ZIMA

From Nobody to Somebody

Mikhail does not remember a lot of his early life, a good majority of it a hazy blur. His parents, whoever they had been, had either died when Mikhail was young, or simply abandoned the boy on the streets of St. Petersburg. Most of his early life was spent drifting, from foster home to foster home, in and out of local orphanages when he caused too much trouble for whatever family had picked him up recently. It took a toll on Mikhail, each family making him more and more bitter, a cycle he finally decided to break when, at the age of 14, he packed up what few belongings he had and ran away, in the cold night.
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During the next few months afterwards, Mikhail lived as a street rat, stealing what he could get his hands on, be it food to eat or money to buy the necessities of life. Far from the easiest life in the world, but there was something about it the young teen found...enjoyable. Perhaps it was simply the thrill of finally having the ability to make his own damned decisions in his life, or it was simply the thrill of getting away with something that wasn't his. The reason didn't matter to Mikhail.
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Nearly a full year later, after his 15th birthday, when life took another turn for Mikhail. It was one of his targets, a man in a fancy car, wearing a fancy suit, surely he must have a fancy wallet filled with cash. It was an easy score, something he had done at least a dozen times before, a classic even. Accidentally bump into the man, lifting the money from him in the confusion, then scamper off before anyone noticed what had really happened. The only problem was the man he had picked, a man known as Damian Orlev, a powerful local crime boss. A hand snatched his arm, dragging out a fist clutching a wallet, the large man staring down at the white haired teen.
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Perhaps, on any other day, this insult might've lead to the teen's death, but on this day Damian had been looking for someone like Mikhail. He had a package that needed to be delivered, one that the local police would be on the lookout for, and most of his men would be recognized before they could finish the delivery. Thus Mikhail was given a simple option, delivery the package for Damian, or end up dead in a ditch somewhere.
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The response came in record time, the package taking only slightly longer. Mikhail never did find out what was in the package, but it did start up an interesting relationship with Damian, the boss seeming to take the former street rat under his wing, and his employment. In many ways, his life didn't change much from this, he still took things that didn't technically belong to him, but now he was guaranteed to never sleep on an empty stomach.
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This lasted for a few years, nearly four of them to be exact, until Damian had managed to piss off the wrong man in a business deal gone horribly wrong. Their compound was attacked, raided, nearly all the crew ending up dead, all save Mikhail himself. But, in what should've been the last minutes of his life, there was a...voice. It could save him, give him the power to fight against those who were trying to kill him. Well, it was the second easiest choice he had made in his life.
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A few weeks later, needing to leave town from both retaliation from the rest of the rival bosses who would come to fill in the void in power left by Damian, and to avoid any police that would investigate now that their 'donations' had dried up, Mikhail boarded a train heading west, for Paris.
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