Chapter 2: XI-XX 1/2

Author's Note : Two things… again.

First and foremost, a few story mechanics got challenged by a reviewer and a couple things got tweaked in response after that very long discussion. Thankfully it's not a major change, but there is a little difference in terms and such so you may wish to reread the first chapter to see what.

Secondly, because I have to make this expressly clear, this is not real life. I will tie in history and how a very well connected Mafia impacted it, next chapter, but the Russian Mafiya you read in here is not the Russian Mafia in real life. There were several reasons why, but it mostly boiled down to the fact Omertà is somehow a world-wide law in KHR! enforced by creepy undead dudes with a bondage fetish. Which, if you didn't know, kind of goes against the Vory z Zakone values where if asked if you are vor, you have to respond that you are even if the police are recording you doing it. That being said, I pretty much started out using a kind of base in the Italian Mafia and thinking of how that model had spread out and trying to tie in Russian values. Which, again, got challenged a bit by one reviewer who knows the lifestyle I'm trying to represent here due to his work in the police in the same region.

Totally okay with me, actually. Entirely fascinating discussion, that.

That all being said, be warned my Russian Grammar sucks major butt. I have an awesome reviewer that is perfectly willing to challenge my usage of it, and I'm perfectly happy for corrections if you find any. Which will probably mean that if I do use Fenya, it will either be cringe worthy horrible or spot on by complete mistake.

Edited (4/24/2017) - General grammar and story-flow cleanup.

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

Edited (9/1/2018) - Minor corrections.

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

XI – XX

XI (Sunday the 27th of March, 1960 continued. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Sonya managed to slow her panic-fueled flight eventually, snagging a firm hold on her errant friend before he darted past her.

She wanted some answers, particularly why Cherep had stood there like a moron instead of run for his life when confronted with three vory. Drunk off their ass ones, but they were still Mafiya men who worked the wet-work side of the criminal world she found herself in.

True killers that had been shamelessly arrested for it, one that worked for hire and one of the others worked within his own syndicate.

One look at the purple boy's oddly pale but flushed face told her that getting her answers would take a bit of finesse and probably a heaping amount of tact.

"Explain."

Pity for him she apparently had no tactful bone in her body when upset.

He was almost bent in half much like he had been just after they first met, hands on his knees and thin shoulders heaving like a bellows, trying to regain the breath he lost bolting after her down the darker Moscow streets to prevent anyone following them. He couldn't verbally answer her, but Sonya was familiar enough with his flailing habits to glean the idea that he hadn't intended for that to happen.

However, he didn't immediately deny any actual involvement with the vory from what she could infer from his motions.

"Were you looking for them?" If she sounded a bit betrayed and a little panicked, she figured she could be excused.

As she had never really cared to figure out why Cherep accepted her bothering him on random days, merely assuming he appreciated the company as much as she did. He didn't have that slick edge to him most of the Mafiya members she knew of possessed, and he wasn't likely to develop that given she had refused to pull him into her life to any degree.

She visited him, not the other way around.

The fact Cherep was a dork, was clumsy, was nearly painfully honest in his reactions, all of it made her appreciate the measure of normality he gave her very skewed life.

Which was incredibly childish of her, she knew, but two years had gone by and nothing more had come of her bugging him it was one of few options as to why he never protested left to pick from.

Sonya wasn't sure what to do if he tried to take advantage of her, either her skills or just her presence in his life for whatever reason. The sickly feeling that she might have misjudged him settled in her gut, and she stared at him blankly until the other kid finally managed a sentence.

In the semi-dark of twilight, his surprisingly vibrantly purple eyes glared out at her as he straightened up slightly. "I-I… was… looking for… you."

She blinked grey eyes at the half-bitten out rebuttal, a little nonplussed by that fact.

He knew she was Mafiya?

Since when?

"Why?"

Here he flushed redder, more than simply exertion would account for. "You… were acting oddly."

She kept staring at him blankly, causing the slightly older preteen to throw his hands in the air in a fit of pique only to bury them into his unique hair and tug as he figured out how to phrase everything he wanted to say.

"Usually you only have a few hours free to come see me once or twice a month, yet you spent a whole day with me after one of your usual visits. I figured something was up later that night, but when you didn't come back…" He trailed off uncertainly, stubbornly not looking at her anymore.

The urge to smack her own face with a hand was growing. It hadn't even been a week since she last saw him, which was typical for her usual habits. Cherep apparently got worried for her, when she broke said typical habits just because there had been a very real risk of getting caught on her heist and wanted to ensure she got her Cherep-time.

