Svetlana Chkalova

[Lt. Ansel Schäfer]

[CLASSIFIED]

THE BASICS

Name:// Svetlana Sergeyevna Chkalova ( Светлана Сергеевна Чкаловa )
Nicknames & Aliases:// Sveta ( Света )
Sex:// Female
Birthday:// November 22, 1921
Age:// 21 ( As of October 15, 1943 )
Sexuality:// Straight
Nationality:// Russian
Allegiance:// Allies
Occupation & Position:// Red Army Senior Sergeant [sniper] ( unknown equivalent in U.S. army )
Languages Known://Russian (Native Speaker), German (Fluent), French (Beginner), English (Beginner)
Religion:// Spiritual but not religious

AT A GLANCE

Hair Color:// Pale blonde
Eye Color:// Green
Height:// 5'5
Weight:// 140 lbs
Usual Attire:// Male-issue Red Army wool field uniform complete with hat. She is usually seen in the sandy khaki-tan color variation of this, but will wear whatever will provide her with the most camouflage in her current location if it is on hand. In warmer weather she will sometimes wear a long dark skirt ( which may or may not be made of wool ) with her uniform top. When she isn't on duty ( which is rare ) she prefers simple weather-appropriate clothing which allows her the most freedom of movement. Fancy dresses and high-heels are definitely not her thing, though she will don them on special occasions.
Usual Weapons:// Svetlana's weapon of choice is the Mosin–Nagant M91/30 Sniper Rifle with a 3.5 PU scope. In addition to this, she carries a TT-30 pistol and a standard issue NR-40 combat knife as backup.

DEEP INSIDE

Personality://Pretty, clever, and fit, Svetlana Chkalova would have no shortage of friends if she were less cynical, withdrawn, and condescending and more outgoing, patient, and unassuming. A born introvert she doesn’t feel a strong need to make new friends or please others, and she will not go out of her way to do either. This, however, doesn’t mean she doesn’t want friends or close relationships: she does, she just doesn’t want to pour a lot of time and energy into making and maintaining dozens of superficial friendships with people she has very little in common with and with whom she can’t form any strong connections. When out in public she is usually friendly — or at least polite — towards strangers, but after introductions are out of the way and/or pleasantries have been exchanged she doesn’t normally make much of an effort to get to know the person she just spoke with better unless he or she does or says something that piques her interest. The exception is handsome young men. These are greeted flirtatiously, and once introductions have been made Svetlana will try to keep the conversation going for as long as she needs to figure out if she and Mr. Good-Looking have any common ground or chemistry. If all goes well, and no girlfriend is in the picture, future meet-ups and dates are arranged. If all goes well but the guy isn’t interested in a potential girlfriend Svetlana will usually try to stay in contact anyway, as it isn’t often that she meets interesting, like-minded individuals of either sex, and it’s even rarer when she meets ones which share a significant number of likes, hobbies, and passions with her.

Despite her introversion Svetlana knows how to flirt and does it well. She has no problem attracting male attention when she wants it, and has had numerous flings and brief, failed relationships. Trouble is, though she desperately wants a good, solid, committed relationship with a man who ticks at least most of the boxes in her “must have” list of qualities, the young sniper has more than just introversion working against her. To start with, she is distrusting of people in general, even ones who make good first impressions and appear on the surface to be caring and upright. From an early age her father drilled it into her head that she should always be on her guard and never be too quick to trust other people’s words and promises, and sure enough growing up she never had to look far to find lies, deceit, con artists, and false advertising. So, although she knows good, honest, moral people exist, it often takes her longer than most people to reach the point where she feels like she knows someone well enough to put them in that category, and as a result some would-be friends let the acquaintanceship fizzle out before it ever has a chance to blossom into anything more, feeling that she is overly paranoid and will never trust them no matter what. The fact that she is quick to judge, stubborn, proud, tends to stereotype, and has a superiority complex doesn’t help.

However, for all these faults Svetlana is incredibly, almost blindly loyal to those she loves and will fight to the death to protect them from all who would harm them. In these tough times especially she will go out of her way to make sure they have everything they need to stay healthy and comfortable, even when it means that she herself has to go without. Her altruism doesn’t stop at family and loved ones, either: if she sees any of her compatriots going hungry or thirsty, or suffering from the cold or lack of medicine, and she happens to have what they need, she will give it to them without a second thought, focusing on those in greatest need first.

