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Blai in cyberpunk (Cinci)
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Blai grabs him a pie.

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He will pause looking over the bike, declare, "It's about out of gas anyway...", and eat the pie. "What brings you out- No, no, bad English." Sigh.

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Blai nods apologetically and has a pie too.

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He cleans up his bike. He asks for more water. He paces and rambles to himself about places he could go next. He asks Blai if there are any chores or anything he ought to be doing, since he doesn't want to risk going back to Bordertown just yet.

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"Help English?" Blai suggests.

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"-Oh, sure. I was told immersion is the best way to learn languages. I never was a teacher though. How do you want to do that?"

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"Tell me when I say a wrong thing? Or the word for a thing I say many words for."

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"...Tell you when you say something wrong. Or when there is a more concise word you could use. Okay, I can do that."

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"I will be worse at this in about forty minutes," he says. "So, until then. Do you do chess?"

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"What, more magic? No, I've never played chess. I think the knight moves in an L shape? And bishops are sneaky somehow? Pretentious authors like to use the pieces as metaphors in their books sometimes."

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"Bishops do -" He casts Prestidigitation and makes a board and starts appearing pieces on it, a bishop first. Diagonal like so, zig zag zig.

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"Bishops do diagonally. So rooks do orthogonal- Straight lines? And queen does bishop and rook. And king can only move one spot."

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"Yes." And he makes all the rest of the pieces too and sets them up. Makes sure the guy knows what pawns are for too.

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He's really not very good. Especially with knights.

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This is a teaching game so Blai keeps all his pieces - so as to demonstrate - but gives his opponent lots of tips as they go.

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"Weren't you supposed to be trying to learn English? Well, if you want to play chess we'll play chess..."

He has an original thought for a move, for once! A marginally clever pawn/rook fortification.

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"English can be about chess!"

Once he is sure the guy knows all the rules he estimates a generous handicap and starts over.

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"I don't know... Chess words. I'm sure there's all sorts of words for particular strategies or whatever, but I only know a few by cultural osmosis- 'ahh, yes, the Vienna opening, a bold choice Mr. Bond' or whatever."

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"Vienna? Mr. Bond?"

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"Vienna is a city in Germany- In Europe. One of the big centers of culture for the western world. Once upon a time, anyway. Mr. Bond- Now this is old old stuff, I'm a bit of a geek about the classics? But the references survive, at least a few of them- Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE. The James Bond series was a very popular and long-running series of movies and novels, video games too, spawned a whole genre. Spy stuff. Thrilling heists and infiltrations against villains out to take over the world but for one daring secret agent trying to sneak into the enemy base and figure out the plot."

He is making a pretty standard pawn ladder.

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Blai has few enough pieces to find this at all challenging to cope with! "Only one secret agent? No one to help?"

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"Only one in the field, usually. Sometimes a partner thing. He has people make gadgets for him, tracking devices or odd weapons like exploding pens- Or gather information. Sometimes he rescues a damsel in distress."

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"They are damsels because of the book being a book about a man and a damsel doing - I do not know all the words or which words are polite -"

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"What, sex? Yeah, it's implied that he bones the girl after rescuing her. Never outright stated- Oh, no, you couldn't do that in some types of 20th century media, think of the children!" He snorts. "Anyway, yeah, there's a lot of words for that. I think 'damsel in distress' as a trope isn't actually specifically about the character being a sex object though? It's more about them being helpless. Usually that's women in classic stuff, thus, damsel."

Roooook come on out, slow and steady only accept even trades and he'll beat this handicap.

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"...what are we thinking about the children?"

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