Russian Madness: CAES

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Much violence, shooting, and translated Russian swearing involved. No real explicit gore...yet. Not until the next few chapters.

Note: to sum it up, no logic, no explanation, no reason. Only madness.
The Vodka Wars: CAES
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It was early morning, the air still cool and light dim. A soft breeze blew along yellowed grass. It smoothly traced around the overgrown stalks, flattened out, and ruffled over the outlines of the two men facing each other. They were sunk knee-deep in the field and were both very still. The little movement present was a slight swaying when the wind threatened to move one of them off balance. The only visual difference between them was a few markings of different color, other than they couldn’t be told apart. Both of them wore identical uniforms: non-reflective black suits with various equipment. The garbs could only be described as combat orientated, they had rigid guards over the shins and forearms and so forth, and combat vests were strapped over the torso. The only difference between them was a couple solid stripes over the shoulders-one red, and one blue. Both faces were also obscured, hidden behind heavy duty full coverage gas masks. The lenses over the eyes were mirrored, and a hose trailed from the mouth, over the shoulder, and down to relatively small gas canisters over the backs. Only two others things differed: hanging over the shoulders, rifles; holstered by the hips, pistols.
Despite the appearance of the suits, they both served a much more important purpose than was immediately discernible. Not fifteen meters away from the men stood a large gray-white monumental sign. Four block letters rose up over the supporting platform, all of them Cyrillic. Translated, they read CAES. The welcoming sign to Chernobyl Atomic Electro-Station.
Beneath the blocks was a much smaller Russian inscription, “Dedicated to V. I. Lenin”

The entrance to the Chernobyl power plant ran along the outside of the perimeter. Beyond the welcoming sign ran a long strip of pavement, which turned into the actual plant. To the right of this pavement was a water reservoir, the radioactive cooling pond. To the left ran a long section of wall topped with barbed wire. At the end of this runway was a gated section that turned into the actual plant.
The men stood midway down this roadway, Geiger counters strapped to the wrist, reading 0.834, microroentgen. Roughly eighty times normal. They were maybe 110 meters away from Unit-4, and it’s difficult to describe just how amazingly huge that structure is. The fence separating them from it seemed insignificant, the reactor building towering high enough to simply stun someone.
The signature tower stretching above it was long faded to white-a series of yellow painted scaffolding climbed up the East wall, closest to the men.
But neither of the men were focused on the time bomb ticking away not two hundred meters away from them. Instead, both of them were staring right at each others masked faces, and keeping a close eye on an object smack in between them. The object was almost obscured in grass, but the small shine of reflected light was easily visible.
The men stood six meters apart, and right in the middle of that space stood an upright bottle of Stolichnaya quality vodka, tinting the sunlight with a distinct smugness.

For sake of simplicity, the men shall be referred to as Syinii and Krasniy, or Sin and Kras for short. Kras, the red one, stood with his back to the CAES perimeter wall, while the blue one stood with has back to the water. Neither of them moved.
The sun slowly rose, the breeze continued to bend stalks of grass, and the men just faced off, the vodka between them. Minutes passed, a finger twitched. Sin slowly cocked his head, Kras remained paralytic. Slowly, Sin took a step forward, nothing happened. He took another step, closer to the vodka. Closer…
He stood right over it and looked a Kras, a slightly questioning glance. The Russian remained completely still, looked like he’d fallen asleep standing up. He didn’t move to stop him, didn’t say anything, didn’t even flinch. His hand hung loosely by the holstered pistol. Emboldened, Sin casually leaned over, reached his hand out to the bottle- a single bullet slammed into the cracked pavement by Sin’s hand.
The gunshot echoed off the walls and across the water. In one smooth, almost casual movement, like a gunslinger drawing a Peacemaker, Kras had drawn the USP, pointed, and pulled the trigger. Sin simply froze, his fingers inches away from the smooth glass of the vodka bottle. The .45 ACP cartridge shell pinged off the pavement and flipped over to the bottle, slowly rolling over to the glass base and nudging it with a tink.
Slowly he straightened out and looked at Kras again, annoyed. Kras held the USP with an almost lazy air, and briefly spoke. Out of the flowing Russian, a foreigner might have caught only one word, “Vodka”. Kras flipped over the USP and slipped it back into it’s holster. They were back to where they’d started, both staring at each other, silent. Only now Sin was less than a foot away from the bottle, and with having been so damn close to it, he wasn’t in the mood to wait so long again. He was too impatient, and so let just half an hour pass. The sun rose a fraction of a noticeable distance.
Faster than a snake, Sin bent over, grabbed the bottle by the neck, and took off, running North, toward the gate to the power plant. He got two meters before he felt an iron grip lock over his wrist and yank his arm over and twist it up behind his back. The other hand pulled his shoulder back and a foot slammed into the back of his leg, dropping him down to his knees. A second later Kras’ hand closed over the vodka in Sin’s grip.
The Russian voice over his shoulder was quiet, “My vodka.”
Sin’s response was swift and amiable, “Let’s share?”
A millisecond later he pivoted around, straightening out his arm, and swept his leg behind Kras’, pressing his other leg into the front of Kras’ ankle. One leg pushed into the back of Kras’ knees while the other swept his ankle back, sweeping his legs out in a scissor like motion. Kras fell forward, releasing Sin’s arm and the bottle to stop himself from falling flat on his face. A second later Sin’s foot slammed into his jaw, rolled him over, and Sin was on his feet again, rapidly fleeing along the roadway, with vodka in hand.
Kras was amazingly stoic, he never made a sound, but this didn’t prevent several moments of dazed pain as he lay on the pavement, clutching his chin. The mask had absorbed most of the blow however, and as he lay on his side, his eyes were focused on the fleeing figure. More accurately, on the glass bottle in the figures hand.

