• Published 1st Apr 2016
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Group Precipitation - FanOfMostEverything



Stories set in the Oversaturated World, some silly, some less so.

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Mate in Negative Seven, by FoME

It was a relatively common sight, albeit in a different sort of universe: A young godling eager to show off greater clarity into the nature of reality by challenging mortals to a game just barely out of their reach. In this case, as with so many others, it was a variant of the game of war abstracted down to an eight-by-eight grid.

At first, it played out the same as it did in many worlds: The mortal’s moves came hesitantly, taking a minute or two, hands shaking as she moved her pieces. The godling, by contrast, moved like lightning, hands and pieces darting with relish. Especially when the space around the board began to blur, the pieces wavering in superposition between two, three, five simultaneous game states. The only constant was white pieces falling in battle, with far too few black ones going with them.

But then came a novel twist on the narrative. The mortal paused, looked across and back and in directions that had no name, then took a rook and turned it not quite counterclockwise.

The entire board sprang back to its starting state, save for the white rook in the middle of the board.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try this again now that I’m getting the hang of it.”

The godling made a point of not letting his jaw drop.

At that point, Sunset Shimmer appeared at the end of the cafeteria table in her typical golden flash. “Okay, what exactly are you doing to causality?” She frowned down at the chessboard. “And how does Ditzy have three rooks?” A tilt of the head made the frown deepen. “Hang on… What?”

“A fascinating twist on the classic proposed by none other than our illustrious Agent Heartstrings,” said Mr. Discord. “Time and possibility are but additional axes in which the pieces can move. And Miss Hooves just realized that that means rooks can jump all the way to the beginning of the game, so long as their current space has remained unoccupied through the entire match. Unlikely but wholly possible.” He grinned as they began the exchange once more, both moving with that divine confidence. “I have multiple mates in two, but those are far ahead in the timeline. She has ample time to try to dig herself out of—“

“Checkmate,” said Ditzy.

Mr. Discord blinked, then looked back over the board. “I can just—“

“On your king three turns ago.”

“That… Er…” After a few more moments, Mr. Discord nodded and tipped over his king. “So it would seem, yes. Well played, Miss Doo, well played indeed.”

A golden glow enveloped the chessboard as it collapsed back into a single eigenstate. “Please tell me you’re not going to popularize this,” said Sunset.

Mr. Discord shrugged. “I’m not sure most people can even process it. You and I, certainly. Miss Doo with her unique relationship to multiversal geometry, evidently.”

“To be honest, Agent Heartstrings has shown me the game before. Though she uses unicorns and dragons.” Ditzy shook her head. “Then it gets weird. At least I’m better at it than normal chess.”

“Still, I’m not sure many others can handle more than a few timelines without their brains melting.”

“Pretty sure that’s where computers get involved, Mr. Discord,” Ditzy noted.

“Hmm. Fair point.”


“‘Cross-Temporal Hyperchess’?” said Lemon Zest. “Which bad sci-fi novel are we in again?”

Sunny Flare smirked. “Let’s not forget who introduced whom to that metatime-strategy game.”

“Okay, fair. Let’s see how nuts this one can get.”

Author's Note:

See here for the MTS and here for this chapter's inspiration.

Honestly, I'm amazed I didn't do something with this earlier.

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