One error right off (which I suppose that you can blame on the press rather than yourself, if it's plot-relevant, but still and all it sticks out) is the news broadcast that recites that "the guilty combat cyborgs known as the Numbers were directed into rehabilitation programs instead of being convicted." While partially true, don't forget that Uno, Tre, Quattro, and Sette all ended up doing hard time along with Jail. Unlike, say, the Book of Darkness incident, where Hayate and the Wolkies got off with "community service" and Graham and the Liezes got to "retire," so that everybody walked in one way or another, there was a definite split in how the JS Incident perpetrators were handled--those who chose to work with the TSAB received rehabilitation assignments, while those who didn't received punitive sentences.
(As a side note, I'd love...just
love...if Auris ever brought up the JS Incident to Hayate as an example--mainly since she, after all, was guilty as sin of working with the conspiracy to create the black-budgeted combat cyborg project as her father's aide. "Gee, Auris, what was that about giving undue leniency to people who helped give the terrorist who tried to destroy the entire planet of Cranagan and overthrow the TSAB all the funding and equipment he needed to pull that off?" Or, "Of course I'm willing to work with you, Auris. After all, as director of the Shadows, every once in a while your minions kill someone who's an
enemy of the TSAB, which already puts you ahead of your father's performance.")
Now, as to the courtroom scenes...well, you announced in the A/N that you knew it was awful and you glossed it over, and as much as I really hate to say it, it
was awful. The problem here is that the entire web of plots and counterplots--the dynamic between Auris and Hayate as well as the moral decisions both have to face--all center around the outcome of the trial. So the trial serves as the "public face" of where those plots stand--where we, the readers, get to see the
results of the plotting and scheming. Hearing what Hayate actually had to say would have been important, at least to me: first off, it begins her initial
public stance, the tack she's going to openly take and from which she needs to work from. Secondly, what Hayate says at trial shapes where Auris needs to go with her own scheming to try and get the results she wants. Thirdly, in some places, there were things that needed to be said. For example, when you wrote: "It was almost boring, how easy it was for Hayate to strike down all of the opposing pleas for clemency stuttered by the nervous defendants" I really wanted to know how she countered those arguments.
A couple of side notes: a
defendant is the person who's being charged in a criminal case (the person against whom the case is brought--in a civil case, it's the person being sued).
Raven is the defendant in this case. I think you meant to say "defender," "defense counsel," or something similar...
Likewise, I may merely have fuzzy recollections of the earlier chapters, but I don't recall if anybody's brought up the giant pink elephant in the room yet:
did the deceased Shadow participate in the actual murders during his undercover operation? Certainly, if he did, the defense attorneys are going to try to scream this one to the heavens and all over the press. The TSAB seems to be staging this one as "heroic law-enforcement officer cut down in the line of duty by crazed vigilante," but if he was an actual killer, that's going to be hard to sell (and might explain why Auris has a plan set up to stage a prison break and assassinate Raven, to keep this information from getting out).
The real problem with the trial scene, though, isn't the internal problems with it, but how it affects the rest of the story. I mentioned one issue above, but it also strongly affects the remainder of the chapter. You did a really nice job showing Fate being the caring friend for Hayate in the second half of the chapter, but some of the emotional "punch" was stolen because the scene is all about Hayate's emotional exhaustion and we didn't actually get to see the things that exhausted her. The implication is that she had a hard day at trial, not just because of the physical effort of speechifying or the mental effort of debating the defense counsel, but the emotional cost of what it is she's doing--the positions that she's taking (as Fate rather cogently asks). But we don't really see what it is she's doing or how she's compromising what we expect to be her morality, so we don't see the cost to her. So on the one hand there's the "show, don't tell" factor concerning how she's come to this exhausted state so we can "feel" it from her, and on the other hand there's the problem that it's hard to get caught up in the tension of Hayate being drawn into moral gray areas when we don't actually see her entering those areas.
Remember too, with your regard to "rehashing" the arguments Hayate and Auris had, that
Raven's perspective on her actions--and the slant on that perspective that her defense will try to present--are not the same as Hayate's perspective. Here, you need to put yourself into the shoes of those defense advocates, and present
their case--not the abstract moral arguments that Hayate or Nanoha would present because they believe in them, but the arguments that defense counsel would put forward for the purposes of having their client walk out of the courtroom as a free woman.
Enough said there. Let's move on.
As I said, the scene with Fate and Hayate was, by contrast, extremely good. I found it very easy to visualize Fate driving Hayate home, the scenes inside the car, their shifting expressions, the sweep of the windshield wipers (for some reason, even though you never actually said so, I somehow mentally "wrote" the rain into the scene...weird, huh?). Fate driving past Hayate's house was an evocative moment, a sudden "I have something important to say" announcement. That and I found Fate slowing
down to ten MPH (you know, I just realized that it's probably KPH, isn't it?
)
above the speed limit to be ridiculously cute.