Burya polov
Or, an effeminate Russian boy's story
Copyleft 🄯 2024 David Klopić
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Warning
This is a work in progress (W.I.P.), and is thus susceptible to change.
Chapter Three: Is that a tuna can with a mouth?
The following day, to prove that he was not a “friendless boy” any longer, Zhenya asked Filat to accompany him during lunchtime. Filat was taken aback by this request, as hanging out together was something they rarely did, but he accepted. He wondered out loud what kind of friend she was—Zhenya’s words alone were not convincing. Her name was Dina, and she was really cool, was all Zhenya had said. Filat joked that he knew plenty of cool girls, as well as those whose name was Dina.
“Over here, krasivy malchik!” Dina shouted from a distance while indulging in a king-sized pizza. She tapped the seat next to it, as well as the one beside it, as if she knew that more company was on the way.
“That’s the lady, eh?” Filat said to his classmate. “Isn’t that much pizza bad for her health?”
“Maybe she works out,” Zhenya replied, “so she can eat as much as she wants as long as she burns the calories afterwards.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t. I said ‘maybe’.”
The two boys sat beside Dina, and Zhenya took it upon himself to ask about the large pizza she was eating. With a big grin across her face, she answered:
“A girl’s gotta eat if she wants to grow up big and strong!”
“A woman doesn’t need to be strong, though,” Filat commented, “that’s what men are for. But I suppose there are boys who are neither big nor strong, like Zhena here.”
“And don’t stand a chance in life?” Zhenya replied. “Well, you won’t have to worry about it for long!”
“I doubt I won’t,” Filat said, “because you should first change the way you dress. And the way you walk.”
“Why? Is it weird? The walk, I mean.”
“Well, you latch onto your trousers like they’re gonna fall off. And you’re trying a little too hard to keep your feet parallel to each other. And you—”
“Do you have a single nice thing to say about him?” Dina interposed. “You don’t really listen to this guy, do you, Zhenya?”
Zhenya looked at Filat and then at Dina as he answered:
“Nope.”
“Well, obviously,” Filat interrupted, “otherwise he would’ve stopped pretending to be someone who he wasn’t—”
“So, how is your day?” Zhenya asked, completely brushing Filat aside.
“Standard,” she replied. “By the way, do you want a slice? I usually don’t share, but you’re my friend now, so help yourself!”
Zhenya nodded and obliged. A slice would not hurt.
“Hey, about yesterday,” Zhenya said between delicate bites, “did you go home early? I stayed in my classroom to clean up, and I thought I…”
“Oh, nothing to do with you,” she said, “I was actually called into the principal’s office right after class. Valeriya fucking ratted me out!”
“But wasn’t there a security camera nearby?” he asked.
“I guess so, but naturally, the school won’t reprimand the bullies… But when someone stands up against said bullies—oh, the horror! Thankfully,” Dina continued, “she let me off the hook, but promised me that next time I was going to suffer more serious consequences.”
“That’s a relief,” Zhenya said. “By the way, about that dy—”
“Wait… is this friend of yours still talking?”
Zhenya turned around and heard Filat saying:
“—Russia has always been a traditional country, no matter the period. Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, modern Russia… And there have always been two kinds of male: real men, and little boys. Now I’m not saying you’re little—okay, maybe you are—but you’re still green, and trying to figure yourself out—”
“Huh,” Dina told Zhenya, “this guy has a way with words, alright. How does he fare in Russian language class?”
“I admit he does write better than me,” he replied, alluding to his assignments, “but his handwriting is a mess. He’s basically the next Tolstoy.”
“And still, he’s squandering this opportunity on rants about the modern Russian boy… Funny, right?”
While they indulged in a brief but hearty laugh, Natalya, the girl whom Zhenya met beside the ice cream shop, joined them. She wanted to have a word with him as regards his “test results”. Dina rubbed her hair and gazed senselessly at her best friend. A test? she asked. Yes, a test, Natalya replied. She asked if she could speak to Zhenya in private. Dina initially protested, but appeared to have given in. Zhenya had long finished his slice, so he saluted Dina again and walked away alongside Natalya. Inside the men’s restroom on the first floor, Natalya leaned against the window frame while taking one final look at her clipboard with his so-called test. She suggested not to tool around any longer, declaring:
“Your test from yesterday came back negative.”
