"No."

Shiro doesn't bother to justify this opinion, and as the seconds tick by it becomes apparent that she doesn't have to. Black is thinking through the next move.

Black really wants to play pawn to h5 and make the white queen go away, but it's not going to be that easy. White would capture it with the g4 pawn, giving a crushing advantage on that half of the board. Black would then have to launch the c-file rook attack early, maybe winning white's dark square bishop but ultimately losing their rook, which is the only piece with any aggressive power at the moment. Black has already ruled out taking white's remaining knight, since doing that with the queen would be foolish and doing it with the bishop would give white yet another angle on attacking the king. There's really only one option here, and it's to let white take the h pawn and escape check by moving behind the bishop. With the king off the back rank, the rooks control key squares that white otherwise needs to get to checkmate.

All according to plan. This isn't amateur hour.

Shiro moves the g4 pawn that black has kindly allowed to remain where it is forward, forcing black to move the queen diagonally to safety. The rook on the far end of the board joins the queen; black takes her other bishop but by capturing on a square that far across the board the black queen is helpless to intervene. She takes the hanging pawn with the rook as black moves its boxed-in rook over to support the bishop, and with pawn to f2 threatens to make the bishop's position completely untenable. It'll take a few moves to get it to f6, but she knows that black won't let that happen. Indeed, black captures on f5, which lets her bring the knight in on the action with a recapture. The evaluation bar in her imagination is already congratulating her on a job well done.

Black spends two minutes and thirty-five seconds thinking before playing queen to b3.

"What?"

Yeah, 'what?' is the correct response here. Shiro thinks the most likely explanation is that black misclicked and put the queen somewhere random. She waits for a moment to see if black requests a takeback.

Nope, that's where it's supposed to be!

Okay. The only move that doesn't pointlessly lose material is taking the queen with the pawn. Shiro is within milliseconds of executing that move when her brain catches up with her fingertips.

With that pawn out of the way, black is going to take her knight with the light square bishop, putting her in check again. With that pawn out of the way, the c-file rook blocks her escape to the right, and the dark square bishop blocks forwards and left. She has one square to flee to.

If she's lucky, black will immediately take the rook. She can put the king in check with her other rook, force it to back away, and recapture the bishop with her queen. That's a losing position for black: the king will be in a terrible position, and she'll have a material advantage.

That's looking really unlikely at this point. If Shiro were black, she'd be putting white in check with the same c-file rook attack from move 13, which forces the king to a3. Then black can move the king to safety on e7. That line takes the king and the c-file rook away from the rook on g8, which white then takes, but then…

…the bishops are free to attack.

The bishops are free to attack, you say? Oh my.

Black checks, lets white take the rook, and proceeds to brutally hunt the white king across the board with both bishops until it's trapped in the a8 corner. If not for the black pawn on d5, bishop to e4 would herd Shiro into the most spectacular checkmate of all time. As it stands, this still lets black take white's remaining rook, leaving white with three pawns and a queen versus black's three pawns, two bishops, one rook, and a serious positional advantage.

This game is no longer white's to win. How's that for a comeback?

"That's insane," Sora mutters. "No human plays like that. How did it find that move?"

"Anyone can pull a miracle out of their butt if they set Stockfish's depth to forty. I, uh, I see a lot of lines I could play but none that look especially promising."

Sora thinks for a moment.

"This game is all offense. Black wants to keep us on the back foot until we're done for, so we need to seize the initiative and use it to buy some space. Take the free pawn, get the king out of the corner, then turn the tables and check the king back until all of black's pieces are on the right half of the board."

"You think that'll work against someone whose Elo is over three thousand?"

Shiro does take the pawn though, and when the bishop moves to safety on g7 she muscles the king out of the corner.

"If this is a real person, they're focused on hounding the king and might not be worried about our response in the next move. They're fifteen moves ahead down some endgame line right now, looking for a checkmate. If we shuffle the pieces it'll break their concentration, and they don't have enough time left to come up with another move as awesome as that queen sacrifice. Unless they're using a chess engine, in which case it doesn't count."

Can't argue with that logic. Black moves their rook away from the king, and Shiro responds with six checks in a row. By the end of it, black's pieces are completely rearranged and white's queen controls almost the entire board.

"You're in check and you've left your g pawn hanging."

"Ha ha, very helpful. I'm just upset that I have to put the king back in the corner."

Sora is joking, of course. Black has to move the rook to protect it, issuing a check, but once it's off the seventh row there's nothing stopping the king from capturing black's a pawn. With the a and b pawns out of the way, white's own a and b pawns can slowly trundle towards a promotion. Black now has two objectives: keep the pressure on the white king, and stop the pawns from advancing.

Wrong. Black has three objectives: stop the pawns, eventually get checkmate, and keep white from finding any nasty attacks with that queen of hers. There's one on f3, skewering the king to the rook and forking to attack the light square bishop. Black moves it to e2 preemptively.

Ah, but you see, that only advances one of black's aims. Shiro gets the pawn threat started with b4, and when black plays bishop to h5 to set up another offensive skirmish she takes the b pawn with her king as well. The bishop orbits around to f7, attacking the queen from the safety of the rook's shadow, but the f3 skewer is still available and Shiro has no qualms about using it.

Charming. Black interposes the bishop. White can't keep up the pressure forever, and when the queen retreats to the king's side the rook makes check on the b file. Getting the king back on the sidelines is only half the goal; the other half is finding a way to take out those pawns. Including the g pawn, thank you very much.

At this point there are a few good moves white can make. Black is happy to let the clock run out for white, who by this point has a sizeable time advantage, and take the time to think on the opponent's turn.

Sora has no idea whether this opponent is using a chess engine. His best guess is that one was used to find the queen sacrifice and the rest is natural play. There's no reason for a human chess player to let the time run out as badly as black has. Now's not the time to get distracted, however.

"Do I shove the light square bishop off with queen to d7 and get his rook to follow, or do I check the king into the middle of the board from queen at g2 and play b5 while his rook is still there?"

"This guy will voluntarily move his rook when pigs fly. You need to force it."

"I can do that."

So she uses the first line, and when the bishop retreats to h5 the rook follows to its protection at e8. The b pawn makes its way up to the sixth rank, at which point black pins it to the king with the dark square bishop. She moves the queen to a better position with a check, then moves the a pawn into a supporting position just in case.