Natasha's comrade leader, TonyTheTailor, was no longer working out of Queens but now the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. As much as she liked the city known for their cheesesteaks, they needed something to spice things up. She recently found some journals of her kin, this particular one was from her uncle Vladimir. Vladimir was a force to be reckoned, just like all her kin. Vladimir was more brute than brains, but he did have one thing going for himself, his Associate Comrade Program.

Natasha wanted to run a very similar program now that she worked out of Philly. She wanted to create a second nickname for the city... the city of Comradery Love. 

She removed a piece of heavy parchment from her breast pocket and asked her comrade FatTony to hammer it to the known telephone pole on Main Street. She wanted anyone, and everyone to see her offer.

*

Associate Comrade Program

Its time to move beyond the blunt weapons and the street-level brawls. My distant kin may have preferred bear wrestling and drinking only Vodka, I am offering a path to power built on brains. My distant kin, Vladimir, showed that sponsorship yields success and I will show that refined sponsorship yields dominance. Where vodka prevailed, whiskey is now the drink of the comrades.

Associate Comrade Program Requirements:

1. You must have been born with a name that is Slavic descent, preferably female.
2. You must be willing to partake in Rogue-A-Thon (RAT) events in the whiskey shops.
3. You must wear an Unshanka hat, to be worn for the first thirty days.

These requirements are much lower than my previous kin of Vladimir, but this is to help promote the first recruits.

Outcomes of Associate Comrade Program

Upon completion of the program, you will learn the and master the complexity of the underworld. You will learn and gain access to the comrade intelligence network, known for scheming and making hundreds of millions of dollars. We will not be wrestling bears like my ancestors did, you will learn to outsmart the bear. Most importantly you will pick up the tongue of a true elite comrade, by saying comrade with the perfect balance of irony and sincerity. 

APPLY TODAY!

*

Natasha took a step back and eagerly awaits any comrade to ask any questions they may have. 

Johnny listened to Natasha explaining the program and smiled. His father had once told him about the program and Johnny had also read about it in his fathers memoirs.

Comrade Natasha I wish your program nothing but success.

He tipped his hat and made his way to the local coffee shop.

Natasha notices her comrades pay their respects to her and her recruiting program...

"Comrade Twinkletoes, I hope you mean the whiskey shops. Coffee is for tired old comrades, comrade."

As she listened to her comrade boss ask a very intriguing question about the wearing of the Unshanka, she pondering for a brief moment before giving her response. 

"If a comrade is to wear the traditional Unshanka hat for thirty days straight, it is highly advisable that you wear it in the shower to ensure it gets washed. The art of RATing can be trained very easily comrade. I hold lessons at night from six till seven with whiskey to follow afterwards. For comrade language lessons, I have learned that it comes natural. If in the event a comrade in the program forgets to use our comrade tongue, they will repeat it until it is said. They will also write it thousands of times until their fingers bleed." 

Natasha had a meeting with the newly appointed Godfather of South Philly. The conversation was short and deliberate. 

"Comrades I come before you to announce the first amendment to the program. In your final day before graduating the program you will enter the gulag. The gulag will consist of the removal of a certain individual and surviving their aftermath. Upon survival, you will be rewarded handsomely with protection meant for only the strongest of comrades."

Tony staggered back into the room where Comrade Natasha held court, coat torn, lip split, and the faint smell of gunpowder still clinging to him. The man looked like he’d been tumble-dried with a sack of bricks, but he stood tall anyway. He’d earned that much.

He wiped a smear of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.

“Comrade,” he said, voice hoarse but proud, “assessment complete. Bonnie_Jozwick is no longer taking up space on the payroll.”

He took a slow breath. The last twenty-four hours had been nothing but traps, ambushes and angry friends of Bonnie popping out of alleyways like they’d been bred in them. At one point he wasn’t sure if he was being hunted or auditioning for a horror film. But he’d made it. Against the odds, against the bodies flying at him, against the Gulag itself.

He rolled his shoulders, wincing.

“Figured I should report in before we start the language lessons... and before you finish those final measurements for my Unshanka. Prefer not to get fitted while bleeding out.”

He smirked, the kind of smirk that only survives if a man has just stared death in the face several times and still thinks he got the better end of the deal.

“I survived the Gulag, Comrade Natasha. What’s next?”

