"Vladimir!" Larry said as he opened the door.
"Larry!" Vladimir responded, obviously happy to see his old friend.
Standing in the doorway was a Yutobanian man measuring six foot one. He had messy black hair which looked like it hadn't been cut in at least six months. Vladimir's body looked similar to that of Stefan's, but with lesser-built arms. If he, Stefan, and Larry standing side-by-side, they would look almost exactly the same except for their faces and their hair, as well as minor details. Both gave each other a friendly pat on the back and Larry invited him into the penthouse.
Stefan was standing near the fireplace as Vladimir entered. He turned around to face the new guest.
"So this is the infamous Demon Lord I've heard so much about, huh?" he said.
"To the rest of the world, it's the famous Demon Lord." Vladimir responded.
Stefan walked up to him and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise."
Vladimir turned his attention to Jessica and said, "Lemme guess, this is the lovely Jessica Flechazo that I've heard of back at Valais?"
Larry looked at him and smiled. "Jessica Foulke now."
"Ah, I see." Vladimir walked towards her and offered his hand to her. Jessica took it and he kissed her hand. "Very nice to meet you Jessica. Larry wouldn't stop talking about you when we weren't flying around in combat."
Jessica blushed. "Why do I not find that hard to believe?"
Vladimir turned his head towards Larry and said, "Hey, I have a little gift in my car for you. Can you help me get it out?" He turned to Stefan and said, "And you too, umm…"
"My name is Stefan." He finished Vladimir's sentence, "And sure, I'll come."
The trio walked out of the penthouse, leaving Larry's parents and Jessica behind. They walked towards the elevator as they closed the door behind them.
The elevator came to a halt as the doors opened on the fourth floor of the building. The group stepped out and walked towards a parked 2002 Kia Sportage roughly twenty meters away. The dark green paintjob on the car almost blended into the shadows of the parking garage if it wasn't for the brake lights. On the rear bumber of the SUV was a bumber stick of the Yutobanian flag. Vladimir opened the rear hatch and Larry starred at what could be the best thing since sliced bread: Vladivostok lager, all the way from Yutobania. His car was filled with the drink by the box load.
"Wow…" Larry said his jaw dropping.
"Happy wedding?" Vladimir joked, smiling as he talked.
"This must have been expensive Vladimir. Must have been in the range of around eight hundred dollars worth of beer?"
"Nah," Vladimir explained, "That's only in this part of Belka. Back home in Cinigrad, it only cost me two hundred dollars to get all this you see in my car."
"That's pretty good Vladimir, you've outdone yourself this time…" Larry said, still in shock.
"Maybe." He replied, "Let's get this out of the car."
"Where you want all this Larry?" Stefan asked, holding a heavy box in his hands.
"Bring a few boxes back to the penthouse, the rest go in my car." Larry answered.
Everyone grabbed some boxes and went to the elevator. As the elevator picked up speed, the loads in their hands grew heavier. A minute or two after, they reached the top floor and Jessica, waiting just outside of the penthouse, opened the door for them. She was stunned at the amount of Vladivostok Vladimir brought with him. Stefan, Vladimir, and Larry walked in and set the boxes next to the couch. They then returned to the elevator and went to the parking garage to get the rest. As they got more boxes, Larry showed them the way to his car, a white 2005 Chevy Trailblazer. Within half an hour, they finished the transfer of beer from the Sportage to the Trailblazer. Altogether, there were about twenty-five boxes of Vladivostok lager.
Larry was back in the armchair, opening another bottle of Vladivostok with a bottle opener attached to his utility knife Stefan, Vladimir, and Albert did the same. Jutta was on the couch trying to find room now that Albert and Vladimir were sitting down. With everyone else taking up the couch, Jessica ending up sitting with Larry on the armchair. He tried to make room for her, but the chair was only so wide, so she decided to sit on one of the arms and ended up sitting on the right side of Larry. He wrapped his right arm around her and had his hand rest on her leg. Jessica leaned towards him as Larry continued the storytelling once more.
"Vladimir, I was telling everyone about my Belkan War adventures. I believe I left off just when the war started." Larry explained.
"Alright" he responded.
"A lot of the Belkan War was pretty easy in the beginning," Larry said, "We had to defend out base once, some bombing missions, and the like. It was basically easy money."
Vladimir interrupted and said, "The first time we had any major resistance was when we went out to B7R for the first time and ran into Rot Squadron. I do believe you might know them."
"Yeah, they were famous in the BAF, touring the country as much as they fought." Stefan said.
"They were a tough group to beat. My blue Eagle could barely keep up with their red and black Typhoons. Larry also had similar problems." Vladimir explained.
