Order in the Court! (Just Kidding)

Pittsburgh used to mean something.

Steel. Industry. Pride carved into every brick and beam like a promise you could touch. Back when words meant something and contracts weren't signed in eggplant emojis.

Now?

Now Pittsburgh was Boom Town's sadder, drunker cousin—the kind that showed up late to Thanksgiving, set the gravy on fire, and asked if they could crash on your couch for “just a night” before disappearing with your Wi-Fi password.

The once-proud skyline sagged under layers of graffiti and collapsed billboards. Some buildings still stood like stubborn old men refusing to move out of condemned houses. Others had already given up, sinking into themselves like bad posture made of concrete.

And everywhere—everywhere—the signs of the Babel Virus thrived.

Not just bad grammar.

No, Pittsburgh had gone full mutation.

Road signs were just paintings now. Murals of crying faces, broken hearts, suns wearing sunglasses throwing up peace signs. Someone tried to graffiti “FREEDOM” on a courthouse wall, but by the time they finished, it just read:

🎈🚪🛴

No one knew what it meant.

Everyone agreed it was beautiful.

I walked through it all—still a journalist, still pretending that I wasn’t slowly becoming part of the story I was supposed to document.

I told myself I was here to observe. To witness. To record.

But in the back of my mind, a single, worming doubt twisted tighter every step I took:

If the world is ending, and the people you care about are slipping away...

...how long can you just stand there with a notebook?

How long can you watch before you have to choose a side?

Because Sota and Hana didn’t know it yet, but their almost-leader was still alive.

And what if he was the key to restoring the world?

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There’s a lot you expect when you walk through the crumbling ruins of a post-apocalyptic Pittsburgh.

Broken windows. Empty streets. The occasional man trying to barter a live goose for half a sandwich.

What you don't expect is to get forcibly recruited for Jury Duty.

It happened fast.

One second, Hana, Sota, and the parrot were navigating an intersection decorated entirely in neon emojis (one suspiciously large 🍆), and the next—

“YOU! WALKERS! CIVILIAN DETECTED!” a voice boomed.

Their badges just read: 👮⚖️✨

“POLICE SIREN WOMEN JUDGE! POLICE SIREN MAN JUDGE,” one shouted, pointing at Hana and Sota like he was doing interpretive dance.

The other officer pulled out laminated cards and thrust them into their hands.

“You now Jury. No opt out. 🚫🏃➡️🪓.”

Hana blinked, confused. “Are they speaking in emojis now?”

“Forget that! Does this card say 'No running or you get axed'?”

The parrot squawked. “Yes.”

Before anyone could argue, the two officers grabbed Hana and Sota by the shoulders and started herding them toward a nearby building.

“You participate! Or... FIRE SKULL!” one barked.

Hana growled under her breath, but didn’t resist. “It’s faster to just go with it.”

And just like that, they were shoved inside.

The “courthouse” was a gutted out high school gymnasium, converted with the enthusiasm of a kindergarten play and the structural integrity of a rotting pumpkin.

Bleachers were full of people waving tiny emoji flags. A few had face paint: 🔥 over one eye, 🎈 under the other. A toddler in the front row wore a T-shirt that said “🎭=🗽”.

In the center, on what used to be the basketball court, stood a makeshift stage. Cardboard columns. Duct-taped podiums. A giant yellow banner reading:

WELCOME TO PEOPLE'S COURT OF EMOTICON JUSTICE

And at the center of it all, a woman in a judge’s robe covered entirely in glitter and little dancing emojis.

She banged a plastic gavel that had a “POW!” sticker on it.

“Court is now in session!” she yelled. “Today’s case: The People versus Professor Margaret ‘Maggie’ Helbling—accused of High Treason Against the Emoji Language!”

A spotlight swung wildly across the crowd, finally landing on a middle-aged woman in a tweed jacket who looked absolutely done with everything.

“I told you people,” she said, standing up with the weariness of someone who’s corrected the wrong there/their/they’re for the last time, “I just said using 38 emojis in a single sentence isn’t efficient communication.”

The crowd gasped as if she had punched a puppy.

The judge pointed dramatically at her:

“As per the Pittsburgh Linguistic Freedom Act of Year 1 P.D. (Post-Duo), all participants must ACT OUT their defense arguments! 🎭📜”

Sota blinked. “Wait, what?!”

“Oh no. It’s performance-based law,” The parrot said.

The judge grinned wide enough to nearly unhinge her jaw and clapped her hands twice.

Two assistants in emoji hoodies handed out paper masks, props, and plastic swords to everyone on stage.

Hana received a mask shaped like a thumbs-up 👍 and immediately crushed it in her fist.

“We’re seriously about to act in a trial,” Sota whispered, horror creeping into his voice.

“Act and decide her fate,” Hana replied flatly. “Focus.”

The parrot perched angrily on Sota’s shoulder. “This country is three seconds away from doing improv with pitchforks.”

Meanwhile, up in the stands, I took furious notes from under my emoji mask.

This is already the second trial I've been involved in since I arrived.

I guess some things never change.

America still loved suing people. Now they just did it with more ✨pizzazz✨.

The bailiff stomped over and handed Hana and Sota two cards:

One said 🎭 = Jury

Sota blinked at his.

“Uh... guess we're jury?”

Hana nodded grimly. “Good. Let's stay quiet and get out of here as soon as possible.”

