1 Chapter 1: I-X 1/2

Disclaimer : Katekyo Hitman Reborn! belongs to Akira Amano.

Rating : T? Mostly for some swearing in Russian, the rating will get worse eventually.

Author's Note : Yes, I got sucked into another fandom. Yes, it's another SI/OC fic. I'm going to try to avoid some of the issues my other one had, so expect updates to be slow since I'm going to try to stick to the plot worked out for this.

FYI: I actually have no idea how the Russian Mafiya works, bits and pieces of the lore for it I used in this story is cobbled together from different sources and tweaked a bit. Some translations of the Russian used is available at the end.

In Russia your name is legally written out like this: Family Name (Maiden if applicable) Given Name 'Nickname' Patronymic Name. One's Patronymic name is apparently the father's name with an –ovich for boys and -ovan for girls, -vovich and -vovan respectively if the last letter is another vowel. Though there is a Matronymic version, and my SI/OC's mother has one, it's not nearly as commonly used unless one's mother doesn't know the father's name (apparently unwed mothers). There is some conflicting sources for that, so I went to the first one I found and kept with it. (Which was a name generator site and why the mom has a female 'daughter of' Matronymic name.)

Edit (3/11/2015) - Shabondy corrected how Sonya's Patronymic name is ended, as I missed a step in that.

Edit (3/27/2015) - Qinetiq has corrected a few Russian terms for me and challenged a few things, some changes in the story mechanics resulted. Explanation at the bottom.

Edit (6/02/2015) - Weaver of Silver corrected the spelling of the female versions of Sonya's last name.

Edit (4/23/2017) - General corrections and date-shifts.

Edit (3/16/2018) - Final formatting and minor corrections.

Edit (9/1/2018) - Timeshift and minor error corrections.

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

I-X

I - (Thursday the 3rd of February, 1955. Saratov, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Nikishina Sonya Mikhailovna was born to Nikishin Mikhail 'Misha' Vladislavovich and Nikishina (ne Lazareva) Nyura Ruslanovna on the evening of December 28th, 1950, in Saratov, a port city on the Volga River in Soviet Russia.

Their daughter was 'typically' Russian in features, with her mother's wavy ash-blonde hair coloring added to her father's sharp Slavic features and grey eyes, and she could very well pass herself off as a Barbie doll with baby fat given a couple more years to grow in. Neither of her parents were bulky people, which made the very young girl assume she would eventually inherit a willowy frame though she hoped she turned out more like her mother. Who could probably put in a claim of having been a ballerina in her younger years and get away with it.

Much to the relief of both her parents, Sonya wasn't the type of child that demanded a lot of attention. She was quiet and kept to herself, fussed little, and generally preferred to be left alone most of the time.

Which worked for them, they didn't seem too enthused with being parents at all.

Mikhail was intent on not being around much, when he was around he was either home to drink in the warmth of the house or try arguing with his wife about something or another. Nyura liked to pretend she wasn't a stay-at-home mother against what seemed to be the socially accepted norm around the local town to the point the neighbors thought little of the woman, the longer she could ignore the fact she had a daughter or husband the happier she was. Why either of them went through with the trouble of having a child was more than Sonya could answer, but in return for the food and shelter she didn't mind staying out of their way like they wanted.

She had enough trouble on her own end, the whole 'hands-off' childhood thing worked for her too.

Sonya's odd personality for a typical Soviet child, just being aware of how strange her home life was being merely a symptom of something not being exactly as it seemed, was something caused by the dream-nightmares she had starting shortly after her first few months of life. Dreams where she was living an entirely different life as one Rachel Victoria Stokes, a daughter of an always working lawyer mother and a mainly absent chemist of a father.

An American college graduate, who had been trying to figure out what to do with her degree in International Affairs which she had worked hard for but had no longer recalled why she had wanted it.

