19

Monday, May 28, 1990

A semi-surprising fact about the legal system (at least in the United States, due to the country's highly litigious nature) is that the overwhelming majority of cases never see their day in court. Sure, plenty do, and the sheer time and cost investment in trials is a large part of why the courts are constantly backed up.

But on average, ninety percent of all cases end before going to trial. There were myriad reasons this could happen, though the two most common? One, settlement; and two, plaintiffs dropping their claim as discovery went forward (which itself had multiple reasons; in my experience, it was often the claimant learning they had no case, or a claimant's bluff being called). But my absolute favorite was in federal cases: the Rule 12(b)(6) Motion for Dismissal. Or, as I liked to call it: the "so what?" motion.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to just walk into a conference room, cross my arms, offer a smug smirk at opposing counsel, and say three words. This time, I had to actually try.

I had to try and angle for getting this case dropped – and I needed to try and get past the egomania to do it.

Ben Parker and I sat in a conference room in the New York State Supreme Court, better known as "that one giant courthouse that always shows up in TV and movies". There was no way on God's green earth that I was going to march into a conference room owned and operated by Oscorp, and similarly, there was zero chance of me letting these men into my office, only to drop a parting gift on their way out.

Which meant that I had to book a conference room at the courthouse (thanks, Jeremy). Much as I would have liked to keep this to one of the courts out in Queens, Osborn was the filing party, and I didn't exactly have any reason to argue that it should be elsewhere. Particularly because… well, it also played into my narrative a bit. As much as this was the court in Manhattan, it also always had at least one press team nearby.

And I was banking on Osborn's newsworthiness making him want to keep things quiet.

Regardless, Ben and I had arrived early. I'd called up Osborn's counsel, and (after an obnoxiously long ten minutes trying to actually reach his lead counsel) scheduled to meet at ten a.m.

Which was why we'd arrived at 9:30.

My glamour was firmly in place, as I had a feeling the kind of lawyers Osborn hired were the same type that got me fired from LL&L in the first place. I may have been growing more comfortable with showing my true face, but that was around people I trusted. And while you can trust opposing counsel after everything is said and done? During a case itself, you need to expect them to be shaking your hand with the right, and thumbing through your papers with the left.

(This was not a random example. This had, in fact, happened. Once. Sam Lieberman got the dumb schmuck's license suspended for a year.)

10:00am came and went, with no signs of anybody arriving. Ben Parker gave me a look, but all I did was unclasp my fingers from where my hands rested on the table, motion for him to be patient, and then clasp my hands again.

Showing up late to anything that didn't enforce punctuality was a common enough psychological tactic. It told the other side that they weren't important, worth your attention or punctuality, and implied that this was an afterthought. The inverse of this tactic, showing up early and proceeding to do other work while waiting, was what I preferred, but I would readily admit that it didn't have as much of an effect.

At 10:07, the door to the conference room finally opened. Ben Parker made to stand, but luckily for me, I didn't need to motion for him to do otherwise – he took one look at me, saw that I remained seated, and settled back into his chair. We did not want to stand. You stood for a judge to show respect.

We did not want to show this cadre anything even remotely resembling respect. Not right off the bat. That was how you wound up on the back foot.

Just as I predicted, three lawyers walked in. Each of them wore what looked to me like an extremely expensive suit, paired with a dark blue tie: two navy blue suits, one black. Even in these early days of summer, black and navy was the go to.

Behind the three attorneys came the man of the hour. Norman Osborn himself. He wore a tan linen suit, loafers, and no tie, in a marked contrast to the men he came in with. And yet, just looking at his clothing, you could tell his clothes were a cut above the rest – I doubted I'd ever seen linen that fine before, and probably wouldn't ever own anything like it myself.

The most interesting detail, though, was only apparent once he took off his oversized sunglasses.

Because Norman Osborn had a medical eyepatch covering his right eye.

I very pointedly did not turn to look at Ben when he drew in a sudden breath at the sight, instead locking eyes with his lead counsel.

"Schaefer," he said, offering me a nod as he sat down.

"Babbage," I replied with a nod of my own. "How's the wife?" I asked.

"She's with the kids in the Hamptons," he replied. "Still haven't settled down yourself, I see," he added with a glance at my left hand.

"You know how it is," I said with a shrug, trying not to show my discomfort at the gesture. "Married to the job."

