Chinami Nadakai
The sound of a sharp, brief cry of pain and the scraping of stone echoing off the stonework halls almost made her hurry her pace, but "Liliya" resisted willfully the urge to act recklessly. Honestly, despite the seeming inevitability of it, she hoped to go unnoticed by Reverio as long as possible... for the entirety of this venture ideally. The disguise was just an insurance policy at the end of the day.
To be honest... She wasn't sure how she wanted to go about... "all this", as it were. Reverio's impulsiveness had forced her own hand in turn. The disguise was something she'd thought up more by lucky happenstance than anything else. She barely had a plan -if what she had could be defined as a "plan" at all- beyond keeping the demon inside her close enough to hear what it needed to hear and fulfil her end of their Deal, and that lack of direction -that vague "winging it" bullshit- didn't sit right with her.
As Liliya approached the bottom of the stairs, she quietly closed her lighter, extinguishing its glow as a cautious measure. Still suspended above the ground, she listened to the area beyond... and received only ominous silence. Tucking her snow-white hair behind her ear so it didn't potentially hang out obviously, Liliya chanced a peek around the corner, and her single exposed crimson eye narrowed at the sight of a grand expanse of checkered black and white... and the familiar "pieces" atop it.
'Chess?'Pursing her lips, Liliya glanced at the door on the opposite side of the room, which appeared to be swinging closed, quashing the majority of the white light spilling from within the space beyond the first obstacle.
'Reverio... you moron.' Even mentally, the words simply couldn't help but be very exceptionally
done already with this blonde with a martyr complex. Honestly... this trap looked not so simple. How had he crossed it so quickly?
More importantly, while she didn't want him to get too far ahead of her, did she really want to catch up?
Liliya finally moved out of cover, hovering out to the edge of the "playing field", as her brows furrowed minutely. Scrutinizing the field, she could see the pieces lying deceptively still, but she would have bet her left tit that they were golems of some sort. This sort of...
flamboyant trap seemed exactly the sort of thing to include such an extra "flair" from whoever had made it. Eccentrics aside, however, what was more important was how this trap functioned...
Did the intruder have to "play the game"? With what? Could they order the pieces around? If so, which ones? Both? Did they have to choose? Was it a fake-out or unwinnable scenario? Was she facing a magical AI? Did the pieces reset between "games"? Hard to say; she hadn't been quick enough to watch Reverio "play". And on that note, if there was a "game" to be played, how had he done it so fast? Was he just an idiot savant at chess? No, that didn't sound quite right. She'd heard Reverio's cry of pain, and the lightest scent of copper tinged the air to her Spirit's superhuman senses. If there was a strategy, Reverio wouldn't have had time to use it. He was on an obvious time crunch. He didn't have the time to indulge obvious delaying tactics. More likely than not, he had just bulled on through and accepted the consequences.
And she might just have to follow his lead.
Not. Ideal.
She had no doubt that doing it such a way would be loud, as her crimson eyes scanned the board, black and white pieces alike, looking for gaps in the formations. The board was arranged as a game already in progress. Assuming the pieces were limited to attacking within their game rules (and she'd have to be cautious of a reverse psychology fake-out letting her guard down), then she could only safely traverse accordingly. The odds that this were the case were... higher than her tenuous confidence in the competency of the government would like to believe. Why? Well, who in their right mind made a trap that could actually be beaten? To guard stuff like she could only assume was hidden below, you'd ideally make a trap with no solution except a secret passphrase or some-such that would temporarily disable the defense.
But digression aside, assuming the pieces had to play by the rules... that still didn't do anything about the first major hurdle.
The puppy-guarding white queen.
Sitting in the "bottom-left" corner of the "board", the white queen canvased the entire length of the battlefield in three threatening directions. There was no way to get past her without being imperiled. Even if Liliya were to cross on the opposite corner, that too would be additionally guarded by the presence of the white rook, looming midway up the field. And that wasn't even mentioning that this "bottom" side was the home territory of the black pieces. The more she looked at the board, the more she could vaguely see how the black team was disadvantaged. In fact, their position was so bad that they all seemed to have moved up at least one space, leaving their entire backline open to the white queen's predations.