Only Rachel had died, in a mugging gone horribly wrong on dark night, while she tried to wrestle with herself about what she was going to do with her life. Once she came to terms with the sudden and abrupt removal of anything familiar, Sonya was left trying to muddle through twenty odd years of another life heaped onto her personality as it developed from a childish self-centeredness and into a fully aware person of her own right.

An American born in the year 1987 and died in 2012. Now she was a citizen of the USSR in the 1950s, dreaming about a young woman who wouldn't be born for decades if at all.

There were any number of days when she woke still thinking she was a young woman called Rachel, and the disjointed feeling she got when spotting blonde and not brown hair then grey and not hazel eyes was often disturbing. The age/height difference was a headache all its own, causing more than a small measure of her early childhood clumsiness so despaired over by her so-called 'mother'.

Said early childhood was mostly a never-ending series of nightmares and confusion for her as she tried to at least not draw any attention to herself as she sorted her own mind out, but she still rather disliked the abrupt change in circumstances that happened early in 1955.

As awkward as being a child born to two less than enthusiastic parents was in a town where that seemed to never be the case, she rather preferred it to learning that her parents had used her to pay off a debt they owed someone else.

Nikishina Sonya Mikhailovna then became one of many children taken to the local Mafiya recruitment drive, due to either their parents or unrelated members tempting them in.

The Mafiya group specifically the group of children to young adults all now belonged to had once been part of the vory v zakone, the thieves-in-law. Remnants of those who had previously been condemned into the GULAG labor camps under Joseph Stalin's reign, and kept holding the 'brothers in arms against the government' idea that had been mostly discarded upon their release after World War Two by the rest of the Russian Mafiya.

Sonya learned all of that from her tattoo artist, who took pity on her obvious confusion but appreciated she didn't wail and moan about the little curled cat tattoo she was given on her right bicep like some of the even older children did. Discounting that most of his storytelling was probably a bit whitewashed for a child's sake, she actually liked the little kitten and shrugged her agreement to return to him when she 'earned' her next tattoo.

Valya was good at his art for something that wasn't quite 'mainstream' popular yet, and he was somewhat pleasant while she was under his hands, so she accepted the tiny slip of paper that held the address for his usual haunt on it in case she wanted him to add to her non-existent tattoo collection.

The next thing she learned was that her kitten denoted that she was brought in young to be a thief, the general standby for those not specifically courted on whatever kind of recruitment run this was, instead of for any of the other criminal branches their new thieves' clan dabbled in. She wasn't the only one getting a curled cat tattoo that same day, but there were about a handful of other designs getting inked on other, mostly male children as well.

Some of them were picked by the people that guided the kids of varying age ranges into the warehouse-turned-tattoo parlor, others seemed to be assigned by lottery. There were card tattoos, various symbols denoting several money values, pairs of dice, three masks, a handful of guns on the older if still young adults, mixed in with the more common cats and spider webs and one lone much older teen that was in the middle of getting a bullet crossed with a knife where she had her own.

Sonya was by no means sold on this new direction of life, but she was also not as stupid to think she might be able to just walk out. For one, although she had the intelligence of an American college graduate she had the physical form and appearance of a young child. For another, if her parents had her to pay off whatever they owed then whoever they owed their firstborn child to probably wouldn't like nor stand for it if said payment took off on him or her.

Third, this was well organized and practiced. Well supplied, prepared for, and things seemed to be getting done at an alarmingly fast rate. They had done this before, would probably do this again, and any kind of escape Sonya could come up with had probably been tried many times before therefore likely any escape attempt would be foiled quickly.

She would have to wait and see, for both an opportunity to escape or if she really liked this no matter how much as she doubted she would she might stay regardless of her irritation with her parents.

Getting sorted out by their freshly given tattoos was a mess and a half at the end of the night, because they were new and most were still bleeding even with the surprisingly clean rags passed around like candy to staunch it. Of course, there were the handful of children that didn't pay attention to what they were getting which resulted in time wasted checking the swelling flesh for what general shape said tattoos were in.

