Parties Are For Losers takes place during the very end of summer. On one of his nightly outings with the gang Yura notices a commotion - some young girl spilled her drink on a small gang leader. For a brief moment Yura is startled by the strange look in the kid’s eyes, but before any harm can be done to her, Sanya steps in, soon followed by her and Yura’s gang members. Yura, too, snaps out of it and joins the fray. After the tussle is over they get acquainted with the girl, who introduces herself as Katya and says that she had run away from home. Since neither Sanya’s nor Yura’s living situations allow for it, they make a sort of hideaway for KT, where they bring all the essential stuff for her to sleep in relative comfort.
The kids hang out over the course of about two weeks, during which Yura and Katya in particular develop a close, sibling-like relationship.
One day, when the kids are escorting Sanya home, her brother notices the abnormal markings on Katya’s arm. Having a lot of experience working with anomalies, he immediately recognizes her as a potentially dangerous mutant.
Later on that night Yura and KT go to another party. Yura has an emotional breakdown, which ends in Katya comforting him in the bathroom.
The next day they go to visit Sanya’s place only to learn that Sergei had alerted the authorities about KT (though he did not expect a full-on swat team to show up). In an effort to defend herself, Katya busts out her powers, but is ultimately captured and taken back to the facility.
The video can be split into two parts.
The “present” part takes place around 2 weeks after the incident. Yura is about to leave on his first mission to the Zone, when he is stopped by Sanya, who has run all the way from home to see him off.
The video goes into a flashback to a year before. Yura has been tutoring Sanya for some time and through conversations with him she became fascinated with the boy’s “cool” lifestyle, which was the complete opposite of her own sheltered life. She eventually masters up the courage to ask him to take her to a party, to which he reluctantly agrees.
At night Yura helps Sanya sneak out from her room’s balcony, after which they both go on to dance and have fun just as planned. At some point they get separated, and when Sanya finally finds Yura in the crowd, she sees him flirting with another girl. Upset, she goes to vent her anger outside by kicking some trash cans. She is startled by Yura, who has gone out for a smoke and saw her little fit. To Sanya’s surprise, though, he joins her in an even more violent outburst.
This incident signaled a sort of turning point for Sanya, after which her hanging out with Yura became more and more frequent, as she herself gradually became tougher and tougher - eventually even gaining some street cred.
We return to where Parties Are For Losers left off, with Yura and Sanya watching on as the van with the captured Katya drives away. At this moment something in Yura snaps - he realizes that he can’t let it end like that. His initial attitude of “what’s the point of even trying” is replaced with “if I don’t do it, nobody else will”, as he becomes dead set on freeing KT. At this point he has no conceivable way of doing it (especially on his own), but if working for Sergei and taking some time to come up with a plan is what it takes, he’ll do that.
Coming back to the very first scene of the video, Sanya wants to tell Yura something before he goes (seeing as she may never see him again). The boy interrupts her, since he doesn’t want her to say anything she might regret. Yura firmly believes that he will, in fact, return and gives Sanya (who was dressed a little too lightly) his jacket before finally leaving.
Punch It, Punk! and Parties Are For Losers take place during roughly the same timeframe. Anya has been fascinated with Olya ever since she first saw her a few months ago (in a “holy shit what a cool mysterious lady what’s her deal” sort of way) and - partially out of curiosity, partially out of boredom - began trying to stalk her. Keyword being trying, since Anya’s the most indiscreet person to ever grace planet Earth. Olya noticed that pretty much immediately (which didn’t stop Anya’s further attempts), but went along with it, since that girl is not exactly a threat and can actually be easily avoided. Nonetheless, Olya’s routinely catching Anya and treating her at a nearby cafe eventually lead to them developing a rather close, niece-aunt sort of relationship. The girl regularly “runs away from home”, but pretty much everyone knows that she just goes to hang out at Olya’s place for a few days before coming back to her family.
So, during one of Anya’s many stalking attempts she gets harassed by some thugs, only to be saved by Dmitry. Olya, returning from the store, finds Anya (who she knew was tailing her) with the beat up boy. He refuses the ambulance, so they fix him up at Olya’s place and feed him. Dmitry, who said he ran away from home (which Anya finds very hashtag relatable), starts living at Olya’s apartment and he and Anya begin hanging out doing whatever. At one point he offers Anya to leave the city, since she seems to hate it so much, but she suddenly feels unsure whether she’s ready to actually go through with something like that.