Jason Babbage and I had met, however briefly, when he was a 3L and I was a sophomore. It turns out, when you ambush the last law student lingering in the library and ask them for advice about prepping for law school, odds are you've found a gunner. And when a gunner meets another possible gunner… well, there's no reason to not start networking early.

New York legal community. Surprisingly small world.

Anyway, Babbage had gone straight to McDermott Will & Emery, but left right as I'd assumed he'd make partner – and after twelve years of work. He must have gotten one hell of an offer to let Osborn poach him off of partner status, and given the unspoken statement of 'I own a beach house in the Hamptons'?

Seven figures. Easily.

"That's why I went in-house," he said, putting his briefcase on the table to retrieve documents. "Better work-life balance." A set of documents found its way onto the table between us.

Osborn's complaint, and our answer.

"Much as I'd like to continue the pleasantries," Babbage said, "Norman will complain if I bill him for any more small talk. So let's get down to business."

"Let's," I agreed, even as Norman took the chair opposite Ben Parker, and his other two attorneys took the outer chairs. I couldn't fully hold back the wince at how his chair screeched when he scooted it back in.

"Before we go any further, I would make a request," I said, leading off with what was probably the weakest arrow in my quiver, but it was worth a shot anyway. "Your client," I addressed Jason Babbage, "is asking for compensatory damages far exceeding what my client is capable of paying. More than my client will ever own, most likely. Our justice system frequently slashes awards down to an amount that a person could realistically pay, and going off of that metric, it is unlikely that Mr. Osborn would receive more than… I want to say one hundred thousand dollars. At maximum.

"Given that each of you fine gentlemen," I nodded across the table at opposing counsel, "likely cost at least two thousand dollars an hour to retain, and a case like this could go on for a substantial amount of time, the odds are that legal fees will far exceed any amount you would meaningfully gain."

"And you're so sure about that, aren't you?"

I blinked, then leaned back slightly as Norman Osborn leaned in. His posture was wide, elbows out, back up, filling up as much of the table as he could. His cheeks were slack, eyebrows raised.

"Two teeth," Norman said, holding up two fingers. "And a retinal detachment," he added, pointing at his right eye. "I'm the public face of a billion dollar corporation. You know what that does, when the CEO shows up hurt like that?"

"Norman." Jeremy reached a hand to put on his client's shoulder.

"They considered ousting me,!" Norman said, with a bitter laugh. "From my own company. Because you," he said, pointing straight at Ben, "hit me in the face. With a fucking shoe!!"

Something cracked.

I jumped in my seat. So did Ben. And across from us, his three lawyers all flinched.

Norman had raised his voice in time with that cracking sound, shifting from the more soft-spoken way he'd been speaking to louder, gravely. Higher-pitched. The man was leaning forward now, hands in a claw-grip on the arms of his chair, brows furrowed, lips curled back from his teeth.

And sure enough, I did, in fact, see that two of his teeth on the right were shinier than the rest. Freshly capped, or perhaps dental implants.

"As my client said," Babbage said, hand heavy on Norman's shoulder as he pushed the man against the back of his chair, "the compensatory damages were not decided upon randomly. They are perfectly justified."

Well, shit.

There went getting this whole thing dismissed for financial reasons.

"With that reasoning in mind," I said, taking the opportunity as I pivoted, "there is one thing I believe must be taken into account. As you know," I gestured to my answer document, "one of the witnesses is a minor. Specifically, he is your client's son. His medical records and his statements are key to this matter, and I assume you have already spoken with your client regarding the necessity of allowing us access to him."

"We have indeed," Babbage said, voice level. "And after discussion, it is our belief that all other avenues should be exhausted before rising to that level."

… did he just…?

Was he serious?

"Mr. Babbage," I said, leaning forward. "Is it your statement that you do not mean to comply with the full extent of discovery?"

"That is not what I said," he replied. "Only that every other avenue should be expended beforehand."

What was… there were no other avenues. Discovery meant he was required to turn over every single document that was pertinent to this matter.

"If that is the case," I said, "then you may expect our discovery requests by the end of business tomorrow. I sincerely hope that we may prevent this from taking on a more adversarial air than necessary, and resolve this affair in a reasonable fashion."

"Very well," Babbage said. He took back his copies of both the complaint and answer, then slid a business card across the table. "Fax is on the bottom."

"My thanks," I said, reaching for my own briefcase and sliding across a business card of my own.

