Chapter 6: LI-LX 1/2

Author's Note : You all can blame the info dump in sections LII-LIII on one of my readers from AO3, who asked to see what I had on Flame natures. She's the whole reason why it's in here so soon. I hadn't planned on it until... much later.

Edit (4/24/2017) - General story-line corrections and grammar.

Edit (3/19/2018) - Final formatting and minor corrections.

Edited (9/2/2018) - Minor corrections.

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

LI-LX

LI (Sunday the 28th of May, 1961. Arseniy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

With several months Sonya had nothing planned for before her, she decided there was no time like the present to start on experimenting with her gemstones.

Taking a good long look at what she had gathered in the privacy of her own room, she then had to fight the impulse to smack herself upside the head.

She wasn't a jeweler, or a geologist. A tumble of loose gems of similar shades of purple in varying cuts all looked the same to her. While a few jewels were secured in settings, there were only a handful of those neatly labeled for use by clerks with little base knowledge to work from.

Apparently, her plan of 'secure the gems then figure the damn thing out once home safe' hadn't been the best one. Hindsight being what it was, she should have probably taken the time to ensure the loose gems remained in with their mounted fellows just to keep the types all straight.

The former pickpocket eyed the jumbled mass of precious and semi-precious stones on her bed in exasperation. She could pick out the opals, strange shades of tiger's eye, and jasper… but the rest that weren't labeled neatly would need professional help in sorting.

Considering it in the secured safety of her own space with time to spare, there might even be a less than legal option. Given all of it was stolen property in the first place, it would be risky to have them appraised by anyone not shady or without even the tiniest of Mafiya connections.

Her clan likely had a local fence somewhere nearby, it stood to reason that if the person took the results of two previous jewelry store heists and sold them off in exchange for a slightly inflated cut of the proceeds then he or she had a good idea of how to identify jewels. At the very least, they should know someone else that wouldn't mind identifying the exact types she had for her.

Gathering up the stones she couldn't tell apart, Sonya took the mess to Lisa… who laughed at her, delicately picking her way through a couple of them the young thief couldn't identify on her own. "All of these?"

"I've got the ones I can figure out upstairs still, but if I do get a good result and shatter the stone later on… I'm going to need to know which gem it was, so I can get a replacement."

Just to make the mess even more of a headache, the blonde had to think about settings and the cut of the facets too. If it would make any difference was debatable, but if she did get results other details like that might just tweak it in strange or different directions.

"I'm starting with purple shades, as supposedly I'm mainly a Cloud."

"Supposedly?" Lisa echoed without inflection, rolling several violet shaded jewels between her fingers.

"I've got a main Flame of Hard or Classic Cloud, according to the book Arseniy got me in Mafia Land. Secondary of Storm, I can't figure out which way that one polarized, and a minor possibility for Inverted Sun. Supposedly. I've yet to actually confirm that but I'm working on it."

"The strength?"

"Entirely possible it's just an unconscious use of Cloud Flames." She confided what little she had assumed to the woman uneasily. "Multiplication, Propagation, whatever you want to call it; it's an increase of either muscle mass or the force I can exert all at once. Which would be why my practice staffs all shattered and didn't Disintegrate in my hands."

"You don't sound happy with that." The older woman pointed out the obvious easily, letting the multi-colored sparkling gems fall back into the velvet pouch they were being stored in.

"I was hoping more for Sun's Activation. Which can be used to heal, among other things. I have the possibility, in the fullness of time, but that's not something I'm likely to get the hang of quickly."

She hummed, considering the girl.

Which merely confused Sonya. "Lisa?"

"Do you know enough about these Dying Will Flames to make a report about it?"

The younger of the two thieves very carefully didn't pull a face at that inquiry as she took a few seconds to fully think it over.

In all honesty, she probably could.

Most of what she knew was all theoretical so far, unconfirmed facts in a book she got someplace suspect that she didn't have the time or ability to verify using herself. Even still, it was a lot more information than she had started out with and probably more than enough for anyone else looking for instruction on their less than normal skill sets.

