The communal home that had been built for Mary Piper and her brood was large and covered many aspects that were typical of what was becoming termed as "Animalian design." While brick, stone, and various inorganic materials could be used, there was something that seemed to favor a more organic look. The land area it covered wasn't much, but it had been built to have multiple levels, almost like it was an apartment building. The critical point that Mary Piper ultimately felt the most secure in was that it was rather quiet...
She knew quite well that kidnapping Jeremy Green was wrong, but she had been desperate. She wanted her humanity back and had been desperate for it... to get away from "Subject Zero" who despite having human like appearances had generally acted like a mundane animal. And while she'd seemed to have some motherly instinct for the children she'd born as a result, by the time of that Halloween Carnival she was desperate to get away. That had been what drove her on, and she went with it, regardless of the potential problems that it may cause.
And as Mary Piper looked out from the window to her private room and watched many of the younger children of her "brood" play in the snow, she knew that there had been plenty of consequences that had come as a result of her actions. Not all of them necessarily came on her. A lot of the rulings and scrutiny had ultimately came down on Horizon over their handling of "Subject Zero."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The case was held in Lyre's civil court house with Mary Piper and Jack seated together with their "brood" around them in the defendant's seats. Many of them were seated on the floor because there weren't enough chairs to seat them all. It was a large collection of Brown Rat Animalians of a standard variety with largely dark brown fur, dark skinned but furless tails, and smaller ears. Most of the Brown Rats in Animalia that had gone through the initial outbreak had actually been PET rats and had the more elaborate colorations that pet Brown Rats, also known as Fancy Rats, had. Though most of the questions were focused more on the events in question, and it was Jack that was put on the stand first.
"Now... Jack... you are who Horizon referred to as Subject Zero?" the prosecutor asked. "Am I right?"
"Yes," Jack answered slowly.
"Now... in the statement of the charges, it's been made that you repeatedly raped Mary Piper and keeping her pregnant and thus rendering her unable to escape the sewers," the prosecutor spoke.
"I heard," Jack said looking down.
"Do you deny any of this?" the prosecutor asked.
"Not in good conscience," Jack admitted, still looking down.
The answer seemed to puzzle everyone, as it wasn't the answer anyone expected to be given after a "not guilty" plea.
"So you admit that you raped her?" the prosecutor asked.
"I admit that I had sex with her... and now I can understand that it wasn't wanted," Jack answered.
"You do realize that constitutes rape?" the prosecutor asked.
"From a legal means on what has been explained to me... yes," Jack nodded, "but..."
"No further questions," the prosecutor cut him off and returned to his desk on the side opposite the bench where court appointed lawyers sat in representation for Jack, Mary Piper, and their "brood."
The judge nodded and looked over to the defense attorney who looked up.
"Do you wish to cross examine?" the judge asked in a tone that made it clear that he was wondering why the trial was even going on if the defendants were essentially going to admit to the accused crime.
The defending attorney stood up and nodded, "Yes, your honor."
The judge sighed and sat back in his chair and then made a sweeping gesture with his right hand. The defending attorney then walked around his desk and then moved forward to begin his own line of questions.
"Now... Jack can you state for the court your origins?" the defending attorney asked.
"We know that already!" the prosecutor protested before Jack could answer.
"Is there a reason for this?" the judge asked.
"Yes, your honor, more to set the mindset that Jack was it at the time the crimes occurred," the defense attorney answered.
"Very well," the judge sighed, "you may answer the question."
Jack nodded, "I was a laboratory animal at Horizon Labs with the sort of hormone supplement program they were working on... the one that lead to the Animalia Virus, if by accident. From what I've been told I was the first test subject and tested with a proto-form of the serum."
"So... this wasn't quite yet the Animalia Virus that we know... but yet it did seem to produce similar results," the defense attorney mused, "Correct..."
