Once upon a time there lived a little mouse. He was a pretty cute mouse, but he didn’t have a lot of buddies.

This was largely because he was a pretty serious chap, which meant that chatting with him could be kind of heavy.

The result was that potential new friends wouldn’t stick around too long..

Sniff… poor little guy.

Anyway, one happy day mouse came across some amazing stuff: Cheese! And lots of it.

All of a sudden the mouse was awesomely popular and cool.

As the cheese diminished, mouse wondered how long the fun would last.

Would his new friends all disappear with the passing of the cheese?
Only time would tell.

His fears were unrealized. In fact, the very opposite happened! Other folks started showing up, who looked a little different than his peeps, but were cool nonetheless.
There was Bishop the Owl for example, who fancied himself quite wise.

There was Knight the Horse, who looked fearsome with his pointy stick but was highly ticklish and hard of hearing.
They called him Horsie behind his back.

There was King the Dog, who was quite sweet yet suspiciously eager to please.

And Queen the Cat. Although Queen insisted she was but a gentle and furry soul with soft paws, the mouse were a little nervous around her for some reason.

In particular, Queen liked to follow the mice around a lot.

Every chance she got she would yell “Conga Line!!” and off they would dance, Queen – as always – bringing up the rear.

The long and the short of it was that mouse was pretty happy with all his new found friends, and would regale them with tales long into the night.

One day though, mouse made a horrific discovery!!

A severed friend!

The horror didn’t end there though – there were more!!

In fact it was a veritable trail of destruction!!

What was the reason for the carnage? Mouse could see something dark off in the distance, rising up like a tower of smoggy evil.

Egads!!! It was evil personified – a black cat!

Mouse ran away as fast as his legs could carry him in a tunic.

But first he stopped for a stiff drink.

Let’s make that two.

Mouse ran back to the colony and informed King and Queen of what he had seen.

He gathered the troops – and they listened attentively.
They knew this was no fairytale.

Mouse described the future before them.. Normally people speak of a checkered past, but in this case, they were moving into a checkered future…

Where white would stand off against black…

And black against white…

And heads would roll…

Let the games begin!!