Chapter 11: CI-CX 1/2

Author's Note : Well, now you're all sharing motivation to write more with a rabid plot bunny for Pawprints. I told you all I don't appreciate getting harassed, right? Really, really annoying to have that happen just after stating how irritating it had been while writing another story.

Additionally, if you don't like a story element or whatever bitching about it will get you exactly how much effort you put into your reviews. Which is nothing. Sonya's stint as a circus performer happens for world building purposes. Otherwise she rushes through countries and isn't forced to look around.

Proposing something else, suggesting some other method, or actually taking the time to talk to me via the irritating pm thing will get you more.

Now, some exploding of my word cap happened. I managed to chop up the first time it happened easily enough, but this is still over the ten-thousand word limit I had. You may see more of that in the future.

Edit (4/25/2017) - General story corrections and minor edits.

Edit (3/20/2018) - Final formatting and minor corrections.

Edit (9/7/2018) - Minor corrections.

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

CI-CX

CI (Saturday the 2nd of April, 1966. Zolotov Headquarters, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Of the things Sonya rather needed to get done and over with before leaving Moscow, her list started with her biological father and ended with getting a driver's license.

With things as they were, she had the time to ask Arseniy about dealing with the former weeks before the circus she now belonged to opened for the first time that year. Well after she managed to gain her driver's license by using one of Dmitriy's automatic transmission cars.

She knew herself enough to know she had been stalling and putting it off… but what in hell was she supposed to say to him?

Thanks for the genetic contribution that led to my existence and for dumping me in the Mafiya. No, I hadn't really needed you around. By the way, I stole your wallet.

Yeah… she was of two minds over even seeing the man again.

Taking a bit of precaution about what could likely happen as she still didn't know what she thought about the man and her childhood situation, she left her assortment of miniaturized polearms with Cherep. Since she could certainly do more than enough damage with her own fists if need be, it wasn't as if she was going in unarmed.

Any Cloud Flame user would quite literally need to lose their arms before they would be less than lethal at short range and even then, they could probably inconvenience someone greatly. She wasn't very skilled, because Cloud Propagated strength didn't equal indestructible bones, but she knew how to punch and the weaker bits of the human body due to her haphazard and targeted education.

The thief closed her eyes tightly, pinching the bridge of her nose and tried thinking less lethal thoughts.

She only had one facet of her childhood incident that lead to her becoming a Mafiya foster child, there might be some semi-agreeable reasoning he had for what he did. Not to say she would appreciate it or any reasoning, but there might be.

Sonya decided she sucked at trying to give someone the benefit of doubt.

…and she was stalling again.

Palming her face, the young teenager turned to Arseniy. He looked perfectly willing to sit and wait for her to decide to continue or not, and it was very tempting to ask him to blow the whole thing off.

"So… he's in there."

"Yeah."

Sighing at that unhelpfully short confirmation, she glared a hole at the closed door to her left.

Nikishin Mikhail Vladislavovich hadn't proved to be too hard for the vor to track down again. He hadn't even left the USSR, just merely relocated further down south to a tiny town that didn't know him, the fact he was a widower, or that he should've had a tiny daughter in tow.

Said daughter wasn't too sure if she was happy this would be over with quickly or disappointed she couldn't put it off for another year or two.

She only got one step towards it before the vor spoke up again. "Leave the door open."

Giving a short nod to show she heard him, she opened the door to the small receiving room on the first floor of the Zolotov headquarters.

Mikhail looked almost like someone had shot him when he got his first good look at his daughter in nearly eleven years. "Nyura?"

"If the woman is dead, how could she be opening doors?" Sonya snapped at him bitterly, almost reflexively irate even if she had tried to ensure she'd have a level head for this… discussion.

Apparently, she was nursing a grudge.

She looked enough like her mother to be mistaken as such. A childhood goal of hers, but not exactly a warm and fuzzy thought now.

