Perestroika: Act 1
Alyona Rodionova, Bratva Heiress, a girl who had access to more money than her peers could even conceptualize, picked up trash in a park. She wore her uniform doing it, but was wholly out of her depth when it came to doing actual manual labor. Cold, tired, and humiliated, she sits down on a park bench to catch her breath.
She was stuck here for 2 more hours. She almost preferred being a filthy Sukeban's maid since it was at least inside work, but the school insisted her punishment be something to "build character". A group of Track and Field girls walk by, laugh-chuckle at the haughty Gaijin cleaning up cans, and throw a half full juice can near her feet to add to her pile, the juice spilling on her fancy loafers. She grits her teeth and balls her fists into hands at the disgraceful display: she'd never humiliated them publicly under her reign over their club when they served her tea and cleaned her mansion. She wanted to find their houses, to break their windows, and if they still dared to degrade her-
"Earth to Alyona!" Madoka says loudly next to her ear, snapping her out of a growling rage.
"Onguuchi-san? Sorry, I was just taking a break," she says an attempt at dutiful cheer, but the frustration in her voice palpable.
Madoka hands Alyona some warm tea in a thermus cup: "I just came to see if you wanted to check that new boutique that opened up in Twilight Plaza with me: my shadows will think I'm helping with the new club budgets so we won't be too bothered~."
"I'm a pariah to the clubs you're supposed to mediate with: being seen with will be bad your social life," Alyona says.
"Its fiiiine, Alyona-chan, I want to hang out and it's not like we have a ninja club spying on everyone right?"
Alyona sighs: "Fine, but I'm here for another 2 hours, and if we're going somewhere nice I want to wear more than my uniform."
"Oh yeah, me too. Want me to send a car or do you want to?" Madoka says.
"I prefer your family's cars, ours are not meant to be... permanent, so to speak" Alyona says while rubbing the back of her head.
"Kay, see ya in a few hours!" Madoka says as she runs off back to school.
"She's not gonna be happy to see us: she's gonna be fuming mad because she has that community service shite," Archie says as they.
"Nonsense: Mochi has never failed to make her smile. The colder it is, the better for her taste," Renka says as the two go to meet up with after detention. She got to skip some days if her other punishments didn't line up neatly: lucky her.
Alyona sits at a sushi belt restauraunt, munching on whatever comes by and looks appetizing as she gets all kinds of looks from the usual customers. The white-haired cyclops and the shredded white kid sitting by don't alleviate the stares, but Alyona was too tired to care.
"Did your humiliations go well? I had to clean up alot of dog shit today," Alyona says while rubbing eyes.
"Detention was quiet and tranquil. We brought an offering to alleviate your frustrations," Renka says as she takes the ice cold Mochi out, giving Alyona a small smile.
"Did you two want to go shopping with me and Oguuchi-san? From the student council?"
"And carry your bags while you two prattle on about bras and nail polish? I think I'm fine," Archie says. "But here, one of the math teachers tried to "forget" to hand you your homework. I got your copy without laying a finger on him, don't worry."
Alyona takes the worksheets and stuffs them lazily in her bag with a grateful nod.
"Why do we have to be the ones to suffer? Because we're guilty of being different?" Alyona grumpily mutters to herself as her companions some plates and join her a feast of low quality raw fish.
"Because they match our strength with numbers," Renka answers.
"'Cause we're on their turf and tried to take it over," Archie answers.
"Then the punishment should have at least been shared equally! You two should be cleaning up parks with me!" Alyona says.
"You know you and Renka don't need to play maid for Fujiwara girl, right? I thought it was a one-time thing but I keep seeing you do it," Archie responds.
"S-She says it will get our punishments waived if were good enough!" Alyona shoots back quickly, a prepared response.
"This that Tsundere shite you were tellin' me about Renka?" he asks.
