“This is amazing!” Short Bus said, walking casually behind Ben and Frankie as they dug in the general direction of the court house, “We’re like land sharks! Casually swimming through dirt, ready to pull people down into our tunnel and eat them. Say, that’s a great idea, I can smell someone right above us-”

“No,” Ben said, drawing out the denial with emphasis. “One, it’s too risky. Two, eating sentient, living creatures is gross. Three, no! We don’t have time to eat, we’ve got to find this stupid fucking courthouse nobody told me how to find.” Ben didn’t mention how they were moving slower now because of how fucking big they had to make the tunnel, to account for Short Bus’s huge frame, because Ben didn’t think like that and Short Bus was his bro.

“Hang on, I’m gonna cheat-” Short Bus said, then he shut his eyes and fell asleep. Before Ben had a chance to shout ‘What the fuck’, Short Bus woke up and grinned. “Adjust your course slightly to the left and then keep steady for about five hundred feet.”

“Sure, but how?” Ben asked, immediately trusting that Short Bus’s directions were good.

“[The Bright Spark] Ben!” Short Bus boasted, “I’m a Psychic Shark with a special brain. I can [Astral Project] right out of my body when I’m asleep, and I can read minds too! The [Lawyers] up there know this battlefield well, and I ripped the information right out of their bleeding brains!”

“Are they OK?”

“None survived,” Short Bus crowed.

“Oh,” Ben said, the shrugged, “That’s fukkin OP man, good job.”

“Naw, it’s nothing compared to what humans with [The Bright Spark] can do. Those guys are overpowered for sure. Utility Pocket seems awesome and all, but I just don’t see how it compares to FOOD!” Short Bus roared, suddenly distracted by Frankie, who had, somehow, acquired a large haunch of meat and was playing keep-away with it. Short Bus lunged, mouth first, faster than anyone should be comfortable seeing, towards the meat. He didn’t catch it and yelled profanity as Frankie reappeared behind him, his enormous body already cramped in the underground, struggling to maneuver properly to keep up.

“He wants you to tell him how awesome the Utility Pocket is,” Ben commented, staying well clear of the death-zone around Short Bus, “and how The Bright Spark totally sucks because it can’t store large amounts of food in a pocket dimension.”

Short Bus froze as Frankie appeared at the tip of his nose, dangling the meat right in front of him. His eyes crossed as he laser focused on the Utility Pocket Elemental.

“The Utility Pocket is the best plus perk,” Short Bus intoned, hypnotized, “it is the great white shark of plus perks. It is the Caudal to the bright spark’s underwhelming mammalian ass. It is NOM” Short Bus lunged forward and caught the meat, likely because Frankie had dropped it and was rolling around in silent laughter on Short Bus’s face.

“Yeah,” Ben said, looking away from the scene, “this is probably the best way to navigate the Legal District. Short Bus, you think you can do your special psychic brain thing and find the rest of the group?”

“They’re fine,” Short Bus said with his mouth full, “Ghost Ears is in stealth mode waiting inside the courthouse, Vivi’s with him. Red is. . . well, she seems pretty at home here in the warzone. I don’t think she understands what she’s supposed to be doing right now aside from killing everyone she meets.”

“Body count?”

“Uh, high. She’s got a bunch of weak-willed followers doing her bidding and I’m pretty sure she’s only in close proximity to the courthouse on accident. We’ll be able to snap her out of it once she sees you.”

“Me specifically, or us in general.”

“Yes,” Short Bus said, deflecting. “Now Frankie, I know you’ve got more food. . .”

Rather than play along, however, Frankie suddenly stood up alert, a literal red exclamation point appearing over his head. He leapt from Short Bus’s snout, past Ben, then knocked him back from the digging wall with a blast of air. Before Ben had a chance to say anything stupid, Frankie started acting really, really weird. His form didn’t exactly change, so much as snap into place, and he took on the vague form of a jumping spider, the kind with the butt and the little wavy arm things-

“Abdomen and pedipalps,” Short Bus coughed his interruption, clearly reading Ben’s thoughts and correcting the taxonomy error.

The colorful butt and wavy arm things that they use to dance. Frankie was carefully ‘dancing’ in front of the wall, looking entirely focused. Tiny Utility Pockets were opening and closing in front of him, carefully carving away dirt, revealing-

“That’s a fucking landmine,” Ben said, eyes wide, wanting to take a step back, but not wanting to abandon Frankie, “dude holy shit Frankie, good senses.”

