2/2

Valerian's first night in Moscow happened at the Zolotov Clan headquarters. Mainly so his mother could show off the son she had finally been able to bear one of their vor and partially so Cherep and Sonya had the time to completely scrub down their home.

A year and a half worth of grime and dust wouldn't do the baby much good.

Tatiana's old bedroom was also turned into a nursery, being the one closest and next door to Lisa's and Arseniy's own room. Her fellow Cloud's mechanical skills did at least translate over to carpentry skills, but he still got irritated with the directions to assemble the baby crib enough to politely ask her to burn them with her Storm Flames when he was done.

Mostly politely, but there was that rather concerning tick in his left eye when he asked. The grin as he watched them crumble to her red Flames was also a little disturbing.

Their foster mother's delighted laugh the next day when she realized she wasn't going to have to juggle Valerian and a deep spring cleaning at the same time was more than enough of a reward for them.

The vor sheepishly scratched the back of his neck when she turned that amused and delighted gaze on him, still holding the napping baby in the crook of his arm. "I asked the kids to do it for my Christmas present. Since they did the baby shopping for your own."

"I suppose that is why Tatiana said she'd be the one to clean out our rooms back in Mafia Land too?" She asked dryly, a smirk she could do nothing about still twisting her lips up.

"…yeah."

Lisa pecked the father of her baby on the cheek, then looked over to the two foster siblings watching them. "Well?"

"Can I stay for a month?" Sonya asked, flicking her hand in the direction of their headquarters. "I've got to catch up with Dmitriy about the Dying Will Flame research and what tidbits I've recently learned. You can think of me as a live-in nanny."

"You freeze when I give you Valerian, Sonya."

"Well… yeah. He screams."

With a huff that did nothing to cover her amusement, Lisa gave a nod then looked at Cherep expectantly.

He held up his hands, shaking his head. "I probably should go back to work, but I'll try and visit on the free weekends to ensure Sonya doesn't terrify little Val."

"I would not-"

"I like Val, better than Lera anyways." The older Mafiya woman interjected before her youngest foster daughter got the two of them into an argument. "Sonya, if you're staying then the usual applies. Let us know where you'll be, at least generally, and if you're not going to be sleeping here whichever night."

"Sure."

"What about Valera?"

The suggestion got their foster mother to pause before she went up the stairs as she thought about the nickname her lover offered. "Well… Tats won't pout about her suggestion being nixed. Even better, thank you."

"How are you going to handle that?" The vor ask of Sonya while Lisa probably checked out the nursery they had set up, patting his son's belly absently as he woke up. "It might be your work, but he's the one putting the effort into it."

"So, it's ultimately up to him." The thief finished with a shrug. "I told him last year that if he really wanted I'd come back and fill in for him so he could do whatever, but if he doesn't want to give his position up I'm not going to argue. I'd rather that, actually."

"I have to get going." Cherep interjected before that could continue, replacing the watch she had given back to him into his jeans' pocket. "I'm overrunning it by a bit as it is, Arseniy."

Their foster father gave the stuntman a nod, and a pound to the back, before shifting the now awake Valerian higher up his chest. "Don't be a stranger, Cherep."

"I'll try not to." He responded, blinking a bit and flexing his back with a wince. "Sonya, see you later."

"Oh wait, give this back to Crina." The thief dug out the crystal bit she had gotten from Fong, tossing it to him. "And be careful."

Her brother knew perfectly well where the jewel bit was from, giving her a strange look. "Back? Did she lose it or something?"

"Or something." His fellow Cloud agreed sourly. "Don't ask."

He accepted that with a nod, giving the both of them a wave as he left through the still open front door and shutting it behind him.

"I swear to high hell, if he crashes not a street or two down from here…"

"That sounds like ill-wishing." Arseniy informed her dryly, Valerian still trying to figure out what the ever-loving hell he was doing with dad rather than mom as he wiggled to get comfortable.