"Indeed. I enjoy it for my own reasons of earning praise for my large vocabulary, but Alyona seems to enjoy the lady of the Garage's attention most," Renka calmly responds as Alyona blushes.
"Stop putting it like that, we're not even friends! I'm doing this so we can all get back to our school lives sooner!" Alyona insists.
Archie has his pager go off, causing him to groan in frustration: "Deal with it yourself, ya bint!"
"Was that your mom?" Archie was asked.
"Yeah, not dealing with her or her fuckin' boyfriend now."
"Sounds... fractured," Renka comments.
"Dumb bitch locked herself out of the house cause she keeps leaving her purse in weird places, I use the spare, and she knows that for sure but I'm the guy who has to give up that freedom so she can go drop on in her latest sucker at work, and kiss him to remind him what's waiting for him at home."
"You've stayed in one of my guest rooms more times than I've seen you go home," Alyona remarks.
"Exactly: as long I get my money from him I don't need to see him. Your mansion is more comfortable, anyways; still trying to get your guards to box with me so I can keep sharp."
"Do you hate your mother?" Alyona asks as she refills her plate with a rare salmon roll.
"Can't hate her, I'm here because of her. Back in England we had fuckin' nothin', she found a new sugar daddy to pay rent and worked while I started shaking kids down to pay for my own shite when I was 12. Then, suddenly, I get told I gotta learn Japanese, because she and some oriental guy are getting married and we'll be set for life. I don't miss those days back in England, except for the boys I would run with cutting class and making ends meet."
"Is that... why you agreed to join my club?" Alyona asks.
"Yeah, for a chick you're tough. Same with Renka."
"It's... freeing not to be tough," Alyona says, letting her guard down. "My father is a bad man because he must defend a tough reputation, but he is a good man because his reputation let's him do as he pleases and he chooses to help others where he can."
"A man of Karmic balance: following his tao to its fated conclusion" Renka muses.
"Dying in the snow from a bullet in your lungs from an assasin is something that shouldn't be dressed up as something mystical," Alyona says.
"Fate can give cruel fortunes, Alyona-chan. You have choices before you reach that inevitable end, all three of us do," Renka says.
"Choice means sacrifice: it's not a choice if it's your fingers or your life," Alyona responds.
"Always the option of fighting your way out before you're placed at the choice in the first place," Archie concludes.
Ilya didn't like driving on Japanese streets: not wide enough, easy to get boxed in on. Of course, the country was supposedly perfectly safe, and that's what the Boss' daughter believed. As much as it stung that some bratty student had more power than him, it was the job and he at least wasn't being expected to smile doing it. It helps that he knew Alyona was more capable of torturing someone on her own, and anyone on her side was on her father's side. If they wanted someone to push around it would be Ludmilla, but anyone who tried was made an example of.
Alyona entered the car after a late shopping trip with her cyclops friend and a dyed blonde, who came by every now and then to Alyona's tea parties along with the little girl. She was tired, leaning against the window of the sedan and nodding off. She'd almost be cute if he didn't have the image of her ripping a man's fingernails off for talking down to her.
Immediately, he notices something is wrong. Two cars following his rough route, some large men in hoods and scarves with their hands in their pockets. They were being tailed; and not by any of the local Yakuza thugs.
Assassins were unlikely: they would have struck earlier, as soon as Alyona and her friends separated. The price on a little girl's head would be low, anyways.
Kidnappers were more likely, so he expected a roadblock and a holdup. He got on an expressway so whatever they had planned wasn't going to be as easy.
Rivals were the most likely answer: Taras had more principles than the average mob man because he was insane, and that meant he would break his organization rescuing his woman and his daughter. The mansion was a fortress: the police would haul everyone who had a gun in their hands in and ruin everyone's plans. Alyona was the weak link since she was always going to some dilapidated shithole with caution tape and buildings which looked worse than crumbling Kruschevkas. He sped along, keeping to thick traffic as the two cars attempted to keep up with him. The soldier in him that survived Afghanistan told him to cause a wreck and fire some shots to attract attention and buy them time, but Alyona stirring awake and looking angirly up toward him distracts him.