Part of her wanted to wait, though. The problem with that would be if she was asked to identify more Flame-capable around that she knew of with more information under her belt… she might not be able to keep Cherep's name out of it.

Sonya was not a people person by any stretch of the term, something possibly influenced by her Cloud nature or not. She had never been, nor would she ever, be one of those charismatic people that could talk rings around others. She couldn't really recall clearly if Rachel had been one or not, all she did remember was that in her last life she had a select group of friends and stuck with who she had known for the most part.

Her decision would be limited by two things. Time and her foster brother. Either make a report now with faulty information and hope future reports could be done by paper or wait to confirm it all and have less ambiguity to hide Cherep behind if questioned closely.

"I could, if you want me to. I'd like to practice on Arseniy before you arrange anything important, please."

Lisa, who was pretty much the mom of the household and had watched Sonya grow up for the last five-six years, raised an eyebrow at the bland confirmation. "Just like that?"

"I have possibly two out of the seven Flame types, three in a couple years at best. If you take the polarizing Flames into account, I have two or three out of fourteen. There isn't much I can do to make a complete report on this stuff, as I will not have the resources to find more answers in other directions." The younger thief wanted to palm her face and scowl, neither of which she did because the brunette did know her very well and could probably guess why she'd get defensive or protective over what should be just odd knowledge she had.

The only things Sonya ever got protective of were her books and siblings. With her Mafiya clan, she did not want them to connect Dying Will Flames and her best friend until the purple colored brat could watch his back without her.

"I'll let Arseniy know when he wakes up."

LII (Tuesday the 30th of May, 1961. Arseniy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

"Summarize what you do know, then get into what you should but haven't confirmed. Leave the unconfirmed rumors for last, and party tricks for the very end." That had been Arseniy's advice to her, so that's what Sonya gathered up in one handwritten journal she had started after her first trip to Mafia Land.

What she did know was disgustingly little for all the effort she had poured into learning about Dying Will Flames of the Sky.

Due to the name alone it was an ability one usually gained on the edge of death or when the possibility of death became unavoidably apparent and one reached for something different, one needed willpower in order to summon up the ability or use it in any practical sense, and they manifested as a kind of Flame that didn't harm the user so long as they weren't overused.

The physically young former pickpocket could also use very little of her own Flames, besides the still wonky sometime super-strength she was somewhat positive came from an innate use of Hard/Classic Cloud Flames.

The information she should know but wasn't yet positive about included her Storm secondary and the minor Sun she might have if she put effort into developing it, and the nature summarizations in the back of the best of her books on Dying Will Flames.

As there were seven types of Dying Will Flames of the Sky, that also meant there were about fourteen different distinct personality types. If you counted the variations between the mainly Soft/Inverted and Hard/Classic types, like how it was possible Sonya's Storm wasn't Classical or Inverted but something in-between, then there were more than could be cleanly calculated. An infinite number of things could also change or affect how a Flame user's nature expressed itself, but supposedly the basics were typically the same.

According to the book that she got from Arseniy and what she managed to extrapolate then add in from every Mafia storybook she managed to get her hands on, a Flame users' base nature ran the gamut of doormats to violent psychopaths.

Classical Skies were the doormats, as they tried to attract their Guardian Elements by being accepting and encompassing to all and sundry but couldn't bring themselves to avoid or push away abusive characters that tried to take advantage of them at the same time. Inverted Skies were obviously the opposite, they could be elitist pricks about their Guardians' prospects and callous to those that didn't meet their personal standards to the point of being indifferent to their deaths.

Both variations were still an embodiment of Harmony, what all other Flame users were almost instinctively driven to seek out or attract. They also were mitigating or emotionally manipulating influences, the only point different Flame users could bridge to other users that had a nature that didn't normally tolerate another's.

