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Juukulius and Juukulius, Attorneys at Law
Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, was at her wits' end. She had tried several lawyers so far, and once they stopped spasming from mana overflow, they all told her the same thing. “Get Lost.”, “Are you out of your mind?”, and “I don’t do domestics.” It seemed as though everyone had heard about the very public breakup with Satella. And everyone, almost to a man, wanted nothing to do with it.
So, here she was, sitting down in a rather cheap seat as the current lawyer, Joshua Juukulius, readied himself for a meeting with her. She thought it was a good sign that he didn’t immediately throw up in her presence. Vomit was hard to clean out of amorphous energy blobs.
A minute later, she was seated in his office. Better appointed than his waiting room, though still showing signs of being a recent tenant, even if he hid them well, there were boxes still unopened.
“So, you wish to sue Satella, the Witch of Envy, for,” Joshua shuffles his papers and looks over them again, his monocle to one side as he examines the documents that Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, provided. “Kidnapping, Murder, Grand Larceny, and Identity Theft.” Peering over the papers, Joshua can’t help but ask, “Identity Theft?”
Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, looked away, blushing, and simply said, “They have been pretending to be a world spirit.” Wisely, Joshua chose not to ask for further details. What disembodied forces of nature and evil got up to with each other was entirely for them to deal with.
“Well, I can’t say the case is great, but I’m new here and need the work. So, I’ll accept the case at the price point we agreed earlier. And the answer to a single question.” Joshua spoke evenly. He had been thinking about the question he wanted to ask, and he thought he had the perfect question to resolve some of his more existential issues.
“Hit me”, said Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, as Joshua took a moment to compose himself. “Why, was I born weak?”. The question was rushed out, as if he wasn’t sure he could say it unless he did it in one blur of words.
“I’m sorry, who are you again?” questioned Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence. “I don’t think I remember making you.”
It was then that Joshua did the impossible; his face matched the colour of his hair as he switched between mortification, anger, and sheer horror. “I’m Joshua Juukulius! Son of Alviero and Maria Juukulius!” Time stretched on after he exploded in the face of the dismissal from his literal god.
“Oh! You mean Julius Juukulius? I didn’t think I made you that weak, though, compared to Reiny-chan everyone is sort of underpowered.” Responded the oblivious and somewhat deaf world spirit.
“Joshua! My name is Joshua, you –”, said Joshua, taking a slow breath before continuing. “My name is Joshua, Ms Od Laguna, hallowed be your presence. I’m not my honourable brother.”
Her eyes went hazy for a moment as she thought, looking through her impeccable memory to remember the creature before her – that said memory could not remember Satella’s birthday was none of your business.
“Oh! I remember now! Joshua! Yes, I sort of made you out of the leftovers from Julius. There wasn’t much left, you see.”
If one were to watch slowly enough, one could see the moment that Joshua’s heart breaks.
Public Defender Office Phi Kappa Nu 12
Puck was smoking a cigarette. Were his daughter here, she would probably yank it out of his hands and smash it into the ground. But thankfully, she was not in the fifth circle of hell, and he could enjoy his smoke in peace within his office. At least for another five seconds.
It was exactly five seconds later that a woman entered his office. A woman clad in black and orange with a veil over her face. Amethyst eyes glowed with unsubtle power as she walked over to the chair in front of his desk and sat down upon it, crossing her legs as if she were a noble woman from the ancient past.
He knew better, of course. She was dangerous. Her beauty belied her danger to everyone and everything in the world. A creature of such unfathomable power and destruction that she had once consumed half the world and would have consumed the other half had the Sage not made a sacrifice to stop her.
Satella, the Witch of Envy.
And she was currently weeping on the desk before Puck as she tried to get her sob story out. Honestly, why was she exactly like Emilia?
It took all his mental strength not to reach over and pat her head and perhaps offer her a lollipop. Of course, while he was demonstrating said mental strength, he was reaching over and patting her head, as well as offering her a lollipop.
‘ Od Damn It’ he thought.
After she finished off the lollipop, she was able to begin explaining the situation. “So, my ex-wife is currently suing me because I may have taken the house, the car, and the kids. But honestly, she wasn’t looking after them all that well! I mean, their world was so mean! So many people were hurt, and meanies were enslaving people left and right. That’s not fair, right, Mr Puck?”
“Yes, Ms Satella, that is not very nice. But, uh, can I ask why you are in a public defender's office rather than, say, a more high-powered lawyer’s office? While I will do my best to defend you in court, I cannot exactly devote myself to you; I have many other cases on my docket.” Asked Puck the Lawyer, who was a subtly different entity than Puck the Parent or Puck, the Destroyenator of Worlds.
