Here's chapter two up just in time for the 10th anniversary of Gundam 00's airing! :'D

Breakthrough

In chess, the destruction of a seemingly strong defense, often by means of a sacrifice

October 6, 2017

That night there is an unusual buzz of excitement in the mess hall. Those who hadn't heard about Tieria and Sumeragi's fantastic wager in real time had been filled in on all of the details over multiple overlapping dinner shifts.

Sumeragi hadn't expected a simple chess game to garner so much popularity among the crew of Celestial Being, but apparently the extremity of the stakes more than made up for the usual lack of enthusiasm over the game. The crew lingers until the mess hall is full and all the seats are taken, neglecting their after-dinner shifts as much as possible while still keeping the Ptolemy operating safely.

The energy runs high throughout the room as everyone whispers questions about the bet and the game, or theories as to how it will play out as they wait for the players to finish their meals.

Sumeragi is done with her dinner first, turning her attention to a bottle she has pulled specially for the occasion, while Tieria continues to eat in his usual frosty silence, refusing to be rushed.

When he finally finishes eating and disposes of his meal tray in the disposal chute, he leaves the room to retrieve the board and pieces. He refuses point blank to let Sumeragi accompanying him, despite the knowledge that there was no real possibility of tampering with or somehow marking the pieces of a chess set, and somehow fails to see anything hypocritical about his suspicions requiring him to fetch the board himself.

Sumeragi's amused, "There's no way to cheat at chess!" doesn't change his resolve as he walks out of the mess hall.

He does allow Feldt to accompany him. It isn't so much that the pieces are heavy—low gravity does have its perks—but even if he could have made the journey in one trip, Tieria realizes full well that it is much easier to hold onto the hallway's transporters while possessing at least one free hand.

When Lichty, who apparently, has never seen a real game of chess before, bounces his legs in excitement for the two of them to return, Ian offers to take over the helm for the rest of his shift.

"You may not be thanking me later, because there's really nothing exciting about chess," he warns, "but… sure, kid, stay and watch them play. I can handle the bridge for a few hours."

"A few… hours?" Lichty blinks.

Ian doesn't answer him, but turns to Lockon before he leaves. "Hey, Lockon," he calls. "I got five bucks on Miss Sumeragi."

Lockon throws his head back in laugher and raises a hand in acknowledgement. "I don't have odds for you yet," he says with a smile.

Ian waves away his concern. "Doesn't matter the odds—I'm putting money on our tactical forecaster."

"Alright, then…" he says, pulling out his terminal to enter the wager.

"Luck, Sumeragi!" Ian says, mock saluting her before he heads out.

She smiles fondly after him as he disappears through the doorway.

"What do you think, Lasse?" Lockon greets, when he arrives a minute later.

"About what?"

"Odds for the game," Lockon says. "Two to one, you think?"

Lasse crosses his arms as he thinks on this for a moment. "In whose favor?" he counters.

"Call it evens, then?" Lockon asks with a grin.

Lasse shrugs a little. "Sounds fine to me."

Lockon nods. "So what's your bet?" he asks. "Ian's already got five on Miss Sumeragi."

Lasse breathes deeply as he looks at their forecaster and the drink she's pouring for herself. "I'm also with Miss Sumeragi," he says after a moment. "Ten dollars."

"Why, Lasse," Sumeragi raises her glass to him. "I didn't realize you had so much faith in me!"

Lasse cracks a crooked grin, and grabs one of the only empty chairs. Dragging it across the floor, he magnetically anchors it before sitting on it backwards. "I'm here, aren't I? Trusting you with a lot more than just ten dollars," he points out.

"Hmmm," she says, holding out her drink in a toast before knocking it back and emptying the rest of the glass.

Chris leans forward across the table in concern. "Are you sure you should be drinking at a time like this, Miss Sumeragi?" she asks.

Sumeragi stares at Chris for a moment, then grins.

"Well, no one betting for Tieria?" Lockon muses as he inputs the bets into his terminal. "Can't have that. The poor guy will think we have no faith in him at all. Guess I'll put fifteen on him to even things out."

Sumeragi glances up at him, eyebrow raised. "I thought you didn't think this was a good idea," she says.

"And I still don't," he replies with a grin. "In fact, I hope I lose. But… this way if Tieria loses he might not feel so bad that all of Celestial Being thought the game was doomed from the start. And…" he pauses, tilts his head and adds with magnanimity, "if he wins, then I, at least, will be in the good graces of our brand new tactician."

