[hider=Madelief De Kreisz]Name: Madelief De Kreisz

Nickname: Madelief has been, and is, known by many names throughout Europe.

Her family and the Wolves refer to her as Madelief, Maddie, Liefie, Leilei or, after a particularly insane stunt, just 'Mad'.

As an acrobat in the circus, she was known as 'Petit Oiseau Blanc', french for 'Little White Bird', given her age and, by extention her size as well as her general palour.

Fans of her death defying aerial show would know her as little more than 'The Flying Dutchwoman', as said the posters.

And finally, she became notorious under the moniker of 'The Sky Witch' to anyone who knew of the Wolves.

Age: Twenty Nine

Gender: Female

Nationality: Netherlander

Appearance: Madelief is tall, lithe and statuesque with a slender but incredibly toned physique owing to her lifetime of physical pursuits.
She has long dancer's legs leading down to a pair of feet that bear several thin streaks of whitened skin, scars left from dancing en pointe in her younger days.

She is typically aryan with a pale complexion, icey blue eyes filled with a childish exuberance and an extremely full mass of wavy, light blonde hair that falls well past her shoulders and is very rarely seen in any style other than loosely flowing down her back.

Her face is distinctly germanic with a slight but square jaw, hollow cheeks and high, prominent cheek bones tapering down to a sharp chin. Her pale blonde eyebrows appear almost non existant from any distance other than face to face and her dainty little button nose sits above full lips.

Her arms are long and thin but not boney, acquiring noticeable tone in their use in her acrobatic activities and her hands are well suited for her more recently acquired hobby of playing the piano, with long, slender fingers which regularly go unadorned by jewellery, as does her swan-like neck.

Madelief bears a thin, arching scar approximately six inches long running over her left hip, received when enemy fire dislodged shrapnel from her aircraft and wind pressure sent it flying through her like a blade. Barely visible against the pale white of her skin is a small white burn mark below her left eye from a hot shell casing that flew from her gun and the back of her right wrist bears a crescent shaped scar from a knife accident that occurred during her time in the circus. 

Skills: Acrobatics, ballet, flying trapeze and wingwalking. 

Is a crack shot with a rifle but apparently only when balancing on an aeroplane, can't hit the broad side of a barn on solid ground.

Moderate knowledge of nursing including things like first aide and recognition of certain illnesses etc.

Decent grasp of several languages, including english.

Can play piano and read sheet music.

A fair shot with a throwing knife.

Traits and Quirks: Madelief's defining trait seems to be her near psychotic lust for adrenaline and lack of self preservation. She lives almost entirely for fun and adventure and, as long as she has those, she is happy. This causes Madelief to be brash and impulsive which leads to trouble when working in a team in the high pressure situations in which the Wolves often find themselves. However, she is also practically fearless when it comes to these dangerous endeavours and maintains a calm sense of focus, rarely rattled or caught offguard in the air.

Given her relative lack of schooling past about thirteen years of age, Madelief is rather book dumb and this can make her seem foolish at times. Regardless, she is an intelligent woman and world experience coupled with an independent lifestyle replaced schooling to give her a broad knowledge base and left her anything but niave in the way the world works.

Having been involved in careers with an emphasis on showmanship and performing, Madelief is a cool and confident woman who exudes a sexuality rather out of touch with her relatively lacking experience, with, or interest in, romance.

History: Madelief's life started simple, but big dreams led her to big places, and then right back down again. 

The daughter of a nurse and a fisherman, two incomes led to a stable and secure life in which all worked hard and were rewarded with a warm home, good food and wanted for little.

Madelief spent most of her younger days exploring all around her rural home just outside of Den Helder in the northern Netherlands. She was a girly girl, it was true, but things such as hair styling and playing with dolls fell by the wayside when it came to chances for a little whimsical adventure and of all of the childhood adventures that were to be had, Madelief's favorite was climbing.

First it was things like cupboards and desks when she was just learning to walk. Then stair banisters and windowsills and then finally walls, trees and the roof of the family home. It was wild adventure and good times, but every childhood has to come to an end.

Madelief and her brother, Alfons, were practically shoehorned in to the respective professions of their parents, it was just more or less expected, but, as Madelief progressed from the joyous freedom of childhood to the dull bore of schooling, it was her father who recognised in her a similar spark to one he had once had.

