2: Patient
(COMPLETE)
The frail human boy’s ribcage had collapsed. He laid there on the table unable to draw breath. Doctors shouted orders at the nurses among whom numbered two Raphas, a Night Nurse, three Atemis, and one very overworked Pinielf. New and exciting ways to hemorrhage out cropped up everywhere from the lust venom overstressing his cardiopulmonary system. His penis had been priapistic since they got him in, and they could not drain the blood fast enough to keep the capillaries in it from bursting in a new place every minute or so; at least they could not without killing him. A Rapha hung another blood bag up. Needles threaded through the flesh of his chest and hooked on the underside of his ribs, handled with precision by the Night Nurse. The Atemi realigned the qi flow from the chakras in his groin once more to try to stop the blood from gushing out even faster and then prepared to send his vital life force back to his core once the Night Nurse was done with her task.
With a mighty heave from a pulley mounted on a small crane, the hooks pulled the boy’s ribs back into their natural shape. Blood came from the lad’s lips, and one of the nurse quickly cleared his throat and prepared his trachea for a scoping. One of his ribs had punctured a lung, and they needed to close that hole as soon as possible, and one could not use typical healing magic or techniques until it was at least situated in an optimal healing position. Something healing wrong would not solve anything.
Another gush of blood shot from the draining point in the boy’s penis. “Damn it,” one of the doctors cursed aloud, “Cut and cauterize that thing. The boy may never become a man, but he’ll die if that thing keeps losing him all his blood.” One of the Raphas held the boy’s penis which was oozing blood out, and the Night Nurse’s fingers melted together morphing into a vicious looking surgical tool and began to glow with heat. Off it came. Another blood bag was hung on the boy’s rack. Hopefully they would gain some ground without his erectile tissue draining blood from his internal organs.
With the lung mended, now they only had to worry about the internal bleeding. The anticoagulant that had been injected with the lust venom was going to make that difficult. The Atemis prepared to guide the Raphas and the Night Nurses in where to apply small bursts of the mystical healing techniques that their breeds were capable of. Slowly, it looked like they would make progress, and the idiot child’s mistake may not cost him his life after all. Then again, men lost a lot of their ability to function in society without their genitalia. Without sex, they could not tame, and without that skill, they could not hold down most jobs which all had some element of handling relevant ‘girls including taming them. The Pinielves at the hospital were far too overworked to be designated to non-life-threatening issues and would not be regrowing a new one for the lad. His family would have to cough up the payment for a private enterprise or specialized clinic.
Slowly, the lad began to pull through.
Weeks later after several crates of paperwork had been filed and a criminal prosecutor became involved, two families, a jury, and a small audience of the general public were assembled in a courtroom. In a small, rural town out of the way of the major lanes of travel possessing less than modern communications infrastructure, this was entertainment. In the plaintiff’s seat was the prosecutor. Seated next to him was a ‘Jenny and behind him in the pews was the boy’s family. In the opposite side of the courtroom were the defendants, a couple in their early thirties looking decidedly fearful for their well-being.At the front of the room was an octogenarian judge sitting straight-backed and sourly appraising the room. Or, he was quite possibly attempting to set the court ablaze with his gaze.
The closing arguments were being made. The prosecutor was quick to remind the jury of the fate the boy had suffered being thoroughly crushed under increasing and increasing pressure before finally succumbing to mind-altering toxins which ended in him losing his manhood. The prosecution’s theatrics and many slides containing graphic images from the boy’s medical file from earlier in this trial soared to the forefront of the jury’s memory. Wisely, the prosecutor did not accuse the actual perpetrator of the crime for anything. He knew well that there were one or two bleeding-heart liberals in the jury and did not want them to stall the jury with sympathy for the devil. Were there just one, he would have laid it on thick. Sadly, with two on there, he had to play nice because they would feed off of each other’s nonsense and may steamroll the rest of the jury who just want to go home and no longer have to deal with the sometimes mind numbing minutiae of law. Just to be safe, the prosecutor reaffirmed that the primary charges here were ones of criminal negligence and that their instructions were to render their verdict based on the charges alone. When the prosecutor turned away, he had to surprise a little jig, certain that he had nailed it.
