239 General Power 3.5

He leads her onwards, to the center table, and gestures her towards the far seat. "Here is where you and I shall play."

"I don't like chess," the girl protests, even as she finds herself sitting. He takes his place across from her, behind the white pieces.

"Chess is merely a metaphor. I approve of the symbolism because it is a game for gentlemen, a game with quite a large degree of finesse. Of course, the goal we play towards is something fairly different… " He smiles over the board at her. "A simple bet."

"I don't want to play." She tries to stand, but finds she cannot. The old man's smile widens. The other players in the room are pointedly not looking at her.

"You don't have a choice, my dear. You came here with me, you play my game. If you had come here on your own, perhaps you might have had a chance, but as it stands — Well, a simple bet, as I said." He touches his king briefly. For a moment, the piece looks like three different men, three brothers. "Your goal is to give one of these men, a happy ending."

The girl stares at him, shocked. "You want me to give them a handjob?"

He bursts out laughing, a loud, booming, joyous sound. "Oh, my dear, you have spent too much time around those despicable and mundane researchers. No my dear, I mean set things up so that their story ends happily. " He waves off her attempt to comment. "No, not for the rest of their lives, merely that this chapter of their existence gets a happy ending. You pick up on things quickly, I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"I don't want to play chess." She's pouting now, arms crossed over her chest.

"It doesn't matter. If you fail to play, I win, by default, and make their lives miserable." He moves his first pawn forward. On the board, it is merely a pawn. But, in the real world, agents of the Foundation are redirected, and a rather callous man is placed in charge of the containment of an SCP with the mind of a child.

"I don't play chess!" She declares emphatically, glaring at the board. A slow smile creeps over her features. "But I do play Yu-Gi-Oh." She stares at the board intently, her face furrowed in concentration. A slow change occurs on her half of the board, until it resembles one half chess, one half children's card game. She looks up at him, from the cards in her hand, and smiles. Quickly, she places a card on the table, the image showing a sand dune. "I play the hungry sands, in defense mode! And then I cast a past immortality on it" She drops a card on top of the first one, this one displaying an amulet with a ruby stone in the middle. Sometime, many years ago, a researcher-turned-SCP gets lost in the desert. The SCP is recovered, but only after a month has passed, and his mind is imprinted on the hive mind living there.

The old man stares at her, and, for once, an emotion other than joviality appears on his face. He is shocked. More than that, for the first time in a long time, he is surprised. The Great Hall has grown silent, every eye upon the game in the middle. "What are you looking at?" he asks them, without looking around. The sounds pick up again, as the other Shapers return to their games.

343 leans forward, the smile once again rising to his face as he gazes at the transformed board. "I don't know how you did that. But that's what is going to make this interesting."

239 can't help but smile back. "Game on."

***
Games Reality Benders Play