Sonya ended up sorted out next to a chatty redheaded girl that called herself Tatiana and another but older mousy haired boy that gave Dmitriy as his name, her fellow girl another thief who could've gotten a card tattoo but picked a cat and Dmitriy clarified his spider in a web as apparently just 'dedicated to a life of crime' rather than an actual future job class to be trained in.

II (Thursday the 10 th of May, 1956. Arnseiy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Being fostered with Tatiana the to-be con artist was a distinctly different kind of situation than living with her own parents. Thankfully and strangely.

Taking stock again a year later proved… somewhat interesting.

For one, the couple the two of them were sent to learn under were accepting of Sonya's early independence from them only if she kept them informed of what she got up to. For another, she didn't have to find something to do out of sight every day by herself anymore.

Additionally, they weren't in Saratov anymore, they were in Moscow. It was apparently easier to hide the fact they were raising up the next generation of Mafiya members in larger cities, but equally so her 'father' didn't want her to remain in Saratov so she ended up elsewhere with a group of other 'displaced' children picked up by that Mafiya recruitment drive he shoved her into.

Vor Bazanov Arseniy Pavlovich was the girls' main trainer in everything an aspiring thief needed to learn the basics of, his partner but not wife who lived and certainly slept with him Primakova Elisaveta 'Lisa' Rostislavovna was the one primarily raising them and teaching them everything else a citizen of both the USSR and their Mafiya syndicate required them to know. They also stood in as their 'parents' in their little fake family, Tatiana claimed she had none and Sonya knew full well her own were still alive just utterly disinterested in her.

Arseniy only tended to teach the girls in the evening hours, and as such he slept most of the mornings away. The youngest of the household figured he worked a type of second shift, since being part of their Mafiya syndicate that upheld a variation of the vory kod prevented any of them from honest employment if one could support themselves by their criminal exploits. Elisaveta, who told the girls to call her just Lisa early on, took care of teaching them basic knowledge about everything else herself instead of sending them off to school like most children.

The older brunette first ensured they knew how to read and write not only in Cyrillic but several other Slavic languages first, then branched out into teaching them to speak in different languages as well as what Sonya recognized as basic geography, Soviet Union's variations and then foreign law, their own Thieves' Code they were being 'asked' to uphold, basic forgery in the guise of 'art', a very selective series of chemistry lessons, and mathematics.

Apparently neither girl could go to the public schools available as that would just allow the uchastkovyi, a cross between a Sheriff and a Constable but a local resident to their part of the city, to pick them out as Mafiya members before they ever stole their first mark. The two girls would eventually become known to the militsiya, and possibly the KBG, but Arseniy held the opinion the later that occurred the better.

Both children had ballet lessons in the morning, early enough that Tatiana usually swore under her breath every morning when Lisa woke them for the day. Sonya didn't mind the dance lessons, it helped with her still lingering clumsiness that she had yet to grow out of, and the other girl was enthusiastic of learning it if not appreciative of the early morning hours.

They also got to see a lot of the other girls they would eventually be working with then, as the woman who ran the ballet school was a minor clansman's wife who didn't mind teaching more Mafiya girls to dance even if they never did go professional.

Breakfast was made shortly after that, mostly done and eaten without Arseniy, then another hour or so of gymnastics in the backyard or the basement to work on tumbling routines. A short break for hygiene reasons and so Lisa could go greet her lover when he woke, then they spent the rest of the morning on whatever the older woman wanted them to learn.

Lunch was taken a bit later than Sonya was used to at first, and very rarely did Arseniy join them for that awake or not. If he did join them they would move into what typically ended up being the more recognizable training a thief might use to escape, disguises and how to act like you belonged even if you didn't, how to use odd building features to escape that way, and the like. If not then Lisa would teach them how to lie, how to act in high society, how to tell someone was lying, and the less overtly stated parts of the code they were going to be held to as thieves for the Russian Mafiya.