Most who know anything at all about the quiet and solitary “lone wolf” sniper assume she joined the Red Army because of her strong drive to protect herself, her friends, and her family and/or out of patriotism. Both are true, but there is a third and fourth component, and the latter are almost as important as the former.

Svetlana’s upbringing — specifically the military grade combat, firearms/marksmanship, tracking, and survival training she received on and off from the age of seven — not only fashioned her into a lethal huntress, it nurtured her innate desire to seek out exciting situations and gave her a taste for taking on challenges. Over the course of her childhood she had developed a bit of an addiction to adrenalin rushes, and she immediately recognized joining the military and fighting on the frontlines as an excellent opportunity to get her fix. Likewise, soldiers are faced with challenges on a daily basis, challenges which not only keep them fit of mind and body, but which, when conquered, raise one’s rank, glory, and reputation. More and more over the years Svetlana has chased glory and public acclaim to bolster her already inflated pride, and what better way to get them than to become one of the Red Army’s deadliest snipers? Though she can do without the huge droves of superficial “friends” she knows will come out of the woodwork and try to get close to her for all the wrong reasons should she achieve her goals and become a legendary sniper and highly decorated war hero(ine), she craves the fame, admiration, and recognition nonetheless, subconsciously as a way of validating her feelings of superiority.

Snipers tend to fall into two main camps: 1) those who hate the enemy with blazing white-hot passion, dehumanize them, and will happily — even giddily — kill as many as possible as often possible and can do so without feeling a twinge of guilt or remorse, and 2) those who may or may not hate the enemy, don’t dehumanize them, and rarely or never enjoy taking their lives, but do so for the greater good of protecting themselves, their loved ones, their community, their culture, and their freedom from death, suffering, oppression, and extinction. Svetlana falls into the latter group. She hates what the Germans and their allies are doing, and she hates a few individuals whom she has heard committed specific atrocities. When she sees any member of the Axis she assumes bad things about them, but unless she knows they have done something cruel and horrible, something which goes beyond simply trying to kill her and her allies as quickly as possible, what she feels for them isn’t true hatred, but rather strong dislike. She hasn’t been fighting on the frontlines long and has been lucky enough to not have personally witnessed her enemies doing anything more than dropping bombs from planes, shooting, and lobbing explosives at her side: all things which her side returns in kind. And while she has heard stories of rape, torture, and unspeakable cruelty rained down on innocent people she’s not seen these things, or the result of them, with her own eyes, and until she does there will always be a kernel of doubt in her, a thought that maybe fear and hatred are driving her comrades to exaggerate the frequency of such acts. This is because deep, deep down, under all the cynicism, judgment, and stereotyping, she simply can’t forget that her enemies are also human, and in spite of everything she’s seen and experienced she still believes that most humans couldn’t bring themselves to do anything that bad, that deception and cheating for the sake of money, power, and attention are the worst that most people are capable of and that true atrocities are committed only by a deviant few. By this way of thinking war is the result of bad leaders, sometimes evil sometimes not, sending normal people with normal levels of light and darkness inside of them out to kill another group of people, usually after conditioning them to think that this is the only way they can be prosperous and/or protect themselves from a perceived threat. It’s easy for even non-evil leaders to make such decisions because they can easily distance themselves from all of the deaths and suffering they cause, ensure that none of their relatives and personal friends are likely to wind up directly in the path of fire. Sitting up in their ivory towers, calling the shots as though they were playing Chess, it’s far removed from their daily lives and experiences, something that other people have to deal with and worry about unless the war starts going very badly and the fight is brought to their front door.