Sumeragi laughs, loud and clear. "Are you sure you don't want to play the loser?"

Lockon grins at her. "Any other takers?" he asks, holding up his terminal and looking around the room.

Doctor Moreno shakes his head in amusement. Setsuna doesn't bother replying. When Lockon turns to Allelujah, the meister flinches a bit and shakes his head quickly.

"What about you, Chris?" Lichty asks from beside her.

Chris purses her lips. "Hmm, that's hard," she says. "I might put five dollars on each of them?"

"Ooh, yeah!" Lichty is quick to agree. "That's a great idea. Me too!"

Lockon laughs again. "That's… not how betting normally goes, you know," he tells them. "And besides, with even odds, the whole thing will be a wash for you no matter who wins."

Chris shrugs. "Fine, then," she decides. "A shopping spree for the winner."

"That's not even a bet," Lockon protests, although he's grinning broadly at her.

"Bet you hope Tieria wins, then," Lasse chuckles.

"I mean, it's not like it's really my money, anyway," Chris hedges. "So it doesn't really matter to me," she says airily.

Lockon huffs a laugh. "Alright, then. Well, I'll put Lichty down five on each…"

"Wait!" Lichty protests weakly, but Lockon doesn't seem to hear.

"… and Chris furnishing the winner with a shopping trip…" Lockon looks up from his terminal. "Miss Sumeragi, do you want to place any bets?"

"Betting on herself?" Chris asks.

"Can she even do that?" Lichty completes her question.

Lockon cants his head and looks to Lasse for guidance.

Shrugging, Lasse says, "Sure, if she wants to."

They all turn to Sumeragi, but she shakes her head. "Why would I need to do that if Chris is already going to take me shopping?"

Lockon laughs at that, and finishes typing the last few notes when the door hisses open again.

Tieria appears with the board and Feldt follows closely behind with the box of pieces. The crew greets them with grins as they set them down on the table.

Chris and Lichty offer to help Feldt set up the board, and they open the box, divvying up the distinctly colored pieces. Lichty volunteers to set up the pawns while Feldt directs the placing of the larger pieces.

Tieria doesn't sit down when he catches sight of the smiling faces around him. He frowns back as he surveys the room. Lockon suddenly realizes what the suspicious look is for and explains that they've placed bets on the outcome of the game.

"Bets?" Tieria sniffs.

"Even odds," Lockon replies brightly. "Split fifty-fifty between you and Miss Sumeragi."

Tieria raises an eyebrow. "Indeed," he asks, and something changes in the way he holds himself.

"Yep. So," Lockon claps his gloved hands and rubs them together. "We all good, then?" he asks, looking down at the now-completed board.

Tieria bends down to inspect it closely, ensuring that each piece is indeed in its designated position. Satisfied that nothing is out of place, he nods.

"Although…" he breaks off with a sharp glance to Sumeragi, "we haven't decided who's white and who is black."

"Oh, you can be white," Sumeragi says easily before pouring herself some more alcohol. "Doesn't matter to me."

"Are you sure?" Lasse asks, frowning a little as he stares between the two of them. "Wouldn't you like to do rock paper scissors for it or something?"

Sumeragi waves a hand and twirls the board so two lines of black pieces stand in front of her. "I really don't care."

"Fine," Tieria accepts, icily, before taking his seat opposite her.

"Any special specifications?" Sumeragi asks. "We doing this timed? Blind? Blitz?"

Tieria eyes the glass in her hand. "It appears you are doing this imbibed, but otherwise, no. A standard game of chess. Winner takes the tactical forecaster's chair."

Sumeragi inclines her head from across the table. "Well, then let's begin."

The effect of her words is immediate. Everyone quiets down and settles around the table eagerly, pulling their chairs forward and rearranging seats to get a good view of the board.

Tieria, playing white, makes the first move, sliding one of his pawns forward two spaces. Sumeragi quickly follows with one of her own. The first few minutes are spent volleying pawns forward at a quick tempo, but after that, each move becomes increasingly slower as they both take more time to analyze the board between turns and start edging out some of their larger pieces.

While it soon becomes pretty clear that no one watching knows all that much about chess—Feldt and Lasse seem able to follow the game play and Lockon at least knows the name of each pieces and the basics about how they're able to move—it is equally evident to everyone that Tieria and Sumeragi are both extremely proficient players.

