“Guards!” Lyili slammed her fists down, fire bursting all over her body. “Seize this criminal at once!” Jeez, you’d think she was the king or something.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The woman that was obviously Suza held out what looked like a pen. “Any closer, and I’ll use this to detonate the bomb I’ve attached to the safe, destroying everything inside.”

“N-No!” coach Coach cried. “Please, your majesty!”

“F-Father!” Minzfel hid behind the throne.

“Don’t tell me…” the king started. “Is there a bomb here in the palace?”

“I won’t reveal its location. Not yet,” Suza said. “All I want to do is to recount my infiltration of the stadium last night. After that, I will surrender myself.”

“This is preposterous…” Lyili said.

The king wiped the sweat off his forehead. “But… who are you?” He was just salivating over this woman a few minutes ago and he couldn’t recognize her? The mask barely even concealed her face, not to mention that her hair was exactly the same as before.

Suza pointed to her cheek, still holding the small device in front of her. “You may call me… ‘Blue Diamond’.” The audience started to murmur amongst themselves.

I turned to whisper to Violetta, just narrowly avoiding a horn in the eye. “This is Suza.”

“Wha-!?” I covered her mouth as quickly as possible.

“Don’t blow her cover. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s obvious that she doesn’t want anyone to know it’s her.”

“Do you really think she stole it?” Violetta finally started whispering back. “Oh no, do you think the orphanage is running out of money?”

“How should I know?”

“I really hope she’s just saying this to protect Jaim…” Violetta frowned. “If she really did steal it, whose going to take care of the kids?”

Violetta was right. As convenient as it was for her to take the attention off the brat, her taking the blame didn’t help him either. Plus, Suza was a self-proclaimed fan of mine. The best thing I could do for Jaim was to prove that neither of them did it.

Okay. She was also hot. That didn’t matter to me of course. Likewise, her skin tight outfit didn’t factor into my decision either. I was a good person. Seriously.

I was.

“Sir Allard?” Lyili asked, grinding her teeth together.

“Your majesty, my assistant and I both agree that we should allow Blue Diamond to speak,” I announced. “No, you must let her. If she’s telling the truth, it will lead to the location of the safe!” Fuck yeah, I was selling this shit hard.

“That’s right!” Fuck yeah, Violetta helped I guess.

“Now this is a trial.” Yaika gave me a lazy thumbs up. “Good job, Ryley!” Thanks…?

“Very well, she may speak.” The king nodded, straightening himself up. “However, I won’t allow you to put any of my subject’s lives in danger. You’d best think wisely about pressing that device of yours.” Dark energy swirled around the king’s body like a storm. Holy shit, I forgot how scary this idiot could be.

“If you’ll allow me to tell my story, then I shouldn’t have any reason to press it.” Suza smiled, walking over to the stand. Coach Coach practically tripped over himself backing away from her.

“Fine. I agree to your terms.” Lyili crossed her arms. “Proceed with your questioning, Sir Allard.”

I wasn’t expecting to be questioning the matron of an orphanage holding a bomb detonator, but here I was. At least it couldn’t get much crazier than this. Here went nothing.

“Why did you steal the safe?” I asked.

“I was hired.” Suza narrowed her eyes, a seductive smile on her face. Was it… getting hot in here? “It should go without saying, but I can’t reveal my client’s identity. Thief’s honor.”

“What’s inside of it?” I asked. Fuck the coach. Whatever he was hiding, I was going to find out.

“I’m not at liberty to say. My client explicitly asked me not to reveal that information.” Neat. So I basically just learned absolutely nothing.

“So… what can you tell me?”

“I can tell you how I entered the stadium through picking one of the backdoors.” Suza grinned. “And I can tell you how I took the safe from the coach’s office.”

“T-That’s impossible! There’s no way you lifted it. That safe is almost three feet tall!” coach Coach squawked. Really? Demons used feet? They didn’t use meters or lizard tails or something?

“It’s not that hard to figure out, old man.” Suza laughed. “I used one of the carts in the equipment room. They work like forklifts, so no lifting required. All I needed to do was bring it out to my getaway van and I was out of there.”

“You’ve… you’ve got to be kidding me…” Coach Coach looked furious. Well, I thought he did anyway. What did an ‘angry bird’ look like anyway?

“Hold on.” I pointed at Suza. “You used the cart to bring the safe out to a van?”

“That right.” Suza glared at me. “Is something wrong with that?”

“Oh nothing’s wrong with it.” I said. “It’s just if that’s true… then we can assume that the stadium staff discovered a cart in the parking lot this morning?”

Suza bit down on her bottom lip. Bingo.

“What’s going on?” Violetta whispered in a voice that was loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I’m saying that if she used a cart to move the safe to the parking lot, then it should have been there this morning,” I said. “After all, it would be pretty risky to go through the trouble of going back to the storage room to return it, don’t you think?”

“That… does make sense…” the king said. Of course it did.

“R-Returning it wasn’t risky,” Suza started, only to be cut off.

“No, the kid’s right,” coach Coach said. “A handful of my players were practicing at the stadium last night. Even if you managed to avoid being seen by them the first time, it doesn’t make any sense for you to go back in and risk being caught… What the hell’s goin’ on here!?”

“W-Well, I left it in the parking lot then,” Suza said. Yeah, real convincing.

“We can clear this up pretty easily.” I turned to the king. “Make a call to your guards at the stadium and ask them if any of the staff found a cart.”

“An excellent idea, Mr. Allard.” The king raised his thumb high in the air for the weirdest thumbs up ever. “I’m very interested in what they’ll say.”

The door slammed open.

“Come on!” the king yelled. “For the last time, please be quiet if you’re going to leave the… Brad?”

“Y-Your majesty!” Brad huffed.

“Is… everything alright?”

“No! It’s totally not! I just got a call from the guards you, like, sent down to the stadium!”

“Oh good.” The king gave a sigh of relief. “We were just talking about that…”

“T-They found the safe at the bottom of the pond on the field!” Brad said. “B-But… oh god… That’s… that’s not all they found down there!”

Lyili looked just as confused as I was. “What do you mean that’s not all?”

“Prowteg! The Janitor’s star player!” Dozens of tentacles shot out of Brad’s body, flailing around. “He’s dead, man! His body was down there!” With that, the crowd erupted.

It took a moment for it to sink it. This was a murder, and it involved the very thing Suza claimed she had stolen. What the fuck was happening?

“Wow! Now this is a trial,” Yaika yelled over the chaos. “Good job, Ryley!”