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Who: Aankin and OPEN (plus a part for Obi-Wan)
What: Anakin is at the park, playing chess
When: Saturday, today
Where: The park
Rating/Warnings: Probably low, maybe swearing

It was Saturday, the day was crisp, but sunny, which was really the best you could hope for in New York in the middle of winter.

Anakin had the rest of the day to do as he pleased and he had too much on his mind to spend the day in his apartment. He loaded up his backpack with snacks, his phone (which was his music), his chess set, he threw on hat and a glove (the one hand didn’t need it), his coat, and then grabbed a bus to his favorite park.

He found an empty table – the table and the benches were made out of cement and the tabletop had white and black cement squares inlaid to make a chess board.

Anakin pulled the battered, wooden box out of his backpack and started setting up the metal pieces. He put the black pieces on his side, to be generous to whoever decided to play with him.

For Obi-Wan
Around early afternoon, Anakin sent Obi-Wan some texts:

>> at the park
>> want to take* about memories

He was curious if Obi-Wan was going through the same thing he was – the memory repeating over and over ad nauseam until it felt like it was burned more firmly in his brain than any memory he’d gained naturally over the years. He was sure he wasn’t alone but just wanted to check.

*OOC: unintentional typo, but let's go with it.

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He didn't respond to the text, because he was already headed to the park with coffee in one hand. He found Anakin pretty quickly. "Hey. Something wrong?" Worth asking, even as he settled into his seat and, yeah, immediately moved his first pawn.

“Fast or slow?” Anakin asked before deciding his first move.

Was something wrong? Yes, he had an insane memory about a hippy and version of the man sitting across from him. That wasn’t Obi-Wan’s fault.

“Is your memory acting weird?”

"Fast." Which meant he would near certainly lose, but felt more appropriate for the discussion, if only because it would keep him preoccupied. "And yeah, if by weird you mean the same memory repeating over and over like some kind of glitchy movie."

Anakin moved his first pawn, using his left hand.

He looked at Obi-Wan. "Ya, that's exactly what it's doing. Every night in my dreams. I think I've memorized everything about the room we're in, the clothing we're all wearing- I bet I could start counting the gray hairs in that hippy's beard."

"I think that hippie might actually be my father." Or something like. "I should probably be more respectful and object to him being called a hippie."

Except he wasn't actually fussed and met the move by moving his pawn out to meet Anakin's.

Anakin looked up. "Your father? How can you tell?" That was some interesting information.

"Oh, I can't. It was just that the more it replayed the more detail, including those involving emotions I picked up. At least my own." Which meant there was some sort of close familial relationship?

"Or it's replayed so many times I'm projecting horribly."

Anakin paused in moving his next piece, because now he was confused (and he was also concerned because he didn't quite like the 'feelings' that came with the memory). "Are you saying you want a hippy for father?" Anakin asked.

"No." He was definitely not saying that. "Just that the feelings were familiar." Like feeling threatened, rejected, inferior, irrelevant, and hurt while trying to be polite.

"Huh," Anakin said, not realizing the extent to what Obi-Wan was feeling.

"I don't have a dad so I guess I don't have anything to make that comparison." Maybe that's why he wasn't picking up that kind emotion about the older man in their memory. He sure felt things - excitement and lingering rush of adrenaline. Which was weird, because they were all kind of crouched on the floor in the memory...

"Not having a dad might complicate it but I don't think parental feelings are particularly delineated by gender of the parent."

That was an assumption (that Anakin had someone parental - or had) and he realized it late and winced.

Anakin didn't want to talk about the one parent he'd had, so he didn't let the conversation turn that way.

"So... then why is your 'dad' introducing us?" he could only us one hand for air quotes. On top of the irritation of the memory, his right arm hurt that day and wanted to avoid moving it as much as possible.

He didn't expect Obi-Wan to have the answer, but it's the one that popped into his mind again and again.

"I don't know. I wish I did. Maybe with time." Was he happy with that? No. Was he going to be flailing against the irritating blank walls that refused to turn into doors he could walk through to find answers? Also no. "Meanwhile I would settle for uninterrupted sleep."