Late afternoon was when the girls occasionally got to see Dmitriy again, as well as all the other children also in their neighborhood there for training and not more domestic reasons. That was more recognizable training in skills a thief needed to know that vor Arseniy handled for all of them; pickpocketing, lockpicking, safecracking, hot wiring both automobiles and security systems, how to lose a tail, how to fence what you stole, and the like. Every now and again when the older criminal wasn't available due to whatever they would go to a different location that seemed centralized to their various foster homes for combat training under a man called vor Aleksandr, for small arms, knives, and whatever else anyone wanted to learn to use.

Then the two young girls had dinner with their two 'foster parents', and the rest of the evening was left to practice whatever skills they wanted before bed.

There was no real schedule to anything. There were frequent days when either Lisa or vor Arseniy weren't available and some rare occasions when neither were around for a day or three. Sonya and Tatiana were encouraged to do whatever appealed to them during those times, but while the older redhead was content to crack safes or work on her vocabulary in different languages the younger blonde liked to take a book on whatever was handy and escape their 'foster home' to explore some of Moscow's less traveled streets or get a bench somewhere quiet.

It was a beautifully austere if cold city, and always somewhat colorful with something new to investigate if she just looked. Some industrial pollution and cookie cutter architecture that tarnished the view fast, but she didn't think it was any worse than America's manufacture suburb hellscapes or even the Rust Belt of ruined factories a little south of where Rachel once/would live.

Unfortunately, in Lisa's and Arseniy's eyes, she didn't go out solely to practice her pickpocketing. Though she did tend to do that a little just so the vor didn't lecture her on keeping skills sharp and contributing to the household funds, as well as keep an eye out for the odd identification that either of her 'foster parents' might be able to use.

Sonya rather did like the rewards the occasional pickpocketing brought her, because even if she still wasn't sold on the whole 'thief' thing the Mafiya life she was living would prevent her from having the school records getting a decent legal job would require. Barring her from that side of the world until she had the experience and skills to dodge anyone sent after her long enough to correct that. The set of her own lock picks and the agreement for staff training she secured by acquiring the IDs were particularly useful, as she was very good at lockpicking and rather wanted to keep from getting a skull or tombstone tattoo that denoted kills any time soon or in the far future.

Tatiana tended to act like an older sister she never wanted, a high-maintenance one that demanded attention when she could, so she wasn't all that sold on the character of what could charitably be called her first real 'girlfriend'. The redhead also got a little jealous of the younger girl's skills, because hers were a little more immediately useful than safe cracking or forgery.

Lisa was more of an elder sibling-type role model, mostly because the woman didn't like being called 'aunt'. She was a cheerful early riser that didn't care if they swore or bitched if they did so while doing what she set them to do.

Vor Arseniy was more of a parent in the house, because no one wanted him angry or irritated. He wasn't abusive, but he also didn't hold off on smacking either girl if they got too mouthy or disrespectful of him.

It was also because of him that Sonya could wander on the rare occasions she had free. He had said it was alright and not even Lisa went against what he said when he wasn't home.

It was on one said occasions that she ran into something unusual, rather someone unusual, that clued her in to something being a little skewed from the reality she recalled in the bizarre dream-life of Rachel's she once lived through.

III (Wednesday the 3rd of September, 1958. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Three years into her next new life in Moscow, in the fall of her seventh year and a decent budding thief in the making, Sonya met Cherep.

Just Cherep, apparently. He who had bright purple hair with matching eyes and spoke his Russian with a distinctly Czech accent. Wandering around the streets just like her, even if it was a school-day where most of the kids their age were tucked away in dark and dreary classrooms getting stuffed full of knowledge they might not ever use.

He was mainly a little annoyed at the questions she kept pestering him with, but she was more than a little fascinated and too curious to care.

Purple wasn't a natural coloring, yet his hair was bright ass purple. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes were the same blatant shade of eye-popping violet, including the hair on his arms.