The defence made sure there was no doubt as to whether or not the defendants had any intent to let this happen. He did not spend too long on that because the prosecutor focused on their negligence, having called them “... a couple of dumb city folk trying to save the world by eschewing common sense with the price being the maiming of a young man with a bright future.” The defence attorney knew there was nothing he could do without getting fired by his defendants. Had they let him throw their “daughter” under the bus, he probably could have gotten them off with a slap on the wrist. He had told them that no matter how this ended, the only question was whether or not they were going to face serious penalties and not whether or not they would be able to keep raising their damnable pet. Still, he did his best. The only thing the defense could really do was play up the contribution of the boy to his own situation. Somehow, he doubted that he would convince the jury that the boy would have never gotten hurt if he had not made the choices he had. It was not uncommon for people to not blame adolescents for being seduced providing they were still before their taming age.
Over the two days the jury was in deliberation, the defense was already talking with his paralegal. He, just like his counterpart in the prosecution, had acquired an OfficerJenny for his assistance. Their encyclopedic knowledge of the law was a godsend for the profession even if they were terrible at interpreting or understanding the law as a breed. This was especially so for the finer details. After all, they were designed to be cops, and they did not need much training in law or civil procedure to perform their job. Sure, they knew every last letter of the law, but that was not the same as knowing how to use it. Still, the defense attorney had gotten lucky enough to sink his claws into one of the more level-headed and thus trainable ‘Jennies. Those tended to not leave the League’s employ once their talent had been recognized and was being prepped for grooming. This helped his trade since sometimes ‘Jennies got their head wrapped around enforcement of the law and never learned to think about the actual consequences or implications of the law. His had adapted beautifully to this and had learned enough civil procedure to keep the forms flowing, drastically reducing his workload.
This had little to do with the law, though. He had wanted to know more about whether or not they should continue the case should the defendants want an appeal.
“They’re guilty,” his paralegal said flatly. And some people wondered why they were not used as judges as well. Oh well, she was still a doll in many respects.
“That’s up for the jury to decide,” the attorney added wearily for the umpteenth time. Maybe he should switch to prosecution. That would make his home life simpler.
“I don’t like representing the guilty,” she reiterated for the umpteenth time and fully ignoring what he said. Maybe she could convince him to go to prosecution. They would disagree less. Neither of them said anything further about that tonight.
“I’m getting worn out,” he said, moving on because if he did not, they would get wrapped up in another petty argument. The make up taming was fun though. “They don’t want to save themselves just because it will hasten the inevitable execution of their brat.”
His paralegal shrugged. “I’ve been in contact with their representation for their civil case, and they have the same complaints,” she said, “There’s nothing they have that we can use. Tort law allows for the reduction of penalties based on the contribution to the injury, and they managed to get the amount our ‘lovely’ clients got hit with reduced substantially. The victim should have kept it in his pants, but they still improperly handled their pokegirl. The levied penalties financially crippled them.”
The defense attorney rubbed his temples from behind his desk. Part of it was his increasing dislike for his unreasonable clients and his paralegals use of jargon from outside their profession which muddled the true issues. He was glad that he was the one who did the talking. They would never win anything with her running the show. “All this because they wanted to raise their thresholded daughter themselves instead of selling her to a ranch that knows what they’re doing,” he grumbled, “She’s going to get level 5-ed or executed regardless at this point, but they just wouldn’t let me throw her under the bus.”
Two yuppy human engineers married and managed to retire early before moving out to the less expensive countryside. Their kid thresholded. Neither the defense attorney nor to his knowledge any of his colleagues were extremists, but sometimes the liberals just baffled them. If they have no background raising a pubescent Naga kit, why would they not at least hire or purchase someone to keep it out of trouble? They did not take remotely adequate steps to prepare their pets to help take care of their spawn, and their current pets were already spoiled from their leniency. When he and his paralegal had spoken to them, the defendants had spent so much time sputtering about the cruelty of abandoning thresholded daughters to breeding ranches that they had never wondered why it was done.
Notes and Commentary: I tried to imagine why someone would send a thresholded daughter to a ranch if they cannot immediately sell them instead of raising them for reasons aside from social norms. Finally I realized that it would be much more difficult to raise a threshold than a domestic born kit since they are both pubescent and have no control built up over the years of just being. So, it would only make sense to give- not sell- thresholded daughters to a ranch who knows how to deal with them. If they do something wrong, you are so, so liable, criminally so even under real world American property law. Some leagues probably subsidize purchases of thresholded girls as an economic incentive to purchase thresholds in order to reduce the problems they cause an incentivize families to give them up.