IMPEDIO SOCIETY . USENKO, MIKHAIL

MALE

ASEXUAL

THIRTY-FOUR

JUNE 12TH, 1978

BORN IN ANTARCTICA, BUT LEGALLY RUSSIAN

RUSSIAN
ENGLISH
SPEAKS WITH A RUSSIAN ACCENT

HIS DIMINUTIVE IS "MISHA", BUT IS USED ONLY BY CLOSE FRIENDS.

0.5

Impedio Society

N/A

Libro Crypta
Princeps

08/20/2013

REITGERTE

DARRIN "MOOSE" MOORE
LANCE BISHOP
LUCIEN MARGAUX
KEIJIRO WATANABE
MIKHAIL USENKO

NO.

YURI PETROV FROM TIGER & BUNNY

Mikhail's true job is that of an archivist for the Impedio Society. His rank is Patrician, and he was formerly a successful hunter with the Antarctica branch. He's only recently transferred, and is currently being loaded up with plenty of extra jobs that aren't his field at all.

Mikhail lives in his own apartment, which is funded entirely by the Impedio Society. It's not far off from the Impedio Society Headquarters, but is closer to central LA. It was chosen for it's proximity to public transit, but Mikhail likes it for it's proximity to both used book stores and a small tea shop just down the street. It's in a relatively relaxed area, and is well away from any main roads.

Lacking a license or the knowledge of how to drive anything aside from a snowmobile, Mikhail tends to walk, bike, or take the bus. Of the three, the bus is his least favorite, and he only uses it when necessary. He finds it to be too crowded

His apartment is small, the second story over a little bakery. He enjoys the smell of bread in the morning, and it never gets overly loud. It has a small kitchen, his room and a guest room (currently untouched), and then a living area. It's largely bare, although he's got a bookshelf and has started filling it up.

The windows are a particular sticking point for him. Mikhail grew up in an environment where he'd get three to four months with no sun at all. It's strange for him to look up and see the sun peeking through, and he's had to modify the windows to allow in no light at all. When he sleeps, he sleeps in total darkness, his room essentially completely sealed off from any source of light.

Layout of the apartment.

Mikhail seems particularly out of place in LA, and it's little wonder why. His skin is pale, a healthy dose of scar tissue keeping him from gaining any real color. His eyes are a steel grey, and his hair is either very light grey or straight white depending on who you ask. When he was younger he was simply a very light blond, but he greyed early due to genetics and stress.

Standing at six feet tall, Mikhail is a beanpole. There's plenty of signs he was once athletic and fit, but most of that has faded. A long recovery period meant that most of his muscles are gone, but there's still little signs in the way he moves. He's thin as a stick and consistently underweight, forgoing both food and sleep in favor of work.

Perhaps oddest of all for someone who lives in LA, Mikhail's clothes are perpetually out of place. No matter how hot it is outside, he's always wearing long sleeves and long pants. There's no such thing as shorts and a t-shirt for him. While he'll credit this to habit, having grown up in Antarctica, it's entirely for practical purposes. A good chunk of his body, including most of his torso, is littered with scars. The most prominent ones look like a massive beast chewed on him, leaving a perfect set of massive teeth marks. Of course, that is what it's from, and there's no way for him to explain it to anyone outside the Society, forcing him to keep it covered at all time.

Mikhail is a broken man, and it takes no time at all for anyone to realize that. He practically radiates it. The way he talks, the way he moves--everything simply screams that he's a shell of himself, the small remainder of the man he once was. His shoulders slump, his eyes stay down. He rarely looks at people, and generally speaks only when spoken to. What joy he finds in the world he finds in the little things, the few things he still enjoys.

Once upon a time, Mikhail was an excellent hunter, and a lot of those traits still bleed through, no matter how broken he is as a person. His obsession with being prepared has twisted. He's no longer prepared for battle, but instead for work. If anything needs to be done absolutely perfectly, he's the man for it. He'll obsess over the finest of details.

