Interrupting her school day, Lena is dragged off to a Checkmate mission where she meets two other pawns and finds her leadership tested. It's really the aftermath that shows things are headed to a boil. This fic is a prequel to the first book in the Next of Kin series. If you haven't read that yet please do not continue. This contains spoilers. If you've read NoK, well, here's the sixth of several short pieces of some backstory I plan to post. I hope it helps to flesh out some of these characters and fills in some questions for you all. The prequels should be read in this order: "Queen Takes Pawn", "Queen's Pawn to Queen Four", "Kiss of Death", "Swiss Gambit", and "Alligator Sp3rm".