotations. I annotated the whole book . . . what will I do without it?”

Princess Celestia was old enough and had enough experience with social situations to know when a full grown stallion was about to cry.

“Come now,” she said, feeling it necessary to speak something in order to abort the birth of such a pitiful sight as a stallion’s tears, “would you like to hear what I’ve been thinking about?”

“As . . . as you please, Your . . . Your Majesty.”

“I was thinking, while you went for your little flight, about everything that I’ve done, all the issues and affairs I have, and am currently dealing with—and, no matter how bad it has seemed, I’ve realized that, somehow, life will always go on. When you put everything in perspective, this court and the nature of the complaint against me—it all seems rather silly doesn’t it?”

Due Process laughed. “Yes, Your Majesty. It’s incredibly silly!”

A short silence followed, in which they, though each conscious of the bothersome procedure that was waiting for them, shared an unspoken, unaccountable little sentiment, not quite joy insomuch as it was a slight, modest contentment.

“Your Majesty,” Due Process said at length, somewhat reconciled, “you could avoid this all. Just a flick of your hoof, and you can go right back to your palace, and I right back to my apartment, and that would be that. Please do it, Your Majesty. You’d be doing both of us a huge favor.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The lawyer snickered. “Come now, Your Majesty. Your word is the law of the land. All you would have to do is say: ‘Be it proclaimed, and promulgated throughout the land,’ etc., etc., ‘I, Princess Celestia the Supreme, the Benevolent,’ etc., etc., ‘do hereby denounce and decree that the Pony Rights Administrative Tribunal is hereby and forthwith dissolved, and all pending complaints dismissed accordingly.’”

The princess sighed, and gave a haughty, almost mocking, sidelong glance at him. “Were it so easy, my dear.”

“It is that easy, Your Majesty,” the lawyer replied, the gravity of his tone striking the princess, and uncomfortably rousing her from her nonchalance. “I’m in your service to give you my opinion and advice. Well, Your Majesty, here they are: Waste neither your time nor mine with these proceedings. Abolish the PRAT. Let us go home.”

Princess Celestia, suppressing a transient velleity to strike the arrogant attorney in the head, calmly explained: “Even were it in my power to do that, I have read enough to know what happens to leaders—or rather, I should say, tyrants—who rule by their whims. I enjoy bachelorhood too much to marry Mademoiselle Guillotine just yet.” Seeing his look of absolute bemusement, she concluded that the allusion had not had its intended effect. “But it’s not in my power. You undoubtedly learned about the division of governmental powers in school, one of the most important being the requirement of all bills to bear the signature of both me and my sister before becoming law. That is explicitly required by the Constitution of the Principality of Equestria. I remember writing that part, in fact.”

Due Process laughed, and sidled closer to her on the cushion—perhaps a bit too much into the personal space of a princess—and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial, eldritch whisper.

“Now now, Your Majesty,” he breathed, uncomfortably quietly, right into her ear, “I imagine that being a princess must be hard. Perhaps it might feel as if the whole world were conspiring to undermine you. And you probably have reason to believe that. But I can assure you, Your Majesty”—sidling yet closer—“I, as a bar-certified attorney under contract to you, can assure you, Your Majesty, that you have at least one friend in this world: me. I’m sworn, by oath and honor, to not only advise you to the best of my ability, but to also keep everything—everything—you say confidential. You may think you have no friends nor allies, but I can say with absolute certainty you have at least one, and he is sitting right in this carriage with you. Anything you wish to tell me, I will take to the grave. My only concern here is that you receive the best counsel possible under the circumstances.

“So, I’ll ask you again, Your Majesty—and this time, please answer honestly, for how can I give you proper advice otherwise? I ask you, Your Majesty: why don’t you just flick your hoof and will this problem away?”

Princess Celestia frowned and slid to the other end of the carriage. Due Process had not realized how far he had been leaning over, and landed chin first on the seat.

“And I say to you again, sir,” she replied, now with enough force to make the little lawyer tremble, “even were I so inclined to arbitrarily circumvent the democratic process, bills require the signature of both me and my sister. If a bill can get neither, or if it can get one but not the other, then due process necessitates that it be returned to Parliament. It is to ensure that neither I nor my sister can rule arbitrarily. It is an integral part of our government’s division of powers. That is why it’s mandated by the Constitution.”