Classical Suns were typically nurturing in nature, trying to bring out the best in everyone they met even if that someone didn't want it. Again, Inverted Suns preferred only dealing with those they knew were talented… and if they decided to teach or help someone in a skill their 'student's' willingness wasn't exactly a point they bothered with.

Both polarizations of Sun Flame users were active kinds of people, generally very physical with their 'help'. They could also be very stubborn, in varying shades of the word.

Probably the most social of all the Flame types was Rain Flame users, and with their Tranquility ability also the Mafia world's answer to therapists. Which, since Flame users have been atypically rare for the last century or so according to Lisa, meant very bad things for the underworlds' collective sanity.

Classical Rains were supposedly passively tolerant, someone that was very difficult to irritate or ruffle and generally easygoing. Which left Inverted Rains to be aggressors, those that would poke every hot button one had until you snapped.

Storms were the more obviously 'eccentric' types of Dying Will Flame users, they were also as explosively tempered as their name suggested in either the fast and hot variety or slowly building and suddenly violent way. They were also the ones to hold grudges second best, only falling a bit short of Cloud Flame users... which said very little good about Sonya's temperament in a few years.

Storms of a Classical bent were fixated perfectionists, they catered to their fixations with almost fanatical enthusiasm and precision that another would be tempted to label as 'going overboard'. Inverted Storms were perfection fixated, what they did had to be perfect or they would spend an ungodly amount of time repeating their actions until they were.

Lightning users were the flightiest, in a few decades they would probably be labeled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Classical Lightning users basically had the attention span of a gnat, attracted to the shiniest or flashiest things only to lose interest equally as fast and move on. Inverted Lightning users tended to get attached to one thing, but they as well tended to be interested in little but what attracted them so getting their attention onto something else was like pulling teeth.

The trade-off was that Lightning users could process so much more than normal. Their lightning-quick flashes of condensed attention was enough to tell them everything in one glance another person would take three times as long to understand the significance of.

As she already knew from her own personality and Cherep's, Cloud Flame users were just as opposing in polarized nature but not entirely as her books suggested.

Classical Clouds were territorial and usually loners, getting between one and what they decided their 'territory' was did not tend to end well as they generally didn't bother to warn you what would happen and instead just got violent. Inverted Clouds were 'free spirits' socialites rather than territorial, generally passive and rather rootless to the point that threatening their freedom was something only suicidal idiots tried to do. They were also probably the most 'long-ranging' of Flame types, even if one side of that coin tended to stick to a physical territory.

Her foster brother, who was strong in his Flames even if he couldn't consciously control them, was almost the perfect poster boy for Inverted/Soft Clouds. Not quite to the level of 'free spirit', but he was very ornery in a passive-aggressive way when he thought his personal freedoms were being infringed somehow and generally easygoing otherwise. Up and including allowing himself to be physically relocated if that would work best for everyone.

Sonya didn't ever try to hem him even verbally and let him have his way usually if she couldn't argue, trick, or tempt him into another path. Although if that was due to being a Cloud of the opposite polarization or just because she knew that wouldn't end well was debatable.

As the two of them got older and they grew into themselves, it would be questionable if how they behaved then was due to just Flame natures overtaking what they would've been like or if it was all just supposedly maturing outlooks behind their late teen personalities making them behave as they would. That was probably be something the former pickpocket wouldn't ever know, as she would never get a subjective look at the problem as close as she was.

Mist users were the most erratic and hard to pin down. Since they were generally the first to activate their Dying Will, there wasn't much on the basic personality beforehand available.

What little there was suggested Classical Mists were meddlers, the type of person that would stick their nose into anything and everything. Inverted Mists were introverted to the point of expressive in it, exaggerating a trait or two to the point that was how most tended to identify them by even if it wasn't a natural or even a true trait.

Then again, Mists were a headache and a half alone. It was entirely possible any Mists interviewed for the books she had taken the information out of messed around with their answers just to be difficult.

