Act 67: Trial
A few days past, with the former capital now stable enough and with everyone having been given time to pick up the pieces, it is now the day that has been talked about for a while one, the day in which the Gron will be judge before a court of law, something that is certainly unheard of but it is something that has promised to the public to bring impartial judgment for the accused how it will go is anyone's guess at this point. This is rudimentary but this is something to demonstrate to the public a glimpse of a more robust law system that is going to be implemented. Everyone knows Gron is guilty without a shadow of a doubt, but what will be his sentence?
Some tables, long benches for the public and some wood was requested to make a railing that will separate one side of the courtroom for the public and also an elevated platform for the judge. And this was all set up in the palace's entrance. Naturally some of the common folk did come to witness this trial, they were instructed to come in and sit on the benches, at least until it got full, then they had to be turned away.
Luca is just finishing telling a story to Ranii right now. "...So yeah, Pixie took my sword, set it on fire and stabbed it into his throat."

"Well actually I didn't set it on fire. I just made it really hot." Pixie corrects him. 
"Still, same difference." Ranii replies. "impressive nonetheless.
"Well, I certainly try." Pixie beams happily.

"Heh, yeah." Luca pat's the Vulpix's head.
There is talk all around them, some mons can't quite grasp the fact that the Lord of the Sands has been beaten, others seem to be happy that he is getting what's coming to him, and some talking speculations about what he looks like.
Everyone goes quiet when someone starts walking into view, it is a familiar Meowstic and he is holding a gavel in his paws. Because who else to take the position of judge right now other than Stic? He should really start looking into getting some pokémon to take this position when he starts solidifying some of the laws that come with the republic. He calmly steps into that elevated platform and clears his throat. "Good morning to all of you here today. Today in this temporary courtroom we shall have the trial of Gron, the former Lord of the Sands. I will ask that everyone in the benches remain calm and try not to make too much noise." He then looks to the side. "Bring in the accused!" He called out.
And now who is brought in is Gron, the Aggron has his arms very tightly tied up with ropes and is being accompanied by four NSR soldiers armed with spears. The big pokémon looks to the side at all the crowd that is gathered here right now. It's easy for everyone to see that one of his eyes, the left one, is blind, and there is a rather pronounced scar on that side of his face, all of this because of a certain Lucario who is watching him right now.
The pokémon sitting on the benches were left in silence when Gron walked into view, for a good number of these people they are finally laying eyes on the former Lord of the Sands, some are afraid as he looks pretty strong...hopefully he won't be trying anything...

Seer stands quietly some distance behind Stic. In order to keep the judge's impartiality, she has been told not to probe the defendant's mind. That's another thing that's going to have to be worked around, the presence of psychic types and their mind-reading capabilities. She is however ready to tell him of any plans of attack Gron might attempt once the inevitable verdict is brought down, or before. 
Pixie and Ranii fall silent as the defendant is brought into the room.

One would expect Gron to be struggling against his binds but he is eerily silent right now, but he is clearly glaring with disdain at everyone sitting at the benches, as he thinks they are nothing but low-lives who came here to watch him get his sentence. Hell, this whole thing feels like some sort of public humiliation here, what is this truly all about? Does that Meowstic intend for everyone to see this for some sick sense of pleasure?
"Gron, please look at me." Stic says.
He snorts and looks up at the Meowstic, and now he finally speaks. "What is this now? You intend to drag me along the mud for everyone to see? Is this what that is?!" He spat at him, his hostility against the Meowstic clearly is still strong. "You broke my family's sword...you made me your prisoner...what more do you want?!"
Stic remains calm however. "Be quiet. You are going to be judged for the crimes you have committed, this is how it is going to be for now on." 
An Ampharos comes walking in now, he is holding some curled papers in his arms. He hurried over to the opposite side of Gron's and placed them there. "Alright uuuh...'your honor', right? I'm here."
"Good, the plaintiff is here. Court is now in session." He gestures to the Ampharos. "Please, bring the case forward now."
The Plaintiff nodded, picked up one of the papers and unfurled it to begin reading once he had walked to the center. "Firstly, I would like to bring up the case of 'pruned'. As everyone knows pruned have a blood relation to nobles, they were few and far between but have been getting more prominent after the slavery ban. As everyone know, a law was put in place to stop slavery and at first it looks like it did worked, but the nobles had found a way to sidestep this law by subjugating the pruned to be servants...more often than not against their will, and by he fact that they were related to nobles they did not count as 'slaves'."
"What we do with our own is NONE of your business!" Gron growled at the electric type.