Natasha enters the streets, dodging the bullets from another assailant. Her task to enter the gulag was to locate and murder Officer Warren_Ham. She asked her network of comrades to locate the said perpetrator... he was located in Mug City. Money was no longer an issue for her as she took an immediate private flight to enter the gulag. 

BLAMO!

She murdered her target in cold blood and now was on the chase. Her Godfather was the first to enter the gulag, but won't be the last. Under his leadership, she decided to enter, especially after the fact that it was now a requirement to become a comrade. She took a quick minute to address TonyTheTailor's concerns.

"Comrade, next up is the unshanka. As you are known as the tailor, you should be able to dawn your unshanka immediately. Right afterwards will be the language lessons. I must admit though, you already do rather well in the comrade tongue."

TonyTheTailor stepped out from the shadows, brushing a bit of Philly dust from his jacket like a man who’d been through the wringer recently. 

“Comrade LiamGallagher, surviving the Gulag is no small thing. But you walked through a parade of geezers with murder on their minds and came out grinning. That takes grit. Proper comrade grit.”

He paused, letting out a breath he’d been carrying all week.

“It’s been a long and shitty week for me. One of those weeks where you start to wonder why you bother showing up at all. Lost a bit of love for things, if I’m honest. But seeing this? Seeing you come out the other side and still look like you’re ready for another round… it reminds me why we built all this nonsense in the first place.”

His eyes drifted toward Natasha, standing by her parchment like a general guarding a battle plan.

“And Comrade Natasha… credit where it’s due. When the streets felt a bit sour and boring, you were the one dragging some comradery and fun back into the fold.”

He shrugged, a small, weary gesture, but the sincerity was there.

“Without friendship and community, we’re all just walking corpses waiting for our timers to run out."

Tony raised an imaginary glass.

“To survival. To comrades. And to those who remind us why we bother.”

He smirked at Liam.

“Now enjoy it, lad. You’ve earned the whiskey. And if Natasha hands you an Unshanka two sizes too small… consider it a badge of honour.”

Natasha was happy to see her comrade LiamGallagher come to his sense and become a comrade. She raised her own glass of whiskey and gave him a nod of respect. 

CHEERS COMRADE!

"Becoming a comrade is no easy task but obviously like Liam had said, when he says, he bloody means it. Was rather interesting to hear about the attempted murder with a scarf... I never wear a scarf and perhaps this is your lesson to not wear one either comrade. They are only good for choking others out. Every time someone enters the gulag, a new lesson is learned and applied."

She turns and listens to her Godfather...

"Agreed. If we aren't reminded why we are all here, then why are we? Perhaps the city of Brotherly Love really is turning into the city of Comradery Love after all."

Megan had recently shut down her cozy barbershop in Queens and slipped quietly out of New York, hoping Philadelphia would offer the fresh start she desperately needed. But the past had a habit of following her, especially when it involved Natasha and the Soviet-born Comrade Program.

Natasha had recruited Megan months earlier, claiming the Program only targeted “forces of corruption.” The mission: kill Alton_Taylor, the slick, untouchable employee of FBN, who had quietly wrecked communities, including the one Megan grew up in. The FBN had recently shut down multiple drug fronts in both Queens and South Philly and Alton_Taylor was behind all of them. Conclusion; Alton_Taylor has to go.

Megan’s part had been simple: get close during a private appointment with a stripper from one of Iconoclastic Inc's stripjoints and shoot Alton_Taylor's brains out. Experienced as Megan was, she succeeded.

And now FBN wanted Megan.

Philadelphia was meant to be safer, but Megan could feel eyes on her whenever she walked to the corner bodega. The burner phone Natasha had left her buzzed constantly with warnings—short, coded, unnervingly calm.

November 18th, as rain misted over the empty street outside her apartment, a new message arrived:

“Comrade Megan. FBN operatives are in the city. Move now. —N.”

Megan tightened the strap of her small backpack, the only thing she’d bothered to unpack. She wasn’t a spy, she wasn’t a fighter, but she wasn’t running blind anymore, either.

If FBN wanted a chase, they’d find out that a determined ex-hairdresser from Queens could vanish just as cleanly as she could cut a line.

And maybe, with Natasha’s help, she could finish what the Comrade Program had started.

With a exceptionally warm Ushanka, soviet emblem included, on her head, Megan walks up to TonyTheTailor.