There was rapid swearing in Russian, and then Kras was on his feet and sprinting toward the blue marked bastard as if he held the elixir of life. Sin had the head start, but there was an immediate problem. In less than five seconds he’d reached the double gated barrier that separated him from the Chernobyl power plant. It was a box shaped border, blocked by a white gate.
Sin quickly tore open a large pouch above his waist and slipped the bottle inside, freeing up his hand as he secured the vodka in the pouch.
His movements were slightly panicked; he could hear the sharp slapping of footsteps behind him, accompanied by a stream of Russian swearing as Kras sprinted closer- rapidly closing the distance while Sin worked with the gate.
He managed to get the gate to open, started to swing it out, scraping the bottom over the concrete, and then he was bodily slammed into the white bars. Kras spun him around by the shoulders and slammed his back into the gate again, striking out at the helmeted face and head. It was swift, frenzied, and amusingly violent. For his part, Sin didn’t really fight back, covering his head with a forearm instead while he dragged himself over the gate, trying to get through the thin space he’d pulled open. It took a few seconds of harsh blows and high school-like shoving until Sin finally wedged himself through the gate, shoved Kras back with a foot to the chest, and slipped inside the checkpoint. Before Kras could follow him inside he quickly grabbed the gate and slid it back into place.
Kras was yanking the gate back open an instant later, while Sin was busy getting through the second one. The second gate opened much smoothed, and Sin got through it and slid it back into place a split second before Kras slid past the first one. This time though, fate decided to act biased. The second gate had a rusted, radioactive padlock hanging from it. A heavy effort slid the rusty lock home, and with a click the Kras was locked out.
Sin backpedaled a few steps, and was about to take advantage of the delay when Kras threw traditional methods to the wind. Rather than opening up the second gate, Kras used simply charged straight at it and jumped up. His foot kicked into the gate for an added boost. His hands closed around the top bar and he vaulted over it like a gymnast, barbed wire and all. Kras flipped over the top and landed straight in front of Sin. The two stood straight, looking at each other for three seconds.
Sin’s voice sounded over the breeze, “Oh.”
Kras’s arm lashed out in a sideways blow-Sin ducked under it, spun around, and sprinted away again, like a pair playing tag. Kras was right behind him. His hand fell on Sin’s shoulder, who instantly ducked down in a solid crouch-Kras ran straight into him and tripped over, flipping straight onto his back. Sin rushed by, gaining a meters advantage as an entire encyclopedia of Slavic swearing sounded after him. Most were about his mother and penises.

Sprinting like a madman, Sin arced his way around a pile of irradiated pipes and rapidly moved over to the Eastern wall of the Unit-4 Shelter, heading straight to the yellow scaffolding that climbed up to the roof. Sin took the proper route, stepping around the railing and quickly moving up the metal stairs. Kras opted to kick jump straight to the first landing, hauling himself over a quarter of a second as Sin’s blurred form passed it, and then the two were rapidly spiraling up the scaffolding, Sin just a few steps ahead of Kras, who did his part by constantly lashing out in an attempt to grab Sin’s head, missing each time. He wizened up two landings later, which meant three seconds of running.
As Sin turned on the landing to get on the next flight, Kras simply leaned over the railing separating flights and grabbed Sin’s leg. Sin instantly fell flat on his face against the steps, rolling over and kicking out at the hand clutching his foot. Kras just dragged him over like a bear, steadily pulling Sin’s flailing form through the railing and onto his own flight.
He might have dragged him out, stomped on his face, and threw him off the scaffolding, but long experience in grappling for both of them meant a heightened creativity in combat for improvisation. Which in this case translated to Sin moving his leg down under the railing, which meant that Kras' hand was stretched out on top of the bar. A moment later Sin’s other leg stomped straight into the back of Kras’ hand, slamming it between boot and bar.
In America, a common thing to say would be “Son of a bitch.” In Russia, they prefer to be more direct: Kras’ snarl of pain was accompanied by “*pauk* your mother!”

Maternal swearing or not, Kras’ hand released Sin’s leg in avoidance of being shattered, and the now liberated leg slammed into Kras’ chest. The red marked combatant fell back down the flight and hit the railing at the landing, while Sin continued his journey upward.
The two were now separated by a couple flights, and the journey continued upward with unheeded pace-rapidly circling around flight after flight as the pair made their way up the wall of a twenty year old Radioactive box.

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I have included three pictures here. These are the only ones tossed in, posted so that people may get a much easier understanding of the scenery and location. It's easier that way.
www.pripyat.nu/stalker/pripyat/chernobyl/slides/chernobyl_power_plant_sign.html
www.pripyat.nu/stalker/pripyat/chernobyl/slides/chernobyl_reactor_4_four_3.html
www.pripyat.nu/stalker/pripyat/chernobyl/slides/chernobyl_reactor_4_four_4.html

[Spooky]

I like it. I can imagine it getting made into a short flash film, or something of that nature. It's got good descriptive language, and reminds me a bit of 'My Skull!' here, except between two people and much deeper. The only thing I had a bit of trouble with was the action sequence. With all of the explanation it was a tiny bit hard to follow what was happening, and made it seem a bit slow placed. It's probably only me, and that's your writing style, so there's nothing wrong with that. Just something I thought I might point out.
Looking forward to the next addition.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Well, thanks for the note. Honestly, I'm just trying to do a pointless, rather comical story for sheer entertainment purposes through highly unlikely Hollywood style action with no real literary value.
Think Grindhouse...ish.

