The Commander

Chapter 1

Vera watched the city below her quickly grow closer as she fell, she knew where she was and she knew why she was there. Her life hadn't started well and it hadn't ended well either, having been an interrogator in the soviet military. Her landing brought her out of her thoughts as she quickly got up and scanned her surroundings. She appeared to have landed in an alleyway, and to her disgust, two other figures were also standing in the alleyway. It was more of what one of the figures was doing to the other that disgusted her. In hell, sinners did whatever they wanted usually without consequence but now she was there she would instill order.

Walking closer she saw the sinner attempting to defile another sinner who appeared to be fighting his best to keep the larger sinner away. The smaller one appeared to be some sort of anthropomorphic feline while the other demon looked like some kind of bug, one she planned to crush under her boot. Reaching into her green trench coat's pocket, she found her trusty revolver right where it usually was, the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union carved onto its barrel. She was slightly surprised to find it there but pulled the hammer back anyway.

The sound caused both sinners to freeze as the bug sinner turned toward her, meeting her cold gray eyes. "Do Svidaniya" she said and pulled the trigger, shattering the knee joints of the bug sinner. He screamed in agony as she continued firing, making sure to draw out his death as long as possible before leaving him to bleed out in the infested alleyway. The other sinner stared at her wide-eyed as she approached, attempting to crawl backward out of fear. Though her eye remained cold she held out her hand, allowing the feline sinner to take her hand. His fear changed to awe grasped her hand.

"What is your name, little one," she said, her voice accented heavily, she had learned to speak English due to her time interrogating Western spies. The little cat looked at her for a moment before responding in a small voice "My name is Flak" he said before continuing "I'm not supposed to be here" he said as his eyes welled up with tears "It's scary here a-and everyone is so mean" he said clinging to her arm which she now noticed ended in the paws of a cat as well. She continued to look for something reflective as she listened to Flak's weeping when she heard something that made her stop. He stared up at her with wide, watery eyes "Im eight" he said in a meek voice.

Vera didn't know how to respond, the small sinner she had saved was a child, how did a child get into hell?! Lots of things were happening and she had only been there for likely ten minutes. "How did you get here" she asked, her voice remaining stern but not as cold as it had before. "I killed Mama's boyfriend, but she got mad and broke my neck" he continued, regaining enough of his composure to stop crying. "I just didn't like when he hit her and me but Mama killed me anyway" Vera nodded, "Can you walk?" she asked, to which he nodded "Then you stay with me," she said before getting up.

She walked over to the sinner she had just killed and noticed he had begun to regenerate, which she decided to put a stop to. Pulling a long knife from her coat she began to butcher the sinner, taking the meat and placing it in another pocket. Flak looked at her in slight horror as she walked back toward where she left him "Lesson one, don't feel emotion toward filth" she said, which he nodded quickly at. As she and Flak walked towards the exit of the alley, she noticed a cracked mirror resting against the wall. Looking at it, she finally got a good look at her appearance. She, like Flak, was an anthropomorphic cat demon, she had grey eyes with red sclera, and her fur was grey as well and it had dark stripes in it. Her ears seemed to have grown through her olive green ushanka and her tail also went through her matching olive green trench coat. Much to her surprise, she had olive green wings sprouting from her back, which in her opinion, was a lot of olive green. Something that caught her attention was the crosshairs that hovered over her right eye, she'd figure that out later.

She continued walking while Flak held onto her left hand, her right hand was in her pocket gripping her gun. From what she had seen so far, other sinners were not to be trusted, though Flak was an exception, he reeked of over-truthfulness. Continuing their walk down the road, Vira gathered that they were currently in Pentagram City and six months away from something called 'The next cleanse'. Another thing that caught her eye was that the year, it was the thirty years after she died in 1954. All of a sudden a car pulled up next to her and a moth demon exited, he was about two feet shorter than her, which is when she realized how tall she was compared to other sinners. She glared coldly down at him as he looked at her nonchalantly. "Hey, ba-" he did not even finish the second word before he found himself looking down the barrel of a large revolver. "Now aren't you a feisty one" he said from behind his heart-shaped glasses, she knew his kind and she hated them. She had seen multiple pimps over her years and she could only describe them as one thing: filth. The pimp kept on talking having moved out of the way of her gun, which she holstered. When he pulled out a strange piece of paper she did something that made her smile widely: She punched him.