User blog:GamerNerd i/A Friendly Game of Chess

//From now on I’m going to use the full names. I don’t know why, I just feel like it’s more… respectful to the characters. Dialogue is still “word for word.”

I got this message earlier. My guess is that Rotom sent it, because neither of the two seem to notice that he’s recording. Also because I don’t think they’d want this to get out… But whatever. I mean, come on. They’re playing chess. What's the worst that could happen?

Transcript

Rotom sounds like he’s asleep when this starts, but he’s obviously not because he turned on the camera. That seems weird since the two kids actually are playing normal chess, which is kinda boring. But maybe this happens all the time so Rotom expected something interesting.

Seems like Aidan decided to visit Nadia. I don’t know exactly what Nadia’s bedroom looks like, but there’s an impressive number of bookshelves in the relatively small space. If the place was bigger I could’ve confused it with my old school’s library.

“Check,” Aidan says, moving a pawn into position.

Nadia’s knight moves in to remove the pawn. Aidan moves another pawn to take over the knight. “Check,” he says again.

Nadia moves her king forward one space. It’s not much, but it gets the king out of the way of the pawn.

Aidan smirks. “Well, that’s checkmate.”

Nadia’s eyes dart around the board. “What?!? How?”

“I mean, for one thing, that’s basically your only piece, aside from that rook that you swapped earlier.”

Nadia rolls her eyes. “And that's my fault?”

Aidan looks indecisive for a second. “Yes and no. But anyway, if your king moves here…” He goes through each possibility for escape, shutting each down.

There's an awkward silence for a few seconds. Aidan starts to get up, presumably to clean up the set. Then Nadia literally flips the table, smacking Aidan flat in the face. This prompts a… colorful response from Aidan, an odd mixture of modern swear words and various other swears used by video game characters.

“WHAT IN THE NAME OF ARCEUS WAS THAT FOR????” He yells to conclude his rant, covering up a bloody nose. He extends a hand and a yellow beam extends from it to his face. In a few seconds his nose isn't bleeding anymore.

Nadia is a little shocked about what she just did and slowly moves to put everything back upright. “I’m sorry Aidan… I just…” She stoops to pick up a few pieces and put them back on the table. “You’ve beaten me at literally every analog game I have in the room,” Nadia sighs. “And in my family I’m usually the one who wins all the time. Especially chess.”

“Yeah, I understand.” Aidan corrects the table and grabs a tissue to clean up the splotch of red his injury had created. “My family isn’t really made up of gamers, so my only worthy opponents come from this club at school. I’ve been with them for a year now and can’t beat any of them consistently.”

“Admittedly, it’s also that these board games aren't as entertaining as I’d think.” She laughs while placing the chess set on a shelf among a multitude of board and card games. “Heck, to be honest, watching you play is more entertaining than this, and I don't even know what’s going on.”

Aidan stops wiping the table to give her a skeptical look. “Is this about me talking to myself? Because I’ve told you how much that helps.”

“Of course not,” Nadia replies. After a moment she adds, “Okay, maybe just a little,” and starts giggling.

Aidan sighs as he finished wiping and tosses the reddened tissue behind him. Impressively, it lands in the trash behind him. “Hey, you know what? Let’s try chess in a different way.”

Nadia glances at him as she readjusts her collection. “Different in what way? The way you said it doesn't sound good.”

“Surely your repertoire of material has some kind of giant chess set in it. Why don't we pit the two against each other?” He smiles teasingly. “Your set against mine.”

She considers the challenge. “Okay, fine. As long as it's not here.”

“Of course not,” Aidan laughs. He opens a portal and walks through it, beckoning. Nadia follows, silently trailed by Rotom.

The portal opens into a large, circular room with a high ceiling. Faint purple light glows from the walls, and a few windows let in light from a blue sky outside. Rotom nestles himself just below a nearby window that gives him a good view of the currently empty room.

“Welcome to the game room of Karazhan,” Aidan says to Nadia. (I don’t understand how Rotom can hear them from so far away, but whatever.) “Naturally it’s not actually Karazhan, but it’s a pretty good replica.”