If the actual action and running around seems slow or bogged though, that kind of screws over the only thing that's being worked on with this story, so I'll definitely need to work that out. I probably won't be able to change that anytime soon, but I'll try and make it at least somewhat better connected and understandable. Either way, thanks for ze comments.

---------------------------------------------
Naturally, Sin got onto the roof of the Sarcophagus first, though this wasn’t much help considering that he was now stuck on top of an exploded reactor with nowhere to flee. He briefly wondered if he’d have enough time to drink the bottle before Comrade Red caught up with him. It was the optimistic voice that gave birth to such an idea, but the quiet, snobby realist in him just shook its head and nudged him, Nah-ah.


With that aside, Sin opted to sprint across the roof to the other side of the building, the optimist in him once again hoping that there might be more scaffolding on the other wall. Midway down the whole building, the Sarcophagus ended and the original Unit-4 building began. The transition was a sloped ramp midway along the structure, which moved up to the platform with the distinctive Chernobyl tower.
Had it not been for the situation, both men might have stopped to consider the convoluted beauty of the place. On top of the Unit-4 Sarcophagus…the sun rising to the East, bathing the concrete in the cooler light of morning. A strong, cool wind flowing around them. From such a height, the grasslands and water could be seen with ease, and a place to watch the sunrise was simply unparalleled. That is, if one ignored the fact that the immediate several kilometers were irradiated and that trucks strewn about were still clicking at 30 Roentgens per hour. A good philosophy is to focus on the good things in life, and that’s precisely why Kras didn’t notice the scenery but focused only on the carrier of Stolichnaya vodka.


Sin just ducked under the tower pylons and continued to run straight to the opposite edge, the optimist urging him on. In a few moments however, the pessimist got an excuse to slap the optimist over the head. Sin was still sprinting at top speed when he reached the edge, and ended up almost running straight off the roof. The West side had no scaffolding, no stairs, and no teleporters.
Sin noticed this little detail just a couple seconds before he’d have leaped right off. The result was undignified to say the least and to sum up the rapid attempts at stopping, Sin ended up with his toes sticking over the edge, his momentum threatening to shift his center of gravity right over the edge. For several seconds his body was tense, leaning back from the lethal fall centimeters away, and then he barely made it, stumbling back a couple of steps from overbalancing. His breathing was heavy, and he leaned forward a bit, looking over the edge he'd almost fallen over. He stepped back again and sighed with relief. Kras shoved him off a second later.


Sin felt the weight slam into his back, stumbled forward, and saw the world tilt sideways as he turned around, falling over backward. Sin's body tipped back over the edge, one foot still on the roof and furiously windmilling his arms. His stomach seemed to vanish as gravity took it’s hold, and the only thing that stopped him from yelling “Mama!” was a much better savior.
“Hey hey! The vodka!”


Kras grabbed him by the collar a millisecond later, just as Sin was about to tilt right off. Sin was a little too terrified at the moment to say anything, seeing as his entire body was leaning off the structure. Kras looked at him for a moment, then down to the pouch with the vodka, then back up to Sin. A few seconds passed as his mind made sense of the situation, and then he groaned, “Aw, God damn it…”

Kras grabbed Sin’s arm with his other hand and pulled him back onto the roof. Five seconds later both of them were sitting down and discussing the matter.
“All right, obviously this bickering is going nowhere. When one of us has the vodka, they can’t drink it because the other is right on top of him.”

Sin was nodding in absolute agreement, “And we risk breaking the bottle for that matter. So what’s your suggestion?”

“I say we put the bottle down on the roof, walk away, kill each other, and the survivor can return to the bottle without the risk of breaking it.”

Sin’s voice was completely casual, as was the suggestion, “That works out. Let’s just leave it down in the middle of the roof. We’ll take care of business near on one side or the other.”

Kras shrugged, “Sure.”

Sin pulled out the bottle and both of them walked back to the center of the roof, no hurry. The sheer amiable casualness with which they discussed business was remarkably insane. They spoke and acted as if it was an everyday occurrence, which was actually rather likely.
Sin set the bottle down right in the center of the roof, upright. Kras nodded, “Ok then. You want to go to the East side or the West side?”

“How about South side?”

“Too dangerous for the bottle. That place is friendly fire haven.”

“Ah let’s go East than. With the bottle no longer present as a shield, guns up?”

Kras might have answered, but exactly two seconds after the question, there was a sharp crack, and the chunk of concrete directly below the bottle fragmented and fell away. The bottle fell down after it, leaving a fist sized dark hole in the roof.
Both men were completely frozen, staring at the hole. The sounds of the bottle hitting things on the way down wafted up from the black circle, fading to silence as the bottle fell farther and farther away. There was no sound of it shattering.

Six minutes passed, both men were still staring at the hole. Kras finally broke the silence, “Huh.”

Sin’s voice was welded with disbelief, “Is that even possible?”

Kras waited several seconds as he tried to make sense of the sheer mind-boggling mechanics of what had happened.
“I guess….since it has happened, that it is possible for a chunk of a solid concrete radiation confinement building to break off when a few hundred grams of weight are set on it, but the rest of the multiple kiloton engineering supported structure to remain stable.”

“Hmm…”

The two men looked up at each other, then looked back at the hole. They looked up again a moment later. Sin said, “Well…if that’s the case, let's get this over with.”


The rifle that the two were carried was an AKS-74u, a compact version of the AK-74 with a folding stock. When Sin finished speaking, he instantly pulled up the rifle and opened fire. The bullets struck only concrete; Kras was already gone, sprinting to the Southern wall faster than an Olympic track runner.
Sin fired after him in an arc, spraying rounds in his general direction without really aiming. The only reason Kras wasn’t nailed was really a combination of protagonist luck and a leap of faith. He reached the South wall, leaped over the waist high railing, and dropped straight off of the Sarcophagus a bare moment after Sin starting shooting.