"After that, we started out path to glory and fame, especially after freeing the capital city of Directus. Our Eagles were shown on almost every recruitment poster in Ustio as we were looked upon as gods of war." Larry said, "Both of us enjoyed this fame to the fullest extent. Maintenance crew or pilot, it didn't matter; everyone wanted a piece of us on both sides of the conflict."
"A lot had changed when PJ started flying combat missions with us though." Vladimir said.
"Who's that? I've never heard of him during the war." Stefan asked.
"Stefan, you were on the western front. We're talking about Ustio…" Larry said, annoyed, "I would doubt that you would have ever heard of him."
"That was the nickname of one of the newer mercenary pilots by the name of Patrick James, or PJ for short. He was in Crow Squadron, 6th Air Division, Ustio Air Force." Vladimir said.
"He was a pretty decent pilot." Larry added, "He flew about as well as me, but he wasn't very focused on the missions at hand."
"He would talk about his beliefs on the war and his old squadron would mess around with him about his girlfriend back in Osea. I saw a picture of her once when I was talking to him awhile ago…" Vladimir said in a plaintive tone, "She was very nice."
Larry started to grow nervous. "Anyways," he continued, "Everything was going fine for me until the invasion of Belka by the Allied Forces. At first, I wasn't comfortable with doing so, but I had my orders; I just did as little damage a I could while still completing the objectives set out my the base commander and my flight lead Vladimir. He did the same as me, trying to destroy as little as possible, but he had different motives than I had since he wasn't Belkan and it wouldn't have had made a difference to him in that aspect."
Larry drunk some more from his bottle of Vladivostok to clear his throat and said, "It all went downhill when we were ordered to escort Allied bombers to Hoffnung. I figured that it was a precision bombing raid meant to take out the Belkan Army's manufacturing capacity, so I was fine with having to bomb some parts of my hometown. When we reached the target late at night though, I saw that the bombers got there first and started dropping their payloads all over the city; I was never expecting the Allied Forces to do such a thing as carpet bombing an entire city full of civilians."
"I know that Larry," Albert said, "We were still living there that night. You remember how the living room was laid out, right Larry? Anyways, the couch was facing the glass wall overlooking Hoffnung and I watched as the southern part went up in flames."
"I thought you had already moved to Anfang by then." Larry said, shocked.
"We were moving out then, but we didn't completely move out until a week afterwards."
Larry paused for a moment and then continued, "I was disturbed by both the sight of my hometown burning to the ground and the fact that it was the Allies that were doing such a crime as to bomb civilian areas of the city. They didn't even care where their bombs landed; so long as their bomber was fully emptied of its payload they were fine with it. Once I'd returned to Valais, I wondered if Hoffnung would be an exception or if the Allies would continue to bomb cities throughout the campaign."
"It felt like forever before we went on out next mission." Vladimir said, "We were ordered to watch over a group or something, but when we reached an area just outside where we were suppose to be, we'd received a urgent message from HQ that bombers armed with nuclear weapons were heading for Ustio and would be flying through our airspace."
Larry added on, "I saw this as a chance to escape the horrors of what I've seen as the truthful intentions of the Allied commanders, those evil bastards. I slowed my plane down and only shot at planes that Galm and Crow teams missed while slipping away. When the bomber group was destroyed by both Ustian forces as well as, to our surprise, South Belkan fighters, we learned that they were only a decoy when another group of aircraft suddenly appeared to the far south and dropped the real nukes ajar to our airspace. Our electrical equipment went haywire and it was difficult to control our fighters for around ten seconds before the equipment somewhat had restored itself. I attempted my escape but just then, Vladimir flew to me and he rejoined the flight, making it impossible for me to sneak out. Because of that, I had no other choice but to open fire on my buddy. I didn't want to completely annihilate him, so instead I just shot at him randomly with my missiles, not allowing them to lock on to his fighter. I continued forcing him to avoid me until a defected Osean squadron, Wizard, shown up with defected Su-27 fighters to cover my escape. I was glad that they did show up since I was afraid that my encrypted messages for help hadn't reached them."
"But how could you have possibly have known that Wizard had defected?" Stefan said, "I mean, you did say that the pilots at Valais couldn't use a phone or anything like that."
"Well that's true," Larry explained, "But military communications were permitted. I used this to my advantage and searched for anything talking about missing pilots or even squadrons. That's how I knew Wizard wasn't with Osea anymore."
He paused in his speech momentarily and then said, "Once I was under the protection of the renegade forces, I was relieved to be away from all the confusing warfare that the Allies were carrying out, even though it was at a great cost of having to loose all contact with my friends back at base and possibly not receiving pay from whoever I could have been working for next. Under this renewed euphoria of delight, I failed to see what lay ahead of me with the defected forces and whether or not I would be able to go back to living the same life I once had with my family and Jessica."