"Why does everyone keep asking that?" He asked the shockingly clear fall sky not three minutes after meeting her, and even if it wasn't directed to her Sonya answered him anyways.

"Probably because they want to know what dye they can use to get your hair coloring. It's pretty neat, really." While Cherep gaped at her, for what reasons the tiny pickpocket didn't care to know, she plucked out a strand of his chin-length hair to inspect the root.

It was purple the whole way through. Huh.

The violently purple kid she had found then squawked like an offended parrot, slapping at her hands well after she plucked a strand of his hair. He didn't even look too surprised that he missed her by a good margin, merely glaring with that same darkening lavender eye coloring the equally tiny blonde had to accept as being completely natural as well. "Don't do that."

Tucking the strand of hair into her borrowed book as a bookmark, she gave him a level look and tucked the bound stack of paper under one arm. "And how are you going to stop me?"

Floundering a moment as the question stumped him, he looked around then his features brightened as if he had thought he hit on the perfect idea. "By leaving, bye."

Amused at the weak attempt, she blatantly followed him out of the square she confronted him in. It only took him a street to realize she hadn't stayed behind, and the glare she got over his shoulder made her crack a smirk. "What?"

The kid, because he was more of a child than Sonya had ever been herself, huffed out his obvious irritation with her and proceeded to try and ignore the fact he was being followed. Badly.

As in, he tried running a few streets until his limited stamina ran out. She easily kept pace with his best effort to outrun her, much to his painfully obvious chagrin.

She politely, for her, waited out the gasps for breath before nudging the boy nearly folded in half and struggling to breath with one shoe. "Really? That was… pathetic."

Really pathetic. Like… not even the other civilian kids she sometimes watched from afar got out of breath that fast. He probably wasn't… well cared for.

The other child's clothing supported that guess, given the sloppily done patchwork almost not spanning the hole in his shirt enough to contain one sharply boney elbow.

"Don't you have other people to bother?" Cherep gritted out petulantly at her, still breathing heavily enough she was beginning to become concerned for him. "Go stalk someone else."

She actually thought about following his bitchy advise, but since neither vor Arseniy nor Lisa was home that day and Tatiana was being a little moody bitch Sonya didn't really care to be home just yet. There was the possibility of going to bug vor Aleksandr for additional lessons in whatever was at hand or going across the neighborhood to see what Dmitriy was up to, but neither option was guaranteed because they had their own things to do most days and might not have time for a lone girl-child.

Most didn't. Sony had never been stopped or bothered before she got a tiny bit distracted by the strange hair coloring.

It wouldn't pay to find a good target to pickpocket because no one was home to appreciate the new legal identity they had a limited time to use before it was reported. At home she had already picked most if not all the locks the vor had in stock for her, and was thoroughly bored with doing the same schoolwork that it seemed Rachel had once already done in her life and Sonya knew from that.

There was little else she had to do in a timely manner, sucked to be him.

"I actually have nothing else to do that's as interesting as you are right now." She informed him dryly, shrugging a little at his incredulous look that earned her.

Cherep gaped at her unattractively for a few moments longer, but eventually gave a kind of shudder-shrug and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Um… okay."

She waited a beat, but when all the kid did was stare at her expectantly the blonde had to huff in bemused irritation herself. "You… are such a pushover."

"Hey!"

It wasn't until much later, when she got home and ignored Tatiana wailing about having to cook for herself to check if Arseniy or Lisa were home yet, that Sonya absently recalled what Cherep's name translated into English as and realized what had bothered her so about the kid she met that morning.

Other than his apparently natural coloring, that is.

Cherep was a word she had for a skull.

A purple haired and eyed individual named Skull?

First off… who the hell named their kid skull?

Secondly… Rachel had watched an anime who had someone like that once. Sonya didn't recall most of the plot or anything about a lot of the characters in that show, all she really recalled was a wimpy son of some Italian Mafioso and boxers… and the cursed babies with the pacifiers.

