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Tagora Gorjek’s voice was about what you would expect it to be, looking at him – oiled slick as his hair, and grinning like the kind of supervillain known to strut around in the fanciest kind of suits, swinging flashy personalized canes as they talked.  Some kind of polished-up trickster; some kind of corrupt CEO who may’ve been shredding evidence just before you walked into the office.  And you know?  Terezi Pyrope had it on good authority that sort of character might’ve been exactly Tagora’s speed.  He may or may not have had doodles of himself as a social climbing, swoon-worthy mastermind antihero folded neatly into the very back of his glossy plastic file folders, after all.  Terezi’s best friend, Vriska Serket, said she’d seen them.  Apparently, the guy drew himself looking kind of like shinier interpretations of comic book-Loki, though Terezi hadn’t had the honor of seeing any of that herself, yet.

Tagora never passed up an opportunity to croon something quasi-threatening and manipulative down over someone’s shoulder while they were working, either – he waved and smiled very politely to everyone in the hallway, even the people he’d say cruel things about the minute they went off to band camp or something.

Terezi knew she was gonna need to summon all her mock-trial debate club prowess if she wanted to beat someone like Tagora.  Only one of their school’s fake lawyers could take home the gold that blisteringly hot – yet fated – afternoon.  And sure, people said Tagora’d already won any debate the minute he opened his sneering little mouth, but Terezi practiced all the time at home vs. her army of stuffed dragons.  She figured she had a decent enough shot.  Justice would prevail that day – probably.  If Terezi had anything to say about it.

(And at the very least, Vriska had an enormous pile of water balloons waiting for Tagora in a tub of ice behind the school – just in case, you know, he said anything too nasty.  Terezi had asked her not to use those, of course, potentially tainting the sanctity of their make-believe courtroom.  Not without flipping a coin first, anyway.)

The mock-trial courtroom was full of swollen light as Terezi strode over to take her seat – some huge finger-smudgy windows took up pretty much an entire wall, so the AC had to do its clattering, tragic best to keep up.  Most members of the audience were using their programs as sweaty-gripped makeshift fans or pressing still-wrapped ice cream sandwiches from the concession stand into their cheeks to try and cool down.  The courtroom was also where everybody usually got lunch – that was the courtroom’s harmless alter-ego, the way Terezi thought about it – so the air smelled sort of like old spaghetti sauce and chocolate milk.  Each of Terezi’s footsteps squeaked over the linoleum, which she told herself could conceivably be read as nonchalant and unafraid.  At least Tagora’s shoes were going to squeak, too.

Outside, their school’s stickball team dashed around on a plot of scratchy artificial grass and tried to avoid getting bitten by fire ants.  (Terezi suspected they weren’t having much luck.)  A bunch of kids played Fiduspawn cards hunched together in a creeping patch of shade, too, and some others may or may not have been breaking into Cronus Ampora’s fancy vintage car.  People laughed, and shoved fistfuls of dirt at each other, and practiced ballet/tap-dancing routines over and over in the parking lot.

Terezi pitied them, in a way.  Maybe they just hadn’t seen Debate Coach Kankri’s sign-up posters at the beginning of the semester?  But those posters had been just so delightfully red, and with a picture of someone surrounded by a sea of their own word-balloons.  They’d been pretty hard to miss.

Speaking of Debate Coach Kankri, he was brandishing his clipboard around just then and doing introductions.  Mostly for the parents’ sake – Terezi’s big sister Latula had come to watch her work, and she still waved enthusiastically whenever Terezi caught her eye despite the ice cream clumped in her hair (she’d tried out that old ice cream sandwich trick, see.)  Latula’s boyfriend, Mituna, kept taking absurd pictures of things around the room and giving them snarky captions.  He’d texted a few over to Terezi by that point, before she’d told him to quit it so she could concentrate.  Mituna’d eaten his ice cream sandwich already, and his feet were propped up on his skateboard, leaning back like he thought he was just so cool.  He’d probably end up playing some sort of video game through the actual debate part, but Terezi figured him coming meant he might've been a little more serious about her sister than she usually gave him credit for.    