For him, it's a way to avoid risking any future shame. He knows he's already failed once, already let the society down. He's desperate to avoid it happening again, and he's meticulous with absolutely everything. His room is spotless, his work is perfection itself, and rare is the night that he goes to bed at a reasonable hour. The sort of spotless, detail-oriented reports he turns in don't come for free, and Mikhail frequently goes without sleep. His eyes always have bags under them, and a report can never just be done--it must be quadruple checked for perfection.

Another holdover from his time as a hunter is his attention to detail. Mikhail is a particularly observant person, and is quick to notice changes in both the world around him and the people he is surrounded by. When a coworker gets a haircut, he's the first to notice. When someone's moved something in the vault, he's the first to notice. All things considered, it should be a good thing, a sign of his old skills, but combined with his paranoia, it only leads to a decline in his fragile mental health.

Because Mikhail is paranoid, if for good reasons. He knows how strict the Impedio Society is, and how important their work is. He already knows that he's failed once, and he is quite confident that a second failure wouldn't be tolerated. He isn't crazy enough to think he'd be killed, but he knows he'd be demoted into oblivion, stuck in some back corner of the society, emptying garbage bins or something equally demeaning. He has been constantly convinced the demotion is coming since the day of the incident, a sword constantly hanging over him that he's just waiting to drop. At first he was convinced the paperwork was just going through, that any day someone would walk in and tell him he was being demoted. After more than a year without any demotion, his paranoia didn't fade--it simply adapted. Instead his paranoia was that they'd given him one more chance, and even the slightest slip-up would be too much.

He's constantly apologizing, constantly trying to make up for things that don't even bother most people. He overreacts. For most people, he apologizes too much, to the point where the apology itself becomes annoying. He makes mountains out of molehills, perpetually convinced he's going to piss someone off and lose what he has left.

All things considered, Mikhail really shouldn't worry as much as he does. There's no impending demotion lingering over him. His superiors in Antarctica understood, simply doing what was best for the society at the time. If anything, his old co-workers look on him with pity, not hatred. While it would be wrong to call him an out and out coward (he fought plenty of creatures before he finally lost and gave in), he's not exactly brave either. He's become far more withdrawn and less likely to stand up for himself, dealing with confrontation by simply pulling away from the situation. If someone yells, he simply stares at the floor and accepts it while apologizing profusely.

The thing that Mikhail lost the most wasn't his position--it was his confidence and self esteem. Now Mikahil has neither, and it's extremely obvious to those around him. There's no attempt made to hide it, it's simply out in the open. He doesn't feel himself worthy of any praise, no matter how good the work he does is. In much the same way, no matter how small an error he makes, he feels it a thousand times more, and mentally beats himself up over everything, even if things aren't his fault. He's pessimistic to a fault when it comes to himself, and while he can be optimistic about others (say, how a mission will go), when it comes to himself, he always expects the worst.

While he is withdrawn, Mikhail is not always quiet. While he is silent most of the time, preferring to speak only when others show an interest, he can be extremely talkative if someone shows interest in one of his areas of interest. If someone wants to know the history of a particular artifact, he can talk for literally hours, going over every single detail. He tends to talk a little bit too much, but he's very honest in the way he speaks. He doesn't leave out things or weave around the truth--he simply tells people up front.

Despite all the mental punishment he forces on himself, Mikhail is still at his heart a good person. He's polite and patient, more then willing to lend an ear to those who need it. He's a good listener, willing to sit down and let people pour their heart out, and is able to do so without judging them. As far as he's concerned, no one could be worse then him, making him unworthy of judgement. He thinks of others feelings before his own, and has no real qualms about putting himself at risk.

Mikhail has no experience with relationships to speak of, having been far too focused on his work. Even so, he's affectionate with those he's close to, those people being few and far between. He misses being able to relax, and his scars are a well kept secret that keeps him pushing people away rather than opening up to them.

His behavior oddities are cranked up to extreme levels when dealing with those outside of the society. Growing up in Antarctica left him very, very sheltered. While most children growing up in the society have a good deal of exposure to those outside the society, there was really no 'outside' for Mikhail to be exposed to. He finds himself wary of those who aren't members, worried about overstepping his bounds, of letting too much go. He acts even more quiet than usual around them, even if he is particularly curious about what life is like outside.