She blankly stared at the ceiling over her bed as her 'foster sister' moped around a little downstairs and told herself it was just a coincidence, then tried to believe it.

She was part of the Russian Mafiya. The physically tiny thief would've heard something about colorful fire or creepy-strict zombie Mafia-Enforcers by now if that was at all true, and she hadn't. There had been a complete lack of anything supernatural or different from this life and her last.

However, she was a very minor baby Mafiya thief. Maybe she didn't qualify for that kind of information yet?

Maybe… maybe she should stick around Cherep until she sorted that out… because if something like that did exist… well…

Torn between wanting to laugh or cry at the impossibility, even if it was a connection to her last lifetime in a place she never thought to look, Sonya huffed a sigh as she rolled over to go to sleep.

IV (Friday the 26th of September, 1958. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

"Sonya's been meeting with someone!" Tatiana practically sang much to Lisa's tolerant amusement, grinning stupidly at the fellow baby thief almost two full years younger than her.

"And how long did it take you to figure that one out?" Sonya deadpanned back, following them easily enough as they walked to where the morning's ballet practice was held. "It's only been going on for most of the month."

There was a kind of honor among thieves, or at least the Mafiya ones she had gotten to know here, but privacy wasn't something this version of them religiously practiced. If it happened regularly, chances were that both Lisa and Arseniy already knew it was going on and were planning something if you weren't supposed to be doing it.

Case in point, the first time she left their little home and neighborhood for another part of Moscow Lisa had known the moment she returned. Whether or not that was due to spies or someone being a concerned neighbor and informing her, or just because she noted something not available in their section of Moscow on her, was up in the air. The first time Tatiana blew off practice or study when she had the free time to just laze about like a bum Arseniy had known and given her hell for it and the man had been gone for three days due to whatever it was that took his attention most of the time.

"Sonya?" Lisa questioned lightly, giving the youngest a serious look even with the grin on her lips and tossing her short brown hair out of her way with one hand.

She kind of wondered how the woman managed that expression so flawlessly. "He's got purple hair. It's weird."

"Which would explain why he caught your attention." The older Mafiya member gave a semi-accepting and semi-dismissive shrug, holding them up just before the doors to the dancehall to continue posing questions. "Why keep meeting with him?"

"Because his reactions to me poking him are funny."

It wasn't worth it to lie, but telling the truth wasn't something Sonya want to do either. Telling the older woman that she was watching him for any purple fire suddenly appearing probably wasn't a good idea. She still wasn't too sure about the odd coincidence of the meaning of Cherep's name and his unusual coloring, so like the rest of the weird things that nagged her it was ignored.

Just like the memories of being Rachel and the fact she was used to alleviate the debts her parents had.

Lisa hummed instead of showing either disapproval or approval, waving both girls into the building for their usual morning activities.

It wasn't until they were stretching at the barre with their class that Tatiana asked a few questions herself. "Are you going to bring him home with you?"

'Was she going to bring him into the Mafiya' was what the redhead was really asking.

They were supposed to be on the lookout for additional blood for their syndicate, though it was more like a community in practice, and required to train them themselves if they found anyone.

"No. He's not really the type." Sonya informed her lowly with a shrug, trying to ignore the attention she was getting from some of the older girls for finally speaking up during this time. "From what I gather he's as innocent as can be, meeting Arseniy would probably cause him to faint or something. Clumsy too, he'd forever be trying to keep up even if he started classes with the boys right away."

Tatiana pulled a Lisa and hummed, not nearly as blandly as the older Mafiya woman could pull off but enough to convey the fact she wasn't sold on the younger girl's reasoning.

Much to her disgust Dmitriy pulled her aside just before their mass lesson on deciphering altered blueprints for hidden safes and panic rooms to ask her basically the same thing. The boy was kind of like the cousin that no one knew what job he had, he was generally good with whatever dropped into his lap and didn't seem to mind doing a bit of everything.

Dmitriy was also a solid friend she had somehow made over the last couple years, even if he tended to avoid the redhead she lived with when he could. "Well?"