"Expect our requests no later than end of business Friday," Babbage said, standing up from the table once he put my card away. The other two attorneys also started standing at the same time, though Osborn continued giving a one-eyed stare at us.

"Norman, please."

I sucked in a sharp breath, and put a hand on Ben's shoulder, trying to keep him from saying anything more. We did not need to antagonize them, not when Osborn had already decided to be adversarial.

"I'm not letting this go, Parker," Osborn said, standing from his chair. He had a sneer on his face, staring down at Ben from under shadowed brows. "You hurt me, I hurt you. It's fair."

Having said his piece, Osborn rose from his seat in one smooth motion, and headed for the door. His hand missed the doorknob ever so slightly on his first grab, prompting a growl from the man. He adjusted his arm to get the knob, swung the door open, and stomped out. His three lawyers weren't far behind. The door slid shut behind them.

And suddenly, we were alone in the room.

"That… that didn't go well, did it?" Ben asked once the door had closed. I stood up from my chair, took a pen out of my briefcase, and walked around to the other side of the table.

"It did not," I confirmed, frowning as I approached the four chairs used by the other side. None of them had bothered pushing them in, and predictably, Osborn's was the furthest from the table. "Ben, did you also hear a sharp sound there? Like a snap, or a crack?"

"I did." Ben stood from his chair and joined me on the other side of the table, eyeing the chairs. "Do you know what it was?"

"I hope not," I said, a warm, queasy feeling bubbling in the pit of my stomach. That warmth started to spread, becoming almost tingly as it spread to my arms and legs, and made my mouth go a little dry. I sat down in Babbage's chair and leaned into Osborn's, running a finger over the arms of the chair.

Something caught under my fingers, biting at my skin. I sucked in a breath, uncapped my pen, and ran it along the chair's arm.

The pen's tip caught on something. It took a bit of effort, but I managed to ever so slightly peel a strip of wood up from the chair.

Then I ran my fingers along another part of the chair's arm, and found another spot where the wood had splintered.

Five in total on one arm. Five in total on the other.

"What are these chairs made of?" Ben asked, the color draining from his face as he caught a glimpse of what I'd found.

"They're solid mahogany," I said, feeling a bit faint myself. "Mr. Parker. Under ordinary circumstances, it is allowed, and even encouraged, for the parties on opposing sides of a lawsuit to try and meet without lawyers and work things out without the legal system. These are not ordinary circumstances. Listen closely." I turned my head to look him in the eyes, one hand still on Osborn's chair. "Under no circumstances are you to ever let yourself or Peter be alone in a room with Norman Osborn. Do you understand?"

"I do," he said, falling back into one of the other chairs. "What does this mean?"

I stood up from the chair and started to pace, letting the movement burn some of my nervous energy. The sound of my heels striking the floor was something else I could focus on, pull my thoughts away from my anxiety.

"It means," I said, trying to decide on the best word, "that Norman Osborn is a superhuman."

And that brought up a very dangerous question. Had that been Norman Osborn speaking to us?

Or had it been the Green Goblin?

Wednesday, June 6, 1990

It always annoyed me when shareholder meetings went longer than they were supposed to. I mean, really – who schedules a meeting to go from 8am to 11am, doesn't even properly begin the meeting until 8:45, and then ends after noon? What kind of failure in planning is that?

But at least it hadn't been entirely useless, I thought to myself as I considered the business card I'd tucked into my purse. That was something to consider later, though. Right now, I had to consider my workload for the rest of the day. I had a brief to finish, a thank-you letter to write to a senator for his amicus brief, a preliminary injunction to file… and that was all before that article on the ADA for the bar association…

I made it to the back door of my office, only to hear something that sounded like yelling. Listening in, it sounded like… Joshua was yelling?

Okay… there existed any number of reasons that he could be yelling, and only one of them was something I wanted to walk in on. So, discretion being the better part of valor, I went in through the front door.

And was greeted by Sophie gasping in relief and standing up from her desk.

"Thank God you're here," she said. "Josh's been going nuts for the past hour."

"What happened?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer as I walked past Sophie's desk and into my office. Sophie followed me in, flipping through a calendar in her hands.

"A paralegal dropped off the documents you requested from Osborn," Sophie said.

And those documents had Joshua yelling. Which meant they'd done something. The possible ways they could have messed with the documents while still following the letter of the law was… yeah, I didn't want to know.