Damn it, after she had ended up in a Mafiya foster home she had hoped she'd turn out more like him in looks just to prevent that kind of thing. Her mother was a bitch.

The thief shoved those thoughts away and gave her father a long look over. Even if she rather heartily disliked him and what he did to her, he was family.

Mikhail was… a lot older. Almost fifty by appearance alone even if she knew he was only in his late thirties or possibility early forties. Silver peppered his light brown hair, much more than mere age would account for. His body language and posture was currently cringing from her sharp words making him seem more like a bent old man that one just at middle age.

He managed to recover his composure as she noted the changes he had gone through over the years, straightening up just slightly. "Sonya… you look… well."

Almost immediately he seemed to regret his choice of words.

"Rather well, considering you dumped me off on strangers the first chance you got and never looked back?" She finished for him blandly with a nod. "Why thank you, father. I am glad you noticed."

"I never had the choice to come back for you, that… man out there saw to that."

She crossed her arms under her chest and pinned him with a flat look. "Arseniy only found you after three years of looking. You had between my fifth birthday and then to try to salvage your own mistake, do not try to pin the blame on him."

Sonya had gotten the whole story from the vor when she finally asked for this meeting. All the details, even the bits she hadn't wanted to know of or learn about.

Like the fact Nyura had sold her own daughter to a Turkish human trafficking ring that managed to sneak up the Volga River from the Black Sea. The vory of Saratov used the tip off Arseniy managed to figure out looking into her family history to demolish them, but not before the slavers caught up to her mother.

Mikhail made an expression halfway caught between a sneer and a scowl, aimed towards the doorway behind her. "I did not know the risk of running afoul of Nyura's blunder had abated by then, I had been planning on waiting five years before trying to find you again."

"Find? You dumped me on a Mafiya recruitment effort!"

"I didn't know that either!" He snapped back just as irritably, informing which parent she had inherited her short temper from. "I had only thought it was an orphanage collection point for street rats, not a gathering of little criminals."

"And that makes it all better, does it?" She ran a hand over her face again, trying and probably failing to gain a bit of restraint for that temper they shared. "Shot yourself in the foot there, father."

CII (Saturday the 2nd of April, 1966 continued. Zolotov Headquarters, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Had Sonya not ended up with the Zolotov clan… Mikhail probably would've succeeded both hiding her and getting himself free from his wife's stupidity ill-thought out actions. Even if she ended up under a vor just a little less thorough than Arseniy, he might have still succeeded just without being able to pick her back up again half a decade later.

She had, though. Her foster father wasn't one for half-assed efforts, getting a rather precocious girl barely out of toddlerhood to foster had incited the investigation that led to her biological father being found out.

"You know, had you said a word of why before dumping me like so much baggage… I would've been so much less angry with you."

The former pickpocket had a bad habit of always assuming the worst. It made a few things pleasantly surprising, but she tended to lash out first before thinking of why something was happening or how it got that way.

Slavery was illegal and getting placed in a group of want-to-be criminal types had led her to assume she had been sold to the Mafiya.

Stupid in hindsight, the Russian Mafiya did not do child slavery, but she had been a tiny girl shoved into a very strange world and expected to keep up without an explicit explanation. Between Rachel's knowledge of the worst kind of humans throughout time and the appearances Sonya managed to see, it hadn't been a bad assumption.

Technically, she had been sold to criminals… just not these criminals.

The difference between Turkish slavers and Russian Mafiya, one had a standard of living to give their members… and much less unpaid slave labor.

"I barely knew what was going on, Sonya. Should I have told you? That your mother sold you? You weren't even five, a tetchy bit of a girl with her head in books." Mikhail sounded both insulted and derisive. "We never wanted to be parents at that age, you were an accident I tried to do my best for."

"If you hadn't wanted to be parents, then you should have kept it in your damn pants." Sonya informed him icily. Telling a Storm-Cloud they were a mistake was apparently not a very good idea, given her slipping temper. "A little warning? Maybe a comment of how you weren't up and abandoning me? Mentioning the possibility that I would see you again? That was too hard for you to do in between packing up and hightailing it out of the city?"

