Work Text:
There are visitors today in Night Vale.
Two of them claim they are lawyers.
Now, lawyers aren’t real, but we’re not going to tell them that.
They must know, right?
The lawyers appeared from the Night Vale Harbour and Waterfront Recreation Area, emerging from where water would be, were we not in the middle of the desert.
They reported a death near where they appeared, which was declared a drowning by the Sheriff’s Secret Police on the scene.
One of the lawyers, an imposing presence with a wine red suit, glasses, and frilly neckwear, objected to this decision.
“There’s clearly a stab wound!” He said, pointing condescendingly at the Sheriff’s Secret Police, and then pointing less condescendingly and more annoyedly at the dead body, which I have been told to tell you did not have a knife in it.
“No knife here!” The note says, “What’s a knife? There are no knives in Night Vale! There are no knives in this drowning victim, either. He drowned. Drowning. Victim.”
The frilly lawyer went on to insist that a murder investigation and trial should be carried out. The other lawyer, wearing a bright blue suit with a pink tie and hair unnervingly spiky, looked on at the former with a mix of fondness and nostalgia.
The lawyer continued, “Surely it is necessary to find who did this!”
The other lawyer, the one in the blinding blue suit, gave the first’s hand a gentle squeeze, as if to say “Hey. It’s going to be okay.”
The first squeezed his hand back, as if to say “I know, but I’m going to win this debate first.”
The lawyer in blue did not say anything to this, but did acknowledge it.
After thirty minutes outside at the Night Vale Harbour and Waterfront Recreation Area, the Sheriff’s Secret Police agreed to the demands of the increasingly sweaty and irritable lawyers, because, and I quote, listeners: “We already had the suspect taken away to a secret location, and we might as well let them have their fun.”
The trial will take place in the basement of town hall.
City council assures everyone that this is perfectly safe, and encourages citizens to come watch, and perhaps throw their rotten tomatoes at the lawyers.