“The Constitution?” repeated Due Process, raising his brow, much the same way a parent would to the fantastic claims of a child.

“Yes, the Constitution.”

The finality of the princess’s last statement seemed to completely change the lawyer’s bearing: from amused, now he was confused.

“Wait . . .” he said, “are you serious?”

“Has anything I’ve done or said given you reason to believe that I should joke around in matters so important?”

“No, no, Your Majesty! Forgive me, I’m just . . . shocked . . .”

“Shocked at what?”

“So you honestly—honestly, from you, Your Majesty, the princess of Equestria, in confidence to your lawyer—you don’t . . . know?”

“Please speak straight!”

At the princess’s injunction, Due Process nearly leaped once more out of the carriage. He did manage to keep his balance, but not without losing one or two feathers.

He cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, that part of the Constitution is null and void . . . if not the whole Constitution itself,” he whispered.

She groaned. A thousand and more years of experience with legal circumlocution had made her too jaded to take what he was about to say next seriously. Yet she reluctantly droned: “How, praytell?” if for no other reason than to keep him talking awhile so that she wouldn’t have to.

Due Process took a deep breath. “Your sister, forsaking her royal duties, and becoming Nightmare Moon, compelled you, Your Majesty, to exile her, and take over her duties for the past one thousand years—is this not true?”

Why are you asking if it’s true, you slippery little ferret, when literally every single pony in Equestria—if not the world—knows this? was what she was dying to say, but her royal longanimity held yet a little longer, and she managed to constrain herself to: “That’s correct.”

“Did Princess Luna sign any laws between her exile and return, Your Majesty?”

“No. It would have been hard to do that from four hundred thousand kilometers away.”

Due Process winced. “Then I’m afraid to say that no law has been passed for the last thousand years, Your Majesty.”

Princess Celestia shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you can draw that conclusion.”

“For the past thousand years, your sister has been . . . indisposed, and therefore unable to sign any bills brought to her by Parliament. As per the Constitution, anything that bears just your signature and not hers in addition is not law. Therefore, no law has been passed in the past thousand years.”

Princess Celestia chuckled. “That, quite frankly, sir, is ridiculous.”

“I’m giving you only my interpretation, Your Majesty, which is the only logical and legal possibility.”

“The governing of Equestria fell to me!” she cried. “I had to do everything; circumstances changed!”

“But the Constitution did not, Your Majesty.”

“An irrelevant nicety.”

“Perhaps, Your Majesty” said Due Process, “but the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; and as common law builds itself upon precedents, therefore, legally speaking, there are only two possibilities: either the constitutional requirement of needing the signatures of both you and your sister is null and void, or no law has been passed for the past one thousand years. For the sake of Equestria’s law and order, I would suggest that you take the former interpretation—unless you think that nothing of great import has been made in the past thousand years. That bill passed six hundred years ago abolishing serfdom might have been silly anyway, perhaps?”

Squinting at her in disbelief, he added: “How did you not know this, Your Majesty? If I were to go back to school, I’d write my master’s thesis on it. I thought I’d be exposing some grand conspiracy!”

Princess Celestia, shrugging, sat back, taking a deep breath of the chilly air. “I do know that law is necessarily muddled, confused, and contradictory,” she said. “You’ve brought me no news.”

Due Process fell back, mouth open, in the throes of a diminutive epiphany. “Our government isn’t malicious,” he whispered, half to himself, “it’s just incompetent.”

Then, to the princess, he said: “So I suppose Her Majesty is determined to face the tribunal?”

“Yes, Her Majesty is.”

He collapsed in a sigh and a groan. “So be it, Your Majesty. Now, I know we’ve had no time to prepare, but that’s okay. I just wanted to let you know that I believe Res Judicata plans—”

“Who?”

“Res Judicata.”

“What is?”