Cherep had some decently good luck, with his bike and stunt work anyways, so Sonya accepted that.

Baby Valera decide he didn't like the noise that accompanied the stuntman's bike any more than his sisters had years ago. He then let dad and one of those sisters know it by wailing.

They responded by cringing, in tandem.

(ooo000ooo)

(Thursday the 11th of January, 1968 continued. Zolotov Headquarters, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Dmitriy glared at Sonya, who looked to Galina, who shifted her gaze to the Inverted Rain again.

The office hadn't changed much since the first time she saw it, done up mostly in dark wood and shades of dark blue. There were a few new touches of green, again a dark shade of it, here and there she did wonder about.

Brass accented fixtures were new, at least. It was a very nice… ugly lamp on the desk.

"Well?" The Storm-Cloud asked, settling back into the seat across the Rain's desk. It was blue too, and the one next to it was green.

"You are a colossal pain in the ass, Sonya." He informed her flatly, kicking his boots up to set on the corner of his desk.

Galina sniffed in disapproval of the action, clicking her way to the bookcase set up next to the windows of the Rain's office. "I believe we will be staying in charge, Sonya."

The thief herself was gazing at her high heels, wondering how the ever living fuck she could stand to wear those for hours. She was a Lightning, no instant-heal for her to bullshit her way through it.

Did she Harden her ankles or something?

"Alright." Seriously, was there some kind of secret she and Tatiana were never let in on? "So then, next order of business is the few new things I've found."

"You were with a civilian outfit for two years." Dmitriy reminded her in a blank tone of voice, looking highly skeptical.

"Not the entire time." Sonya waved that off, rubbing at her temple. "Last winter, when I borrowed the Mist gems? The Inverted Sun who was guardian to the Mist brat found out he could use moonstones. Since they don't come in variations of yellow, closest would be brown, the color of the stones probably doesn't actually mean much."

"Fuck… do we have to rematch the kids?"

She frowned at that suggestion, shaking her head after a moment. "Not until they have some kind of control, I think. You're starting them all on what? A matched color gem?"

"It works better than sapphires in the long run, even if those give better results quickly." Admitted the Rain with a short nod. "The shattering, on the other hand…?"

Her left palm twitched at the reminder, and she smoothed it down her jean clad thigh. "I know. I think we're going to have to rematch at least all three of us, and Tats, but the kids can wait until they have reliable results without a gemstone."

Galina let a couple heavy books slam into the former mechanic's desk, which made the owner of said desk jump enough his boots slid off it. "We will be recording results this time, to ensure a stone for one Flame user will not work for all."

"Except for Mists." Sonya corrected, shaking her head when the Lightning glared at her. "Look Galina, I'm not even sure any Mist even needs a stone, much less can actually make use of it like another Flame user can. Usov ended up with a mineral, the other Mist brat I fitted ended up with turquoise. Which, again, is a mineral."

"That's… still going to be a lot of rocks." The only male in the room informed her slowly, jerking a thumb over to a heavy chest set up in the corner of his office. "And we're already running low on a few of them already, ran out of a couple too."

"I will resupply the gemstones needed." Which would likely mean even more jewel heists and, since there wasn't a limitation or a sorting method found yet so that meant all gems she could find in any one place, a lot of risk if she did it within the USSR. "For both us to test and for fitting any new Flame users."

"Better you than me. We're going to need Cherep and a few other Flame users. Like an Inverted Sun, both Skies, even if we're nixing the Mists from the official results we should probably at least test them."

"Can you tell between a Classic and Inverted Mist?" Sonya asked of him dryly, shoving a hand through her hair and mentally reminding herself she still needed a trim. "I can likely pull an Inverted Sun, probably around the time Tatiana's free for a little rock testing. I might, might mind you, be able to ask a Sky to help us. Classical, I think."

What was Tyr?

She was pretty sure he was a Flame user as well, if not really confident on what he was.

What the mere act of asking and getting said help would cost, on the other hand?