"Ilya, where are we going?" she asks in a bossy voice.
"We have tails. I'm shaking them now," he says as he turns onto a back country road, hoping to get on a another big highway.
Whatever she said afterward was drowned out in the noise of crunching metal, shattering glass, a loud engine, and resulting head trauma as their car is slammed from the side and skids into into a vacant lot, doing a flip before grinding into the dirt to stop.
Moscow, 1998
The Rodionova family rides in a fancy car through a part of the city in the middle of being "revitalized" by the new owners. What was once buildings that housed public services became a district for flashy, "imported" goods. Almost all of which were stolen or bootlegs. The deeper they drove in, the more depraved it got. Taras grits his teeth as he looks toward the driver. The man wore a tailored black suit and simple red shirt, and a yellow and black striped tie loose around his neck, as his prominent feature these days was his thinning blonde hair.
"This isn't right."
"We scouted the place earlier: this is where the other bosses are meeting," the driver says staunchly as he stops in front of an old warehouse, turned into a nightclub drowned in floodlights, neon, and loud music.
"Not what I meant: these buildings deserved better," Taras says with cold fury in his voice.
Alyona and Ludmilla sat in the back seat, each dressed formally. The mother wore an ornate red dress with an especially tight waist with a white fur coat, her daughter a looser pink dress with a small white cardigan with preserved flowers for buttons, and a fluffy white peacoat.
"...Alyonushka, do you think the animals inside want to show us this place as a point of pride?" Taras asks.
Alyona nods, sharing his irritation instead of her mother's pearl clutching mortificiation: "Yes. They're going to show us a vault full of dollar bills and drugs and try to humiliate us as old-fashioned and push themselves forward."
"So what is your response to such a blatantly disrespectful act?" Taras asks.
"Leave in Protest and consolidate our own territory. Break their advance and then use that invasion as a pretext for conquering their turf as reperations," Alyona says coldly.
"For a woman, that might work. They only know you as weak," Taras says.
"It's a man's duty to make animals like this cower in fear," he says as he leaves the car.
"Take them back to the airstrip, and get them flown back to home," Taras orders.
Alyona feels strangely relieved for a moment as she is driven away, placing her coat back on her lap. Of course a part of her wanted to look at the western puppet who did all of this and scream at him, but she knew the response would be laughter, no matter how good her speech was.
Of course her mother was blindly relieved to just go home after they'd been here for just a day: she was a kept housewife, and Alyona had to be as elegant and classy as she pretended to be while also thinking like her father. A store catches her eye on the drive back out of the red-light district: one with videos in its windows.
"Driver, stop there," she demands.
"Alyona, your father-"
"Never said I couldn't tell you make stops. I want to look around inside."
"Alyonushka, please, it's not going to have what you're... looking for," Ludmilla tries to say.
"I can sift through pornography: stay here if you like," Alyona says with a defiant look toward her mother that gets her to back down immedietly.
Ludmilla wanted to say her daughter shouldn't even look at the cover of tapes like that, but the words couldn't come out. The driver wouldn't listen to her anyways: Alyona had punished guards who didn't recognize her authority through painful lessons mimicking her father's work.
Alyona can't remember what she bought that night, just that it was a bootleg anime tape of something violent and bloody that got stuck in her VCR, and lit it on fire as a stunt for her friends at school months later.
Alyona wakes with her ears ringing in a dark, messy field. Her driver was trying to drag himself over to the car phone with glass stuck in arms and blood on his head. She didn't have time to think as she ripped a sleeve off a blouse she bought a few hours ago and dug in the glove box for a bottle of Vodka. Thankfully, she was right that it was there, and could wrap the makeshift bandage around the mans head as he tried to get a message through for backup.
