Leningrad. First of October 1986.
Damned nukes, damned comms, damned Radio sabotage and damned NATO dogs!
Aleksei Bogdanov, Seventeen-year-old corporal and messenger for the Soviet Red Army North Front Command, or simply the NFC for employees, growled as he ran through the city of Leningrad in quick, successive and vast strides across the open, empty streets, as air raid alarms wailed through the streets like a damning echo, warning of the official End of the Fucking World arriving! He heard the high-pitched whistle of Yankee jet planes overhead, low-flying and hundreds of them against the dark clouds that separated the world from the beautiful blue sky. Snow began to fall, trickling down in an aggravatingly slow manner.
"Make it a fucking storm, damn it... Ground their damn planes..." The boy muttered to himself as Anti-Air batteries started lighting up the sky, a distant beat of drums. Rockets howled overhead, leaving trails of thick black smoke as they arched up to greet the hundreds of American planes. The distant sounds of combat startled the boy, but he could still hear his heart, thumping hard in his chest, as he rushed down the snowy roads and side alleyways toward the Leningrad CP Anton.
Several soldiers rushed past him, clad in winter clothing and with the heavy combat webbing laced around their chests. Kalashnikovs hung by their soldiers and their bright-green steel helmets with the large Red Star painted on their foreheads were attached by slings to the rest of the webbing, smacking against the AK clips with an annoying clanking sound. Two of the men hauled a DShKM on a wheeled mount down toward a fortified position ahead, where Sandbag walls had been created and an AA gun, a ZU-23-2 with its two skeletal barrels, was aimed up at the sky, spitting explosive rounds up into the black sky.
A Soviet soldier showed the boy to halt as he came into the intersection and spoke to him "What're you looking for, comrade messenger?"
"CP Anton. I've got a letter for comrade major Tarkov, top-secret and straight from the Kremlin." The boy said, snapping a salute as he noticed the Anti-Air officer's rank on his khaki collar, that of First Lieutenant. The First Lieutenant saluted back, then pointed to the left, down to the main Bolshoy Prospekt boulevard. He told the boy calmly "Down to the boulevard and straight, comrade. Watch it. Reports have it that the Americans have sent a wave of elite paratroopers first,as souts, before calling the main air wave."
"Yes, sir, Comrade lieutenant. Give them hell!" The boy crisply saluted. He turned and continued his sprint as the first bombs fell on the far side of Leningrad. He looked back, to catch a glimpse of the scarlet-orange blaze of the firebombs lighting the horizon and the distant districts on fire. He growled in anger. The bastard yankees would pay for this when the Tupolevs and missiles would reach their damned shore and burn all of them alive.
He gazed ahead, to see a squad of Soviet troopers waving him forward and pointing him to the left, toward the CP. He nodded to them as he took a stride, thanking the boys, probably just a tad older than him, with a lax nod. His stride continued until he turned a corner. He dived fast back behind the wall as bullets screamed past him, hitting snow and the concrete wall, scratching and sending sparks toward the boy. He swore, then reached for his gun, an old, surplus Kalashnikov. It was rusty, the wood was moldy, but the damn thing still fired well in training.
He racked the bolt of the weapon, then heard the voices of the Americans, speaking in their odd English. He understood words and words. "Advance upon position" was what he pulled out of his lexicon there. Footsteps sounded off, creaking against the snow... The boy sniffed, pressing hard against the wall. He swallowed air, then peeked out of cover with the AK and fired... The return fire was hellish. They must've had a machinegun with them...
He knelt, then fired a burst blindly at the yanks. A groan and the sound of snow collapsing under weight told the boy he'd hit SOMETHING at least. He made a quick count of how much ammo he brought with him as the sirens wailed in his head and the AAA made his already-overworked heart throb even faster. He had four clips, plus the one in the weapon making five. He'd just fired 15 rounds, leaving him at another 15 in the current mag and only one round probably hit out of all he'd shot blindly. He also had his surplus Tokarev, gifted to him by his grandfather, a former NKVD commissar in World War II.
As the boy peeked from cover, a glancing shot scratched his cheek, making him fall to his knees, peek and aim... He locked onto the green-and-white American uniform closest, then squeezed the trigger. The gun barked twice, blood stained a uniform and a second body fell. He swept to the left and fired again. Two shots, both missed. He was down to 11 in the mag...