“Negative?” he repeated after her. “Is that good or bad? What was the test even about?”
“You don’t know?”
“No, you told me it was a secret!”
“I guess I did,” she replied.
“So? May I know what it was for?”
“Compatibility.”
“Compatibility with whom?”
“Dinka.”
“So… the results being negative is a bad thing, then?”
“Perhaps.”
Zhenya had one simple question to ask:
“Why exactly?”
“You really wanna know?”
“If you may tell me.”
Natalya lightly lifted her shoulders and glued her eyes to the clipboard.
“Sure… Firstly,” she began scouring the test, “your height is inadequate for Dinka. She has a minimum height requirement of 187 centimetres. You’re seventeen centimetres shorter than that, while she herself is six centimetres taller than you!”
Dina? Dating based on height? Outlandish! In the meantime, Natalya went on.
“Your waist is fine, probably your weight as well, but wasn’t able to measure it… but these are once again undermined by your height. Oh, let me tell you something as you appear a little dumbfounded. In terms of nature, taller men are more attractive than their shorter counterpart. Shorties”—she placed her right hand atop his head—“really only have a chance with other women if they make six figures… Oh, since we’re in Russia, I actually mean eight figures. So, not even a six pack can save—”
“I get it, I wasn’t blessed with a great figure. Can we move on?”
“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant… You got a petite figure… But don’t expect to pick up as many girls.”
“I already don’t,” he said, “because my face scares them away, I think.”
“Alright, don’t be so harsh on yourself, now. And, when it comes to the ‘egg test’, I didn’t expect that reaction from you or, I should say, a lack thereof.”
“The egg test? What was the purpose of that particular one?”
“Yeah, what was it for?”
Natalya jumped up and dropped her clipboard to the ground. The foreign voice was revealed to have come from Dina, who sneaked up on them.
“D-Dinka!” she shouted, picking the clipboard up. “I told you this was a matter between me and him only!” she berated.
“I was curious about this ‘test’ you spoke of earlier,” Dina replied, “so I had to come… Also, why does everyone all of a fucking sudden have a problem with him!?”
“What?” confusion befell Natalya.
“I’ll tell you what, Nat’[1]! First of all, I don’t have what you call a ‘minimum height requirement’ because that shit is for shallow bitches who aren’t worth dating. Now, answer me please, what’s this ‘egg test’ and what’s its purpose?”
“No need to call others ‘shallow bitches’, dear,” Natalya replied, “As for the purpose, it’s just a way for me to assess his reaction time.”
“By… cracking an egg on top of his head?”
“Exactly,” she affirmed, “or at least attempting to, but he didn’t even blink! He was supposed to dodge it, or hit my arm so I would’ve dropped the egg to the floor, anything, really…”
“And… what does that prove?”
“That he’s one of those incredibly passive male creatures who want their woman to do all the work, which includes giving birth AND having a job! But the men do nothing! Absolutely nothing! Just charge their phone, be gay, drink hot chocolate and cheat.”
“Well,” Dina replied, “I do agree that men who do nothing suck, and cheaters are scum, but aren’t you overgeneralising? I’m sure Zhenya here is a very swell boy. And he’s pretty, I’ve always wanted to befriend some pretty boy. What is your problem with him, again?”
“Hey, I just needed to know what he was like on the inside, that’s all!” Natalya tried to justify her actions. “But, given our very limited conversation, I do admit that I had slightly miscalculated him… But no matter. Listen here, Yevgeniy Dmitrievich! You—”
“Don’t have to address him like he’s your employer,” Dina interrupted her. “Just call him Zhenya.”
“Zhenya!? But isn’t that a bit… too affectionate? Haven’t you only known him for a day?”
“He said it himself,” she replied, “unless you wanna call him Zhena like everybody else? I know I wouldn’t.”
“You can just use my name without my father’s,” Zhenya pitched in.
“Hmph… well alright, Yevgeniy,” she softened up, but not for long. “This won’t be the last you’ll see of me! I’ll be observing you and your interactions with Dinka closely…”
“Careful, boy,” Dina joked, “Big Sister is watching you!”