Seer stands behind him, while there are things she would like to say, she keeps to her duty and remains quiet and at the ready, it does not appear as if Gron is going to try anything. At least, not that she can sense.

Gron is getting angrier and wants to kill Stic, well, he wants to kill more than just Stic but if he tried to act on these emotions it wouldn't end well for him. So far he is under control.
The Ampharos continues. "And to end this note, Gron has also been making plans to do away with the slavery ban law in the near future, quote, 'now that the guildies have fallen in line, we no longer need to appease the bleeding hearts.' This information was given by some of the nobles that we have spoken to."
"What?! Who said that?!" Well, there goes Gron getting loud again, knowing that some in his court have 'thrown him under the carriage' has him fuming. Meanwhile the public watching from the benches are beginning to sound a little outraged from knowing all of this.
"The names of  those who gave this information will be kept under wraps for their own protection." Stic explained to Gron. Part of what made it so appealing for the nobles to spill the beans is that they were offered to be anonymous.
The Aggron snarls angrily at the psychic cat, but this doesn't do much at all other than showing that he is not as calm as he seemed to wanted to presented himself to be.
"Plaintiff, do you have anything else to add to the case?" The Meowstic asks.
"Yes, of course." The Ampharos went to get another piece of paper to read. "The next case that is being brought up now concerns the guilds. The guilds were around as long as any of us can remember...but what most of us likely forgot was the true purposes of said guilds in the past. They were known as Exploration Guilds or even Rescue Teams. But these days they seldom do any of that. The guilds we known today are little more than thugs who abuse their position in the hierarchy by being above citizens, doing what they see fit, charging exorbitant amounts of poké for their services and only truly answering to the nobles, who allow them to act this way in the first place as long as they were at their beck and call."
What will Gron say to this now? "We have always made sure that the guild masters overseeing each guild were exemplary pokémon, they would never allow such things!" Doesn't sound like the most convincing defense.

"Honestly the guild thing it's not really that much better up North." Pixie whispers to Luca in response to hearing about the Guilds. 
I do hope they remember to bring up the meat hunting thing as long as they're on the subject of the Guilds. Seer comments to Stic in his mind.

Stic keeps staring at the scene in front of him, but he does acknowledge what Seer said. Surely that part could be coming up any second now.
"I suppose that is to be expected..." Luca whispered back with a sigh. Nobles are as Nobles are.
"And to end before moving on to the next one i would like to bring to everyone's attention some of the less-than-savory things that the guilds have been doing for the nobles." Seems like the plaintiff is now getting to that part that Seer has been hoping for. "One is keeping the citizens controlled with intimidation, another is issuing an accusation of someone they don't particularly like being a Wallbreaker for the guild to 'deal with' as they saw fit. But the most appalling thing is secretly using the guild as 'hunters', hunters that hunt the meat of pokémon to sell it to the nobles"
The pokémon at the bench are clearly appalled by this. But what does the defendant has to say about this? "You can't prove that! You can't prove that us nobles sink to the level of dungeon savages! This is outrageous!!"
The Plaintiff has something to easily counter this defense though. "Other than some confirmation from the pokémon that live here, we also found clear evidence of the fact that yes, nobles do indulge in that. There was meat stored in the kitchen of your palace."
Well if this is outrageous to someone, it's to the audience watching this trial, they are starting to get more vocal about this, openly insulting Gron now, calling him 'meat eater' and the such.
The former Lord of the Sands turns around to look at everyone. "What are you calling me?! HOW DARE YOU?!"
Well...now it looks like this is escalating, Stic can't let it go this way. He brings down the gavel upon a wooden block several times, that makes some noise that gets everyone's attention. "Enough! Order! Order!" Looks like that quelled the situation well enough, the crowd in the benches has piped down back to whispers again.

Seer begins to tense up as things escalate, but she still isn't foreseeing any possible future where Gron actually attacks anyone.
Pixie is a little surprised, just a little. She'd almost expected the lord to try and defend his positions, not try to deny them outright. .... Almost. 

