It's a rather average Saturday for most people - milling out and about - and the Game Center Crown is doing a brisk business, as it always does, between the arcade itself and the upstairs Fruits Parlor Crown.
What is unusual, is the fact that Takashi Agera walks in the door. Game Center Crown isn't a place he's been in some time; and never quite so aimlessly. He's got a nueropsychology book - a very advanced one - under his arm. But he's a little fried from reading, from trying to understand - from working so hard on the frankly unsolvable problem of himself. And that's why he's here - to unwind.
When asking himself 'what would a /normal/ 14 year old do when so fried' the idea of 'play video games and have a milkshake' came pretty suddenly to mind.
Upstairs in the Crown, Ami has claimed a table all to herself. In truth, it's the table she and her friends usually claim, and the staff at this point know that where there's one girl, more are sure to follow along soon, so being upset that she's literally spread out across the whole table is somewhat pointless.
Three books on Chess strategy, a book on Veterinary Medicine, another on probabilities and statistics, and Sun Tzu's The Art of War all prominently surround a chess board in the midst of a game that cannot be less than 15 moves in.
The blue-haired girl is so deep in her concentration on the board that she doesn't even look up when the Crown chimes a newcomer. Normal 14 year olds probably do play video games. Ami Mizuno really isn't normal.
Takashi walks by the blue-haired girl, sat in quiet concentration over her board - and her imaginary opponent. He probably would've given it a shrug, if not for the books arrayed around her too. And there's something familiar about her that he can't place. (If he could, he'd realize she'd been introduced to him at a party, but that memory is a little too hazy with the events of the rest of that night!)
He stops, and turns. There is, for once, not a hint of superiority creeping into his voice - just that honest curiosity creeping in. And he smiles. "I hope this isn't... too nosy. Are you practicing, or does your opponent just vanish for such long periods of time you have to fill the gaps with Sun Tzu?" he asks.
Ami jumps a little at the sound of Takashi's voice, just over her shoulder. She hadn't expected to be interrupted, especially by a boy! Nevertheless, the girl recovers quickly and turns to glance at him. "Practicing," she admits. "I have a tournament tomorrow, and I'm still not entirely confident in some of the counters for the more popular gambits being used by the players, there."
Takashi smiles. He doesn't sit yet - he hasn't been invited. To anyone who knew him, this too would be odd. "Well..." he begins, searching for the words - and how to say them - for a moment. "If you'd like a partner, I'd be willing to do a little intelligence sparring with you. But if you've been practicing so much, for a tournament and that, you'll probably beat the heck out of me." he adds with another smile.
"It's been a while since I've played anybody - since I started my internship, actually." he adds, honestly remembering it, finger to his lips.
The blue-haired girl hesitates a moment, then shrugs and motions to the seat across from her. "I mean, if you'd like to try, I'd certainly appreciate a partner." Hopefully he'll be good enough to be a valuable partner. But with that textbook under his arm, there's at least some hope that he's not a complete dunce! "If you'd like, you may choose which colour to play," she suggests, allowing him to pick first move advantage, or his favourite colour. "I'm Ami," she introduces herself. "Ami Mizuno."
Takashi takes the seat offered, and looks down. "Thank you very much." he says, and looks down. Black is closest to him - and, well, why not choose black. With the way he's been doing everything else for so long, black is comfortable to him. "I'll play bla..." he's cut off, because Ami Mizuno just introduced herself by name.
He knows that name, because like anyone who derives a lot of joy from academic achievements, he knows the person he regularly jousts with on the mock test rankings.
There's a moment of silence, a moment of pondering, while he pushes down a lot of impolite or hostile remarks at the face he just put to someone he considered an opponent in the academic realm. Finally, he begins with. "Hello, Mizuno-san. I'm Takashi Agera." he says with a smile. "I'll play Black."
Inwardly, he's congratulating himself on not just heaving insults her way. Maybe he's more in control of the person he is than he was lead to believe. This should be an interesting experiment, at least.
"Black goes second," Ami warns Takashi, as she begins setting up the board. When he introduces himself, she looks up at him curiously. "Ah," she says faintly. "I believe we've met, briefly," she says. Unlike Takashi, Ami doesn't actually keep track of whom her competitors are in the academic world. She merely studies and tests.