Sonya rolled her eyes at him and the older boy snorted at her.

"Give me the quick and dirty version, then."

"Met him not too long ago, has weird but natural hair and eye colors, and he still freaks out when I track him down on my free days. No, I don't think he's Mafiya material. Anything else?"

He blinked at her a few times, frowning suspiciously. "This isn't the onset of a crush or anything stupid like that, is it?"

"Like the one Tatiana has on you?" She asked of him wryly, pulling him into her home's living room where Arseniy was setting up for his lesson that evening. "Hell no, don't think I'm even old enough to start that nonsense."

He gave an aggravated sigh, but willingly left her for the designated 'male' side of the room.

Their lesson might have been mixed in terms of ages and gender, but that didn't mean there were even remotely decent people on either side. Separating them out merely kept certain personalities from clashing and interrupting the lesson, both things that might just end up hospitalizing a handful of the younger but already established Mafiya members.

Arseniy hadn't been pleased the last time someone had the balls to interrupt him, he had tossed the offender straight out the front doors on his head. The last idiot that tried to grope Lisa on the sly ended up needing to get his hand reattached due to losing them to a pissed off vor, as well.

Sonya was always surprised when some moron tested his limits yet again, even if it happened nearly three to four times a year since she had started living and training under him.

Later that night, the older man's only reaction to learning she had admitted to knowing a civilian 'friend' was laying down the rule that only if she finished her work for any day she could go off to meet him if she wanted.

Tatiana was appalled at the favoritism.

He wasn't impressed with that assumption. "Maloletka, use your head. A true vor doesn't own property, it's against the code. Her friend can be used to buy and hold any property she might want, which gets around that nicely."

The younger girl actually suspected there was a little favoritism involved, if merely because she didn't tend to need lessons repeated to her so Arseniy didn't really have to deal with her often. Tatiana had been in trouble more than she had, both girls were rather sure Lisa reported to him everything they got up to given he never really needed to ask where they were in what skill or how much they practiced.

Both the insult and the mini-lecture was enough to get the older girl to shut up though, and the before bedtime safecracking practice continued as normal.

V (Monday the 29th of December 1958. Dmitriy's Garage, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Tatiana was among the first of them to be arrested.

Even considering the rest of the neighborhood baby Mafiya members around at various ages or rough skills, no one else had managed to screw up that badly yet.

Sonya skipped out of the house nearly the same instant Lisa reported the other girl's arrest to a freshly returned for the night Arseniy, spent a safe few hours with Cherep in a park then wandered over to the garage Dmitriy both lived over and worked at when he had little else to do.

The preteen, who was by that point eleven to her eight years of age, almost burst a rib laughing at the irony. "Who's the petty thief in your unit? What was she doing, pickpocketing?"

"Oh no, not picking pockets. The militsiya picked her up trying for a five-finger discount." Corrected the younger girl lazily, lounging on the hood of the car Dmitriy was hotwiring to show less mileage for later selling. Her nose wrinkled against the stench of motor oil and superheated metal that lingered in the shop with everything closed against the inclement weather outside even if they were the only ones there at the moment and nothing was running. "Shoplifting… poor Tatiana."

He actually stuck his head out from under the sedan, giving her a confused frown that she could see for once. "Why the hell did she do that? Tatiana can't be that stupid, to try a method she's not trained for."

"I bet you it has something to do with a few of the other girls around here." As the redhead did pour most of whatever free time she had into hanging out with the rest of the Mafiya girls living locally, while Sonya occasionally ducked out to see Cherep.

"No bet. That's too obvious." Dmitriy rolled back under the car, though the baby thief wasn't sure what he was doing now given the lack of metal on metal that would've sounded if he was doing something. Though from what little she knew of automobiles he might be manually rewinding the speedometer just to waste some time.

"I think I don't ever want to be arrested."

"You thinking of going straight?"

She gave that question some serious thought for a moment.