A single snort of laughter echoed from the back of the gallery, quickly silenced. Judge Donahue’s expression clouded with bemused confusion, clearly struggling to follow Roma’s scattered logic. The rest of the courtroom sat in uncomfortable silence, watching the usually polished attorney practically vibrate with misplaced pride at his own dubious wit, his hands still frozen mid-count like he’d forgotten to put them down. His gaze tracked away from Juniper, something crossing his face… almost bashful… as he muttered, barely audible, “…this is really doing something for me.”

The words died in his throat as Judge Donahue’s expression turned to granite. Daniel surged to his feet, every inch of his frame radiating barely contained fury at Roma’s relentless attempts to undermine not just their case, but Juniper’s professional dignity. Beside him, Sophia’s usual warm demeanor had frozen into something sharp enough to butcher a steer - they’d all watched Roma’s calculated strikes at Juniper’s credentials as an examiner, each jab designed to diminish her expertise before the jury.

Juniper had endured his thinly veiled attacks on her technical knowledge, weathered his dismissal of her insights, and maintained her composure through his attempts to paint her professional background as a punchline. But this - this casual reduction of her to mere measurements - was the final straw. In that moment, her hemispheres bifolded… left despicably perplexed at how someone could be so smitten by her biscuits…

“You look like a horse,” her voice cut through the tension, sharp and precise as a surgeon’s scalpel, carrying all the controlled fury of someone who’d earned her place in this courtroom through years of dedication. “With that long face of yours.”

The retort wasn’t just a comeback… it was the declaration of a woman who would no longer allow herself to become familiar with being put in her place. She wouldn’t be diminished, wouldn’t let her hard-won expertise be turned into a joke. Her words carried the weight of every female attorney who’d ever had to prove themselves twice as hard to be taken half as seriously.