“Alright, chickens, come to the henhouse, round table time! The fox brought coffee and pastries!” I rapped my knuckles on the glass door of the conference room, drawing as much attention as possible. Everyone’s Outlook notifications had gone out eighteen minutes ago, then again two minutes ago, but only three of the twelve available attorneys had actually gotten up.
So I brought out the big guns: free food, and more importantly, coffee that didn’t come from the break room.
“Coffee?” Somebody asked.
“Also donuts and pastries. The good ones,” I confirmed. “Come on, there’s enough for everybody — but if you take the last cruller, I will hurt you.”
That got a couple laughs, and thankfully, more people crawled out of offices and into the conference room. They drank coffee, ate pastries, fought over the last custard-filled donut because we all knew they were superior to the jelly ones… the works.
As a general rule, we attorneys had problems with tunnel vision — spend enough time working on the same types of cases, and you had a way of ignoring everything outside of them. This often led to the annoying situation where the solution to a major issue was literally a click away, but you didn’t even think to look, and suddenly, you were facing down the barrel of a malpractice lawsuit.
Hence, round table discussions. They were usually used in one of two ways: first, to get a bunch of fresh eyes on problems that aren’t biased by too many hours already working on the issue. Or second, as was the case here: to gather up as many possible ideas about a new case before too much time was spent. Because if you addressed the root cause of the tunnel vision issue, you tended to not actually have the issue in the first place. And given the absolute shitshow this case already threatened to be, even after a measly six to eight hours of work, that tunnel vision problem was something I desperately wanted to avoid.
“Okay everybody, we’ve got a prickly one here.” I grabbed a stack of stapled printouts — a collated document containing both the intake questionnaire and my own notes — which I’d assembled late last night, because I couldn’t fall asleep until I felt like I’d gotten something done. “Wrongful death case; any of you who’ve worked one before, you know just how ugly these can get. Any of you who haven’t yet? I hope you’re ready.
“But before I get ahead of myself, quick show of hands: I know I tend to monopolize them, but has anyone here had any experience with cases involving Moonshot before?”
A few hands went up, but I picked a pair that I hadn’t already pulled into a case in the last year: a younger attorney of Hispanic descent, and the only hijabi in the general litigation group.
“Alrighty then; Julio, Fatima, you two are on the main team with me. While I hope this mess doesn’t go to trial, if it does? One of you gets second seat, the other gets third; I’ll decide when we get closer.”
The two of them locked eyes for a moment, and I would swear I saw a literal spark of competitive spirit pass between them. Then the moment passed, and I had their attention again.
“Alright everybody, meet our client.” I walked back to the front of the conference room and woke up the laptop that we had plugged into the projector, bringing up the first slide of a brief powerpoint presentation I’d prepared. Thankfully, the client was cooperative yesterday, so I had a good pair of pictures to put up on the projector’s screen: one from before the event, which she’d graciously emailed me, juxtaposed with one that I took just yesterday. “This is Destiny Banks, widow to Gunnery Sergeant Tyrone Banks, and mother to two boys, Jerome and Elijah, twelve and seven. Or, um. Should I say, she was a mother to two boys. That ‘was’ is why we’re here.”
I tapped the laptop, and went to the next slide. It was a news article from two months ago, one that I’d deliberately pulled from an old print newspaper, and which had taken me an hour and a half to track down last night.
TENEMENT HOUSING IN SOUTHEAST BURNS DOWN, AT LEAST TWO DECEASED
December 28, 2019
It was buried in the middle of a middle page. Not even a footnote. At least footnotes had the advantage of drawing the eye.
I could feel my ears pinning back in anger at the thought alone.
“Destiny and her two sons lived in this building, on the third of five floors, facing an internal courtyard. When it caught on fire, the fire brigade got there first, and a superhero arrived shortly after. Fire rescue was able to get everybody from the exterior apartments, and the lower interior units. The superhero got everybody out of the upper interior apartments, and anybody on the third that fire rescue couldn’t reach. Or at least they thought so. Eventually the building came down, and at some point they found the two boys’ corpses.”
I didn’t have a picture. I didn’t look for one, either.