"You earned the top marks at Infinity last semester, didn't you?" It's one of those things Ami just vaguely remembers, somewhere in the back of her mind. With the board reset, she pulls up a timer on her phone and sets it out between them, then taps the button to start the timer on her turn. It does not take her long to move a piece and tap the timer again, passing the turn automatically to Takashi.
Takashi looks, and it's almost like he doesn't spend any time even looking at Ami's move - he makes his move incredibly rapidly, like it's been memorized, and passes the turn back.
Once again, it takes a whole lot of difficult self-control for him to resist - and even still, a little of it gets out. "Yeah, I took the top spot from Chiba-san this time. He says he was just ill, though." The thought of chiba-san still makes him grit his teeth a bit. "But we'll just have to see if that holds next time. He's an upperclassman and he's taking some college courses, I hear - but so am I. I think I've got him next time, too." he adds.
Even if he has to cheat. Even if, after everything, Takashi decides he's been wrong about things, he's pretty sure he needs to keep making sure he beats Chiba.
Ami is not nearly so hasty in her riposte. Even at this early stage of the game, she takes her time debating Takashi's moves and her own. "You know Chiba-san?" she asks him curiously. "He's a friend of mine," she admits with a faint smile. "We've studied together many times. Maybe you should join us, next time?" she suggests to him.
Carefully, she makes another move, then asks, "What courses are you taking? I've considered taking some myself, but I'm already attending Cram school, and I don't know if I have the time to add college courses, as well."
Takashi moves incredibly quickly again for this move - still like he hasn't considered Ami a threat, or like he's simply impatient, even in Chess, the game of patience.
"Chiba-san and I have... met." he says, taking the most polite avenue we can. It is much more polite than saying 'I tried to kill him with a mutant grief seed' anyways. "I think he would be suspicious of me joining his study group." he adds.
"But, to answer your question, Electrodynamics and Thermal Physics, this sesmester." While the two subjects serve a secondary purpose of sounding impressive, they serve a primary purpose of being related enough to things he's been researching for years that he can skate through them with a limited amount of actual time being invested into his college courses. After all, something he'd have to spend time on would be damaging to Experiment Time.
"Well, with your grades you could probably afford to take one, at least. You don't strike me as the type who's exactly struggling to pass everyone else by. Something about you tells me that." Those words are, at least, in direct counter to how he seems to be playing the little chess game.
Ami seems only vaguely disappointed that Takashi seems to be either unskilled at chess, or uninterested in the game, only two moves in. She glances down at the board for a few moments, then makes yet another move, threatening one of his pawns with her knight as a test. "Interesting," Ami says thoughtfully as she passes the turn back.
"My studies have all ranged more towards biology and medicine," Ami explains thoughtfully. "And those topics, at the level I need them, tend to have numerous requirements to get into them. I suppose I could start taking the prerequisites just to get them out of the way, but I had hoped to test through them when I entered college in a few years. Are you planning to enter the field of creative energy discovery?" she asks him curiously. "It's a very important field, with oil rapidly diminishing throughout the world."
It's a rather Takashi-ish response to give no heed to his pawn, as he moves a peice up. And a medicore player might miss it, but someone as studied as Ami certainly won't - Takashi's rapid movements and pass of the turn could possibly be about trading early game peices for a risky - but potentially successful - move.
"You could say that, yes." Takashi says, in response to her comments about creative energy discovery. He can't help but smile. And here, he adds the biggest lie he's given all week. "I hope to help a lot of people, in the end. A hard road, but a worthy one, I think."
"Biology, medicine - so you're going to be a doctor, then. Certainly, the world could use more intelligent, beautiful doctors."
Ami is busy studying the board while Takashi speaks. She verifies that capturing his pawn will not put her knight in danger, then frowns and leans forward to study the board a bit more.
This is the position she is in when he casually calls her beautiful, and Ami has the good grace to blush a little. "I hope to," she agrees quietly. "My mother is a doctor," she explains as she spots what he might be doing. "My father was an artist, and while I love his art, I could never do what he does. So I'd like very much to follow in my mother's footsteps, if I may."
Eventually, she decides to take his pawn after all, and sets it to the side.
Takashi actually pauses now, and considers his move now that the pawn has been taken. He makes a calculated - but still aggressive - move forward with a knight of his own.