That Satella did not answer right away and looked down boded poorly for his mental health.
“Well, I might have spent aaaaaallll my money on Subaru merchandise that I reeeeeaallly including one 1:1 scale model of his d—” was as far as she got before Puck’s fluffy paw covered her mouth, and he whispered to her. “Say no more. Please. Not a single word.”
‘Why is she just like Emilia?’ Puck thought to himself, before he thought deeper on who exactly could have produced such a horror.
‘Fucking Echidna’
Court 124-A-λ-Nu817
Judge: Chief Bureaucrat Volcanica
Case: Od Laguna vs Satella, the Witch of Envy
Defence Attorney: The Great Spirit, Puck
Prosecution Attorney: Joshua Juukulius, Stewart of House Juukulius
If Volcanica had to listen to any more of this, he was going to kill himself. That is the thought that had been running through his head for the last twenty minutes as he heard Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, speak about his case. Really, why was he sent the cases from the universe he was from? Wasn’t it enough that he had to deal with these people normally, but now he had to deal with them during Judge Service?!?
Of course, while Volcanica thought this, everyone on the outside saw a very large, very powerful, and very senile old dragon looking out into space as he occasionally murmured about how unfair things were. Quite where someone had managed to find a wig that could fit upon his head, let alone a device designed to allow it to stay on his head, went without question.
Some things are better left unknown.
“So, as you can see, my client’s world was completely and utterly devastated by the actions of the defendant. The defendant not only subsumed the remaining half of the world when she had consumed the other half, may I add, but then sought to kidnap all my client's citizens, including her.” It was at that point that Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, leaned over and whispered into Joshua’s ear. Joshua couldn’t help but look defeated at what he had just been told, defeated and entirely unsurprised.
“Including his limited edition, mint condition, Reinhard action figure. Now with 20% additional paternal trauma. My client is seeking a return of the previous missing half of the world, as well as all its original citizens. Additionally, my client seeks a restraining order against a one ‘Subaru Natsuki’ for at least 1000 standard years, including any reincarnations, transmigrations, or possession transpositions for defiling the marital contract.”
“Oh, you utter Wrinkler! We were completely over by the time I even met up with my BELOVED!”, screamed Satella, as she looked ready to leap over the bench and strangle her separated wife. “Besides, you don’t want to keep Reinhard to look after him, look at his mental state!”
It was with a click of a finger that a visual representation of Reinhard’s mental state appeared in front of the court. Her attorney, Puck, was not trying to stop her from doing this. Instead, they appeared to be staring intently through sunglasses as they remained motionless. Why they chose to wear sunglasses in a courtroom, during a midnight session, several stories underground, went without comment.
Satella just had that effect on them.
Returning to the Reindiagram, instead of a rather handsome young man, there is a house that was on fire, burning down, you could say. And within that house, there was a cartoon dog that appeared to be sipping a drink from a mug placed before him. Were he able to speak, the dog would have said “This is fine,” but thankfully, in this most hallowed of places, cartoon dogs cannot speak.
That court is several more stories down into the celestial bureaucracy and only operates every second Sunday.
“Look at it, you’ve taken a perfectly good sword saint and broken it. It’s actively on fire, and it thinks that it’s okay! I don’t think he’s smiled properly since he was five! You can’t trust her with anything!” screams Envy. In this case, the Envy of getting to spend time with her beloved caused her to come out and take over.
Reinhard was a touchy subject for Envy, being both a hero and the last remnant of her failed marriage with Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence.
“Well, if we’re talking mistreatment, sweetie~ . How about we talk about you dragging your little boy toy to our world!” Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, responds venomously. Envtella pales at this, as much as a being who is trapped in a seal without sunlight can pale. Under the Kashihara Accords, worlds were rated for their Isekai suitability. Ranging from Reincarnate Only to Tourist Trap. Earth was rated closer to Tourist Trap, and Laguna’s world was ………
Well, it was rated for Reincarnate only.
The fines were going to be harsh, and the time wasted inside the Court would be even worse. ‘I might even have to sell 5% of my stake in Butterfly Incorporated!’ The mere thought of being forced to part with even a single bit of her shares in her frenemies' business filled her with distaste, but for some reason she got the sense that this would avoid an even more horrible fate. She would at least still have her Subaru collection and would not feel the urge to consume half the world, again.