Suddenly, Natalya pulled Dina by the hand and said, “I think we better get going now. And you,” she referred to Zhenya, “if I hear a complaint from her, I’ll deform that beautiful face of yours in a way your brain won’t be able to comprehend. Got that?”
“Y-yes, ma’am,” Zhenya said and nodded.
“Shit, you made him submit to you so hard that he’s calling you ‘madam’ too, eh?” Dina teased, while Natalya refused to comment.
With the two girls departing, the restroom was quiet once more, and Zhenya went into a closet to quickly relieve himself before returning to a designated room for Physics class, where Filat complained to him that he had had nobody to listen to his speeches once Zhenya had left.
“You had Dina,” Zhenya instantly debunked his statement.
After two periods of running around during physical education class and a period of rest as Russian literature class followed, the bell signalled the end of the school day. Even though his establishment had a flower club, and Zhenya enjoyed the act of cultivating them, he took no part in any extracurricular activity except at home, afraid that most if not all of its members would also be members of the fairer sex. He stayed behind to tidy the classroom where the last class was held, and saw Dina on his way out, whom he greeted. Of course, tailing her was Natalya, who asserted herself between the two. It seemed that they had the similar goal in mind: Krasnopresnenskaya. Or was it Barrikadnaya[2]?
Although it was a brief encounter, Zhenya learned a good deal more about his companion. Dina lifted weights and jogged in the nature (sometimes parks) with her father, twice a day. To get home from school, she had to take three metro lines and ride a bus over the border of Moscow afterward, and even so her father still had to pick her up from the bus stop. She must be living in the woods where flowers bloomed and no smog was covering the beautiful landscape of Moscow from afar, Zhenya went over in his head while Natalya talked about a Serbian actor who had been recently given the foot from a famous television show “just because”. He had literally done nothing wrong, she complained. At the road junction where he had to turn left for Faina’s flower store while the metro stop continued straight ahead, he parted ways with the two girls. Dina waved at him energetically and said, “See you tomorrow!” whereas Natalya simply nodded in modest approval.
Once in the flower shop, Zhenya gazed into the flower display which has not changed by a lot since his last visit.
“So I’d like to buy a necklace,” he talked, “even though my father doesn’t let me have jewellery! But, there are so many metals to choose from that it’s hard to pick! But maybe something out of Latin—er, I mean brass… might suffice. It’s as cheap as silver, too…”
He took a fake flower attached to a toothpick and slipped it above his left ear.
“But Moscow’s full of jewellery stores. Why are you askin’ me?”
“Oh, I’m not just looking for a place to shop,” Zhenya replied, drilling a hole through Faina, “I have a specific design I’m looking for. Maybe someone can cast it for me…”
He found a picture of a pendant he wished to buy and showed it to Faina, who, upon inspection, raised her eyebrow at him.
“Wait, that’s what you want? I thought you wanted an eagle pendant, or the KFC logo! That five-pointed star pendant, that size, is available in five in ten stores! No need to go the extra mile for somethin’ which you can easily obtain right here!”
“Wait, did you say KFC?” Zhenya asked after she finished talking.
“About that, I know a customer who’d paid someone for a home decoration made of silver—and he opted for the fuckin’ KFC logo! Truly, we’re livin’ on planet Earth… Right, the necklace. Nobody’s goin’ to behead you if you just ask, and if they don’t have what you’re lookin’ for, you just waddle away to the very next jewellery place!”
“You’re right,” Zhenya conceded. “I needn’t have thought this hard about it. I’ll go right away!”
“Sounds like a plan. Are you also gonna buy that flower pin you have in your hair?”
“Oops, sorry! I took it without thinking,” Zhenya said, his face flushed, and placed the pin back in the jar he found it in. “By the way, sorry for barging in all the time without a reason.”
“Oh, you’re fine! I’m the sole owner of this place, so I got all the time in the world. But don’t you think it’s high time to be makin’ friends with your peers?”
“I just did! I didn’t tell you that… She may seem a little dangerous, but she’s very kind, and I want to introduce her to you someday.”
“I’m sure you will. Take it easy now, boy!”
