Cop Craft Volume 4 Chapter 5 Part 1
Appendix 1
The people of Vice: About Aleksandr Godunov
Godunov is a detective from Russia. His family roots are rather complex, having Estonian blood, and some Georgian blood, though in all honesty he’s not even quite sure himself.
He was born in Saint Petersburg, or during the final days of the then called “Leningrad”, raised by a tough factory worker and a hard working office employee who were trying their best during the chaotic period of the Soviet collapse.
Well, back then he was just a child, so he doesn’t remember that kind of poverty at all. Just like most unprivileged children around the world, he simply used to consider his own circumstances as “normal”.
Even now, whenever he sees documented cases of human rights abuses and misery in Africa or Semani, for example, he will look at people shedding tears of compassion for them and simply think “Well, maybe they actually don’t feel the need to grieve about their own situation themselves?”. Of course that is not to say that their conditions are not terrible, but he mostly thinks about it as a way to respect human vitality itself.
However, since those very people would probably be upset at him saying something like that, he prefers to keep his mouth shut. Even his wife is that kind of person, so he prefers to say nothing (he sees that as his manly wisdom).
In any case, it would also be incorrect to say that Godunov was a happy child. He was a sickly boy who suffered from asthma, and he would get terrible fits during the spring and autumn seasons. Asthma inhalers were particularly expensive at the time, costing several rubles that his family could not afford, so he would frequently see his mother crying while lamenting that “at this rate, the boy will not even make it until he’s twenty”. He would cover himself in a blanket and open the windows to get some fresh air, sometimes even sticking his head out, and then spend the entire night wheezing and gasping for air.
He would frequently think that perhaps his mother was right, and that his life was not going to be very long anyways.
However, for some mysterious genetic prank, Aleksandr the boy started suddenly having a great appetite and will to exercise during his early teens, and in the blink of an eye he ended up becoming strong and muscular. His asthma attacks also had stopped at some point, leaving without a trace.
He would frequently be the class’s hero in PE classes, and he was unparalleled in the entire region whenever he commuted to the local gym and engaged in wrestling or sambo. Just by showing off his biceps, firm as a log, and giving off a cheeky smile with his well built manly face, he could make most girls in the neighborhood shriek for him.
And despite it being easy to think that he would get cocky and arrogant, he actually didn’t.
Despite getting very strong himself, Aleksandr was still the kind of boy that had a strong sense of justice. He had been a very weak boy in elementary school, and picked as a prime target by the school bullies, after all. They would pull him by his underwear, push him around in front of the girl he liked, and force him to kiss filthy urinals. Why was filth like that so enthralled with the idea of making other people suffer? Even now, Godunov couldn’t understand it.
After getting a lot healthier, he stopped being humiliated altogether, but his hatred for injustice was already well ingrained within him. As such, his favorite movie was “Red Heat”, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the main protagonist. In it, tough guy Ivan Danko is sent from Mother Russia to America. Schwarzenegger plays the role of a police officer from Moscow who goes to Chicago and becomes a very important player in the fight against the results of American decadence and organized crime.
He’s so cool! So incredibly cool!
I don’t even care that his Russian pronunciation is weird! I want to be like Ivan Danko someday as well! I’ve heard that even Schwarzenegger used to be a weak kid with asthma as well. And that he managed to get those huge muscles with hard training.
Aleksandr watched that DVD at least a hundred times as a kid. The problem was that the copy he owned was not legal, so it was not like he was always behaving a hundred percent legally.
Leaving that aside, Godunov’s aspirations to become a police officer were something that developed naturally as he grew up, but getting there wasn’t an easy road.
The police officers in his area weren’t particularly fair or correct to begin with, being the type to get easily swayed by bribes. Godunov didn’t want to be like that.
As he kept questioning his own situation, he found himself right about to graduate high school, at a moment when a lot of different paths were opening up to him, but ultimately he ended up choosing the military to become a soldier.
Godunov was sent to Chechnya, and he went through true cruelty in the battlefield there.
It was a life that he did not ever want to remember, but even then he ended up getting promoted to Corporal, and promptly sent to the Semani world.
That place was not much better than Chechnya in terms of horrible battlegrounds, but due to a wound he received from a poisoned arrow, his leg was permanently lightly damaged.
Despite having permanent damage, it wasn’t so bad that it affected his everyday life. For the most part, he was still able to run faster than most men his age, and for a long time too. But even then, he was not able to run quite as fast and quite as long as his unit needed.
He still had the chance to move on to recruit training or to office desk jobs, but by that point he had already come to hate military groups.
Ultimately, Godunov ended up quitting the army, and then being recruited by the “Ambross Project” in the autonomous region of Kariaena Island.
The “Ambross Project” consisted in redrafting (former) soldiers that had been deployed to Semani, as part of the autonomous law enforcement unit (police force) of Kariaena Island, particularly emphasizing peace and reconciliation. And among the recruited there weren’t just Americans, but people from several different countries. The main reason being that as long as they had been deployed in Semani, they would be able to preserve the public order in the newborn autonomous region, while maintaining peaceful relations between people from Earth and Semani.
The program’s history was the following:
During the war in Semani, an American second lieutenant named Ambross was fatally wounded and died in battle. He was just a second lieutenant, so his death was not particularly surprising.
A pretty common event for most armies anywhere in the world. However, that unfortunate soldier’s parents were house representatives in congress, or something important like that, and so in order to grieve their child, they started getting involved with certain activist groups and backing them, eventually leading to the foundation of said program.
“If you’re going to cry about your son dying, then don’t send them to war” was what Godunov thought, but in the end he didn’t say anything like that during his interview. (He saw that as his manly wisdom).
In any case, he had to be thankful to second lieutenant Ambross.
Aleksandr Godunov was happily enrolled in the San Teresa police department. Now he was just a few steps from becoming his “Red Heat” hero.
He breezed through the academy, and then energetically fulfilled his tasks as a regular policeman, studying with all his might to finally become a detective.
Хорошо́ (Harasho) !
I did it, I’m finally like Ivan Danko.
He almost felt like jumping with joy that day, but ultimately the unit he was assigned to was number 12, in charge of theft crimes.
Day after day all he was doing was interrogations.
Violent or exciting situations were rare. And the opportunities to use his custom designed Desert Eagle (aptly named Podbyrin after the gun in the movie) were also far more uncommon than he expected.
It was too big, and too heavy, and whenever he sat down, the hammer would press against his waist and hurt. He was fed up with it.
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