Holding the beliefs she does, and not being bloodthirsty or cruel by nature, Svetlana doesn’t usually enjoy taking lives. When she makes a kill she feels a rush of pride and satisfaction at having hit her target, especially if the shot was tricky, and she feels good about the facts that she likely saved lives on her side and is that much closer to her kill-count goal numbers. But as for the man she killed, her feelings are more complex. If it is someone she was lucky enough to kill on first sighting she’ll feel a faint twinge of sorrow that she had to end that person’s life, even if she knows that person likely killed and/or injured some of her compatriots. If it is someone she had to watch for some time before she was able to make the killing shot, however, what she feels depends on what she observed. If the soldier appeared to be just some scared guy doing his best to stay alive and protect his compatriots the amount of sorrow she feels is greater, and her happiness over having hit her mark is dampened. If the guy appeared to be a vicious and bloodthirsty asshole who enjoyed what he was doing too much — especially if he laughed and smiled when killing people — she feels good about taking him out and even derives pleasure from it. The same formula applies when she tricks enemies using her “femme fatale” approach and leads them and/or their comrades to their deaths, though she seldom does this as it is riskier and there are fewer opportunities for her to get within conversational earshot of German soldiers. When killing via the later method she dresses like a civilian, forgoing anything which shows her true allegiance, and pretends to be attracted to her victim and/or a Hiwi sympathetic to the German cause.

In addition to the above-mentioned traits Svetlana is extremely brave, strong-willed, overly proud, overly confident, and curious as a kitten. She loves firearms and, thanks in no small part to her father, is quite knowledge about them. She enjoys both mental and physical workouts, and prior to joining the Red Army was equally as likely to be found in her room studying or outside exercising. After the war ends she plans on following her original plan of becoming an interpreter/translator and schoolteacher for young children.


Likes://

★ Her father, who doubles as a best friend and mentor, and whom she enjoys spending time with and has a great deal of respect for )
★ Father/daughter bonding time
★ Sniping
★ Sniper rifles
★ Firearms in general
★ Knives & daggers
★ The thrill of the hunt ( but not so much killing, unless it's enemy soldiers )
★ Recognition for her hard work and accomplishments
★ Languages
★ Pretty jewelry ( especially gold pendants and necklaces )
★ Children
★ Cartoons
★ Literature
★ Any kind of useful training/ learning new skills
★ Exercise
★ Mushrooms
★ Bunnies
★ Cats
★ Learning new things
★ Good-looking men
★ Seafood
★ Snow ( as long as it isn't more than a few degrees colder outside than is needed to sustain the snow )
★ Raptors in general, but eagles most of all



Dislikes://
✖ Nazis
✖ The swastika ( for obvious reasons )
✖ Alcoholics
✖ Abusive men
✖ Men who are only nice to women to get into their pants
✖ Idiots
✖ Cruelty
✖ Russian winters ( It's just. Too. Cold. )
✖ Losing her quarry
✖ Rodents
✖ Snakes
✖ Liars
✖ Poles ( thieves, cheats, and liars, the whole lot )
✖ False sincerity
✖ Cigarettes ( she's very sensitive to the smoke, which makes her sick )
✖ Corsets ( Too constricting! )
✖ High heels ( They're pretty, but they seriously impede movement and are a huge liability in potentially dangerous situations )
✖ Sexism. Especially when she is not taken seriously and/or written off as weak and simple-minded just because she is a woman.
✖ Child abuse
✖ Animal abuse
✖ Boats ( bring on the seasickness )
✖ Salty food




Fears://

☣ Loved ones dying
☣ Snakes
☣ Being ambushed/caught off-guard
☣ An Axis victory and what it would mean for her country

Secrets://

♦ Whenever the subject of Leonid comes up, Svetlana gets angry and calls him a idealistic coward that she and Russia are better off without. In truth she actually misses him quite a bit and hopes he'll come back to her someday and reveal that he didn’t do what he did for the reason everyone thinks.

♦ Enjoys sleeping naked, provided the blankets/room are warm enough.

