A/N: Here's the last one, as promised. I hope it's not too late. If it is... well, nuts to me, I'm posting it anyway. :P Sorry if this one's boring, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I remembered what the last word was.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to SpongeBob SquarePants. If I did own it, I'm not sure whether I'd consider that a good thing or a bad thing.


Chapter 4: Chess

SpongeBob quietly snuck his way into Sandy's treedome, hoping to catch the squirrel off-guard. He hid behind the tree and quietly peeked around it to see that she was still sitting at her picnic table with her back to him, unaware of his presence. He slipped on his red karate gloves and tiptoed halfway over to the table, but before he could make his move, he noticed that there was something on the table. Curious, he walked the rest of the way over to the table until he was right behind her and peeking over her shoulder to see what it was. Now he had put karate to the back of his mind as he wondered something aloud.

"What is that?"

His question was met with a green karate glove in the face that hit him with such force that it slammed him back against the tree before he knew for sure what hit him.

"Whoops! Sorry, SpongeBob!" Sandy shouted as she threw her gloves off, ran over to her now-dizzy friend and helped him get back onto his feet. "You okay?"

"Uh, I've had worse I guess," he answered, holding one gloved hand up to his forehead as he did. Sandy led him over to her picnic table and he sat opposite of her.

"I figured you were trying to sneak up on me for another karate match."

"I was, but-" SpongeBob cut himself short when he noticed the thing on the table again. His dizziness now gone, he saw that it was a simple wooden box with the word "Chess" etched onto it. He laughed. "Sandy, that's not how you spell 'cheese'!"

She rose and eyebrow in confusion before she looked at the box that had now caught the sponge's attention. "Oh," she chuckled. "No, silly; it's chess."

"Chess? What's a chess?"

"You're kidding. You've never heard of chess before?"

SpongeBob shook his head. "What's it taste like?"

Sandy chuckled again. "It's not something you eat; it's a game. Here, I'll show ya." She opened up the lid of the box and took out the board, followed by the black and white pieces. Once she was done arranging the pieces on the board, she looked over at SpongeBob and gestured at the board. "This is how it's set up; pawns at the front, everything else in the back."

"If those are pawns, then what are the rest of these called?"

"These little tower-like pieces in the corners here are called rooks," she explained, pointing at the pieces on her side of the board as she did. "These horses that are next to them are called knights-"

"Why are they called knights?"

"Pardon?"

"How come the knights in this game are horses? I mean knights are supposed to be guys who are covered in armor and fight other knights with swords and other weapons like that. I know that some of them ride horses, but it's kinda silly for the knights to be horses, unless the horses are knights. Can horses be knighted?"

"Well- Look, I don't know why the pieces look the way they do. Maybe it'd be too hard for them to make pieces that look like armor."

"But they can make a horse's head?"

Sandy sighed. "May I continue, please?"

"Oh, yeah. Sorry."

"Okay, now these pieces next to the knights are called bishops, and then there are two different ones; the left one is the queen, and the right one is the king. Are you with me so far?"

SpongeBob nodded. "The horse head as a knight thing still seems kinda silly to me, but I get it."

"Alright, now let's talk about how they move." She picked up one of her pawns and moved it forward two spaces. "Pawns can only move forward unless there's something to their left or right in the row in front of them, then they can bump off whichever piece that is."

"So if there's something in front of a pawn and nothing to the left or right ahead of it, then it can't move?"

"Nope."

"That seems rather inconvenient for these little guys," he mused as he picked up one of his pawns and looked at it.

"Yeah, but if they're lucky and they make their way to the back row, they can be promoted to either a rook, a knight, a bishop, or a queen."

SpongeBob whistled. "That's one heck of a promotion."

"Yep. Now-"

"Why can't they become a king?"

"Because you're only allowed to have one king."

"You can have only one king but more than one queen? That seems kinda weird."

"I...I guess it is, if you think of it that way. Anyway, the rooks can move-"

"They can move?"

"Yeah. What'd ya think they were there for, to look pretty?"

"No, but how can a tower move? I mean I've heard that there's a moving castle somewhere, but-"

"SpongeBob," Sandy sighed in frustration.

"Sorry. Go on."

"As I was saying, the rooks move either horizontally or vertically. Now the knights move in an 'L' shape, and they're the only ones who can jump over their own teammates."

"Why?"

"Because, um... Because horses can jump, I guess."

"Well I can understand how the rooks wouldn't be able to do that since towers can't jump, but kings, queens and bishops can, can't they?"

"Yeah, but humans ain't as athletic as horses, are they?"

SpongeBob paused and thought over for a moment. "Okay, you've got a good point there," he finally admitted. "Continue."

"Right, now speaking of bishops, they can move diagonally-"

"But only if there's an opponent in the row ahead of them and either to their left or right, right?"

"No, SpongeBob; that's just for the pawns."

"Oh. Oops."

"It's okay. Now the queen can move horizontally, vertically, or diagonally."

"Wow! So what about the king? Can he move in any way he wants?"

"I guess you could say that. He can move one space in any direction he can."

SpongeBob rose an eyebrow at this. "What? He can only move one space? What good does that do?"

Sandy shrugged. "I guess whoever made this game figured that all of the other pieces do enough that they didn't need to make the king seem so overpowered. Anyway, it's better than not moving at all."

"I guess that's true."

"Now there are a couple of other moves you could do, but I think I've covered most of the basic ones. The object of the game is to outmaneuver your opponent to the point where their king can't move anywhere without one of your pieces defeating him. Think you've got all of that?"

"I think so," SpongeBob answered as he looked over his pieces. "So this is a game where the pawns are useless when there's someone directly in front of them but they can be promoted to either a castle, a horse head, a religious person, or even royalty, the two towers on each side can move but they can't jump, the horse heads that have been knighted can jump while nobody else can, there can be multiple queens yet there can be only one king, said king can move even less than the pawns, and you win when you find a way to successfully assassinate your opponent's king. Is that about right?"

Sandy slapped her forehead and groaned. "Do you want to play checkers instead?"


A/N: ...How the heck did I manage to mention Howl's Moving Castle in there? I've never even seen that movie. :/

Anyway, that's it. At this point I don't really mind if I win the contest or not, I'm just glad that I managed to finish this. I hope some of you enjoyed at least one of these.