Svetlana Karpova

Vigilante

Operation Blackfish (Formerly)

Vigilante

Terrorist (Label by the CIA)

**Svetlana Karpova**(Russian: Светлана Карпова) is a former Russian nationalist and Operation Blackfish agent turned Shadow Force member\Task Force Reaper operative. She is one of the major sisters in the sorority\crime fighting unit.

## Biography

### Early life

Born in 1996, the girl who would later become Svetlana Karpova was raised in an abusive family, with a negiligent father and an alcoholic, abusive mother. She suffered years of torture under her abusive mother, which caused her to reach a tipping point at the age of 15, when she ran away from home and fled to the United States of America by stowing away on board a cargo ship bound for the United States of America.

She ended up in New York City, where she remained until the age of 18, when she moved to St. Louis, Missouri.

### Operation Blackfish

At some point, Svetlana joined Operation Blackfish, a black operations unit within the Central Intelligence Agency. She was exposed to Blackfish's notorious morality breakdown procedure, designed to turn Svetlana into a merciless killing machine. The indoctrination was successful and Svetlana worked alongside fellow agent Tamara Sultanovich for many years. During one mission a couple years later, evidence emerged that the CIA was using an illegal behavior-modification program to break down ordinary people's morality and essentially brainwash them into becoming effective nearly unstoppable living weapons, which made Svetlana and Tamara snap and soon both Sultanovich and Karpova defected from the CIA. Upon hearing about this, the CIA decided that Svetlana and her comrades needed to be silenced to ensure that the project stayed a secret. CIA director Arthur Holmes put a kill order on Karpova's entire team and called them over to a black station to be assassinated. However, both Karpova and Sultanovich caught wind of their plans and slaughtered the operatives dispatched to kill them. Sultanovich and Karpova both decided to go into hiding, faking their own deaths and laying low.

Sometime after this, Svetlana returned to Russia and confronted her abusive mother, whose sanity at this point deteriorated to the point where she believed Svetlana had betrayed her family by running away from home. At this point, Mrs. Karpova had divorced from her husband, who had later committed suicide after spending years blaming himself for Mrs. Karpova's alcoholism.

Mrs. Karpova and Svetlana got into a verbal tirade, with the former accusing Svetlana of being a traitor to the "Karpova Family Name" and threatening to beat her to death, to which Svetlana responded by daring her to try. When Mrs. Karpova angrily assaulted her daughter for the first time in years, Svetalna fought back and eventually killed her own mother in self-defense. She later turned herself in to the authorities and was successfully able to prove to the authorities that her actions were in self-defense, as well as exposing her mother's alcoholism to the police. As a result, all charges of first degree murder that would've been placed against her were dropped. Resolving to put the past behind her, Svetlana went back to the United States in hopes of starting a new life.

### Task Force Reaper and Shadow Force

Svetlana Karpova reappeared some years later, as a criminal wanted for multiple counts of robbery, arson, and breaking and entering. She served time in various federal prisons as a convicted criminal, but one person-a man named Vinnie Crosby-saw potential in her. He successfully coordinated a plan to bail Svetlana and her cellmate, fellow criminal Tatiana Gerasimova, from prison and recruited the two of them into a new organization, Task Force Reaper.
She graduated high school eventually, and joined the University of Columbia, where she spent two years before abrutply transferring to the University of St. Louis in the spring of 2016.

In spring of 2016, Svetlana, now a student at the University of St. Louis, joined the sorority group Alpha Xi Delta, otherwise known as Shadow Force. No one in Shadow Force or Task Force Reaper knew of Svetlana's past, or her current status as a rogue CIA agent, save for a handful of people. However, word soon got out and soon everybody in both the Reapers and Shadow Force sought to protect Svetlana and her friend Tamara from the CIA, which had put a kill order on both rogue agents, the outcome of which is undetermined.

### The Mack Coalition

*Main article*: The Mack Coalition

She was with Tamara Sultanovich in Hadford, Montana, under the name Louise Knight, with Tamara operating under the name Lacey Price. They both befriended Emmett, but as the story progressed and murders began happening in Hadford, Emmett grew suspicious of both Lacey and Louise, eventually culmilating when Emmett confronted the two about their real identities. Eventually, they cracked and revealed their real names to Emmett, much to his surprise. Relationships between the two were strained, but eventually Svetlana and Tamara were able to put aside their rivalries with Emmett and work together to expose Operation Blackfish to the public.
Sometime after the events of The Mack Coalition, both Tamara and Svetlana left Hadford without disclosing where they were going to the Hadford townspeople, who never heard from the two again. However, the two of them left quite an imprint on the citizens of Hadford.