The first thing Anakin thought was that waiting to learn more was so unsatisfying. He wanted to know now. If the memory was going to attack him, essentially, every night, he felt he deserved more information.

"No dreams would better than the the same one." He moved his piece. "Anything else weird?"

"Not really." He made his own move immediately, which meant he was going to lose, but whatever. "I've talked to a few more people. I think they're all suspicious to various degrees. I also realized that we may be able to use the place I work, after hours, for our own meetings if those need a location."

"An ice rink?" Anakin asked, dubious. He needed to know before he made his move.

"...There's an ice rink in the arena. I thought we might use a meeting room or board room, though I suppose we could gather on the ice itself...."

In short no, he's not quite that far gone.

"You have those at the ice rink?" Anakin knew so little about these things.

"It's a really, really big sporting arena and facility. They host all sorts of things. There's even an attached food court." HE wasn't upset at all, just explaining.

"Huh... I'm sure they have them in Arizona. I've just never been to one." Maybe that was odd? Of all the things he had experienced, never going to an ice rink was a wholesome absence in his life.

"But that could work for a place to meet."

"They're not very useful in most circumstances, unless you happen to skate." He quirked a slight smile. "In this case we've got an alternative use. It's a big space so if people keep turning up we have room, without crowding into anyone's dining room."

The library was good, but fresh air definitely had its merits. He'd be getting a lot of it as an environmental scientist, anyway.

Hopefully.

He hadn't met too many of the other Different yet, so in a big city like this one, Elliott didn't expect to recognize any of them here, at the same time he was. The illusion of normalcy shattered, and for several moments, Elliott went back and forth on whether or not he should stop and say hi, or just pretend not to see him.

In the end, the polite mannerisms drilled into him by his mother won out. Still, it was a little weird to know some people now by virtue of shared... weirdness.

"Anakin," he said brightly, not quite moving to take a seat. He eyed the chess set with some puzzlement. "How are you? ..Did I thank you for your help before?"

Anakin pulled out one of his air pods and put away his phone when he noticed someone step up - it was the polite thing to do. He smiled when he saw that it was Elliot. He didn't know the teen criss-crossed this part of the city... He actually didn't know where the other Different were located either. Only Obi-Wan.

He looked confused, because he wasn't sure what Elliot was referencing. Not that Anakin didn't care, but he didn't always remember things like that.

"Maybe?" He gestured to the empty bench. "Do you want to play?"

"Oh, uh," he glanced at the board again, coloring faintly. "I don't really know- my mom taught me Shogi and Go. I mean, I know some things, like there's.."

He blinked at the strange set pieces. "Or maybe not. ..Is this chess? I thought there was a horse piece that moved in an L-shape, and the Queen is important?"

"This is chess," Anakin confirmed. He picked up one of his black knights - in this case, it was cylinder with a flat top with a horizontal slit cut into it. "This one is the knight. And," he picked up the queen, it was slightly shorter than the king and the right of the king, and it's top was rippled with a smooth wave pattern. "This one is the queen. I made this out of junk pipe when I was twelve. I can teach you how to play."

"Okay," he said, taking a seat. "That's pretty cool that you made them, though."

Elliott leaned over and pointed along the smaller, front row. "These are the ones that just more one space at a time, right?"

Anakin pointed along both his row of black pawns and Elliot's row of silver pawns, the squat, plain cylinders.

"These are pawns, and they have a few different moves."

He picked up one of his pawns to demonstrate. "Pawns normally move one space forward at a time, never backwards. Unless, it's its first move, then you have the option of moving two squares forward."

He set the pawn down on the board, two squares ahead of where it started.

"It captures other pieces on the diagonal. Now say your pawn is here," he moved a pawn from Elliot's side, one column over to be diagonal of Anakin's. "The only way I can attack with a pawn like this." He moved his piece along the diagonal to demonstrate. "Now that pawn stays in that column unless I use it to attack another piece. If a piece is directly in front of it in a column, the pawn can't move forward."

He glanced at Elliot to gauge how that information was going down.

