Natasha Ivanov

## Personality

Natasha is a headstrong individual who can be very arrogant at times from having to make out her own living and not having a lot of friends growing up. She is very flirtatious and often uses her looks to gain advantages in anyway possible, or just to have fun with people at the bar or around town. While living in Russia has built up her confidence she still can be self conscious at times and has been known to get very emotional. Her emotional stress comes from years of neglect from her alcoholic parents, as did her flirty nature, as that was one of the only ways she got by. Natasha has a very competitive nature and, because of her growing up in Russia, as the ability to hold down alcohol very well. She takes pride in that many male pilots have challenged her to drinking contests and they have always lost.

During missions her attitude shifts, making Natasha very serious and not very talkative except when needed, such as talking on the radio for a gun run or pickup. She is able to make very precise calculations when flying her pelican and uses her smarts and wits to extract herself from situations, which has come in handy in the past and will come help later on. Natasha makes it a priority to keep her pelican clean and functioning. Natasha is not afraid to get her hands dirty and do the hard work whether others to it too or not. She isn't overly stressed about the cleanliness of her pelican but the young woman always finds the time to take care of her equipment. Natasha is very proud of her bird and what she has done to support the troops on the ground. Natasha has a strong sense of pride in the country of Russia and that caused her to paint the russian flag on the side of her pelican as well as an old russian winter coat.

Physical description: Natasha has striking features that include her brown hair and blue eyes as well as a smile that could melt any man’s heart. Her skin is slightly more pale than normal due to her living in Russia and not getting a lot of sun. Despite this her skin looks very fair in certain lights. Even though she only stands at 5 foot 5 inches she can make herself look shorter or taller depending on how she carries herself.

When not on a mission she almost always has a smile on her face, especially when cleaning her pelican or drinking as those are some of the times she is most happy. Natasha’s nose is slightly blockier then normal with minimal freckles dotting either side of her nose. There is a scar going from her tailbone all the way up to in between her shoulder blades, along with a robotic left hand. Natasha's eyes are almond shaped with her eyebrows curving around the and coming down to a point on either side of the young woman's eyes. Her left hand also has been replaced with a robot hand from a ship crash during the battle of earth.

## Biography

Natasha was born as the oldest of 4 children her two parents lived in the russian city of St. Petersburg in the year of 2532. Her parents were both alcoholics for the majority of her life starting when she was only a year old. Due to her parents alcoholic behaviors she had to learn how to fend for herself at a very young age. Her parents gave birth to two twins when the little girl was 4 years old. Natasha loved them very much, more than her parents did by far, as they were very neglectful of her and the younger siblings. She looked out for them by her lonesome when she was 9 and taught them how to fend for themselves when her parents were at the bar and when she wasn’t at school. During one of these lessons her father came home drunk and saw her teaching one of her lessons to the younger kids now aged 5 years old. When he saw this she was beaten by her father and left with bruises and scars about her body. One scar, that came from a nail sticking out of the wall, has left a permanent mark from her lower back all the way up to the top of her back. Once she was healed her teacher saw the scar and had reported it to the authorities. Her parents were taken away by the police a year later but not before her mother gave birth to another child. The four of them were taken into foster care by the Government and their parents locked away for the rest of her childhood.

Her and her siblings spent 6 years in foster care before they were adopted. By this time Natasha had developed a love for technology, particularly planes. She was also very interested in the history of the motherland. She was very intrigued by the history of flight and space travel and decided she was going to go to college and be a pilot. 2 years later with her ambitions coming true, she was well on her way to becoming a pilot. She had put in an application to the flight school and was getting ready to depart when news that the human covenant war wasn’t going so well for humanity. She decided to, instead of becoming a civilian pilot, join the UNSC as a Marine pilot. While going through basic she excelled at hand to hand combat but was not a very good shot with regular weapons. After graduating from basic training she joined the pilot training programs and learned how to fly a variety of ships including the long sword fighter and pelican. Her favorite by though would be the Pelican troop transport or gunship. She was very talented at flying a pelican in space and in atmosphere. A year passed while she was going through training as she learned to pilot a pelican gunship and became very skilled at handling the ship but was by no means the best in her class.