The response fire was, yet again, terrible. Two voices sounded closer... He growled, then murmured something to himself and dived from cover, firing a burst as he slowly flew in the air. Six rounds, five misses. He caught another one in the side, but the bugger was just grazed. Lead flew around him as the boy had to roll to his feet and dash for the next piece of cover he could find. A shot grazed his arm, another his stomach, but he didn't relent. He dived behind a parked, abandoned car on the side of the road as the sound of metal impacting metal slightly muffled the AA gun's firing. The windshield and windows of the car were shattered to bits by bursts of Yankee fire, but the boy knew how to deal with it.
He looked through under the car, to see their feet, poked the muzzle of his AK under the vehicle and, with a roar, he fired his last remaining rounds until the gun clicked, knocking two of the three remaining Americans on the floor, with the last two rounds finishing them off. He heard footsteps behind him and gasped, rolling back and parrying a bayonet strike, halting it just in front of his face with the empty rifle. The American blade was inches from his face and the strong push intended for it to reach his throat... But the boy pushed back, gritting his teeth at the blade.
He gazed past the hands covered in winter clothing, to sight a young man, probably two years older than him, pressing with all his strength, teeth clenched, breath ragged and steaming in the cool air of northern Russia, his blue eyes, bloodshot. The struggle continued, with the two equal in strength, until Aleksei delivered a kick to the back of the man's head, making him reel in pain off the boy. He delivered a double-kick to the stomach of the Yankee again, sending him sprawling on the floor, before pouncing to his feet, slinging his AK onto his back and drawing out his own knife, a blade made by his father in his spare time, with hard stamped steel and wood from the stove. He pounced on the American, who gripped his hands and snarled, stopping the attack inches from his jugular.
"You... American... Dog..." The boy cursed, struggling to push the knife down into the airdropped bastard's throat. The Yankee said something in English. The two were yet again in a deadlock... But the American froze upon hearing a whistle in the air... A whistle that muffled anything else, making even Aleksei's eyes widen... A whistle that donned the clothes of Death itself...
The boy stood up to his feet, leaving the American on the floor, before looking up at the sky... There, he saw a single, gigantic bomb falling from the monstrosity of a bomber called the B52 Stratofortress... A second bomb followed it in close proximity, heading for the Sankt Peter palace square, whilst the first one was aimed at the old town center... The boy stared on, with disbelief, as the knife fell into the frosted snow next to his boot.
"No..." The boy murmured, watching the pair of Nuclear Bombs fall through the curtain of flak and rockets, ignored by the armament in favor of now-burning planes... "No..." He spoke again, but a distant, tearful whisper... His entire family was near Sankt Peter Square, hiding and praying their son would come home again, their young son. He'd lived in Leningrad all his life... All of it... His little sister, 1-year-old Andrea, his older brother, , 19-year-old Maxim, wounded early in the war... His mother, 42-year-old Lyudmilla and his father, 46-year-old Pavel, they'd would die first... They'd die... He'd never see them again...
The American whimpered, then hollered up into the sky angrily. The Russian boy was too stunned, too downed to say anything... He fell to his knees, then cursed the bombs that fell upon the city... That fell upon his home... He cursed them silently, his mouth closed, as a warm tear fell from his cheek into the snow. The flashes, two, came, making the boy shield his eyes and take cover, screaming out unintelligible, inarticulated words... Then thunder rumbled, enveloping the city in flames and shock. Before he was taken by the burning hot wave of radiation, he cursed aloud the families of every American, of their leaders and of their descendants, crying the flash-burning death tears...
Then all was silence...
Somewhere in North-East Ooo. A millennium later.
Marceline, the young, proud and beautiful Vampire queen floated through the dense, snowed-on forests near the Ice Kingdom, right at the borders. She whistled a happy tune Finn had some three weeks ago taught her. She was slightly annoyed, because the tune didn't dare leave her head, not allowing her to write any more songs. She sighed, pushing her jet-black hair over her shoulders and gazing about with her crimson eyes. Trees, trees and trees...