It was stupid fluffy friendship concern, and so a-dork-able of him.

Emphasis on the stupid.

"Please don't tell me you walked up to the first member of the Mafiya you found and asked for me by name."

The flush on his face turned into a blush that nearly glowed fire engine red in the dim lighting.

Sonya was torn between beating her head in on the brick walls hemming them in the alley on both sides and smacking him for the near heart attack she almost had.

"Cherep… skull, crossbones, and tombstone tattoos all mean that vor is a murderer. Same with dots on the hands. The number they have is how many they have done for the Mafiya, or how many they want to brag about or keep track of." The little thief informed him bluntly, cradling her now pounding terror-induced headache with both hands. Looking at him was out of the question, she would burst out laughing and probably make her headache worse, so she stared at her own palms and kept her voice level. "The police badge on a hand or arm means police battery. Just… keep that in mind and don't do that again. Especially don't go up to drunk ones."

With any decent amount of luck, those three drunk Mafiya men wouldn't recall the scuffle or what started it. She didn't believe in luck though, she believed in Arseniy and his probably violent reaction to the news they had been screwing around in territory that didn't belong to them.

Sonya, Tatiana, Lisa, and Arseniy belonged to the Zolotov Thieves Clan, known for their skilled thieves and strong presence in the middle-class suburbs of a wealthy neighborhood in Moscow. The younger thief of her 'foster' family rather suspected she lived not quite on the outskirts of the edges of the Zolotov claimed territory, far enough away from the main locations to be less suspicious to the militsiya but close enough in case of any true emergency.

Zolotovs had actual professionally given tattoos on their members. They did allow the prison given tats that, she knew from a different lifetime, were infamous for spreading diseases like syphilis and AIDs to mar their members' skin but only if arrested and in prison. Otherwise you got it done in the much more sanitary tattoo shops they protected, no exceptions.

Being thankful for that fact alone was more than enough for her to report the three probably fresh from jail vory to the older Mafiya members she knew.

The fact those three went after her friend no matter if he had started it was another, thieves were not known to be generous.

In fact, thieves by nature were sometimes malicious and always greedy creatures.

She, even after taking into consideration her unusual circumstances, was not unusual for a Mafiya trained thief. Arseniy was pretty much a typical vor as well, he could be just as cruel and greedy as most if more experienced and respected than she was.

Even if reporting the three vory, who could have easily wandered down the wrong street by mistake after stumbling out of a bar, would likely end up killing one of them neither Sonya nor her 'foster father' would lose much sleep over it.

A vor was expected to retain their control, no matter what they drank or what drugs they took. These had not, and that would be all that she needed to ensure they paid for what they did.

She abruptly dropped her hands, giving Cherep one last look to ensure he knew how foolish she found his recent actions. "Whatever. Come on, let's get you home."

He gave her that same seething wet-cat look she earned when needling him about something he did that proved to be less than ideal. She was alright with that, because it had been stupid and at least he knew it now.

"Sonya? You are okay, right?"

She managed to break someone's arm with a piece of wood and kicked someone hard enough they dented a brick wall, all because he had no sense of self-preservation.

"I…? Am fantastic." Assured the tiny thief tiredly with a flat tone. "I left Moscow for a couple days, Cherep, and it could've taken longer than it did. So I visited because it might've been a long while before I got back."

"…oh."

XII (Monday the 28th of March, 1960. Arseniy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Arseniy's expression could have been carved from stone as the man listened to what reasoning Sonya had to violate her curfew. All that had been planned on was her getting her tattoos added to, something that would take only a few hours factoring in the round trip by train.

Her detour to rescue Cherep's skin and walk him home had not been calculated into her plans for the day.

She knew full well the purple boy's safety wasn't a good excuse, the older two Mafiya members knew she had no plans on pulling him into their world therefore she shouldn't put him before them and their lifestyle if she wanted to keep out of trouble.

Three obviously drunk Mafiya vory harassing her friend in Zolotov territory was a good one, even if she had to inform Arseniy about the brick wall denting after she kicked one into it. He'd figure it out anyways when he went to deal with the interlopers, lying would do nothing but get her into trouble with him for attempting to lie in his face.

Worse, getting caught doing it.

From the complete lack of expression on the vor's face, she was in enough trouble to being with.

The older man left shortly after she told him the street and approximate location she had seen the three drunk vory, Sonya had to accept the matter as dealt with unless he said otherwise when he got back. She really didn't want to know any detail other than if they survived the night or not.

Lisa gave her and Tatiana a bland smile and suggested they go to bed since it was so late. They did so without word, because when the older woman got bland like that it meant she was upset and that just made Arseniy more than a little aggravated when it happened.

