Heaven or Hell

HEAVEN: Leben/Zukunft

A/N: Copying this over from my ao3. Enjoy.

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The black king moves his pieces to stop impending doom to the kingside, where his king innocently sat after castling that way. Both the white queen and the bishop attacked the farthest corner of the castle of pawns, h7. He simply moved a knight from e7 to g6 and blocked the enemy advances, making the white king groan.

“Stop playing so defensive!” He complains. “Chess is never fun with you.” He then moves a pawn forward to attack the kingside again. Luckily, his king castled at the queenside, so this won't leave him open for attacks.

Dark black blue eyes flick up to him, a smile following. “Don’t be upset. Remember, patience yields focus.”

“You say that all the time,” he huffs, impatiently waiting for the others move. The black king laughs, then proceeds to move his own pawns, ready to attack.

Lava red eyes are rolled. “Are you copying my strategy? That's lame.” His opponent just shrugs. Eye roll again. “Whatever. I'll be faster, and when attacking with pawns like this, it's about who can ignore the other for longer anyway.” So he ignored the black pieces and advances his own pawns. His opponent chuckles.

“What's so funny?”

“Nothing. Just thinking about how you should look away from what you can do for once and think about what your enemy can do. The movement of my pawn was only to make way for my queen.” And moving his queen he does. The innocent, defenseless knight on b4 was now directly in line of the attack of the black queen, the white king now having a piece less than the black king as he cruelly took it.

The white king snarled. “Whatever, I'm still winning.” A laugh. “Whatever you say.”

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Adam likes to think he is normal. He has a small apartment to himself and his fat, lazy cat, works a boring office job, sometimes goes out with friends or to visit family and usually eats self-cooked meals but takeout if he feels lazy. He never did anything to stick out, never anything to be special or something like that.

So how come he finds himself in a situation like this?

He was just walking home from the supermarket, the store fairly close to the multistory building his apartment was in. And even though it was already dark, life was buzzing in the city, neon lights shining in the distance, more or less shady people shifting about, women with revealing clothing or men in suits and with black cases, hurrying down the streets. Adam was the latter, only with shopping bags instead of cases, not really having the time to get changed before shopping if he wanted to avoid too much of the city's nightlife.

So there he was, after a hard day, feeling especially tired after his co-worker messed up again, leaving him to clean his mess. Usually, he'd walk around the block to avoid robbers or similar things in the alleys between the high skyscrapers. Because having a boring office job apparently doesn't help you shape up at all and he was as weak as a man his age could be. Plus it could easily be avoided. But today, he felt especially not ready to put up with the extra length he had to walk because of that. So he went through a little shortcut to get home faster.

And that's when it happened. A few males were grouping in the alley, but he was able to walk past them by simply walking left. So he did just that. A single glance to the right, however, revealed that the men were ganging up on another male, hair white as snow and eyes closed, dressed fairly normal for someone his age. The attackers had their hands on knives, which they didn't use as they kicked the defeated male on the ground. There was no sneering, no laughing, no yelling. The scene was eerie if Adam had to describe it.