Thankfully, there was no world to consume here, so she’d have to resort to her second-best plan. Shifting the blame. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it! It was Echidna, I tell you! On cap. For real real. This is Wack, yo.” It wasn’t well known, but Satella had been brushing up on Earth gamer lingo, after all, it’d been a long, long time since she’d seen her beloved, and she wanted to understand him.
Unfortunately for Satella, the guides she read about gamer lingo were 10.6 seconds out of date.
And thus, her earnest attempts at communication came over as cringeworthy. Thankfully, within the court was an ancient world spirit, a semi-senile old dragon, and several attorneys, meaning that they came from hell and thus had no age to speak of, so no one picked up on this truly awful attempt to mimic Twitch Chat.
Volcanica looked unconvinced by this attempt at shifting the blame. Satella had something of a sweet tooth, and remembered the times that Satella would steal his cookies from his cookie jar and then blame Echidna, Typhon, Daphne and even Sekhmet for stealing them. Let alone pinning the blame on Reid and the rest of their merry gang.
Everyone knows that Reid hated cookies, instead preferring to enjoy the humbler chocolate bourbon.
With his tiny gavel in his hand, it looked as if Volcanica was ready to render a verdict. When, finally, her attorney, Puck, woke up. That was good because the court bailiff was five seconds away from calling for a medical officer and perhaps a hearse. It was with the force of a thousand Phoenix Wrights – all of whom were currently losing their court battles across the courthouse complex – that they shouted “OBJECTION!” as they slammed their hands down on the desk before them and performed the pose.
That such a cute cat should be unable to generate sufficient force to generate any sound from such a smack did not bother Puck. He was simply born different.
Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, blinked, a tough feat for an amorphous blob of soul energy. Satella blinked, an even more impressive feat for a being who, technically speaking, wasn’t even present in the courtroom. Even Volcanica blinked, or, at least, it looked like a blink.
It could be hard to tell when the dragon always handled most of his court cases with at least one eye closed. Most of his work was dreadfully tedious, and after a few hundred years, it all sort of blended together, so he often slept through much of the legal proceedings.
Moments pass as everyone waits. All eyes are upon Puck, as his surely well-crafted objection is ready to be hurled at Volcanica like a proverbial rail gun shot. The tension only built and built as things progressed, as everyone awaited the finest of turnabouts.
“The only reason that my client was pushed to such extremes was due to controlling behaviour from the world spirit over there! He’s obliged to consider all requests for reincarnates when presented, but when my client presented the case for ‘Natsuki Subaru’ as his patron, she was refused outright! In such a scenario, what else could she have done? Performed an Isekai and left him to General Sorting? ”
A murmur went out across the court, even though it was empty aside from the bare minimum of staff needed to run a court case. None of the staff seemed even remotely concerned by the phantom noise of a hundred or so people suddenly appearing inside an empty court.
General Sorting was a horror show. And eighty per cent of the people processed ended up working for the celestial bureaucracy as it expanded to meet the needs of the expanding celestial bureaucracy. Imagine being Isekaied and being told to do mundane and rather tedious paperwork for the next two hundred years.
The rate of Isekai Isekais was at 27% and rising as more and more people from the modern age filtered in.
It was with a snort that the great Dragon, Volcanica, returned to his prime. His mind cleared as he could take their bickering no longer. “ENOUGH! I HAVE HAD IT WITH YOU TWO. COULD YOU BOTH STOP ACTING LIKE CHILDREN FOR MORE THAN 15 SECONDS?” yelled Volcanica as the room seemed to shake under the pressure he was giving out.
Normally, would he have given sass to Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence? Empowered by the power of bureaucracy and twenty years of listening to this nonsense happening, he was going to lay down the law.
“Since you two cannot act like adults. I’ll settle this for you. The court finds that Satella, the witch of Envy, and Od Laguna, hallowed be its presence, are to be forced into joint and separate therapy sessions for no less than two years! Additionally, now that the world is conjoined, you must take responsibility,” announced Volcanica with a particularly serpentine grin.
They had mingled their assets and items together so much that telling them apart was impossible. So, he cut the Gordian knot. They’d have to put up with each other forever.
“You are sentenced to co-parent the newly created world as the joint world spirits, until the planet eventually dies or all life perishes upon it!”
It’s said that the screams from both parties echoed out so far that on a certain world in a certain galaxy far far away, a certain would-be emperor found himself sucked out of the window as the glass shattered from the sonic assault.
Looking back on events, that world decided that it had dodged a bullet with the would-be emperor being gone, and did not decide to file charges.