Aug 21, 2017 20:40:39 GMT
Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2017 20:40:39 GMT
A GOD DOES NOT TURN AT THE CRYING OF A WORM
A slender, straightened finger slid its tip against the polished charcoal-tinted marble slab atop the cherry wood center table. A beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It traced around one of the straight corners until lifting from the base, hooking and pulling a game piece into between her index and thumb to lift analytically in front of her eyes. Each had been hand carved - a gift in commemoration for the recent LAPD Commissioner's election. The competitor had owed a debt that the victor simply had humbly asked the Queen's aide in collecting. His price: to lose. Hardly a heavy choice when the other option dangled the safety of his son's children on a thin string. It was so easy to see what meant the most to people - where they placed their value - just by the pictures that littered their social media and living room coffee tables...
The board was trimmed with silver; the pieces speckled with flakes of white gold along the glossy, polished outer layer. Magnificent. The Commissioner knew how to say 'thank-you' properly - loyalty clearly shown and gratitude given in the form of an object very resonant to her. The Queen never really did connect with many material things, but the game of chess - perhaps the idea more than just the board and pieces themselves - was an exception. It had been, often, the deciding factor in choices and crossroads that had taken weeks, months to plan. Decisions that had, with lack of dramatics, been the difference between life and death. Fortune and catastrophe. Victory and failure.
Like all things, practice the game enough and it falls under your control. Much like chess. Much like the ignorance and weakness of others. She'd risen from pawn... to the queen she held in her fingers; the most powerful and versatile piece on the board. Her head turned to the side of the room that proudly displayed her other boards lined against a wall - each with a game currently in play or frozen at the finish with the White King tilted on its side. None had beaten her. Rival 'gangs' of uneducated children, business sharks, local police, the Irish, Japanese, and Italian mafias, the federal bureau. Their kings had either fallen, joined her cause, or parted out of her way. Her attention drew back to the new marble board and she set the Black Queen in its rightful place at the back before pulling forward five, white pawns.
These were become... irritating. They'd earned themselves a game of their own now. She tacked them forward in an order to allow four of her own pawns to knock off to the board's side in decommission. It opened space enough for a knight to plot through behind them, the shadow of a pawn's reach. They knew little of what they'd begun. Small, insignificant things that had appeared on her radar one too many times without a trace of metahuman documentation or the knowledge of other families. The knight would be enough to incite fear, perhaps knock one or two down, and then serve simply as a witness to where these pawns had come from.
Soon enough, like all the others before them, they'd understand who owned the streets they walked on.
The board was trimmed with silver; the pieces speckled with flakes of white gold along the glossy, polished outer layer. Magnificent. The Commissioner knew how to say 'thank-you' properly - loyalty clearly shown and gratitude given in the form of an object very resonant to her. The Queen never really did connect with many material things, but the game of chess - perhaps the idea more than just the board and pieces themselves - was an exception. It had been, often, the deciding factor in choices and crossroads that had taken weeks, months to plan. Decisions that had, with lack of dramatics, been the difference between life and death. Fortune and catastrophe. Victory and failure.
Like all things, practice the game enough and it falls under your control. Much like chess. Much like the ignorance and weakness of others. She'd risen from pawn... to the queen she held in her fingers; the most powerful and versatile piece on the board. Her head turned to the side of the room that proudly displayed her other boards lined against a wall - each with a game currently in play or frozen at the finish with the White King tilted on its side. None had beaten her. Rival 'gangs' of uneducated children, business sharks, local police, the Irish, Japanese, and Italian mafias, the federal bureau. Their kings had either fallen, joined her cause, or parted out of her way. Her attention drew back to the new marble board and she set the Black Queen in its rightful place at the back before pulling forward five, white pawns.
These were become... irritating. They'd earned themselves a game of their own now. She tacked them forward in an order to allow four of her own pawns to knock off to the board's side in decommission. It opened space enough for a knight to plot through behind them, the shadow of a pawn's reach. They knew little of what they'd begun. Small, insignificant things that had appeared on her radar one too many times without a trace of metahuman documentation or the knowledge of other families. The knight would be enough to incite fear, perhaps knock one or two down, and then serve simply as a witness to where these pawns had come from.
Soon enough, like all the others before them, they'd understand who owned the streets they walked on.
WORDS: 537 || TAGGED: SOLO || WEARING: HERE || NOTES: THE CRASH SURVIVORS
Table by Nightwing™