“The police opened an arson investigation into the building fire, but it was apparently closed just a few days later,” I continued. “We’ll need to get a copy of that report. The fire department opened their own investigation into how the two boys got missed by emergency services, and that one at least took a few weeks, but it also closed. We’ll need that report as well. It’s the last report that’ll be tricky.”
I tapped the computer again.
“This is Barricade.” The image on the screen showed a man wearing a superhero costume. Or, if I was being realistic, it was just a set of motorcycle leathers done up to resemble a medieval knight’s armor, topped with a police helmet painted in the same style. “If you’ve been in the district for longer than a few years, you’ve seen him around. He’s currently enlisted with the National Moonshot Regiment, three years into a voluntary six-year posting. Civilian resources are, as usual, pretty damn useless when it comes to telling us the details on his powers, but apparently, he’s fireproof enough to get called in for fire rescue.”
“Is that common?” Fatima asked, holding her pen up to catch my eye, and suppressing a giggle when she saw my ears go up at attention. “Moonshot being fireproof?”
“No, it really isn’t.”
I held up a hand, and with a brief stirring of will, a roiling orb of purple foxfire shimmered into being above my palm. Several of the other attorneys gave shocked gasps, followed by all of them leaning in to get a closer look, which had me resisting the urge to roll my eyes. God, you would think these people had never seen superpowers before.
“So, I can do this.” I bounced the ball of foxfire in my hand a couple of times, then made it dissipate with an idle wave. “You’d think I’m fireproof, right? I mean, I can throw around fireballs, so I must be fireproof, right? But no, I’m not.” I let out a wistful sigh. “Would be nice, though. Do you have any idea how many oven mitts I’ve lost over the years?”
That got a smattering of laughter, thankfully. Given the subject matter, that was good. We needed to keep some amount of levity when dealing with all this doom and gloom.
“Now, the NMR opened an investigation into this, and to the best of my knowledge, their investigation is still open. This means that every single other lawyer at this firm could bark up that tree, and nothing would happen.”
“And you’re saying you can because you’re Moonshot?” Darryl, one of the older attorneys, asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Uh, yes and no?” I hedged, my ears drooping slightly. “Yes I can definitely get something, no it’s not just because I’m also Moonshot; there’s a few more things at play here. And I’m sorry, I’d say more, but it’s literally illegal for me to even consider explaining it without an exception in play. It sucks, I know, but this is one of the few things I could still get court-martialed over.”
“You know what? Fair enough,” he said, crossing his arms as he leaned back in his chair. “Nevermind.”
“Anyways, that’s all for the official investigations and most of the parties involved: the fire department, the police department, Barricade, and the NMR. There’s a few more, though.” I tapped the computer again, and pulled up a pre-fire image of the apartment building. “The apartment building is just one of, in my opinion, far too many buildings owned by William C. Smith & Co., or through their sister company, Fred A. Smith. The sad part is that the newer buildings they own are generally fine, but they couldn’t give a damn about Section 8 housing. So that means WCS is worth looking into, the property manager is worth looking into, whoever handled the building inspections and certified its fire safety is also worth looking into, and so is anybody else who was responsible for this building.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Because I don’t know about you, but I hear ‘fire rescue couldn’t get to the upper floors’, and I immediately think that something isn’t right.”
I turned off the computer and wheeled over the rolling whiteboard we kept in the conference room, turning it around to show what I’d already written up on the other side.
“So here’s where we stand: NMR. DC police. DC fire department. Superhero. Fire rescue on the scene. Building owners. Building management. Property inspectors. And possibly more we don’t know about,” I listed off, tapping each name with a capped dry-erase marker as I went. “At least eight possible entities. We’re currently operating off of very limited information, and are still miles away from actually filing suit. Even so, we’re going to ask the question anyway.”
I turned back towards the gathered attorneys, and posed the key question.
“Who do you sue? Why them? And what would you need to find to make the lawsuit stick?”
And now that everybody had been brought up to speed, the round table could properly begin.
----------------------------------------
“Okay you two, order whatever you want,” I told Julio and Fatima. “It’s going on the firm’s card anyway.”
