[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell] [h3][color=steelblue][i][b]Ash[/b][/i][/color] [i][b]&[/b][/i] [color=crimson][i][b]Thalia[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=white]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Education Center (M) [i][b][color=white]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A [/cell][cell] [right][img]https://i.ibb.co/6ZrqbnS/Ash-FC-3.jpg[/img][img]https://i.ibb.co/zrhf0KK/Thalia-Portrait-II.jpg[/img][/right] [/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color] The situation, to Ash's perception, shifted dramatically. Pretense seemed to have been dropped, at least partially. There was little else which could be done to make this easier on Hunter, nor did it look like they were attempting to. Coddling was not permissible during a military trial. Or this, which was similar to a traditional Court Martial, by the standards of what used to be the Army of the United States, but was off in the details. Nevertheless, the trial represented one of the last vestiges of civil justice left to humanity at large. Perhaps even more impartial to the system they had established in Newnan. The flexibility and efficiency that it lacked comparative to his own call for a simple vote (or right of passing summary arbitration) was superseded by the overtly transparent nature of an open tribunal in the spirit of a Court Martial. This assumed the majority of parties making the decision were indeed impartial. This also assumed that all parties agreed to serve under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a thing under previous circumstances was reserved only for soldiers. Perhaps that it what intrigued Ash about this trial. The idea that everyone within the walls were treated as military personnel. That might work well for someone like him, who had chosen the lifestyle. But what about others? It gave Ash pause for thought. Thalia was mostly just mildly entertained at this point. She was always a person who was direct to a fault, declining to share information rather than make up convoluted deceptions or backtrack in a conversation. So when she witnessed what she interpreted to be exactly that - backtracking and covering - she internally called bullshit. Maybe it was a transition between telling them what Hunter thought they wanted to hear into something more like the truth; she couldn't say. Thalia just wasn't buying it. In her mind, the guy was being dishonest to someone, even if it was just himself. More than that, it looked like [i]Profesora Coño[/i] was actively trying to put him on the defensive. Trying to bring out an emotional response? That would certainly be tricky. And more often used in jury trials because people were silly and led by their feelings. All in all, this just got a little more interesting, and Thalia was curious to see what developed.