[center][h3]Barney Rynsburger[/h3][/center]

Like electricity the pronouncements of the yellow-eyed adjudicator crackled among his gathered captives, and though spoken evenly they charged the very air with tension. It left several of them numb, too overloaded by the brute force of heavy truncheons and inhumane exploitation to be shocked by Pondwater’s callous philosophies. Barney kept himself as still and harmless-seeming as possible, firmly convinced that despite this man’s reasonable, even affable exterior, he would not hesitate to visit terrible cruelty on anyone he branded ‘guilty’. That was the fate that had befallen the inmates outside, after all. The thought that he could be made to suffer so thoroughly and utterly that he lapsed into total silence terrified Barney to the very core, far more acutely than any dream or nightmare should be able to.

As he and a few others quivered, however, others got jolted into action. In what was becoming typical fashion Dakota found his voice first, and Barney marveled at the former singer’s courage. He spoke aloud the implication that the judge laid before them all--that they too would be judged, their innocence or guilty confirmed. Pondwater gave a stiff nod. “Precisely,” he replied, lifting an index finger off his gavel to tap his nose. “In this very room, I will preside over your trial. You all should count yourself fortunate, for not all receive the honor of my personal arbitration. The typical defendant is jailed for a period of their own choosing, between two and ten years. The greater the sacrifice, the greater potential gain, naturally. Like theirs, yours will be a trial of the spirit, determining your strength, endurance, and willpower, but it will be much faster. Lucrative, no?”

[i]Wait, what?![/i] In a judgement where the sentence was imprisonment, the trial itself was imprisonment? Not a matter of litigation or evidence, but a trial in the Herculean sense, where the court subjected the defendant to the same tortuous existence as the condemned? Barney reeled from the revelation, but the knowledge that ordeal in store for him would be something else reigned him in. Of course, that just left one question. What exactly [i]would[/i] it be? At this point, the young man couldn’t even hazard a guess. Anything was possible. All bets were off.

He glanced over at Caelum when the formal youth asserted himself, as best he could, given the circumstances. When he spoke up the sentries’ eyeless faces stared right at him, like guard dogs ready to lunge, but they made no motion without their master’s say-so. Pondwater himself, wearing a curious expression, sized Caelum up. Though he’d managed to mentally compose himself somewhat, he could only look so dignified while smeared with his own fluids and disheveled by time spent on the ground. The judge angled his head and stroked his beard. “Are you sure? You have the look of a man who’s been beaten, and not just by my guards.” He drew closer and leaned toward Caelum’s face, challenging the bloodied teenager to look him in his eye. “Fine clothes, a noble bearing. Someone brushed by greatness..? Hm. Perhaps,” the shadow intoned, “You are indeed an accomplished, well-adjusted young man, your future bright, your ducks in a row. Or perhaps you are merely pretending. Failures are those who would rather cover up their shortcomings than get rid of them. Those who care only for appearances, wearing masks to hide the scars beneath. Is that you?” Pondwater shrugged as he retreated a few steps. “The truth, as they say, will out. For before you is a chance to absolve yourself of guilt. I want you to show me the truth of your words.”

At that point, a very small voice reached him, but in the tomblike silence of the courthouse’s grand foyer it could scarcely be missed. The judge’s eyes, one piercing bright yellow and one black behind the lens of his glasses, fixated on Alina. “...I beg your pardon?” Pondwater asked, his voice rock-hard. “Perhaps I didn’t quite hear you. Surely, that wasn’t a refusal.” He clicked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. If you don’t take a test, you still fail, my dear. To be so far gone that you’d plead guilty straightaway, without so much reaching for the light...well, I’m afraid we don’t give points for honesty.” He nodded at a guard, who slouched forward to grab Alina like a child painfully tight around the middle and pick her up. As Pondwater approached, the guard held her at just the right height to whisper in his ear, which the judge held an expectant hand up to. “Now, what was that you said, again?”