It wasn’t a straight drop the ground however. The Southern and Northern sides of the Chernobyl Sarcophagus weren’t vertical. Immediately over the railing, the roof only sloped down before it finally sheered off onto a yellow catwalk. Over that catwalk was a straight drop to a large ledge, which dropped onto another one, and then onto the ground.
The walls were much like a very large stairway.

Kras hit the sloped roof on his hands and rolled over to his side, rapidly sliding down the metal sheet. Sin reached the railing a few moments later, but didn’t follow, instead shooting at the fleeing figure. The bullets punched straight into the rusted metal, throwing up sparks around Kras, who could do nothing but pray for a few milliseconds.
He slid off the edge of the roof and fell onto the catwalk running alongside it. Without a single pause for fear, he vaulted over the railing and fell away, dropping a straight twenty through thirty feet to the ledge below him.


The most likely reason for why Kras’ leg didn’t shatter when he landed was technique. He hit the metal on the balls of his feet and toes, keeping most of the bone away from impact. His legs instantly bent, the strong muscles of the calf and thigh absorbing as much energy as possible before it would be transferred into the bone of the knee.
He fell forward and hit his hands on the ground, gravity pulling him down into a push up position. For a second it felt like a rope tied around him was actually pulling him down, a real force that was acting on him.T hen it vanished, leaving his limbs feeling very light.
He was on his feet an instant later, not wasting a moment looking up for Sin. A few meters to the side of the ledge was a rusted, black stairwell, spiraling down like a fire escape. It was mounted on the original reactor building, away from the Sarcophagus, but the distance to it was easily jumpable.


Kras ignored the landing several meters below him, and instead sprinted off and leaped straight forward, aiming for the actual flight of stairs. The flight was farther away than the landing, but it wasn’t several meters below him-and leaping down onto a small metal square wasn’t something even Kras was insane enough to do.
He hit the stairs flat on his stomach, wrenching his wrist between two steps on accident. He was rapidly moving down the fire escape moments later, taking three steps at a time and jumping down to the landing once close enough. No gunshots followed him. He didn’t bother to check.

Kras reached the ground a quarter of a minute later, his feet finally on solid ground again. He spun around, just once, to see if Sin was visible anywhere on the roof. Kras didn’t see him, turned, and sprinted West, heading in the opposite direction from where they’d both entered.
Sin was likely making his way down the scaffolding, on the East side, but the entrance to Unit-4 was on the West wall, leaving Kras much closer to it. With this head start he thought that he might just shut the path behind him and get to the vodka without any trouble. That bottle was down there, and he wasn't going to waste time in confrontations with the blue marked friend when he could simply reach the vodka first.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Sin crouched on one knee, breathing softly as the seconds ticked by. His left knee was up, and his left elbow lay on top of it for steadiness. His right elbow was pressed into his side, and held the AKS at the stock, the left hand supporting it. His index finger lay on the trigger guard,away from the trigger itself.
Sin was crouched by the extremely large double-door that led into Chernobyl Unit-4, at the West wall. The door was recessed into the building and his body was half hidden by it. He might have looked like an old friend waiting for an arrival, but the fact that he was steadily aiming a rifle in the expectant direction gave the position a slightly more sinister air.

He was currently looking South, toward the corner that Kras would come around. The Communist colored warrior had dropped on the South wall, which meant he’d be moving around this corner to get to the West wall.
Sin had already reloaded, dropping the partially spent magazine into a pouch and inserting a fresh one, leaving 31 rounds of ammunition ready to puncture Kras the moment he came.

Seconds ticked by, Sin didn’t move a centimeter. His cheek rested along the stock, looking down the sights with the single-mindedness that came only with obsession. While Kras’ goal might have been to reach the vodka first, Sin was currently thinking more along the lines of sure victory. Rather than simply beat his opponent to it, Sin preferred to slaughter him, empty a magazine into his head, reload, put two more shots in his groin, and then go for the bottle.

Half a minute went by. Sin’s finger slid up along the trigger guard, slipping along it with an air of impatience. Ten more seconds…He spared a quick glance at his Geiger counter: 1.975. Almost two Roentgen per hour, practically 200 times normal background radiation. They’d moved a hundred meters closer and the count was picking up.
He gave an impatient glance over his shoulder. He’d been sitting here for two minutes now-and Kras couldn’t have beaten him to it. Oh no, no fancy flipping jumps for him. Sin had just gone straight down the couple hundred feet from the West wall. Of course, that didn’t mean a jump and then a sudden stop. Russian Jedi powers were prominent in different fields.

Sin’s finger twitched. The seconds were passing far too slowly for him. Two and a quarter minutes, when it should have taken no more than twenty seconds for the Mule to get in his sights. He found himself glancing over his shoulder more and more often. His left hand was drumming on the hand guards. He looked back at the Geiger counter, 1.977
Damn it…

With a biting of his tongue, Sin stood up and slowly backpedaled along the entry doors. He’d swung the left one in just far enough to slip inside, and then settled down. It had taken almost three minutes before he finally started thinking straight. Sitting in broad daylight with cover on only one side?
He was now considering sealing the door behind him and going after the vodka, or simply lying in wait inside the pitch black garage to shoot at the silhouette shape that would eventually enter the space. The double doors led into a giant warehouse-like space, essentially nothing more than a giant, square, concrete box, and along the left wall was the now unsealed entrance into the Chernobyl Shelter and Unit-4 building, consisting of a vertical tunnel with a ladder, dropping a person into the original Unit-4 building.