"Well... This place is as dull and boring as I remember it..." She muttered to herself. The young woman had the looks of a beautiful seventeen-year-old teenage girl from back in the old days, save for her sickly pale, almost gray skin. She wore a grey tank top, tucked underneath a blue winter coat with a fur collar, as well as dark-blue jeans and a pair of leather boots. Slung behind her was her bass-ax, a strange combo of a guitar and a two-bladed battle-ax, that she'd always enjoyed using both for songs and to kill monsters.
The girl slightly tumbled as she extended her legs, to try and walk a bit and stretch them out... She looked down, to see, caught in the snow, something made of bone. She knelt and dug it out, only to reveal it as a skull. Laying beside it was a strange metal contraption... What were these things called... Ah, right, Guns. A gun... She looked at the disabled gun with a bit of familiarity, she knew not from where... Before leaving it be and continuing her now-walk toward a cave ahead.
She poked her head into the dark cave with a smile, then asked "Hello, anyone in there?" only for the echo inside to repeat what she said. She shrugged, then carelessly walked in, staring at the ice walls, stalagmites and stalagtites that'd formed about. Nothing she hadn't seen before in Ice King's little place, but... Wait... She looked over ahead, to see... She moved toward an ice wall, wiping away the fog with her gloved hand, only to be greeted by a face. A young face, handsome too. It looked contorted, sad and angry, tears clearly having run down those young cheeks many years ago. The boy had good looks to his side, but he also had... What in... He wore a green helmet, with a crimson star emblazoned upon the forehead. Familiar symbol. Far too familiar.
She felt a hint of dread. Not something she was too used to... A sentiment she'd long ago forgotten. Looking at the boy, she wiped further fog away and dread overtook her more and more as she saw the armor, the gear and the weapons the boy carried. He was clad in a green uniform, with heavy armor and webbing for ammo, with even a holster to his side that housed a pistol, and a messenger's bag just behind him. She staggered back as memories flooded her of the old days... And of the propaganda.
"A... Commie? That's what you are. A damn commie." She whispered to herself, awed as she placed a hand by the boy's face, feeling the cold of the ice "Didn't you guys die too, after the Great Mushroom War?"
He was clearly human, that much was obvious at first glance. It'd been a thousand and some years since the bombs dropped. She knew them still, from visual memory. The soldiers of the Soviet Union, Commies as they were called. Oh, how she still remembered the rousing war calls of her people, oh the patriotism echoing from them 'BETTER DEAD THEN RED' and 'THE ONLY GOOD COMMIE'S A DEAD COMMIE'. She slightly chuckled, then shook her head and said to herself more seriously "But... What do I do with you? I mean, I can't take you home, can I? You're frozen solid and probably dead."
She bit her lip, then murmured to herself "Then again, if you aren't and I wake you up, chances are you'll try and kill me... So you're kinda dead eitherway."
She stared at his face and a pang of guilt took her. Yet again, another feeling she hadn't felt in a while... She sighed, then hit her head twice, thinking how to wake the boy up. She took a piece of tech given to her by Princess Bubblegum, a pocket heater as she called it, then examined it. The small, round device had grating and small heat lamps attached to it, as well as a mechanism to latch onto walls and hard materials, like Ice. Convenient. She placed it against the ice wall the boy was in and set it to slow heating, before sitting down and leaning against the other ice wall just across from him.
She looked at the boy, having second-thoughts again, then said to herself "Maybe you can tell me how life was with the other side... Or how life was back before the War, at least." leaning her head against the ice. She closed her eyes, then opened them again... To see the ice nearly melted. The girl gasped as the boy was beginning to thaw, then rushed to his side, grabbing him before he fell. His weapon clattered to the floor, followed by a strange bowie knife, right next to him. The girl felt the side of his neck for his pulse... He still had it! HE WAS ALIVE!
"Alright!" She pumped her fist in the air cheerfully... Then remembered this was still a commie.
She felt a slight hunger... Looking down at the side of his neck as the boy breathed raggedly, the girl's fangs were unveiled almost instinctively. She leaned over, then said to herself "One bite... No." She backed off, shaking her head "Just awoken and you wanna draw blood... Not a good idea..." and picking him up afterward. She took his gun and knife too, slinging them over her shoulder and into her boot, respectively. She looked at him as he started breathing normally, then smirked and said "I'll take ya home. Get ya warm."
... He inhaled deeply from the cold air, awakened... His vision was darkened. Had he gone blind? Had the flash gotten him?