Tatiana pulled her to a stop just before they entered their respective rooms. "Sonya? Were you hurt?"

"Bruises, mostly." The younger girl admitted, rubbing one wrist that might be sprained. "I'm a little scuffed up, but alright."

She might not have felt them during or just after the fight, but she felt every ache and bruise right after getting Cherep back to his dingy little home and the last of her adrenalin drained away. They ensured she held no illusions about just how lucky she had been that the three killers had been both heavily drunk and probably fresh from prison, had they not been she might not have done more than get herself majorly hurt or probably dead again.

There would be a very colorful collection of bruises on her skin by morning, and she didn't really want to think about how much they would hurt then.

Ballet practice and the gymnastic training were going to be hell tomorrow.

Tatiana frowned at her but didn't protest Sonya leaving her in the hallway for her own room.

The exchange gave the younger Mafiya girl some hope for their relationship, just as the silver charm bracelet the older girl was wearing did. She hadn't been sure if she would accept anything from her given the small jealousy problem Tatiana still had, but the bracelet she stole for her first heist was still on the redhead's slender wrist.

Maybe the older girl had grown out of it a little?

She was almost a teenager.

Sonya wanted her foster sister back the way she had been.

XIII (Thursday the 31st of March, 1960. Aleksandr's basement, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Dragging Cherep to vor Aleksandr's for the first time later that week was partially interesting and mostly irritating, partly because the kid only stopped protesting once she succeeded in dragging him to the rather remarkably normal looking home and mostly due to the complications she ran into.

Sonya presented her purely civilian, purple haired and eyed friend to the old vor and asked, "How hard do you think teaching him basic self-defense will be?"

The ancient and battered looking man, who had been the one to teach her most of her fighting skills alongside several other hot-headed young baby Mafiya, took one look at Cherep's pretty to the point of being almost-girlish features and just sighed heavily through his nose.

Admittedly the older boy just looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but right there with them, his expression more resigned than agitated much to her amusement. Apparently, he was alright with her introducing him to other Mafiya members even after almost having the brains smacked out of him earlier that same week by a few others.

Either he had no sense of self-preservation or he really did trust her that much.

"You intend to do this?" Rumbled the grizzled vor, dismissing the preteen for the equally young thief.

Sonya supposed she was the greater threat of the two of them and gave the old man a half-nod part-shrug. "Thinking about it, yeah. Why?"

He looked the so far silent Cherep over, and she copied him to figure out what he was after.

As Aleksandr was the man who taught her to fight, who still expected her to develop her skills more even if she quickly outstripped what he could teach her about her chosen weapon, she did trust his mostly non-verbal assessment of the challenge ahead of her. The old vor, and he was pushing either the lower or greater edge of fifty given his massive collection of scars, tattoos, and grey hair, used fighting with some of the older children as a punishment for the idiot baby Mafiya who thought a weapon in their hand made them unbeatable right away and didn't need training to use it. They generally didn't last long against Sonya, who had been training to use her weapon for nearly half a decade.

Cherep's entire form was practically screaming an unwillingness to be here, if no fear or terror to account for why. The fact he was still here even when it was apparent he didn't want to be gave him few points from the look of things.

He had probably watched as the boy allowed Sonya to manhandle him into his underground training hall without a word of protest, and how he was still standing there without speaking up in any kind of protest of her intent. Aleksandr probably thought Cherep had little to no backbone, and while that might be true it wasn't the best impression her friend could give a character like the man in charge of training budding criminal elements to kick some significant ass in time.

Then again, she hadn't been much better starting off… and now she could hold her own in a fight against two drunk and surprised vory in her own right.

"I may have heard from a little birdy that you managed something a little unusual a few nights ago." Spoke up the old vor, still eyeing the increasingly wary boy child before him. "Think you can do it again?"

She scowled a little at the reminder, since she had yet to figure out anything decisive about that moment of unusual strength she used a few nights ago. Logic would dictate that trying to repeat the feat would give her a more solid answer either way, but she really didn't want her recent fears to be confirmed.

If any of that mess was true it might end up helping her a little… but that would mean it was possible her Cherep was that Skull and he would be rather miserable in a cursed-baby way and she would have to let that happen.

...no. Fuck that. He was hers first.

"I can try, why?"

Aleksandr gave her a bland and very unpracticed smile, which made her suspicious.