Debate Coach Kankri demonstrated the “You’re Out of Line” tweet he might give on his whistle if things got crazy, like they apparently had at the debate club championship a handful of years back.  It’d been before Terezi’s time, but she’d heard there had been pirate cosplay and an angry mob involved? 

Everybody recited the school motto next, just so their founder (and money source) Ms. Meenah Peixes didn’t get too pissed off.  She was often called the “School Empress,” after all, and Terezi thought most of the faculty members were only half-joking. 

Tagora slid her over one of his slimiest, yellow-toothed smiles and took a sip of bottled iced coffee.  Everybody on Coach Kankri’s debate team knew you weren’t supposed to have dairy stuff right before public speaking – it clogged up your voice, or something, leaving your throat all full of mush.  But Tagora had brought a latte into the actual debate – that’s how confident he was.  He waved to Terezi like he thought he was very slick, but wound up choking on his drink and sputtered a little.  One of the witnesses – guy called Xefros Tritoh – passed him a napkin, and then they brought in the accused.

Dammek What’s-His-Name made it very clear he was only participating as a way to get out of detention.  In fact, he was wearing that on a sign around his neck when the volunteer bailiffs (Barzum and Baizli Soleil, also working as witnesses that semester…  The debate team wasn’t exactly huge for some reason?) brought him in.  “I’m Only Here Because it Beats Detention,” the sign said on the front, but Dammek flipped it over when he sat down.  “Whatever it is, I’m Guilty,” the sign said on the back.  Dammek looked really proud of himself, all twisted-up smirk and carefully styled hair.  He didn’t look like he washed his face too often, and there were a bunch of mysterious, sticky-looking stains on his jeans. 

Terezi was the prosecuting attorney, here, so you’d think an “I’m Guilty” sign would make her job easier, right?  But she was facing off against Tagora Gorjek, and the wheels in that guy’s mind were turning up a storm just as soon as Dammek flopped himself down and blew a sarcastic kiss to the audience.  If anyone could convince the jury that Dammek was being blackmailed into declaring guilt, or something, it was Tagora…  And that’s exactly what he set about doing just as soon his turn rolled around and Coach Kankri was convinced to hand him over the microphone. 

Tagora had a rhythmic, wheedling way of speaking, that was for dang sure, whatever kind of milky sugar-coffee he’d just been drinking to clog up his throat.  He paced a little, as he talked, and gestured with benevolent, sweeping motions.  Lots of warm, concerned smiles, handed all around the room like a collection basket.  Lots of obviously fake soft-eyed innocence.  Against all odds, Terezi noticed some of the volunteer jury members nodding along with Tagora, or looking at Dammek with something like sudden pity.  It would’ve been clear even from way out on the stickball field that Tagora was having the time of his life, winding his voice nice and smooth all through that lunch/courtroom.  Like twining a thread all tightly around everybody, jerking at their wrists like puppet strings.  Like he thought he was Billy Flynn – ultra lawyer – in the high school production of Chicago Latula had done stage makeup for last year.  Hah!

Even when Dammek attempted to take anarchistic control of the trial during his interview time…  When he kept trying to not only claim the charges against him – (something fairytale-ish and probably chosen out of a hat: stealing Cinderella’s glass slipper and vandalizing her pumpkin carriage, apparently) – but make them worse and worse, until eventually he’d also toppled the whole school’s government and set all Empress Peixes’s fancy mermaid trinkets on fire…  Tagora was somehow able to keep things going along smoothly for him.