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to do that at all. Renato would be enough of a headache.

Dmitriy whistled lowly, eyebrows raised. "How the hell did you manage to meet a Sky?"

"I was invited to Vongola's Christmas Ball, as arm candy. I met Vongola's Sky Timoteo there." She admitted wryly, still musing on the logistical and supply problems such massive testing would cause. "I think… we may wish to test several of each, not just one of every type and Polarization."

Galina, who was jotting down their conversation into an actual plan to implement give the look of her list-like notes, looked up sharply at the thief. "Why?"

"I think Polarization might be a degree instead of an either-or thing. Outward or inward expression of Flame."

"You're the one getting the rocks, you want to do that much work…?" The Rain shrugged that off, looking at the Lightning's neat rows of handwriting. "This will take a couple years anyways, so you might as well not ask those outsiders for some help. We might just have the types on hand when we're ready for new testers."

"Fine." It likely would've cost her more than she was comfortable giving, so it didn't bother her in the least to scratch any plans to ask for help from Italian Flame users.

Again, Renato was enough of a headache on his own. Actually, giving the hitman what he probably wanted while also owing him more?

Owing Vongola and its Sky favors?

"Second order of business, this nature shit." Dmitriy snagged the master copy of her Flame research journal and waved it in the air. "The 'such and such Flame user hates/loves/will not care for such and such Flame user'… you sure about that?"

"No." Sonya informed him shortly, irked at the reminder of the disinformation she tended to run smack into. "It was a warning included in most if not all books about Flame types. However, Classic Cloud I may be, I get along fine with non-stupid Mists. As an Inverted Storm? I should have major issues with Galina, which we don't."

The Rain nodded sharply, flicking through his well-thumbed copy. "Yeah, figured that one out myself. Rains get along with everyone my fucking ass."

"Well…" The Lightning drawled out coyly, with a sharp smirk. "…that might be due to being Inverted, Dmitriy. That gaggle of Rains, all Classical mind you, do tend to be the less disruptive as a whole."

"I still think they're all high on their Tranquility." He shot back quickly, with a scowl. "We really should separate them out, because I'm pretty damn sure if they're not doing it to themselves they're doing it to each other."

That sounded like an old argument. "You are the Rain, Dmitriy. You would be the one to know."

"See! Even she thinks I should deal with them."

Galina rolled her eyes, giving Sonya a sideways look. "They're not, I checked."

"He'll be less stubborn if he can at least check in his own way."

"I'm right here."

"Last order of business," the Lightning continued as if she hadn't heard the only male Flame user in the room, gesturing to her books, "I took notes on all the brats as they developed into Flame users. You get to help us sort out what is Flame related and what is not."

…her wrist already hurt just looking at the heavy pile of paper and journals.

What did Galina's Lightning nature bolt to when it kicked in?

Shouldn't it have been Tatiana, or something about the thieves' ring she was part of?

Maybe the tiny bits of paperwork that had needed to be done?

The Sun using nurse that was her elder sister wasn't exactly fond of paperwork.

"…fuck."

Dmitriy snorted. "Tell me about it."

"Less talking, more sorting." Galina demanded, handing out the piles equally to all of them.

An Inverted Lightning bureaucrat with a fixation of paperwork. That was kind of scary.

(Saturday the 10th of February, 1968. Arseniy & Lisa's home, Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Even as Rachel, she never did manage to get a nine-to-five working job. The best the college student had was a waitressing job that didn't pay nearly enough.

Sonya never wanted to do anything like it again.

Besides learning all about teenage Flame-boosted angst and drama about people she didn't particularly care for nor would have the time to get to know, and the wrist cramps she suffered through from week one to week four, she and the other two Flame users got maybe a page of information for each type over the course of a month of solid work.

Mostly in the many different ways the preteens/teenagers thought to utilize their various Flames. The most interesting so far was one of the baby Mists basically 'enchanting' mirrors to show what the onlooker desired.