Sin slowly backed up along to the crack, staring all the while to the South corner, and then finally lowered his rifle and turned around, slipping into the garage, reaching down to retrieve his flashlight.
A gauntleted forearm swung out from behind the door and slammed into his face.

An instant, ricocheting pain shot through his nose and quickly blinded him. An instant later blows were sinking into his gut, winding him as he backpedaled straight into a wall, disorientated and practically blind. The garage was pitch black, the only illumination being a small strip of light coming through the door, and he could hardly open his eyes, his nose was bleeding, and he had no bloody idea where he was in the room. He couldn’t see Kras, was swinging at empty air.

He felt the rifle strap jerk into his neck as Kras yanked it off and tossed it aside somewhere. Sin lunged forward, blindly slammed his body into Kras, who didn’t fall down or make so much as a sound. Sin left a hand lock around his elbow and an arm wrap under his shoulder. A moment later the combined leverage swung Sin’s body in a circle and tossed him to the ground like a rag doll.
Sin instantly rolled on the ground, moving, he himself didn’t know where. He blindly rolled into a wall a moment later, and everything was suddenly silent.

Kras’ footsteps sounded twice, and then he stopped moving. Both combatants were still in the dark, seeing nothing, hearing only the pounding pulse in their temples. Sin strained for a sound; some giveaway of Kras’ location.
Seconds ticked by. Sin slowly, ever so slowly started to crawl to the side, moving along the wall. He moved a few meters, and then blindingly bright light fell on him. Before he had time to react, there was a rush of footsteps, and strong hands locked under his shoulders, pulling him up and bodily slamming him against the wall, the circular flashlight beam dancing over the place in a crazy light show.

An instant later the hands locked around Sin’s throat and instantly sent him into a fit of coughing. The hands squeezed tighter, pushing up against the underside of his jaw. The flashlight was aimed at the floor, Sin couldn’t see Kras by it’s light.
Unlike Kras however, Sin opted to be much more direct in combat. He didn’t bother with any Sambo or other martial system.
He reached his hand down, pulled back the strap over his holstered Makarov handgun, drew it with practiced ease, thumbed down the safety, and pressed the muzzle into the first part of Kras’ body he found.

The gunshots were absolutely deafening in the space, but even louder than the shots was an animalistic snarling cry of sheer agony, if that were possible.
Kras instantly released Sin’s neck, his hands flying to the torn muscle of his thigh and locking around Sin’s gun-hand, pushing it to the side where another shot blew into the concrete. Kras’ hand closed over the pistols slide and twisted it out of Sin’s grip. A moment later Sin’s elbow rammed into Kras’ head and the Communist colored Russian fell backward, dropping the Makarov. The flashlight went with him, secured to his wrist by a strap.
With the short distanced departure, Sin was left clutching his throat and coughing like a chronic smoker. Despite the inability to properly breath, Sin pulled his own Surefire flashlight from it’s band, threw himself forward, grabbed the discarded AKS, rolled over onto his back, and sprayed the immediate area with a hail of bullets. He stopped after a few seconds.
In the echoing silence of the gunshots, the clinking of cartridge shells was dull, and fell only upon Sin’s ears. A stream of crimson droplets trailed over to the ladder into Unit-4.
Kras was gone.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

Well, not much to this one. Just went crazy with what I hope was fun
--
Despite the usual minimum of three hundred (or was it thousand?) workers in the Chernobyl NPP, it was currently completely deserted at the exterior. On the interior, it was only mostly deserted. The majority of the doors in the maze of hallways beneath Reactor-4 were shut, locked, and many were permanently sealed. The hallways themselves were concrete and lined with pipes and cables running along the walls, and surprisingly enough, they had power. It was a dim light, and many of the lamps no longer worked, leaving sections of hallway almost pitch black, but a tourist could make their way around easily enough.
Unlike during operation, the halls were completely silent. There was no sound of wind, no humming, no coolant flushing through the pipes, nothing. For about twenty seconds anyway, after which a heavy barrage of gunfire blew through the halls, bouncing off concrete loud enough to bruise eardrums.

Sin was almost flat on the ground, lying sideways on his shoulder. With one hand under him for comfort, he held the AKS up over the boxes that were providing him cover and fired a blind spray of bullets down the hall.
From the opposite side of the hall, Kras was kneeling behind empty drum barrels and shooting between them with a German USP pistol. No AKS, which had mysteriously vanished. The mystery could be solved by observing the effects of a 5.45 round striking the barrel of a rifle.
Bullets blew through the crate over Sin’s head and nailed him with splinters. The hail of gunfire sent down the Hall by Sin punched straight through the drums and tattooed holes around Kras, who took cover from the blind fire by going as close to the wall as possible.

Sin emptied his magazine and rolled over onto his back, keeping flat on the ground as more bullets tore apart the top layer of wood hiding him.
spray&pray, spray&pray!
He clutched the release catch behind the magazine and reloaded. Just as he finished a bullet ricocheted off the wall, slammed into a pipe, bounced off, and tumbled up into the ceiling lamp before falling back down into Sin’s lap. His side of the hall was left in almost total darkness. Now he couldn’t even see the chunks of wood being torn apart.
He rolled over and raised the AKS over the crates again, spraying the fire around the hallway one-handed and practically rattling with the vibration. He had all the appearance of lying in a massage-chair.

Kras was currently on his back, also reloading, when Sin stopped shooting. The sudden lack of 130 decibel noise left their ears ringing, and Kras could just barely here the musical tone jingling far over on the other side of the hall.
Sin fished the Cell phone out of his pocket as Kras resumed fire, tearing tiny slices of concrete out of the ground. He flipped it open as he reached around the side of the crates and returned fire, “Da!? I’m busy!”