Zhenya sprung out of the flower shop to find a jewellery store that was nearest to him. Little did he know that his search for the pendant would, frankly, not take that long. While the first store he wandered into did not have what he wanted, the next one, just five blocks away, did. The necklace he found had significantly more copper than zinc, thus resembling gold even more, and although slightly smaller, was still big enough to easily be noticeable. And the price? Not the cheapest, but it would make do: ₽3,000[3]. After having his payment processed, Zhenya instantly put it around his neck. It twinkled in the afternoon sun once he was out. He unfolded the shopping list and crossed out the item. He was now one step closer to ultimate strength. Or so he thought.
Another Wednesday. His routine virtually stayed the same, and so did his school accessories, but with two more added to his arsenal: an aluminium paint can and a large paintbrush which he found beside his bed after waking up.
In school, after the Algebra professor left the classroom, Zhenya stopped Filat for a moment and asked if he could keep him company during lunch again.
“Why have you become so friendly all of a sudden?” Filat asked. “Did those plastic bottles finally get to you?”
“You know what they say, the more, the merrier,” Zhenya replied.
When the two boys came out of the classroom, so did Dina and Natalya, a few doors away. Zhenya suggested going outside to enjoy their lunches. But first, Filat had to order something from the cafeteria, after which he, Zhenya, Dina and Natalya all descended into the great outdoors. The air was not countryside-fresh, but it was not industrial town-fresh either, surprising of Moscow. They sat down on one of the benches adjacent to the school gate. Dina unfolded her quadruple tuna sandwich, Zhenya opened his cute lunch box with a little bit of everything, Natalya did the same with a bag of chips, and Filat was already munching on his French fries sprinkled with mayonnaise (indeed, a contentious choice).
“That’s one big sandwich,” Zhenya commented on Dina’s grub. “How do you manage?”
“Fish is low in calories,” Dina replied, “so I can eat as much of it as I’d like! I even got all of the greens: cabbage, pickles, onions, tomatoes…”
“Tomatoes aren’t green,” Filat said over Natalya, “and neither are onions.”
“Did you make it yourself?” Zhenya asked.
“I did, and I’m pretty proud of that! Want a bite?” Dina offered him the sandwich.
“Thanks,” he replied, “but may I instead offer you some of my lunch, in return for what you did to me last Wednesday?”
“Hm, I suppose I’ll take you up… Hey, is that an octopus sausage? I’ve never seen one of those in real life before!”
“You can have it,” he inched his lunch box closer to her.
“Really? There’s only one left!”
“I made four of them, so don’t worry about it.”
Zhenya faintly smiled. Dina put the sausage between her thumb, index and middle fingers, flicked her hand away from his lunch box, and examined the octopus sausage. It was only cut in a way that resembled this cephalopod, but it was still charming. Just as she was about to suck it in, a professor came out of the school building and shouted:
“Everybody, get back inside the school! It’s dangerous to remain here!”
“What the hell!?” Natalya said, standing up. “What do you mean, it’s dangerous?”
“Apparently, a giant beast just appeared on the Red Square and is making its way towards our school!” cried the professor.
“Where did you get this news from,” Filat asked, “the All-Russian Crack Pipe Television?”
“You just described RT[4],” replied Dina by laughing after. “Not speaking from experience, however, cuz I don’t wa—”
“Guys, look over there!” Zhenya said, having stood up, and pointed behind some buildings opposite the school.
Indeed, everybody saw a towering monster getting closer and closer, and it was… a giant tuna can? It was standing, currently walking, on two legs as thin as toothpicks. It looked like something a seven-year-old would scribble. And yet, it lacked the childhood innocence in which this tuna can was just that—a stupid tuna can with sticks for legs and arms. It walked just fine despite the weight, and the top flipped up and down like a mouth, although a mouth it had been with which the beast cackled.
“Kye-kye-kye! What a good day to drench people in fatty acids!”
It imitated a sneeze and large particles of thick liquid dispersed all around itself. The group of four was sprayed with it, which smelled like fish, and it mainly put off Natalya.
“Ew!” she scoffed. “I took a shower this morning! I even washed my hair!”
“This smell reminds me of when I go jogging in the morning,” Dina said as she smelled her white T-shirt with the word “BOMB” written onto a cartoony explosion.