Before Alina could reply, she was saved by a far less subtle outburst. Slowly Pondwater turned to face Nick, his luminescent gaze stony, as the crass boy repudiated him. If the guards looked irritated by Caelum, they practically fumed now, their batons held tight in clenched hands ready to crush bones into sawdust. When Nick finished, however, Pondwater stepped away from Alina with a wry smile, and the guard holding the girl put her down. “Where you are?” the judge repeated, bringing his gavel up onto one shoulder as the other slid into a pocket. He sauntered a few steps forward, drawling, “No wonder. It is clear you’ve clothed your naked guilt in the morality of the slave, dredging up enough self-esteem to live on by hurling pitiful defiances at your masters. But no matter how you self-aggrandize, it is still the masters who call the shots. In our world, you’ve gotten nowhere.”

In one fluid motion the judge swept the gavel from his shoulders and plunged it, head-first, into the ground at his feet. The sound of the impact filled the whole courthouse, and as one the guards moved to line up on either side of Pondwater. When the shadow spoke again, he did so with booming bass. “However, you chose a few of your other words far more fortuitously. For your trial is now in session, and fighting tooth and nail is precisely what I ask of you all.” He gestured to the rows of minions. “These guards mistreated you. Hurt your bodies and, worse, your pride. If you are not beyond hope, then surely, you [i]burned[/i] against them. To strike them down and claim victory over those who dared to bring you down. Well, now is your chance to assert yourselves!” The judge smiled grimly, holding up a hand. “Lay them low and defend your innocence. Or die, and be proven guilty!”

He snapped his fingers, and in uniform the guards began to spasm. Their bodies twitched and swelled violently, as if they were possessed, their uniforms melting into shadow. With a final lurch their heads snapped backward, and one after another the pits in their faces discharged an explosive burst of inky, oily blackness. The murky, smoky geysers rose like mushroom clouds, dancing shapes forming and unforming within the haze. Then, just a second later, [i]they[/i] came.

Barney recoiled as freakish things emerged from the dwindling clouds. The first thing he saw looked like a wretched, mutated bird, with a greenish, featherless body like a plucked chicken, gangly limbs, and a serpentine neck that coiled around itself. A blood-red face bearing a long, swordlike beak hid behind wings with gleaming, bloodshot eyes. After swooping down from their clouds the four [url=https://i.imgur.com/aCcjSZD.png]Duplicitous Storks[/url] hovered in the air, limbs twitching fitfully as their loathsome necks wound and unwound.

Bizarre as they were, however, Barney ended up paying them little mind. Malformed cranes could still conceivably have a place in reality, but the next monsters to appear could not. They were gruesome, bodiless amalgamations, their leonine heads nestled in a ring of goat legs with too many joints, curled spider-like in all directions. Two pairs of bronze, glinting spider eyes stared out from regal faces with manes wreathed in fire. They also floated in the air, and as they turned like wheels the [url=https://i.imgur.com/VatDZWy.png]Lionhead Doctors[/url] half-snarled and half-bleated over the roar of their flames.

Most alarming of all, however, was the nightmare that sprang from the husk of the guard captain. It leaped down from the cloud and skidded to a halt, a three-headed beast with raven-black fur and plumage. A canine body and forepaws gave way to the dark feathers of flank wings, a tail, and rear talons, but all Barney could focus on was the violet inferno that surged from the monster’s three sets of horns. An object floated above each head in the blaze as if fuel for the fires, but they did not burn away, and the creature’s crimson eyes smouldered almost as brightly as the [url=https://i.imgur.com/DN1akfB.jpg]Night-howling Rhetorician[/url] pawed the ground, baying in a cacophony of sordid voices.

Through the chaos the judge’s voice resounded. “Hahaha! Magnificent, are they not? Shax, Buer, and my faithful Naberius! And though impressive they are but the least of the challenges my anointed must face. Destroy my servants, and you too may one day take your place at my side!”

At some point, Barney had hit the ground, though he couldn’t remember falling. Just the shadows called Shax would have been bad, although maybe he could have theoretically managed by grabbing and wringing their necks. The sight of the three Buers filled him with both terror and revulsion, but even then, with his life on the line, maybe he could have done something. But when Naberius appeared, it was all over. Standing as tall as a cow, the monstrosity loomed over him like the specter of death, more fearsome than any terrestrial predator on earth. All Barney wanted to do was run, but his legs, convinced that the hound would lunge the instant he turned tail, wouldn’t work. “W-what the hell!” he burst out, somewhere between a yell and a stuttering wheeze. “We’re just normal people! We can’t fight these monsters!”

