Chapter 12: CXI-CXX 1/2

Author's Note : I would apologize… but the series of fantasy sci-fi books I follow with probably disturbing fanaticism put out the latest in the series and I got a hold of a copy. If you thought Déjà vu was long, this other author beats me out by a mile. So distractions, but I did finish it all off in just a couple days even if almost everything else suffered while I was so invested.

Anyways, Bjǫrn's name. Your computer will need a different language pack installed in order to read the tiny tail on the 'o', otherwise it will either not show up or you get the rectangles of DOOM that signify it's outside of your computer's ability to read and display. My apologies if that is so, but he will be 're-branded' if he does in fact stick around for long stretches of time.

Edited (7/16/2015) - I had said I had gotten distracted, didn't I?

Edit (4/25/2017) - Minor story corrections and additions.

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

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

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

CXI-CXX

CXI (Sunday the 31th of July, 1966. Oslo, Kingdom of Norway.)

Jiayi was a tiny Chinese woman with dark hair and eyes, about middle-aged, and long since retired from performing for crowds. What she did for the Großes Volksfest now that her show days were behind her was choreographing the flying circus acts and managing the performers that showcased them to the public.

She was also the one that slotted time on the trapeze for any needed practice, and the lady that Sonya had to go through to pull off what Cherep wanted her to do once they reached Oslo.

The tiny and fierce woman's rapid-fired Mandarin Chinese was hard for her to follow at first, given how long it had been since she'd last spoken or heard the language. The fact she bothered trying to keep up at all at least won her some leeway from Jiayi, as well as the fact she did sometimes participate in the gymnastic routines the trapeze artists used to stay flexible.

The Storm-Cloud's bad habit of smoking rather negated all of that, however.

The lady would huff and puff, but since the Russian thief wasn't the only one of 'her girls' to have nasty habits that impacted her breathing she let her go off now and again when the blonde was getting frustrated.

Trapeze swinging and tightrope walking was harder than she had counted on.

Ballet training and gymnastics only got one so far in the art, and before the tiny Chinese woman would sign off on Sonya using the big top's rig she had to prove she wasn't going to panic or fall off like an idiot. Which meant several days of practice on the much lower practice rig set up when they had the time to put in the hours to make use of it.

Day four of the 'rest' week they were taking in Oslo, almost a full month of working on the art whenever she could spare a few hours, was when she finally stopped trying to treat the tightrope like a solid balancing beam and could judge the momentum of the swinging trapeze bars to make a rather clumsy transference without arresting their momentum.

Meaning day five of that rest week was when Jiayi finally gave a reluctant green light for Cherep's stunt attempt.

Not before the fierce little Chinese woman wrangled a concession out of the Storm-Cloud to keep practicing on the trapeze. Her trained balance and hand-eye coordination a thief like her needed for certain skills apparently impressed the older woman somewhat, and the younger teen's flat refusal to be part of the big-top shows didn't seem to daunt her.

Having an emergency option if one of her girls got hurt too badly to perform seemed way too enticing for Jiayi to pass up.

Sonya, after the first bumps and bruises wore off, didn't mind putting in the hours the tiny lioness of a Chinese woman demanded. It wasn't nearly as intensive as what she really did need, given her Cloud Flames rendering any light or mild exercise routine ineffective, but every little bit could only help.

Her brother hadn't been idle while she learned the 'ropes' of trapeze swings, so to speak.

He and some of the other menfolk had cobbled together two ramps, one angled to give him the most height he could safely get and the other with a gentle slope back down to land on. It probably wouldn't last very long, and if he got the approval to go ahead with stunt work they'd have to make a better one for future shows, but it would work for the few days they needed it.

A few test jumps, some of them with a large bag of sand to simulate her weight, and he was as confident as could be. A slight change, though. No one else really wanted to be involved in something so risky, so it would just be the foster siblings trying out his trick stunt.