“Whatever that is smells nicer than this,” Natalya said.
Filat was also on his feet, gazing up.
“I’m the single manliest man in my classroom… But I for sure ain’t manly enough for whatever that is!”
He happened to have thrown a glance at Zhenya, who smirked at him as he said that.
“Hey, don’t give that look!” he argued. “You’re, like, the last person I expect to deal with this… thing! And what would you do, sing a happy song? Swing a pencil around and pretend it’s a magical wand?”
Zhenya approached the school gate, consequently walked through it, and turned around.
“You’ll shortly see it’s not just a pencil, comrade Filat.”
Zhenya placed his bag on the floor by the gate, unzipped it, and removed the paint can and the paintbrush, the former of which he opened with slight difficulty. It had been sealed shut.
“Transform!” Zhenya exclaimed.
He dipped the brush into some pink paint. First, he brushed through his hair, transforming it from black into pink. He then cast it into the air and did a 360 spin before catching it—or failing to do so, given that the brush fell two steps away from him. Filat burst into laughter.
“Cut me some slack,” said Zhenya shyly, “it’s my first time…”
“First time doing what? Embarrassing yourself in public?”
“Now you’re just mean,” Dina defended her newly made friend. “Don’t listen to him!”
“It’s fine, Dina,” he replied to her, “I’m used to his remarks by now…”
His hair had reverted back to normal as a result of failing to catch the brush, so he began the transformation procedure from scratch. He repainted his hair, spun around after tossing the brush upwards again, and he barely managed to grasp its handle, but it still slipped away. He alternated between his hands, trying to reach for it, but it eventually landed—on the floor, again. Filat had his phone long out, capturing the moment.
“Third time lucky,” Zhenya said, picking up his brush.
“Is the spin really necessary?” Natalya asked.
“Probably not,” he replied, “I just thought I’d look cool.”
No more delay. His hair became pink once more, and this time, he was able to catch the falling paintbrush. Perhaps it was him losing balance that prevented him from a successful transformation. And successful it was. Once he got the utensil, he brushed his entire body, starting from both his legs and moved it until his shoulders. His ordinary outfit was replaced by something flashier—over it were a grey bodysuit, a pink tank top with short sleeves, pink shorts which barely reached his knees, and pink low-heeled shoes with a strap across the instep, as well as the brass necklace. The final part of his transformation consisted of him pulling the brush from the bottom, which made it longer, then twisting it to widen the bristles, ultimately transmuting the brush into a mop. Dina still had not eaten Zhenya’s sausage. Filat was pinching his cheeks. Natalya cracked an egg atop her scalp. What did they have in common? They were all—flabbergasted.
While all that was going on, Zhenya was already airborne. He had run along the pavement before taking off to face off against the mean tuna-producing machine.
“Kye-kye-kye!” it greeted Zhenya. “Took ye long e-nuff! Eat some o’ this!”
That was a sort of warning, but Zhenya was still caught by surprise once it began unleashing homing fish. And they did not stop coming. While circling the monster and avoiding most of its attacks, Zhenya thought of the ideal spell to cast while scouring the Little Book of Spells, veritably not little at all, and which had been given to him “free of charge”.
“Pomidor udachi[5]!” he said strongly, not having taken long, followed by him creating an imaginary tomato with his wand, which was just a few moments ago a necklace. This in turn conceived a large circular shield that he could wield with ease, just by moving the wand around. It made disarming that tuna can that much easier. But it had a trick up his sleeve.
“Good, good, but why don’tcha parry this next!?”
Out of its body flew a tuna fish, straight out of a computer graphics program operated by an amateur, the fish as large as a shark, which approached him at a great velocity and slapped him silly with its tail. His shield disintegrated, and Zhenya was sent flying through the air until he broke one of the windows of the school.
“Jeez, I was getting hyped up for nothing,” Filat admitted. “Guess I’m going to the IT room now. Let me know if someone takes this beast out…”
“Hold on!” Dina shouted. “Aren’t you gonna first see whether Zhenya’s alright!?”
“He should be,” he replied, “but since you’re so concerned, maybe you should check on him. Bye now!”
Once he was out of the picture, Dina and Natalya remained outside.