“Ah, my friends, he’s so desperate for you to believe his stories!” Tagora chortled, leaning in to the jury like they were sharing a secret.  “I wonder what’s gotten him so afraid?  I’m sure my opponent, Ms. Pyrope here, has no idea.  But surely we can all agree this trial today doesn’t have to concern itself with whether or not my client has ever considered setting fire to any mermaid-themed embroidered pillow sets!  I mean…  There are a lot of them.  And it’s not as though any pillows have actually been burned, right?”

Yeah, vs. a different fake defense lawyer, Terezi’s victory might’ve already been in the bag by the time Tagora started calling witnesses.  As it stood, though, she kept scowling at whatever simpering smiles or possibly-accidental winks Tagora sent her.  As it stood, she kept having to shake her head at Vriska, who was leaning against one of the bleachers with an ice-cold water balloon tucked half-heartedly behind her back and dripping all over the squeaky floor.  Vriska raised her eyebrows and “tsk”-ed right back at her.  Terezi could just imagine the boisterous, skittering tone of voice she might use, declaring, “Well, you know I’m ready to strike whenever you are!  C’mon, you know you want to.”

As was the usual rule in Coach Kankri’s mock-trial championship showdowns, Tagora got to call three witnesses up to the stands to hammer in his points.  To convince everybody of Dammek’s innocence, somehow, despite the fact that he kept declaring things like, “Come on, I want this on my permanent record!  Stealing Cinderella’s fancy shoe must’ve been just the first step in my revolution!  Somehow?  Ahaha, this is so dumb…”

Tagora’s first witness was Cirava Hermod, who always wore a neon eyepatch after some mysterious accident they didn’t really see the point of talking about.  Terezi suspected they may’ve just signed up to volunteer that day because Tagora’d guilt-tripped them into it or something?  They provided Dammek with an alibi – something about going to a dwarf-run music store together (keeping up the fairytale theme, which Terezi appreciated), because, you know, they both liked music and Dammek generally didn’t pass up any opportunity to show people all the edgy, obscure bands he knew.  They played a song from this new “moisturewave” CD they’d bought to prove it, actually, until Coach Kankri put a stop to that.  Apparently “moisturewave” wasn’t everybody in the audience’s thing.

Tagora’s second witness was Barzum Soleil – who answered every question very cryptically and mostly just stared straight ahead with wide, unblinking eyes as Tagora monologued.  Then came Baizli, who giggled a lot and said Dammek seemed too nice to get a poor innocent pumpkin carriage mixed up in all his dirty work.  Yes, what a sweet guy, that Dammek What’s-His-Name, never once kicked anybody at school down the stairs!  At least not so far as Baizli had seen.  Would someone like Dammek really have the guts to steal from an actual princess, conceivably pissing off all the tiny animals hiding in their school’s basement and just dying to sabotage his band equipment?    

(Dammek declared, “I’ll show you what I’m capable of!” from the sidelines, and Coach Kankri had to bang his little gavel again for a while.  The twins just glanced at each other and snickered, the dusky sunset-colors painted carefully by their eyes dripping only a little in the heat.  They gathered up their stuff pretty soon after that and headed out to gymnastics practice, trailing silky dancing-ropes behind them and padding around in eerily silent slippers.)

Okay.  So then it was Terezi’s turn, right?  She gathered all her most biting laughter; she offered whatever fairytale-ish evidence she’d been able to come up with.  (Dammek seemed to really appreciate the plan she’d made for him to sabotage the ball Cinderella had been heading too…  And the “photographic evidence” she’d staged of the famous glass slipper tied up in some spooky basement chair like a hostage got Vriska yelling, “Terezi!  Yes!” from the audience seats.  And then, naturally, Coach Kankri tweeting his whistle at her a little.)