"Correct," Jack answered, "but when I was tested... I developed into something physically like an Animalian... mentally... mentally I was still very much like a mundane rat, though one "irritated" by the testing. If it weren't for the introduction of the fully developed form of the virus... about all you'd get from me would be the same sounds that a mundane rat would make as that was all I knew. Mary Piper could talk, but she was human before and several of the "brood" could manage a little... but then Mary Piper tried to teach them..."
"So... in a sense, you had the mental faculties more in line with a mundane rat rather than an Animalian, am I right there?" the defense attorney asked.
"Yes," Jack nodded.
"Do mundane rats have any sort of moral compass in which they define things as right or wrong, like say rape?" the defense attorney questioned.
"No... a mundane animal would be more concerned with survival rather than whether it was right or wrong," Jack answered.
"So... when you came across Mary Piper in Lyre's sewers... what was going through your mind?" the defense attorney asked.
"Siring children and nothing more than that," Jack admitted, "at the time... I was not even aware of the concept of no one wanting it... I could smell that she was ovulating at the time, which meant she was in heat and since she didn't have children with her... she would naturally want to have children. I really wasn't aware of anything in that was "wrong" until Horizon administered the more modern form of the Animalia Virus."
The defense attorney nodded and then looked to the judge, "we can provide the security footage from Horizon's lab facility where they were being held which can show the behavior in both Jack and the "brood" that would reflect this."
The judge, who know looked quite interested in the case nodded, "We will grant a short recess to allow for the appropriate equipment to be brought in to show the tapes."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And much of the trial went along those lines. Eventually the charges on Jack were essentially dropped as the tape evidence did prove what Jack had claimed of being more mundane. On some level, that didn't quite make Mary Piper feel that much better, as she had never wanted to be raped in the sewers and she didn't want to be a rat. Even if Animalia had been in existence prior to that fateful day, she would not have wanted to be a rat. But as she looked down to her hands, largely pink a light covering of hair that her skin color could be seen through and the brown fur that had grown from her wrists up, she knew that for the time being that was what she was going to have to be.
Mary Piper still wanted to be human again. In many ways she did care for the "brood," particularly after getting the updated version of the Animalia Virus had seemed to bring out many of the lessens she'd initially tried to teach them but had only partially succeeded on at best. And they DID apologize to her extensively. But there were certain things that just dug too deep, and the fact that she'd been raped by a science experiment in the sewers was one of them. Jack had apologized to her, and in a way she could get the sense that he was sincere in that, and that was enough for her to tolerate being under the same roof as him, but they kept separate rooms and separate beds. But his behavior was better and in that, that would be enough to tolerate him being around, as it would at least help make sure that the brood would be able to grow up and hopefully live a life not overshadowed by their parents mistakes...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"And now we come to you, Mary Piper," the prosecutor began, "the victim of Jack's animal and feral lust..."
"Yes," Mary Piper answered with narrowed eyes, not liking the fact that the prosecuting attorney was pushing that angle so hard, as it only reminded her of all that she'd had to go through.
"We've heard from Doctor Green that on the night of this past Halloween he had been lead into the sewers by a group of your children before them taking him before you," the prosecutor stated, "he's further confirmed the fact that Jack here was at the time too feral to have any conceptual knowledge of right and wrong... and that it seemed to him that the brood weren't that different."
"I did try to teach them things," Mary Piper spoke, "but it gets difficult when you're being kept pregnant and giving birth far sooner than should have been possible... Particularly as the number of children grew and grew..."
"Yes... well... YOU are different from Jack, as you were human? Correct?" the prosecutor asked.
"Yes," Mary Piper answered.
"So unlike Jack, who at the time was simply a large rat, you DID know better with regard right and wrong," the prosecutor mused, "Correct?"
"Yes, but I was desperate to be human again... to be who I was," Mary Piper answered, "and it seemed like Doctor Green was going to stop his research into reversing the transformation and I would be stuck as a rat and being kept pregnant by those I did NOT want having sex with me."