A few days after the KT incident Olya spends the night at Sergei’s place, when he vents to her about the whole ordeal (the snippets of dialogue during the instrumental part are his). The timeframe, the vague “ran away from home” explanation that both Dmitry and KT used and the general strange disposition of the boy cause Olya to become very suspicious, though she doesn’t tell Sergei anything. She asks to take a photo of KT’s jacket, which Sanya kept in her room, explaining that rather than letting clothes go to waste, she could offer to give it away to an acquaintance of hers. Sergei lets Olya take the picture, but warns her that there’s no way Sanya would agree to give or even sell the thing to some stranger. Of course, Olya had no intentions of doing anything like that in the first place.
Upon coming home she shows the picture of the jacket to Dmitry, which causes an immediate emotional reaction from him and basically confirms Olya’s suspicions that the boy is at the very least connected to Katya. Anya overhears Olya speaking to Dmitry (which basically amounts to “listen, the girl was caught, I know what you are, you can drop the act”) and, thinking that she’s about to call the authorities on him, snatches her phone; panicked Dmitry meanwhile doesn’t want to hurt Olya, but restrains her movement by means of surrounding her in all the sharp objects from around the house he could think of. She’s unphased by it, though, and as Anya takes a look at the phone, she realizes Olya was just texting Sergei (about the supposed sell-this-jacket-to-a-friend-of-mine deal). Realizing she was not going to turn Dmitry in in the first place, the kids are relieved. The boy is, however, left distressed about what happened to KT.
Due to the nature of Dmitry's powers he is both very useful and extremely difficult to contain. Therefore, rather than being forcibly restricted, he was given the best possible treatment a mutant could hope for (good living quarters, actual clothes, respect from the staff, etc.). From the moment he was taken into the facility he was told that with the way people from the outside world treat mutants, his life, if he was ever to escape, would become far less comfortable. No particularly inhumane experiments were held on him, but he was regularly used as a "valuable assistant" in testing other mutants' abilities. One of those mutants was KT.
Despite the staff's seemingly friendly disposition towards Dima, the insincerity of it all, as well as their constantly growing fear of him was apparent; Katya could feel that.
When the experiment is about to start Dmitry suddenly snaps and breaks both KT and himself out of the facility. They run to the city and steal some clothes to change out of their uniforms.
Katya is very excited about meeting new people and living her life to the fullest, but Dima is not so keen on that. They have an argument and go their separate ways, which leads KT to the club where she meets the gang and the events of PAFL take place.
After Yura's breakdown in the bathroom he confronts KT about her mutation, but she doesn't want to tell him what it really is. Nevertheless, Yura feels like the only person who could help at this point would be Sergei.
At night Katya is struck by overwhelming hunger.
The next day, when Yura brings her for a talk with Sergei, the swat team raid happens. After the girl is recaptured, the truth about the nature of her ability is revealed to her. KT understands that in the end things like her are meant to be contained; she accepts defeat.
Stalking has always been more of a side thing for Olya, her main job being the head of the Facility's Logistical Department. Her knowledge and sometimes deliberate changes in both transfer and patrol routes used by the Facility have been of invaluable help to the stalkers.
Nonetheless, a lot of them harbored a certain distrust of her, especially when it came to her coming along for the Zone missions. First of all, it's pretty much unheard of for a woman to be a stalker (due to the dangerous and often physically straining nature of the job, as well as the effect the Zone may have on one's reproductive system) and, second of all, no matter how many missions she’d go on, Olga never seemed to develop any sort of "feel" for the Zone or its anomalies - the so-called Talent that every stalker possesses. They either saw her as a double agent or a bored rich girl trying to play around with something far beyond her.
Still, a few of them had a lot of respect for Olya - Sergei especially so. Him, Nikita and Nikita's brother worked with her on a regular basis, though one of them never trusted Olya completely, seeing her as dead weight at best.
Nikita's dislike of her grew even more potent after Sergei failed to rescue his brother from the meat grinder. He got away with his side dissolved, while Olya lost her eye, but even so, Nikita believed that if Sergei wasn't playing favourites, his brother could have been saved (which isn't entirely untrue).
The real extent of the tension between them went unnoticed by Sergei, partially because of Olya's unwillingness to bother him with her problems and partially because of Nikita's unwillingness to confront the man about it - Sergei was already ridden with guilt after losing a friend, and pressuring him about Olga would neither bring the brother back, nor change his attitude towards her.