The month did allow Bjǫrn a very good crack at attempting to plan out ten different jewelry stores Sonya could rob in a row, accepting the corrections the thief supplied using her knowledge of how hard or easy it would be to smuggle hot jewels across certain borders and trying it again.

It was midway through that second try when they finished the paperwork, on the Classic Storm that Sonya would probably get to know. Who, unfortunately, shared a name with her biological father.

Mikhail the younger had fixated on the idea of becoming/being a vor, which while all well and good actually grated against her a bit.

Might be because the boy didn't look too convinced she was a Storm until she shoved a fistful of red Flames under his nose. Even then he seemed a bit dismissive of her, if for either the fact she was a thief by trade or because she was female was questionable.

As it wouldn't matter in the long run, Storms were more the type you pointed in a direction and then got the hell out of the way of as they burned everything to the ground, she dismissed the issue for the most part.

Milos Zolotov had little to nothing to do with the efforts of the Flame group of his thieves' clan, but he did check in on them a few times. Mostly due to the fact she was planning a crime spree to 'restock', and the logistics of getting her illicit goods back to the clan was an issue. Their Pahkan was a bit more silver around the edges than the last time the thief saw him, but still spry and as shark-like as ever.

His son, on the other hand, was a lot more expressive of his doubts about their skills as he followed his father.

Gedeon Zolotov had apparently become friends with Dimitry, even if the Inverted Rain was about half a decade younger than him. Sonya really had no room to wonder, given Renato was about four years older than her. Galina didn't like him much, but the Inverted Lightning apparently had issues with non-essential people looking over her shoulder.

Hence why the woman didn't stay with her former gang after Tatiana left the group, apparently.

The thief really did wonder exactly what happened at the end of that.

Thankfully, for her sanity if nothing else, she also had to finish the last of her retraining and deal with new parents at the same time as a distraction. Pitching in for Lisa at least got her some major experience in the kitchen, and after burning a meal or two a day for a week straight she did graduate into being a halfway decent cook.

As long as it was breakfast.

"I am never taking a hiatus again." The blonde muttered into her arm, shaking Valerian's rattle absently for baby's amusement.

He looked entirely unconcerned by her comment, trying to smack the noisemaker out of the air so he could both investigate and drool on it.

"How did you…?" Lisa trailed off, looking highly confused over the char mark on her biggest pan. "Sonya? Did you use your Storm Flames on this?"

"If I had, you would no longer have a pan. No, that was… I got distracted because Valera needed a new diaper."

"Better you than me." Arseniy offered blandly from behind his newspaper.

Somehow, the vor not only knew when to dodge soapy pan wielded by his baby's mother but could do it without ever looking. That took some real skill, or intimate knowledge of his lover's habits when irked.

Looking a bit irritated himself at the nice big wet spot on the paper, her foster father folded it up and looked over to where she was amusing his son. "You said a month, Sonya."

"Not that we don't appreciate the help." Lisa hurried to tack on, giving her likely ruined pan a hard look. "Mostly."

"Bjǫrn and I leave in two days." She offered calmly, shaking a rattle again to regain the attention she lost when Valerian got distracted by soapy water flying from over in the kitchen. "We're hitting up Mafia Land first, where he's getting that Lackey title he's been after for a few years, then a bit of a crime spree will occur."

"Oh?" Arseniy asked, moving from his spot at the kitchen table to amble out and see both her and his baby better. "Where to where?"

"Francoist Spain to Austria." Spain would be a new country, but she had gone through a large part of France and some of Switzerland already which laid between Spain and Austria on the route they would take.

It was going to be uncomfortable no matter how she wanted to do it. The research needed more stones, Sonya needed the money, and if the USSR was still too hot for jewel thieves then outside of the Iron Curtain she went.

At least afterward she would have the money to splurge on a hotel room of her own, instead of crash with her foster parents for another month or however long Dmitriy wanted her help with.