LIII (Tuesday the 30th of May, 1961 continued. Arseniy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Unconfirmed rumors about Dying Will Flames were as similarly limited as what Sonya had managed to confirm or at least get information about.

According to everything she had read, her nature was supposed to get worse as she got stronger as a Flame user.

Which it wasn't. Sonya had been more 'Classically Cloud' in nature when she had been five compared to how she was now that she was ten, and she had nearly gotten reasonable control of her strength by this point.

Or if not 'control' then able to summon it up almost at will and break anything she wanted.

If that was because of her Storm secondary getting stronger or her possibility of Sun nature was debatable, but it was just as likely as claiming it was Cherep's fault.

Hell's fire, she was practically a chatterbox compared to how she had been.

Her 'territory' was also something unconfirmed, however much her book insisted her best friend was such a thing. It also insisted the damage she did to three drunk vory was her getting territorial but all she recalled from that incident was a whole lot of fear, and it just seemed iffy to her to have a person as territory.

People were not things. She flatly refused to even humor the idea.

Disregarding her foster brother, her territory could be anything from her biological birth city of Saratov to her role as a Zolotov thief. Getting confirmation on what it was wasn't likely to end well.

Sonya could look for patterns and possibilities all she wanted, but it would be her getting territorial over something that would confirm what.

A ten-year-old, or however old she'd be when it happened, girl who could shatter bones getting territorial would not be pretty for whoever tried infringing on her. Likely this was something she really had to warn both Arseniy and Lisa about before it happened.

From hints and suggestions in the book the vor got her, Flame users were supposed to start acting out in a few pre-established patterns after hitting their late teenage years. The other six types of Flame users that weren't stabilized by Harmony bonds by then would start seeking out the seventh and get progressively more entrenched in how they displayed their Flame's nature in hopes of such behavior would let them catch the attention of a Sky.

The stronger one was in Dying Will Flames, the earlier it happened and the worse it was.

How those Dying Will Flame natures, and Flame users themselves, interacted with each other without the buffer of a Sky at hand was… a hot mess. Allegedly.

Sonya couldn't decipher much beyond Classical Clouds Flame users were those she might end up killing and trying to rationalize to herself… and Mists, because apparently Clouds and Mists never got along well even with a Sky at hand. Storms were nice to Rains and Lightning users of their opposite polarization, and great with other Storms of their same, but generally had rocky relations with everyone else. At least they weren't violently opposed to Storms of their opposite polarization like Clouds.

If she never found herself a Sky, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted someone to be that to her, those other Dying Will Flame user types might just incite homicidal tendencies in herself. She'd never know it either, unless it happened and she could somehow manage to catch the behavior before she harmed someone.

Rejection was… something the blonde wasn't even sure what it applied to when it came to Flames. There was Flame Rejection, Sky Rejection, and just simply Rejection referenced by her best Dying Will Flame book and a few of the storybooks aimed at teenage mafia members.

Obviously, it was bad. Really bad when it came to both Flame and Sky Rejection according to the plots in the storybooks, but she had little additional information. It was also something she would be happy to not know about, it sounded that horrible with what little she did know.

Flame Rings were… possibly not something Sonya would be able to understand in time. She had over twenty different stones to work through, which might just take her a year to do depending on if she spent a week or two weeks investigating each type. She also didn't have a comprehensive collection of gemstones, merely all the ones she could get in one semi-affluent branch store.

Either she'd figure it out in a year, or it would take much longer and require her to rob another jewelry shop or buy one of the ones available in Mafia Land and get that one appraised.

Tatiana was possibly a Classical Sun, Dmitriy an Inverted Rain, Lisa might be a Classic Rain herself or a similar polarized Sun of her own, Arseniy could be either an Inverted Lightning or a similar polarized Storm or both if Sonya was honest.

The little she could do with her Flames so far was bend iron, shatter steel, and lift more than her physical form suggested.

LIV (Friday the 2 nd of June, 1961. Zolotov Headquarters, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Arseniy helped Sonya work up a report to give while Lisa had her loose gems appraised.