Terezi made her speeches, and she may or may not have been imagining the assembled jury as a row of her stuffed dragons back at home.  Jury member Gamzee Makara smiled at her all warm and sloppy and encouraging, though he also had a set of beat-up headphones in so it was possible he couldn’t even hear her over the morbid cackling clown rap he was into.  Jury member Karkat Vantas was studying all Terezi’s evidence super carefully, possibly because he knew his big brother, (Coach Kankri, yeah,) might get his feelings hurt if he didn’t.  Not that Karkat would’ve ever admitted something as mushy and kind as all that, at least not without a lot of swearing and insults Terezi knew he didn’t mean.

Terezi’s call for witnesses went…  Well, significantly less fluidly than she’d hoped, which meant Tagora was sipping from that bottled latte with a very smug look on his face during most of it, and/or accidentally snort-laughing some of the stuff into his hand.  First up, see, Terezi called for Marvus Xoloto…  And Marvus, with his sly smiles and annoying habit of texting both Terezi’s sister figures (Latula and Vriska) in the middle of the night, was nowhere around.  Maybe he was off buying more flamboyant top hats from the costume store – maybe he was playing one of his pranks and completely lost track of time.  Either way: no Marvus.  Terezi called his name into that sticky, shifting courtroom, and when a lot of silence answered her Tagora did that snort-laugh thing. 

Jerk.  Terezi had half a mind to nod at Vriska about that water balloon attack plan, but she very nobly resisted.

A couple of Marvus’s friends were in the audience, though, and that huge, soft-eyed Chahut Maenad – who people said had beaten some of Marvus’s enemies into a bloody pulp during some sort of frenzy in her freshman year – stood up and waved to Terezi like, “Hey, sis, let’s say he sent me, okay?  I’ll just write my name down on the little sign-in sheet, if that’s good with you…  Yeah.  So everything’s fine.”

Chahut handed her purse to the kid next to her – somebody Terezi didn’t know, with stripey sleeves and big jewelry – and slouched over to take her new place in the trial.  The kid with her purse was barefoot and had a sharp gold tooth that looked like a fang.  They started rifling through Chahut’s bag for candy and stuff almost right away.

Chahut was probably Terezi’s most helpful witness, honestly.  She made up some story about attending the ball with her friends as an entertainment troop: some sort of fairytale circus act.  Said she’d accidentally gotten a picture with the glass slipper being stolen in the background and stuck it in one of her scrapbooks without realizing.  She had a slow, drawling voice, like syrup dripping off pancakes.  When she took her purse back from the stripey kid, Chahut chuckled and said, “Aw dang, you didn’t even check the zippered pockets!  That’s where all the best stuff is.”

Next on Terezi’s witness roster came Dammek’s boyfriend Xefros Tritoh, who ran nervous hands through his hair and kept smiling all shakily like he expected somebody to yell at him any second.  He narrated what it had been like to pull the infamous glass slipper heist by Dammek’s side, and it was going pretty okay until Tagora asked to question him.  Xefros crumpled under the cold knowing in his eyes, and started admitting, you know, maybe it was a different set of magical glittery crystalline shoes.  No, he didn’t have any video of himself chatting with Cinderalla, so he couldn’t exactly prove they had met.  Stuff like that.  He’d have to check with Dammek again, ahahaha…  Ha.

Xefros had passed up on stickball practice to be there that day, but by the time he left the stand he was flushed dark red and calling, “I’m so sorry, Tetrarch!” over his shoulder.  Terezi wasn’t completely sure what he meant, calling his boyfriend something like that, but Dammek just sighed and twitched his lip up in a fond, grudging half-smile.  “Whatever,” he said, and Terezi wondered whether he meant to sound mad, or if he was just sort of awkward getting apologized to.  “Just sit down, or something.  I feel like this has to be almost over.”

And you know, it kind of really was.  By the time Vriska – Terezi’s last witness, of course – had her turn, it was also pretty clear who’d won.  Vriska’d just gotten in a shouting match with both Tagora and Dammek simultaneously, and she’d ended up banished from the courtroom by the might of Coach Kankri’s whistle.  Not… Not the most encouraging thing in the world.