A composer and musician at heart, her father had always dreamed of making a living from his music and would play regularly for her on an old piano he kept in the shed. Madelief, bursting with suppressed energy would dance along joyously and her father decided to foster her talent and not let it be crushed under the weight of expectation, as his had.

Immediately, he begun scrounging together a few guilders from every fish he sold and took her to see a ballet performance in Amsterdam. 
Madelief was starstruck and looked on in awe as the dancers performed their balletic feats and, despite protests from her mother, who argued the viability of the cost, was enrolled in a ballet class within the week.

For years, Madelief practiced hard and practically lived for the art of ballet, finding much of the rest of her slowly maturing life to be a bore. She knew even then that she was expected to finish school, begin studies for nursing and eventually become exactly like her mother, a prospect she hated. Even the structure of her ballet lessons became too rigid for her, too controlling and suffocating. Madelief didn't know what kind of life she wanted, but it wasn't this life.

It was by chance that she had been skipping home from school one day to be passed a flyer for a travelling circus that had come to town and was taken to see the show two days later. It was during this performance, staring up at the flying trapeze that she felt a fire in her stomach that she hadn't felt since that day at the ballet. Why, these acrobats were just doing what she did in her spare time! What was keeping her from doing the same?

For the entire ride home, Madelief begged to quit boring old ballet and switch to the even more explosive and adrenaline filled pursuit of acrobatics and the flying trapeze! What better place to live a life than way up there in the sky?

Remembering how his wife had resisted the ballet lessons and believing her wish to become an acrobat to be nothing more than a childish whim, Madelief's father staunchly refused and insisted she perservere with her ballet training. It was only after she concussed herself attempting stunts off a self-made ropeswing in the back yard that Madelief's parents decided it would be better for her to learn with instruction rather than kill herself in the attempt. After all, Madelief had a strong will and would not be dissuaded.

Unfortunately, acrobatics was a rather niche skill and did not have a school on every corner and the family found it difficult to find a teacher for Madelief even in nearby Den Helder. 

At this time, Madelief's father suffered an unfortunate accident while out fishing, a hook slicing open his arm and, while the injury itself was bad enough, the true suffering came with the infection that followed and the sicknesses that attacked his weakened immune system in the infection's wake.

With the father unable to work, times became financially hard for the Van Kreisz family and, fearing her father would die without her help, Madelief literally ran away from home and joined the circus. Being young and athletic with the good base skills of balance and flexibility provided by her ballet training as well as apparent fearlessness regarding heights, Madelief was accepted by the circus.

Her first job, however, was not as a trapeze artist. She would receive training in that area, but her primary duties involved cleaning animal stalls and other menial tasks, tasks which she hated given her surprisingly dainty feminine traits. The pay at first was meagre, but given that the circus also provided her with food and board, she was able to send one hundred percent of it back to her family and she also made a few extra dollars in a knife throwing game that the performers liked to play, she became quite skilled at it. 

The money she sent home, coupled with some considerable financial aide from Madelief's uncle on her mother's side, Diederik , meant that Madelief's brother, Alfons was able to continue going to school and her mother was able to stay at home and provide her full nursing attention to her father.

Madelief continued for much of her teen years in this way, living a life of danger and adventure and sending all proceeds home to her sick father but eventually, she began to feel that familiar feeling of stagnant boredom and the restlessness that came with it.

Seeking a new challenge, Madelief found it a few months later at an airshow during which two daring pilots went up in an aeroplane and left the cockpits, performing a series of balancing acts right out there on the wings. Madelief's eyes gleamed with delight, her abundant energy and obsession with heights and adrenaline had evolved from climbing trees to dancing ballet to the flying trapeze and now she was ready to take on this new frontier, aeronaughtics.

She approached the pilots after the show and was promptly laughed out of the hangar. A female pilot? Was she serious?

However, once out of earshot of his colleague, one of the pilots, Edvard Hoss caught up with her and made her an offer. Maybe piloting was out of her league but she was a beautiful young woman with considerable talents in acrobatics and experience in showmanship, the pilot believed they could make a fortune with him flying and her performing and, willing to do whatever it took to become a wing walker, Madelief agreed to his terms.