Natasha allready hooked me up, comrade. She said it accentuates my eyes.

The coat Megan wore had bloodstains all over. "Boss, 7 FBN operatives tried to take my life. I slaughtered them all and dumped the bodies in the Shuylkill River."

Now let's talk about that certification, comrade.

Octavius, generally a jovial person, flexing his massive muscles for the people of Philadelphia, had a stern look on his face as he approached the masses. His handsome face coated in a red sheen of fresh blood. He looked down to see his breastplate covered in the same. A small smirk crossed his face as he approached Comrades TonyTheTailor and Natasha. He unhooked his breastplate and let it fall to the ground at their feet. 
 

“I hereby renounce my Roman citizenship and embrace the Soviet roots that were buried deep within. I only aspire to be Comrade Octavius going forward.”

”I submit my application for the Comrade Programme”

“I would have brought a finger as well, but I forgot my knife in my other breastplate.”

*milk walks out of the local watering hole after finishing his ice cold glass of 2%*

*being that he is from the baltic region, he already qualifies but he gets on FatTony's shoulders and announces that he is an official comrade* 

We here at Iconoclast Inc. have all entered and escaped the gulag.  

if you want to be a certified comrade, you MUST shoot a CA based out of Philly.  

Upon completion of your task, mail Natasha and she will certify you as such

*milk gets off of FatTony's shoulders and kicks him off the curb into a puddle and shouts: Prison rules bitch. then proceeds to go back into the watering whole for another cold glass of 2%*

Natasha had been traveling east in an attempt to import more soviets to these shores. Luckily for her though, many of her known acquaintances had wanted to participate in the Associate Comrade Program. Neither her or TonyTheTailor knew how successful this would be but one thing was certain, being a comrade was something others wanted to become.

"Congratulations on taking your first step into the Associate Comrade Program. The next 24 hours will be interesting for each of you. Everyone that has entered the program, has completed the gulag. I hope that continues to be the case. Good luck to all of you, and hopefully see you on the other side."

Tony stepped forward, voice carrying across the gathered comrades.

FRIENDS, FORMER ROMANS, COMRADES.

I listened to each of your stories. Octavius renouncing Rome. Milk baptising the streets. Peter committing homicide with a hot dog roller. These are the moments that bring a tear to my eye. Not of sadness. But of pride.

I had a dream. I had a dream that one day comrades from across these shores would rise up. I had a dream that former Romans, Baltic milk drinkers and hot dog entrepreneurs could stand together in unity, bonded not by geography or lineage, but by one shared belief.

He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough.

That it is perfectly acceptable to shoot a designated FBN employee if you want to become a certified comrade.

So let it be declared. Octavius, once bound by Rome, now bound by vodka fumes and duty. Milk, pure of calcium and impure of behaviour. Peter, destroyer of agents, roller of hot dogs and bringer of chaos. You have all taken your first steps into the Gulag.

Now your test begins. Twenty four hours of being shot at by angry FBN clerks with poor aim and worse attitudes. Some say the odds are impossible. Some say the programme is stupid. But these critics are not comrades. They do not see what we see.

Tony placed a hand over his heart.

We see fun. We see unity. We see a group  trying to make this world less boring. And for that, I salute you.

To the Gulag. To comradery. To the absurdity that binds us. May you all survive the day, and may the FBN employee with your name on their list be on lunch break.

Welcome to the programme.

My gathered friends and associates. I must ask this most pressing question. Was losing Don Peter worth it? It seems to be all fun and games until one of your own meets an unexpected and premature death. Does this end the race to the gulag? Or do you continue to seek the fame and fortune that comes from surviving such encounters?

Natasha had just finished visiting her fallen comrade, Peter, at his final resting spot in South Philly. There was a new section within the cemetery dedicated to fallen comrades; fully pledged comrades, or associate comrades in the program. Both were admired and respected amongst the ranks... As she made her way to the streets, he heard a non-comrade ask questions about the gulag.

"Godfather Chairman Slim, Peter chose to run the gulag to prove himself. He knew the dangers but still decided to do it to become a full comrade. Many people will not understand this and that is alright. It is not fame and fortune one expects to gain out of the gulag but something that is more meaningful. You wouldn't understand, but again, its alright."

"The gulag will continue on for as long as their are volunteers to enter it."