//------------------------------// // Part 2: The First Game // Story: It Was Just A Game // by KalaAWild //------------------------------// "What is going on? What have you dragged us into now?" Rarity asks Twilight with a twist of nagging involved. "I don't know," Twilight says to her. She looks around the chess arena her friends and herself got into. "Saxon! If you can hear me, tell me why my friends are in this cynical game?" "It is quite easy to explain, my darling," Saxon's voice explains. His voices echoes for all ponies to hear. "A king has to have loyal followers in his army. Your friends that I saw in your heart seemed like a perfect fit." "I should have never followed Saxon," Twilight says to herself. "Pardon me but what did you say?" Applejack asks Twilight. "I should have never followed Saxon to the chess game. I should have gone to the competition." "Why did you even follow him?" "He said he could make me better at chess after one session of playing chess. I did not know this would happen!" "Well, whatever this game is, this Saxon guy has to explain the rules." "Thank you for asking," Saxon's voice echoes again. "Your goal is to capture the shadow pony's king on the otherside of the board. Succed, and you advance one hoof step closer to victory. Lose, you can go join the statue garden I have assembled." Saxon's voice becomes quiet when he finishes. Applejack, still unable to move her hooves, screams at Saxon for the game. She thrashes about on her standing but she eventually calms down. Pinkie Pie, still party cannon, stares happily at the pawns across the board. She makes funny and goofy faces at them but none of then flinch. "Well at least we won't die," Fluttershy shyly speaks out. "But we could be turned to stone. That is about the same thing," Rainbow Dash looks at Fluttershy. She tries to use the best tone of voice to give more strictness but Fluttershy hides behind her hair again. Rainbow Dash turns her attention to Twilight. "Alright Twilight, you're the egghead here. How we play this game of chess?" "Well," Twilight takes a second to think over her thoughts. "chess is a strategy game where you have to maneuver your pieces to capture the opponent's king. If the opponent's piece lands on one of our pieces, they get captured and are rendered unplayable." "What do you mean, 'unplayable'?" Applejack asks. "The piece cannot be seen or heard from until I capture you back or the game is over." "You better know what you are doing," Pinkie Pie gives Twilight some confidence through her cheery mood. "I am going to have the biggest party if we make it out of here." "You make the first move," Rarity says to Twilight. "Make sure you know what you are doing." Twilight takes a step into the empty king square and game officially believe. She makes her first turn of the game by moving her pawn on D2 to D4. The D2 square's outline shines with light with the D4 sqaure. The pawn walks over the square and ends the lights of the square. The shadow pony move its pawn too on E7 to E5. Twilight thinks about her next move before even moving a muscle. The pawn the opponent moved was in front of the queen, laying out a possible chain reaction called Tower Charge. This is where the queen can capture the high ranked pieces while using the pawns for protection. Twilight has to use the best of her knowledge of statistics in her head in order to bypass the move. Twilight points her hoof at Rainbow Dash who was on the knight square G1 and points her hoof again on a different square at F3. Rainbow Dash's square lights up with light and the F3 does the same. Rainbow Dash can feel her ability to move again and she tries to fly away. A magical force field, probably something from Saxon, blocks Rainbow Dash from leaving the F1 square. "Rainbow Dash," Twilight carps at her. "You have to follow the rules. Just trust me on this as much as I trusted you to catch me at the cliff." Rainbow Dash remembers how much Twilight doubted Applejack when she first visited Ponyville at the cliffside. She hung by her hooves on the cliff and was barely saved by Applejack but she could not hold on. She gave enough trust to Applejack that she actually let go of her to fall down the cliff. Rainbow Dash, with the help Fluttershy, caught Twilight from a perilous doom. With the thoughtful glimpse of trust in her heart, she moves to the F3 square. She flies over one of Twilight's pawns and into the square. The light disappears and the shadow pony makes a move. Just as Twilight predicted, the opponent moved its queen out of the backrow at E8 to H5. According to the simple rules of the game; the queen can move in any straight and diagonal directions. Rainbow Dash was in the line of the queen's attack. Rainbow Dash could see the queen piece glaring at her with bright red piercing eyes. The silhouette reminded her of Princess Celestia's shadow. Even the hair flows like hers and the queen piece had a horn and wings. She nervously gulps as the queen remains motionless but scary. "Twilight," She mutters to her. Twilight could hear the nervousness in her voice. Rainbow Dash was not one to be nervous. "get me out of here! I don't want to be this queen's next meal!" Twilight makes a quickly and hastly move by moving her pawn in the line of the queen at F4. Her opponent leaves its queen as it was and moves its knight on B8 to C6. Twilight moves a pawn forward from H2 to H3. Twilight has a plan to capture the queen but