By the time the round table wrapped up, it was almost one in the afternoon. We’d only discussed Mrs. Banks’ case for the first half of the meeting, at which point everybody else started pitching issues from their own respective cases at everyone else. Once it was done, everyone working a non-contingency case billed for three hours, I had about a dozen different ideas for who we would eventually end up suing, and my stomach had begun to sing me the song of its people.
So I grabbed the two junior attorneys who’d attested to having some experience with Moonshot-related cases, and dragged them to The Palm for lunch.
“Are there halal options?” Fatima asked.
She was the older of the two, and while she had five years as an attorney to my six, she’d only been with the firm for two years. Plus, she was one of those who’d gone straight through education with no side trips into the general workforce — high school to college to law school, no full-time jobs. She was an excellent attorney when it came to writing motions and crafting arguments, but, well, there was a reason she hadn’t been lead attorney in a trial quite yet.
“Just ask someone,” Julio answered. “Can’t hurt.”
Julio was still relatively new to his career — class of 2017, I think he said. He’d also gotten two years’ experience as a public defender before deciding to take that experience and lateral over to both a better pay structure and less stress. Those two years had clearly done a bit of a number on him though, if the slight graying at his temples was any indication.
“They’re also able to modify things as needed to hopefully make them halal,” I offered. “Although I will admit to a bit of ignorance here. I don’t know if there’s similar certification or the like for halal as there is for kosher.”
“Do you keep kosher?” Fatima asked, to which I scoffed.
“God, no. I like meat and cheese together a bit too much.”
The small talk continued until we’d had a chance to order. The waiter we’d gotten was one of the ones I recognized, so there was thankfully very little reaction to my appearance, and being seated at a booth meant that the staring could be kept to a minimum. I was going to draw attention wherever I went, but at least there were ways to control it — and familiarity was the strongest one, I’d found.
Spend enough time around the same areas, and the reactions tended to go from “holy shit, is that an animal person!?” down to just being “oh, it’s the foxgirl again, neat,” which was infinitely more preferable.
“So you both mentioned having had some experience with Moonshot before,” I began, pausing to take a sip of my iced tea before continuing. “So I guess I just want to know what that experience looked like. Which of you wants to go first?”
“Well my little sister’s Moonshot,” Julio jumped in. “I was living at home and going to community college, and suddenly we all get woken up cause my sister’s screaming her head off about getting shot or something. We all go look, and she’s floating on the ceiling and glowing.”
Ah. So she was an A3 then, got it.
“Not really case law experience,” I said, prompting him to continue.
“Well, about a month later and these government suits show up at our door saying Mira was under arrest, and they wouldn’t tell us what for,” he continued. “So we closed the door on their face, they broke down the door, I texted Mira to stay at a friend’s and not to go flying anywhere, then asked the professor who told me I should look at pre-law for help. He calls a buddy, who calls a buddy, then we got a free lawyer who kept Mira out of juvie or JROTC by pointing out that the charges specified the wrong laws, and the judge dismissed with prejudice.”
“… still doesn’t quite count,” I said with a sigh, my ears drooping. “Firsthand experience with Moonshot issues is still good though, so we’ll take it. What about you, Fatima?”
“Oh, um, nothing special really,” she said. “Client was a Moonshot who got denied medical treatment because she didn’t have insurance, and the hospital said her powers would heal her up instead. And it was true, yes, but what should’ve been a week-long recovery was instead two months of pain.”
The longer Fatima spoke, the more my ears pinned back, and I couldn’t keep the frown off my face.
“Remind me later to tell you two about the doctor that tried to send me to a vet instead.”
To their credit, both Fatima and Julio practically recoiled from that, but while she showed horror, he looked appropriately furious. Both of them looked ready to ask questions, and I mentally prepared myself for a grilling.
Except then our lunches arrived, and their trains of thought were promptly derailed by the call of food. The waiter set a salmon filet in front of Fatima, while both Julio and I received strip steaks. I already knew I wouldn’t finish all of mine, so I had a protein all set for tonight’s dinner. Julio, on the other hand, started demolishing his so quickly that I pulled my own plate closer to me. Which Fatima spotted, and that set her into a bit of a giggle fit.