She should hide, or run, or wait for the police, or-
No. The flashlights approaching in a circle were all her concussed mind needed to know that she wouldn't have the luxury of being a victim here. 5 beams of light approached her, and Ilya didn't have a weapon with him for a simple chauffering task. She felt her heart rate jump: they wanted her for ransom at best, revenge at worst. Either way she'd be hurt very badly.
It just felt natural when a handgun appeared in hand, a PB for covert operations that commanded a high price on the black market. She didn't register for a few moments how she drew a gun from nowhere like she did in the Idea world, she simply took aim toward one of the light beams and lowered her aim, steadying her nerves before pulling the trigger.
A man cries out in pain and stumbles: "You dumb fuck! I told you not to bring a fucking gun!" he shouts in Russian. Alyona brings the slide back and observes.
"I didn't Sergei! You probably ran into a pole or some wreckage!"
"YOU BLEW ONE OF MY TOES OFF! HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO FORGET TO TURN YOUR SAFETY ON BEFORE I GET YAROSLAV TO TAKE THAT FUCKING THING AWAY FROM YOU!?"
"THE FIRST TIME WAS THE ROUNDS YOU GAVE ME WHICH WERE DEFECTIVE!"
A third voice appears as they infight: "SHUT UP and keep focused! Josef, get back to truck and bind your toe up!"
Alyona keeps low to the ground and out of the light, doing her best to imitate a natively Japanese accent as she tried to sound more hurt than she was. Normally under this kind of stress she defaulted to her mother tongue, but that would be all the confirmation they needed that they could move in without fear. One look at her and they would know exactly who she was; even a look at her driver would make it obvious. She notices Ilya's fingers punching in the number for the mansions home phones, and swipes his hand away: even a whisper of Russian being spoken, and any hope the attackers would leave dies.
She can feel her heart in her throat as the footsteps get closer, her body freezing up as she realizes at some point she will have to defend herself. She'd tortured people, mutiliated them, and watched them die, but never taken a life herself. A part of her tried to will her hands to draw a faster gun and take the whole group out, like her father trying wrestle control of her body from her mother's inactive moralism. She lays herself over Ilya, faking a more mature sounding sob while the moonlight dances over her hair. In her left hand was a Makarov, angled downward to hide it from view.
"Fuck! This isn't even a decoy!" One of the mobsters shouts in Russian as they get close enough to see the carnage.
"You must be blind! I know I followed the right car!"
Police and ambulance sirens can be heard in the distance. All of the mobsters look toward the one insiting on further investigation.
"Let's bail, tell Yaroslav we lost her, and pretend this never fucking happened," he says as the group runs to a big truck and speeds off down a mess of poorly maintained roads. The gun in Alyona's hand dematerializes, and she breathes a sigh of relief.
Higan Central Hospital, 12:55 PM
A police officer sits with the foreign girl paramedics pulled out of a hit and run car wreck. Her driver was in surgery, but was going to make a recovery. The girl was uninjured, but refused to speak to the officer assigned to get her side of the story.
"...Miss Rodionova, you and your driver's visas check out. I just want to know what happened," he asks.
The girl threads her eyebrows, clearly in deep thought.
"Miss Rodionova, either tell me what happened or I'll have to take you back to station," he says for the 20th time. It was a threat; it meant talking with the Russian's about extradition and deportation with a whole lot of paperwork and interpreters in the process. It would be better for everyone if he got her talking.
"...Let me start over. I'm Officer Kenji Takayama," he says in English.
She at least looks at him for a moment; she was listening, at least slightly.
"There are no charges against you, or your driver, or anyone else but the person who ran into you and refused to take responisbility. I just need your testimony and you can go home."
Alyona looks over at Officer Takayama: "It was just a traffic accident. I don't know what happened, since I was trying to keep my driver from bleeding out the whole time," she says coldly.
"And did you catch a glimpse at the vehicle used to hit your car?" he asks.