"I'm sure it was traumatic, but given that this occurred at the same time as the initial outbreak, don't you think you could have fled the sewers?" the prosecutor asked, "You would have been discovered and cared for in a way that would have been better for you than simply staying in the sewers and subsisting on garbage... And at the time, while you may have been pregnant, you would have only been in the first stages of your first pregnancy. Surely once you transformed you would have had the strength to get Jack off you and get away from him."
"And how was I to know that Animalia would be so well supported in Lyre and then Nevada?" Mary Piper asked, "I was attacked and raped by a giant rat and at the time I was terrified out of my wits and then... I WAS a giant rat and equally terrified out of my wits. How was I to know that Animalia would be accepted as easily as it was? I didn't learn on THAT until much later, by which point I had little ones to look after and had been pregnant enough times that simply moving was difficult."
"I suppose you couldn't, but it would at least allow you stand by what was right," the prosecutor spoke, "which would then mean that you wouldn't have to worry about the process being repeated in the sewers and Horizon's scientists could have immediately went to work on restoring your humanity... that is what you want, right?"
"Yes," Mary Piper sighed and looked down. "but as things stand... that might not be possible."
"No further questions," the prosecutor returned to his desk. From there the defense attorney came forward.
"Your honor, what happened with Mary Piper goes beyond what we can truly expect to be "normal" in any real way," the defense attorney spoke, "she could have come out of the sewers, sure, but we at the same time I must emphasize the point that was made on not knowing whether or not Animalia would be accepted. I would also remind the court that when the incident first occurred in the summer of last calendar year that much of Animalia's acceptance in Lyre came ONLY after Clara and Robbie through Horizon explained Animalia's Ten Edicts... along with the revelation that a human had been infected during the summer."
"That doesn't excuse the actions in question," the judge spoke.
"Perhaps not," the defense attorney spoke, "but it is a concerning factor as to why those actions happen. Ms. Piper didn't commit them because she was "Cobra Commander" out for world conquest or anything remotely close to that. She was scared and didn't know what was going on... and many times we do make mistakes when we're afraid."
"Understood," the judge answered.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"And a lot of that helped in the end," Mary Piper spoke, "I didn't really get out of any punishment... but it did help..."
The end ruling had taken the information on the fact that what had happened with Jack before being put on the truck, with the expectation that Jack's body was to be properly disposed of with the thought that he was dead had provided enough that Jack and "the brood" were deemed innocent of what had happened in the sewers, as with their minds being more feral at the time, there was no real control. The real negative had been with Horizon in that regard. They faced no legal restrictions on the fact that they had believed "Subject Zero" to be dead after they euthanized him and thus couldn't have known that he had a healing factor that could completely counter to poisons used to "put him down" in the first place. However, their stock was hit pretty hard, and while some numbers looked very good, Horizon's had hit a rather deep nosedive. The news people stated that Horizon wasn't at a point of no return in that regard, but they would probably need some other success to make up for what had happened.
But while that had given Jack and the children some hope for a happy future, Mary Piper was not as fortunate. The court essentially did find her guilty of kidnapping Jeremy Green. The fear in her motives and some testimony from Jeremy himself got the sentence lowered from spending time in a state prison to community service with any and all money that was raised in "Cheaper by the Dozens" going to Lyre and Animalia for the show's first season. If it did well enough to warrant a second season, there would be another hearing on that matter to consider Mary Piper and Jack's behavior, and until all of that was done, Mary Piper could not leave the city limits of Animalia or Lyre.
The real good news for Mary Piper remained the promise that Jeremy had made at Horizon. She may not have much hope in her humanity being restored, and a part of her would admit that things felt "better" after getting the more advanced version of the Animalia Virus, but that didn't mean that she wasn't still hoping for enough progress that she might one day be human again. It wasn't much, but it was all she had... And until then, she'd make sure that her children and grandchildren grew up to be respectful members of society. As since that process was done with them... they had improved and a part of Mary Piper's mind recognized that they were in a sense children. They deserved a good future, and Mary Piper would try to give them what she could for a good future, regardless of whether or not Jeremy and Horizon found a cure.