The judge held up both hands, one curled around the shaft of his gavel. “In life-or-death circumstances, people are capable of incredible feats of courage and strength. They show you who they truly are!” He pointed the head of his gavel at Barney. “And since you’ve shown yourself to be a coward, we might as well start with you. Naberius....GAH!”

All of a sudden Pondwater’s shadow doubled over, clutching one eye. He held a palm to the side of his face with the mask-lens, leaning on his gavel with the other hand for support. As Barney watched, baffled, a terrific crash sounded out from above. He looked up to see a blue, humanoid blur plunging through a glass window, and just a moment after he scrambled out from beneath it the unknown intruder slammed down on Naberius with the force of the whole fall driving a long, silver sword through the monster’s central head.

Barney blinked, stunned, as the stranger looked up and toward his group of defendants. Instantly a lightbulb went off in his head, a surge of recognition and remembrance. That royal blue uniform, the glasses, that distinctive hat over black, scruffy hair. A black tie and shorts with a utility belt over dark leggings. Heavy-set to the point of being portly, but energetic and confident. It was the [url=https://i.imgur.com/zAsK2XQ.png]police girl[/url] from his dreams.

“You!” For a moment Barney couldn’t formulate any coherent thoughts, struck as he was by tonal whiplash. In just one moment he’d gone from certain death to irrepressible gratitude for this unlikely savior, and somehow that led him to one realization that he somehow couldn’t dispense with.

[i]She’s so cute![/i]

She grinned at the group. “Me!” Her expression then turned serious, and she told them, “You guys better run while his Vision is out! I’ll cover ya as best I can!” 

“Feculent pig!” Pondwater’s bellowed insult echoed through the courthouse. He’d risen with clenched teeth, still clutching one eye, and extended his gavel toward the humans. “Kill them, you imbeciles!”

The Shadows started to move. Reaching down, the police girl seized the bottom of her sword where it protruded from the bottom of Naberius’ jaw. With a hearty pull she wrenched the middle head sideways, snapping its neck, before she executed a graceful flip in front of it. Her weapon, which Barney suddenly realized was a giant needle, flashed between the remaining heads, dealing both a painful slice before she kicked it right in the middle. As the oversized dog stepped back, whimpering, a fireball from a Buer on the left blazed within an inch of the girl’s face, but she managed to lean back in time.

A quick duck to the right saved her from a Buer that hurled itself at her like a buzz saw, and with remarkable speed her needle came up to clash twice with a Shax’s beak. Once put off-balance it fell victim to a well-placed slug from the police girl’s other arm, but a rain of bubbling curses forced her to dodge away. She rose from her roll and hurled her needle like a javelin into the face of the third Buer, and all the while she kept that ear-to-ear smile. “Yes!” A silvery gleam in the air revealed the presence of a silken thread, and when the girl gave it a yank the Buer went flying. “Yeeeeeehaw!” Whooping, the police girl spun the monster around like a giant yoyo, battering away the rest of the enemies. When the needle finally came loose, sending a pile of shadows tumbling toward Pondwater, she chucked something after them with her other hand. Only after it pinged off a Buer’s forehead did Barney realize that it was a grenade, and with another tug of her string the police girl pulled the pin.

A fiery explosion shook the courthouse. The monsters disappeared in the blast, and Barney, who’d been still as a statue while staring at the fight, jolted awake. Looking back at everyone yet to make a run for it, the police girl waved her hand in the universal [i]get away[/i] motion. “What the heck’re y’all waitin’ for!? Get your sorry butts outta here!” Behind her, the smoke was clearing, and a quick headcount would reveal that she had yet to actually kill even a single enemy. As she turned back to face them, Barney turned tail. Though practically delirious with confusion at everything going on, this girl had given him a chance for survival, and thanks to it he pulled himself together enough to run with it. He was loath to leave this girl alone, but she could handle herself, and he would be a hindrance. Instead he did as he was told and began a mad dash for the front door.

In the way were two Shaxes that had managed to make their way around the main fight. Escaping meant getting around them and the dark magic they’d tried against the police girl, but this time Barney didn’t back down. He couldn’t--not now that the chips were down and he had a chance of survival. “Gang way!” he thundered, and with his head shielded by his arms he charged forward.