Around the same time the young blonde thief got her jewels back, the vor took her into the Zolotov's main headquarters to make her report to the right people.

The first time she had ever been there, and her first thought was… eclectic. There was a lot of random things hidden in certain corners if you cared to look. Probably a lot of stolen things, and it all kind of clashed together.

The 'right people' according to the man posed as her foster father included the Avtoritet, or Brigadier, in charge of the Zolotov recruitment and training that took place in her neighborhood. Him and three other Avtorityets overlooked the personnel intake and management for their entire clan in Moscow for their Boss, their Pakhan, and were apparently the ones Arseniy reported to.

She had known the vor whose roof she lived under wasn't just any member of their clan, but it was still slightly jarring to know where he fell exactly. It should have been obvious since the vor in question was the one hammering several Mafiya lessons through thick skulls a handful of nights a week, and he could make decisions about security around the neighborhood without being reprimanded from what little she had seen a little over a year ago when Cherep joined them at home.

Arseniy was… either a Boevik or a Krysha. A warrior or an enforcer, in other words.

Why he was training Mafiya brats was still something to wonder about, especially the faction of their clan that mainly dealt with training thieves and not just Mafiya hopefuls trying to become vor.

Sonya had thought Aleksandr had been the vor in charge of their neighborhood. The grizzled old combat trainer had his home to himself with no fosterling Mafiya trainees underfoot, despite the training hall under it that was used very often in any given day.

She snapped out of her mental wanderings fast when Arseniy brusquely introduced her and informed the four men what topic she would be covering.

Laying out everything she knew of Dying Will Flames took an embarrassingly short amount of time. What she might know but couldn't confirm took nearly three times as long, as it covered the other Flame types she'd never have the resources to understand herself. The rest of what rumors or facts that might be true, but she hadn't yet confirmed, was nearly as nerve-wracking as spilling what she did know.

Adding on most of the Flame possibilities in her household except for her best friend's did at least amuse two of the Avtorityets. As per Arseniy's advice to leave the party tricks for last, Sonya bending a respectively thick iron rod into a loop barehanded finished off her presentation.

She was dismissed shortly after the four men had gotten a good look at the metal she had twisted, which had been expected. Arseniy held the rest of the information they might want to look at and had the time and effort put in to be listened to by those vory.

She might be the Dying Will Flame user, probably one of few remotely active users in the clan due to the trouble she had in getting information on the ability in Moscow, but she was still a little girl in a Mafiya syndicate. One a few months shy of her eleventh birthday as well, to make it all worse.

To the Zolotovs, who were a recent addition to the Mafiya's underworld, her Flames were still relatively new to them and not something they had precedents to help them utilize.

It worked for her, because with what Lisa informed the girls about Mafiya gender equality and the fact Sonya was a thief meant there would probably be little direct control her clan would try to exert over her future travel plans. She had her Mafia Land contracts to help in that respect as well, which would cover why she would be leaving the USSR in as little as half a decade.

If the little thief paid her dues and heeded the mafia's and her clan's laws, she was pretty much set. There wouldn't likely be any attempts on her freedom until after Dying Will Flame users became more common.

With how isolate the Russian underworld was, any attempts in the future would only happen a few years after the rest of the underworld realized Flame users would no longer be a passing if rare ability only very select mafia syndicates could boast of.

Probably only when the Seven Strongest of the Era made their debut and established themselves using said rare ability.

The only problem with that kind of behavior from her clan was the fact Sonya would be left to fumble her own way in the dark. Apparently, to the Zolotov Clan, if she succeeded great but if she screwed up and killed someone or herself… at least she'd be a great warning story for the next Flame user to pop up.

Dying Will Flames weren't something the Zolotovs could ask around about without questions being asked why in return. Thus, the reason she had made the progress she had without guidance from anyone in the Russian Mafiya and why it wasn't likely she'd ever get a teacher for it.