“So… where’s the chess?” Nadia looks around at the empty room before glancing at her feet. “Oh,” she says, looking at the floor she stands on, “That’s why you were asking about a giant chess set.”

Both Recreators are each standing on one square of a huge checkerboard built into the floor. The 8x8 square of alternating white and black tiles is true to form, going so far as to include a grid system with numbers and letters being written along the sides of the board, numbers vertically and letters horizontally.

“Obviously it is,” Aidan laughs. He starts walking toward one edge. “I can take this side. You set up on the other.” Nadia nods in understanding and walks in the opposite direction.

You’d think that with how effortlessly the two create other items (I.E. the Eye of Agamotto, Reinhardt’s hammer and shield, Wonder Woman’s gear, etc.) that summoning isn’t much of a spectacle. Apparently with larger objects, like the giant chess pieces, it’s a whole other story. I actually had to watch this part twice - one for each side - to get all the details right.

Aidan walks to his side and touches the View on the side of his head. A holographic screen shows up in front of him, similarly to how Iron Man’s suit has screens inside his helmet. The image is hard to make out, but it seems to be that of a chess set - but the pieces are moving.

He takes hold of the screen with one hand and pushes it downward. Everything but the chess pieces in the image is pushed flat, parallel to the floor. The models remaining are colorless wireframes of the pieces. Apparently each piece is tangible; grabbing them one at a time, Aidan throws each piece onto its respective space on the massive board. Upon landing, their wireframes are placed into a T-pose. Finally, he extends his hand, which is fitted with some weird glove thing, in front of him like reading a watch. On his glove is a keyboard. Typing one-handed, finally presses a button (Enter, perhaps?) and the pieces spring to life one at a time in a flash of pixels and bits of code, fully-sized and with complete detail.

On the other hand, Nadia pulls her ink pot neck charm out of her shirt. Ink flows out of it freely, in a pattern similar to that of a magnetic field. The Tome floats in front of her, as if some invisible man were holding it aloft. Holding the Author’s Inspiration (her magic pen) in her right hand, she begins writing in the air. Although I can’t quite make out the words, at the end of each sentence that group of words takes on a liquid-ish form that splashes onto one of the squares. As N begins writing another sentence, additional ink from “in orbit” add to the small puddle, as the piece takes shape. Each puddle has a vague form until it reaches its full height. Then it fills in and solidifies into a giant metal chess piece.

Once Nadia finishes writing, she puts the pen away and hangs the Tome at her side. The ink continues to flow around her until the final piece, a tower of rusted metal, finishes taking form. Then she puts the ink away.

Two massive sets of chess pieces now loom between the two Recreators. The teens look each other quietly for a time, seemingly admiring (or comparing) their work.

Aidan breaks the silence. “That’s a pretty nice set you’ve got, Bendy,” he says mockingly. “You’ve improved since making little ink boogers that come out of the machine.” Obviously the reference goes over Nadia’s head, but she responds with something a little more biting. (If you understand it, that is.) “Your pieces look pretty good too,” she says with a smirk. “I remember when they looked like a Bizarro made them, so you've definitely improved.”

Aidan didn't quite understand that, but glanced at his own set for a second as if looking for an answer there. “Well, my spritework has definitely improved. But my consistency hasn’t apparently.” He’s right. His pawns are all silver-clad knights, but his other pieces are more brutish orc soldiers.

Shrugging this mistake off, Aidan moves to start the game. “Anyway, let’s do this traditionally first.” He gestures with mock courtesy, before offering the first move. “Ladies first?”

Nadia plays along, curtsying. “You’re too kind.” She then commands a “Pawn to .” The iron statue on the edge of the board moves on its own with a metal sound, sliding two spaces forward.

“Good start… I’ll do the same.” Shield raised, a knight on the opposite end of the board walks forward two spaces.

Another voice command, and one of Nadia’s pawns move again. Aidan basically mirrors this and the game progresses pretty slowly until all the pawns are out face to face. It really gets interesting once the pieces start destroying each other.

“Pawn to E4,” commands Nadia. The metal statue turns at a 45 degree angle and advances to the space, occupied by one of Aidan’s armored knights (which ironically aren’t actually considered knights…).