"He doesn't look calm at all, I hope he doesn't try anything..." Luca whispered to Ranii and Pixie. He is prepared to jump over the railing to fight Gron if he reaches breaking point and goes violent.
Things have de-escalated enough for Stic's liking. "Anything else to be added?" He says to get things moving again.
The Ampharos is already getting ready to read the contents of another piece of paper. "The next point that is about to be brought might be a little more complicated to talk about. As it concerns the religion that surrounds 'The Drought'..."
"What's this now!?" Here comes Gron with something to say about this again, and the Plaintiff isn't even finished. "Are you going to dare stain the very principles that shaped the Sands into what it is?!"  It does sound like this to him, and also some of the pokémon at the bench are a little skeptical about this...
"No, that is not what I will do right now. Just please listen to what I have to say. Let's start with the basics, the dogma of those that Worship the Drought is 'Warm days, warmer still. It will always get warmer. To never fight the heat, but speak it back, lest you perish under this eternal drought.' While the message of perseverance is indeed clear, this has also been used to convince those that believe in the Drought to live through the hardships without actively trying to do anything to make it easier, it paints the very idea of change as something to be avoided...which made common mon simply accept the status quo."
"Only through living in the heat do we learn to content with it, the Sands would not have survived otherwise, it would have perished!" The Aggron argues.
"But in the end, things did change, and we are all still here despite everything." The Plaintiff says. "I understand that these were indeed not the most beneficial changes that were brought upon us by the Grove invasion, or even the rise of the Republic, changes inevitably happened and we must now live with them, whether we like them or not."

"Back in the Snows we have something similar." Pixie whispers back to Ranii. "Though, over there, it's Balance, not the Drought." 

"And before I close to this note, i would like to stress that there will be no discrimination against any religion in the republic." The Ampharo gets another paper, this one must be the last now. "Now let me bring up the final note of all these charges. This is something that happens not just around here, but through nearly all of the towns among the Sands, the treatment of dungeon dwellers." 
"Hmpft! Them?! What could they possibly have to do with this?!" Gron angrily asks.
The Plaintiff is kind of glad he asked, he doesn't say it directly to him but he begins explaining exactly what this has to do with this. "Well let me begin by adding some of what we heard previously. The Pokémon that live in the dungeon are outside of the influence of civilization, thus it was deemed fit for them to be even lower than citizens, and the treatment they receive from this clearly shows. Next is the religion that is practiced within the mystery dungeons, while to this day it is something hard for us to understand it clearly, is a fact that they worship 'The Maze' rather than 'The Drought'...and thus they are also discriminated against for their religion."
"Those dungeon dwellers are beneath notice!" Seems like Gron still thinks this is going nowhere.
"And the most prominent example of needless violence against pokémon that live in the maze, and the noble's clear intent to keep the status quo no matter what is an incident that occurred in drywell. Some dungeon dwellers began thinking about living outside of the dungeon, just outside of it to be precise. The nobles noticed that and told a guild to deal with to push them back into the dungeon. However it didn't quite go like that. The team that the nobles sent instead chose a peaceful solution and supposedly came back with a peace treaty and even a trade agreement. To this the nobles responded by 'doing it themselves' by sending in a delegation to converse with the commune of dungeon dwellers, what was supposed to be a peaceful negotiation turned into a massacre as the delegation used iron to begin killing them one by one. And for their trouble, the guild was forcefully disbanded at the same time."

Ranii nods, having heard just a little bit about that incident from the word of mouth around Sandstone, particularly around Igon during a conversation between her and Ara. She suddenly realizes it's been a while since she last checked in with her, and now with the war closing, it might be time to check back with her. Perhaps once the trial is done. Hey, maybe she can bring Pixie along? ... Then again, she doesn't really know if Pixie is really the 'girls' type of girl. She'd have to ask. Well, no matter, time to focus back on the trial at hand.

What does Gron have to say about this now? "It was foolish to ever think that those savages could be trusted to begin with! Do you know what kind of mons live in the mystery dungeon? The kind that becomes known as 'Wallbreakers', the kind of uncivilized Pokémon who wants to do us harm! The nobles in Drywell were in the right to push those vermin back to their den!" Well, by this point he is not just supporting the killing of Pokémon that live in the dungeon, but is also contracting himself with what he said before, because why would the Pokémon that live in the dungeon be 'beneath' notice if they are so focused on making sure they don't grow?

It is at this point that Seer steps forward. Although she has resolved to maintain neutrality, she feels like she has to say something. "Has it ever occurred to you that the organization known as the "Wallbreakers" exist because of such actions, not the other way around? Or do you truly believe that you are above the concept of cause and effect?" She says with conviction. "They, and the faction that overthrew you, did not come from nowhere, after all. "

Stic's eyes widened in surprise when Seer began speaking, but he did not stop her from doing so, he just glanced at her as she spoke. Gron glared at her. "The Wallbreakers are nothing but lawbreakers and criminals! And you people are not different from them!" That is quite an inaccurate accusation if there ever was one.

"When peaceful means of change become impossible, violence becomes the only path forward. You and your Drywell friends demonstrated that well enough." She says with a nod before retreating back to where she was. 
"I wonder what ever happened to Drywell?" Ranii wonders aloud. "Oh well, I'll have to ask Khaako or someone else about that."

