"I agree with Nirvana. Your motion is overruled, Caracies, and in the future please be more selective about your procedural requests."

He barely processes the name. It's not important, not compared to avoiding any further missteps like that.

He'd sort of assumed that Milites would have some kind of scary-sounding devil name, like all the devils he'd heard of, and when he hadn't been able to track one down he'd figured that's because it was well-hidden. Maybe you only get a scary-sounding devil name if you're a pit fiend or something like that.

That's not really what's important here.

"Thea, can you explain why you didn't try to get a cleric to heal Martellus?"

"He was already dead by the time I'd have had the chance."

"Wow, great question! Hey, why don't you ask her a real question, something like, I don't know, why she tried to frame someone else for the murder!"

"I didn't think anyone would believe me that it had been an accident."

He is deeply unsure whether the Abyss's efforts are increasing the odds of an Evil verdict compared to just having someone yell "flesh" until they get kicked out. It's a good question, but the delivery is all wrong for its purpose, and now that the Abyss has asked it he can't very well just go and ask it again.

........Not that an Evil verdict is particularly in doubt, of course. 

"We've heard a lot about 'self-defense.' But we need to ask -- why was her life at risk in the first place? Why was her victim willing to risk an attempt on her life? Teresis, can you tell us what you think led him to try to kill you?"

"Is that really relevant? I mean, he's not the one on trial here..."

"The relevance will become clear once the witness answers the question."

She's not sure if this is the kind of trap where Hell ensnares you into admitting to things that are incriminating or the kind of trap where Hell ensnares you into looking like you don't think your actions were a big deal but given that they're asking the question at all it's presumably one of the two.

"Veritas, the request to not raise frivolous procedural quibbles applies to you too."

It's kind of weird how the judge keeps referring to everyone by their name? Their ... human name, if her guess is right? Whatever. People are allowed to be weird.

The judge is looking at her, which means trying to delay answering any longer probably won't actually help her.

"Five years ago, Martellus was involved in another incident that led to someone's death. I told him that I would prevent anyone from finding out what he had done as long as he was willing to work in whatever roles I asked of him and accept only the wages he needed to survive. I suppose he was sufficiently unhappy about this arrangement to be willing to take some risks like that."

"Your Honor, Hell requests once more that Nirvana explain why this woman's attempts at blackmail -- which she has just told you she used as an excuse to force her victim into near-slavery -- should not be classified as Evil. Hell believes that Nirvana is avoiding this point deliberately."

...That's not exactly wrong but it's still upsetting.

He needs to focus.

If he's being honest with himself, it does look pretty bad that the petitioner spent years using blackmail to force someone else around. Also that she was part of a criminal organization, but the other afterlives aren't focusing on that point yet, so it's less urgent to figure out how to counter it.

There has to be some way to turn this around. There has to be. He just needs to find it.

With her killing Martellus, there were mitigating circumstances that he could point to. With her blackmailing him, there aren't -- she helped him cover up a murder, that makes it worse if anything --

--Does it?

If she hadn't blackmailed him -- he'd've been taken in for murder, almost certainly, and executed. He'd likely have gone to the lower planes, if Thea's guess about whether it was intentional was correct, though "actually their actions were necessary to stop someone from going to Hell" is rarely accepted as a justification for doing things that would otherwise be seen as clearly unethical. (Admittedly most of the precedent here comes from cases about murdering innocent people.)

Technically speaking, she could have helped him cover up the murder and then not blackmailed him, but -- if it really was a murder -- it's hard to say that that would have been better than what she did. At least this way she could keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't kill anyone else.

The obvious issue is that Thea's memories don't really support this interpretation of her motivations whatsoever. But at least it's a start.

Believing deep down that every petitioner you represent is a good person is not a job requirement. It is, however, the sort of thing that many advocates find helpful; no one deserves to suffer in Hell, or even to be destroyed in Abaddon, but if you're thinking of your goal as "try to save this obviously terrible person" it can bleed into your arguments no matter how hard you try to hide it.

He doesn't think that Thea is an obviously terrible person. She clearly made a lot of mistakes, but -- so do most people.

He has a question to answer, and if he takes more than a few seconds it'll look like he can't.

"Your Honor, when determining whether a petitioner's actions were Evil, this court must consider their viable alternatives. In some cases, it is impossible to entirely avoid harming others -- the standard citation for that is In re Foot, though the same sentiment exists in earlier cases -- and in general this court has considered a lack of superior alternatives to be a substantial mitigating circumstance.

"In this case, Your Honor, the petitioner had just witnessed what she believed to be a murder. Most people in that position would have just turned in Martellus to the local authorities, at which point he would have been executed. If Thea had done that, no one would seriously believe that made her Evil, but Martellus clearly would have been worse off. 

"That wasn't her only option -- theoretically, she could have covered it up and then just let him go -- but again, as far as she knew, she had just witnessed a murder. What Hell is calling 'blackmail' was, in a sense, her only chance at ensuring that no one else died.

"The motivations of mortals are rarely entirely straightforward. I'm not going to tell you that she was acting entirely selflessly. But the impulse towards mercy is a fundamentally Good one."

This is absurd. Nirvanans are absurd.

"Are you seriously trying to argue that covering up a murder is Good."

"I'm not going to say that's necessarily Good in every case. But -- in this one, yes, or at least Good-intentioned."

"I feel like Nirvana is just putting together a bunch of pretty words to try to get us to ignore the thing where she blackmailed someone. For years."