#sniffle.....

On the battlefield, it seemed as if no one could escape from the sturdy box of institutions. Modern warfare is based on the massive institution of the state. The solid institutions of country and country are pitted against each other until, in the worst case, one of them breaks down or ceases to function. For The Sorrow, World War II in his native Soviet Union was like that. He was born in 1919, when the world was too hard on the system of communism. It was the period of the infernal Russian Civil War, which claimed 8 million victims just five years after the Russian Revolution, and his homeland had been overrun by the Russian White Army, backed by Europe. Then, just before he was defeated and driven out by the Red Army, the White Army killed his entire home village. It was a miracle that he survived as a baby, embraced by the corpses of his parents. That is how the vision remained stuck in the depths of his memory. In the midst of the burning forest, he saw a line of dead people walking away. Whenever he dreamed, he could talk with the people in the funeral procession that appeared in his dreams. When he was a boy, the NKVD visited him because of his reputation for being able to speak with the dead. The then People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, Nikolai Yezhov, shook hands with him enthusiastically. And Yezhov, who was faithful to Stalin in executing the Great Terror, lost the halting power of violence when he obtained a medium who could draw information from the dead. In his boyhood days, he interrogated the spirits of the horribly tortured and shot bodies every day. The system demanded that he do so. He continued to work to defend the Soviet system. In 1936, when Yezhov was still in his prime, the system gave him a new intelligence job. The Spanish Republic, then fighting a civil war against the rebels, was trading with the Soviet Union for military supplies. He was sent abroad for the first time to assist Stalin's plan to ship gold bullion from Spain to the Soviet Union. Still in his late teens, he attended meeting with key figures in the Popular Front government. He was sent to the United States to meet with the government of the People's Front, because no one could lie in front of him, who could read the minds of the living and interrogate the dead. Then he met her, who had participated in the civil war as a mercenary. She was a tall girl with blond hair and blue-gray eyes. He was terribly embarrassed when she said to him, "Even the Soviets had cowboys." He was terribly embarrassed because he had an antique gun belt with an old revolver strapped to it. As a soldier, he lacked training and had borrowed the skills of the original user from his tools by using his psychic abilities to read them. The more he used a master's favorite tool, the more skillful he became, so he used the pistol of a fast-shooting gunfighter from the days of the western frontier. He would have tried to return the sarcasm, saying that even Communist International cowboys joined the Comintern. But as soon as he looked into her eyes, it all blew over.

Behind her, he saw a huge vision of history. It was a history of the struggles of the American frontier, a vision of intelligence and politics. It was a bloody conquest, an indefatigable defense, smoke and death on a tremendous scale, and the love that grew behind the scenes. The great footprints of human history, which could never be measured by any vessel, flashed through his mind in an instant. Then he came back to himself and began to speak. She rolled her eyes in amazement. He did not remember what he said then. She did not tell me, but she said she had never forgotten a single moment. That was how The Sorrow met her, when she was still just a little girl. It was a time when he did not yet know his sins and true sorrow.

"Boss. Only two years after that, the Yezhov era was over, and I was supposed to be killed to keep my mouth shut. 'They' gave me a way to survive."

Times have changed, and more than twenty years after their encounter, they are in the Groznyj Grad Fortress, which is still under construction. In 1962, The Sorrow was a KGB spymaster and The Boss was a spy for America. The Sorrow stood at a break in the sewers; behind him was a cliff, and beyond the cliff was the darkness of night.

"...Back then, the Germans were trying to eradicate communism. The village where I grew up became a battlefield. It was not unusual for villages to die out in this way. When I was no longer able to stay with the NKVD, they sent me to fight as a partisan in German-occupied territory."

And there, too, having seen too much of the slaughter, he awoke to sorrow. He realized the end of his journey of trying to create a state where there were no enemies. How many times has the world changed its justice between them? How many times did the world change its righteousness between them? Today, it is more curious that the Soviet Union and the United States are Cold War rivals. But between them, they have a weapon. The Boss was not holding her favorite assault pistol but an M1911, which is relatively easy to conceal. With her gun at the ready, she does not let her guard down. The Sorrow, who is an accomplished soldier and whose mediumship allows him to borrow the skills of his owner from the weapon, surpasses her in rapid fire. The Boss is older and more brilliant than he was when he was a young man in the Great War. He is more brilliant now than he was when he was a young man in the war.

"Once I was an American and you were a Soviet, and we were not enemies. The Nazis and the Axis Powers took the war to the world, and the Soviet Union was in trouble. So 'they' in the Soviet Union enlisted you in the Cobra Corps."

Their fates crossed again in World War II, because "they" wanted The Sorrow to do so. He came to love her and the Cobra Corps as well as his country.

"Yes... I met you, and you gave me life."

The Sorrow recalls the fierce, glorious days when he once dreamed he could bring the world together.

"You were the best warrior I've ever known. You were brave, thoughtful, and loyal. No one could lie to you, and you always found out the truth."

His admiration for respected Voyevoda, even in the Soviet Union, tickled him badly. If they were not now killing each other, there were plenty of things they would like to talk about over a drink. The Sorrow was on a mission to eliminate an American agent who had come to investigate the fortress. He was not informed that it was The Boss who was coming. Cornered up to this cliff at night, the two faced a fate they did not want to believe in. The sound of rain was cold upon them. If she shot, The Sorrow's body would fall into the rainfall pool.

