[hider=Dr. Nikita Ilyushin]
[b]Player Name:[/b] CanisMajoris2
[b]Character Name:[/b] Dr. Nikita Ilyushin
[b]Character Age:[/b] 37
[b]Character Gender:[/b] Male
[b]Appearance:[/b] 
[img]http://www.tasteofcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Children_of_Men.jpg[/img]
[b]Profession:[/b] Medical Doctor, Psychiatry
[b]Nationality:[/b] Born in the ashes of what was once the European Confederacy, Nikita is a human with little to no knowledge of what his nation once was, though he speaks Russian, a language all but vanished from the annals of history.
[b]Strengths:[/b]
[list]
[*]Indefatigable: Hours and hours spent in exposure to those in need has led Nikita to require sleep less than a normal human would. His endurance during stressful situations is remarkable, though this has led him to experiment with various drug mixtures to help further augment this ability.
[*]Caring: A genuine desire to help has led this psychiatrist to be extraordinarily empathetic. 
[*]Intelligent: Extensive education as a medical doctor has made him the reference for any psycho-analytic quandary.
[*]Good diplomat: His tongue is his greatest weapon, possessing the ability to defuse a situation with his words alone, and settle disputes with unbiased reason and calm, patient rationality.
[*]Experienced: His experience in the field, primarily to deal with those fatally afflicted by the nuclear fallout, has led him to develop a flexible response towards problems, and it has proven to be quite effective. 
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[b]Weaknesses:[/b]
[list]
[*]Fatalist: He’s not too hopeful that humanity will survive, and while he’d like to call this “realism,” it’s a thin shroud over top of thinner hope.
[*]Scared?: Nikita’s strength lies more with his ability to talk himself out of a situation rather than shoot himself out, and he can come across as anti-conflict, conciliatory, and even cowardly.
[*]Distant: Like many of his compatriots, he lacks any real bonds with others, and he seems unwilling to remedy that.
[*]Self-diagnosing: He experiments with drugs in order to fix the rather extensive issues with his mind, to combat the crippling fatalism that often leaves him bedridden and depressive.
[*]Stubborn: Unwilling to give in to other opinions, it can be difficult to convince Nikita that perhaps he is wrong after all.
[/list]
[b]Personal Effects:[/b] Nikita has very few personal possessions aside from a large collection of medical works--many of which were written by him--kept in a small locked bookcase. He has a satchel filled with medical equipment that he keeps as a memento from his time as a field paramedic. He keeps a stash of cigarettes infused with sedatives hidden within a locked safe, only sharing with those he feels desperately needs their opiate-like qualities.

[b]Bio:[/b] Nikita was, from a very young age, forced to deal with the realities of war. His father was killed fighting the various militias that had sprung up in Europe after The War, his mother was shot by a sniper when walking through his home town, and his two sisters were forcibly taken as prisoner-wives by a local militia. Unable to survive as a dependent, Nikita--at an age as early as ten--learned to fight with his fists and with knives and broken bottles, depriving others of their essential liberties so that he might survive. Only when he attempted to rob the richest family in town did his reign of terror come to an end.

He was taken in by this relatively well-off couple--he wouldn’t have survived otherwise--who cared for him as their own son. This elderly couple had no children of their own, and Nikita very quickly became attached to them. They became the parents that he more or less never had in his childhood. It was only when the Devastators came that he realized that normalcy could never come to him. 

He was seventeen when news of the Three-Day War came to Earth. He heard of the great battle, the bravery and sacrifice of those involved, of "them damn red-bellies," a slur in reference to the Martian refusal to assist the Spacer Navy. He heard of the great Roland Constantine, a hero revered by the common man to such a degree that he was almost deified. 

But what Nikita remembers most acutely is the strange reaction his "parents" had to the war. They didn't respond so much out of fear or even hatred, but out of sullen acceptance. He remembered "Father" in the sitting room sipping the last of his precious vodka, musing to himself that it was about damn time he died. Horrified by the fatalism of his parents and wishing to escape the prejudice of his town, he expressed interest in a medical career to his parents.

His foster parents, with their substantial influence, were able to put him in one of the top medical schools in the Roslin Confederacy. The school was brutal, with a penchant for killing off the precious life that remains all for the higher purpose of creating strength where there is none. The accommodations were spartan, the rules confining, and the discipline all but fatal. Nikita learned very early on to keep his head down and wait as those foolish enough to create themselves were inevitably shot down and eviscerated by the Professors. 

Studying medicine, specifically psychology, Nikita quickly proved himself to be the brightest of the cadets in that field, scoring almost a perfect score on the final examination. Branded as a special case, he was sent to the New Minnesota Medical School to further his studies, eventually graduating at or near the top of his class in almost every subject. Nikita the whole time knew that the real reason for joining the Cadet Corps was to help his dying people, and upon his graduation he began work in the wastelands of Russia, encountering terrible maladies and horrifying mutations, seeing the true effects of fallout firsthand. Rather than practice psycho-analytics, he was relegated to the relatively plum assignment of paramedic, bolting from place to place assisting in temporary life-saving measures that would, by and by, only slow the pace of death.

Rather than continue with work that he knew would not help, Nikita began a hospice care system that eventually spread across the entire European continent, dealing with those fatally afflicted, and even those whose psychological problems were so great that they could do nothing but wait for the inevitable bell toll of death. It was a dark job, and one that paid strange dividends. Productivity went up in those burgeoning farms, unhindered by having to support a dying population. Nicknamed “Pre-Morgues,” Nikita’s hospice houses began to be seen in a far more negative light than he had wished. 

With little to keep him on a dying continent that no longer accepted him, Nikita began to look for other places that required his extensive knowledge and medical background. Upon learning that a program was in the works designed as a last-ditch effort for humanity’s survival, Nikita knew that the final climactic act had begun for his life. If he failed here, (well, first off… it wouldn’t matter anyhow; they’d all be dead anyhow…) he knew he did all he could to save a race that was on the brink of collapse. 

In order to prove himself, he launched into an almost maniacal explosion of psychological experimentation and investigation, discovering new maladies every morning and then finding cures for those maladies every night. He published papers describing the extensive damage nuclear war has on the psyche, of the unique instances he found where psychological warfare had actually taken place. Nikita became one of the most well-known psychiatrists on the planet, highly regarded as both a scholar and a doctor, able to cure any psychological problem imaginable. 

It was the problem of deep space travel that bothered him next. He knew nothing--no one knew anything--about how a mind would react to deep space travel for years on end. Applying for the Genesis Project as soon as it became public knowledge, he planned to see if prolonged deep space travel was feasible, and if the psychological effects it had on someone were irreversibly detrimental. 

Saying good-bye to a family he was not related to, and leaving a family he never knew, Nikita was all but certain in this mission's failure, but he would stay with it until the end, fighting for some glimmer of hope in the distance. That one glimmer: survival.

[b]Code Word:[/b] Pineapples (are great)

[/hider]