Now, the former pickpocket had to try to mix her newly acquired skill in trapeze swings and recovering from a fall while tightrope walking with Cherep's jumping of his little Russian made motorcycle.

It was… rather more nerve-wracking than she had counted on.

"I did say I was going to get you on one eventually."

"I entirely regret you were right in that claim."

Her fellow Cloud had the American made Bell Star helmet she had specifically ordered for him in his hands, the only full-face helmet of the era. Getting it when the USSR was so against imports or anything made in the US had been a headache and a half, but entirely worth it and the expensive price-tag.

Even if he misjudged the forces at work in mid-jump, at least he likely wouldn't be suffering a severe head injury.

The fact it was bright ass purple, nearly the same shade as his hair and eyes, merely meant he didn't tend to forget to wear the damned thing. For some reason, Cherep rather liked his coloring and wore purple whenever he could.

Sonya sighed heavily through her nose, vowing that the moment they were done she was taking a permanent smoke break for the rest of the day. "Let us get this over with."

Her brother, like the brat he was, flashed her an excited grin before tugging on his favorite birthday present from her.

A 1965 Izh Planeta motorcycle looked like a bicycle with a gasoline engine attached, as far as aesthetics went. There was more to it, but she didn't really feel charitable towards her best friend's favorite metal thing.

His plan for this stunt was to have her standing on the back seat of his bike, which while unadvised wasn't too hard for her if she braced her legs against his back and gripped his shoulders. Balancing while he got up to speed was tricky, and she started swearing under her breath when Cherep gunned the throttle and aimed for the jump ramp.

Sonya wore the safety harness attached to the performers when trying out new tricks, which was her only reassurance she wasn't going to get her fool head splattered open trying this. Jaq was on the other end, easily being twice her size in body mass made the strongman a very good counterweight if anything went wrong.

Actually hitting the ramp made her stomach drop into her toes, but to her surprise just letting go of Cherep's shoulders actually seemed to make everything easier.

Rather, putting space between herself and his deathtrap of a machine was something she was keen on.

Her brother bore down on the front end of his bike, tilting them rather disturbingly, which was her signal to jump for it. Doing so actually forced the back end of the bike to dip and evened him out, but then she was a little too concerned by reaching the swing left to hang to watch what was going to happen to him.

Getting a one-handed grip on it wasn't the best thing ever, the stress it put on her shoulder hurt until she got her other hand on the wooden bar. Then she looked down, trying to ignore the dizzying height.

From the look of the tiny people below her, the want-to-be stuntman had landed safely and was very damn excited about it.

Great. Fantastic. She was never doing this kind of crap again.

Sonya huffed, then glared at the next platform she needed to build up the momentum to reach to get down.

Never the fuck again.

CXIII (Monday the 8th of August, 1966. Oslo, Kingdom of Norway.)

The good news was that she hadn't torn something in her shoulder. That would've sucked.

Cherep was also given the news that he could start thinking up of other stunts and Master Liam would try to work it into the circus acts next year. Maybe not a big-top show, but at least a side-show display at first. Only if it proved popular would they start showcasing him as a stuntman.

Sonya supposed that might count as good news too.

The bad news was none of the other girls were keen on trying what she had done.

She could sort of understand that. She trusted her fellow Cloud a lot, enough to follow along with whatever crazy plan he had cobbled together and at least try it out. Not that she'd always do so, but generally if she couldn't find a reason not to she'd still do something he suggested once or twice.

The trapeze artists of their circus had known him for about half a year, mostly just casually as one of the 'stagehand mechanics', which wasn't the basis of any great relationship. The fact he finally had an opening to try for his dream of becoming a stuntman alone was impressive, really, but he was still unproven to be anything remarkable to the rest of their fellow circus performers.

The Russian thief still wasn't doing his trick stunt again. Once had been bad enough, but she hadn't had any expectations for it to make her even more wary of mixing the height and lack of support it required.

If she absolutely had to, she would. However, she didn't and now that she did have some idea of how risky it was baulking wasn't quite descriptive enough to explain her feelings on it.

