Check Yourself Before You Checkmate Yourself
Alpha Girl seeks chess prodigy's help to stop villains who are one step ahead of her
It’s 9 a.m. in downtown Callan. The city’s busiest bodies have been up for a few hours already, hustling. Pursue Bank is being robbed. No one has been hustling harder lately than the villains robbing the bank, the Chessperados. Five chess-fetishizing medieval cosplaying demons and their leader. A hooded man directing the Chessperados’ every move with an invisible chessboard and pieces, the Checkmater.
Alpha Girl flies through the bank entrance to save the day like a beam of light in her white and red suit with her golden hair flowing behind her. She looks around to see the bank’s security guard is hurt and everyone else is terrified. The Chessperados are nowhere to be found though.
Yet again, they are one step ahead.
“They got in the vault!” Pursue Bank owner, Jimmy Crysta shrieks desperately. “Alpha Girl, you must stop them. I worked really hard for the money they just stole… Well, my parents worked really hard for it… Well, my grandparents worked really hard for it… Fine, the foundation of my family’s success was built on the backs of slaves. Do you want all their work to be for nothing though?!”
Regardless of how Crysta got his fortune, it wasn’t just his money the Chessperados stole. Pursue Bank is where quite a bit of Callanians keep their money. Alpha Girl was going to have to stop them somehow. To do that, she’s going to need help.
Callanians love games. Even if they’re not overly competitive, they crave competition. The excitement they get from winning can’t be matched. They’ll lose gracefully in pursuit of the excitement of winning. Most Callanians aren’t very athletic though, so traditional physical sports might not be the best route to the pursuit of glory. Hillside Chess Lounge is home to the Callanians who choose to use their brilliant minds over their physical abilities to compete.
The most brilliant chess player in Callan is Johnny Gordon. He’s been beating experienced adults at the game since he was eight years old. At 18 years old today, he’s won more chess matches than any other Callanian has won anything. He’s Callan’s champion, and no one’s success is more important to the city.
“There’s the man I’m looking for,” Alpha Girl greets Johnny, jolting him from his uncomfortable sleep at a Hillside Chess Lounge table.
When Johnny wakes up enough to realize who just said she’s looking for him, he goes into a nervous frenzy, moving his backpack from the table to below his seat and frantically setting up the pieces in front of him for a game.
“Long night, huh?” Alpha Girl says to Johnny, gesturing to the few empty coffee cups in front of him. He forcefully widens his eyes and slowly nods his head in a sarcastic manner as if the obviousness of her question makes it unworthy of a spoken answer. Of course he’s tired; when he gets home from his not-quite full-time but definitely-not part-time job, he sits down at his desk to work on online classes, then he practices chess until his brain finally surrenders to his body and no longer fights to keep his eyes open.
“I could use your help,” Alpha Girl continues. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Chessperados…”
Alpha Girl pauses for a moment as Johnny jumps at the mention of their name. She gives him a look of concern.
“Oh… Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” Johnny declares nonchalantly before shifting his attitude to that of a self-centered uninterested prick. “What’s this got to do with me?”
“I think to beat them, I need to know how to play their game,” Alpha Girl suggests. “Who better to help me with that than one of the best chess players in the world?”
Johnny scoffs at Alpha Girl’s naivety. “I’m not anything special, trust me. I’d love to help, but I’ve really got to focus. I’ve got a tournament coming up. Plus, you’re a superhero. I’m sure you can figure this out on your own.”
Just as Johnny finishes rejecting Alpha Girl’s request, a young boy and his mom approach their table. As the city’s local superhero, Alpha Girl is used to seeing a look of nervousness and excitement from the kids who look up to her, so she’s not at all uncomfortable with the boy. She smiles and waves at him, but he doesn’t see because the nervousness and excitement isn’t for her.
“Mr. Gordon,” the boy manages to say with his mom’s hands on his shoulders for support. “Will you sign my board?”
Suddenly Johnny isn’t such a little prick. He eagerly agrees to sign the boy’s board and asks him how he got into playing chess. When the boy tells him he wants to be like him, Johnny is forced to pause before he responds.
“You’ll be better than me,” Johnny affirms, more to himself than the boy.
Alpha Girl can’t help but smile as she watches the little boy scamper away, holding his signed chessboard in the air like a trophy. Before she can say anything to make Johnny uncomfortable at how important his signature was to the kid, he grabs his things and stands up.