Oh well… at least she could visit Dmitriy while here and ask if he'd like to learn how to use some dubious Flame ability called Tranquility the long and hard way.

While Sonya still intended to stick with Cherep, if her clan wanted to show off a Dying Will Flame user then she'd either be expected to come back when they called or supply a different alternative they would like better.

Rains were more sociable than Clouds, after all. Dmitriy was also male.

LV (Monday the 26th of June, 1961. Arseniy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Sonya had started picking her way through her gems before Lisa got the rest sorted out, but the purple diamond and alexandrite she had started with didn't so much as heat up through the two weeks she wore the diamond or the other two she had a hunk of alexandrite on her.

There was no reaction from them, or any perceivable change in her grasp on her Dying Will Flames. Which, while not surprising, was a little daunting when paired with how few stones she had to work with and how many she probably didn't have.

At least she could fence the purple diamond pendant, and alexandrite was a very popular if common stone in the USSR. The cash wouldn't be as much as an actual heist, but still respectable for the week's allowance even if Cherep wanted to go see the circus again for his upcoming birthday.

The whole concept had been a shot in the dark, so she really shouldn't have been so surprised it failed in application.

Learning meditation was tricky and boring without someone to help, but as it didn't seem to be hurting her control over her strength or her temper she kept up with it. The jewel of the next two weeks, a loose hunk of purple sapphire faceted as a teardrop, was clutched in one hand.

After several weeks of no reaction, Sonya had been understandably surprised when the gem imploded in her hand not five minutes into trying to control her breathing and thoughts. Feeling the sapphire crumble in her hand was odd, but also startling enough she blankly stared at her own fist for the first few seconds.

The pain registered next, and the thief opened her hand to see the extent of the damage to her palm.

"Shit." She wouldn't be selling that sapphire after all.

If she had clutched the gem too hard or if it shattering had force behind it was debatable, but she still had jagged pieces of sapphire stuck in her palm. The rest of it was in cracking chunks, with bits of fine sapphire powder mixing into the blood seeping out of the puncture wounds.

Sniffing irritably at the injury, she got up and headed for the kitchen as Lisa was likely there. The older woman preferred her fosterlings to eat something healthy for lunch before making Arseniy's first meal of the day. If she wasn't, there was a probably illegally overstocked first aid kit under the sink.

The older pair had made a point of all the kids knowing that, and that it wouldn't be an issue if they needed it for whatever reason. Not using it when they had a need would get them in trouble, not the other way around.

Sonya was pretty sure morphine was a controlled substance, but there was still a bottle of that in the kit.

"Lisa?" The blonde warily poked her head into the kitchen, grimacing when she spotted the brunette. "I may need some help."

"Oh?"

There wasn't enough blood to start dripping just yet, but there was enough to cover her palm and make it look worse than it was. "With this."

The older thief stared at the shattered mess of jewel and blood for a moment, heaved a sigh, and dug out the kitchen's first aid kit from under the sink. "What caused it?"

"A sapphire." She informed her flatly, taking a spot next to the sink so she could wash the blood away and so the woman could see the fragments of the gemstone that hadn't dug into flesh.

"It worked?" Asked the brunette, sounding surprised and confused at the same time.

"Not sure if this does qualify for 'worked', but I did get a reaction." Not a great one, and Sonya would make it a point to avoid sapphire jewelry in the future. "I think… I might try again next week just to make sure it was the gem and not me. I'm done for this one."

Lisa looked at her curiously, digging around the kit with one hand. Probably to find the tweezers. "It's Monday."

"It's also early in the day, and I'm already bleeding."

"Well… you have a point there."

Carefully washed her palm off for her, dumping the bigger shards of gemstone into a little empty jam jar instead of letting them go down the drain, the older woman started efficiently pulling the shard of jewel out of her skin. Her foster daughter got distracted inspecting the fragments for any other damage, but she couldn't even see a reason that would explain why the sapphire shattered as it had.

"So what did this tell you?"