They continue to move quickly, even though, with each new piece in play, every move leads to an ever-widening circle of ramifications. They reach for their chessmen deliberately, thoughtfully, in almost complete silence, apart from the occasional scraping of chairs across the floor and Sumeragi's pauses to either empty or fill her glass.

Lichty clears his throat, half an hour into the game, and Tieria pierces him with a frosty glare.

When Lasse makes a distressed noise in the back of his throat in response to a move fifteen minutes later, Sumeragi wordlessly throws out one hand to the side to silence him with a finger on his mouth.

"No comments from the peanut gallery, thank you," she whispers, not taking her eyes off the board.

"Peanut gallery?" Lasse turns to mouth at Lockon in disbelief, only for the meister to shrug and grin back at him.

"And anyone attempting to influence the outcome of this game will be asked to leave," Tieria declares, his voice edged in ice and taking on a more dangerous quality than anyone expects, in the quiet of the room.

Despite not having made a sound, Allelujah shrinks further back into his corner of the room, to the point where Lockon isn't sure how he's able to see anything of the table, let alone the board.

From that point on, everyone maintains absolute silence, although it soon becomes clear that very few of them had realized just how long a game of chess could go, or how unexciting it was to anyone who didn't understand the strategies or comprehend the consequences of each move until they finally resulted in captured pieces.

The pile of captured pieces on either side of the board—the jails, as Lichty and Feldt had arranged them—grows slowly, pawns at first, then one of Sumeragi's bishops, and one of Tieria's rooks, and a knight each.

There's a long sigh from somewhere on Moreno's side of the table, and Lichty adjusts himself, popping one elbow on the table to see can get a better look, but there isn't any tangible noise until Lockon rolls his head from shoulder to shoulder and his neck cracks audibly.

Tieria turns to him with a swift glare, hand still halfway to a piece. Throwing his hands up in mock surrender, Lockon is ready to remind the guy that he had bet on him, but realizes that saying it out loud will most definitely earn him an invitation to leave the room.

When Tieria makes his move, Sumeragi pauses, drink nearly touching her lips. She sets down her glass without drinking, and peers down at the pieces, muttering under her breath.

Everyone unconsciously leans forward, holding their own breaths and trying to decipher what it is she sees until she reaches for her queen and makes a move, looking satisfied.

Tieria smirks a little and moves his knight out in response. Sumeragi counters with a pawn that Tieria immediately captures, and Lockon starts to worry that he might win his bet, after all.

Sumeragi starts a new combination, moving her pieces forward to block his oncoming knight and bishop, sliding pawn after pawn into position as Tieria takes them and forces her to move her other pieces back to defend her king.

Chairs scrape as several people angle for a better view, crowding over the table with hushed murmurs as Sumeragi and Tieria both reach for their pieces in turn, not bothering to comment on the noise now.

Sumeragi's quiet "check" seems to come out of nowhere.

Tieria stares down at the board in disbelief for a moment, then rallies, eyebrows drawn together in concentration as he surveys the scene, moving his queen out to cover the move. He begins maneuvering around it, and Lockon can see him advancing toward the other side of the board, hoping to put Sumeragi's king in check as well when he stops suddenly, staring down at the board in horror as he realizes what he's done.

Lockon can't see exactly what's happened, but he can tell Tieria thinks it a grave mistake. But there's no way to take it back now, and also no real chance that their forecaster hasn't picked up on the situation just as well as Tieria has.

With one more move of her queen, Sumeragi takes his bishop and quietly but definitively declares, "Checkmate."

The mess hall erupts with whoops and cheers much more fitting for the end of a football match or a decisive victory on the battlefield than a game of chess. Congratulations fly from every corner of the table, and those within reach pat Sumeragi on the back or attempt to shake her hand.

She's too busy pouring herself another drink to return the gestures. When she knocks it back, Lockon isn't sure if it's in celebration or relief.

The noise finally begins to die down after the initial explosive reaction, but Tieria remains where he is through the entire thing, eyes ablaze and staring at the board like it has betrayed him personally.

His jaw works silently for a long minute before he's able to grind out a harsh, "Best two out of three."

Sumeragi levels him with a look and replies evenly, "That was not the agreement." Her refill sloshes in her hand. "I am, and will remain… Celestial Being's tactical forecaster. But," she says quietly with a smile that is not unkind, "I very much enjoyed this game. And if you would like to continue playing… for nothing more than bragging rights, of course," she is quick to specify, "I'd love to. I think it would keep us both sharp."

Something in his face twitches at that, but he doesn't shoot down the offer outright, which says enough, Lockon thinks.