He heard the whistle of the air by his ears, felt the cold slamming into his face... Had it all been just a dream? Slowly... Slowly, but surely, he opened his eyes, to see the rushing snow around him, coming from the dark clouds above. He inhaled the cold winter air, then exhaled steam, before muttering to himself "Am I dead?" in English. A voice, jovial and cute, but with an American accent, was quick to answer "Nope."
He gasped, turning to the left to see the pale girl carrying him in a bridal hold. His eyes were wide... He was stunned by her beauty. His emerald eyes were wide, locked with her scarlet ones. She gave him a smirk and warned "Uuhm... Don't look down, okay?" in that damnable yankee accent again. The boy's brow quirked up questioningly as he slowly turned his head... His heart skipped a pair of beats as he looked down, to see the ground rushing below him.
"WHAT THE FUCK!?" He hollered out in surprise, grappling onto the girl's neck with both his arms wrapped around it. The girl chuckled and said "You've got a cute accent, Commie-boy."
He looked to her, to see her off the ground with him in her arms, then asked "HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU FLYING!?" worriedly. The girl tilted her head, giving him a wider smile, and said "I'm a Vampire." simply and nonchalantly. The boy looked at her and returned "You're joking." almost immediately staggering as the girl showed her sharpened canines, her fangs, in a toothy grin. "CYKA, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?! HAVE I GONE BATSHIT INSANE?!"
The girl laughed, then responded "I got ya out of that Ice you were in, buddy. You're welcome by the way."
"GET ME DOWN! I'M NOT VDV, I'M AFRAID OF HEIGHTS!" The boy protested.
She shrugged, then said "We're nearly there, so hang on."
"THERE?! THERE WHERE?!" He asked again. "WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?!"
"Jeez, you ask a lot of questions. My home." The girl rolled her eyes mockingly. "You feeling cold?" She asked, a bit of worry in her voice. The boy wanted to speak out again, but soon, he trembled and sneezed off to the side. He wiped the snot from his nose onto his sleeve, then swore behind his breath "Arg... I think I caught a severe cold. Would explain the fucking hallucinations I'm having..."
The girl let out a hearty laugh, before responding "Nah... Hang on." She then warned. The boy grabbed onto her neck, unsure of what came next... She dived, allowing the boy to scream a shrill scream so powerful, it was heard almost all around Ooo. They entered inside a cave, which just amplified the scream back at them, before the girl dropped him to the floor in front of a small house and placed his rifle and knife beside him. She cleared one of her ears with her pinkie, then said "WE'RE DOWN, YOU CAN STOP SCREAMING!"
The boy abruptly cut off and opened his eyes, then exhaled deeply... He stood up, dusted himself off and looked to the still-floating Marceline before yelling again "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU TRYING TO DO, KILL ME!? Blyat, I wish I was old enough to drink. I'd have been at a bar already..." to which the girl merely chuckled. Whilst the boy was distracted, she went face-to-face with him enough for him to get startled when he looked back up. He gasped and took two steps back, wrapping his hands around the holster of his pistol. He sighed, rubbed his eyes and said "Please... Do not do that..."
Marcy shrugged, then said calmly "Alright... Also, we didn't introduce ourselves to each-other. I'm Marceline."
Aleksei's eyebrow twitched thanks to the strange girl "Aleksei."
She nodded with a smirk, then said "Alright, Aleksei. Nice to meetcha... Now, how about we go inside. It's getting chilly out here."
He looked toward Marceline's house, a small, lifted home with a white picket fence and green grass at the front porch. It was a two-story building, painted pink, with a brown roof. It seemed relatively big for a single person to live in, but hell if the Russian didn't know any better. He and his family'd been living in a one-room apartment for most of their life back in Len-... His look went grim as he picked up his gear, the knife and rifle...
"What's the matter?" Marcy asked with worry, looking at him. He looked to her, then shrugged off the feeling and shook his head "Nothing... Lead the way in."
The Vampire girl smirked as she floated up the stairs, followed by the ubiquitous heavy steps of the young messenger's boots. The girl produced a key from the lord knew where, placed it in the keyhole and said "Welcome, to my humble abode..." before spinning the key calmly... She walked in first, followed by the boy, who walked in reluctantly.
He was not disappointed...