"No," Alyona responds with a hint of anger in her voice.
"What did it sound like?"
Alyona looks over to him, confused.
"How loud was the engine compared to the crash? Victims of automotive accidents often recall the most about the moments leading up to the crash."
"...Really loud, I could hear it over the impact," Alyona answers, softening a bit.
"Thank you, Miss Rodionova," he says as he opens the door to the hospital room, Ludmilla coming in immedietly to hug her daughter, having just thrown a coat on over her pajamas to come see her. There aren't words between them, just a mutual fear of loss and fear.
As the Policeman leaves to handle his end of things, Alyona whispers to her mom: "Stay in the Mansion until I tell you its safe: we have food for a month, right?"
"Y-Yes but-" Ludmilla starts.
"Then keep to the house. I will handle whatever outside chores or shopping that needs doing."
"B-But why?" Ludmilla asks.
Alyona pats her back: "Because I... I need you to just stay put."
The two avoid looking at eachother the entire time they wait for Ilya to be out of surgery. Alyona chooses to work on algebra homework from her rescued backpack, instead of dwell on the subject more. Putting the whole Mansion on red alert and warning about an attack would paralyze her social life and community service, and worry her mother to death after Alyona was so sure that Japan wouldn't allow this kind of thing to happen to either of them. If her father heard of it, he would have Alyona immedietly pulled back to Russia to keep her closer than ever. She'd have no choice in the matter, and running away would only make getting caught by Yaroslav's men easier.
The only option was to handle the situation herself. If all of her clearly hastily hired attackers and their paymaster were dead or running, nobody ever has to find out about the attack and her dream can stay alive. Besides, a real magical girl keeps her mundane life and her fights to save the world from her parents anyways. Usagi's parents and shitty brother never knew how talented their dim-witted daughter was at beating up bad guys.
Two Russian men sit outside a seedy bar in Kagoeka, the usual inhabitents steering clear of them as they work through a crate of canned Japanese beer. They are dress casually, but with heavy jackets and body armor under there shirts.
"Josef lost his toe to someone, and I know none of us brought a piece," the largest of the two says, angry even after some drinks. He was tall and imposing, keeping a musculer build from his time fighting in Afghanistan. He has a buzz cut and several implanted teeth from a life of fighting, only taking over his organization after his old boss let him too close.
"Yaroslav, I did what I could."
"I know Sergei, doesn't change this whole fucking task became way more costly because that bitch's bodyguard was better than we thought."
"Nobody even heard a gunshot: and we would have heard about it if the police caught an armed gangster. The TV only says there was a car accident."
"Rodionova must have hidden the gun and silencer then," Yaroslav says as he crushes a can in his fist.
A Japanese girl with long black hair leans on a wall opposite to them: "I can get you into Rodionova's mansion, if getting her on the road is too much."
The men look at the tiny Japanese girl skeptically, but Yaroslav bites his tongue. The girl looks back, smirking.
"Call me Rin: how much is 30000 Yen in Rubles?"
"We don't need a little girl's help; buzz off," the Russian grunts back.
"I have my eyes everywhere in Kagoeka, Mr. Zaytsev. Your problem was your target: she's not just a spoiled princess."
"Just because her insane father catches her live bait to play with doesn't mean I'm going to be afraid of her," Yaroslav says with a confident smile.
"...How insane is he?" Rin asks, looking up towards the man's thin blue eyes.
"Stuffed someone inside a pig and had it slaughtered for trying to rob one of charities. This isn't a game, little girl: go sell some cigarettes or beer to your friends," Yaroslav says dismissively.
"Then don't go for the gun-toting little psychopath: go after her dumbass mother," Rin says.
"And I can get you the plans to their fortress of a house for 40000 Yen in liquid assets."
Yaroslav looks at the girl and throws a her briefcase. She cracks it open and her eyes go wide.
"Deal, little girl?"
"Deal, Mr. Mobster."