“I’ll teach you how to play the game,” he states bluntly. “I’m only teaching you how each piece moves though - no strategies.”
“Deal.”
“I’ll need more coffee though.”
The duo walks across the street into Grounds Zero. Besides the chess lounge, this is where Johnny spends most of his free time. Johnny’s busy schedule has led to lots of coffee. So much so that the coffee bar’s owner, Wrigley Mills, knows his order by heart now.
“Employee, student, chess prodigy and now Alpha Girl’s sidekick?” Wrigley greets Johnny as she brings him his coffee. “You ever heard of burnout, kid?”
Johnny snickers and waves off the comment. He doesn’t have time to burn out. He sets up the board and pieces to show Alpha Girl how to play.
Almost immediately, everyone in the coffee bar crowds Johnny and Alpha Girl’s table to watch the city’s superhero play chess against the city’s champion. The heat from everyone’s eyeballs makes Johnny panic and run out of the coffee shop. He trips as he exits and his open bag flies through the air, spilling everything inside. Hitting the ground and shattering are five chess pieces that look exactly like the Chessperados.
A thick steam rises from the broken pieces, creating a mystic fog. Emerging from that fog is the band of high-powered chess-themed thieves that have terrorized the city recently. Crooked Rook, a robot made of ebony and ivory brick to look like a humanoid castle with Frankenstein’s monster’s personality. Night Knight, a horse-headed man with a shiny ebony helmet and armor and an ivory cape. Bad Bishop, a religious fanatic dressed in an ebony and ivory Catholic bishop uniform. Mean Queen, the fiercest and fanciest woman who’s ever existed, wearing a functional yet fashionable ebony and ivory dress and ivory-bejeweled ebony crown. And Killer King, a sharply thin man with a rugged black beard who wore an ebony and ivory royal cloak and an ivory crown. All ready to be led by the Checkmater.
“Look, honey, it’s BoJack Horseman!” a pedestrian calls out pointing at Night Knight.
Night Knight whips out his ebony-and-ivory two-tone sword and slices the pedestrian’s head off. “I’m sick of being called BoJack Horseman.”
Crooked Rook points and laughs at his teammate like a giant baby before Mean Queen smacks the back of his robot head.
“You two idiots focus,” she hisses at them.
Alpha Girl darts to Johnny to protect him from the Chessperados, but Crooked Rook jumps in front of her and blocks her like a brick wall.
“No hurt Checkmater.”
Alpha Girl is slow to get up as she processes this reality.
“Johnny…” is all she manages to say.
Johnny stands up and faces Alpha Girl. Standing behind her now is everyone from the coffee shop. All the people so eager to see him succeed, staring at him like young children watching their parents put Santa’s presents under the tree. Johnny laughs to himself. Then cries.
“This is who I am,” he declares. “When my tireless hours of work, studying and practicing didn’t pay off enough to get me what I needed to compete in chess at the highest level, I was presented with this power. I couldn’t say no. I’ve been using these powers to rob banks to pay for school and chess tournaments. It’s the only way I could continue being the city’s champion…
“But I’m done. I’m giving it up. All of it. I’m not going to run away from the punishment awaiting me for my crimes. Throw me in jail for all I care. At least no one will expect anything of me there.”
Alpha Girl is about to tell Johnny how sorry she is for everything he’s gone through, but Killer King makes the first move and rests his hand on Johnny’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Johnny Gordon,” he says sincerely. “You can be free…”
“After we’ve extracted your mind from your body. It is far too powerful to be wasted.”
Immediately, Bad Bishop thrusts his open palms out and squeezes the air between him and Johnny. This pulls Johnny into the air like a rag doll before he writhes in pain as Bad Bishop invades his mind.
Alpha Girl lunges into action. She’s met again by the giant brick wall of Crooked Rook, but this time she was expecting him. She cocks her fist back, charges it with her light energy and forces it right through the robot’s brick torso. Crooked Rook explodes like a wall being busted through by the Kool-Aid man.
Before Alpha Girl can move on to save Johnny, Killer King clears his throat and gestures to the young boy whose board Johnny signed earlier. He’s holding an ebony-bladed knife to his throat.
“Save someone who wants to be saved,” Killer King suggests sinisterly, then turns to Mean Queen and nods.
“I’ve been waiting to finally meet you, Alpha Girl,” Mean Queen smirks as she steps in front of Killer King. “I’m HBIC around here now.”