Her father acquired some unhealthy looking color, his slowly reddening features was something she was thankful she didn't inherit the genetics to pull off. "It did not occur to me to give you false hope, it was just as likely that would have been the last you saw of me."

"At the moment, I am entirely sorry that isn't true."

"You don't mean that. You are my daughter."

Sonya leveled a neutral gaze on the man, tucking every scrap of irritation and hurt away to be dealt with later. Much later… like never. "Arseniy was more a father to me than you ever were. If it wasn't already filed away on my paperwork, I'd ask to change my name to reflect that."

Once she had stopped considering the vor as just scary/not to be pissed off, anyways.

"That… that beast of a man mutilated me! You cannot be serious, Sonya."

"You were the one to abandon your own flesh and blood to him, without trying anything to mitigate the damage your wife did or would cause us before fleeing like a coward."

Figuring that this conversation would go nowhere else but around the fact she was a thief or fully part of a Russian crime syndicate, or the hurt they were stubbornly holding on to, she decided it was well past the time to leave.

"Sonya! Don't you turn your back to me, girl." Mikhail's tone was taut, angry or irritated or whatever.

She was past the point of willing to try and figure it out but had enough family fidelity in her to glance back at him. "What now?"

Her less than caring, or interested or even remotely bothered, tone of voice made him turn an even darker shade of red. "Your so-called father was the one to brutalize me, don't you have anything to say to that?"

"If you ever want kids again, adopt one of those so called 'street rats'." With that, Sonya shut the door behind her sharply.

Then came face to face with a highly amused but trying to hide it Arseniy.

The vor's lip was curled up even as he fought to keep his expression clear, the most lopsided smirk she had even seen on him. "Sassy little thing when poked, aren't you?"

She coughed awkwardly, having forgotten he was listening in on that conversation.

Arseniy rose to his full height from the chair he had been waiting for her in, giving the door she had shut a dark look but gesturing her to lead them out of the building. She did so just a touch jerkily, trying not to recall what she told her biological father about said man behind her.

It wasn't until they had started the long trek back to the neighborhood she grew up in that he spoke up again.

"Lisa can't have kids. Childhood illness took that from her, so we agreed to take a few years to foster a brat for the clan instead." The vor informed her quietly. "Tatiana was that brat, but you weren't any difficulty tacked on top of her."

The blonde swallowed thickly, blinking rapidly so she wouldn't cry. That did explain why a vor as highly skilled as him was doing spending a decade or so teaching a bunch of snot-nosed little brats the ins and outs of Mafiya life.

"I don't mind, if you want to go through with changing your name a little."

"I'd… have to file for new paperwork, though. Cherep and I are planning on leaving in a matter of weeks."

"Or Lisa could finesse it through and get you a new set, she's good at that."

A slow, almost bitter smile twisted Sonya's lips. "She is, is she? I'll ask as soon as we're home."

Arseniy hummed lowly, ambling along as if they were only out on a walk and not going home after she confronted her own father about his less than stellar care of her.

The Storm-Cloud gave the situation, more specifically her foster parents' situation, her attention in favor of stewing in her own thoughts on her blood family.

Sun Flames… they healed, right?

Was it only freshly done injuries, or could it heal something like old impairments from illness years after the damage was done?

CIII (Monday the 18th of April, 1966. A cargo boxcar, a freight train, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

A violent, screeching halt to her rushing around hadn't been what Sonya had been expecting.

She had been expecting the crushing crowds, the very loud music and talking, and late nights… she was at least not surprised by those parts.

However, circuses were… slow. It was the best term she could come up with.

