Even super heroes can’t get out of court.

Judge: Are you Penny Yoshinobu?
Me: Yes, your Honor.
Judge: You have been charged with no vehicle registration and no safety sticker. Do you accept or contest these charges or have anything else to say in this matter?
Me: I’d like to contest the expired registration charge. The registration I presented was an Oregon registration and I think the stupid cop officer misread it. *mumbles* Bad Cop. No Donut
Judge: Do you have the registration with you?
Me: No your Honor. The owner of the vehicle had to take it to work today.
Judge actually laughs
Both: *ahem*
Judge: The bailiff will have your slip and your rescheduled court summons date.
Me: Thank you.

[commercial break]

Welcome back viewers! Hang onto your seats everyone! Here comes another exciting episode of the Penny: Adventures of a Super Haole!!

[theme music “The Laziest men on Mars - THE TERRIBLE SECRET OF SPACE” and opening credits play]

“No Cops and Bad Donuts.”

The night before her court summons, Penny and her mother’s boyfriend (aka “The Almost Evil Step-Father”) were searching frantically for the registration and insurance card for his truck. Some evil mynah bird or cockroach (presumably employed by the Mokes Interested in Never Accepting Haoles organization or “M.I.N.A.H”) no doubt had stolen it just prior to them realizing it was missing. The malicious intentions of the mynahs and cockroaches were obvious to Penny, but her Almost Evil Step Dad insisted that it had probably been an accidental misplacement. (Yeah right. How could a cockroach accidentally misplace the vehicle registration papers? The damn things were as big as the roach!)

Since Penny’s original plan of attack had been discovered and thwarted (that of walking up to the judge and saying “Here, your Honor. This is the registration I presented to the officer. Clearly it is not expired. Clearly it exists. Thus your officer is an idiot.”) she quickly had to come up with a Plan B. Penny ran to her computer and hurriedly logged onto to the World Wide Web where she accessed her infinite intelligence resources…namely her mecha’s AI personality “Valiant” (who was busy doing Calculus and couldn’t help) and her best friend “Moose” and his mecha’s AI personality (code-named R.I.O. the Radically Intelligent Other) for help. She also called upon other Intelligent Beings such as her associate D.P.W. and a former colleague with a Hawaiian name meaning “God”. Unfortunately, no immediate solution presented itself.

After hours of perusing various Hawaii State Law books which had been sloppily converted to HTML, Penny finally decided to just go and plead not guilty, and ask for a later court date so that she would have time to replace the registration card and so that her Almost Evil Step Dad could get a stupid safety check. So, at midnight, Penny went to sleep.

[commercial break: Ad for a new Britney Speares Baby doll. Pull her string and she says “Oops I did it again” and begins to smell like real baby poo poo.]

The next morning, she arose bright and early and stepped outside only to see that the clean laundry she had hung up the day before was still on the outside clothes line… and thus soaking wet. *Penny smacks head in dismay, grumbles incoherently as she steps into the car and leaves her suburban home, kicking up cinder dust as she accelerates away*

Her first task was to find the courthouse. It is a well known fact that Hilo, Hawaii is the most illogically designed city in the universe, with one-way streets all going in the wrong direction, two way streets which spontaneously morph into one-way streets at certain hours of the day, given the right conditions, as well as randomly placed traffic lights where the left-turn arrow is only green for maybe 1.76 seconds. Needless to say, finding the courthouse was not an easy task. Neither was finding the courtroom once she found the house. All the entrances to the building were blocked off with “emergency exit only” signs and bright orange tape except for a single door on the very far end of the building.

Eventually, after many long and painful staircases (she was very sore from her latest and very strenuous super-hero training session from the previous Monday) She headed towards what looked like some kind of office. But just before she entered the room, she noticed an extremely attractive Japanese Looking Guy heading down the hall. He nodded at her (probably because she was staring at him) and she promptly walked smack into the door she had forgotten to open. *rubs nose* gahh… :(

[transmission interrupted. the words “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US” flash upon the screen before being hastily replaced by another commercial break: A re-run for the Britney Speares Baby Doll ad.]

After receiving directions from the lady at the desk, Penny noticed a few other people heading in the general direction of a big fake wooden double door labeled “Court Room 3″. Penny checked her yellow citation. Yep. This was the place. She entered. And then immediately stopped because not only were there no seats, but there was a big guy in a yellow shirt standing just inside the door. After the Yellow Shirt moved, Penny glanced around, and thus she saw the *gasp* extremely attractive Japanese Looking Guy sitting all by himself with maybe 6 inches of space next to him!!!! *JOY!!* Penny asked politely to sit down. *evil grin*

Court was in session for maybe 20 minutes before Penny was called up. She was surprised at how many people in the court room she recognized. Hey! Isn’t that the girl who dropped out of school in 8th grade? She used to share her lunch with me! I wonder who that weird guy she’s with is. Maybe he is her dad. *penny sees them kiss* ehh… *blinks*

“Penny Yoshinobu!”
*penny jumps, rises and approaches the bench*
[editors note: insert previously featured conversation between Judge and Penny here.]
*penny breathes a sigh of relief, signs some paperwork and quietly exits… nodding to the extremely attractive Japanese Looking Guy as she stumbles out and navigates her way back to her car… parked 3 blocks away where parking was free. Then she drove home and arrived back in her room before she normally would even be awake on a day without school.

The End

[end theme music “Ranma 1/2 sndtrk - Baka Song” (used with permission) and end credits play]

Stay tuned til next week… when Penny will once again battle against the forces of Evil and attempt to rescue her soaking wet laundry in You Can’t Sun-Dry Laundry in the Rainiest City in the United States (part 1 of 6).