After a few years, no matter how the city sees itself (southern, northern, western...) all court rooms began to look alike. The rooms were well lit, the faces all had the same slack expression in the benches and the Judge always looked like he was a second away from nodding off. The only exception was in the South where judges still had that flair for the country. The current judge, Judge Ford, bared such a resemblance to Colonel Sanders from the KFC commercials that Titus debated on asking what the secret herbs and spices were.
Settled in next to the Judge, Titus shared a small box with the judge's assistant named Marion. He was dressed in his normal court uniform: Well fitted suit, para-ordnance on his hip and a back-up snub nose in the top of his polished boots. Marion was dressed in the opposing fashion of a dress suit with enough cleavage to give the lawyers a start each time they looked towards the Judge for a ruling. It was a standard ploy, Get a cute assistant that'll distract the lawyers, giving the judge plenty of time to catch up to what was just said. The play's the thing, Titus thought to himself as he watched it from his prime seat. Marion had noticed him already as the new Marshal, and was dropping subtle hints. He'd bent down to pick up a loosed pen twice and had already noticed the short skirt had risen up her leg since this morning, enough to see the tops of her stockings.
Nonetheless, Court was the best way to start in a new place. It gave the Marshal time to adjust to his surroundings and it also gave him a good view of the people running through the town. Sooner or later, you'd have to visit a courthouse, even a federal one. It was at this point that Titus got his feel of the general outlook on people. Good, bad, trash, rich trash; all of them stepped in at one time or another.
So there he sat as he watched the defendant try to fight his third death sentence hovering over him. Even with two sentences, humans still had another twenty years or so before it they were put under the needle, or the chair, or whatever. Titus envied them a little. If he'd ever get convicted of a crime, he'd be dead within the week or with a very large price on his head. That was the price for being more human than human. The true curse of power.
He adjusted in his chair a bit and returned to his stoic Marshal pose, non-moving, all-knowing, all-seeing, all hail the king of the courtroom. At least Marion might think that's funny.
