"HOW CAN YOU WIN THE GAME IF YOU NEVER MAKE A MOVE?"
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What would you do, if you were given a chance to save millions of lives throughout a galaxy?
Would you do it? Could you even do it? Is such a feat even possible?
Or would you crumble and choke...
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In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else.
—José Raúl Capablanca
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Melanie never has been good at chess.
She had never played much of the game at all really, until her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer.
Then, over the course of those two years, she had found herself improving at the game, albeit gradually, as her and her mom passed the time in hospital waiting rooms, the checkered board laid out between them.
"Any time today?" Ms. Bains asked, dark circles under her eyes as she watched her daughter's body language grow more and more frustrated.
"I'm thinking." Melanie had told her, green eyes locked on the chessboard in concentration.
"Honey," her mother's voice began, filled with amusement, "it's been ten minutes."
Melanie groaned. "I know, okay? I'm trying to be careful. I want to win—"
Ms. Bains shook her head at her daughter in exasperation, as if Melanie were missing the most obvious fact in the world.
The next words said would stick in Melanie's mind for years to come.
"How can you win the game if you never make a move?"
Melanie leans against the edge of the stone balcony of her room, gazing out across Coruscant, thumbing at the gold locket that lies in her hands.
Gingerly, she pries open the locket with her fingers.
She peers down at the inside of the locket, taking in the secret inscription her mother had made, just for her alone, before she closes the small object again.
She watches as the sun rises over the horizon, bathing the city of Coruscant in a shower of golden light.
It's so beautiful here. So peaceful.
It's almost difficult to imagine, that in only a few short hours, she'll be in a whole other environment entirely.
In the middle of a live fucking battlefield.
She sighs wearily to herself, squeezing her eyes shut in frustration at the absolute horror show she finds herself in the middle of.