Was she supposed to play as black to remove the obstacles? Did that even mean black was on her side? Even if they were, how was she supposed to make them move in the first place? Could she move white? Perhaps the scenario was that she was supposed to play out the finishing blow.
"White queen, A8 to A5," Liliya commanded with a whispery confidence. If she estimated correctly, that would not only remove a major direct obstacle, but open the queen up to being immediately captured by the black bishop currently guarding the black king. Even if that potentially left the bishop vulnerable, the trade for an enemy queen, strategically, was surely an irresistible target. Honestly, when it came down to it, she could perfectly well tolerate slaughtering as many pieces as possible on both sides until crossing the board became trivial. A final victory was meaningless and a waste of time. There clearly wasn't an invisible physical barrier, or Reverio wouldn't have been able to cross so easily, so all she needed to do was clear the path... not that it would be so easy.
The white queen remained unmoved... And perhaps it was her imagination in the relative darkness, but Liliya could almost have sworn the pale statue was glaring at her even in its unnerving stillness. She suppressed a shiver and looked away. It looked like she couldn't control white... so how about black? If she could, she would need to be very careful about her next commands. Even if the act would be a test, it would be one with stakes. There would be no backing out in a move made in chess.
One hand made it to her chin in thought, as she tried to think several moves ahead. The black bishop could still be her tool of destruction against the white queen. Could she bait it? Was it too transparent? How advanced was the "AI" of this trap, if one existed at all. Was each piece independent? She needed to keep in mind that victory wasn't the goal here, only getting the enemy out of the way. If Checkmate came, it would be by happenstance. So, keeping in mind that the white queen's mere existence threatened every possible path forward, that thing would have to go before anything else.
Liliya lightly chewed her bottom lip. Moving the black bishop might provoke retaliation from the white rook. Would the rook give up its cover of the white queen's coverage blind spot? Perhaps. If she moved the black bishop onto the back row, it would cut off the majority of the white queen's attack route, and she wouldn't be able to attack it without being captured by the black king, himself. However... the white rook could move to the center of the board to threaten the opening instead. In two turns, the rook could have the black bishop captured... No, rather, the queen could then safely capture the bishop, and the black king would be in checkmate, unable to take the queen without being struck down by the rook.
So, how could she pressure the rook? Did she need to? Perhaps she could go on the attack instead. She had a rook left that could put the enemy king in "check" for a moment, but the predicted chain of actions that would follow was... not particularly advantaged towards herself, unless she missed her guess. Canvasing her other assets did not bring forth particularly promising possibilities either. Nearly every piece at her disposal was being threatened. Thankfully, most of the threatened ones were also guarded in some manner... if somewhat more effectively in some places than others.
Perhaps she should test the waters a bit.
Taking out the book she had palmed back in the library proper, Liliya lowered herself to the floor, casually slipped the book onto the "battlefield"... and waited for a response. She received none.
"So, they only respond to the living, presumably? Or, at the least, the trap cannot be cheesed by an object as small or light as a book." Briefly wetting her lips in trepidation, she leaned down and carefully edged her hand across the line towards the book... No movement. She snagged the book and pulled back, standing up again. Was her arm too small, or were the parameters of the likely retaliation more specific than that? Was it actually like chess in that she would have to fully commit to her "move" before the enemy could respond?
Again, she had to revisit the question: should she even attempt to play by the rules or just smash on through? This -just considering a strategy- was already eating up way more time than she was comfortable with... but she had no way to know what the defense system would actually look like without taking the plunge directly. She had no way to tell if her Spirit could protect her without taking a chance. And without the ability to heal herself any longer? She wasn't particularly keen on unnecessary risks.
The longer she stared at the board from an aerial position, hovering once more above and outside the line to the battlefield, the more ideas started to sprout... and the more she began to realize that this position that black was in was nearly guaranteed to lose. The crux of it was her own lone remaining rook. Once the queen took that on the next possible turn, it would be a death spiral. Nodding her head, Liliya was decided. Even if she might not be able to get the white queen, she could hopefully eliminate some of the annoying crossfire.
A muted snort of amusement(?) caused the girl to startle abruptly, whirling around to the stairs to find-
...Nothing.
Right, she had almost forgotten that she wasn't alone. The damn demon had been suddenly pretty quiet for the last good while.