♦ Keeps a running tally on her rifle of all the Germans she's killed


Goals://

✔ Eliminate Ansel Schäfer ( he is her special project, the enemy sniper she wants most badly to bring down )
✔ Play an instrumental role in ridding her current city ( and future cities ) of enemy snipers
✔ Make 100 kills
✔ Make 500 kills after the goal of 100 has been reached
✔ Move up at least two more ranks before the war ends
✔ Achieve a "legendary" status among her people
✔ Find Leonid ( or, failing that, find out whether or not Leonid really did desert his county, friends, and family )
✔ Become a teacher/interpreter after the war ends
✔ Become fully fluent in English and French
✔ Start her own personal library
✔ Add as many of her favorite weapons as possible to her collection
✔ Visit Egypt and see the Sphinx
✔ Visit Paris, France
✔ Travel around the world
✔ Find true love and start a family of her own someday

Strengths://

Brave. Svetlana's ability to overcome or suppress her fear and do what needs to be done serves her well. It's a trait all good soldiers posses and has saved her life, and the lives of her compatriots/allies, countless times. Thankfully her courage is tempered with caution and she rarely takes huge or unnecessary risks.

Loyal. It's very difficult to obtain her loyalty, but once someone does Svetlana will stay by this person's side through Heaven and Hell regardless of what it means for her. She absolutely will not betray or abandon a loved one no matter what she stands to gain or lose by doing so.

Stronger and fitter than the average woman. A childhood rich in both physical activity and strength/endurance/agility training have sculpted her into a lithe, healthy, and powerful young woman. She's still significantly weaker than the average male soldier, but is quite a bit stronger than most of her sisters-in-arms and is capable of overpowering some civilian men who don't regularly exercise or use their muscles.

Sharpshooter. While she isn't the best of the best, or even in the Red Army's top twenty percent, Svetlana is a pretty good sniper and hits, more often than misses, her targets.

Stealth. Svetlana possesses a natural knack for sneaking about unseen and unheard, one which she discovered early on in innocent childhood games. Prior to joining the military she sharpened this talent to a razor's edge through training with her father and is now able to glide in, out, and around objects and rooms like a shadow on the sea provided the lighting is on her side and she has sufficient cover. She isn't always able to do this quickly, but the ability to move from place to place without being discovered is crucial to both her success as a sniper and her continued survival.

Strong-willed. Once she makes up her mind either about something or to do something, it is extremely difficult for other people and outside forces to derail her, distract her, or convince her otherwise. This is true even when she is under immense pressure. Can also be a flaw.

Feminine wiles/femme fatale. She doesn't chase male attention and isn't the type to flirt with just anyone, but when the situation calls for it she has absolutely no moral hangups about flirting with men for the sole purpose of getting what she needs from them. She doesn't take this flirting too far ( she'll tease with her body, but her clothes stay on ) and will give up if the man doesn't take the bait within the first few minutes, but more often than not the bait is taken and the objective achieved. However, the object of her seduction is in for a rude awakening if he tries to get too physical or intimate. As Svetlana can speak German, this tactic is most often used on German soldiers, usually for the purpose of distracting them so that they can be killed more easily or tricking them into helping their enemies or harming their allies. As much as she relishes the feeling of empowerment that comes from the effect she can have on men, the Russian prefers to kill her enemies more quickly with less danger to herself and only resorts to being a femme fatale in life or death situations or when the risk of being shot is relatively low and the potential reward(s) is/are high. This can also be seen as a flaw in moral character.

Curious. This girl is curious as a kitten, and the moment something piques her interest she just has to learn everything she can about it. Same with mysteries. It drives her nuts to leave a mystery unsolved, especially when just a little sneaking around can cure her ignorance and potentially reveal a lot of useful knowledge. This trait is a strength in the respect that it most often leads to greater knowledge, and knowledge is power. However, it is also a flaw, as being too curious can lead to serious injury and death.

Unselfish heart. This isn't to say she is totally unselfish: like everyone else Svetlana can be a bit selfish at times, and this manifests in a variety of ways. But the fact of the matter is that this young woman spends a great deal of time thinking, worrying, and caring about other people, and she always puts friends and family, little children, and the wellbeing of the Russian people as a whole first. She will fight to the death to protect those she loves and surrender her share of comforts and necessities to those in greater need without hesitation.

Weaknesses://

Curious. This girl is curious as a kitten, and the moment something piques her interest she just has to learn everything she can about it. Same with mysteries. It drives her nuts to leave a mystery unsolved, especially when just a little sneaking around can cure her ignorance and potentially reveal a lot of useful knowledge. This trait is a flaw in the respect that it can lead to serious injury and death: ie; "curiosity killed the cat". However, it is also a strength, as curiosity often leads to greater knowledge, and knowledge is power.

