[BP] Pawn To Queen (Janice + Killingworth)

[candy lamb]

The second time they met, it was less... interrupted.

Barren Pines was beginning to slip down in terms of sense, safety and general wellbeing. Janice Fitzpatrick had known it early on. Unfortunately, there was also less room for doing the sensible thing -- which would have been, leaving -- but that had never really been an option for her anyway; Janice Fitzpatrick's curiosity was a powerful, radiant force, as deep-seated as a sense like taste or touch or smell. She was far from stupid. In terms of a real bacterial meningitis outbreak, there would be a lot more shutdown; access to outside news agencies and in fact the outside world had suddenly become extraordinarily limited; and she was penned in.

The library was silent and empty the next time she entered. Empty and silent, except --

-- except for Gunn Killingworth, sitting hunched over the chess board, smoking a cigarette right underneath the "Thank You For Not Smoking" sign. Not setting off any smoke alarm. Simply staring at the gambit he had set up, which Janice recognised -- Benko. King's bishop. Bishop, to rook. As she watched, he finished as white, which was unusual -- breaking into E5 from the knight. As she approached, he took the queen.

He paused when she entered. There was no -- baffling girl this time, nor horrifying little furballs. Just silence, and nicotine.

Intead of hello, he rearranged the board swiftly. The whites stood silently against the black pieces, the whites offered to the empty chair.  

[cibarium]

There had been a few things pricking irritably at the back of Janice's mind lately. One of them seized her concentration and proceeded to paralyze it every time she so much as took a cursory glance at a Scrabble board; this had become a nuisance since she first furnished her dorm, she chose to disregard it altogether, though that entailed the faux ignoring that took more concentration than actually paying attention. She had effectively set up a large, energy-inefficient neon sign in her brain that said I AM IGNORING YOU.

The other things were much more relevant to this school: the 'supernatural' occurences she had witnessed, and the supposed bacterial meningitis case, the latter of which made her furrow her brow in annoyance every time it crossed her mind. She had picked up some literature on the subject after hearing of the increasing number of deaths taking place in the school. Things did not add up.

There should have at least been... a quarantine, or the school temporarily shutting down, or something, she figured. Something other than dismissively-announced casualties occasionally peppered with general health advisory. The teachers hadn't been much help spreading information; some advised caution in the face of contagious disease while others gave stilted, dismissive waves and told them not to worry about it, that things would get taken care of.

It was giving her a headache thinking about it. The volume of unanswered questions made her irritable, and she had entered the library in search of a distraction.

And thankfully, finding one had been as easy as noticing that man from Hillworth was back, looming over a chessboard. No words were exchanged-- none were really needed-- as the board was rearranged and she took the empty chair, having moved her first piece before she was even sitting down.

She had been wondering if she'd ever get a rematch.  

[candy lamb]

They launched into the game without a hell of a lot of preamble. He was an insidious player, she found, as she'd gotten a slight taste of the first time -- didn't look as though he were on the aggressive until, suddenly, he was, forcing her to gather her defenses and try to break his line. He never cracked, not once.

Eventually, he did speak --

"What do you think," he said, "of the sailor senshi?"

It was a simple enough question. An odd one, maybe. But it was one other people asked -- what did YOU think of the sailor scouts -- what did YOU think of the event at Nile Park -- what did YOU think? Whose side were YOU on? Some people outed the entire groups -- both of them -- as simple, lame terrorists; or gangs, that was a new one. They were gangs.  

[cibarium]

Janice wasn't breaking, either, it was a bit like watching a pair of icebergs on a still ocean as the game beneath them went on. The only thing that moved enough to notice were their hands and eyes, and the junior player adapted quickly-- she moved without hesitation, but it was also clear she wasn't moving without thought.

"The sailor senshi?" she repeated, her gaze flicking upward, brow pitched in interest. She had a look about her that suggested she had a somewhat informed opinion.

She did.

"Not very highly," Janice admitted, returning her murky eyes back to the chessboard, shifting a rook over a couple of spaces. "I encountered one once, and the conversation that followed signified to me that whatever they are, they have no idea what they're doing."  