"I think there can be artistic value in a lot of things that other people wouldn't consider art. A good strategy, for example, has an art of its own." Wether he's talking about the game or about something else is left unsaid. "Or the way energy flows - the way you can control and direct it and change it's purpose. That has a beauty, too."
If Ami looks at Takashi, she'll see it seems as though he's studying her as much as the board. If not moreso.
He means electricity, right? Ami squints at Takashi's discussion about energy a moment, not even looking at the board. "That's ... true," she agrees, hesitantly, still thoughtful. "But I was more referring to painting, which is what my father does." She smiles a little, then looks back down at the board.
With his aggressive move confirmed, she leans back and begins to think. She's already three moves in, and should have been countering it with that last move. Still, there's plenty of time to set up a defense. And so she begins to do just that, moving the first piece of what will be many turns of preparing her position for defense against an aggressive siege.
Takashi begins to move his peices up aggressively - but carefully, this one move taking far more time than he first three before he passes the turn. "Of course, I was just speaking in general terms." he adds. "My point was just responding to you saying that you couldn't do what he does - perhaps not in paint, but in some other format you can still follow him just as much as your mother."
"A... lot of what I do was inspired by my parents. My mother made a lot of sacrifices." Takashi says, and then trails off. It's too raw to him still, especially with the way he's been questioning it all.
Ami continues her defense, recognizing his play for what it is. She doesn't take nearly as long to make her moves, now that she knows what he's up to. It's almost like she already knows the move he's about to make, before he even makes it.
"What did your mother do?" Ami asks Takashi curiously.
Takashi looks up to Ami. "She..." he pauses, looking intently at the board. "She literally worked herself to death, in order to make sure I could have the best possible life, because she and my father weren't married, and she was afraid I wouldn't be taken care of." That's a shade of the truth - or at least, the truth as Takashi knows it. "She literally gave everything she had, before I was born, to make sure I had all the opprotunities I do. She was a scientist. I get it from her."
Takashi returns to the board and makes another aggressive move. "I try to live to honor her memory. But I'm starting to wonder if that's what's best for me - and since I'm sure she'd want what's best - it makes things complicated.
Ami tilts her head a little at Takashi, studying him rather than the board. "My father left us when I was still a little girl," she says quietly, as if that puts them even close to on the same level. "I haven't really spoken to him except on the phone in ... years. He keeps promising, but," she trails off, then shakes her head. "It sounds like your mother was very brave, for you. But, if I may offer some advice ..." she hesitates a moment, then says, "It sounds like what she wanted is what would be best for you, not for herself. The best way to honor her memory may be to become the very best person you can be. Use your intelligence to do something meaningful; something to better the world. Or at least to better the lives of those around you. If I were a mother, that's what I would want for my children: that they be happy, and that they make the lives of others around them better."
"She also left me a letter saying I should stop at nothing to be successful, though. It's really the only thing I have left from her." Takashi adds, making another move. "She was... really clear about it. I can see the strength she had in the words she wrote." he adds.
The chess game isn't forgotten, either, as Takashi continues pressing forward.
"My father and I also aren't... very close. Since he was involved in an affair with my mother, he's never really claimed me publically." he says, after a pause. "But... that can't be helped either. He does what he can. He's just not in a position where he can hold after a scandal."
"Then you should be successful," Ami says gently, smiling at Takashi. "That doesn't change my advice at all; it just reinforces it." She finishes reinforcing her position against his attack with her next move, then prepares for the siege. She's going to lose pieces as soon as it starts, but by her calculations she should come out on top, and be in a position to start threatening his king soon after.
"Does that mean you're on your own, then?" Ami asks curiously. "Or do you have a guardian who cares for you?"
Takashi begins the assualt - taking a peice easily - and looks to her. "Yeah, I'm on my own. But I'm an intern for... a large company... and the work pays well." This is an understatement; he's relatively well off. "So in that sense I'm already successful." he adds.
"But there's always this nagging feeling I'm not doing well enough, I guess. And I'm... currently stuck, considering my choices, the paths I've been going down. Things have gotten interesting now, I guess."
"Mmm," Ami replies quietly, as she counters his move with one of her own, taking piece for piece. "I can understand that feeling. It's tough figuring out how much is 'enough'," she agrees quietly. "Does Infinity have a guidance counselor? Maybe you should ask them for input. I'm afraid I'm not much of a help, here; I don't have a job, and my ambitions won't really reach fruition until I graduate from medical school."