"Ugh. What shenanigans did they pull?" I asked, letting my glamour fade into prismatic static, without my customary snap this time. That was something I did for theatrics or effect, and didn't really matter around people I knew.

"They put all of the documents in one box."

I paused with a hand on my purse's strap, just turning that over in my head. That wasn't exactly odd, I thought to myself as I remembered to take my purse off my shoulder and lay it on my desk. Hell, it was downright tame. So why was she… oh. Ooooh.

Had they pulled a small-scale IBM?

"The documents are all loose leaf, aren't they?" I asked.

"They are," Sophie said, sighing.

"And mixed up?" I followed up.

"That too," she confirmed.

"Fuck," I said out loud, not even bothering to hide my annoyance. "Of course they did. Alright, I need to go help Joshua."

"Before that?" Sophie tapped at the calendar with a pen. "I got a call from a possible new client. He said he wanted a morning meeting to discuss before retaining you."

"Alright," I said, taking a brief seat at my desk while Sophie spoke. "Am I free… let's say nine a.m. any time soon?"

"Actually…" Sophie trailed off, flipping another few pages in the day planner. "He said he wanted to meet you for breakfast."

"Where at?" I slipped out of my heels and slid them under my desk, then stretched my poor feet a little bit before putting my flats on. Ah, sweet relief. Could I wear my heels all day? Yes, I could and had, and that wearability was why I owned four pairs of the same Cole Haan's. But if I didn't have to, then I wouldn't.

"He said he wanted to meet you at the Four Seasons Restaurant," Sophie answered.

That name rang a bell. Four Seasons, Four Seasons… that wasn't the hotel, I didn't think. Actually – hold on, I'd been there.

"That's in the Seagram building, isn't it?" I asked, standing back up, three inches shorter but with my feet far happier.

"That's the one," she confirmed. I left my office and started heading to the back, Sophie following behind. "Potential client asked about seven-thirty, two weeks from today. It's a bit on the early side, but you do have an opening that morning; should I call back to confirm?"

"Go ahead," I said. "You'll probably have to remind me when I get closer, but what's the possible client's name?"

"One sec," Sophie said, flipping back over to today's date in her planner. "Charles Xavier."

I paused. That was—

No. I didn't have time to think about that. Right now, I had more pressing issues. Such as trying to get rid of this case as soon as possible.

Before Osborn decided to let his better devil off the leash.

"Call back and make the appointment," I told Sophie. "And, um. Before you leave for the day, would you mind putting on the coffee and tea for Joshua and me? I have a feeling the two of us are going to be burning a bit of the midnight oil with this."

"I can do that," Sophie said.

"Thanks Sophie," I told her. "You're the best."

Sophie giggled in response and waved me off.

Taking my cue to leave, I headed back through the hallway and made my way to the conference room, where Joshua had taken up residence.

And where he had spread a couple dozen individual piles of paper, with a much larger stack just sitting in a paper box.

"How bad—"

"Shh!" Joshua silenced me, and my jaw clicked shut. His eyes were flitting between the paper in his hand and the various piles on the table, and after an agonizing thirty seconds of just waiting, he finally decided on something, and slid the paper into the pile fifth from the head of the table. "Okay. Speak."

"Pretty sure I'm supposed to be the boss around here," I said with fake consternation, one hand on a hip. "How bad is it?"

"Well?"

Joshua waved a hand at the table, and I noticed that he'd untucked and unbuttoned his shirt, along with having taken off his belt. Normally I would consider gently admonishing him for unprofessional attire… but a single look at this absurd mess of paper and organization had me wishing for something more comfortable than my skirt suit.

Like sweats.

"I've ID'd at least twenty-nine separate documents so far," he said, pointing at each of the piles. "And every single document in this box," he smacked the side of a white cardboard box, still mostly full of paper, "is completely out of order, mixed together, and lacking any kind of arrangement whatsoever."

I sighed, eyes looking up and praying to God to release me from having to deal with shitheads like this.

"They pulled an IBM," I murmured.

Okay, context time, and keep in mind this explanation is massively oversimplified?

In 1969, IBM got hit with a massive antitrust suit regarding anti-competitive practices and market share issues. After thirteen years of discovery and pre-trial litigation, the suit lasted until 1982. When it was dismissed for mootness — that is to say, the reason for the lawsuit no longer existed.

In my opinion, two major things emerged from this suit. One, the scene was set for Apple to exist. Secondly, and far more pertinent to myself?