They kept being sent on missions together. While they would protect each other from walking into traps and such, there was a clear sense of bitterness between them, which sometimes escalated into passive confrontation.
Olya never thought of herself as guilty for the brother's death, but she'd be lying if she said Nikita's words never got to her. In any case, she'd never let her feelings of inadequacy slip, especially not to Sergei.
The video is about Olya and Nikita accompanying Yura on his first trip to the Zone. It's supposed to be a fairly easy mission to retrieve the big battery spotted in one of the overgrown safes not far from the entrance to the grinder tunnel.
Everything goes smoothly - Nikita takes a liking to Yura and does most of the explaining, while Olya leads the way. They make a short stop in the hollow to eat and rest. The hollow is a small area (about 25 metres in radius), which seems to almost instantly dissolve any anomaly that crosses its border. It is not recommended to stay there for more than 20 minutes at a time, as one's flesh will begin to dissolve as well. It is located directly above the meat grinder.
When retrieving the battery Yura finds a little glowing trinket. After Olya and Nikita assess that it should be harmless (though of little value), he happily collects it.
Throughout the trip Olya is mostly lost in thought. She went into stalking to try to add some thrill and purpose to her life, but, as magical and exciting as it was in the beginning - even with all of the ugly aspects of that job - even that eventually devolved into something routine and meaningless. She has Sergei, but is too scared to open up about her problems for fear of being left alone. Nikita left his girlfriend after she got pregnant - who's to say Sergei wouldn't do the same?
On the way back, however, something unexpected happens. The border troops that were supposed to be patrolling the other route catch the gang by surprise. Any trespassers are shot on sight - Nikita is the first one to go down. The guard, however, halts as soon as he recognizes Olya, just before being shot by the panicked Yura.
The other guards rush in to arrest both him and her, not daring to kill their supervisor.
Early in the morning Sergei gets a phone call from the police station where Olga and Yura have been escorted to after the events of the Mill. He arrives to learn what's happened and talks to both of them. At that point the two have already been interrogated.
To his dismay, Olya decides to take the blame for shooting one of the guards, both because she doesn't want the boy's life ruined and because, considering her position, she may be let off a bit easier than some unknown teenager. Plus, if Sergei is willing to use bribery and his favours with the militia, lightening only one person's sentence should be less difficult with the other one out of the picture.
Yura, who was ready to answer for his actions, is not too keen on Olya's choice. He doesn't have a say in this, though. After Sergei spends the day jumping through not-so-legal hoops, Yura is, ultimately, let off with a month of community service on charge of unspecified trespassing.
The two have an argument on the way from the police station. Sergei's patience with Yura has reached its breaking point: for all the time the man has spent on him, the boy's brought him nothing but trouble. The bad influence on Sanya, the Katya incident and the fuck-up that lead to Olya facing a very real prospect of jailtime are not worth it.
Sergei won't be working with Yura anymore; he doesn't want him anywhere near his house and especially nowhere near Sanya. They're done.
The song begins with Yura sneaking into Sanya's room. He wants to explain his side of the story and retrieve his jacket (as well as simply see her) before cutting off all of their contact proper. While Yura tries to act nonchalant, Sanya is too concerned and confused to deal with his jokey attitude. So he just gets to it.
We see a flashback of Yura's interrogation, where some guards mockingly throw the artefact he'd found back at him. The cube doesn't even glow when outside the Zone, so it's as valuable as a piece of plastic.
After the first chorus, we're shown a different day with Yura doing community service. He encounters Anya and Dima, but then the latter cuts the meeting short after getting annoyed with Yura's teasing. As he drags Anya away, they make eye contact. That causes a familiar uncomfortable feeling, the same one Yura felt when he first looked at Katya. It's clear that the boy is a mutant.
While it seems like a stretch that one runaway would be connected to KT, Yura wants to find out more about Dmitry. He corners Anya and, under the guise of being concerned about her blooming relationship, asks her some questions. The girl readily tells the story of their rescue romance, leaving out the part about Dima having telekinesis. She also mentions him living with Olya for the time being. While Yura didn't want to make any grand assumptions beforehand, the familiar "ran away from home" narrative, the sinking feeling that he got from staring at him and, most importantly, the dates of Dmitry and Katya's appearances matching up turn his suspicions into a certainty. The two just had to be connected.