While much of the energy has been drained from Mikhail's life, there's still several things that have become his primary interests. Living in Antarctica, there's no room to dabble in hobbies--you pick and you stick with it, because shipping anything in at all is unfeasible. Even so, some of the hobbies he's picked up are relatively new, his interest having exploded when he was first released into LA proper.

Books: Mikhail has quite an obsession with books, but it's not just any book he cares about. He is a book elitist, preferring older tomes. The older the better, and as much as he enjoys the content of the books, he enjoys the books themselves. The bindings, the inscriptions, the hand drawn illustrations--old antique books are his favorite, and he has a small but growing collection, harvested from used bookstores. Nothing he has is particularly expensive, but they're certainly more valuable than the average paperback.

Tea: Mikhail loves tea. It was one of those rare luxuries on the base, something he would enjoy immensely growing up. It was always alike, but never quite an obsession until he arrived in LA. After all, there were whole stores of tea, and his small apartment is practically bursting at the seams with all the tea he's bought. He has a whole cupboard just for different varieties of tea!

Mikhail was born, strictly speaking, off the grid. While he was given a Russian citizenship after birth, he never so much as stepped foot in the country, and everything was done behind the scenes through Impedio Society connections.

Instead, he was born in Antarctica, well away from any normal base and deep underground. The Impedio Society base was entirely off the record, unknown to any government of the world. For all intents and purposes, it didn't even exist. It shouldn't have existed either, buried deep under the ice where no human should have survived. Artifacts had helped the society build it years ago, and artifacts kept it running. They provided power and heat, and the entire compound was significantly higher quality then other Antarctic bases.

It had every amenity a base could want, save the fact that it was completely isolated. To a certain extent, most children raised in the Society were isolated, but growing up with zero access to non-society civilians took it to a whole other level. He was educated by private tutors, the number of children being so small that a normal school was implausible. He was taught the secret histories of the world, and the Societies place in it. Even from a young age he was given considerable training in everything he'd need, learning how to fight both humans and monsters. He was taught about all the creatures the society knew of, but the thing he was most interested in was artifacts. It was so strange and bizarre to him, and he found there to be plenty of parallels in books that he read--magic swords, enchanted items, and all of them used to defeat evil and protect humanity--just like in the stories he read.

Socialization was in short supply at the base. People did come in and out though, and it was from them that Mikhail got most of his socializing. Young couples would arrive with children for him to play with, and he'd learn to spar with them as he grew. While others were frequently moved, his uncle remained the administrator of the base, and the farthest he traveled was to the other side of the continent.

When the time came for tests of his aptitude, he excelled in both combat and history. In the end he was given the choice, and his father nudged him along into hunting. Hunting had considerable prestige attached to it, and there was plenty to hunt in Antarctica, filled with creatures that had thrived in an environment away from humans.

His combat skills were formidable, and by the time he turned fifteen, he was first granted his sword. An old relic, it held considerable power, increasing his speed and making him even more efficient in training. Even so, he'd yet to face a real opponent, and wouldn't get to until a year later.

When he was sixteen, he faced his first ice elemental--a weak one only the size of a normal human, and he killed it with ease. In the case of ice elementals, the danger was more from being disabled and freezing to death on the Tundra, unable to make it home. In one on one combat, an ice elemental was little challenge, and Mikhail found himself actually wishing for a challenge.

All his training and so few ways to use it. There was no large civilian population to protect. There was always the option of transferring off, but he was still a minor, and would almost certainly be better treated under his uncle's control then a strangers. Even so, he found himself bored, and even as the hunts became more intense, going farther inland, he still failed to be enthralled. It simply didn't seem like he would ever really matter. In a place so far from the 'front lines', even promotions failed to matter.

He became a patrician, trained his own young hunters. He was going places, even if he felt like he was standing absolutely still. No matter how many monsters he took down, it didn't feel like he was really helping anyone. He was divorced from the reality of what the Society meant to humanity at large. It was hard to feel like anything mattered when there was no real danger.

He was a patrician when it happened, when everything fell apart. It was supposed to be a routine mission, with just him and three others out on the ice. They'd learned to camp long ago, a necessity in the massive, roadless landmass the made up terrestrial Antarctica. It was even half comfortable, with artifacts to ease their way. In the end though, it was the artifacts that did them in, drawing the wendigo to them like moths to a flame.