After going through her training she was stationed on board the UNSC Frigate *Grafton* and was sent to Reach as a cargo pilot. This job bored her and she hated doing cargo runs. The only way Natasha could tolerate it was when the young Russian got breaks she would go to the bar and have a few drinks. Men would often ask her to drinking challenges, not knowing that she was Russian and that she could handle her alcohol very well, she beat them almost every time. Her life was repeat of doing cargo runs and hanging out at the bar, until 1 year later the covenant attacked Reach in 2552. Natasha now 20 years old was now paired with a pelican gunship instead of her old cargo ship. She was stationed as a defense force for the frigate *Grafton*. When the frigate attacked the Covenant spires she was to provide air support to the forces on the ground. During the attack when doing a gun run she was shot down by a Covenant AA wraith. Her pelican crash landed and she managed to escape the cockpit with a twisted ankle, her left arm broken and the hand attached to the arm mutilated. Natasha had to stay with the bird and wait for rescue to arrive. The search and rescue team arrived after a couple hours of her sitting against the side of the pelican. When they arrived she was informed that the Frigate had been destroyed during the assault. She was slightly disappointed but was okay with it in the end and moved on with her life but with a sweet lust for revenge. The pilot was taken to an evac ship with other wounded marines to get taken off world. Unfortunately during the crash her hand was crushed and the young brown haired woman had lost her left hand in the incident and was instead replaced with a robot hand.

The ship entered slipspace and headed towards Earth for a final stand. Once she made back to earth Natasha was admitted to a hospital for her injuries. She healed from her injuries in a few months with her arm back to normal and her ankle fully functioning, along with full use of the robotic hand without any complications. Although the young woman ended up wearing her flight gloves most of the time to hide the robotic hand. The Covenant attacked once again in October and she was sent off to fly pelican gunships once again. Having learned from her previous mistake she made sure to take out AA wraiths first before moving on to easier targets. Her skills as a pilot were very good and she was to soften up Covenant defenses in New mombasa before the ground teams made it to the city. She was on another gun run when Regrets ship, that had settled over the city, went into slipspace. Natasha saw the massive ship entering slipspace and quickly put down her bird on the street anticipating the subsequent shockwave. Once the shockwave passed and the ship left she signaled for a pickup using a smoke grenade, as the EMP fried her pelican and communications. She was taken to one of the ships that were protecting the planet and assigned a new pelican. While there wasn’t much of a fight in space at that moment, one month later truths fleet arrived at Earth. Natasha was in awe at how big the fleet was. The young Russian was dispatched with hundreds of other pilots to take out enemy banshees and other small craft, as well as run bombing runs against the covenant ships. She was continually amazed about the amount of ships, slinging missiles and shots at each other. She was very successful in her assaults and destroyed many small Covenant ships as well as helped damage several Covenant CCS class destroyers and a couple SDV-class corvettes during the space battles.

As the Covenant started attacking Africa she was sent back down to evacuate the bases that were being assaulted and bring any survivors to rally points across the continent. She was apart of the assault against the AA batteries in the town of Voi. Her job was to protect ground assets from banshees that were in that area. Even with her now excellent flying abilities she still had her work cut out for her fighting against the Covenant. Her bird was hit with multiple plasma shots in one of the wings causing a disbalancing of the aircraft. While her Pelican was still in the air, she had to retreat for fear that any more damage would destroy the vehicle. She crash landed in the hanger of the *Forward unto dawn* to make repairs. While her ship was being repaired the ship entered the portal and journeyed to the Ark. While her ship wasn’t fully repaired enough to be of use, during the space battle engagements Natasha flew a longsword fighter to repel multiple enemy seraphs and banshees assaulting the dawn. She was able to down many banshees and a couple seraphs during their engagement. Once the battle was won, she boarded the dawn once again and waited for her pelican to be fixed. Natasha wasn’t of much help until the assault on the control room where she engaged in another battle in the air against Banshees to keep them off of the ground teams. As soon as the battle had been one she was recalled to the *Shadow of intent* to flee with the rest of the UNSC and Sangheili forces.

Once she returned to Earth Natasha was stationed on a base in Russia as well as being promoted to Private first class and getting the purple heart and bronze star for her many fights with the Covenant. She had tried to find her family but was only able to locate the twins, who had joined the Corp as Marines during the battle of Earth, one becoming a hellbringer the other moving on to become an ODST. Natasha was very proud of them and had huge respect for them. Her youngest sibling and foster parents were killed by the Covenant. Since learning that news she has had a deep burning hatred for the Covenant and a desire for revenge, although that desire only shows during battle.
After a few years of running Cargo Ops again she was stationed to the UNSC *Infinity* in 2557 as a pilot to transport the spartan teams on board. Natasha was excited about getting back into action and was happy to do the job. As the *Infinity* found Requiem she transported multiple spartan fire-teams to various Operations along the planets surface. She was praised by the spartans for her flying ability and being able to dodge Covenant ground fire like it was nothing. Natasha continued running these Ops until the battle for Requiem ended and she was assigned to Task force Omega to track down the second Janus key.