Her brother was at least totally understanding of her reluctance for doing it again, he had brushed off her slightly stilted apology for that easily and merely gave her a rib-cracking hug for trying it with him once.

He made an awesome best friend, even if he did drag her into carnie life.

The open circus week that followed had been just as trying in its own way, even if they only opened officially at ten in the morning they closed near two in the morning the next day. Children, young adults, family units, and the elderly generally visited in the afternoon and the rowdier singles and parents, sans their young, made up the crowds out for the evenings.

It paid off, though. They had more than enough funds to charter a ship to cross the Baltic Sea once they reached Stockholm, Sweden, and enough to last maybe two or so months on the road even if they didn't open the circus up during that time.

The only downside Sonya really wanted to quibble about was being expected to breakdown and pack up the day after they were finished showcasing the Großes Volksfest. Everyone was tired and more than a little stressed from lack of sleep or straining to squeeze out that last bit of effort for the grand finale Sunday night.

She wasn't alone in cursing out the city's officials that specified what time they had the fairgrounds for, but the fact another circus would probably need a week break like they had the week before stopped it at just cursing. For anyone else to get it they had to move, preventing anything but dirty words being uttered in various languages instead of actual disgruntlement being felt.

By the time the Russian thief had gotten Madame Crina's junk packed up and told the men the tent was ready to be broken down, her legs and feet were aching. No wonder the old bat zealously guarded her damn fine boots and took a seat every moment she could.

Those boots were probably made specifically for the old woman's tiny feet, and to cushion the extreme amount of time she spent on them. She wanted her cobbler's name, and a whole week to commission herself a pair of them.

At least the circus was done with Finland and Norway, in as little as a week they'd be out of Sweden too.

France was next, and Sonya had a few plans outside of it that made her happy Cherep would probably be a little too distracted by choreographing his future stunt work to really pay attention to what she was up to.

Pierre-Antoine Carpentier, who had once been the Arcobaleno of the Storm almost three hundred years ago, had been noted as being a Frenchman. The Storm-Cloud wanted to look him up, because for one human memory was not the most accurate of things and for two... at least then she'd have a ready excuse for how she knew what bits she still did.

The thief herself still didn't know what she was going to do about the next set of Arcobaleno.

Yes, they would be the last set and yes, it would only be for about three or less decades… but, Cherep was hers first.

Sonya didn't particularly feel like sharing her brother, thank you.

Unlike the… hitman of that to-be group, the dark Sun, Skull wasn't necessary. Not from what Rachel had known. If that was true or not was questionable, in her last life she only saw very little of the purple-haired stunt baby.

The story she recalled had been about the Decimo of Vongola, not the immortal stuntman of the Arcobaleno.

She couldn't really plan for anything, because her fellow Cloud might just decide on his own he didn't need to associate with a group that contained several mafia types and a pair of soldiers.

He might just decide to help them anyways, despite how competent they were, and so the thief would just have to watch and wait.

Either way, that wasn't something she'd leave him to struggle with himself.

CXIII (Friday the 19th of August, 1966. Versailles, French Republic.)

If there was anything Cherep was greatly appreciative of about his Mafiya-flavored childhood, it was meeting Sonya and the many language lessons Lisa pressed on all of them.

French had been his first foreign language, aside Russian but he had lost a lot of his native Czech before brushing up on it a few years ago, meaning while the circus was in France he didn't have to find someone that spoke the local dialect just to sightsee… or grab Bjǫrn.

His foster sister's little fan boy hadn't left as he claimed he would do, the kid was still hanging around and pretending he wasn't following the young Russian woman. Said young woman and his little sister was pretending she didn't notice him in her day-to-day life right back.

He wasn't sure what was going on, but suspected it was something mafia related. Sonya was only that blasé when it came to mafia dealings that made his head hurt, which made it a fair guess. It didn't mean he wasn't keeping an eye on the boy, or how he tried to shadow his fellow Cloud around, but it didn't look all that bad.