Sonya didn't know what he would've asked from her to train her friend in basic self-defense, it was the whole reason she had intended to teach Cherep herself. This, though… wasn't an earth-shaking favor, but still something that would probably annoy the older man. He had more than enough to do training the children in the Zolotov's Mafiya version of a 'big brother' program to at least be less easy prey for when they were older.

The Zolotov Clan gave children with either no family or bad homes a new place to live and grow up within, in return said children grew up with a lot of loyalty to them. The bulk of which would become their next generation of Mafiya members, the rest would support the clan in different ways but would probably chose to bite off their own tongues instead of endangering the rest of them.

Aleksandr's implied suggestion wasn't much of a favor, and Cherep wasn't presenting himself as any type of diligent student.

Therefore, Sonya suspected something else was going on. "No, seriously. Why?"

"If you can do it again in front of me, I'll train your little kitten."

The young thief hesitated for a long moment. "Fine."

She still couldn't figure out how that equaled the favor of training her friend, but if he wanted to…

Cherep wasn't letting go of her wrist, though.

She turned to see what he was doing and frowned slightly at her pinched-faced friend. "Cherep? What?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?" He asked her, one eye warily trained on the old vor but mostly turned so he could see her too. "You can… uh, teach me, can't you?"

"I can, but Aleksandr is better. He taught me." That bit didn't address whatever it was that he was now highly concerned over and she scowled more, literally drawing a blank over what else might be bothering him.

The purple haired kid still looked incredibly uncomfortable with the whole idea and was still holding onto her wrist tightly enough she might be losing circulation in it.

"She doesn't have much of a choice, malchik." Aleksandr informed them both quietly, looking Cherep over keenly as if he had done something impressive but surprising against his expectations. "Arseniy knows she did it once, and what he knows eventually gets back to the rest of the clan. That might be what's taking him so long to come back, they're going to want that. It might be worse to stall off confirming she can do it if they become impatient."

Sonya was missing something. She didn't particularly like the feeling.

Her mostly civilian friend didn't look comforted by the information, in fact he looked downright upset, but he let her go anyways.

Giving him a twistedly bitter smirk that fit his aged face much better than the bland expression had, the old vor turned back to the blonde thief and gestured deeper into his basement-level training room. "Well? Hop to it."

Confused, suspicious, and feeling like she somehow stepped on a landmine, she did so.

The walls of the basement were lined with racks of wooden weapons, replicas of things that could be used in a fight and actual training weapons for teaching the use of. There were very few staffs, mostly there were a couple lengths of wood over in the racks used for showcasing things one could use in a pinch if a cleaning supply closet was at hand.

This was where she learned how to fight with a broom handle, or more to the point the shaft of a rake, if she didn't have her own weapon on her.

Which she didn't tend to carry around, as hiding a thick pole of wood taller than her was an exercise in futility.

She pulled out one of the broom handles, because it was the most like what she used that night. "It might take me a bit. I still have no idea what I did."

"We have all day." Aleksandr informed her calmly. "I can even help you get back into the mindset, if you tell me what you were thinking."

Sonya might not know what was going on, but she also wasn't that stupid. If she told him she had been scared for Cherep's sake, he'd probably use that and threaten the kid.

He might have trained her up, but she wasn't his favorite student. She was just one of many that he taught.

"I'll muddle through somehow."

XIV (Thursday the 31st of March, 1960 continued. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Cherep dragged her off the moment Aleksandr let them go for the day. Mulishly pulling her along in a reversal of how they arrived to the old vor's home, even if he was nursing probably bruised ribs and she was a bit more than winded.

Sonya put up with it because she was both curious and confused, and from the sound of it he might know a little of what was going on. She had her own suspicions, no matter how much she would like to deny it.

Once was happenstance, twice was a coincidence, but three times was an established pattern.

The vagueness and the hinting around threw her off a little, but even if her more remote suspicions were true… if her Cherep was that Skull, Sonya needed to know so she could plan for it. Additionally, that information might make an impact on her plans for herself and her line of work but that was at most a secondary concern when lined up against cursed rainbow babies.

There was also that thread of hysteria and panic lacing her thoughts that needed to be dealt with, as well. She was trying not to dwell on that though.

The purple haired preteen dragged her past her own home and in the opposite direction from the place he rented out a room at, she suspected he was aiming for one of the rare parks on the edge of the city for whatever it was he wanted. She was proven right too.

He ignored the pointed looks from the few childminders and parents out and about, collecting their charges for dinner or bedtime because it had been late already when Aleksandr allowed them to leave for the day. He also ignored the fact she didn't tend to allow him to manhandle her anywhere usually but was going along with him now.

She did so because the kid had been stiff and wary since their conversation with the old vor, meaning he probably knew a bit about what was going on and she wanted to know what the hell was going on.