Frankie didn’t respond, he just kept up his concentration dance, waving his long arms and keeping his now flattened butt up in the air, looking a bit like a radar dish. The landmine was shaped like an everlasting gobstopper from Willie Wonka, the old version with Gene Wilder, but was colored a gunmetal gray with bright red tips. It was also larger than Ben’s current Leap-rechaun form and looked like the kind of thing that would have instantly killed him. Ben had no idea how the landmine was supposed to be triggered, but Frankie was taking no chances, carefully extracting the bomb without jostling or vibrating it at all. Ben felt the tension ratchet up as more and more of the land mine was exposed, everyone in the tiny tunnel critically aware that they were in a confined space with an alien explosive device in a warzone, and that it was likely designed to kill people exactly like them.

Short Bus hadn’t moved and inch, which was hell on the restless shark, and was visibly sweating. Ben was trying not to even breath, his mind spinning wild fantasies involving the word ‘vibration detection’ and ‘highly sensitive’ and ‘C4 is the result of primitive Earth chemistry, alien explosives are likely to be much more powerful’. Ben was trying to figure out how to use his body to save Short Bus and Frankie; Short Bus was trying to figure out the exact same thing, and Frankie was lost in his own little world of pure focus. Someone was going to die down here, and they all knew it, and they were all willing to take the bullet so the rest of the group could live.

Then, at the moment of peak tension, Frankie engulphed the landmine in a Utility Pocket and made it vanish, leaving a gobstopper shaped void in the soil. Short Bus relaxed like a marionette with it’s strings cut, his body snapping into a fall as he crumpled to the ground, breathing hard, wiping the sweat from his exhausted looking face. Ben didn’t even move, still frozen in place, but now breathing hard and staring with wide eyes at the place death had been lurking. Frankie was the only one still acting, now using his long pedipalps, the wavy arm things, and gathering a mass of light purple energy above him. It looked like a mass of the writhing tentacles that surrounded the opening of every Utility Pocket, but compressed into a ball, guided and shaped by his flat butt and arms. It grew in brightness, then flashed like a camera-bulb, discharging and illuminating the world like an x-ray.

We’ve got a lot of redundant vision and scouting abilities in our party, Ben’s logical gamer brain said, and the rest of him just numbly nodded in agreement. Frankie turned around and his body shifted back into a smooshy plushy, and he waddled over to Ben and began waving his now stubby arms frantically.

“What’s that boy? Landmines everywhere up ahead! Damn, any way around them?”

Frankie kept pantomiming, which consisted of him pretending to dig and then dramatically dying.

“That’s not ideal,” Ben said, running a hand through his hair in response to the stress. He started rubbing and massaging his face for the same reason. “Short Bus, how close are we to the courthouse?” Ben looked over and saw that the sharkman was already asleep, or [Astral Projecting] to the surface above them and scouting.

Christ almighty we’ve got a lot of redundant vising and scouting abilities. Note to self, think about that later.

“We’re close, but it’s going to be a fight to get there,” he said, opening his eyes and looking as stressed as Ben had ever seen him. “Like I said, Vivi and Ghost Ears are up there, but they’re already in the courthouse and I don’t think they’re going to be able to come out and help us. Red’s close, so we can count on backup there. . . but it’s a pretty fortified position. They’ve got a machine gunner nest manned by [Lawyers], sandbags, barbed wire and a line of guys with guns trying to keep us out. Even if we charge it, I’m not seeing any of us surviving to make it inside.”

“All right let me think,” Ben said quickly, feeling the stress pounding in his head and starting a headache. He did a quick inventory of what he had in his Utility Pocket, a bunch of dirt, a bunch of random unidentified loot from the Citadel, lots of spears and a landmine. Also corpses, tons of corpses, one of which was his own. Ben shuddered the shudder of existential dread, then suppressed all thoughts about his own corpse until such time he was ready to deal with it. It could be a while.

“I can see you putting a plan together in your brain Ben,” Short Bus said, a shark’s smile on his face, “I’m watching your thoughts right now.”

“That’s an invasion of privacy,” Ben said, not particularly caring, then changing the subject abruptly, “is all the danger concentrated around the courthouse, or is there anyone behind us?”

