Early October mornings got chilly in Moscow, and on the doorstep of the titanic Empire Style Ministry of Defense building Stepan Mogila shivered without the familiar warmth and solid weight of his armour, like a hermit crab without his shell. With a few gestures of his AR gloves Mogila sent one more batch of job applications, and entered the dusty halls of power. This time he got lucky: coming early did him good, and after but an hour of queues and signing forms in triplicate, he finally got his Army recon honorary discharge papers. Warm sun, so rare in the autumn, met Mogila outside, so he decided he could afford taking a walk at his own pace for once. He clicked his finger a few times against his protruding canine, - a habit he got when trying to give up smoking in the Army, - and headed down the street to Kremlin. Golden domes of a church floated into vision as he walked, and he stopped and crossed himself.

His commlink pinged: “Driver - Denied, not dignified enough to work with our clientele”. Mogila shrugged at this thinly veiled metahatred and kept walking, stopping to cross himself once again once the Kremlin’s many cathedrals became visible as he stepped onto the Borovitskaya Square. “Electronics store manager - No necessary higher education”. The ork crossed the road, and walked along the river and the Kremlin wall. “Pizza delivery - Out of acceptable age gap”. He turned the corner, crossed himself for the third time at seeing the St.Basil’s Cathedral, and ascended the Basil’s Descent to the Red Square. A beggar in VDV uniform tugged at his pant leg, but he pushed him away in disgust, having long learned both the guy’s real story of lumbermill traumatism and the Vory-affiliated gang he was put here by in the months he has been trudging this path after signing one more batch of the many discharge papers.

So early in the morning, Draco Foundation building at the far side of the square met with silence and unlit windows, so he made his way past Lenin’s Mausoleum and to the necropolis. Ignoring the feeling of being watched, as he learned in his two months of peaceful life, he turned to the graves. They all were here, heroes and tyrants, Stalin and Gagarin, Ogurznev and Ivanova. Mogila slid his hand against the cold marble of the graves. “Dog hairdresser - Unacceptable medical condition”. That one hit home - he might have gotten a citation for these wounds, but they sure weren’t doing anything for his chances to find a job. He turned abruptly, and walked quickly further across the square and down to Alexander Garden. At his jerky movements, the fresh scars from wired reflexes removal decided to remind of themselves. He stopped before the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and felt as motionless as the two guards flanking it for a while, remembering all the good guys his unit lost to the Yakutians’ toxic dream of independence that was never to come. The dance of the flame, and the quiet whistling of the burning gas captured his attention for a while, so he stayed motionless for a few minutes, lost in his thoughts. “Bathhouse attendant - Too many visible tattoos”, - pinged the commlink again, making him jerk in place, and head for the subway.

A german shepherd sniffer dog bared its teeth at him as he entered the vestibule, apparently sensing the stench of blood and explosives still lingering against him, but he gave the young cop holding its leash a glance morbid enough to make him let the ork pass into the marble halls of Ploshad Revolutsii station. Mogila boarded the train and picked a free seat, anticipating a nap for the time lost with the paperwork at the ministry, but at the next stop a whole crowd of new passengers drifted in, an elderly female oni among them, which made him get up uneasily to pass the seat, and doze off standing in a corner.
An hour later, he was at the outskirts of the Monino district, housing the city’s many garrison forces. Heading down the street to his favorite watering hole, he dismissed a few more job rejection notices, getting at the very end to the Unemployment Fund daily payment notice, an entirety of 10¥. He smiled bitterly and made his way down the cracked concrete steps toward an unmarked basement steel door. The insides of the nameless watering hole were full of smoke and overly loud shanson music, as always. Mogila crashed at the counter, and ordered a glass of cedar liqueur - another bad habit from his Siberia days. The barmen, a teenage Middle Asian in a bright white apron, poured him one. As he pouted over his drink, a troll drifted over, obviously once powerfully built, but now overweight and barely fitting into his rentacop uniform.

-Down on your luck, buddy? - the troll started without introductions, - I see you’ve been quite a warrior, we could use a man like you, - his four molars had apparently once been knocked out, and since replaced with gold.

Stepan gave him the look that made his surname, meaning Grave, also his nickname: “Thanks, I’ll pass,” - he answered coldly, - “I’m looking for something constructive and involved, not just being paid below minimum wage for sitting on my ass”. Something in his eyes apparently told the troll not to press the issue, and he left Mogila to his bitter drink. He downed the glass, ordered another one, and downed it, too. The colors around finally warmed from the pales of the late autumn, and as he got up, - again, with unfamiliarly effortless movement for the lack of armour, - he noticed dizziness already crawling up his vestibular.
As the ork was making his way back up the steps, he misstepped, planting his shoulder firmly into the chest of a patron going down. As the light fell on the man’s face, before Mogila could consciously react, his reflexes threw him off to the side, - too slow, all too slow without the implants! - and as his body assumed the familiar stance for CQC, he finally got a chance to get a better look at his quarry: god knows he has never seen a more suspiciously Yakutian face!

-What the hell do you think you’re doing, buddy? - the man roared, as he threw a straight punch for Stepan’s face. He dodged down without answering, but the man moved much faster than him, and before he got a chance to break distance, got him in a headlock, pushing him down towards the ground and kicking him in the face repeatedly. After the third kick Mogila’s eyes lost focus, and somewhere after the fifth the blood flowing from his smashed brow and nose flew into his eyes and made him completely blind. The sound of a heavy smack sounded like heavenly music to him, as his opponent let him go, and he slid to the ground, his back against the wall. As he struggled to clear his eyes and refocus his vision, he felt a familiar hand help him up to his feet, and a familiar voice croak:

- Stepa, what the fuck? Do you seriously think you can just jump every Yakut you see in the street? - the voice was unmistakable. That was Yura Virus, his squadmate, dragging him off somewhere like so many times before - but meeting him here was a one in a million chance. As his vision finally cleared, he finally got to see the man: he lost his usual clean-shaven army chic, instead opting for a five o’clock shadow, and instead of his favourite SVD he was carrying a telescopic baton. An assortment of electronics, commlinks to radio scanners and god knows what else, half of them burned, was however strapped across his chest as usual. As Mogila eyed him, the man helped him up a step and into a van, where Stepan sprawled across a seat. Finally he blurted: “Virus, for fuck’s sake, how come you’re here? You left two solid months before me, why aren’t you back at your Samara you kept telling us about?” Virus slammed the van’s door behind them, and fell into a seat opposite of Mogila, nodding to the driver to head off: “You see, Stepa, things got complicated at home. I mean, when a man leaves for half a dozen years to crawl through shit and shoot shapeshifters, can a girl be expected to wait for him? So I was about as set up in life as you are now, when a pal of mine from an earlier draft, who returned a year earlier, set me up a job. In Moscow, too. So now I’m a well-established specialist, doing what I’ve always done best. As such, tracking down your discharge was easy enough - so I came to offer you a deal to use your best talents that you just can’t refuse…”