“More like HCIC,” Night Knight says under his breath but not far enough under that Mean Queen couldn’t hear. He’s lucky she’s busy.
Mean Queen charges toward Alpha Girl. Alpha Girl charges toward Mean Queen. They meet in the middle like a couple of Newton balls and fly back upon impact. Staying on the attack, Mean Queen quickly gets up and leaps into the air with her fists hoisted above her head like hammers ready to smash Alpha Girl to pieces.
Alpha Girl is able to project a force field of light right before Mean Queen connects. Mean Queen pulls out an ebony-bladed dagger and stabs the force field, shattering it.
Alpha Girl is so stunned she doesn’t notice Mean Queen’s fist heading for her temple.
BAM
The blow snaps Alpha Girl out of the trance. She looks up to see another fist incoming. She grabs it and breaks it.
Alpha Girl’s victory is short-lived as Night Knight quickly lunges at her with his sword. She’s able to dodge a fatal blow but she doesn’t escape the blade entirely. It slices her side, drawing blood, and she stumbles.
“I didn’t know you could bleed,” Killer King gushes at the sight.
“They all bleed,” Night Knight declares.
Alpha Girl slowly gets up while holding her side. Slowly piecing himself back together behind her is Crooked Rook. Mean Queen rises as well, popping her knuckles. I imagine that'd be pretty uncomfortable since her hand is broken, but people who pop their knuckles don’t just stop popping their knuckles because they broke their hand.
Alpha Girl’s surrounded. She’s outnumbered. Injured. She looks to Johnny, the city’s champion, and refuses to quit.
Most of Johnny’s mind has been extracted at this point. But he’s still conscious. He sees Alpha Girl running toward him. With everything else gone, all he knows now is his early days of chess. When he first learned to play. When he loved the game and he loved how excited he and all his family and friends were when he won. He remembers being taught the etiquette of conceding a match your opponent will inevitably win. He remembers thinking that was dumb.
“The king!” Johnny is able to cry out in a sleep-talking mumble. “Take the king… Check… mate.”
Alpha Girl turns toward Killer King, who still has the young boy hostage. Alpha Girl wasn’t the only one who heard what Johnny said. The young boy takes advantage of Killer King not looking at him and swings his closed fist at the villain’s balls. Alpha Girl quickly follows with her own blow to the king. A charged-up punch to the chest. The light from her fist burns Killer King until he evaporates.
With their king gone, the rest of the Chessperados slowly fade as well. Before Bad Bishop vanishes, Johnny’s extracted mind is restored. Because that’s how it works.
The crowd of people rush to Johnny. He gets up and walks to the young boy.
“Care for a game?”
Diamonds are created by pressure.
Being under pressure presents an opportunity to shine.
I often forget this and run from pressure. When it comes to fight-or-flight situations, my response seems to always be flight. I’m not going to keep doing that.
Writing comes with a lot of pressure for me. I chose to change my college major from finance to journalism because I wanted to get paid to write. Since then, it’s been challenging to write for fun. I can’t help but think everything I write has to be great or else I won’t ever be a paid writer. That ultimately makes me want to not write.
I can’t not write though.
I haven’t run from the pressure of writing in a while. I’m writing because I enjoy it. I hope you enjoy reading what I write.
“Mr. Real?” Emperror calls out to his boss as he enters his office at Real Labs.
Mr. Real is staring out of his office window at Callan, wearing the same white suit with navy pinstripes he always wears. He’s holding something in his hands.
“A man robbed multiple banks over the course of a few weeks, and these people forgive him because he’s good at chess,” Mr. Real says, not to Emperror, but to everyone and no one in particular.
“Is it really that simple?” Emperror asks, which makes Mr. Real laugh.
“Everything in this city is as simple as that. It won’t be when we’re done here.”
Emperror looks on in fearful anticipation. Mr. Real turns around and sets the items he’s holding on his desk in front of Emperror. Looking at the items, he’s afraid of what Emperror wants him to do.
“One way or another, this city will become part of reality,” Mr. Real declares as he walks around his desk to stand between it and Emperror. “Use the reverse-engineered erronium to put these back together and make them work properly. Make them better than they were before.”
Emperror stares at the Chessperado pieces on the desk as Mr. Real leaves the room.
“This city will become part of reality.” What the fudge does that mean?
We’ll eventually find out what Mr. Real is up to. Stay tuned for the next Time Well Wasted in two weeks.