[candy lamb]

"Interesting conclusion to come to," said the man in front of her. He was examining Janice's defense with -- at least, she halfway imagined, he had a face that didn't reveal a hell of a lot -- interest, before carefully re-aiming his assault. Moving inexorably towards her king, his offense was a little bit like a steamroller that he watched plunge into the net of her defense. "You're correct. They have all the goddamned unity of coconut."

Knight to rook.

"There's the other side," he said. "The one that does have unity. And purpose. That's the ******** thing about the senshi; there's no purpose -- they're disassembled, they're blind cannons. They destroy s**t like children stomping all over a sand castle."

He wasn't looking at her.  

[cibarium]

Her defense was proving to be quite an elaborate one. No piece she moved was in vain; she was good at giving each and every one some sort of purpose, a nested doll of traps - crack open one and find another. The girl was making this out to be a long game, chipping and pricking away at Killingworth's juggernaut until it would eventually collapse from exhaustion and blood loss.

Conversation moved to accommodate the game: slowly. There were long, spacious pauses between the man's question, her answer and his response. Not that either of them were the type to hesitate or overthink in a conversation. It was a peripheral thing to talk during a chess game, it wouldn't do to turn it into the main event.

"Surely you don't mean to imply the other side is something other than a monster who aimlessly roams the streets, covered in blood and cackling?" Janice quipped, breaking into a bemused smirk.

Then she moved her remaining rook and said, "I think that's checkmate."

There was suddenly a lot more room to talk.  

[candy lamb]

There was, and not a word was spoken. Gunn Killingworth examined the board for the longest time as though he were a forensic specialist, looking at how she had won the victory and how he had lost it, how she had carefully built up a pincer attack over time that was so subtle he hadn't realised he was caught in its jaws. This was an unusual sensation. He played chess with Audrey, and Audrey's victories were those of nearly won -- with Audrey, he'd been amused by setting up chess gambits and seeing how she responded to them, not in playing actual battlegames against her.

And now this unpretty, muddy-haired girl had won against him.

"A long time ago," he said, "the Earth was ruled by a monarchy, who spent their time battling the Moon -- don't smirk; this is the ******** truth, no ifs, no buts. When they finally had a ceasefire, the prince of Earth fell in love with the princess of the Moon. You might call it a Romeo and Juliet." (Truth be told, Gunn Killingworth was actually fairly well-read.) "With the same assumption that they were both ******** morons. Anyway, the Prince put his entire monarchy in jeopardy, threatened to have the Earth annexed by the Moon -- so a coup began."

He was still brooding over the board. "The Moon wants to take back its territory. The other side wants independence."

Gunn Killingworth was reaching forward for her toppled queen.

"Their rightful kingdom."

The ivory piece was very white in his hand. And he was staring at it in disgust.

"Freedom."

Gunn Killingworth could also be fairly well-spoken, though he could only go around one hundred and twenty seconds without a '********.'  

[cibarium]

And Janice sat there across from him, her head propped up on a hand, the side of her mouth that was visible stretched out into a self-pleased smirk, the smile of the cat who just caught the canary. Who was also sitting across the table from a starving tiger, granted, but didn't seem to feel that was a reason to not bask in her win. She enjoyed her victories thoroughly, and was very much driven by success. This much was obvious of her.

As Killingworth went into his monologue, the girl was attentive-- she was listening, and even softened her smirk a bit at his remark, lifting her head from its perch on her palm, wearing the studious look of someone trying to pull information from a textbook.

She should have laughed in this man's face, honestly, told him he was being completely ridiculous and walked away.

But she had also spent the past few weeks locked away in this school, and hearing about the things that had gone on here would have made her do the very same thing.

"...Evidence," she said, simply. And she crossed her arms, and waited.  

[candy lamb]

"I'm not going to show you a ******** catalogue," said the man in front of her, though he didn't seem too angry or too offended. "The evidence is right here: the sailor senshi are ******** stoolie pigeons, they're catspaws for a kingdom who doesn't give a s**t about them. The Negaverse are their opposites. And we use any means possible."