When it gets close enough, the crouching statue of a pawn lashes out with two swords. Sure enough, the Stormwind soldier is… er… not in one piece anymore. With a scream that sounds prerecorded (you know, the usual “aaahhhh” thing) the head, torso, and legs of the knight land in three different squares.

“Well that was… rather violent…” says Aidan as a small pixelated orb floats from the fading body parts into his glove. Nadia shrugs, unfazed for once. “That’s Wizard’s Chess for you.” Glancing at the other pieces, she adds, “Although I guess it’s a lot more morally satisfying to smash a statue than it is to slice someone in two.”

“I guess that’s the consequence of me using the ‘living’ pieces from WoW rather than the marble versions from Hearthstone,” Aidan concludes. “But it’s fine either way since they’re only arcane constructs…” He drops off there before quietly muttering, “At least, I think so…?” Shaking his head, one of his knights moves forward.

The game progresses like this, Aidan advancing his troops on his turn. Nadia, on the other hand, continues to remove each of Aidan’s pawns, each one dying with the same prerecorded scream and death animation. Each pixelated soul returns to Aidan’s glove.

“You know what, I’m getting bored again,” Nadia says after removing all of Aidan’s pawns. “Let’s make this a little more interesting.” Defying the rules of the game, Nadia commands both her rooks to charge the enemy rooks (which are demons because… Warcraft), which are still on Aidan’s side of the board.

The rooks are still as slow as the other statues, so he had plenty of time to react. “Whoa there pal!” he exclaims, neglecting the rules himself and moving his two rooks one space to the side. “You really want to play RTS with me? I see how it is.” With that, holographic text appears above the board, declaring, “Medivh cheats!” The spaces upon which Nadia’s rooks stood, which had halted, burst into flame. The spaces with her king and queen were also burning.

Nadia reacts with a Latin curse - “Tu furcifer!” (Translating literally as “You scoundrel,” but obviously she’s using it much worse than that) - before commanding her pieces to “Get out of there!" The pieces do just that, which is good because the metal was already looking red-hot.

“Really?” Nadia yells from across the board.

“Well, I mean,” Aidan begins calmly, “If you cheat, then so will I.” Something white falls on his head. “Ow! Er… I guess I deserved that for cheating anyway. Wait, what-“ cutting off abruptly, he looks up.

Nadia runs over to his side in confusion and amusement, kneeling to pick up the object. “It’s… a bone. Why are there bones falling from your ceiling?”

Aidan doesn’t respond, and instead pulls a red and white ball from his pocket. Tossing it out, a large owl wearing a green hoodie erupts from the ball and comes to stand in front of the two Recreators. “Quill, catch the kid,” Aidan instructs the bird, pointing to a shape above him.

“On it, boss,” the Pokémon dutifully responds. I swear that its mouth moved to say only one word, but I guess Rotom was translating automatically because he too is a Pokémon. As the Decidueye vaults into the air, Rotom follows in his little jet plane body.

As Rotom caught up to Quill, the target figure became more clear. It was a boy, dressed in mostly black clothing. He looked really roughed up.

Gliding beside Quill now, Rotom greets him. “Hey Robin!” Rotom says cheerfully.

“You know I don’t like that name, kid,” Quill responds bluntly. It looks like it comes out in a single word again. “But that’s probably why you call me it.”

Rotom giggles his usual childish robot laugh. “Aw, you know me zzzo-“ A loud clank interrupts him. “Zzrt? What wazzz that?” Looking down, a cell phone is falling among the debris. “That lookzzz important.”

Rotom swoops down to catch the phone in a little net that drops down from under him. At the same time, Quill flaps in the air then dives himself to catch the falling boy. Both land at about the same time near the two Recreators. Rotom deposits the phone in Nadia’s hand before landing in a kind of dock on her back. Aidan catches the boy before he falls off Quill’s back.

Nadia pockets the phone for later before going over to Aidan. Looking at the kid, she quietly mutters to herself, “What… are you?”

“Obviously he’s a human, and in bad shape too.” Aidan retorts. “We should get him to Hogwarts, and, uh…” He points to Rotom. “He’s still recording. Can you stop him or something?” Nadia presses something on her arm and the screen goes black.