Magnitogorsk doesn’t hold much for him. He stares down the barrel of his future there: toiling away at a factory job, living and dying streets away from where he was born. He rubs the water-smoothed stone in his pocket, and thinks of the thunder of the waves. He knows that staying here will kill some essential part of himself. And so, he leaves. For PatriciaKoiFish, I hope very much that you like it :)

The hydrophones have been picking up nonsense for the past three days and Zhenya has had it up to here, honestly.

Magnitogorsk is a city of iron, and so is Metallurg’s will. They will not be thwarted, they do not let go of what is theirs. So when one of their own, born, bred, and molded, tries to run? To spit in the face of all that they’ve given him? Metallurg does not give up what it owns.