This one lawsuit was the major reason larger law firms paid their first year associates so much.

See, for thirteen years, this case persisted. And during those thirteen years, that case produced an absolutely exorbitant amount of paper. Over thirty million pages of documents. Large number, right? So large as to be meaningless?

Let's put that into perspective.

A ream of paper was 500 pages and 20 pounds. So if you assume every 500 sheets of paper weigh 20 pounds, some simple math gets you sixty thousand reams of paper.

Now multiply by twenty. You get 1.2 million pounds of paper.

Or six hundred TONS of paper.

And every single one of these pieces of paper had to be gone through by a lawyer.

This single case was responsible for inflating the value of lawyers by an absurd sum, because one firm had to pay increasingly massive amounts of money to make lawyers go through this paper. And when other firms saw how much money they were offering, they had to raise their wages too.

Which was why I could afford the down payment on my Greenwich Village condominium even before my arbitrage of Stark Industries stock happened. (But waited, because I wanted a better financial position when taking out a mortgage.)

Now, obviously this was not the same beast as what IBM did. But it falls into the same school of thought: drown them in paper and waste their time. There was absolutely no way that Osborn could produce enough documents to tie me up in perpetuity – give me enough tea and sugar, and I could crank out sorting all of this in an all-nighter and the next day.

But the problem was that I couldn't just spend all of my time on this.

"I still have several other things to do today," I told Joshua. "If you have anything else on your plate, go do that first, and if you're not done, stop at five. I'm going to run home around then and grab something other than a skirt suit, then come back and keep plugging at this. You're under no obligation to come back after five, but if you do, it's double overtime pay, just for how much this task is going to suck. And dinner's on me"

"Sounds good," Joshua said. "I'm gonna call my dad, ask for any pointers on solving this mess."

"Good idea," I said, looking at the papers. "Have we found Harry Osborn's medical records yet?"

"Nope." Joshua's response had me scowling. "I've got tons from Osborn senior, but nothing on his son."

Well, shit.

"Alright, put this down and come back to it later," I told Joshua. "I'll check back on this in an hour, and unless everything else is done on your end, I expect to not see you in here. Understood?"

"Absolutely," Joshua said, rubbing his eyes. I took the opportunity to walk out of the room, and let my annoyance fully take hold.

Once I sat back down at my desk, I powered on my computer, and grabbed a notepad while I waited several minutes for it to finish booting.

It was time to draft a Request for Judicial Intervention. If Osborn was going to play games with Harry's records? Well… I'd just get a judge involved.

And once the referee was on the ice, then I'd file the subpoena.

Friday, June 8, 1990

Walking into The Palm was always a fun experience. Yes, it was a restaurant, but it quite literally painted its history on the walls. The original Palm may have been gone, but The Palm Too – quite literally across the street from the original, at 840 2nd Avenue – took the original's thing and went even further.

You walked into this restaurant, and you saw the caricatures on the wall. All the biggest local names adorned every surface, done in classic newspaper comic style. If you came to these places enough, tossed enough Benjamins around, you too could wind up on the wall. And if you had a usual table, your spot on the wall would probably be right above it.

And so I wasn't surprised to see the caricature trio of Lewin, Lieberman, and Loeb… right above the booth that Sam Lieberman sat in. He sipped at a glass of scotch, neat, and looked up from the menu when he heard footsteps headed his way.

His eyes lit up when he saw me, and I couldn't help but offer a smile back to match his.

Amazing how much our relationship improved when he wasn't my boss anymore. And when I was his son's boss instead.

… which, now that I thought about it for a moment, was quite the odd shift in social dynamics.

"Ordered a drink for you already," he said, gesturing with his tumbler of whiskey as I slid left into the booth, gingerly pulling the arms of my sunglasses up and off of my horns before putting them away in my purse. "Asked 'em to get some mint from the barkeep."

Sure enough, when I stopped to actually look, there was a glass of iced tea, extra lemon, with fresh mint in it.

"Just please say you haven't ordered actual lunch yet," I said before squeezing two lemon wedges into my iced tea, stirring it up, and taking a wonderful first sip. Iced tea was already nice – but add in a good bit of lemon and some fresh mint? Now it was on a whole new level.

"No, but let's be honest," Sam said, looking at me over the rim of his glass. "You're going to get either the salmon or the caesar salad, only eat half of it, and then get a slice of cheesecake."