### Operation Hidden Nightmare

*Main article*: Operation Hidden Nightmare
Svetlana returns alongside Tamara Sultanovich in Operation Hidden Nightmare, where they team up with Nether Company, Task Force Reaper and TACITUS to investigate a seemingly harmless alternate reality game/scavenger hunt, which is really a recruiting tool for an international terrorist group known as New Dawn. They soon meet two new factions, a syndicate of hackers, hitmen and secret spies known as Orion, and a network of coporate saboteurs known as Black Rhino. A rivalry exists between the joint Nether Company-Task Force Reaper=TACITUS-Shadow Force investigative team, Orion and Black Rhino, at first. But eventually they learn to set aside their rivalries and unite against New Dawn in time to thwart a terrorist plot against the St. Louis Zoo in St. Louis, Missouri.

## Personality

Those who know Karpova (including both her Russian and American friends) compare her to a Russian doll: you reveal one versioin of her, another part is revealed in the process. She was initially closed off about her past, but after joining Shadow Force, she gradually started to open up about her past, alongside Tamara Sultanovich.

She is also fun to talk to, although she is not much of a conversationalist. She also does not really have a social life (but is starting to form one as of 2017-2018). She is also paranoid about beign discovered by the CIA as a result of the CIA manhunt for both herself and Tamara Sultanovich.

As a sorority gal, she is extremely loyal to her sisters. She demonstrates this by refusing to leave anybody behind, even if it means getting herself killed in the process.

## Skills and abilities

### Skills

* **Master spy**: As a Blackfish agent, Svetlana Karpova is highly skilled in espionage, stealth, disguise, infiltration, and demolitions, as well as sabotage. She is also a skilled liar, having known to have beaten a lie detector test on multiple occasions.
* **Master Martial Artist**: Karpova is a skilled martial artist, having been trained in the art of Silat, Kali/Escrima, Krav Maga, Karate, savate, lucha-libre style wrestling, and, to a certain extent, Systema.
* **Acrobat master**: Svetlana is also skilled in acrobatics, being able to fight against
* **Master Assassin**: Svetlana is considered a ruthless assassin in the field. As a Blackfish agent, she was feared by all, known as one of the most dangerous assassins in the world. She has an impressive kill record, with the serial killer Black Falcon not far behind (Svetlana has killed an approximately 620 people, while the Black Falcon has killed approximately 594 people).
* **Marksmanship**: Svetlana has impressive marksmanship skills, known to have hit a paper target dead center at 300 yards with one shot.
* **Multilingualism:**She is fluent in English, French, Russian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Italian, and many other languages.
* **Gifted Intellect**: Svetlana can process quickly process multiple information streams (e.g., threat assessment) and rapidly respond to changing tactical situations.
* **Expert interrogator**: She is quite good at interrogating individuals, having known to use various questioning methods to make suspects crack under pressure. However, she has gained notoriety for using torture to extract information from enemies, both during and after her Blackfish career.
* **Expert Hacker**: Svetlana was gifted with a high IQ, leading to her possessing impressive knowledge of computers and can hack into networks while bypassing firewalls.
* **Pilot**: She can fly a helicopter and small aircraft, although she is apprehensive about flying something as big as a Boeing 757.

## Habits and beliefs

Svetlana has a habit of cursing whenever frustrated or angry, something she developed as a Blackfish operative. She was also fond of Russian nationalist music as a teenager, though as she grew older she began to enjoy listening to pop or punk rock music. She is also a feminist, though her history with feminism isn't explored much in the TACITUS series.

Svetlana is an agonstic, though she has read the Bible and other holy texts from the other faiths in her high shool and college years. She believes that if God exists, He is a criminal, citing Biblical passages relating to the doctrine of justification through faith in Jesus Christ and sanctification and using them to support accusations that both God, if He exists, and Jesus Christ, His alleged Son promotes, condones, promote, and outright practice a divine form of identity theft. Also, she believes that dying on a cross and resurrecting in three days does not warrant belief in the God of the Bible, because, in her mind, even if the Bible is true in the way that Jesus' death on the cross and the resurrection actually happened, there's no way to actually prove that the ultimate goal was to reconcile people to God, with the Bible merely positing a theory that it passes off as fact (In this regard, Svetlana Karpova's worldview is similar to Emmett Mack's). She also believes that even if one has faith, one cannot prove his faith. Therefore, the Bible's teaching involving an offer of forgiveness from sins via belief in Jesus' deity and His sacrificial death and resurrection is an unprovable claim and, therefore, it is philosophical and theological suicide to believe in such a thing because you could be wrong.