He did notice when his best friend shifted her usual habits, instead of going off and drinking in various shady local watering holes she was poking around several old parishes and asking questions. She wasn't getting very far from all appearances but she didn't remotely look annoyed when she returned to wherever the circus was set up for the week.

Honestly, he was starting to wonder if she was bored or not. She wasn't really made for show business, however well she managed the vagrant like lifestyle inherent in circus life.

It hadn't seemed as if his sister had noticed their one-on-one reception in Finland, and to a lesser extent Sweden, had been a tad hostile. Cherep was chalking that up to her lingering, worsening social blindness and her bewildering preference for hostile or aggressive behavior in her personal dealings.

France had less difficulties with those of Russian descent, meaning that instead of a cold shoulder or suspicious eyeing they got semi-amicable greetings and smiles.

Which made Sonya suspicious, hilariously enough. It didn't mean she refrained from using that friendlier outlook to her own advantage, but just that she was more cautious in using whatever she got by it.

That might have had something to do with the recent reduction of bar hopping, now that he thought about it.

The Cloud Flame user decided he had hesitated long enough, as distracting as actually being assured of his dream to be a stuntman was or not, and he hunted down his foster sister for a handful of answers before she left the circus again.

"What is Bjǫrn doing, anyways?" The question had been far enough from whatever she had been thinking about it pulled the thief up short halfway to Madame Crina's tent, and she gave him a considering look.

"One of two things, if I had to guess." She started slowly as she put out the ember of her mostly burned up cancer stick, her French starting out a touch slowly then speeding up as her annoyance bled on through to her tone. "One, he could be looking for a patron of a sort. He's not much of a fighter apparently, therefore he wants someone stronger to be beholden to yank him out of any trouble that may come up. If he makes himself useful to me, then I'd be that person beholden to ensure his safety. Another reason might be that he could just be curious, but if that curiosity has any actual basis for being is up in the air."

"Didn't you rescue him?" Cherep pointed out blandly, ignoring the fact a smirk was crawling up his face.

He heard the story, and what she had thought about the incident. It still amused him she had such a problem with understanding the motivations of others she didn't know to not comprehend how some of her own actions looked from the outside.

His crooked best friend had just been annoyed she'd been pulled into something that didn't concern her, Bjǫrn probably believed she rescued him.

Indeed, the thief snorted harshly at the very thought. "Not willingly, it merely happened to look that way."

Sonya knew that but failed to connect that information to what Bjǫrn did or didn't know himself or didn't realize the kid might not care what her intent had been and only cared for the results.

Cherep figured this was like how he ended up with a Mafiya thief for a best friend. How nearly a full month of her stalking him equated to a friendship he wasn't sure, but after she stopped annoying him on principle he hadn't minded having a semi regular visits from a friend. There was just less intent on keeping an eye on someone from her end this time.

"Why not take him on?" Whatever it was the kid wanted couldn't be too bad, right?

"I'm having enough…" His fellow Cloud trailed off uncertainly, frowning rather hard out into the distance.

"Enough?"

"…trouble just keeping up with you. I don't need yet another person to keep track of." She finished rather forcefully, looking rather belligerent as she dug out another cigarette. "Besides, what the hell would I do with him while we're wandering the length and breadth of the Continent?"

That was a fair question, really. Sonya had enough difficulties with merely following the same circus he was, especially since she had started looking outside of it for something to occupy her time.

"Whatever it is you're so intent on learning about around here?"

The thief gave him a sharp look for that quip after lighting up a new tube of tobacco from her pack of them, but she did give the possibility some consideration after a moment.

"Just a thought, anyways. What are you looking for?"

"Someone that I read about, but he's long dead. I'd thought I'd at least find a gravestone or something by now, but I haven't actually come across anything that even remotely suggests this guy once lived in the country even if I know he was born here."