Judgmental. Unfortunately Svetlana tends to judge others swiftly and mercilessly based on preconceived notions, stereotypes, mainstream Russian nationalist thinking, and/or first impressions derived from a handful of observations. She frequently writes both individuals and entire groups off as being a certain way without bothering to take the time to see if they actually are that way, and reacts to them accordingly. Sometimes this works in her favor, but quite often it costs her potential friends and allies, easier ways of accomplishing her objectives, resources, the gaining of new knowledge, and time.

Strong-willed. Once she makes up her mind either about something or to do something, it is extremely difficult for other people and outside forces to derail her, distract her, or convince her otherwise. This is true even when she is under immense pressure. Can also be a strength.

Daddy's girl. She thinks very highly of her father and goes out of her way to please him. His approval is very important to her, as are his opinions on anything worthy of discussion. The problem is that she often takes his word as absolute fact without double-checking or doing any research of her own. Sergei is neither unbiased, all-knowing, nor infallible, and though he is good at heart he stubbornly holds on to some deeply entrenched erroneous beliefs and prejudices, which he readily passes on to his daughter. Svetlana will defend her father even when he is in the wrong and make excuses for him.

Superiority complex. Svetlana is well aware of the fact that she has above-average intelligence and has, sadly, let it go to her head. This isn't to say that she thinks that the vast majority of the people she sees and interacts with on a daily basis are dimwitted and gullible — she knows there are plenty of people out there who are just as smart or smarter than her — but she does greet strangers with a "less intelligent than me until proven otherwise" mindset. She can be very condescending towards those whom she is meeting for the first time, sometimes without even realizing it.

Overconfident. Very few tasks are too challenging or too daunting for her, and while it is true that she is intelligent, quick-witted, agile, fast, fit, knowledgeable about fighting and survival, and good at what she does, a past with far more successes than failures has lulled her into a false sense of security. While she isn't usually one to take crazy risks, she does tend to assume that she always has "one up" on the enemy regardless of whether or not this is true, and behaves accordingly. This excessive confidence in her own abilities could easily get her killed.

Proud. Like most who have a superiority complex, Svetlana is a very proud creature. She has a problem admitting when she is wrong, sometimes overestimates her own abilities, and is blind to some of her flaws. Most of all she has a problem asking for and accepting help when she needs it.

Poor navigator. Svetlana isn't that great with directions in general and spatial orientation in particular. When she is in unfamiliar territory she gets lost without much difficulty. This isn't taken to the extreme: she doesn't get lost every single time she has to get somewhere on her own, nor does she usually stay lost for long when she does happen to stray off-course. But her sense of direction is definitely below average.

Cynical. Svetlana is distrusting of other humans in general, believing most to be dishonest, greedy, and concerned only about themselves and their own friends and families. She looks for and expects to find deceit everywhere she turns, and whenever she sees or hears about someone doing something altruistic her first thought is always that that person most likely has a hidden ulterior motive rooted in selfishness. This is also a strength: it is almost impossible for con artists and manipulators to trick and deceive someone who thinks that everyone they meet cares only about themselves and wants to gain something at their expense. But on the negative side it makes making friends difficult and often goes hand-in-hand with paranoia and depression. The silver lining to Svetlana's cynicism is that it doesn't extend to young children, which she believes are much more honest, innocent, and trustworthy than adults.

BACKGROUND

History:// Svetlana Sergeevna Chkalova was born on November 22nd, 1921, in Chelyabinsk, Russia, the first child of Sergei, a K-5 soldier in the Red Army, and Galina, a seamstress/homemaker. Sergei had been hoping for a son, and soon after Svetlana was born he and Galina tried again, the result being Svetlana’s little sister, Faina. After Faina’s birth Galina developed a medical condition which rendered her infertile.