Every week there was a Friday to Sunday long fair, the rest of the week they weren't putting on the big-top shows or moving around they still had customers wandering in that needed entertainment. Half a month spent in every city they would stop at, so two weekends and a week-long stretch between at most in every stop. The slow crawl across Asia and Europe would be… entirely different than what the Russian thief was used to in her own traveling.

Preparing for their Moscow opening day and the rush to pack up for getting the circus underway afterwards were not nearly as hectic as some of the things the Russian thief had to rush through. It was almost lazy rushing in comparison, but that less urgent feeling was more than made up with the sheer volume of packing and transporting logistics that had to be done.

In as little as a month, Sonya learned that she probably wouldn't be a fantastic fortuneteller herself and she had some issues putting herself in a spotlight. It went against the grain for what kind of thief she was, as her stealing was done best without witnesses.

All in all, while she didn't mind circus life it wasn't likely something she could put up with more than a handful of years.

That was alright. She was mainly just following Cherep around until he had some measure of protection as even a semi-popular act. Kidnapping a well-known public figure was harder than trying to snatch kids or minor young mechanics.

Her brother was kind of interested in learning how she did her Propagation of strength, while she really did want to learn how he Propagated himself. That would have to wait for him to figure out how to consciously control his Cloud Flames, and how to explain how it felt/seemed to work. Extrapolating it from there would take some work from them both to attempt learning the other's skill… but might prove to be more than worth the time spent.

For the time being, circus tricks would take some time to learn. Throwing knives, juggling random things, card tricks, and some stage magic were all things she might eventually make use of. Which would take some effort to master after she got the hang of the tricks. She might even actually try her hand at trapeze and tightrope walking, eventually.

They could be use in some not-quite-legal ways, so it was all good on her end.

That had been her plan, until her fellow Cloud revealed he already had conscious control over his Flames.

They were on board the train heading northwest to Kuzhenkino, where the Großes Volksfest would set up for a scant three days before moving on again. Cherep was with the heavy equipment cargo car, seeing as he was both the newest mechanic and didn't mind getting duty to ensure no breakage or theft happened between loading it all on and off.

The palm full of bright purple fire he showed her made Sonya a little… annoyed. "You're screwing with my data points, damn it."

He shrugged that off with a slightly wry smirk. "I've been able to do this since you punched me in the arm that one night. To make the tanzanite light up."

She chewed on her lower lip as she thought. She had been thirteen then, and still barely able to call up or consciously control her own Flames until just before her fourteenth birthday. Her brother had outstripped her by… years, really.

Then again, Cherep also had needed his innate skill with his Flames more than she had.

There was probably a correlation… Usov hadn't had any signs of being a Mist Flame user until he thought he needed something to save himself, then that fear of the unknown prompted them to remain. Which didn't end until a Storm-Cloud and Rain showed him it could be controlled at will.

Sonya needed the boosted strength to damage the vory assaulting her best friend, but she didn't require that ability to continue with her daily life, so her control and power waned. Redeveloping both control and power might've meant more to her drive to learn it rather than practice, possibly.

Dmitriy didn't have any conscious control until he got faced with a crying and hysterical child, but he had known it was possible and was now developing fine control over his power.

Tatiana only had the motivation to learn when her little sister ended up injured, and bullheaded her way through to learning a Sun's Activation based healing ability only until she had it.

Different motivations and requirements translated to different innate starting skills and control… probably controlled how strong one's Flame was, too.

Unfortunately, she didn't have the data to support her theories. There was way too much misinformation floating around for her to feel comfortable trying to push that information out somehow.

"You're not going to ask why I never told you?"

She snorted at him. "It was probably safer to keep it to yourself for while we lived with Lisa and Arseniy anyways. Plus… you are your own person. I don't need to know everything about your life, just that you're alright and alive."

"You know, I had wondered why you never demanded to know what I did most days… Lisa said it's an etiquette thing." Cherep ran a hand through his shaggy purple hair, his expression faintly bewildered.

"It is actually rather rude to ask what one does most days. Typically, because the usual response is to lie about it but occasionally because some think you don't deserve to know if you can't figure it out yourself."