Bjǫrn would at least get some time to season, even if they were about to do six to ten jewelry stores on the fly. Taking a leaf from the circus' traveling arrangements, she planned on maybe two each week at best in the capitals of each country.

Anything more would entirely be up to how much she was pulling and how hard it was becoming.

Well… that was the plan anyways.

She knew perfectly well plans didn't always succeed, or go according to plan, but she needed a better look at what she had proposed to do from the city she would be stealing from before making any big judgement calls.

"Good luck." Arseniy offered, leaning up against the doorjamb between the hallway and the living room.

"We'll be rooting for you!" Lisa called over her shoulder from the kitchen.

Valerian misjudged, or didn't care about, his next swing and slapped Sonya's cheek.

…she couldn't tell if that was another encouragement or a sign he thought she was trying for too much.

(Tuesday the 13th of February, 1968. Madrid, Kingdom of Spain.)

In Madrid, Spain, Sonya made a rather startling discovery.

"There are white sapphires?"

"They look kind of blue to me, Dama Sonya." Bjǫrn commented from her elbow, peering at the same display she was looking at.

…she had to give the kid that one, they did have a bluish tinge to them even if they were mostly clear.

Bjǫrn's Russian was indefinitely better than it had been the year before, and she guessed that the Icelandic words that slipped in were mostly on purpose. 'Dama' was probably not a title she'd ever get him to drop, so it was another thing she ignored.

If it made him happy, he could keep on doing it as long as she didn't have to acknowledge it.

The display she was sourly eyeing was part of a rather smaller scale jewelry store, not one the thief had decided would be the main jobs to pull but one to hit if she managed the time to or if she badly botched the other jobs and needed something quick.

Her brand new 'Lackey' marked the store down as a likely target if they had the time in a weird mash of Cyrillic and a jumble of the Roman script she learned a lifetime ago. His writing was cryptic, in a code he could read easily, and entirely headache inducing for her to look at.

At least it wasn't immediately suspicious, even if the sheer difficulty of reading it would make anyone linger over trying to decrypt it.

"Right, I think this will do it." Spain was, even if they suffered a fair bit of backlash from Italy's non-involvement in World War Two and it was about a decade later, still a militarized state at this point. Sonya wanted her Lackey off the streets and safely tucked away in a hotel room long before she started working. "You do remember what I told you, right?"

The face Bjǫrn pulled at least reassured her he did, even if he was making it a point that he was busying himself with his notebook.

He was not happy the official cover story for them included him as her 'brother' and her posing as a 'streetwalker'. A whore, in other words. If someone asked why he was alone in their hotel room, he had specific instructions to imply it indirectly.

She wasn't entirely thrilled with it either but didn't quite get why he was so upset.

It was, at most, a one-use kind of thing. After that one use, which she would have to bust out her little aide afterwards and scrap just about anything else planned on in the country, she'd figure out something different.

Romanian may not be a language that would escape scrutiny entirely this far into Europe, but since he could only speak that, Icelandic, Russian, and a smattering of French and German it was going to have to do.

At least until she could work on him with other languages, but Spanish and Italian had a fair few differences that kept tripping her up too.

(Wednesday the 14th of February, 1968. Madrid, Kingdom of Spain.)

Spain, which had still been a dictatorship of all things somehow until a few short years ago, was still scrambling to prop up their government after the recent assassination of Francisco Franco Bahamonde, the El Caudillo of Spain.

The scramble did help Sonya a fair bit, there was a curfew in effect that got the bulk of any possible eyewitnesses off the street and the military had much more important things to do than guard jewelry stores. It also hampered her, in that there wasn't a nightlife she could blend in with and any guards would likely be military instead of civilian.

In response, the Russian took to the rooftops and put her gymnastic and circus training to some actual use.

Her only problem with that were crossing the bigger streets, she had a choice between tightrope walking across likely live wires and pole-vaulting across. Eventually, she settled on vaulting.

If only because she wasn't sure how secure those wires were going to be.

A few awkward uses of her Bec de Corbin later, and Sonya reached her goal.