“No, Your Majesty, not ‘what is,’ but ‘who is.’” And then he sat up, in more disbelief at this than he had been at her ignorance of the law. “You don’t know Res Judicata? The pony who carved her name as a Crown prosecutor for ten years, winning over ninety-five percent of the cases she engaged, and who cemented that name as a defense attorney for twenty, winning over ninety-eight percent of the cases for her clients? Why, she’s only the most incredible, dogged, determined lawyer who ever lived! I’ve read the transcripts for all her trials; never before have I seen the most innocent, purest ponies so violently arraigned, so convincingly censured, to such an extent that even you yourself, Your Majesty, Bringer of Light, would have thought them the lowest of criminals; and never before have I seen such brutal, depraved, degenerate murderers painted in such a relief, that even you, Your Majesty, Defender of Truth, would have thought them no more guilty than a bee alighting upon a petal to get nectar for her hive’s sweet, sweet honey!”

“She sounds like a marvelous pony.”

“Oh, she is! I wrote a paper on her methodology in my second year. But how have you not heard of her, Your Majesty? She’s so well known, her exploits so fantastic, her arguments so ingeniously designed—how is it possible you don’t know her?”

Princess Celestia gently touched a hoof to his shoulder. “My dear,” she said, “I’ve lived a long, long time, and I still don’t know most things. And one thing that took me almost half my life to learn is that no matter who you and your friends are, no matter how great your and your friends’ achievements, no matter the ineffability of the grandeur of the accomplishments of those whom you most respect, the second you step out of the spheres in which you orbit, all those things you had held so high in esteem are unknown and irrelevant to millions. You would think I, ruler of the greatest country in the world, who raises the sun and puts him to bed every day, should be exalted and renowned by all; but would you believe it if I told you that I’ve visited distant lands where millions of ponies don’t know what the sun is, let alone that all their food cannot be grown without it?”

Due Process pinned his ears; his smile out of the corners of which enthusiasm had oozed vanished; he slouched in his seat, his head bowed. “I see,” he murmured.

After a while, a modicum of his confidence having been restored by difficult meditation, he finally worked up the courage to say: “As I was saying, Your Majesty—”

“Excuse me!” exclaimed Princess Celestia.

Due Process had not even the dignity to say he had been interrupted so she could say something to him; the words had been addressed to the coachpony.

“Excuse me,” she repeated, after the coachpony had turned in response, with an incredibly dumb look in his eyes. “I believe the courthouse is that way.” She pointed in the direction directly opposite to the one in which they were currently careering.

“Eeet eez correct, Your More Exceelence,” said the coachpony, staring at her vacuously.

She waited for him to elucidate. Nothing came.

“Listen to me, Magic Muzhik,” she said between her teeth, after a thirty second pause had elapsed, “perhaps my sister was slightly harsh when she told you to answer only the questions that were directly put to you, when she asked you if the palace was out of milk and you merely told her there was some in the fridge.”

Magic Muzhik flattened his ears. “I vas not being aware that tornado could be make in building, Your Exceelence.”

“I understand. But please, for my sake, now’s not the time for formalities. We have somewhere to be, and I believe we’re headed in the wrong direction. The courthouse is that way.”

“Ve not going to courthouse, Your Supreme.”

Another half minute of silent, incredulous stares.

Knowing that princesses had the legal power to order summary executions, and having a bit of pity for the poor immigrant, Due Process interpolated: “Your Majesty, the PRAT does not hold its hearings in a courtroom, as, legally speaking, the PRAT, as its power is delegated to it not through the Constitution but through the Equestrian Pony Rights Act, is not a court, but a tribunal, and thus cannot operate in federal facilities, as was the holding of the Supreme Court in Daisy v.—”

“Then where are we going? Please!” She grabbed the lawyer with her magic and lifted him, his limbs flailing, right to her face. “If not the federal courtroom, where? Parliament? The provincial court? City Hall? The small claims court? Please, for the love of all that is good, your princess beseeches you to tell her where she’s being taken!”

Comments

[Sorren]

Yes.

Yes I like this.

[Cursed Quill]

I await the PRATfall.

[nebulaegalaxy]

Call me curious.

[Emperor]

Poor Celestia. You feel like she's suffering through an inanity so great she's three seconds away from choking a bitch to get some answers, and she hasn't even gotten to see PRAT yet