Sumeragi seems to think so too, after peering across the table at him. "Alright," she pushes up from the table with a deep sigh. "Come on, then," she addresses the room at large, trying to clear everyone out so they didn't overcrowd an obviously fuming Tieria. She knows how easily he could go off and just how poorly that would turn out for anyone in his general vicinity when it did.

Setsuna and Allelujah both get to their feet quickly, and are the first to take their forecaster's advice. They slip away as quickly as they can, eager to escape the unusual bustle of people and noise in the mess hall to the safety and silence of their own cabins.

"Come on, Chris," Sumeragi starts tapping on the girl's arm to get her to move. "We should discuss this shopping trip of mine," she says, and Chris gets up eagerly, immediately followed by Lichty.

Feldt stays behind, though, even when most of the others have left. She silently sidles up behind Tieria and waits quietly to see if he wants help packing away the chess pieces. He doesn't seem to see her, though, or else, looks pointedly away as he picks up the pieces one by one. He handles them slowly, carefully. Too carefully, perhaps, as if he might chuck them against the wall if he didn't.

This is what Lockon had been afraid of.

Doctor Moreno stretches his arms and yawns loudly. Lockon glances over as he adjusts his glasses, and thinks that he's making a show of it to give everyone else on the bridge an excuse to leave now while they still can.

While Lockon appreciates the gesture, he also sees how Tieria's hands are shaking as they move the black queen into the case, and he is even more sure that he needs to stay behind to have a talk with his fellow meister.

Moreno finally turns to head toward the bridge—presumably to meet up with Ian—and Lasse starts going with him but stops and turns to Lockon before he leaves. "Come on, man, pay up," he says with a grin and an outstretched hand. "Before you forget," he adds, a twinkle in his eye.

"Forget?" Lockon asks, feigning hurt at the insinuation. "Now how could I forget?" But Lasse's smile does not budge and his hand does not waver. With a sigh, Lockon fishes in his back pocket for his wallet and Lasse's fingers curl into an impatient gimme motion as he waits.

"Okay, okay, hold on," Lockon snorts, flipping open his wallet and looking for money. "Damn, I owe you so much," he chuckles, pulling out a few worn bills.

"Well, you shouldn't have bet against Miss Sumeragi, then, huh?" Lasse says pointedly. "And ten for Ian," he adds, holding out his hand again, but Lockon smiles and shakes his head.

"Nuh uh," he says. "I'll give him his winnings later. You can't fool me. Tell him I'll come find him in the hangar tomorrow," he says, instead, as he puts his wallet away. "Gotta go talk to him about Dynames' armor plating anyway. And Lichty's bet was a wash, heh."

Lasse takes his money and heads back out, leaving Lockon alone with Tieria and Feldt.

He turns and says, "Hey, good game, Tieria."

Tieria spins around and nearly snarls at him in response.

"Whoa, no need to get all worked up about it," Lockon says, hands up in mock surrender as he keeps his voice carefully light. "That was a good game. You're both clearly excellent players. I thought you had her for most of the game."

"You and no one else," Tieria mutters as he slams a white pawn into the box.

"Hey, that's not true," Lockon counters with a wave of his hand. "I think you had everyone going there for a while. Even Miss Sumeragi. And Chris and Lichty and I all bet on you to win," he adds. "And I think Feldt would have too, if she was the betting kind, yeah?" he asks, turning to her.

Feldt flushes and looks down without saying anything.

Tieria glances at her out of the corner of his eye and then looks over at Lockon. Then he resumes his methodical packing up of pieces.

"You going to play again?" Lockon asks in what he hopes is a casual tone. "I'd enjoy watching a few more games."

Tieria snorts.

"No, really," Lockon says. "The two of you are the best strategists on board, by far. I think we could all learn a thing or two from watching you play."

Tieria looks at him sharply, appraisingly, but seems to decide that there isn't an alternative motive in the statement and that Lockon is sincere in his words.

And he had nearly won. It had been a good game, he acknowledges, and he will have many opportunities to study up with Veda before another game is scheduled, and the rest of the crew could certainly benefit from seeing more strategic methods played out.

He'll… think about it.

"Well, you think about it," Lockon says, and Tieria looks up, startled by the way he'd seemingly read his thoughts. "In the meantime, I think I'm gonna call it a night. But thanks again for the game. I really enjoyed watching it. Night, Tieria," he gives a lazy salute. "Night, Feldt," he waves before walking out the door.

They both stare at him as he leaves.