"Unless I like the soup of the day," I said, hiding my consternation with another sip of my tea. Because really, he was right. That was my go-to.

"It's clam chowder."

Oh, ew.

I must've made a more visceral look of disgust than I'd intended, because Sam's laugh filled our booth the instant I cringed at the thought of that utterly disgusting mess that tried to call itself a soup.

"Even if I wasn't allergic, you wouldn't catch me dead eating that slop," I said with a shudder. "How do people even enjoy that?"

"Some of us have taste," Sam said. I offered him a disdainful sniff, but was prevented from answering by the waiter showing up.

"I'll have the salmon filet, sauce on the side," I said, briefly offering Sam the stink eye when he tried to cover the sound of his snort with his hand.

"The crab cakes for me," Sam said, drawing yet another stink-eye from me as the waiter walked away. "What?"

"Just going to sit there and tempt me with the forbidden fruit," I said, offering him a half-lidded stare. "You're a bad Jew, Sam."

"Don't even start," he said, though I could hear the joke in his tone. "I've seen you eating a cheeseburger. You're no perfect kosher lady."

"... fine, I'll give you that one," I said, reaching into my purse to pull out my planner and a pen. "But at least I'm kosher at home."

"Yeah. Cause your dad's a rabbi," he said with a smirk.

"Only half right," I said, answering his smirk with one of my own. "Kept people from inviting themselves over for dinner, or asking me to make stuff for a potluck. People have this weird preconception that kosher meat is always dry and overly salty."

Which was true for the worse examples. A bad kosher butcher just… ugh. Avoid at all costs. Absolutely the worst meat I had ever eaten in my life.

"So, debating who's the worse Jew aside—"

"You," I immediately cut in, and received a mild glare from Sam for my trouble.

"Regardless. We've got a date locked in."

Sam had my full attention. I had my planner open and pen ready.

"Appellate Division has oral arguments scheduled on August 23," he said. "However you're in contact with the kid and his 'abductor'?" I could genuinely hear the air quotes around that last word. "Make sure you or they can produce Allerdyce. Even if your guy's gotta sit next to him and whisk the kid away at the last minute. Depending who we get for our panel, we may wanna have 'em need to stare the kid down while trying to justify that sham trial."

"Do you think it's worth trying to reach out to Captain Rogers?" I asked. "He involved himself in things at the end there. May be worthwhile having him in the courtroom, helping stare down the judges."

"Absolutely not," Sam said, wrinkling his nose. "At least not in that capacity. It may be worth trying to have him work with a lawyer to file an amicus brief. A brief from him would probably be more influential than a Supreme Court Justice's." Unspoken was that if the Captain showed up on his own anyway, we at least wanted to justify his presence with an amicus brief.

"Fair point," I said. "I think that's a bit of a long shot, though. It would require one of us to have a line directly to the Avengers."

"Unless you go through JAG," Sam pointed out. "Or we play the Rolodex game to find someone who served in his unit way back when."

Someone who served in Captain America's unit? So that would mean starting the search for people all the way back at Camp Lehigh in… when was it, 1941?

… wait.

"Actually? I might have a lead on that," I said, putting things together in my head. "But I can't actually do anything on that front just yet. Not until my current case is resolved, anyway. That's where the connection might be, if I've got my timeline straight."

"Right, that case. I heard from that friend of yours in the clerk's office last I was there." Sam leaned back in the bench, taking a sip of his whiskey. "So. Osborn, huh. How's that going for you?"

"That's… complicated," I hedged. "They IBM'd us on our discovery requests."

"Uh-huh," Sam said, deadpan. "Noa, that's annoying, not complicated. And you wouldn't have said things were complicated if it was something covered by privilege, because I would have let things drop if you'd raised the privilege. So stop beating around the bush. Just tell me."

I hesitated. This wasn't something I could just say out loud, not when there was a very real chance that somebody could overhear it. But at the same time… having somebody outside of the case who knew? That would make for an amazing insurance policy.

And beyond that, I did need some advice here.

I reached into my purse and pulled out the small notebook I kept in there, then wrote out a simple message: Norman Osborn is a superhuman. Once that was written, I flipped the notebook closed (with my thumb at the right spot), and turned it to Sam.

He took the hint and grabbed the notebook so that it would open to the correct page.

His eyes went wider than I'd ever seen them when he read it.