'Anything you feel like sharing with the class?' she grumbled, only half-interested. Frustration and unease colored her tone. This fucking trap... She knew Reverio had cleared it both quickly and seemingly easily, but he'd been injured. She could
smell it. So, how? What was the catch? Was she overthinking things?
"This One was merely partaking in the adulation of the observer."Liliya's lip twisted briefly in distaste at the succinct elaboration that followed in regard to the situation upstairs, and then her blood ran cold upon processing the end of "This One's" report. Darla's plan had worked fairly well, but it unfortunately was up against a wellspring of spiteful pettiness and annoying sufficient technology to enable it. The intrusion was detected, and the librarians were coming!
She was out of time! Do or die!
Gritting her teeth and steeling herself, Liliya's Spirit propelled her into the air over the top of the chess board. She was fast, not as fast as her Spirit could move unburdened (mostly for her own safety than anything else) but certainly fast enough that she would clear the obstacle in moments.
And in chilling, slow-motion unison to her accelerated vision, the statues on the board all silently turned to look at her in a singular hair-raising moment. But it was okay, surely? There was every indication that they had to play by the "rules" and were bereft of offence outside of mel-
A criss-cross of searing white and pulsating black beams bloomed from the staffs of the bishops and the damned white queen. Liliya veered wildly, unable to chance taking the unknown energy of the attacks head-on, as they cored ominously into the ceiling, carving bubbling paths through the stonework. Immediately after, she balked, as shimmering white and black barriers of hexagons snapped into place. She bashed into the far one, closest to the exit door, and rebounded violently, flailing back unharmed but disoriented by the unexpectedly unyielding nature of the obstacle.
The rooks now!
And
also the fucking white queen!
The positioning of the pieces unleashing the barriers meant she was entirely boxed in, even as the bishops and queen unleashed a fresh salvo, their beams seemingly totally unhindered by the barriers. Liliya's Spirit hurriedly yanked her puppeted body into a corkscrew dive, passing under the assault, along with curling uncomfortably over the follow-up in space that was increasingly cramped by the moment, as one of the white rooks started to move closer, bringing its barrier with it.
Gritting her teeth, the girl chanced a glance around and saw that even the black pieces were against her. Was that because they'd never been on her "side" to begin with or because she had "cheated"? Impossible to know and irrelevant to the situation at hand. This was the sort of ruckus that even normal hearing could likely catch from the top of the stairs, should someone open the door. All she was doing was supplying the guards urgency! Only seconds had passed since the engagement's start, but she needed to-
"-Be done with this already," she forcibly hissed out in a colder and calmer tone than she truly felt. Rage, indignity and something
else warred within, crawling and bubbled underneath her skin, as crimson eyes narrowed to reptilian slits.
The girl dropped like an anvil, unyielding, and the first of the white bishops stood no chance. There was some resistance, certainly, as her feet crushed the statue into rubble, enchanted resistance even... But these creatures -these
things- weren't alive, and so as was so very uncommonly the case... she had no need to hold back.
Two white pawns served as brief excellent "meat" shields against the incoming fire, as Liliya's gaze snapped to the all too close and
deliciously vulnerable white king. She wondered if killing it would make short work of those other white pieces? The answer seemed to be emphatically
yes, as the white king flicked away a moment before her enhanced blow could land, replaced with one of the white rooks! Liliya blinked in recognition and frustration. She knew that move! Even if she didn't know what it was called, she knew of it... and that it could only be used
once. Sure, counting on the pieces to play by the "rules" at this stage seemed foolish, but a girl could hope, right?
Still, the king may have lived, but that just meant her Spirit-clad fist scythed into the white rook instead, blowing the castle-shaped statue to smithereens. The barrier tried to stop her... only for her Spirit's invisible arm to briefly phase off her own limb and straight through, completely unbothered.
The only barrier barring the way to the exit shattered... and the white king had nowhere left to run.
"Checkmate."Liliya lunged.
The living pieces almost seemed to howl in helpless fury-
...And the door shut behind her.
Now tensely staring down a long stone hallway with another surge of nostalgia, Liliya smiled grimly. She could have destroyed the king, but instead, she would leave the trap active. Anything to buy herself some extra seconds, whether the guards could disable it or not. The pieces were riled up, and with any luck, they would not be so easily pacified.
