In the half second before the judge slammed the hammer down, Shakira Passmore had to dig through the mo’-than-100-page transcript in a desperate search for loopholes that could stop the judgment & free her from the clutches o’ the pendulum blade. Her only blessing was her obscure power to slow time so that a second took an hour.
What was less a blessing was that the entire transcript was in Jupiterian, & she didn’t know a letter o’ that language. It made her truly wish she’d been born with teleportation powers ’stead o’ the ability to procrastinate the inevitable.