There were spies to consider too, because the only ones that typically asked what one did usually ended up being government agency or police spies, information brokers, or other mafia group recruiters. All of which were semi-lethal things to try in doing in the underworld.

Therefore, if you didn't know what someone did in their days you would either find out yourself or be content with not knowing. Asking was hazardous to your health.

That was why she never asked why the hell Renato had so much time to bother her in.

"So… you didn't know Arseniy had me running messages around Moscow when you were otherwise occupied?"

"Uh… no, actually." That was… news to her. Stupid in hindsight, because everyone pitched in under that roof. "Is that where you got the money to win the motorcycle?"

"Yep."

Sonya didn't waste time feeling annoyed, Arseniy had given her fellow Cloud shelter and food and it was his prerogative to decide how the kid paid that favor back. Running missives was tame compared to what the rest of them had been doing, really.

It was his life too, she didn't know everything Tatiana got up to. Equally, they probably only knew a fraction of what she got up to. She had no right to demand that kind of information.

"Alright, do you know how you do that internal Propagation thing then?"

Her brother stopped fiddling with a recently replaced piston that had broken down, peering over at her suspiciously. "Why do you want to know?"

"For the next time I get injured."

He opened his mouth, blinked at her, then looked down at where his bike was stored. "I suppose telling you that a career that injures you isn't a good one would be highly hypocritical of me, wouldn't it?"

"Just a touch, brother dear."

"I don't really know how to explain it… just that it hurts a lot." Cherep shrugged his shoulders, probably a tossup between being uncomfortable with the topic and phantom pains from old injuries being recalled. "It doesn't burn so much as sting at first, but the clearest thing I can tell you of what I thought when this apparently happened to me was the drive to continue. To get up despite the injuries."

That was… painful sounding. Not like her breaking her hand and then refraining from using it, more like the mechanic had broken a leg or something and kept on walking on it.

Sonya beat back the desire to question her best friend closely on who exactly kidnapped him.

He had never offered that information up and she'd never ask, because more likely than not he wouldn't want to tell her.

Either out of a desire to shield her from that part of his life, or from knowing full well if she knew stealing wouldn't be the biggest crime she was guilty of.

It also sounded like either a skill she'd have to attempt learning the next time she got in a tight spot and broke something… or she should start with small cuts and try to use her Cloud Flames to replicate skin to seal them.

That was a lot more self-destructive than just destroying physical things and maybe getting a cut or bruise in the end.

CIV (Monday the 25th of April, 1966. Kuzhenkino, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

"St Petersburg is next?" Sonya almost yelped, and consequently got whacked in the shin by Madame Crina's walking stick for raising her voice in constrained quarters.

"Yes girl, don't make me repeat myself." The sour old bat snipped at her while the thief packed up most of the contents inside their little tent, handing the large crystal ball and more ornate bits of her 'shop' herself. "I suppose that means St Petersburg is more to you than just the city of palaces then?"

More like the territory of a notorious underworld Mafiya group the blonde didn't want to tangle with. "It's just… surprising. I didn't know we are going that far north."

Either she had to keep her head down… or barter for safe passage. Safe passage would be the smart thing to do, trying to sneak on through could get a bit riskier than she liked when surrounded by civilians.

Thankfully they wouldn't be staying longer than a week, the circus had gained more initial operating funds their opening week than planned on so pushing out of the USSR fast to be the first outside the Iron Curtain was what they were trying to do.

"Hmph." The old gypsy woman didn't look remotely convinced, but the younger of the two thought it was more like the old bat didn't really care. "Ensure any trouble that you attract doesn't end up bothering Master Liam, girl."

Case in point. If it didn't affect the circus or the circus master, Crina didn't give a damn. Why was something she was kind of interested in learning.