“So what now?” Natalya asked. “Aren’t you gonna do something about this, Dinka?”
“Of course I will,” Dina answered, “I gotta avenge that krasivy malchik, after all…”
She then said she would be back in a minute, when Natalya saw her coming out, carrying a helmet.
“Ah, I’ve been wondering about that helmet,” Natalya said, pointing at it. “What’s it for? You don’t ride a scooter, do you?”
“I’m considering getting myself one,” Dina replied while putting the helmet on. “This isn’t a scooter helmet, however…”
Once she fastened the strap to keep the helmet in place, a compartment on the back of it slid to the side, and a handful of items were ejected from it: an engine which was flat at first but was enlarged to fit Dina just right, like a backpack, and two thin cylinders with a button on each, connected to the engine with some wires. Once she pressed the two buttons, two exhaust pipes appeared at the bottom of the engine. It was a swift transformation with no outfit change.
Dina also did not delay and took off using her jetpack. After levelling with the beast, she floated towards it at a great speed, and in the meantime unpacked her little box of different kinds of explosives. Some looked monotonous, some had two or three stripes, some even had symbols on them. And she knew which one to use then.
“This one’s for Zhenya!” she shouted while lighting a red stick on fire, no decorations or anything, before tossing it at an unlikely location—the beast’s legs. Her rationale was that a little force would snap them in half. But all it did was kick it off its feet, only for it to regain its balance.
Dina proved to be a persistent gal: without pause, she shot more explosives its way. She managed to throw a grey stick inside the beast to drain it of its internal liquids, temporarily halting its fish-bearing operation. She sabotaged it further by igniting a dynamite stick with alternating light and dark blue stripes which, upon impact, filled half of the beast with distilled water. The third stick, however, which would have instantaneously transformed water into concrete, ultimately rendering the beast useless for combat, was deflected by its stick arm.
“Kye-kye-kye!” it cackled again. “That the best ya got? I admit that yer putting a bit more effort than the girl from a minute ago, but it ain’t e-nuff!”
It opened its mouth wide, and a freight of fish sprung out of it. Dina gasped. She was not particularly versed in aerial defence, and could only dodge so much before a similar fish from earlier appeared and took her out. She switched off her jetpack and focused on sticking the landing inside the teacher’s lounge, where Zhenya had been recovering.
“Dina!” he greeted. “Is everything okay?”
“Yup, no injuries here. But wow, what a tough beast.”
“Huh? Did you happen to fight it—oof!”
Zhenya stood up too quickly as the thought of Dina fighting a monster got him curious. That same monster, however, caused him to twist his left ankle, and he fell back down. Dina reacted immediately. She told him to take off his left shoe, while she grasped his foot with both hands and twisted it back into its position. As unorthodox a method as it was, given that Zhenya let out a moan, it fixed him right up. It only hurt a tiny bit, but he was back on his feet (after putting his shoe back on).
A moment of silence later, Dina and Zhenya came up with a swift plan. They faced the beast again, but together this time.
“Kye? Really now?” it greeted. “Well come at me, then!”
And so they did. The beast immediately began shooting homing fish at them, at a much greater capacity too, and Zhenya created a temporary shield around them while Dina prepared a dynamite stick with dark red polka dots and stuck it onto an oncoming fish. Upon detonation, the fish blew up, and two smaller dynamite sticks emerged which attached to two other fish, blowing them up as well, spawning two more mini explosives for two more fish, and so on until the fleet diminished. Or at least until they were able to surround the beast.
“Yer explosives do nothin’, girlie!” the beast remarked. “What makes ye think it’ll work the second time!?”
“In that case, you won’t mind if I throw the biggest one I have your way, right?”
Dina already took it out of her bag of explosives, and it was not as big as the other explosives she had, as far as height was concerned. Width-wise, however, it was almost as thick as Zhenya’s arms (thin as toothpicks, remember?). The beast did not care either way, as it still made way by opening its mouth as wide as it could get, while Dina cast it like she was throwing a discus (by winding up beforehand). What a dumb beast, after all, thought Zhenya on the other side. He was ready to cast a spell, and did so once the dynamite reached a certain distance. He swung his brass-tipped wand around, created a heart in the air and, as loudly as his throat was capable of, shouted:
“Burya polov[6]!”