“Red and her minions are distracting everyone behind us.”

“Good enough, here’s what we’re going to do. . .”

--

Ben wished his plan was cleverer than it was. They tunneled straight up until they were close to the surface, and then Ben and Frankie started spraying dirt above them, forming a massive molehill, which they were under. While the defenders shot at the dirt pile, it was being safely fortified from below with Citadel walls sandwiched between layers of compressed earth. Ben and Frankie kept adding layers of protection until the bullets stopped getting through. Then Ben started launching corpses from the molehill mound like some sort of macabe geyser or death metal volcano. He couldn’t see it, but they flew high into the air and scattered around the battlefield, prompting someone to cry ‘[Necromancers] incoming!’.

In the not so far distance, Red saw the gruesome display, recognized the monsters, and effortlessly looked through the ground to see Ben and Short Bus waving her over to come help them. After a brief psychic transmission of the plan, she started to run.

“Ok Frankie, we’re going to have to do this fast! Up!” Ben yelled, and they pushed themselves into the loose earthen mound, behind the hardened cover they’d created. As soon as they were on the surface, they started fortifying their position with more walls, extending them out and raising them up, building a functional wall. Ben could feel the impacts of the fire they were under as dull thumps, so many it sounded like rain on a metal roof. “Now!”

They opened a large Utility Pocket over the heads of the defenders, the distance and size rapidly draining Ben’s mana and making him feel faint, and dropped the landmine on them. There was a distant explosion, and then Ben shouted, “Short Bus, lock em down!”

Short Bus closed his eyes, pointing his brain in the direction it needed to fire. The nice thing about psychic abilities, Ben thought, was that they didn’t require line of sight, and they weren’t obstructed by physical obstacles. “[Cone of Psi],” Short Bus said, and an invisible wave of violence blasted out from between his eyes, perceived only as a momentary whiting out of the senses and a ringing of the ears afterwords. Red and her group were running ahead, having timed their charge well.

“Frankie, it’s you and me now!” Ben yelled then, in what he considered the single stupidest, most aggressive move of his life, he stepped out from behind his cover. As he ran, Utility Pockets opened in the air around him, each one loaded with a deadly spear of chitin, looted from the Citadel. Frankie was on his shoulder, operating considerably more Utility Pockets, loaded with similarly deadly ammunition. Ben didn’t know when he started yelling, but he was yelling as he ran and launched spear after spear. They flew through the air, guided by Citadel engineering, aerodynamic and fatally sharp as they tore through [Lawyers]. The defenders of the courthouse were either clutching their skulls in agony or passed out, but a few were fighting through the pain and opening fire, though their aim had suffered badly. Short Bus joined Ben in his charge, pointing his brain at anyone who still had their wits about them and shouting [Psi Blast!], accompanied by a bolt of purple energy that unerringly struck their targets and caused mental devastation.

Red was ahead, the vanguard, taking time to pass by the largest cluster of corpses, and transforming them into spears and orbs of health or mana, littering the battlefield with supplies to fuel their charge. Ben gratefully grabbed the mana and ammo, his entire world consumed by the need to get through the door.

He didn’t even realized when he’d accomplished his goal, eyes wild as he stumbled into the clean building with Short Bus and Red. He was looking around for the next enemy to kill, about to start attacking, when he was cut off by a skill.

“[Order in the court]!” there was a loud banging sound, and Ben felt his body completely empty of adrenaline, his mind suddenly lucidly taking in his surroundings. Ghost Ears and Vivi were sitting on a bench, with a lawyer, all of whom were making faces at Ben’s group as if to say ‘Stop fucking around and get over here’.

“Not even a minute left before your trial starts, typical,” a Sunlet scoffed, taking in Ben’s extremely dirty group with clear distaste, “have you no respect for law and order? Take your seats so this farce of a trial can begin.”

“[Bailiff],” the judge said, and Ben couldn’t see the woman behind the massive hammer she was holding, “could you please fetch the defendants some stamina potions? This is to be a fair trial, and I won’t have them making rash legal decisions due to battle fatigue.”

“[Objection],” the prosecutor said with all the force of a skill, stopping the Bailiff in his tracks, “Solas law is very clear on this, your honor. The defendants are only entitled to a trial, not a fair one. Unless you are willing to allow me to poison the defendants at a time of my choosing, I cannot allow the court to render any level of basic aid.”