Now back to Sanya's place. After explaining all that happened in the Zone and at the police station, Yura gives her the "souvenir" as a small goodbye gift. Sanya notices that the cube is glowing just a little, though Yura doesn't. He jokes around some more and is about to leave, when the girl suddenly embraces him. He is taken completely off-guard, but returns the hug. Sanya refuses to stop talking to him just because her big brother said so. When was the last time she listened to Sergei anyways?
Yura feels genuinely warm. However, the realisation that he ultimately cannot cut Sanya off (both mentally and physically) makes him distraught.
At home, he takes off the bandaid on his cheek. He is left with a scar.
Message Lost is less story-driven and more of a character piece. Because of that, the direct explanation will be done on a lyric-to-lyric basis.
The song itself is sung from Nikita’s perspective.
dawn can’t break when the sun has burned to a crisp
Nikita can’t see how he can ever get better, when all the things that would make him happy have long disappeared.
there must have been some supernova i missed
He has missed the exact breaking point, if there ever was one.
my ultimate snapshot - “sky overcast”
The last real thing he sees as he lies on the ground is the cloudy sky above. The line also refers to him predicting the end of his life to be dull and unexciting.
go out with a whimper, not with a blast
refers to dying not in a heroic, “satisfying” way, but instead purposelessly fading from existence.
you open up your eyes, open your up arms, open your everything
lay all your holy vows and unholy charms - all of you before me
are about Nadya completely submitting herself to him both emotionally and physically (“holy vows” referring to the romantic aspect and “unholy charms” referring to the sexual aspect of the relationship).
and so you run, and so you run, and so you run like a stray mutt
after a mutt-
after a muttered confession of love
Pretty self-explanatory: Nikita considers Nadya’s dependence on him pathetic, as he reluctantly reassures the woman that he loves her as well.
the haze
lingers above
the pale dawning arc
A reference to the Zone, specifically connecting the song to the Mill.
day can’t break when the sun has burned to a crisp
there must have been some supernova i missed
my ultimate snapshot - “sky overcast”
go out with a whimper, not with a blast
has already been explained. The change of expressions from “the break of dawn” to “daybreak” is purely aesthetical, as the repetition of the word “dawn” right after “the dawning arc” sounded unsatisfying.
to scour the blackened, soot-covered earth
Nikita is thinking about Nadya looking for a meaning in life after having been abandoned,
to cry out my name in violent birth
remembering him while giving birth,
to settle for naught and settle the grudge
and (hopefully) coming to terms with everything that had happened.
when there was no jury, i was the judge
Nikita never particularly cared about how other people perceived him, so, in his mind, he was free to do whatever he wanted. Basically, when others’ judgement doesn’t matter, you follow your own rules.
open up my eyes, open up my arms, open up everything
lend me your dying vows and undying charms, i can still hear you sing
see you there standing calm by the open window in the living room
and all the light in the world converges on you
By the end of it all, Nikita is overwhelmed with regret. While he may not have loved Nadya the same way she’d loved him, maybe, if he had tried opening up to her, their lives would have turned out differently.
Dr Temnova loves her job. DT001-319 is her greatest project to date - the immense potential the subject possesses is unlike any other anomaly she's managed before. She has controlled and monitored the subject's development since its arrival to the facility. To her, DT001-319 is a truly standout specimen.
However, not all colleagues hold that point of view. After the recent cuts to the facility's funding, the containment of some particularly expensive subjects has been put into question. DT001-319 is one of them - the potential risk that its powers present is too large to justify further spendings. Dr Temnova may be a high-ranking scientist in the facility, but her protests mean little to the board. Her arguments have too much to do with pure scientific interest and too little with risk prevention costs.
Her resistance ultimately proves futile, as the board issues a termination order for DT001-319. Dr Temnova sees it as an insult. Unwilling to let her proudest achievement go to waste, she inserts a personal message into the intelligence folder given out to DT001-319 before every experiment - this time, before the subject's last scheduled experiment, ever. She notes to read the message in the toilet, where there are no cameras to monitor the subject's reaction.
Considering DT001-319's treatment up until that point, the message must have a critical effect on its mental state. As sad as it feels to nullify the effort that has gone into constructing the subject's worldview, it is necessary to push DT001-319 to escape.