Madelief and Edvard hit the road, performing at airshows all over Europe. They were a huge hit and people began to talk of the ace pilot and the stunning blonde woman who performed acrobatics in the sky. Travelling far and wide, Madelief learned much and absorbed many different cultures and languages, becoming quite the linguist and broadening her mind farther than she had ever dreamed.

Things were wonderful for Madelief, but back home, her father was hanging on to life by a thread and Madelief's uncle had suddenly and without explanation cut all ties with the Kriesz family, including financial support. Try as she may, Madelief's mother could not even contact Diederik, let alone get an explanation out of him regarding the reasons for his sudden withdrawal from their lives and times became hard once again.

Alfons had now graduated and was working as a fisherman, despite his other talents, and, while a wonderful job, the entertnainment business was not earning Madelief enough to support the increasing needs of her family. This, coupled with Edvard's general mistreatment of her and the breaking of a promise he had made to teach her to fly was why, when approached by the Wolves of the Mediteranean for her act in which she performed target shooting from atop the wings of Edvards plane, Madelief accepted.

She was young when she was recruited and could not even fly a plane, but Madelief acted as a gunner in tandem with another pilot, using the rear machine gun and, when it came to boarding zeppelins and airships, Madelief, to the amusement and/or horror of the rest of the crew, would balance on the wings and snipe targets, throw grenades and perform all manner of ludicrous, death defying tasks. She was in heaven.

Eventually, she acquired her own plane by literally jumping wing to wing and killing its former pilot. That particular stunt caused a full retreat of the remaining enemy fighters and began the first stirrings of what she would later be known as, the Sky Witch.
Wolfgang Gotz, the leader of the Wolves decided that her outrageous stunt had earned her the right to keep her prize and she was taught to fly it under the mentorship of a man named Frederik Ole Erik. Also known as 'Erik the Red', Madelief had taken an instant shine to the Swedish fellow when he joined the Wolves and he had responded by remaining vigilant and patient through all of her near misses and painful accidents, gradually transforming her into a pilot worthy of being counted among the aces of the Wolves of the Mediterranean.

Her life was even more exciting than ever and the money she was making allowed her mother to continue looking after her father, her brother to pursue a career more compatible with his own preferences and her whole family to stay afloat. She just told them she was an entrepreneur.

Eventually, though, even this grand time had to end.

Things got too heated, the group disbanded and Madelief fell into loneliness and depression. Upon returning home, she found her father had died. Her whole life had become about supporting him financially, but she hadn't seen him since she had left for the circus, barely even a teenager.

Her brother had moved away from the family home and was attending university in Amsterdam and she was left at home with her mother who had come to respect her for what she had done for the family but there was a certain tenseness between them that never went away.

Living comfortably on her share of the Wolves' loot, Madelief did little but mill around her home for three years. She made a hobby of playing her father's piano for hours on end, learning the music he wrote from scratch, note by note and her plane slowly rusted away in her father's boat shed. That was, at least, until she got the call.

The call to come back to the Wolves knocked her out of her depressive stupor and she immediately sent back a positive response, used a large portion of her remaining funds to re-furbish her aircraft and tightened up her skills before heading off to meet with her old gang with more brightness and joy in her expression than had existed there in the last eight years.

Other: Always carries her father's old fish knife with her and uses it as a weapon.[/hider]

Welp, there she is, my character. I hope you like her and that the wing walking thing isn't too out there. I don't know how realistic you were aiming for but I don't intend for her to be a ninja or anything, just thought of the whole idea being popular in the twenties and kinda ran with it.

Also, I kept it vague but if someone wants to be the character that she was partnered with before getting her own plane and/or the one who taught her to fly, that would be cool. Also, if you agree with it, Danko, I'll edit the sentence about her being able to keep the plane she hijacked to specify that it was Wolfgang who let her do so.

I'm also open to removing the part where Madelief ever got a plane and having her remain a support gunner and wing walking sharp shooter.

Also, I thought that perhaps Madelief's uncle could have been involved somehow with what happened to Wolfgang's family? Maybe he's working out who the Wolves are and has blackmailed Madelief into doing...something.
I dunno, just an idea.

Soooo, yeah, that's that.