(i spose nows the time to write an introduction. i hope it dosn't suck as much as i think it does!)

Русян Солдир

“Name?”
“Dero Rastaslav Igorovich Kiranov”
“Birthdate?”
“December 12, 1977”
"How Long did you stay in the Country?"
“Three years.”

There were two loud pounds on two separate parts of the table, one in an ink pad with rubber stamp of approval, the second on a crisp white piece of paper.
Dero Kiranov was born in the small Russian village, a miner’s village; A place where women’s faces were just as dark and smudged as the men’s. Mothers and Fathers worked hard long days under the cold harshness of the winter climates. Dero came from a struggling family. He had a young sister that had died of Typhoid fever before he had been born. His mother was a fat, plump woman, and his father had hard eyes and even a harder back hand.
As it was, they were a typical family, in a struggling village. Most of the children were illiterate. It was a coal town, thick black oil and hard, rough stone. Only the few that were privileged could get out. Only the lucky few. Most of them… All of them; the rest of them, had been born there, lived there and will die there. So, when Dero was born, there was nothing special about him.

Where he lived, the KGB had still been a major part of their everyday lives. Maybe that’s the reason they had been struggling for their day to day lives. When Dero was a small boy, no older than 10, the last thing he will ever remember of his father was that he had been violently taken away by two men that wore masks, carried loaded weapons that were slung around their shoulders, and thick suits taped up at the wrists and ankles to keep the cold from entering into their leather gloves and steel toed boots. All they wore was black.

As a boy, for that part of the country Dero had been easy going. He loved his mother and father and they were happy when they could afford to be happy. He had never found out about what happened to his father that day, and would never see him or hear from him again. His mother on the other hand was taken to an asylum for the insane and had gotten a lobotomy. Dero had now just become an orphan.

Life in the orphanage was hard, even harder for Dero after the loss of his family. Though, he was accustomed to a hard life. Breakfast was more than he had eaten at home, and for the first 6 months fattened up on more than just bread and potato porridge. At least in the orphanage they were allowed milk and the occasional fruit. Dero was a small child, even by the standard of every other child that lacked in nutrition. His knees stuck out and his ears were bigger than his small head. Even his ribs poked out of his sides.

Every day they had to practice a Russian dance called Kozachok. Dero was allowed to wear Long-Johns in the winter months, with sweaters and a scarf with mittens. They only got one scarf and on pair of mittens that had to last the year, and then passed down to the next smallest boy once he grew out of them. So Most of the time, these things were kept in good condition. Pants and sweaters were the same, but a lot of the time were donated from the inner city kids from the much larger and more prosperous cities. Everything they had was second hand, previously owned or repaired. There was an old Soviet Television complete with rabbit ears and had one station that turned on for one hour during the day to teach the children how to prepare for a nuclear strike.

Dero would never say how he managed to get parents from the United States. How long it took him to leave the Orphanage, if he could contact any of his Soviet friends, or what effect, if any that life had on him. He was one of the lucky ones. The others would most likely turn to crime and violence once they left and end up dead at 19, just one year after getting kicked out. The girls, from a girl orphanage would likely end up as prostitutes.

Living in the States was an easy ride for Dero. Though being brought into a strict Catholic family was something he never paid any attention to. He sits in church, says his prayers and even got baptized. In their minds, he was a good Catholic son. He knew otherwise.

Now 32, Dero had just returned from his time in Bulgaria. Three years in the dirty streets, moving up in the world and finding that he would have to take a trip back to the States. With a fresh crisp piece of paper tucked in the back pocket of his tattered jeans, brand new clean cut Mohawk, just outside of a customs airport He’ll hop from one plane to the next. Destination, Hathian.