"Drop the gun," she said. You are Cobra Troop family." He was advised to defect. He pulls the power from his hand in contemplation. But not to take her hand.

"I can't do that. I can't go with you. You are a warrior who has found a special emotion. You are a warrior who has found a special emotion, free from the constraints of the norm," The Sorrow said after a pause, choosing his words carefully.

"Sadness has set me free," he exhaled deeply into the darkness that had plunged the Tselinoyarsk sea of trees to its depths. The sorrow, as bottomless as the abyss, made him himself. It made him free to choose anything other than the system of the Soviet Union as a country. The Boss also loved freedom.

"Yes, the families of the Cobra Corps were free on the battlefield. In times of victory and in times of distress, even when battlefield was chaotic, even when we challenged the impossible."

"That's why we were strong..."

Nostalgia makes him smile. At that time, he could act with the American army. He could even bind their hearts together. And with her, he could become a father. He is still in love with her.

"...but even so, I cannot abandon my homeland."

Now the times knew them both. The Sorrow is being blackmailed by "them" for the custody of his son, who was stolen as soon as he was born.

He cannot tell her about his son. He was well aware that since the beginning of the Cold War, there had been intense red-hunt sympathizers and exclusion of communists and sympathizers from public office in the United States. The very presence of The Sorrow in the Cobra Corps made the hero The Boss a target. But even though she was subjected to harsh denunciations, she still reached out.

"If the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union continues, it will destroy the world."

In the depths of darkness, they were still a "family". They were connected... But that was why The Sorrow could not make the choice that would destroy her. He was lost as to what to say about his choice.

"Boss. I can't ask you, an American, to understand Stalin and the purges. Those times were a mistake... but still Stalin calmed that revolution from a world-overthrowing festival to a reality. If the Russian Revolution had remained aimed at a world revolution, we wouldn't even be in the Cold War."

There was a precipice behind them. He could have jumped off the cliff and disappeared. But he could not. The place where he stood was not far from the country of the Soviet Union. To him, even the current Cold War still seems like the most sane present. Stalin's Great Terror had cost the Soviet people more than World War II.

"I can't excuse my involvement in it. But if even a handful of old revolutionaries and military men had survived Stalin's death and fired up Khrushchev, human history would have been burned to the ground in a nuclear war."

The Sorrow remained a Soviet spy during his time in Cobra Corps. So from the days of the Great War, when he could dream of the future, he realized that one day his family would be separated. He has no future if he wants to protect the present so that he does not fall below this too harsh cold war.

"There is no new place for me, even if it seems that way in the end."

"No. We can overcome it."

"I don't know how people see things in the United States, which has been cut off from the Cold War....But if you change your point of view, the way you see the world will change."

His fate, which he has already accepted, will not be moved. So he tried to predict the future for The Boss. He held out his hand toward her. The price for wielding his power as a medium is that his glasses break and blood flows from his eyes like tears. The first thing that came through was the condemnation, slander, and misunderstanding she had been subjected to in the U.S. during the breakup. In the extraordinary situation in which the U.S. and the Soviet Union were confronting each other with nuclear weapons rather than rules, hysteria toward Communists and their sympathizers was also a natural reaction. But in the midst of it all, she continued to boldly express her feelings for those she loved. So she was attacked. She did not abandon her family, even when it put her career and credibility, which she had fought and won, at risk. She told them she loved them and that they were her family. The Sorrow vision warped. Tears welled up. He pleaded with her. After all, she should not be lost here, and love drove him on.

"Boss, shoot me!"

"I can't!" Her image blurs in the darkness. Her raging sorrow echoes the grief that fills The Sorrow's chest. She surely knows that their son is now in the Soviet Union. She knows that "they" are threatening The Sorrow. But even if he and she join hands to get the child back from the Soviets, where will they go? The U.S. and the Soviet Union have no chance to reconcile after confronting each other with nuclear bombs.

There is no such thing. He loves his country. She also loves her homeland. In the final concentration of his life's end, his vision of the future unfolded rapidly. For that moment, he was nothing, just a prophet for her. It is a vision of life rising from the depths of deep sorrow. Instead of the genes she had lost, he saw her only son rowing off into battle. And from her son, history will be passed on to his terrible children. To the sorrow of death and the joy of life, their stolen baby joined them. Tears spilled out, mingled with blood.

"...Ah, you gave me my life. But... my life belongs to my country. But, okay, that's all right."

He leaves, his intuition of the future telling him that he should do so. It may be an illusion. But even if it was weakness that made him want to stop here, as a human being he was carrying too much sorrow to tell anyone.

"Shoot!" he shouted in the depths of the darkness. With his death, his country, the Soviet Union, would enter a new era, beyond revenge. He left it to The Boss to pull the trigger that would bring history to a close.

"You'll do your duty, won't you? Then you still have to shoot."

The tenderness spreading at the end of the sadness filled his heart. It was satisfaction. The Boss's finger was on the trigger. She, too, had infiltrated alone to Soviet territory. She cannot return to the United States without fulfilling her mission.

"The warrior's spirit will always be with you," he said. And now he knows where the unity she sees is headed. The influence she walks through the shadows of her history, is scattered like seeds. She sprouts and blooms in places she never even imagined.

"Don't be sad. We'll meet again."

The love of her life, she drowns out her blood-curdling cries. He didn't hear her voice. Instead, he remembered what he had said to her on the day of her youth, when she met him for the first time.

"You and I will surely become a 'family'."