she runs the probability of it being successful in her head. A one percent probability, just one. She leaves her pawn alone on that square and ends her turn. The queen's square lights up at her astonishment and it moves in for the first capture. The queen uses her unicorn horn to stab the pawn and the pony disappears in a puff of smoke. The pawn gets transported behind Twilight and is immortalized in stone. It was just as Saxon said, you lose you turn to stone. Twilight stares in shock at the frozen pony in stone. Even though she did not know the pawn, she wishes she could tell it sorry. The facial expression on the pawn still remains blank and unmoving. She turns her attention at the game at hand. The queen fell for the bait since her real target was Rainbow Dash. Twilight captures the queen with her pawn and the game was pretty much set. “Thanks for making sure that queen did not get me,” Rainbow Dash says to Twilight She turns her head and smiles her famous win face . “I thought I was done for.” “I wish I could say the same for that pawn,” Twilight mutters. She looks back at the stone pawn behind her. Fast forwarding a few turns, the shadow pawn and Twilight fight back to back for victory over the game. Each passing turn, more pieces of the shadow pony disappeared to the stone graveyard behind it. Twilight suffers the same amount of casualties. She lost all her pawns but one and her unnamed castle was defeated. She tries her best to protect her friends but her efforts may be worthless with one slip up. Fluttershy got trapped into a corner last turn and Rarity nearly took a trip to the petrification garden. She scatters her friends across the board to help protect them; Fluttershy on C3, Rainbow Dash on F7, Rarity was moved back to E1 to protect her as she is the king piece, Applejack on H4, and Pinkie Pie on B3. Twilight manages to check the king piece in a corner with a pawn blockade the only problem to get past. The pawns were in an “L” formation surrounding the corner where the king is the hiding. Rainbow Dash checks the king and took out one of the protecting pawns. “This game was easier than I thought,” Twilight sighs exhaustedly. “Just a few more moves.” “But I thought he was in check?” Fluttershy asks. “Check but not checkmate. The king could easily move away from Rainbow Dash’s movement line.” Twilight was right, as she always is. The king moves to the left onto G8. Rainbow Dash is in trouble now since the king could capture her within a move. Twilight tells Rainbow Dash to move to the right at H6. With the danger avoided, she calculates the next few moves. The king moves back to H8 and it was her turn again. She has an idea that will lead her to check mate. She moves her last castle that was placed on G4 to attack the pawn and capture it. The castle piece, who wore heavy silver armor and an enormous shield across its body, charges at the helpless pawn and does a successful capture. With phase one complete, it was the shadow’s turn. It moved the pawn piece on F8 to the castle and Twilight loses her last castle. His capture was not in vain though. Twilight shifted Rarity’s role and moved her to E4. All the pieces were set and all it took was for Saxon’s puppet to set it in motion. The pawn moves forward without taking out Rainbow Dash and it is officially check again when Twilight moves Rainbow Dash back to F7. The shadow pony takes a daring move and moves itself to the H7 square. Twilight tells Rarity to move to the farend of the chess board on H4 and checks the shadow pony permanently. "You lose, shadow pony," Twilight says confidently. She can finally rest in ease for a bit. "Checkmate." The shadow pony vanishes into thin air along with the chess pieces. Twilight's friends appear beside Twight and they found the ability to move freely again without a command. "Alright Saxon, we won your game now so let us go," Applejack yells to the cavern. "I didn't say anything about you leaving yet. You got one more game to play," Saxon's voice sounds off. The chess board reassembles without the mane six cast being put into the game. Saxon rises up from a rectangular hole in the ground when all the pieces were assembled. He decides to play the game but there is a surprise in store for them. On Saxon's side of the board, the king piece which used to looked like Princess Celestia before, had a different look but a figure that was recognizable. The figure had multiple parts of animals combined into one being and it frightens Twilight and the others when they see its face. It was the infamous Discord the Draconequus who was freed from his stone prison. "I'm back for another game," Discord snaps at his old adversaries. "Let chaos ensue again like the haunting past." A/N: This is a really long author note, sorry. Try having some fun after you've read this story. Maybe to understand how the final moves went for Twilight against the shadow pony, you should try replicating them on an actual chess board. I didn't explain this clearly about why the pawn not capture Rainbow Dash during the game. The shadow pony wanted it's queen back by returning a pawn piece to the other side. It would be checkmate for Twilight unless she worked fast to checkmate the shadow pony first. Thanks again for reading this story and don't forget to read the To Save Equestria series and to also read up on a new story I have been working on The Lost Journal of Kindra Skywing when it gets released. Ciao!