As Sin yelled into the phone, Kras pulled a Saiga-12 shotgun out from its sling over his back. Removed the magazine, loaded another one with slugs, and fired the buckshot out of the chamber. The shot blew apart another ceiling lamp, while Sin was busy shooting and yelling,
“What socks!? I don't get you!!”

The semi-automatic Saiga tossed out the first shell and loaded in the Slugs. A second later the crate by Sin’s side completely blew apart, flying down the hall way in shattered splinters as repeated heavy-duty slugs blew chunks out the concrete.
Sin was peppered with material and rolled over, covering his head, “God damn-it. I‘VE HALF A BLOODY BAR! I CAN‘T HEAR YOU!”

What with all the gunshots, even the static was impossible to hear.
He yelled into the phone, “Hold on for a bloody second!”

He rolled over, stood up, and emptied fifteen rounds around Kras, who dropped to the floor with a prayer. Sin ducked back down and brought the phone to his ear again, “All right, can you hear me now?”
A moment later Kras resumed blowing apart the hallway. Another crate shattered, spilling itself right onto Sin’s lap as a 12 gauge slug blew off of the ground and fell right back onto Sin’s lap with the .45, it's little bro.
Sin slashed his hand through the air with frustration and yelled into the phone, “ALL RIGHT, I’LL GET YOUR BLOODY SOCKS!”
He turned away and yelled to Kras between shots, “It’s for you!” and flung the open cell phone down the hall. It spun through the air and flew over the drums just as Kras stood up over them and blew a slug through it. The phone vaporized, and Sin’s correspondent lost one eardrum, “Can you hear me now!? CAN YOU FUCKING HEAR ME NOW!?”

The Verizon bastard suffered a stroke. His work finished, Kras settled down to reload, and the moment of deluded reality vanished.

Kras loaded in another magazine of slugs, spun around the drums, and emptied all eight rounds with such rapid fire the semi seemed like an automatic. The space around Sin completely blew apart, leaving him sitting with gouged out concrete pits and no cover, practically buried in wood splinters and latex from fragmented boxes (the crates had been carrying radiation-proof condoms).

With that last hail of fire done, Kras turned and walked straight through a door in the side of the hall and left, a magazine clattering to the ground behind him as he reloaded the buckshot. Sin was dead-still, lying with his AKS in hand and two slugs, five bullets, and twenty-five kilograms of condoms on top of him.

Kras maneuvered through the halls, running and limping through one door after another, down two stair cases, through a hole in the wall, out of a wall-screen television set, and into another hall. Finally he screeched (Yes, burning rubber) to a halt in a large rectangular room. The room was devoid of all objects, and the only entrance to it seemed to be the door through which Kras had just entered. But what was really important, was the fact that he’d just run into an ankle-high pool of water…which was glowing bright blue.

Cherenkov radiation, or the disturbing blue glow that you can see in water with radioactive contents, happens when a particle moves faster than the speed of light in a specific medium. This meant that radioactive particles were flying through this water faster than light did-in water. Rule of thumb: water glows blue, you get the hell out.
Kras turned around to get back into the hallways, and Sin slammed the heavy steel door in his face. Literally; Kras fell back into the water as his head thrummed from the impact. The illuminated blue ceiling spun over his head. He lay there for a few seconds, and then the door opened again. Sin threw a wet condom on Kras’ head, and shut the door again, locking it behind him.

Sin turned away from the room, pulled out his map, and jogged down the hallways, leaving Kras locked in a room with no lamps, exit, and his Geiger counter clicking at 15.438 Roentgen per hour. Now, to the vodka.

[E-Stalin [Orthrus]]

The Finale....note, along with the previous warnings on the content, let me add another one. Sexual references and such orientated jokes. No, nothing graphic, you sorry pervert.

---------------------------------------------------------

Sin lightly jogged through the maze of concrete, staring down at the map of the building. If you could call it a map. It looked like a dwarf waving a carrot had drawn it. Sin slowed down to a halt and stared at the map. Then he looked up at the hallway, and back down to the map. According to the crayon-drawn piece of paper, the hallway he was standing in was the way to the reactor. It even had little arrows drawn on it...but directly in front of him was...a squiggly line?
Sin looked up, and not five meters in front of him was a wall. A pretty solid wall as it happened. He looked back down at the map....hallway....wall....hallway....wall.
He scratched his head.

--

Krasniy had recently gotten a fresh paint job for his blackout suit. While previously there had been stripes of red on his arms and torso, his entire upper leg was now soaked in crimson. One didn't exactly walk around with a blown up 11mm piece of lead stuck in your thigh, especially with radioactive water pouring into the wound.
As it was, Kras wasn't walking, but crawling. In a very tight space...that was also rather wet. It was a crawlspace under the cement floor of the building. A flooded crawlspace as it happened. Well look on the bright side, at least he could still see. The pitchblack under space was illuminated quite well by glowing blue radioactive water. But of course, the pessimist in him wasn't worried about the bright side. How the hell could he still breath there? It was the optimist that came up with the answer.
Crawling through dozens of meters under clicking water, Kras was breathing stale air that he'd taken with him from the room he'd been locked in. Via the same device that Russians used to block smoke detectors on train carriages. A very stretchy, useful, XL sized tool...
Oh all right, it was a radiation proof condom. Kras had a fully bubble-headed appearance at the moment, the latex condom stretched right over his head and down to his neck, and inflated like a balloon. Gritting his teeth and muttering Russian, German, Spanish, and Old Ruthenian swear words under his breath, Kras tried to ignore the stale smell inside the condom that he prayed to God wasn't what he thought it was.