Though he hadn’t gotten what he’d ordered, Sergei hid his disappointment well, insisting to everyone who showed concern that “all children, boys and girls, are a blessing”. He sincerely meant it, too. From the moment they entered his life he showered his daughters with the same love, affection, and fatherly guidance he would have shown a boy. Whatever their interests were, whatever they strived for, he was there to offer encouragement, advice, and support. He took a keen interest in their education and often helped them with their homework after work, supplementing lessons learned in the classroom with his own knowledge, personal stories, and hands-on activities. Because her husband was such a good father Galina, unfortunately, came to feel that there wasn’t room for her to be as involved in her daughters’ upbringing, and she restricted herself primarily to the role of caregiver, making sure the house was spotless and the children safe, fed, comfortable, and watched over. She would help them with their homework only when their father wasn’t available and rarely engaged them in meaningful, mentally stimulating conversation, her reasoning being that her husband was much smarter, more worldly, and more knowledgeable than her about most subjects, and that the children would be better off discussing the big stuff like politics, human rights, and religion with him.

Naturally, growing up, both girls felt closer to their father than their mother, but the bond between Sergei and Svetlana was especially strong, stronger even than the bond between Sergei and Galina. While Faina was more or less a typical girl with typical girl interests like dolls, makeup, and celebrities, Svetlana was a tomboy who preferred boys’ clothes, boys’ toys, boys’ games, and traditionally masculine outdoor activities like building forts, sharpening sticks into spears, and pretending to explore uncharted territory and/or hunt elusive prey. This delighted Sergei, who had wanted a son so badly mainly because he had wanted to do father/son stuff with him, father/son stuff which included teaching him how to get into peak physical condition and stay fit, hunt food, use firearms and other weapons, and defend himself and his family. When, all on her own at the age of eight, Svetlana took an interest in guns and bladed weapons, Sergei happily jumped at the chance to teach her how to use and care for them. A former soldier of the Imperial Army and a current soldier in the Red Army, he knew the subject matter well.

Svetlana enjoyed her training immensely and took it just as seriously as her schoolwork. Right at first her lessons focused purely on self defense, but as her skills improved and her body strengthened with regular exercise her father offered to teach her other useful skills, training which she readily accepted. The next order of business was learning to track, kill, and clean animals for food. Though she enjoyed the hunt, Svetlana didn’t take pleasure in killing most animals and even hated killing “cute” ones like bunnies and deer. She also hated cleaning her kills, a process which she found gory and disgusting. However, her father’s constant reminders that they lived in an unstable, often cruel world where such knowledge could one day mean the difference between life and death for her and her loved ones spurred her on in spite of her feelings. Once his daughter was a decent huntress Sergei moved on to other survival skills, educating her in the identification of edible plants, the collection and purification of water, and the art of building good shelters. He taught her how to improvise weapons and hide from her enemies, how to best take advantage of weather and terrain. To keep their minds and skills sharp, father and daughter occasionally left the city and went out into the wilderness somewhere where they pretended to be enemies, tracking each other down and engaging in mock battles, all without firing a shot. Such outings always concluded with either a hunt for game or a few rounds of target practice. Though she loved spending time with her father even more than she loved wielding a rifle and looked for every excuse to do so, her coursework and her father’s job often kept that from happening. In such instances Svetlana practiced the skills she’d learned without him.

Though this extracurricular education was a big part of Svetlana’s life and instrumental in shaping the young adult she would grow into, before Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941 the rifle-loving teenager’s main focus was school and her chosen career path of becoming both a translator/interpreter and a teacher for young children. From an early age Svetlana had been fascinated with other languages and had quickly developed a desire to speak more than just Russian. She chose to focus on becoming proficient in German first, as she had regularly-visiting family ( an aunt through marriage and three cousins ) which spoke it, making it both easier to practice and more useful for her than other languages. However, she didn’t allow her focus to blind her to other languages and studied French, English, Italian, Polish, and Japanese on the side, spending the most time on French and English.

Though she had had her fair share of friends when she was a young child( mostly boys ), Svetlana made fewer new friends every year. The passage of time also saw her grow more distant to many of her childhood friends as she chose to spend more time alone in a quiet room with books, pencils, and paper or out training with her father and less time around girls she couldn’t relate to and boys who either flirted with her relentlessly in the most annoying ways possible or made fun of her bookish nature and/or interest in traditionally masculine activities and subjects. Every now and then she’d date a boy who happened to catch her eye and her interest, but until she turned 19 and met a charming 21-year-old young man by the name of Leonid Zavyalov these relationships were brief and never went further than a few kisses.