"A-are you sure, Sonya? I-I mean," Cherep was stubbornly not looking at her even as he finally came to a stop in a little semi-glade carefully cultivated probably with the idea of late teenager couples in mind, "you don't have to do… that just for…"

"To ensure you'll be able to defend yourself from any more ideas of yours that go wrong?" She asked dryly, taking a couple steps farther when he let her go so she could turn and look at her friend fully. "Cherep… what is this all about? You're a little too stiff to not know anything."

He hunched his shoulders in response, keeping his vibrantly violet eyes away from her.

That was… alarming.

The other boy didn't tend to do quiet, unless he was highly uncomfortable or upset. Normally, she heard every grievance, opinion, or preferences he had with either her or the situation they were in no matter where they were or what they were doing.

It was more of a challenge to keep him from talking her ear off than to figure out what he thought about any given topic. His childish protests and rants were mostly amusing, if rather stark reminders she wasn't exactly the child she appeared to be.

Twenty years of extra maturing in another life tended to do that to a person.

"All I know is what happened to me." He told her slowly, looking nowhere near comfortable with the topic at hand. In fact, he looked rather like he wanted to do anything to throw the whole conversation off. "B-but if it's anything like that, then this isn't going to end well for you."

Sonya inspected her friend's face, pursing her lips and seriously considering if she really wanted to hear this or not. "What happened?"

"…my parents killed me."

XV (Thursday the 31st of March, 1960 continued. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

As it turned out, Cherep had been first killed on accident and the near heart attack number two he caused her was unintentional. Other than the whole 'he was part of a statistical anomaly in childhood deaths', it really wasn't quite as bad as he had made it sound.

Sonya didn't quite know if she was more upset that something lethal had happened to her friend or if it was more that she couldn't explain that one away as any type of coincidence. She decided to go with the first one just simply because it made her feel less shallow.

An undead, immortal Skull. One being able to do certain things that weren't physically possible.

A very well developed, almost business-like type of Mafiya that skirted around the legal side of the world easily enough from what she had seen.

It did explain what her friend was up to, in that he was obviously not Russian by birth but in Moscow anyways. His accent had been only one of many things that made her think foreigner by birth but getting that confirmed was less amusing than she had counted on.

The whole story the other child told her boiled down to freaking out his parents with his non-death when he had clearly been dead after getting knocked down a flight of stairs, a series of shady doctor types stalking him for his undead abilities, and a kidnapping gone strange. His early life on the street before she showed up had merely hammered the weirder points of his life home, in that no matter how hard it got or how badly he got injured he would still end up physically fine given some time.

At least the kidnapping had informed him a little about what he had managed to do but getting stranded in a country not his own had complicated a lot.

All he knew for sure was that his abilities fitted into a certain type his once kidnappers had been looking for, he was unusually strong in said ability, and that others who displayed the same 'unique' skills were highly prized for some reason to the point there being a trade of such people flourishing. Fitting that with what Sonya knew from Rachel's leisure pursuits from another life didn't paint a very pretty picture for her or him.

Well… at least she now knew he really didn't have any self-preservation instincts to speak of.

Cherep literally couldn't die.

What did he care if anyone tried to off him?

It wasn't like they would succeed or anything.

The tiny thief took a deep breath, cradling her head in her hands because if she looked at him... "So… huh."

The purple haired preteen across from her in the park's clearing fidgeted with his hands in her field of view, and without looking she knew he was cringing. That made her wonder if he tried to tell anyone else before her, and what had happened when he tried.

Probably not a whole lot of good things, honestly.

"Look, I understand that you can't die. But I don't ever want to see it, so you're still doing the whole self-defense thing." Sonya informed him slowly, raising her head to give him her best 'no-nonsense' look. Which sharpened up into a nasty glare when he opened his mouth to protest. "No, Cherep. I'd rather you didn't die, regardless of how temporary it is or not."

Because that was still terrifying to think about happening at all.

If she taught him a little now, then later when…

No. Cherep was her friend first. Screw everyone else, she found him first.

Baby rainbow curses could be dealt with later. Right now, she was only going to deal with herself and him and possibly her own Mafiya ties next. She would need information, a lot more information, before she could start thinking on anything else.

"…you don't think it's creepy?"

"It is creepy, and a little morbid." Allowed the slightly younger girl slowly, raking a hand through her hair. "So what? Apparently, I can do something a little similar too. Sucks to be us."

He snorted, a miserable expression on his girlish face. "Tell me about it."

"I just did, tupitsa."