Sonya tossed the last silk pillow into the chest built specifically for the delicate and easily molded cloth items, looking around once more to be sure she had gotten the bulk of their 'stage' packed up. "Right, whatever. I'm going to go tell the men they can break down the tent and move our things onto the railcar."

"Don't hurry back."

"Will do."

Their relationship might remain semi-antagonistic for the entirety of their time working together, but the Russian thief didn't really mind the thought. It was a hell of a lot better than the leering and sneers she typically got from the crowd attracting Madame Crina more customers, or the painfully faked friendliness of the trapeze artists and showgirls.

Cherep even got annoyed when the younger woman in the circus tried being friendly to her when he was around, so she was at least sure it was all faked to her. Probably.

Eh… people gave her headaches. Even her best friend at times. Straight-forward and semi-hostile was easier to deal with than simpering friendliness or snooty behavior.

Sonya located her brother easily, with his vibrant purple hair standing out in the sea of brunettes, blondes, and the occasional random colors. He wasn't the only one in the circus with vibrant or slightly odd hair and eye coloring, but he was the only one with purple as both.

"Madame Crina's tent is ready to go." She told the nearest male paying some attention to the on-going picking up efforts in German, their circus' main common language. "What's going on?"

"We hit ground frost here, froze peg at night." Jaq, who played the exotic African strongman for the crowd looking for semi-unusual feats or exotic things to gawk at, informed her in his broken German easily enough. He was leaning on his massive wooden mallet, which showed dirt and mud where he likely hit the troublesome big top peg to loosen it up. "Nothing makes free."

She hummed her understanding. German wasn't his best language, but she couldn't speak Arabic or Berber at all just like how he couldn't understand Russian or any more of her French.

They watched in rather companionable silence as the people gathered around argue about how to get the stake of steel up, and the few attempts to just brute force the dratted thing out of the mud. They couldn't exactly leave it behind, the big top only had so many extra pegs that could take and brace the stress and weight of the massive circus tent.

She would not be offering her Cloud Flame strength as a possibility, only if they decided to finally abandon it would she yank the steel up and sneak it back into the supply carriage.

Cherep suddenly fell backwards onto his ass, flinging a lot of icy mud everywhere. The very stake like peg in question in hand. "Got it!"

Jaq harrumphed, swinging his massive wooden and iron prop over his shoulder. "I likely knocked up for him."

"Cherep's strength against your hammer? Very likely indeed." Sonya agreed with the burly and bald black man, patting him on the elbow. She couldn't reach his shoulder, she might only just be able to reach it with her full growth in a few years. "You might've given up a touch too soon if he got it so quickly."

Except… she could probably out lift the man if cheating by using her Dying Will Flames. The young mechanic had been listening and watching her utilizing her Cloud Flames for years, and they had been trying to use each other's ability lately.

Her best friend might not share her opinion on the showcasing of Flame abilities.

The thief had to obey Omertà, her brother didn't.

…and likely wouldn't. Even if it had gotten him kidnapped before, he was still planning on trying to become famous for his death-defying abilities.

Sonya, at the very least, should probably have a word with him about not confirming anything merely to help him stay off the underworld's radar. As well as some coaching on what to do if approached by any shady or too good to be true characters.

It was the biggest risk her fellow Cloud was taking with his plan on becoming a stuntman, especially if he did some Flame enabled death-defying in front of a full house.

CV (Saturday the 30th of April, 1966. Saint Petersburg, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

St. Petersburg was situated on the Gulf of Finland, part of the Baltic Sea.

Which was part of how the Grekov Gang became so influential, they had a sea route to the Atlantic Ocean and the countries not under the Soviet Union's rule. More than the vory of Saratov, who had miles of river to traverse before any goods were shipped in or out.

Smuggled black market goods, the smuggling people in and out of the Soviet Union, and the acquisition of anything outside of the Iron Curtain you might ever want was what they had built their little empire from.

The Grekov Gang was also better informed than the more mainland Mafiya syndicates. Partially, they could also control what the rest of them learned of those far from their icy home territory.