"Somehow, I'm not surprised this has something to do with your books." Cherep ducked the automatic smack aimed his way from her, grinning slightly. "Give it to the kid, then."

His little sister's annoyed batting at him stopped, or to be more specific she froze, at the suggestion while she considered his point. "...that would mean I have to pay him back for it."

"Either humor him on your terms or his. I don't think Bjǫrn is going to be leaving you alone any time soon."

CXIV (Thursday the 25th of August, 1966. Reims, French Republic.)

Sonya had to give Cherep the point of his argument, but it didn't mean she had to like it.

However, lately she had been chafing against the rather restrictive nature she was under while with the Großes Volksfest. There were things she rather wanted to get around to doing outside of the circus and France was, post WWII, rather… strange in a patchwork way.

It hadn't been more than fifteen years since the official end of the war, and great swaths of land were still abandoned with charred farmhouses dotted here and there or mass-produced home 'blocks' were what signified one was coming up on the suburbs of some village. Sometimes the circus came across roads that hadn't yet been rebuilt, resulting in some strange roundabout routes used to get to the next city.

That contrasted rather startlingly with the refurbished farmsteads and the cities, which had more of the rebuilding efforts concentrated on it since it would likely cost less to house the greater amount of people.

Paris had been shockingly colorful, in comparison to Moscow's severe utilitarian grace.

It had been harder to locate any older buildings in the capital city, there were new façades or straight up new buildings lining the streets and paint could cover any number of discolorations if the surface it was applied to was even.

That, the still obvious destruction that had been wrecked on the country that lingered long after the end of the war, was why Sonya was mostly sure Pierre-Antoine Carpentier was going to end up being a dead end.

If there were any records of the French born Arcobaleno of the Storm three hundred years ago, they might have been destroyed a decade or so before she had even been born. It was entirely possible that some records still existed but finding the information would probably take longer than she had left in the country.

Not if she was going to keep on following the circus as Cherep asked of her.

The Russian thief rather wanted that information if it was at all possible… but she was also rather keen on keeping up with her best friend while he didn't have the umbrella protection of being even slightly famous.

Obviously, she couldn't be in two places at once… but she didn't have to be.

Of course, that didn't mean she wanted to resort to that kind of measure.

Bjǫrn was an unknown element, little Finnish boy that he was.

Sonya didn't trust the brat, or why it was he still tagged along after her when he had previously claimed he would do otherwise.

He might only have mafia connections in the loosest sense of the word and thought she could enable him to cut them entirely. The scrawny kid could also be really interested in her personally, for whatever motivation any young adult might have about a rescuer no matter how unwilling. Bjǫrn could also want to deepen his underworld connections further than his homeland could enable.

Mafia life was both sticky and slippery in that way, hard to shed but equally as hard to swim deeper if the possibility wasn't opened for you by another in deeper than you were. She wasn't going any deeper than she was, not on her own, as she couldn't in the USSR and didn't intend to in Mafia Land.

The Russian Mafiya didn't have women vory, so she was as respectable within it as she'd ever be. Assassination and hitman work didn't appeal to her, seeing as killing was only something she'd have to resort to if she royally fucked up a heist somehow.

However, the thief really did have to decide about what to do with the kid sometime soon.

If the brat kept hanging around he might note that she and Cherep had oddly colorful fire at their command and ask a couple questions from the locals she probably wouldn't appreciate. Bjǫrn was a security risk in a way, a possibility, and a threat all rolled into one little Finish teenager.

The major problem between making use of the kid was going to be the language barrier. Bjǫrn might have applied himself to picking up every scrap of Russian he could, but they were in France. The kid's French was better than his few partly words of her second birth-language, but it was still broken enough she wasn't going to trust it.

That would mean she'd have to use Madame Crina as a translator, learn Finnish herself, or wait until the kid's mastery of the French language was good enough to be certain he understood her.