The hammer was lifted by a mechanical arm cleverly built into The Judges Bench, and slammed into the sound block. The judge, who Ben still hadn’t spotted, spoke, a low simmer of anger in her voice. “The last time ah- I checked you’re half my level, and if you want to get into a pissing match with skills this early in the trial, I welcome the opportunity see you disbarred and dead. Solas may condone making a farce of justice out there in the Legal District, but I will not tolerate dirty tricks in here. [Overruled], bailiff, get the defendants stamina potions-”

“Your honor,” Short Bus said reasonably, raising a hand, “I’m about to start eating the prosecution alive. Instead of a stamina potion, could you please bring us some food?”

“Actually,” Ben said, raising his own hand, “we’re all pretty beat up. Is there any way we could delay the trial about a week or so? My party’s just come from the Overcavern Forest and beaten a Citadel. I’m personally getting warning messages about my level system being broken and how the only reason I haven’t exploded yet is because of the capitol crystal of Solas. If you’re wanting us to have a fair trial, we need time to recover.”

“These are reasonable requests,” the judge, who Ben assumed was communicating over whatever the alien equivalent of Skype was, said through her hammer. “And further, this entire matter can be resolved in five minutes with truth spells. [Balif], prepare the arrays, I want [Detect Truth] [Reveal Deceit] [Moral Alignment] and [Compel Honesty]. I will have each of you testify about The System’s announcement and give your account of the events surrounding the gremlin summoning incident.”

“[Objection!]” A new voice sounded out at that moment, echoed by several other uses of the skill as the doors to the court house slammed open, and a group of aliens walked in. They were led by a large, ruby red, heavily muscled crystal Sunlet who looked like he would be more at home slaughtering innocents in a bandit raid than in court.

“[Prevent Acquittal], a skeleton in a suit said, walking in calmly. It was humanoid, but shaped in a way that was ideal for undeath, like the living creature it had been created from had been designed for the explicit purpose of being raised from the dead. Ben wasn’t close enough to examine it in detail, nor did he have enough medical knowledge to describe why he felt that way, but he knew his intuition was right. The eye sockets were empty of flesh, instead occupied by stationary orbs of fire that burned with intelligent, conscious light.

“Oh shit,” Vivi said, looking at the skeleton, “The Enelim got involved.” Then Vivi looked at the last black suited[Lawyer] to enter the courtroom and rolled his eyes, “of course it would be him.”

“[Subvert Justice],” an Aeon Slug roughly Vivi’s size said as he slugged his way into the room, a look of perverted glee in his eyestalks, “We are the representatives of the Signatory Races, and we will be assuming the role of the prosecution. [Legal Challenge],” he said with disdain, looking at the now sweating lawyer who had been against giving Ben’s party stamina potions.

“Proceed,” the judge said, her voice sounding suddenly tired.

Ben watched with horrified fascination, as the Sunlet and the Enelim grabbed the lawyer, dragged him outside, and noisily murdered him before reentering the court room.

“This trial begins now,” the lead Sunlet said, “the prosecution seeks a motion banning the use of all truth arrays. [Force Ruling],” he said without passion, and his skill was echoed by his two associates.

“The use of all truth arrays has been temporarily suspended,” the judge said, a note of weary resignation in her voice. “We will take a fifteen minute recess before the trial begins to allow both the prosecution and the defense to prepare.”

“Your honor, we would like to begin now.” The lead Sunlet said, a growl in his voice as he stared at Ben’s party with naked greed.

“We will take a fifteen minute recess or I will personally shatter you the second you step outside my courtroom.” The threat seemed to hold some weight, and the prosecution conferred with one another for a few moments.

“Fifteen minutes then,” the Sunlet said, then sat down and began hurriedly speaking with the other two representatives of the Signatory races. Ben had been watching everything like it was a TV show, just dumbly moving his attention from person to person as they spoke to one another. Once there was silence, his brain decided that it was a good time to start working again.

“What the fuck is going on!” Ben shouted, eyes wide and looking around the courtroom, which had seemed so great when he’d first entered it, and now looked like a death trap.

“What, don’t you have courts where you’re from?” Vivi said, rolling his eyes.