"Now pawns have one more move. If it reaches the other side of the board, you can trade it in for another piece of the same color - a rook, knight, bishop, or queen." He pointed out each kind of piece on his side in turn. "But not the king. Make sense?"

Elliott nodded along. He had enough of a frame of reference for chess that Anakin's clear explanation was easy to follow.

"In shogi, you can use captured tiles as your own, but that's not a thing in chess, right?"

"It's not," Anakin confirmed. "In competitions, the pieces have point values so you want to win by capturing as many of your opponent's pieces as possible. But once captured, they don't play a role again unless you get a pawn all the way to the other side and promote it to a higher rank of a piece that was captured before. And I don't keep track of points when I play."

He moved the pawns back to their starting positions.

"Ready for the next piece?"

"Okay." So points were only important in competitions. Well, no need to worry about memorizing values, then.

He watched Anakin arrange the pieces and eyed the others.

"Yeah, I think I've got it so far."

"Okay these pieces," he pointed at the end pieces that looked like castle towers. "These are rooks."

He picked up one and placed in the center of the board.

"It can move horizontally and vertically as many spaces as are open, it can't hop over pieces. It captures a piece by simply moving to the opponent's space."

He skipped over the knight for now and moved onto the bishops. The one with the slanted tops.

"These are bishops. They are like the rooks but move on the diagonal. One moves along white spaces, the other moves long black space." And he pointed that out. "They capture the same way rooks do, by moving into the space an opponent's pieces occupies. Make sense?"

Elliott's eyes followed the trajectory of the pieces, then swept to his side of the board.

"Pawns move one space forward, capture on diagonal. Um, the rooks move straight. ..These ones," he'd forgotten their name already. "They move diagonally."

"You got it. Okay, so these ones," he picked up the cylinder with the horizontal slit at the top, "these are knights. And you got it right, they move in an 'L' shaped pattern. So, like this-" he moved the piece along some 'L' shaped patterns to demonstrate.

"And they can jump over pieces in their way. They capture by taking the piece they end up on."

"Okay," he said, nodding. "So they jump over the pieces in their way, but only take the ones they land on. I guess that'd be pretty OP if they took everything."

He turned his attention back to the straight and diagonal moving pieces. "So these ones," he said, pointing to the rooks and bishops in turn. "They can move any number of spaces? But have to stop if they hit and capture an opponent's piece?"

"Yup, exactly."

Anakin pointed at the two remaining pieces. "This is the king and this is the queen. The queen can move in any direction and go until they hit and capture an opponent's piece. They can't jump like the knight does, though. She is the most powerful piece on the board."

And now they were at the final piece.

"This is the king, the most important piece on the board. Because once he's captured, the game ends."

Elliott knew that much, at least: that the queen was a powerful piece and capturing the king was the goal of the game. Still, he wasn't sure he'd remember it all if they played an actual game.

He tucked his hands away between the seat and his thighs.

"So, how does the king move, then?"

"Okay," Anakin said, picking up his king. "The king can move in any direction, but only one square at a time. But you cannot move the king into danger. So if you have your rook here-" he moved Elliott's rook to one square in front of and to the right of his king. "I can't move my king here-" he move the king forward into the path of the rook, "or here." And he moved his king to the right into the path of the rook.

"But I can use the king to capture pieces if doing so doesn't put the king in danger. So I could take your rook with my king."

He moved the king so it was in the path of Elliott's rook. "If your king is checked - set up for capture - by your opponent's last move, you have to move your king out of danger no matter what. Whether that's by moving the king, or capturing the piece that's checking your king, or moving a piece between your king and the piece checking it."

He moved the piece back to their home squares. "Make sense?"

"Even on a day like this, huh?" York asked, sitting down across from Anakin. The two had played a time or two before, and recently York had become aware that Anakin was also among the Different. This gave York some grounds to be informal with him, he figures.

The bench is cold; York shivers a bit and rubs his hands together.

"It's sunny," Anakin pointed his gloved finger to the sky. "That makes it perfectly fine for a game. Or..." Anakin offered and alternative, "you could just say I won and buy me a rootbeer?"

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