"Are you certain?" Sam asked, to which I nodded. "And you're sure he's not…" he pointed a finger at me and waved it in a circle. I got what he was getting at.

"He's not," I said. "I've met mutants with enhanced strength before. They learn how to control it by the time they reach his age."

"How strong are we talking?" Sam asked, and hidden beneath that was the unspoken question. How much of a danger is he?

"You know the mahogany chairs at the big courthouse?" I asked. Sam nodded. To get the rest of my message across, I picked up my bread knife, and threw a feint at my glass of iced tea, hoping he'd intuit what I was getting at.

"He—" Sam caught himself, and leaned in over the table, his left hand coming up to block someone outside the booth from hearing. "Broke it?"

"Arms of the chairs," I said, my right hand doing the same as Sam's left. "Bare fingers."

"Scheisse, Noa," Sam said, leaning back into the booth. "Okay. Opponent is scary, and in more ways than one. What else is the problem?"

"He's playing games with discovery," I revealed. "I'd rather not have filed an RJI, but I needed a judge to hold his feet to the fire with actual consequences. The issue is that I know he's still not giving us everything, but I'm not sure how to get it out of him."

Sam just gave me a Look (patent pending).

"... Noa. Just depose him."

I opened my mouth to reply, but the food took that moment to show up, temporarily stopping me from saying anything. The waiter put a small bottle of Tabasco next to Sam's cocktail sauce, and he wasted no time letting a few glugs mix into the already somewhat spicy red sauce. I, meanwhile, took a first bite of my salmon, and found it delightfully moist and flaky.

But still in need of the lemon they provided, which I liberally squeezed across the fish.

"How's your food?" I asked Sam, just as a bit of perfunctory mid-meal small talk.

"I forgot to ask for some horseradish for the cocktail sauce," Sam said, chuckling. "My mistake. You?"

"Need to figure out how they keep the salmon moist," I said, poking it with my fork. "I swear, I cannot cook salmon well."

"Cookbooks, Noa." I shot a mild glare his way. "Regardless. Just depose the asshole."

"I'm trying to maintain a measure of civility in this," I said, shaking my head. "The moment I go for a deposition, Osborn's going to tell his team to retaliate, and escalate."

"They already escalated, Noa," Sam pointed out. "They're playing games with discovery. You do not do that." He paused for a moment, just looking me in the eyes. "You're scared of Osborn."

I nodded. There was no point in denying it.

"That's a good fear to have," he said. "Healthy. But you're letting that fear stop you from doing your job. So here's what you're going to do: you're going to depose Osborn. You're going to sit him down in front of half a dozen witnesses and a court reporter, where he can't do shit with that power of his, and get him under oath. You're going to put him on the spot, really grill him. And when he retaliates – not if, when – you document that shit. And then you keep going." Sam pointed at me with his fork. "Men like Osborn, they only got one playbook: aggression. So keep him on the defensive. He wants to act. Make him react instead."

"And if things escalate past a point I'm comfortable with?" I asked, jabbing the salmon with my fork.

"If Osborn tries to take shit to the level I think he will?" Sam said, leaning in and lowering his voice. "Then he's going to fuck up hard somewhere along the way. And when he does? First, you call that friend of yours in the FBI. Then you call your buddy at the Bugle. And then? When it's time to put the screws to him?"

Sam stabbed his fork into a crab cake hard enough I could hear the tines scrape the plate.

"You call me."

Notes:

Pound the Table, Prologue: posted July 16, 2021

Pound the Table, Chapter Eighteen: posted July 16, 2022

Hot damn. It really has been a full year, hasn't it?

You know, I did not expect that this fic would get so popular when I started it. I mean — "Law & Order, but in Marvel" seems interesting on the surface, yeah, but some part of me kept saying "this isn't what people want to see when they click on "X-Men" or "Marvel" or "[insert superhero setting here]".

And yet, several thousand people have consistently proven me wrong every time that little shred of self-doubt returns.

Thank you everyone for sticking with me for this first year. And hopefully y'all stick around as this keeps going – because let's be clear: it ain't going anywhere.

I've got things at least [i]roughly[/i] outlined all the way up to Y2K. And we're still running in the 90's here.

Anyways, hope everybody enjoys their weekend! Still torn over whether the next update will be Chapter 19, or if it'll be the next "What If...?" sidestory, which you'll be able to find in Pound the Table — Extras & Outtakes. Feel free to say which you'd prefer to see next in the comments!