I really want to see Marquis find the undersiders and at least take taylor under his wing.

Amy's idea is awesome, I look forward to Carol's upcoming guano mode.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

This was fantastic. Hey if you ever do omake’s or short stories you should do one about this Amy meeting the Amy from your other story “Another Way” I think that would be an interesting talk. Even more if you had both marquis meet each other

Whoo! Go Marquis! Hes a badass

Uh, if they do team up, then wouldn't they need to find a way to protect Aster from Kaiser?

Please consider updating this more often!

Hoping for Squealer as well

wow

Wooooo! New chapter!

Marquis teaming up with Purity AND Panacea? I'd pay to see the faces of both Kaizer and Brandish!

Max is wrong about US courts caring more for results than intent - weighting results more heavily than intent is one of the governmental evils the entire US legal system was deliberately designed by the. country’s founders to prevent.

Intent is EVERYTHING in US courts. The classic example is one found in this story - killing people is illegal, unless the intent was to defend people from an illegal attack. There is no specific law authorizing police to use deadly force on violent, dangerous criminals for example - instead, there is a law authorizing anyone, when necessary, to use the necessary force level to defend self or others from illegal attack.

Self defense cases in US courts are judged based on what the defender knew, thought he knew - or reasonably should have known - at the time he acted, NOT actual facts he didn’t know, couldn’t have known at the time or only learned later. Such cases are also judged on intent - which can often be inferred from actions, and the difference between someone who runs to safety and comes back with a weapon, and someone who defends themselves from an enemy they cannot run from, is the difference between legal and illegal. The former in the prior sentence would be a murderer, the latter a good citizen, in the eyes of the courts.

When police intend civil asset forfeiture, the fact they took money or goods by force while armed with guns is ignored because their intent was to seize assets in accordance with the law, even though at the time they did it, they lacked both a seizure warrant or a court ruling approving the seizure. Police who simply rob people without filing asset forfeiture requests are prosecuted as armed robbers - the difference is intent, because intent is everything in US courts.

The whole villains lacking rights thing is problematic for a number of reasons under the US legal system. The US Constitution forbids bills of attainder - laws that make it illegal to be a specific person or to be something you have no control over, such as having blue eyes, being a past member of an organization you left before membership was criminalized, or (on Earth Bet) having natural-trigger parahuman powers.

Prior to our civil war, lawmakers and courts - including our national supreme court - had declared that people with dark skin could never be citizens or have rights, and one of the first things our government did post-war was amend our Constitution to make it impossible for any court or state legislature to ever do such a thing again, basically rewriting the Constitution to make it so ANYTHING that could demand rights had them. The post-civil war Constitution does not require that someone be a citizen, or even be human, to have rights. And that leads to the next problem:

Under the US legal system and government system, there is exactly ONE way for someone to be stripped of all of their rights: being declared an outlaw as the sentence from a criminal court, as punishment for a crime.. On our Earth, while outlawry was once considered a valid sentence in US courts, nowadays it is considered a cruel and unusual punishment and is therefore forbidden by our Constitution. But they seem to have gone back to allowing it on Earth Bet, in the form of Birdcage sentences in absentia and kill orders - especially the kill orders, which tick 100% of the checkboxes to be outlawry, they just use a different name.

The problem with that though, is under the US legal system, if you are not protected by the law you cannot be subject to it. Once you declare someone an outlaw, anything they do from that point on is not illegal for them. So by law and custom, any killings any Slaughterhouse 9 member committed after getting a kill order is not a murder, because murders are crimes and outlaws are not subject to the law. To some extent, outlaws are considered a natural disaster, not a criminal - even a wild rampaging animal has more rights, and is subject to more laws, than an outlaw.

Since the Birdcage is also a form of outlawry, anyone sentenced to the Birdcage, even if they haven’t been captured yet, would also be freed from being subject to any and all laws. Like Dragon said, Marquis executed Teacher, he didn’t murder him. Murder is a crime, and nothing is a crime for an outlaw.

In our world, US citizens have considerable police authority, though few actually use it. There was a time when what we would, today, call neighborhood watch groups were the ONLY law enforcement the country had, and in 48 out of 50 states as well as federally, all of the laws supporting that are still in effect.

Earth Bet has taken those laws and greatly expanded them, to allow for vigilantes and entire vigilante groups, superhero style, to operate legally.

Many of the business-as-usual things corporations or even government agencies do on a daily basis are actually crimes. Almost any rights violation you could sue a government official or agency for in civil court for compensatory (monetary) damages is actually a crime that people could go to prison for if charges were filed for the same acts - though the punishment is generally monetary for such organizations, since how do you put a corporation in prison?

On the subject of asset forfeiture, coupled to those aforementioned police powers all US citizens have, I’ve often wondered what would happen, legally speaking, if someone were to successfully rob a bank - or even a police station - that has been found guilty in court of committing crimes, even if the only penalty was monetary - then immediately travel to the local courthouse rather than a criminal safehouse, and file a civil lawsuit against the stolen goods with the court clerk, for civil asset forfeiture.

It would probably work better on Earth Bet than our Earth, but by the letter of the law on even our Earth, it should negate any possible criminal charges, since no one in the government wants to set a legal precedent that a denied civil asset forfeiture is armed robbery, and the police who seize assets are always armed when they do so.

so glad to see this back

Excellent Chapter!

I am eager to see what happens next!

Coil’s plan caught me off guard, tbh. It’s quite devious though.