Then, the trial kicked off the way all good trials do:

With a man fake-crying into a giant inflatable emoji.

"DICTIONARY, CRYING, ANGER!" screamed the lead prosecutor, sobbing dramatically into his sleeve.

“Yes!” another cried, throwing himself to the ground. “ANGER, NOTEBOOK, RED X!”

The prosecution's performance spiraled into a full soap opera.

At one point, a man fainted after being handed a pamphlet that had a semicolon in it.

Judge Lulubelle dabbed at her eyes.

“Such courage,” she sniffled. “Such bravery against punctuation tyranny.”

Sota leaned toward Hana and whispered:

“Is… is this real?”

Hana deadpanned:

“Play along. Or we’re next.”

When it was the defense’s turn, poor Professor Maggie shuffled forward, clutching a battered dictionary like it was her firstborn child.

She tried to read a definition aloud.

Booed.

She tried to draw stick figures on a dry-erase board, explaining the proper sentence structure.

Nobody understood a thing.

Finally, desperate, she attempted an interpretive dance of the Oxford comma.

She twirled. She dipped.

She mimed the Oxford comma saving two nouns from collision.

Another round of booing. Somebody threw a banana.

“Boring!” someone in the jury shouted.

Judge Lulubelle smacked her gavel down and stood.

“The jury is restless! The heart demands justice! I demand entertainment!”

She dramatically flung open a dusty trunk near her bench.

Inside: dozens of plastic pool noodles.

“The trial shall continue,” she declared, “through TRIAL BY GLADIATOR!”

Screaming. Cheering.

Two cultists dressed like emoji knights entered the ring. One had a plastic banana taped to his helmet. The other dual-wielded pool noodles taped to broomsticks.

Sota blinked. “What is happening.”

The parrot landed on his shoulder, shaking his head. “America. 2.0.”

They were almost dragged into the duel crowd, but Hana shoved Sota and the parrot back toward the wall.

“We stay out of this,” she hissed.

During the chaos, Professor Maggie desperately tried to argue for her life.

She drew a sad face on her dry-erase board and mimed pleading.

Nobody cared.

Except Hana.

“She’s innocent!” Hana shouted. “The prosecution’s case is ridiculous! They presented no real evidence—only bad skits and interpretive dancing! This woman didn’t harm the language. She tried to preserve it!”

A few people in the crowd booed.

“She bad!” a juror screamed.

Judge Lulubelle frowned.

Her gavel hovered over the pool noodle arsenal.

Hana tried again:

“You’re sentencing an innocent woman! That’s not justice—it’s theater!”

The judge leaned over her podium.

“EXACTLY,” she hissed.

Hana clenched her fists.

It wasn’t working.

And then—

Sota—quiet, nervous Sota—lifted his hand.

“She good,” he said loudly. “Not do bad. No punish. Let free.”

Silence.

The room shifted.

The words… they were wrong.

But they made perfect sense to the infected minds around them.

“That’s how real folks talk now!” one woman cheered.

“He sound proper!” another agreed.

Judge Lulubelle wiped a fake tear.

“Such beautiful honesty,” she sniffled. “We have heard the soul’s purest grammar.”

The parrot, still perched on Sota’s shoulder, tilted his head sideways in alarm.

Sota stood there, sweating bullets, but forcing a weak smile.

Hana stared at him for a second— Confused.

But the moment passed as the crowd surged again, chanting:

“FREE HER! FREE HER! WATERMELON, NOTEBOOK! WATERMELON, NOTEBOOK!”

The jury voted unanimously.

Professor Maggie: NOT GUILTY.

And in the noise the parrot fluttered closer to Sota’s ear and hissed:

“What. Was. That.”

Sota wiped his forehead again. Shaking slightly.

“I know,” he whispered. “But don’t tell Hana.”

The parrot narrowed his eyes, considering.

The gavel banged.

The crowd of emoji-chanting jurors cheered like someone had just announced free corn dogs.

The trial was over. Freedom had been defended.

Or, you know, whatever “freedom” meant these days.

As the judge wandered offstage muttering about lunch and better sword choreography for next time, the crowd began to disperse in chaotic, emoji-laced chatter.

Sota and Hana stood awkwardly near the center of the courtroom, still blinking like they’d been hit with a bag of grammar bricks.

Hana turned, grinning wide.

“Hey,” she said, punching Sota lightly on the arm. “Good thinking, using their language back there. Quick on your feet.”

Sota opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Tried again.

“Me… uh… just do thinking... goodly.”

Hana laughed. Loud and sharp and real.

“Okay, okay, you can stop now, Shakespeare. We’re safe. No more ‘goodly thinking’ required.”

She turned away, waving for them to follow, already pulling out a wrinkled street map.

Sota didn’t move immediately.

“You’re slipping,” the parrot whispered, too low for Hana to hear.

“I know,” Sota whispered back, stiff as a board. “I’ll be fine.”

The parrot squinted at him with one skeptical black eye. “Will you?”

Sota clenched his fist. “She doesn't know. That's what matters.”

The parrot said nothing. He didn’t need to.

Overhead, the flickering fluorescent lights coughed back to life.

The cracked courtroom TV above the judge’s desk buzzed and blinked.

Static.

Then a blurry image.

A headline stuttered across the bottom:

PRESIDENT RONALD BUMP MAKE URGENT ANNOUNCEMENT

Sota, Hana, and the parrot all turned to look.