We.

There was the barest shimmer in front of her, and then the Hillworth gym teacher had changed. He was now dressed in a quasi-military outfit all in dark coal black, complete with cape. Complete with braid. It was, however, fairly sober and formal, and not a frivolous little miniskirt (complete with iPod, as Sailor Nerissa had shown off). He hadn't moved. He'd just... changed.

"I'm the leading officer of the Negaverse, having pledged loyalty and service to our Queen," he said. "You have two choices."

He did not elaborate on what those two choices were.  

[cibarium]

Now she was interested.

Normal people in normal settings would have screamed, or jumped, or reacted more outwardly than Janice did-- really, many of the people in this school probably still would have, in spite of the near-everyday classical horror movie cliches happening in this school; it had practically gotten kitschy at this point. But she just raised an eyebrow, twitched a jaw, made a short, bemused hmm-ing noise at the sight of Killingworth adapting a dark fantasy military attire at the speed of a finger snap.

She plucked a pawn up off the board, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger.

"I can either agree to join your ranks... or, I can die, I'll assume," Janice guessed, giving a shrug. Lifting her free arm in a contemplative gesture, she continued, "You've just imparted too much information to me for me to say no and leave this room alive. You don't intend for me to say no, either."

She dropped the chess piece unceremoniously and rose from the table, letting the smirk creep back into her features.

"I accept," she replied, "and not out of fear of death."  

[candy lamb]

"Well said," said the General-King.

He had rose to stand with her. And then he was reaching out to touch her -- someone might have thought it was sexually, but then his fingers moved through her sternum between her (slightly notoriously) flat chest and went in deep. He reached around her heart and took something away from it. She wasn't resisting, so she was spared some of the pain that a couple of Negaverse officers had experienced; she was, instead, gently walked into that pit of acid. Of lava. She was burnt away as his fingers closed around her star seed, remaking her, giving her an insight to what he had said was evidence; changed forever and also not-changed, more the same than she ever was.

And something inside her renamed herself: Uranophane.



"Welcome to the Negaverse, Lieutenant," said Charonite. "You'll be given a special role; you're going to be serving our queen directly as her hand... maiden."

(Janice had received too many raised eyebrows at her gender to be really annoyed at his pause before 'maiden'.)

Another pause. "Feel ******** honoured. And get to work, we have enough goddamned dead weight in this organisation. I expect things out of you."  

[cibarium]

Janice really hadn't known what to expect after the moment she'd sealed her fate with that of the Negaverse-- surely something a little more interesting than paperwork, but she had thought that at least she would be led to some place other than the school library for this to happen.

But then the man's had slipped through her chest, like... no, not like the cloth and skin and bone was water, there was still the very raw sense of something cleanly cleaving through all of that, it was more like her flesh and blood was powerless to resist whatever force it was his hand had become. It was dull, and strangely cold at first, but her features still strained, a gasp shook her for a moment as she felt those fingers firmly close around something in her chest. She was white-knuckled, trembling on the spot, staring into the... the nothingness she was being introduced to. The nothingness that had suddenly been overturned from within herself, and gently encouraged to take her whole being over.

It was all flooding in, drowning her like an ocean and suffocating her like volcanic ash all at once, worrying tiny cracks into her-- and then something else entirely flooded in, forcing the spiderwb fractures to open into fissures.

She recognized what it was immediately. It was power.

It was power. And she already wanted more.

Uranophane was still a bit unstable in her posture when the recruitment was complete. It was like the involuntary muscle spasms one could get after an anaesthetic wore off, or the uncomfortable twitchiness that came from a caffiene rush. Not that she was experience any discomfort, however; quite the opposite, she hadn't felt quite this fantastic in her entire life.

When the room came back into view, she adopted a wide, eager grin, her long fingers stretching and flexing, hungry to have some work to be put towards.

Then one arm slowly, stiffly raised, snapping to her forehead in salute. "I thank you for this opportunity, sir. You have my assurance that I won't disappoint."