An older, if still somewhat popular, jewelry store in the middle-class sector of Madrid. She didn't know what brand it was, as it really wouldn't matter to her much in the end, only that it had very big windows she needed to avoid attracting attention through and weirdly had a selection of scarves.

Which… okay. Scarves?

Whatever, padding for any loose rocks and metals then.

She spent a good five minutes of her heist rewiring the outdoor security box, cutting and hot wiring it into redundant loops to monitor so it wouldn't trip halfway through her heist. She had no desire to be surprised again, especially not in a land she had no real support to fall back on if she got into trouble.

Since she wasn't entirely sure it would work as she wanted, or that she did it correctly at all, the Russian thief used the next half hour watching the patrols on the streets. Estimating gapes of time where no one could be looking through the show room's big ass windows and trying to see if they were able to be timed.

However, Sonya had broken her last wristwatch.

That had been why she stole Cherep's to use in Mafia Land. The store likely had a couple for sale, and she could use them for the night, but she really did have to buy a non-hot one for herself sometime this next week.

While she was pondering what kind of watch to get, someone did come around to check out the store she intended to loot.

A probably really ill-advised contortion hanging half-off the building's roof later, and she could see the watchman shine a flashlight through the windows a couple times. He moved on after that, but the mere fact her was there at all was concerning.

Was it a local watch-guard, or a guard responding to weird reports from her hotwired box?

She didn't know, so she resigned herself to waiting another hour or two in order to be sure of what he was up to.

Sighing, the thief resettled herself back against the lip of the roof. Checking to ensure her Bec de Corbin was about back to its original size and she hadn't cracked the spinel stone.

Really?

She had better things to be doing than wasting time on a roof.

(ooo000ooo)

(Wednesday the 14th of February, 1968 continued. Madrid, Kingdom of Spain.)

A very irritating night of stealing and playing keep away with flashlights and marching patrols later, Sonya almost buried the sleeping Bjǫrn under her ill-gotten loot. "Wake up."

The Icelander, who had promised to sleep through the night and did seemed to have kept it, scrambled awake and away from the heavy pack that nearly landed on him. "Dama Sonya? What-?"

"We've got to sort this in a fast hurry and send it off." She snapped, tired and probably cranky from her miserable waiting on a roof and the dodge-happy heist. It had started to rain while she had been waiting, so she was both miserable and wet. "I'll pry the gemstones out of settings, I need you to keep what's what straight and ensure they end up packaged together or if you can't tell they end up in a package that will be appraised later. Then we have to go find something for me to 'acquire' for Mafia Land that would need shipping in the first place to hide it all in."

All the metal would be sold, even the bar of tungsten she would rather keep to play with. She got some petty cash out of the store manager's safe, as well as the cash register and a weekly deposit that had yet to be deposited at whatever bank, so she could send in something at least marginally useful.

As an 'Acquisitions' agent of Mafia Land's umbrella corporation, the Soviet Storm-Cloud could literally send the island anything from glassware to bedding to food to even live animals.

It would either be used or sold off again, but the main reason why she could was for smuggling. Her hot items would be hidden under the more legally acquired items, and when it reached Mafia Land, as long as it was packaged correctly and labeled with where it had to end up, they would reship it elsewhere for her.

If what was hot and obviously wasn't part of the 'legal' shipment was left as is, or even if it wasn't labeled correctly, it would be fenced and her business account credited with what money was made after the island's fees were taken off.

All the metal she didn't need for her Zolotov dues would end up that way. The watches, everything not jewels in nature, the thrice damned scarves she was still confused over.

Sonya didn't have a lot of credit on that service just yet but would likely end up with a lot by the time she was done with her little crime spree.

Bjǫrn scrambled for the packaging material she had bought with the very last of her money the day before, pulling the smaller boxes and padding out of the pile. The Russian herself reached for her pack.

Which was a backpack with a couple extra straps added on for extra stability but held a lot of random stuff if she needed it.