Leonid was Svetlana’s first real love. The son of a soldier — one of her father’s friends, in fact — the two came from similar backgrounds and shared many interests, including languages, children, literature, certain films/radio programs/musicians, and nature. Like Svetlana, Leonid loved learning and excelled in school, to the point where he had also naturally drifted away from many of his peers as he had matured and veered off the beaten path. Sharp of mind and soft of tongue, he was cheerful, polite, generous, and good natured, a nice counterbalance for the sarcastic, wary, highly skeptical and slightly cynical Svetlana. Though they were definitely on the same wavelength and agreed on most things, Svetlana’s love of weapons, especially firearms, caused friction between the two. Despite having been taught basic self-defense and how to use guns, Leonid was a pacifist at heart and despised both war and violence, believing they were justified only in self-defense as a last resort. While he had no qualms with hunting so long as the animals were killed as quickly and painlessly as possible with no part of their bodies going to waste, the glee Svetlana took in both wielding and using her weapons, as well as stalking her prey, concerned him. He worried that someday she might come to enjoy killing and take more than she needed from nature to satiate her bloodlust, losing some of her humanity in the process.

Leonid vanished suddenly and mysteriously right after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. He didn’t say goodbye to anyone and seemingly left all of his belongings behind. Like most who knew him Svetlana concluded that he ran away to avoid fighting in the war and instantly felt hot, intense anger and disgust towards him. Yet she isn’t ready to completely give up on him just yet, and still clings to a small sliver of hope that all is not as it seems.

The invasion prompted Svetlana to immediately put all of her studies and career goals on hold and rush to her nation’s defense. The Red Army happily accepted most willing and able fighters whose citizenship and allegiance were not in doubt, women included, and the training Svetlana had already received from her father ensured that she very easily made the cut for conscription. This sudden change of plans greatly upset her mother, who firmly believed that no woman could ever fight, fire guns, handle weapons and explosives, or drive vehicles/operate machinery as well as a man and worried incessantly about her daughter’s well-being. Sergei’s feelings on the matter were more mixed. On one hand he was deeply worried for his daughter’s safety and knew that she would be risking serious injury, permanent disability, death, and capture/torture on a daily basis, same as him. On the other he had never been more proud of her, and loved that they were able to fight alongside each other in defense of family, friends, and home. Faina was fully supportive. Though she loved her sister and worried about her, she had watched her work out and practice her fighting moves, survival skills, and marksmanship many times and had great confidence in her abilities, perhaps even more confidence than their father.

A few quick demonstrations of her deftness with a firearm and Svetlana was issued a Mosin-Nagant of her very own and assigned to an all-female task force of snipers. To date she has 35 confirmed kills under her belt and has advanced to the rank of Senior Sergeant. Though she still has every intention of becoming a teacher/interpreter after the war ends, she is finding that not only is she well-suited to her current job, but that she enjoys it. True, coming across mutilated dead bodies and people with horrific injuries is hard for her to stomach; the suffering and devastation she witnesses on a regular basis breaks her heart; food, necessities, and comfort are often in short supply; and the threat of grievous injury and death permeates the very air she breaths, but for Svetlana these negatives are offset by the knowledge that she is protecting her home, family, and culture from horrible, evil people who want to subjugate, abuse, torture, or kill every Russian they come across and either steal, taint, or destroy everything that is theirs. She doesn’t just want to fight, she has to. She is also quite fond of the recognition, praise, and respect she gets for doing her job well, and loves hunting enemy soldiers even if she doesn’t always take pleasure in ending their lives. Lastly, though she isn’t yet consciously aware of it, Svetlana is a little bit of an adrenaline-junkie. Being a soldier on the frontlines of a battle where every new day is both a challenge and a blessing ensures she regularly gets her fix.

At present Svetlana’s orders are to take out as many Germans as possible, giving highest priority to high-ranking individuals and those who pose the most threat to Russian lives. Included on this hit list is Ansel Schäfer, one of Germany’s most deadly snipers…

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