It was old--far older than Mikhail itself, and while it would be impossible to date it, the eventual body it left behind was old and mummified, long dead. It had fed on humans that had been lost on the continent, and a good number of disappearances would have been easily linked to it. It had grown strong, unchecked for years, and by the time it ran across Mikhail, it was large, easily fifteen feet tall.

They were massively outgunned. One of the team was picked up and devoured hole before the other three were even awake, and while Mikhail and the remaining two attempted to put up a fight, there was no real way to win. It was perhaps the largest monster to have gotten anywhere near the base in a hundred years, and it killed the other two before moving onto Mikhail, the fastest of the lot.

No amount of speed could keep it away from him. It caught him in no time at all, moving to devour him as he screamed. It was so far over his head, so far beyond what he had experienced--he had never been so afraid.

It didn't eat him, but it very nearly did, leaving massive teeth marks across his torso and thighs from where it had nearly bitten him right through. It didn't finish it though, instead pulling him out of his mouth and scaring him even more--it spoke. It spoke and demanded to know where the base was, clutching him in one hand.

Every bit of training he'd ever had told him what to do: To tell it nothing, to die when it crushed him, and give the base more time to prepare when he didn't return. To deal with the creature on their own terms, prepared and ready, rather than letting it reach the base before they knew anything had happened.

But theory was not practice, and he was afraid. He had never been truly frightened before, not even when facing monsters. He had been raised to fight monsters, raised to protect them, and that had become a double edged sword, unable to deal with the fear.

So he told it where to go, and the Wendigo made for the base with Mikhail in hand. It was only when the base was in sight that it dropped him, abandoning him in the snow and leaving him to die.

Mikhail did not find out what happened for several months, but the wendigo was finally stopped. It was only in the aftermath he was found, suffering from extreme hypothermia and on the edge of death. The only survivor from what should have been a routine patrol. He was stabilized in the base before being evacuated. Antarctica had a good base, but there was no way he could get the sort of medical treatment he needed down there. Instead he was flown to the best available medical care--in LA.

By all accounts, it was a miracle he survived at all. He'd been severely wounded, his pelvis, ribs, and legs having been crushed when he was picked up. He'd had plenty of scratches, and the massive bite mark had left him with open wounds. Add that to hypothermia, and no one expected him to do anything ever again. Even so, with a combination of science and artifact use, he did recover. His bones healed. His body repaired itself. When he was finally taken out of the medically induced coma, it was more then a month after the incident.

To Mikhail, explaining what had happened to his superiors was more painful then any of the damage inflicted on his body. He told the truth--that he'd told it where to find the base. Those killed in the attack were his fault. He expected to be kicked out, to be abandoned by the Society entirely, but in the end it was obvious enough that he'd suffered enough.

It would be weeks before he could walk again, and even longer before he was able to be considered 'normal'. It had been half a year after the attack when he was finally told he would never return to hunting, that a new job had been found for him. He would go where his test scores had previously left him, and deal with artifacts in the Los Angeles vault. He would not return to Antarctica, to the base which he had nearly destroyed in his moment of weakness.

He was given an apartment and a job, and provided with everything he could need. He found it strange and bizarre, unable to get used to the regular rising and falling of the sun, the way people socialized, or the complete casualness of the atmosphere. In Antarctica, everything had been for a reason. In LA, one could simply sit in the sun for no reason at all.

It was quite the change.

Previously, Mikhail possessed a sword intended for combat. It was an intricate blade, with the addition of a small silver secondary edge, used for those monsters that are especially weak to silver. It made Mikhail faster than the average human, and he used it with a great deal of proficiency.

With his reassignment, his combat artifact was removed, and he was granted a new artifact more suitable to his new position within the society.

The book he carries provides him information about any artifacts in his immediate vicinity. It's used for classification and organization, and helps him keep track of the large amounts of artifacts he deals with. It takes the form of what appears to be an old leather-bound book, filled with slightly yellow pages. The front cover is embossed with an old symbol, it's origin unknown to him.