Right now, it weighed about sixty to seventy pounds. Most of that was the metal at the bottom, but at least half or more was in jewels.

Dumping it out on her bed and stripping off the dark, skin-tight clothing she had worn for the night, the thief decided she was fast getting sick of glittering gems and metals.

She pulled Renato's shirt on over her clammy skin, if only because she would like to be comfortable while her damp skin warmed up, and grabbed the labels to fill out with the address for the house she grew up within.

Her little Lackey gaped at the small mound of precious gems and metals put a bit of elbow grease to spill out on his bedspread.

"Don't look too impressed, we have yet to sort it. Trust me, you'll get sick of the sight too."

He shot her a disbelieving look which she snorted in the face of.

It wasn't a particularly big haul, just one she could do in a fast hurry to get the cash they would need to keep going. Mainly to ensure this wasn't going to be too different from her previous heists and because, again, Sonya had needed the money.

End of the week, when she hit the bigger chain store, and he would likely be just as sick of the sight as she was.

(Friday the 16th of February, 1968. Mafia Land.)

"Where is your sister?" Renato demanded of Tatiana when the nurse practically skipped down the steps of the hospital.

Sonya had said she was done with whatever the hell she had been doing with a circus of all things, the hitman had expected the thief to be more available rather than missing more.

How the hell was he going to entice the Storm-Cloud over to his side of the island if she wasn't even around to be tempted?

"She's… a little bit busy." The Sun Flame nurse claimed, a little smirk on her face. "I've a question for you, Mister Sinclair. What, exactly, is your intention in regard to my little sister?"

The other if Inverted Sun blinked at her slowly for the off-the-wall query, scowling as he picked up on something he wasn't sure he liked all that much. "What kind of question is that?"

"An important one, because… Sonya will listen to me. Even if she doesn't quite understand why." She informed him, that little smirk still present but somehow gaining an edge of utter nastiness. "So I would like to know, as a very concerned big sister mind you, why it is Sonya isn't too concerned by you stalking her."

Six years after he met the girl, and only now was her family becoming concerned? "Flame users, back when we met, were still being hunted, Miss Primakova. I kept an eye on Sonya, if only because she was twelve and a Cloud."

"Out of the goodness of your heart, then? Please."

"No, Clouds are rare. I know it might not seem that way to you, given your sister's nature, but they are."

The redhead pursed her lips and considered him seriously with those bright baby blues for a long moment. "Mister Sinclair, bear with me a moment. I may not be half the fighter or the thief my little sister is, who could break bones by age nine and started her criminal career around the same, but I'm a nurse. I make my country's vory feel better. If I ask those mean, violence-inclined men to pretty please take care of this Italian Mafioso who's bothering my baby sister…?"

…for a nurse, that was a respectable threat.

"I would rather not do it. Sonya likes you, for whatever reason." The Hard Sun user continued pleasantly, as if she hadn't threatened to sic a large number of hardened criminals on him. "And if I got you killed... and she found out?"

Clouds and Storms were the types to hold grudges to insane degrees.

"Miss Primakova, I'm insulted you think so lowly of me. I am a gentleman, if a lady says no then a lady says no." Renato returned with a purr, sweeping the fedora Shamal got the lady's sister to buy him off his head before giving the young woman a charming smile. With a bit of an edge of his own, as he didn't really appreciate the insinuation she was hinting around. "But Sonya's more than just a young lady, she's currently someone who helps me out when I ask without asking for something in return. Who is adored by my tetchy Mist brat ward, because she spends time with him without looking for something in payment. Why would I mess that up?"

"Why indeed." She remarked in a bland tone, before shrugging. "Sonya is currently on a bit of a crime spree, look into Spain if you want to see how she's doing. I'll see you around, Mister Sinclair."

The nurse walked off down the street without another word or so much as a backwards glance.

Huffing, the hitman replaced his hat and stalked off for the newsstands.

Spain, hmm?