## Trivia

* She is the first character to be part of two organizations (The second being Olivia Truesdale).
* She appears to be a cold, apathetic person because of her traumatic past.
* She seems to admire Vinnie Crosby because of his stone-cold apathy towards certain people, particularly criminals.

## Quotes

*"Единственная причина, по которой вы не гниете в тюрьме, потому что никто не поможет нам! Кроме того, ты единственный, что у меня есть. Так что пожалуйста ... работайте со мной./Yedinstvennaya prichina, po kotoroy vy ne gniyete v tyur'me, potomu chto nikto ne pomozhet nam! Krome togo, ty yedinstvennyy, chto u menya yest'. Tak chto pozhaluysta ... rabotayte so mnoy./The only reason you are not rotting in a prison is because no one is going to help us! Besides, you are the only one I have. So please...work with me!"*

- Svetlana to a teammate

*"You know what they say,  if you don't want to go to Plan B, make sure you have a good Plan A."*

- Svetlana Karpova

*"NO!"*

- Svetlana Karpova prior to assassinating a New Dawn operative

*"I keep my friends close, but I keep my enemies closer."*

- Karpova concerning her ethics in wartime

*"I just missed your heart."*

- Svetlana Karpova

*"Есть только одна причина, по которой я вам доверяю. Ты мой друг. Мой единственный друг./Yest' tol'ko odna prichina, po kotoroy ya vam doveryayu. Ty moy drug. Moy yedinstvennyy drug./There is only one reason why I trust you. You are my friend, my only friend."*

- Svetlana Karpova

### Quotes regarding theology

*"You can't prove the Gospels legitimancy any more than you can prove why the sky is blue!"*

- Svetlana Karpova

*"I don't think the Bible was even **meant**to be understood as, 'I know for sure I'm going to Heaven based on what Jesus did.' You're just reading your own thoughts into it."*

- Svetlana Karpova

*"If the God of the Bible exists, He is a criminal. His truth killed more people than you can count!"*

- Svetlana Karpova as she attempts to rationalize her rejection of the God of the Bible on the basis of His "acts of love" being perceived as "criminal behavior" in her eyes.

*"If the God of the Bible exists, He is a criminal. His truth killed more people than you can count!...Killing the whole world with a global flood because humanity was 'wicked ?' Destroying two whole cities because of its inhabitants committing acts He doesn't like ?Using love to rationalize sending His own Son on a suicide mission in order to enable Himself to reconcile sinful humanity to other people via justification through faith in Jesus Christ, AKA divinely motivated identity theft? "*

- Svetlana Karpova rationalizing her idea that God is not good, and the Gospel sounds more like identity theft than a message of hope

### Dialog with others

*"If the God of the Bible exists, He is a criminal. His truth killed more people than you can count!"*
"What do you mean? Where'd you get your information from?"

*"The Bible."*

*"You've read the Bible? From Genesis to Revelation?"*

*"Well, I got through the entire Old Testament, but as far as the New Testament, I'm in Hebrews right now. But that's beside the point. Why do I say God is a criminal? Look at what He did throughout both Testaments: 'Killing the whole world with a global flood because humanity was 'wicked? Destroying two whole cities because of its inhabitants committing acts He doesn't like? Using love to rationalize sending His own Son on a suicide mission in order to enable Himself to reconcile sinful humanity to other people via justification through faith in Jesus Christ, AKA divinely motivated identity theft? Allowing people to commit atrocities in His name?"*

- Svetlana Karpova and a street preacher as they debate the Gospel together

*"I get it: you're truly convinced that Jesus is God and Jesus is the only way to reach God....but what if you're wrong and the Bible was just telling you a bunch of nonsense? Have you ever thought of preparing for that possibility?"*

*"Well, I have. But what if you are wrong?"*

*"Then I go to Hell...But what if we're all wrong? What if none of the faiths are true and we all go to Hell anyway?"*

*"Well, where are you getting your information from?"*

*"From studying all the major faiths...None of them convinced me that any of them are objectively true."*

- Svetlana Karpova and a street preacher

## Gallery

Svetlana Karpova during a break-inSvetlana as she crashes someone's partySomething has happenedSvetlana moving in with Tamara SultanovichSvetlana's new lifeSvetlana engaging in a shootout with enemiesKarpova confronting an opponent