GAKUTO LEARNS CHESS
and everyone has to teach him grammar, math and basic common sense all over again.
a/n: Decided to change this to a trilogy. And, the HIROSHIMA in the first chapter is actually Hiyoshi in disguise, for anybody who read the first version by mistake. Spell-check sort of altered it a bit. Okay, a LOT. You might notice the 'math' bit isn't coming out too much, because the point system is way at the back.
warning: In which Gakuto wants to demote his king. And Shishido nearly jump down the building.
It was a few days of pouring rain after that particular day of chess. The regulars, excluding Gakuto, also started to come as late as possible in order to evade death. Sakaki was not very pleased.
Soon after, the regulars' luck ran dry and they were caught in a nice sunny bright afternoon, which they couldn't help but arrive early yet to play chess again. When they figured that Gakuto would actually pester them again, it was too late. He already did.
Atobe and Oshitari were having a battle of the smartest when they were harassed repeatedly by the red-haired shorty.
"Check! Ore-sama no bigi ni yoina!"
"Check. Ore-sama TACHI no bigi ni yoina."
"You can't refer to yourself as ore-sama! It's MY term! I shall bestow that title on you when you proof yourself worthy as a rival, which you are not."
Oshitari changed into sunglasses, looking cool as a cucumber. "I need not your permission to use a title."
"IT'S DELICATE!"
"Can I play today?" Gakuto asked cautiously, because he already knew the answer.
"NO! FOR THE LAST TIME, NO!"
Oshitari tried to reason. "Ask a question, then. One he doesn't know."
Atobe thought hard. "Give me an example of double-negativity usage and how it is wrong."
"THAT'S NOT CHESS!" Gakuto argued. "That's grammar! And it is completely irrelevant!"
"See if I care."
"Um…um…Don't I not like Atobe?"
Atobe spluttered over his afternoon coffee. "Wh-what?"
"Because it is of course I DON'T LIKE ATOBE!" Gakuto grinned at his own intelligence. Oshitari smiled pleasantly.
"Good job, Gakuto."
"Ne, Yuushi, it is grammatically correct right?"
"Logically too."
"SHUT UP ABOUT ORE-SAMA!" Atobe hollered. Normally it would affect even Oshitari, but today he just wasn't in the mood to holler at full strength. He ran out of cough drops just a few days ago and he was not going to sacrifice his royal throat in return for a few badly made up insults.
"Keigo…the agreement…" Oshitari warned. Atobe snorted.
"Later." Atobe pulled a chair and sat down. "If I die my money wouldn't be given to any of you, ass. I shall give the seat of the captain of Hyotei Tennis Club to Ohtori." Hiyoshi gaped from outside the door, where he was eavesdropping from.
"What about the noblesse oblige (1) you were promoting just a few months ago? Teach that retard something."
Gakuto looked weirdly at the two people currently involving in the battle of wits. "What's noblesse oblige? And what's castling?"
"No one has ever mentioned anything about castling-" Atobe started. Oshitari pushed Atobe off his seat and occupied it happily. "Now go."
Atobe coughed slightly and stared down at the jumping redhead. "I'm doing this out of pure pity for your lack of knowledge in chess, so listen up. Castling is a move when you take the rook, or what you say the castle-like object sitting on the edge of the board looking pretty useless, and the king, and you move them."
Gakuto seemed bored. "And?"
Atobe snapped his fingers. "Shishido, recite the seven rules of castling."
"I AM NOT YOUR SERVANT!" He shouted dramatically.
"Shut up and recite."
Shishido grumbled a little and mumbled. "The player must never have moved the king or the rook involved in castling. There must be no pieces between the king and the rook. The king may not currently be in check. The king cannot pass through squares that are under. Castling is illegal if it would place the king in check. The king and the rook must be on the same rank…Wait. Why are there only six rules?"
Oshitari shrugged. "You merged one and two together." Gakuto started to chant an insult at Shishido in the background, and the taller regular ran out of the clubhouse in shame. As if in shame. Maybe just to avoid the insanity. Oshitari went out to catch him.
"OY! Are you leaving ore-sama with the retard?!"
The blue-headed tensai disappeared in the school grounds. Atobe slumped limply against the whitewashed walls of the tennis clubhouse. "This is most obviously the nadir of my life."
Gakuto cocked his head in a manner that would have been very cute for a girl but seriously sissy for a guy. "Wha?"
"Shut up." Atobe set up the board with the rook and king. "Castling is actually two moves, but chess rules states that moves can only be completed by one hand. You pick the king first, in this case."
"Why?"
"Because I am going to rip your mouth from your face if you say that word again, although it is logically impossible."
"HOW?" Gakuto was so surprised, which was very often, that he jumped from his seat with excitement.
"Sit down; now ZIP IT." He sat. Atobe continued. "Castling is an important goal in the early part of a game, because it moves the king into a safer position away from the center of the board and moves the rook to a more active position in the center of the board. There is two ways of castling, kingside and queenside, in which kingside involves the rook nearer to the king and vice versa for queenside. Kingside is safer and more hassle-free."
