Checkmate

(The Illustrious Crackpot)

The redheaded girl slowly regarded the board before her, narrowing pink eyes at her choices. After long deliberation, she reached out a fingerless hand and picked up a slender white bishop, sliding it diagonally forwards four spaces before grinning triumphantly at her opponent. "Check."

The monkey growled at her, banging a gloved fist on the table between them. "Curses! How comes it that no matter how I try, attempt, endeavor, I am unable to fully protect one single black king from your pitiful little-girl plots?! It is but one piece in an army of many, and yet it is always singled out as the weakest point, and I must do everything in my power to protect it, as its protection is the point of this game! Curse yoooooou, curse yooooooooou!!!"

Mojo panted laboriously after this heated rant, then straightened up, quite composed, and calmly captured the offending white bishop with his rook. "I believe that you shall find your 'check' sadly null and void."

Blossom was hard-pressed to suppress a chuckle, but she managed to keep it to herself, instead surveying the new battlefield. The bishop had been merely a decoy, part of her elaborate ruse to distract her opponent by making bold maneuvers with strong pieces so as not to draw attention to her real trump, a small pawn she'd had quietly advancing on Mojo's king since the game's beginning. She hadn't been sure if he would actually take the bait—though he could be rather conceited at times, Mojo was no fool—but the move had opened up a pathway for her pawn that could prove useful to her later.

Pretending to hesitate, she moved her knight forwards, directly threatening his rook. Then she settled back in her seat again, face a disarming mask of innocence. "Your move."

Granted, they were an odd pair to be sitting around playing chess; one a five-year-old superhero created by a chemical explosion, the other a villainous chimpanzee who tried to destroy her, the town and her sisters on a weekly basis. And yet it was only natural that they should meet in such an intellectual competition, their minds matched at levels so much higher than the people around them could ever appreciate.

The seeds had been sown on what had been a perfectly ordinary day—Mojo had been robbing banks using a matter teleporter, and the Powerpuff Girls had crashed into his lair to stop him. Blossom had given orders, then had hung back to observe while Bubbles had destroyed the teleporter and Buttercup had started beating up the villain. But just as the pink Puff had been about to enter the fray herself, her attention had been attracted by a chessboard spread on a nearby table, already cluttered with pieces. Mojo often played matches against himself, as a way to stimulate his mind and out of sheer boredom, and had been in the midst of puzzling out his next move when the Girls had made their entrance.

"If black used its knight to take white's bishop, it'd have a checkmate on white's king!"

Mojo's head had snapped up to stare at her after her unintentional outburst, but any comments he might have made had been silenced by Buttercup's fist. And, as such things went, the Powerpuffs had taken the chimp to jail and Blossom had thought no more on the occurrence.

Then, a week or two later, Blossom had been reading at a table in the Townsville Public Library, enjoying a few hours of peace before she had to go home for dinner. A cough on her right had caught her attention, and there had stood Mojo, poorly attempting nonchalance. Clearly he had just escaped from jail, as his turban had still been covered with the customary black-and-white-striped cap. He'd had a box under his arm.

"Sooooooo, Blossom...you play chess?"

Still rather surprised at his presence, she had simply nodded dumbly.

"Ah."

And without further warning he had sat in the chair across from her with a flourish and, opening the box, unfolded a chessboard on the table. Very quickly he had set up the pieces, lining up the whites on her side, and then had sat back and stared expectantly at her. She'd had no answer for him, instead just watching him perplexedly.

"Well? Does not white have the first move in all traditional games of chess?"

Hesitantly, a bit suspiciously, she had moved a pawn. And he had moved a pawn. And soon they'd been so embroiled in the game that Blossom had arrived home almost after curfew and had had to invent some form of excuse for her sisters and the Professor.

But it had been the best match she'd played in a very long time.

Every once in a while there would be another game—Blossom would tap on his window with board in hand, Mojo would inconspicuously place his set just outside the kindergarten gate, and they would soon be pitted in a competitive (yet relatively friendly) bout. Yes, Mojo would still commit crimes and plot against the Powerpuffs, and after such occasions the games would cease for a time, but always they would return to play again. For in a town with such a low average IQ, intellectuals constantly craved an equal match.

As he slid his rook out of the knight's path, Mojo remarked idly, "Your skills are self-taught, are they not? For they have all the earmarks of those who learn by themselves."

Silently Blossom tried to categorize his reaction. Was he trying to catch her off-guard? Or was he genuinely curious?

"Yeah, I taught myself," she responded offhandedly, chasing the rook with her knight. If she kept his attention on that pursuit, she might have an opening to advance her pawn. "Kind of, anyway. The Professor showed me how to play the game, but he's too busy with other stuff to play much. Bubbles and Buttercup never really got it, so I can't play them either." She looked up to where Mojo was concentrating on his next move. Maybe she could distract him. "What about you?"

"As so many other things that I have done so well, I too taught myself the subtle nuances of chess." He didn't even seem to be thinking about his response, and instead merely grasped the top of his black queen and moved it to back up his rook. "Very few of the other Townsvillains can play this noblest of noble games, chess. 'Him' can play, but the first and only time we were engaged in a match, he set my board on fire."

Blossom tried to be just as detached from the conversation, moving her knight even closer to the rook. "He lost?"

"No, he won." In a swift movement, Mojo's queen captured Blossom's knight. "'Him' can be very confusing like that."

"I see."

Blossom purposefully waited a few moments before her next move, hoping to bluff him into thinking that she'd been cornered. She slid her pawn a space forward, just near enough to Mojo's king that she could check it—and hopefully checkmate—after a few more careful maneuvers.

"Though it must be admitted, although I am loath to make said admission, as it is something that normally I would not care to admit," Mojo went on, edging his queen closer to Blossom's side of the board, "that you, Blossom, pose a much greater intellectual challenge to me in these games of chess than 'Him' could ever dare hope to match."

This statement immediately sounded fishy to Blossom. Most likely he was trying to get at her through her pride, to make her so overconfident that she would lose her concentration and mess up. Ignoring him, she studied the board in front of her. If she moved her rook forwards three spaces, she would be one move away from checking his king...

"Well," she replied as she picked up her rook, using speech in an effort to distract him from the significance of her move, "I must agree that we are just about an even match, intellectually."

"Yes, yes, intellectually we are on equal grounds." His tone was casual, as though the comment was entirely offhand. "And as such it is a good thing that you are my enemy and that I despise you, for if such were not true, it would be entirely possible that I could love you."

Shocked, Blossom dropped the rook, her face lighting up with an unwanted blush. Her piece clattered to the board, completely upright, two spaces short from where she needed it to be.

Mojo just regarded her with a wicked, incredibly smug smile before reaching out and smoothly placing his queen in the square her rook had only just vacated.

"Checkmate."