Obviously, using the old bat was out. Sonya didn't intent to give the crotchety old woman any more ammunition than she had by now, Crina was bad enough as it was. Even if she likely didn't know exactly what kind of undesirable criminal type her apprentice was. That old bat had been around long enough to know her latest apprentice wasn't strictly legal in a sense, but for some reason was making the effort to be so for a time.

It was looking like she would have to deal with her anyways if she wanted things done in a timely manner, because she was the only person the Russian knew who understood Bjǫrn's Finnish and could possibly teach her unless or until his French was more understandable.

As it was, since nothing could be done straight away she'd keep on with what she had been doing. Looking for a man she was rather certain she'd never find while the circus made its ponderous way through the still recovering French countryside.

The Großes Volksfest would be going through Germany next, although they would be nicking into Switzerland for a grand total of a week before making a more southern approach to the USSR and Moscow. Thankfully where they were wintering again this year.

The Russian thief might just be happy they were avoiding Italy on their way back through the European Continent and into the Iron Curtain, but she did wonder if they would be traveling through Czechoslovakia and what Cherep thought about that.

She was mostly sure he hadn't intended to return to his birth country at all, ever.

CXV (Wednesday the 31th of August, 1966. Strasbourg, French Republic.)

Sonya gave the man a dubious look. "Really?"

"Of course, miss. I know of the Carpentier family, they have owned the vineyard a few miles north of the town for generations." The man, an older gentleman with silver streaks through formally dark brown hair and wrinkles framing watery green eyes, informed her cheerily. "Good wine, although the members of the family are rather reclusive."

The Russian tried not to show more of her disbelief than she had to but was mostly sure it was obvious anyways.

She had been scouring parishes and old church baptizing records, trying to find one specific family line using a three-hundred-year-old name, for the last half a month. The remote prospect of finding anything had made her certain she'd never find anything concrete, and the final week the circus had left in France was the point of which she succeeded?

Letting out a sigh through her nose, she gave the man's words some consideration.

There was really nothing to lose by checking it out. It might not be the Carpentier family she was looking for, as she had come across others with the same surname before but without a Pierre-Antoine in their family tree at the right time period. At worse, this would just be another such family.

At best, she'd finally find some solid evidence on the Arcobalenos or their existence to explain what little she recalled from Rachel's life reading about the story… or boost her own limited knowledge of 'the Seven Strongest of an Era'.

"Where is this… vineyard then, sir?"

"Near the border, next to the Forest Robertsau. If you follow the edge of the forest you can see the front door not too far outside of the city's limits."

She vaguely knew what he was speaking of. It wasn't that far from here; the former pickpocket could probably check it out and still return to the circus before nightfall. She wouldn't be able to go the next day, they were leaving France via West Germany for Switzerland.

Which would be interesting, to say the least. How did Switzerland's neutrality translate into the underworld's mafia?

Sonya had abstained from actually digging into France's mafia connections due to her little distractions and was slightly overdue for touching base with the local underworld.

With a shrug, the blonde teenager decided on the rest of her day's itinerary. "My thanks, sir."

The man nodded cheerfully, making her think there might be something to Cherep's insistence that civilians were less asshole-ish than most mafia members and she didn't have to be so suspicious of them.

She tipped the man a few of the francs she had and left him to his work.

Strasbourg, the border city that was the Großes Volksfest's last stop in France, was a little tenser than most of the French villages and towns they had passed through so far. That likely had something to do with the mass exodus of East Germans shortly before the Iron Curtain got a physical boundary in the Berlin Wall.

Part of the reason she still thought the Wall would fall eventually, that was not only awkward but unwise to try and physically separate an established city that way. The fact the Berlin Wall went up so late also attributed somewhat, a lot of the people who could read the writing on the walls had abandoned their country the moment they realized what was going to happen.

With the end of the Second World War and that mass defection, Germany's population had to be reeling slightly if not scrambling to shore up sorely needed infrastructure. That was, after exercising the remnants of the Nazi Party out of whatever offices they had ended up in if the people themselves didn't end up executed or arrested for war crimes.