Takashi smiles, as he continues the trade of peices. "Well, to be honest, just talking has been a great help. I don't think it needs to be a guidance counselor. Though I'm sure Infinity has one..." he adds, thinking.
"Maybe it's because you're a doctor-to-be that I find it so easy to talk to you about my problems. I don't normally get into such depth with relative strangers, after all. I guess you're already passing that part of your dream with flying colors."
Ami blushes at the compliment, and hides her face behind her bangs as she studies the board. "Thank you," she murmurs quietly as she trades another piece. "But I really don't think I've done anything so special. I hope it works out for you, though, Agera-san."
Takashi smiles again. "You did - you listened. Trust me, that's a very rare skill these days." he adds. A skill he's still trying to work on himself.
Another trade - as part of a further push. While it might look to an uneducated observer that he's being recklessly aggressive, to someone like Ami the strategy - though still a very aggressive one - is there, and is clear. "Or you know, perhaps I just find it easier to talk to a pretty face. Either way, it's a compliment!" he says, smirking, as he makes his move and puts the white peice on his side of the board with an audiable click.
Ami blushes again and looks away. "Are you going to the Seiyou party tonight?" she asks him, by way of subject change. If Ami were any less of a chess player, she probably would have a very hard time countering Takashi's move. It likely would have worked. But Ami has played on the national stage against some of the best in Japan. It costs her several pieces, but her strategy should defeat Takashi's as long as she continues sacrificing the right ones and placing the others in the right place. In fact, if he's not careful he's going to wind up in checkmate within only a few more moves, subtly concealed behind Ami's defensive play.
Takashi is, in fact, falling for Ami's trap. True to his word, he's a little rusty - though good at the fundamentals - and it shows, in that he's decent practice, yet unlikely to make it to the tournament himself, were he playing.
"I wasn't planning on it." he says, truthfully. "Are you?"
"Mmm," Ami replies quietly as she continues carefully countering his move. One more turn and her plan will be all too obvious. But for now, she just takes another piece in defense. "A friend is going with me," she says, then smiles a little. "We only met recently, and I'm not usually the costume party type, but I'm going to try to have fun for their sake."
Takashi smiles. "Well, spending time with friends is always fun - or so I've been told so often." he adds, as an aside. Then, he takes his next peice.
And, in doing so, but before he lets go of the piece, he realizes Ami's strategy. He thinks about backtracking - but he's committed to this already, and it's questionable how much he could actually pull out even now, the trap she has created is working so well. So he just goes about his intended move, taking that peice.
Ami smiles just a little at his hesitance, reading it for exactly what it is. "I didn't realise how much friendship was important to me until last semester, when I wound up with a best friend unexpectedly. Now, I can't really imagine life without her." She makes the next move in the set, then points out, "Checkmate in two."
He can clearly see it, which means she doesn't mind telling him. "In fact, after our game I should probably go start getting ready. I'm going as Snow White, and the makeup will take a bit to put on. I'm not ... used to wearing makeup."
Takashi looks at the board for a moment, smiles, and knocks the black King over himself. "Well done. I did warn you I was out of practice. I hope it wasn't /too/ easy for you." he adds.
"Ah well. Snow White's a good choice - for obvious reasons. I hope you don't mind that I say that I'd like to see you again - another game, perhaps, or just another talk?"
"Actually," Ami says quietly, "I didn't see your plan until around four moves after you'd strarted it," she says to him. "I don't mean any offense when I say, if you had a little more practice you might have caught me by surprise. I don't know if your plan would have won; it's too risky. But it was still very challenging to set my defenses up in time to counter it."
She smiles at him, then starts collecting all of her books. "Sure, any time. I come here a lot, so ... just swing by and ask if I'm around. Leave me a note if I'm not?"
Takashi smiles. "Well, I'll be looking forward to it. A rematch and a milkshake, or something of the sort." he adds. "And I wonder if they'll ever come up with a way for us to compare our test scores directly..." he adds with a sly grin, before heading upstairs to Fruits Parlor Crown for that overdue drink.
Ami hesitates at that last little barb, then grins at him just faintly. "It's probably best that they don't. One of us would be crushingly disappointed at the results," she points out to him gently. "Have a great day, Agera-san!" she calls as she finishes packing up to head home.