--

Sin pulled down on the shoelace, tightening up the knot and firmly securing the two kilogram brick of plastic explosive to the wall. He strapped it down to a protruding metal strut, and then dug around in his pocket. He pulled out a slender metal rod, that looked like a large silver pen or a small metal vibrator. Depends on how perverted your subconscious is.
The metal rod had two wires twisted around eachother stemming from the top, colored yellow and blue. This was a blasting cap, the thing that every action junkie knew only as "Detonator". Sin stabbed the blasting cap straight into the malleable block of explosive sitting on the wall, and inserted the wire into a tiny metal box about the size of an I-Pod Nano. The blasting cap itself contained rather weak explosive, which would be used to detonate the more stable C4. The metal box that looked like an I-Pod Nano...was actually an I-Pod Nano.
In his haste to get to the vodka, Sin had come up with a brief moment of pure genius. Seven minutes later, after working with a multi-tool, a knife, and a hair dryer pulled out of a random bathroom, Sin had modified the I-Pod into a radio receiver and electrical generator. Put short, the I-Pod got the signal, and it sent out an electric pulse.
Sin stepped well back from the wall, actually turning the corner and taking cover behind the hallway, and pulled out the radio transmitter from his pocket. He extended the antenna and with a flick of his thumb, turned the safety switch down. Then he leaned back against the wall, and took a deep breath, the tension in his chest rising. Then he chuckled lightly, and screaming to no one in particular, "FIRE IN THE HOLE!"
And with great aplomb, he clutched the detanator switch. Click. Silence....he hit it again, click.

The wall was remaining very much intact. Sin shook the detonator, then held it up by his ear and shook it again. "Oh what the hell!?"
He stripped off the back cover, and stared at the empty space that should have held two Double-A batteries.

Somewhere in Vegas....
Danny Ocean smacked the detonator against his palm, shaking it and clicking the button again. Behind him, Linus quietly asked, "What's wrong?"

Danny shook the detonator again, "I don't know...something."

Linus looked up and then back down. "Well you check the batteries?"

Danny looked up at him, and then back at the detonator. Linus sighed as he rummaged in his pockets for the U.S made batteries that he'd grabbed from an export box to Russia, "You know, when you lose focus in this game for one second..."

Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant, Ukraine

Sin slammed his fist against the wall, "GOD DAMN IT!"

--

Kras shoved open the vent grate, actually bending it almost in half. The metal square fell out into darkness, clanging against concrete almost a hundred feet below. Soaking wet, and unable to take another breath of stale condom air, Kras hung out the ventilation duct and ripped the infalted latex off of his head, sucking in great gasps of perfectly fresh air, that was laced with microdust of radioactive iodine, plutonium, uranium, and curium. The reactor room of the Chernobyl #4 powerplant was almost pitch black, but there were a few dim lamps hanging along the walls that just barely illuminated it enough to allow Kras to see silhouettes.

If anyone, absolutely anyone, that knew what they were dealing with could see that reactor room, and the actual blown open reactor below them, they would have immediately pissed themselves and then vomited out of sheer fear, in the same way a biological expert would feel if they found themselves standing in a puddle of Ebola virus. The pucker factor in no uncertain terms. Words do not describe the scene, and anyone that had bothered to play a game of STALKER wouldn't have any idea either just by looking at the animated polygons.
Down below Krasniy (who was actually in the ceiling of the room...don't ask how) was the exposed Reactor core. At first, it was difficult to realize just what one was looking at, because it was so huge. The giant, circular lid of the reactor was blown out of it and currently leaning at a sideways angle against the ground and reactor lip. Picture a manhole cover, and then blow it up a couple hundred times, and you'd have some idea of just how huge this lid was. Running down from the bottom of this lid were dozens of metal cables, with relatively small cubic blocks hanging on them, like Lego blocks on a string. These blocks were graphite, and anyone familiar with the Chernobyl incident that found one of those blocks sitting around would have run away screaming. The metal cables were bent like pieces of putty under the weight of the reactor lid, but they hadn't broken like the rest of them, and ran down into the reactor core.

The reactor was a huge cylinder, as large as some houses, and over ten meters deep at the moment. The rest of it was filled with broken graphite blocks and solidified liquid rubble and crumbled dust, adding up to some 200 metric tons. Allow the danger of that seemingly harmless cylinder and dust to be summed up as thus: it was clicking at so many REMs per hour that a calculator doesn't have enough spaces for the number. You couldn't see it, you couldn't smell it, you couldn't taste it. Indeed, if you didn't have a clue, you wouldn't even realize that you'd be dead in under three minutes.
The window on Kras' Geiger counter exploded.

Staring down at the dilapidated reactor core, Kras saw just one thing. A small, glowing blue dot. Over a hundred feet below him. Kras took the simple way in.
He sucked in a breath, and with a huge roaring cry, threw himself out of the vent and down into the reactor,

--

Sin took aim, and slowly and smoothly pulled back on the trigger, being careful not to jerk it. The AKS slammed back against his shoulder, and the bullet ripped straight through the slender blasting cap, detonating the shock sensitive booster compound. An instant later the wall vaporized, marking it's send off with an extraordinary loud bang and a shock wave of air crashing down the hallway. The wall disintegrated into so much gray dust floating on the air, and without even waiting for the dust to settle, Sin sprinted down the hall and straight into the reactor room.
Just in time to hear a roaring, "AH MOTHERLAND!!!!!" and saw Krasniy fall down into the reactor.

