...at least his partner can joke. If Dredd ever cracked a smile she'd probably pass out. And there was nothing to joke about the shifting chaos that tried to coalesce around her, where she'd normally find a center of focus. Images bled and mixed into each other, like a story played too fast and underwater.

"Cassandra," she said, simply. Leave the 'Judge' part out for now. Just Cassandra. And she showed a bit of her own past, orphan, mutant, outcast. She felt the confusion, a flash of the shot he'd flung at her from some sort of targeting system, saw herself go down. If it confused him less....she rippled, standing before him, and let the tear in the body armor show, where the round had creased her rib plating. He could shoot her here: it wouldn't do anything. "What's wrong? Alex. Talk to me." Talk to me, and for grud's sake don't shoot anyone in the outside.