Interlude 5: Negotiations

Vadim smirked before he finally showed his face to Mika the Thief. She is good with hiding her emotions, he reminded himself, what his cестра told him before he and a few others were given her approval of borrowing the IS-2.

"Are you gonna waste a whole day staring at me, or what?!" he shouted/asked her and the Thief blinked like she undersood nothing he said, which annoyed him. He wanted this to be over, just to face against the Traitor Boris and his crew ASAP and disable their tank, but Mika wasn't making it any easier.

"The wind blows in a strange manner around you." she responded and Vadim had a hard time resisting the urge to hit her. If anything, Nonna wanted the missin to end without an injury on either side so, if he hits Mika, he'll be on Potato duty for the next month. And Potato duty was something, he wanted to avoid.

"Stop with that wind nonsense," he warned after a while, he used to stop his anger before he acted. After all, he didn't want to be feared too much. If that happened, someone would organise a coup to remove him from his (newly established) role as the Boy squad commander of Pravda.

"Very well, I'll return the tanks-" she tried to trick him with skmething and he stopped her with raising his left hand. "No. You'll announce it before your team first," he said after a few seconds and whistled.

Suddenly, three of his six appointed helpers entered the garage with Aki and Mikko in their grasp. "Now, you have only to say that you return all T-34/76s, BT-7 and the KV-85," Vadim whispered to her with almost unnoticable trace of care in his voice and he smiled slightly, when she nodded.

Mika was surprised. She had never met someone from Pravda, much less Nonna's brother, who'll act like he did just now. Something's off, she realized after a while and shot the boy a look filled with worry and was that pity?! for a split second.

"Товарищ Vadim!" one of the three newcomers shouted as he pushed Mikko on the ground. "Let us beat them to a pulp and you get the tanks!" the lackey continued with a hint of bloodlust in his eyes.

"Нет. Товарищ Nonna told me to not hit them. You really want the Potato duty or Gulag, do you, Konstantin?" the newly named Vadim asked the fiery redhead with a hint of warning in his now very cold voice.

Mika shivered again after hearing that. But, Konstantin seemed unfazed by it. "You can't order me, товарищ!" the redhead shouted and curled his hands into fists, his eyes locked on her and as he rushed to her, Mika instinctively curled into a ball to protect herself from the blows. And the silence was cut by a roar of pain.

But, it wasn't Mika's. No. She looked up and saw Vadim with a bit of blood on his own fist with Konstantin rolling on the floor and holding one hand over his nose, while the other one was located near his thighs.

"You dare disobey orders of my старшая сестра?!" Vadim growled at the crying mess of a formerly brave and mighty idiot, which thought playing NKVD is fun or something like that.

Mika sighed and walked over to Mikko and helped her stand up. "Fine," she said after a while, "you can take all four T-34/76s, BT-7 and KV-85 back. The Wind favors you this time."

Vadim briefly nodded at that and gestured his men to walk over to the still whimpering idiot and pick him up. "There'll be a debriefing, товарищ," was all Vadim said, before the four boys from Pravda walked over to the tanks they wanted and left about 20 minutes later.

An hour later...

Nonna nodded and let a small smile to escape her lips, when she heard the report from Vadim. "Also, we had a small complication... Konstantin tried to attack Mika, even knowing about the consequences. I think that Potato duty at least until the Exhibition match is the best solution."

"Да. We don't need a fiery redhead destroying Katyusha-sama's plan to defeat Oarai," she answered and made a quick note about Konstantin to not forget about him. It was her duty as the vice-captain to do so with uncooperative idiots and let Katyusha finish the debriefing.

And with that, she hung up the call and wrote down the things that Katyusha would be interested in delivering the punishment on Konstantin and making her родной брат really the commander of the boy crews that'll man the returned tanks.

But, before she did that, Nonna sent several planes to Vadim's location to get him back faster.

Later

Vadim sighed in relief, when hus feet touched the ground - or was it the deck? - of his home school ship. His mission was finally over and he can focus on finding the suitable crew for his tank - the KV-85 - that he claimed not long after leaving Jatkosota.

He suddenly felt someone staring at him and as he looked at the person, he smiled. His сестра was standing near the bronze statue of a KV-2 that was almost as old as both of them and Katyusha together.

She gave him only a brief nod with the smallest hint of a smile, before walking over to Konstantin and his guards - Vladimir and Josif - and actually slapped the idiot, which surprised even Vadim. They were twins after all and here he thought that she would only berate Konstantin.

"Off to gulag with him. Katyusha-sama wants him to start his Potato duty ASAP," she stated in her composed voice, but Vadim heard the hint of anger in it. And he couldn't help, but imagine seeing the unforgiving mythical Генерал Зима, instead of her.

Also, he noticed that he wasn't the only one who shivered and felt that he should be elsewhere, lest he wants to spark her ire towards more people than necessary.