Which would also mean they knew more than what any syndicate generally tended to know about the rest of the world.

Additionally, it meant Sonya had not wanted to set foot in the admittedly beautiful city for any reason. Even if the ports here served Mafia Land more than any of the smaller ones farther south, and that trip took her longer, the Russian thief always went either more west or south to get or settle a contracted heist.

Hopefully the sexism in mafia life and generally 'unknown' umbrella most Flame users currently labored under would keep her from being too interesting.

While to the Zolotovs Dying Will Flames were just a strange fire ability some of their younger members could play around with… that would change fast, with Usov there to show them how much even a young Mist could fuck someone over.

To the Grekovs, it might be more like how the Vongola viewed theirs as desirable traits to be coveted and the users made loyal any way possible.

No, Vongola didn't have a shiny reputation. For one, they were mafia. For another, World War Two was only two decades from being over and a lot of that nastiness was still lingering around.

In an effort not to draw undue attention to herself, Sonya bit a bullet and went into one of the 'known' contact points for the Grekov Gang.

"Sonya of Zolotov, eh?" This Boris wasn't as amicable as Tatiana's tattooist Boris, but likely that had to do because she didn't belong to the local syndicate in power. "What are you doing with a bunch of civvies?"

As a fifteen-year-old, she no longer qualified for the blanket protection young children enjoyed in the Russian underworld. Getting protection or slipping in and out of other territories was a lot harder than her occasional heists around the Soviet Union few years ago.

"Laying low, of course." The blonde gave him a bland smile, ignoring the fact he likely wasn't the one in charge or who she really should've been speaking to. Likely, the vor in charge of this little hideout was one of the ones playing 'bodyguard' or not quite in the room with them. "I did a few jobs that might have been a bit too high profile to handle the resulting heat. So now I'm hiding with the pigeons and pretending to be a good girl."

Which was a big fat lie, but she was a thief not a schoolgirl. They would be expecting one anyways, it was better to give them what they thought they wanted then to leave.

Preferably before Madame Crina decided to finally get herself and her 'shop' set up for their opening day in this city. The old bat had lingered about that the last two times, until most of the others had set up where they would be for the two or three days they would be operating for a mere weekend long stay and poached a convenient 'corner' or the closest thing to it.

That wouldn't spare Sonya's shins if she was late getting back, but it was a risk she had to run.

There was some hemming and hawing, and some frankly insulting insinuation passed around, but she kept the pleasant façade up and ignored the harassment until her 'bribe' to get ignored for the week was accepted and she was free to go.

Keeping herself from stiffening up when a few snips of gossip about the Zolotov Flame users proved almost too tricky for her. The Grekov Gang knew about Usov, not his name but that he was very young and a Mist.

Scarily well informed could be added to what she knew of the most influential Russian Mafyia syndicate of St Petersburg.

(ooo000ooo)

(Sunday the 1 st of May, 1966. Saint Petersburg, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Predictably, that wasn't the end of it.

Of course not, the Storm-Cloud didn't apparently have that kind of luck. She might've used hers all up keeping Cherep mostly out from under the Zolotov clan's collective thumb.

The Grekov Gang responded to a Zolotov in their territory by sending in a much more personable man the next day, a vor who charmingly introduced himself as 'Valera'. Then he tried buttering her up to learn the truth behind a few of the stranger stories coming out of Moscow, and coincidentally Zolotov, territory.

If Sonya had not spent some of her developing years around someone like Renato Sinclair, who was both a charming bastard and totally unapologetic about using it for his own ends, or her foster father, who wasn't nearly so charming but still eye candy in a way, she might have gotten distracted enough to fall for his pretty face slightly.

There was also her two decades of life as Rachel to consider, who hadn't been considered nearly as 'pretty' as the thief was now. She had dealt with things like popular cliques playing with 'lesser people' and college students jockeying for a professor's time and attention.