Though these responses overall paint Gron in a negative light, and the pokémon at the bench aren't all too happy about that, there was an attempt at peace there after all, and not only has it stomped to death, it sounds like Gron supports such a thing.
Noticing the small silence, Stic speaks up. "Is that all that needed to be said, plaintiff?"
"Yes, that is all I have to say, your honor." The plaintiff said to the Meowstic before giving a little bow and going back to his table.
"Alright then." Stic took in a deep breath and exhaled. It is time for the verdict now. "Gron, for willfully letting pokémon come into harm's way or even death and allowing such corruption to fester in the lands that you rule. This court finds you...guilty." He brings the gavel down on the block of wood again. And next, time to give his sentence.
"Hmpft..." The Former Lord of the Sands looks up at the feline, to him he can swing that little hammer of his all he wants. These bastards took everything for him, this is the lowest he has ever been in his life. But soon, soon it will all be over...
Stic is with his eyes closed at the moment, thinking REALLY hard on what to do here. On one hand he has the 'the noblest of nobles' right here in front of him, he can order him dead for all he ever did, it has always been what he looked forward to witnessing ever since it looked like he would actually be leading the change to the Sands. But he has been reading Gron for a while now, he came to understand one thing: with nothing left to lose Gron just wants to die and get this over with, he would rather die and than suffer through this any more...so he could also just order him to be imprisoned forever instead. These personal opinions are hard to do away with in time where he should give impartial judgment, but the Meowstic sets them aside and looks at the bigger picture. There has already been enough death already, simply putting one's enemy to death is something the nobles or even the wallbreakers would do in a heartbeat, they have to be better than that. So he will show some degree of mercy, for Gron this will be cruel, but i will be a mercy nonetheless. He opens his eyes and speaks... "You will be sentenced to prison in the very same dungeon you surely threw many of your own enemies in, you will never again see the light of day. That is your sentence, Gron." And with one more swing of the gavel, his sentence is officially given.
"...WHAT?! NO! NOOOOOO!!!" The Aggron doesn't take this well, this wasn't what he was hoping for at all...rotting in his own dungeon. With a roar, he flies into a rage and brings his head down upon the table in front of him, putting enough strength in this to break it in two. "YOU BASTARD! YOU FUCKING BASTARD! JUST KILL ME AND GET IT OVER WITH!!" He starts trying to walk towards Stic, but soldiers around him pull him by the ropes that have him tied, which is significantly slowing him down.
The crowd at the benches are starting to get scared here, it looks like that furious Aggron could get free from his restraints with all that struggle fueled by pure rage. Even Luca stood up, getting ready to jump in if he needs to.
But Stic is nothing if prepared, there were more NSR soldiers nearby ready to come if it sounded like things were getting bad and they were big pokémon as well, so they had more success in dragging the angry steel-type away from the courtroom.

Ranii and Pixie, having stood up when Luca did, soon sit back down when he's dragged out of view. 
"Well, that's that..." Ranii sighs as she sits back in her seat with a plop. "I was half expecting him to drag him off to atropus-9, or some other hell-world. Or at least some sort of off-world prison. Oh well. Maybe he doesn't know about those..." Well, it's not like she has any intention of telling Stic about those. "Off world? Atropus? What are you talking about Ran-ran?" The vulpix tilts her head to the side curiously. 
"... Oh. Right. I have yet to bring you to the ship, don't I? Remind me, I need to do that." Ranii sighs. 
Well, that's that. Seer likewise says in Stic's mind while she breathes an audible sigh of relief.

Lucas remained standing up until the Aggron was out of view, then he sat back down. Though it is still possible for him to shout from here...
Well, that is it, the trial of Gron, the former Lord of the Sands, is done. Stic sighs in relief too. "The trial is over now, please make your way out of the courtroom." He said to everyone before turning to Seer and gesturing to her to come with him, time to go back to the office.
Everyone else leaves too, the Ampharos plaintiff is picking up his papers from the table. And the crowd that was gathered at the benches also begins getting up to leave the same way they came in, the doors are wide open for them. They are discussing amongst themselves about the trial, but the topic that is being thrown around the most is Gron's sentence, some seem satisfied with it, others wish he could be put down for his crimes. Well, can never please anyone really, if an execution were to take place instead there would certainly be mons wishing he could slowly rot in the dungeon instead.
Luca is already going to be reminding Ranii of what she needs to do, he wants to be there for it too, he kind of misses the ship. "Don't go forgetting it now, Ranii."