"I want Yuushi! You are so non-human! You understand best how many brain cells I have left; you can't give me THIS much to remember!!"
"There is no peace for the wicked," A smooth voice came from the doorway. Oshitari held up Shishido, gagged and bound with random ropes and cloth. "And that applies to you too, Shishido." Atobe was livid, but not because of the newly-arrived.
"NON-HUMAN?! It's INHUMANE dammit!" Atobe twitched.
Gakuto was at a lost. Again. "Eh…YES SIR!"
"Oshitari, I love you. Now save me from this retard." Oshitari stayed motionless. "NOW! I mean it!"
"Touchy." Oshitari bolted the door and untied Shishido, who was currently unconscious with chloroform, courtesy of himself. He dusted his suit and sat down opposite Gakuto. "Play."
Gakuto took fifteen minutes to set up his side of the board. Oshitari took advantage by having a small nap while he was at it. When he was done, Oshitari pushed a pawn.
After eight moves, Gakuto managed to push his entire row of pawns in front. Atobe clucked sarcastically. Gakuto cringed. "Atobe, you sound so wrong when you chuckle! STOP IT!"
Atobe froze. "Say. That. Again. I dare you."
"You sound very wrong when you chuckle." Gakuto repeated innocently.
Atobe snorted in disbelief. "Do not insult ore-sama's chuckling ability."
"Actually," Gakuto said. "You sound even worse when you snort!"
Atobe snorted again. "Ahh? Since when does ore-sama snort?"
"JUST NOW! Don't deny it!" Gakuto could be very mean when he wants to.
"I have no intention of having one pointless argument after another with you."
Oshitari nudged Atobe, who was standing beside him. "You ARE in self-denial, Keigo."
"Stop being so antagonistic! And since when did you start calling me Keigo?"
"For about thirty minutes." Having heard this, Atobe gave up and went to get another cup of coffee. Oshitari ignored him and continued the game, because Gakuto was ranting on and on about how he wanted 'no-frills teaching of chess' et cetra.
When Atobe was back with his coffee, Oshitari had eaten Gakuto's queen, rooks and bishops. Gakuto had somehow managed to keep his knights safe, while Oshitari converted three of his pawns into queens consecutively in three turns.
"Wha?"
"If I move the pawn to the other end of the board, in other words your side, I can promote it to a queen or any other piece of my liking."
"Promotion?"
"Yes." Oshitari said
"Can I demote my king?" Gakuto asked.
"No, you can't."
"BUT HE'S SO USELESS!"
Oshitari smiled. "Like you."
"I'M NOT! See," Gakuto hopped his knight (He had finally understood how to move it) over to one of Oshitari's new queen and ate her up. The thing was his knight didn't even land on the queen.
Oshitari died. "You can't capture something your knight jumped over, Gakuto."
Gakuto fingered the queen-in-pawn-disguise. "This queen is still mine." Oshitari was already away from his seat, and was trying to stop a crazy Shishido from jumping down the two-storey clubhouse.
In some way or another, when Oshitari wasn't looking, Gakuto achieved a royal fork.
Atobe gasped.
"Don't gasp!" Gakuto said, irritated. Atobe pointed at Gakuto's knight.
"That is a fork."
"Fork?" Gakuto pondered. "But what's the point of a fork if you have no cake?"
Jiroh woke up. "CAKE? Sugoi!"
Kabaji, who listened to Jiroh just a little bit less than he listens to Atobe, whipped up a cake in the kitchen. Just for the sake of noting, Hiyoshi was banned from the clubhouse ever since the first chess session and also, Choutaro was trying a new method of growing taller courtesy of Inui Sadaharu by drinking milk™.
Oshitari returned, and gasped even more dramatically than Atobe, before pulling out a camera from nowhere and clicked at the chessboard in glee.
Gakuto was miffed. "What was that for, Yuushi?"
Oshitari smirked. "I can't believe the great Atobe-sama would actually help the brainless Gakuto against the tensai ME to win a chess game. It's just so amusing."
"I DID NOT HELP HIM!" The finger on the camera speed shutter stopped.
"I don't believe." Oshitari said.
"I crapped it up myself." Gakuto replied. "Does it mean I have checkmated your queen?"
Oshitari crumbled. "Just TAKE IT."
To avenge for one of his three queens, Oshitari ended the game in a brutal checkmate in five moves. Atobe chuckled (again) partially to irritate Gakuto to no end, and also to laugh at the redhead's stupidity.
"Please don't chuckle; you sound like a piece of shit when you do." Gakuto groaned.
"Faeces do not chuckle."
"Yeah right, you noble ROT."
"Are you calling me wine?"
(1) noblesse oblige: noun, from French The idea that people who have special advantages of wealth etc. should help other people who do not have these advantages. Just a note.
a/n: The noble rot at the end is just Gakuto interpreting it as a noble but spoiled rotten person and using it as a useless insult immediately countered by ATOBE :D Thanks for reading this pointless fic :) The last chapter would be about stalemates, checkmates, value of chess pieces and recording of moves. This is where the math comes in.