He uttered this two-word phrase, each containing two syllables, by elongating the last syllable of the first word, and keeping the rest intact. After the last syllable of the second word, his wand gleamed brightly, and a magical beam shot towards the direction he was pointing, the airborne dynamite stick, which was somewhat in the middle of the tuna can monster when it came into contact with the beam. It was then that the dynamite began to grow, and grow, and grow, until it was humongous to the point that the beast would be unable to withstand the explosion, but still small enough to fit snugly inside of it and incapacitate it before the thing blew up. However, a dynamite that big also had a big fuse…
“Well?” Dina said, her face turned toward him. “Aren’t you gonna make time… y’know… go faster, or something?”
“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t,” Zhenya answered, “I’m only able to cast two different spells per day.”
“But didn’t you cast the tomato spell twice?”
“I did… I can only use the two chosen spells, but I can use each of them up to three times,” he explained further.
“And none of them can accelerate time?”
“Yes… Sorry about that.”
“Hey, you don’t have to apologise! Shit, I suppose it’s up to me to finish the job, then…”
Unlike Zhenya, Dina had no such arbitrary constraints. Her dynamite box was not empty yet—only then would she consider herself in trouble. Able to fly directly above the beast without it flinging its arms around to try and disrupt her, Dina dropped below a single dynamite stick and retreated to the school yard to watch the fireworks. The first explosion, coming from the smaller explosive, did not make much of a sound, but the noise that followed it at once was ear-splitting.
“Oh noes, I’s be dead!” the tuna can muttered before falling apart.
Shockingly, no buildings were damaged in the explosion or the massive shards of tin that became glassy in texture upon impact on said buildings. They did, however, get splattered by sunflower oil. Lots of it. And that was not all!
The students of the Moscow Gymnasium, including Zhenya and Dina, also took an involuntary oily shower. The liquid instantly washed away Zhenya’s magical boy outfit, and Dina, having celebrated the victory with a high-five, noticed.
“Ah, this was just a coat of paint,” he explained, “so a little bit of water will wash it off.”
“But what if it rains, for example?” Dina then asked, but Zhenya did not have enough time to ponder when Filat entered the scene again.
“Where the hell did that monster go?” he asked.
“It’s gone,” said Dina, smiling, “we took care of it.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Krasivy malchik and me.”
“Krasivy mal—you mean Zhena!? You’re pulling my leg! He can’t even hurt an ant!”
“Says the man who essentially ran away,” Natalya entered the conversation.
“Me? Run away? Nuh-uh! I did what’s called a tactical withdrawal!”
“That would imply you were engaged with the beast in the first place, which you weren’t. I can hardly believe it too, but Yevgeniy kinda slayed. I watched all of it. And speaking of which—ugh, I seriously need a shower! I stink like a marathoner…”
She was not alone in this. Everybody in the school moaned about needing a thorough shower after the fact and, thankfully, the principal of the school, a tall woman, approved of a premature ending of the school day.
“But make sure to return to school tomorrow! Tomorrow, you hear!”
On the other hand, the janitors were to have a field day in certain corridors and classrooms whose windows were left wide open. Meanwhile, outside the school yard…
“Phew, I’m beat,” Dina said. “This was no small feat!”
“But we did it, right?” Zhenya said, closing the lid of his paint can.
“Hell yeah! Another high-five?”
They slapped hands again.
“By the way,” Dina continued, “I know you said that attire of yours was only a coat of paint, but… It’s adorable! Does it have a name?”
Zhenya gave it some thought.
“A name… Well, if it were me… I would call it… ‘Milenkaya Roza’[7].”
END OF CHAPTER
Footnotes:
[1] Нать, pronounced Nat but with a little /j/ sound at the end.
[2] Краснопресненская and Баррикадная are one and the same metro stop, but on different metro lines.
[3] ~€30.50.
[4] A.K.A. Russia Today. No further explanation necessary.
[5] Помидор удачи, meaning “Tomato of Luck”.
[6] Буря полов, meaning “Storm of the Sexes”.
[7] Миленькая Роза, officially Pretty Pink (lit. Cute Pink).