X-Men One-Shots and Preferences

A Game of Strategy- Charles Xavior

This one-shot is partly inspired by The Queen's Gambit. The reader wants to learn how to play chess so Charles teaches her.

"What's that?" you ask yourself as you peak into the Professor's study. You were fairly new to this school and you had just decided to give yourself a little self tour of the place when you spotted some kind of game board with special looking pieces on it.

You walk into the room to further inspect this board and the pieces, which seem to have collected dust as a result of being unused in years. You picked one game piece up, looking like a horse, and study it with fascination.
"Strange, I could've sworn I had this room locked," you hear the familiar voice of Charles Xavior.

Startled, you drop the horse looking game piece which lands on the floor. "I say," the Professor speaks when he notices you, "(y/n), what on earth on you doing in here?" "I am so sorry, Professor," you say, "I saw the door was open, I didn't mean to snoop around. I'll, uh, I'll be leaving now." "It's alright," Charles assures, "There was no harm done, that's all that matters." "Oh...okay," you nod, then turn your gaze to the game piece that was on the floor. You go to pick it up.

"Uh, what exactly is this board?" "You never seen anything like it before?" Charles asks. "I didn't really have many game nights in my household," you tell him, "Last time we played Monopoly, that was a disaster nobody wanted to repeat."

"Well," Charles explains, "This is a little more refined than Monopoly, I can tell you that. It's called chess. It is a game of strategy that is centuries old and has various origins in the Old World." "Sounds eloquent," you say, taking a seat at the table, "Strategy. I'm guessing each of these pieces can do something special." "Very observant," Charles nods taking a spot from the other side, "I'll play white." "Okay, sounds fair," you nod back.
"Now," Charles begins, "These pieces here are called pawns. Typically in chess, the pawns move first."

As the game went on, the Professor proceeded to teach you about all the other pieces on the chess board: the bishop, knight, rook, Queen, and King. It all seemed fairly straight forward in terms of what the pieces looked like and what moves they could make. You particularly favored the Queen in that it can move pretty much anywhere on the board.

To nobody's surprise, Charles won the game. "Checkmate," he says, "That's what you say when you take the King." "That was pretty fun," you admit, "Though, I probably wasn't much of a challenge to a Master player like you." "On the contrary," Charles counters, "while you do have your work cut out for you, if you want to get better at this, you did quite give me a run for my money." "You're just saying that," you saying, feeling a bit of a blush; you didn't you were that good at this game." "No really," Charles insists, "I think you might have a gift for this. Come back here, same time tomorrow, and we can play again."

While you still weren't fully convinced you weren't THAT good at this game, Charles thought different. In fact, and even though it's been a few years since he's played chess himself, he hadn't had someone challenge him the way you did...not since...

------------The Next Day---------

You played chess with Charles the same time as he said. You were getting better with moving the pieces and even took out more of the Professor's pieces.

Right in the middle of the game, Charles took out your Queen. You were about to make the next move, but Charles stops you, "I'm afraid this is where you resign," he says. "What? Why?" you ask, feeling confused. "When you lose your Queen the way you did, you resign," Charles explains, laying down your King. "I...I don't understand," you say, "That wasn't part of the rules, you didn't say anything about that being in the rules." "It's not a rule," Charles says, "It's called sportsmanship." "Well it's stupid," you tell him. "That's the way it is," Charles shrugs, "We'll play another game same time tomorrow." "But I want to keep playing this one," you insist. "(y/n)," Charles gives you a stern look, "You lost your Queen, you resigned. The game is over."