Kras crashed into the huge pile of rubble, and sank right through it, as if he'd jumped onto a huge pile of leaves. An instant later, he was immersed in radioactive ash. It was actually quite warm. A little too warm...what was this sensation? Was it...cold? The same kind of cold you got when you tripped and shoved your hand into a boiling pot of water or maybe the kind of sensation you felt when you stuck your hand into theoutersurfaceofthesunandthenstoodtherestupidlystaringatit- "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

For his part, Sin sprinted the 100 meter dash in 11 seconds and dove straight into the reactor core after Kras. Unfortunately for him, he mistimed his jump and slammed straight into the corner of the upended reactor lid, bouncing off and falling down against a wall, breaking his fingers, and then falling fifty feet down straight onto a ripped off Fuel Rod assembly sticking straight up in a very sharp point.
There was a small shhhing sound, the kind you get when you stab a bread knife into a watermelon, as the sharp point of the fuel rod slammed right through Sin's right hip bone, shattering it before punching through his right buttock, and leaving him impaled part way down the rod. To his credit, he didn't make a sound. Well, not a sound of pain at any rate. What followed instead was a rapid stream of Mongolian cursing mixed together with threats to track down whichever bastard created this reactor design and crush his balls with a pair of steel pliers.

Kras jumped up from the rubble like a wraith from a sack of flour. It turned out that radioactive elements tend to be rather hot. Extremely hot actually. Paying absolutely no mind to the burns slowly spreading up his skin, Kras reached around and yanked a miniature fire extinguisher off of it's clip. He snapped off the safety ring, and started to crawl over to the glowing blue bottle of vodka, fully aware that he only had a minute or two left.

Unfortunately for Sin, Jigsaw was not available. Had he been abducted by the loony bastard, he would have sliced his leg off with a hacksaw in two seconds flat before choking the fucking life out of him.
As it was, he had to make do with simply reaching down to the metal fuel rod, which was filled with extremely dense Uranium-238 mind you, and snapped it in half. A moment later he fell the remaining fifty feet down, right on top of the vodka bottle, with ten feet of fuel rod still protruding from his ass.

Five second later, Sin realized that he was lying on top of the vodka bottle. Just as Kras reached him. Sin grabbed for the bottle, and Kras slammed the butt of the fire extinguisher against his skull. Sin rolled over, releasing the bottle, and Kras snapped the safety ring off of the extinguisher and directed a steady stream of white flame retardant foam over the bottle.
The vodka, which had been going at a nice boil, cooled off rapidly as the expanding CO2 sucked out Joules of heat and cooled it off to a nice icy temperature. With the fire extinguisher completely empty, and Sin and Kras both covered in an inch thick layer of white foam, Kras grabbed the nearly frozen bottle of vodka before it could heat up again. Before he could rip the cork out with his teeth however, Sin's iron grip locked over onto his wrist.

What followed next was a three minute long arm wrestling match. Neither Sin nor Kras gave the other an inch, both of them locked together in the starting position, arms trembling as if they were suffering from a seizure. Their bulging muscles might have made a steroid addict jealous. While their right arms wrestled, their left ones were busy punching eachother. As soon as Kras grabbed for the vodka bottle, Sin's knuckles would slam into his, forcing to him to release it, and before Sin could grab it, Kras got a hold of his thumb and snapped it sideways, parting the joints with a sharp snap.

Finally, as their hands were turning blue from cut off blood supply, Kras looked down at the vodka, which was glowing a nice blue colour. Then he looked up at Sin, and back down to the vodka. The golden label that said "Stolichnaya" was now positively shining with blue light. Kras looked back up at Sinniy, "Let's share"?

Option A: Give him some Cash
Option B: Throw your bottle at his head
Option C: Share the love!
Option D: Ignore the parasite. You're too good for him.

------------------------

In the final 30 seconds, vomiting blood and shaking with chills, Kras and Sin sat on top of the radioactive mound of ash, leaning back against the reactor wall, completely naked down to their underwear but wearing Soviet era officers hats, and compared scars, exchanging chugs from the ice cold bottle of Stolichnaya.

Kras lifted up his arm, where a long circular scar ran all the way around his biceps, "See this? Red hot pliers. The Red Mafia caught up to me."

He lifted high arm over his head, twisting around to show Sin the branching scars running down the side of his rib cage. "And this, 20mm autocannon from a U.S fighter. Grazed right through the ribs."

Sin shook his head nonchalantly, "Mine are worse."

"Oh yeah, let's see it then."

Sin twisted his head to the side, showing where a huge chunk of his neck appeared to have at one point been cut off. "Helicopter blade. The bastard was shot out of the sky and fell right on top of me, with the tip of the blades slicing into my neck. Semyon pulled me out."

He lifted up his leg, "And here, Claymore landmine. 700 ball bearings blown into my thigh," he snapped his fingers, "just like that."
His leg looked like a shotgun had been taken to it some time before.

Kras laughed, "Ny ti dayosh. But look at this eh?"
He showed his other arm, where several spidery branching burns could be seen. "You'll never guess where I got this from. I got it here. Right here in this power plant, back in '86. I was one of the guys that swam under the reactor in pitch black water with no lights to open up the flood gates. Got my arm jammed in one of them just as molten reactor started leaking down through it. Bet you can't beat that."

Sinniy grinned, chugging another mouthful of vodka. "No, but I sure as hell can match it. Just look at this. "
He leaned forward, exposing his riddled back. "Guess. Just guess."

"Looks like a hand grenade."

"RPG-29."

"Bullshit!"

"No really, the warhead slammed right along my back from the side, and kept going. Tore off a quarter of my back along with it, before it slammed into a tank not ten meters from me. "


The two Russians comfortably leaned back in the Uranium laced garbage, trading war stories and drinking vodka, all the while vomiting blood and turning a little too pale.
"You think we can finish this bottle in seven seconds?"

"No shit. Quarter liter for you, quarter for me. Go."