Dr Temnova doesn't know if the subject believes the information. That said, it does possess a sort of personal bond to the doctor, which should up her chances of success. DT001-319 is to be terminated after the upcoming KT003-405 experiment, so the subject has a good couple of hours to think.
Ultimately, DT001-319 believes her. Dr Temnova is very, very proud of him.
You should never ask a woman her age. For instance, Dr Temnova is only about 50 years older than she appears.
Sanya has a suspicion about the nature of the cube Yura had brought her. She sneaks into Sergei's artefact-filled office to put her theory to the test, and the guess is confirmed: the cube reacts to anomalies by glowing.
Yura visits Sanya the next night to witness its effects. He's overjoyed: he could really use something that could count as evidence against Anya's boyfriend.
Yura comes up with a plan of how they could get Dmitry to help rescue Katya. Sanya dislikes the idea for several reasons: it relies on assumption, it's extremely risky, and even if it's all bluff (Yura assures her that's the case), she sees the method as immoral.
The girl tries to forcibly tag along, which angers Yura - both because it would be very dangerous for her, and because Sanya being far away from Dmitry is more or less necessary for the setup to work. Yura puts Sanya on the spot by suggesting she come up with a better course of action. She can't. Since he doesn't want to waste any more time before Dmitry skips town or is recaptured, they settle for the plan they have. With that, Yura leaves her behind.
***
Yura tells his sister he needs to pick up some study materials from Olya's place. Having seen the two interact before, Anya doesn't pay much thought to it and lets Yura into the apartment.
Needless to say, Yura has no intention of picking up notes. He starts up a conversation with Dmitry, who isn't too happy about the meeting. The seemingly pointless chatter escalates when Yura offhandedly mentions they should not expect Olya's return any time soon. He reveals where she really is, how she got there, and why he knows that information in the first place. This comes as a shock to both Anya and Dmitry, and not just because of what has happened to Olya: Anya, for one, had no idea of her brother's illegal occupation.
Yura pulls out the cube. It's glowing bright, just as expected. Yura tells Dmitry and Anya about his experience with Katya, as well as about how he came to the conclusion that the two mutants are connected. Dmitry and Anya have heard snippets of what had happened to Katya before. However, they had no idea how involved in the situation Yura really was.
With all that information laid before him, Dmitry doesn't see a point in concealing his true identity. He admits to being a mutant and briefly explains his side of the story to the siblings, now elaborating on why the escape took place. They aren't too pleased to learn about his role at the research centre - Dmitry has always avoided discussing it with Anya, and she never pried.
Regardless, both Yura and Anya believe that Dmitry must have had a change of heart. Yura is still happy to have someone who not only has the power to break Katya out of the facility, but is also well acquainted with its inner workings. He asks Dmitry to help with the rescue. And Dmitry refuses.
"She had it coming," he says. He gave her a chance at freedom - on a whim, no less - and the girl blew it. He is under no obligation to throw everything away for the sake of someone that he barely knew.
Yura is slightly taken aback by the response, but it does not come as a major surprise. In fact, the possibility of an answer like that was why Yura conjured the plan up in the first place.
Disappointed with Dmitry's lack of altruism, Yura produces his phone out of an inner jacket pocket; he's been on a recorded call with Sanya the entire time. If he is harmed, she will still have the evidence on Dmitry in audio form.
But the mutant isn't the one who will suffer the most in case the call recording gets leaked. After all, he can still disappear: skip town, slip through the cracks. Olya, however, can't. And she'll get hit much harder, especially in her current situation. Yura's reasoning is as follows: if Katya might have been some random girl Dmitry had less than a day's worth of contact with, Olya would have a lot more personal significance to him, given she was the one to give him shelter for the past couple of weeks.
And that's correct. Dmitry throws Yura at the wall, enraged; Yura's hands bend behind his back, and the phone shatters on the ground. Dmitry wants to kill Yura then and there. At least, he believes a couple of broken bones or a small organ rupture is in order. But he is stopped by Anya. Yura is relieved to have not gone to meet Dmitry one on one - in spite of all their bickering, Anya was very unlikely to let her brother get murdered in front of her.
Still, she's anything but okay with what he's pulling. Anya can't believe that Yura would stoop so low, she can't believe he'd betray Olya like that. Anya doesn't know Sanya well at all, but she can't believe that girl would throw Olya under the bus, either.
Yet no matter how frustrated everyone is with what's unfolding, they're backed into a corner. Looks like the two sides will have to cooperate.