“So, as for why I was asking about whether you’d dealt with Moonshot before,” I said, drawing their attention off of the food. “The NMR may technically be a subdivision of the National Guard, but that’s just something done for administrative convenience. It’s better to think of them as what you’d get if SWAT treated its members somewhere between ‘Hollywood celebrity’ and ‘Olympic athlete’. They care a lot about making sure their people look good, and that means they really don’t like when the lawyers get involved. Care to guess why?”
Fatima set down her silverware while thinking. Julio, on the other hand, resumed eating, but I could see from the way his eyes and eyebrows moved that this was just his way of mulling over the question.
“Y’can lie to a reporter,” Julio said around a bite of steak, and thankfully swallowed before continuing. “But the average person ain’t about to lie to the judge, no?”
“Exactly,” I confirmed, tapping my fork on my plate to punctuate the statement. “As a concept, superheroes need a certain level of mystique and opacity. Getting honest answers hurts that. It makes them more human and more relatable, and that in turn makes Moonshot in general more human. Julio’s sister is one, so he’s got a frame of reference that normalizes them.” I directed this part at Fatima, while Julio just nodded along, “Hell, he’s been with the firm for all of six months and he already treats me more normally than anyone else I’ve worked with.”
“S-sorry!” Fatima’s cheeks took on a slightly embarrassed blush. I brushed it off with the wave of a hand and flick of an ear.
“It’s really not an issue, don’t worry about it,” I told her. That didn’t seem to allay her concerns, though, because she began shoveling salmon and wild rice into her mouth at a pace that rivaled Julio. “Regardless, I probably buried the lede a little bit there. The point is, just because someone can do something superhuman, they’re still human. They can still make mistakes, and if anything, having powers means that the mistakes are almost inevitably worse.”
The mood at the table took a very quick turn for the depressing. Both of my juniors were intelligent. They’d picked up what I was putting down.
“Either of you worked a wrongful death case before?” I asked. As expected, both of them shook their heads. “Well. There’s some debate on what cases are the ugliest. Most tend to fall on the side of divorce cases and custody battles, particularly when there’s money involved. Or property. Or some single valuable thing that the divorcees are fighting over.
“But I say that those people have never been close to a wrongful death case. Someone is dead. Everything they are and everything they could be is gone. There is no getting them back, and no amount of money is ever going to make up for what they could have been. But that’s all we’re able to deal in, because it’s not about trying to cure their grief with money. It’s about pointing the finger at the party responsible for their death, so that it doesn’t happen again to somebody else.”
Neither Julio nor Fatima offered any immediate response, but I could see them turning it over in their heads.
“Are you saying we shouldn’t try to blame the superhero at all here?” Fatima caught on first, confusion evident in her eyes. “But wasn’t he the last point of failure? I mean—“
“This isn’t a car crash,” I interjected. “This is more complicated than asking who had the right of way. The superhero may have had some fault, sure, but suing him misses the forest for the trees.”
“But—” Fatima cut herself off, and stopped to think instead. Then she settled back down into her seat, apparently having not found a proper rebuttal.
“You want the hero testifying for us.” Julio spoke with certainty. There was no question in his tone.
“I want the NMR’s influence on our side of the scales,” I corrected. “I’ve been part of three prior wrongful death cases with a Moonshot involved. Each time, the winner had the NMR backing their side, and it wasn’t even close. So we need to figure out how to get them to agree with us, but without damaging the myth of their precious superhero. And speaking from experience, any court judgment is going to be secondary to what he’s probably putting himself through right now.”
“… wait, that doesn’t add up,” Fatima said. I lowered one ear towards her in question. “I remember those cases; there was the dead hostage outside Union Station after the 2016 election, and that pileup on the 395 last year. Where did the third come from?”
“Those two you mentioned are the ones where I was involved as the attorney. The first time I was party to a wrongful death case was fourteen years ago. I wasn’t the lawyer, obviously, nor was I a witness. I…”
I sighed, my ears going limp atop my head.
“I was the defendant.”