48 Prosecutor

{SHIZU POV}

/Do your best, my Champion. Feel free to win by any means necessary./

Tyche's voice echoed inside Shizu's head even as she did her best to focus on the task at hand. The sheer scale of what was happening now was putting her off balance, preventing her from focusing on what she was supposed to do as she kept blanking out on the papers in front of her.

"This is... Am I seriously..."

She couldn't help but mumble to herself the more she tried reading through the papers in front of her. In her mind, Tyche was already telling her to do the best she could to win all by herself. She simply nodded, but in her mind, she knew she couldn't just abandon her friends in both Riku and Nyx. She had agreed to be their ally in exchange for being spared, sure, but they were also the only friends she now had in this fantastical world away from all she ever knew. There was no way she could ever give that up, even if it cost her her life.

"I can do this... You're taught better than this..." she told herself as she dove deep into her papers. "Just focus and learn..."

All her life, she was always told that she had wasted her potential; that she could've been anything she could ever want if she just applied herself to it. She knew it as well. She was always rather talented at anything she actually studied for. Her grades were good when she felt like putting in effort, and she was pretty talented at drawing when she actually managed to practice.

Well, the problem was that she didn't end up being a doctor or a lawyer. Instead, she hyperfixated on fortune telling, something that her parents really didn't approve.

"Your Honor, may I call the Goddess of Chaos, Nyx, to the stand!"

Riku's booming voice pulled her out of her musings. She hadn't even read that far into her papers yet, and here was her partner already making moves she had no hopes of ever divining.

"Riku?" Shizu confusedly asked. "What are you..."

"Keep reading," he tersely replied, his gaze still trained on his goddess as he spoke. "You'll know what to do when you're done."

She could only blink as the scene around her then began playing out before her very eyes. It almost felt like she was a bystander. A bystander that had the eye of the literal gods boring down on her with all the pressure that it entailed. It made her feel small and helpless, which was what she had felt ever since she found herself being involved in this game of the gods.

'I really don't belong here...'

She inwardly sighed. It was always the one thing that she knew even as she followed Riku and Nyx around through the Depths. There was no reason for her to be in the Deep Blue fighting for her life in a game that she had no business in playing. Hell, she didn't even want to come back to life, but what else was she supposed to do? Now that she was alive again, she didn't want to experience dying all over again.

And just like that, a clarity suddenly entered her as her focus honed in on what she was supposed to do. Diving right back into the papers, her mind moved quickly as she skimmed through the papers like a woman possessed. Even as the proceedings in front of her began to move without her knowledge, she already had an inkling on what she was supposed to do.

'A prosecutor's role...' she thought to herself, her keen eyes honing in on the parts that she had to play. 'Riku's playing defense, so I have to play offense...'

All of a sudden, Tyche's earlier advice made sense. He probably realized what was happening and told her to just pound Nyx into the dirt. Not that she planned on doing so, but it was the most logical thing to do if she wanted to win. Well, she didn't want to do that. She just wanted to help her newfound friends, and that was exactly what she was going to do.

But of course, she also had to make sure that she'd pass the trial, even she had no idea how that was being weighted in the first place.

"Nyx," Riku began, his voice dull and serious as he hit his papers for emphasis. "Is it true that you tried to vandalize this very courtroom exactly fifty thousand years ago?"

"Uhh... Yeah?" Nyx replied with a shrug. "I don't see why I have to lie about that."

"And is it true that you regret ever doing such a thing?" Riku followed up, his voice taking on a more defensive tone. "Is it true that you wish you didn't do such a thing in the first place?"

To this, Nyx actually pulled her hood down even further as she replied, "No.. Not really."

Shizu's eyes narrowed as she quickly turned to look at the gods watching. Her own patron god was just smiling like usual, while the rest almost looked bored at what was happening. Meanwhile, Themis looked as neutral as ever. He was obviously judging them, sure, but to what ends? She knew that she should begin questioning Nyx now as the prosecutor, but somehow, it felt like it was the wrong move to do so.

Even the papers themselves... It almost read like it was... supposed to be ignored? And the word justice kept popping up for some reason.

"Prosecution. Do you have any questions?"

The fortune teller perked up at the sudden attention, Themis's booming voice catching her off-guard as she looked up to Riku looking at him expectantly. Clearly, her partner already had something in mind for the trial they were enacting. All she had to do was to play her part.... But what was it, exactly?

"Your Honor, I would like to reexamine the witness," Shizu absently called out, her mind piecing together all she had just read into something coherent. "Nyx, are you not the Goddess of Chaos?"

It was a random question, but some things just didn't make any sense. Either way, she was going to get to the bottom of this with Riku. All she had to do was trust him.