It really did look like Tagora Gorjek was going to get yet another silky blue ribbon to hang up in his locker.  It really did look like Latula was going to have to keep nudging Mituna in the car on the way home, trying to keep him from going on about what a mess it had all been. 

But then, Terezi thought of justice.  She thought of how ridiculous it was that a guy wearing an “I’m Guilty” sign around his neck and talking up his own crimes could be declared innocent just because of some very confident mind-games.  She thought about how much she didn’t want Tagora to claim yet another fancy ribbon to stroke as he got his books and gossiped in the hall, too.  Maybe meeting Terezi’s eyes the whole time through the crowd, even...  But she was definitely more focused on the “justice” thing.  Obviously. 

Terezi drew something out of her backpack, then.  Something even she hadn’t expected she’d get to use during this particular fake trial showdown.  It was a pack of dusty chalk, in nearly every color and ideal for scribbling on most surfaces.

“Mr…  Uh, Dammek,” Terezi said, “Would you like to show us how you vandalized the princess’s poor, trusty pumpkin carriage?  I’m afraid I’m not going to let you steal my shoes to demonstrate that part, but…”

“Sure,” Dammek said, and maybe Coach Kankri thought he was just gonna be drawing on the paper Terezi laid out all neatly, with the edges lined up just right.  But, no.  No, even Terezi knew Dammek better than that, and she wasn’t totally clear on his last name!

The trial was declared an unfinished draw after Dammek scrawled a few of his band’s ruder lyrics – starting on Terezi’s notepaper but then spreading enthusiastically over the table.  That didn’t mean Dammek was silenced right away, though.  His anti-Ms. Peixes, anti-pumpkin carriage messages were pretty much all over the lunchroom by the time anyone caught him.  Terezi had never heard Dammek “Sleeps in Class” What’s-His-Name sounding so alive – he was laughing wildly and taunting Coach Kankri, throwing chalk to the crowd like he was trying to get everybody else to draw, too.  (Xefros maybe drew a smiley face and a lopsided stickball bat right underneath his own chair, but that was by far the least anarchistic and/or clown rap-themed thing scribbled around the courtroom that day.) 

Coach Kankri’s whistle was like a very shrill, out-of-breath siren, but Terezi didn’t think she was going to get in trouble.  She had laid out the notepad, after all.   She might’ve felt awful about it, except that chalk washed off easy and the look on Tagora’s pinched-up face was like nothing he’d ever worn before.

Through the chaos, Tagora tugged just a little at Terezi’s sleeve.  He offered her a jerking, Renaissance Faire sort of bow, with a sweeping arm and everything.  Like maybe he thought he really was Prince Loki of Asgard; like maybe he wasn’t exactly sure what else to do. 

“Well played, Pyrope,” said Tagora Gorjek.  “I mean.  Sort of?  Though I’m sure I’ll wipe the floor with you next round…  It’s not as if Coach Kankri will allow you to bring in that chalk again after this.”

“I dunno – we’ll see,” said Terezi, in a voice that meant she really wanted to watch him try to get a ribbon off her next round.  Good luck.  Tagora had to have heard the hungry smile in her voice – a genuine smile, though, like she was actually having fun.  Scheming, almost-triumphant fun.

 Tagora’s challenges followed Terezi out of the courtroom – now shifting back into just a really loud and frantic lunchroom once again.  She gathered up Latula and her skater-kid boyfriend – who both passed over some of that chalk looking laughingly guilty – and the last thing she heard from Tagora was a wheedling, “Okay, then!  See you at practice?”

Terezi led her family back outside, to find Vriska and see if she thought anything like justice had been served that day…  Or if this was something her pirate-OC Mindfang would’ve approved of, in which case she’d probably be sort of thrilled and Terezi was going to have to resign herself to some Obscure Pirate Fact Time. 

Anyway, Terezi was wondering whether Vriska had any more possible plans for that stash of ice-chilled water balloons.