Wednesday DE: Degree Absolute

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Your character has been accused of a terrible, terrible crime which they did not commit. What do they do? Do they put their trust in the justice system, flee, attempt to solve the crime themselves, etc?

Comments

[bjornwilde]

Ahsoka: Oh, you mean the finale of season 05? That is to say, she goes along with the justice system until it is clear that the system and the Jedi Order has failed and then she runs, hoping to prove her innocence by finding the actual terrorist.

Sabine likely runs and attempts to solve the crime. Assuming this isn't some crime the Empire hasn't accused her of. If it's the Empire, then that's just a normal day.

Tybalt, in theory, can't be accused of any crime as the only inviolate law in Fae society is murder and the cait sidhe have leeway in that regard. If this is something the Divided Courts are accusing him of, say that he murdered some noble or somesuch, he'd likely go into hiding, being clear he ran from his Court so they do not face punishment for his "crimes" and then seeks Toby out to prove his innocence.

[have_no_mercy]

If any of my three get accused of a terrible, terrible crime, they probably did it.

Tess would put her lawyers on the job and she'd likely never see a day in prison.

Kylo is Supreme Leader. Who's going to arrest him?

Creed would fight his way out. And laugh, cause he's done worse.

[death_gone_mad]

Amascut would just like to remind her accusers of the old Kharidian saying, "Do not judge the deathbringer lest she judges you."

Fairy Fixit is more likely to be much more cooperative, though she's just as likely to do her own investigation to either build up her own defense or to enact her own brand of justice. She is very good at plausible deniability and deluging people with irrelevant information, so it will go poorly for her accusers. She would have made a good member of the Fairy Mafia if she wasn't already loyal to the Fairy Queen. Maybe because she already acted so much like a know-nothing mafiosa when accused of anything shady that they thought she was on their side.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

For Yamato, it depends. Is it a mundane crime? In that case, he'll go along with the justice system -- and if it's when he's older and, like, Ken is a police detective and Iori is a defence attorney, he probably gets them to help. Is it a Digimon related crime? Well, then he's going on the run and solving it himself.

For Eden, it's awfully bold of ... well, me ... to assume that Daybreak Town has a justice system at all. It definitely doesn't. So he'll try to solve the crime himself as well.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond: patiently waits for someone else to do the investigating, it's not like he'll be hurt, eventually he'll just walk out anyway like "yeah whatever" if falsely convicted and anyone tries to hold him. Best case scenario he doesn't casually upend society while at it.

Evelyn: Attempt to solve the crime themselves. She's an RPG protagonist, it's basically contractual. (More likely that it's a party member accused she's trying to save, but still.) Or prove through repeated world-saving that no, she was not responsible for the thing.

Lois: I'm pretty sure investigating is also a contractual obligation with Lois.

R2-D2: ............ honestly, in Star Wars, basically no one's going to bother accusing a droid of a crime, they'll either destroy it or accuse the droid's biological partner. R2, though, will absolutely go hacking to dig up evidence. Or shock people with his taser. Or other forms of violence. For investigating, see below.

Anakin: Honestly, probably what happens is that he and Obi-wan are in it together, Obi-wan is pretending to put his trust in the justice system and persuades someone that for the Justice System(TM) to work he will graciously remain in custody but Anakin needs to investigate, which Anakin now does with the quiet panic that his alternative might be to have to break Obi-wan out. If Ahsoka's with them, probably Obi-wan lets himself and maybe also Anakin (who is now angry) get captured while she's the free agent proving them innocent.

Look, Obi-wan has terrible plans, we all knew this.

That or they remain in custody until faced with almost-certain death and fight their way out. Padme is likely involved if that's the case. Look, no one in this whole thing has anything resembling common sense.

Vader mostly rolls his eyes, stabs whoever's framing him, and moves on with his day. Possibly he has to have some of his people investigate if Palpatine wants to force him to play politics for funsies, after which he stabs lots of people.

Tavi: Well, based on canonical evidence, we have a few possible approaches depending what point in his life he's at! Prior to finding out he's a Gaius:
1) Flee.
2) Investigate.
3) Discover someone else is committing treason.
4) Disrupt a much larger plan, possibly by accident.
4a) Possibly commit some lesser (or, uh, greater?) crimes in the process.
5) Make Gaius Sextus very pleased with him for excellent work and reward him by making problems go away by fiat.

When he knows he's the crown prince*:
1) Negotiate his peaceful surrender and the cooperation of his allies with his accuser in day-to-day operations in exchange for being held prisoner by someone he knows will not immediately assassinate him.
2) Tell the person in charge of his imprisonment everything to try to persuade them to let him go.
3) When that fails, pull rank and order his own release. (And borrow some cash.)
4) Actually break a ton of laws getting the leverage he needs to solve not so much the issue of the accusation against him but the fact that anyone trying to accuse him of said terrible crime is definitely committing treason and he's going to own their ass for it now.
5) Dramatic confrontation which somehow ends with most of his opposition dead and it isn't even entirely his fault directly.
6) After resolving the conflict, write up the legal document blanket pardoning everyone involved, which therefore also covers all of his doing crimes, and gets his granddad to sign off on it so it all goes away.

*(If I am totally honest, an argument could be made he did commit a crime, if you were looking for it, even before he deliberately breaks a bunch of laws. But only if you're operating in bad faith, and also, he wouldn't have had to do any of it if he could have just called his granddad and asked nicely and it wasn't his fault that he couldn't now was it.)

If it's an international diplomatic incident:
1) Decide to play by their rules.
(1a) Possibly someone quietly commits a murder for him, independent of orders.)
2) Offer alternative restitution to sidestep the issue or an extremely good reason why playing by his rules is more useful than trying to kill him.
3) Solidify international relationships and assimilation into his empire.

These days anyone Aleran trying to accuse Tavi of a crime falsely is just not going to be able to prove it, he has a fleet of extremely loyal and talented spies who are just gonna find out what's going on while he goes "Uh-huh, sure" and keeps working and raising his kid. And then gets to own their ass for treason.

Desiderius: Before he's adult enough to be in a Legion, he's mostly gonna go to his mom and dad going "Back-up, please?" and they send the right Cursor along to deal with it. Once he's adult enough that he needs to handle this sort of thing on his own, honestly, he has enough rank that he'll be able to delegate investigating to someone else. He might have to provide a little precognition/preternatural insight on where to look or what questions to ask, but he's mostly going to be patient and irritated and looking into who's dumb enough to try this on him and why.

(And also, planning to tell Mom and Dad "Hey people are stupid enough to be doing treason again, I thought we figured they'd grown out of it after the first couple unsuccessful assassination attempts after the apocalypse?")