[hider=Hush-Puppy] [b]Name[/b] Natasza "Hush-Puppy" Zajac [b]Gender[/b] Female [b]Age[/b] 30 [b]Sexuality[/b] Quietly Bisexual [b]Nationality[/b] Polish by birth, nationalized American [b]Appearance[/b] Tall and fit, beautiful in an athletic sort of way, Natasza could be described as statuesque or even stunning on a good day. When inside the wire she dresses more like a Hollywood starlet than a professional spy, wearing cotton button-ups or turtlenecks and jeans with fashionable boots and aviators. A bit of lipstick with some eyeliner and mascara brings attention to her face, the better to keep the focus away from whatever her hands may be doing. Depending on the occasion she may add to the look with jewelry "acquired" from the locals or with a few buttons of her shirt left undone to add a little extra persuasive power to her smile. Outside the wire Hush-Puppy is an entirely different creature. The German imported Doc Martens and casual shirts are replaced with heavy combat boots and tigerstripe camouflage fatigues, naturally flawless face covered by a thick layer of paint and mud. The fanciest accessory she carries into the field is a Rolex, chosen for its ability to withstand the rivers she swims through and kept in a pocket to keep the sun from glinting off it. A patrol cap and piece of twine keeps her short hair out of her face so she can use her rifle's scope without worry. The smile she wears in the safety of the villages and cities is nowhere to be found in the jungle, Hush-Puppy keeping up an unreadable mask when working. [hider=Image] [img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/643632480825376768/682442985920790528/83667ca48d3129f5ac758209933c0d43.png[/img] [/hider] [b]Height[/b] 5'8" [b]Personality[/b] Natasza Zajac, otherwise known as Hush-Puppy, is in many ways the personification of this brutal new age of warfare. Combining college-educated negotiation and reasoning skills with modern era intelligence gathering and ancient savagery she's a professional spook, capable of performing all sorts of unsavory acts without flinching. Her education, her looks, her easy-going personality, all are used to get information out of sources with and without their knowledge. And then when it's time to act on it she strikes swiftly and without hesitation, swimming up out of the delta or coming down from the mountains to burn, kidnap and kill as needed. Everyone in Vietnam, is either an asset, a possible asset or a problem to be removed. A firm believer in the concept of carrot and stick HP is willing to use persuasion, seduction, bargaining and violence in equal measure to achieve her objectives. Her intelligence and knack for languages has been put to good use throughout her career, Hush-Puppy making a point to become fluent or at least conversant in the main language of each country she's assigned to. Besides English Polish and Latin she's managed to master French, Spanish, Farsi, Italian, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese besides being conversant in multiple Hmong, Montagnard and Tibetan dialects. HP's relation with such concepts as religion, patriotism and morality can be murky to distinguish even for her, balancing biblical rules such as "Thou shall not kill" and women not supposed to be lying with other women with the brutal realities of her job and her sometimes "unorthodox" attractions. She struggles with her work, the absolute necessity of it making it no more enjoyable. And with each passing day she worries more for her soul. An afterlife on streets of gold and no pain seeming more and more distant as her need to serve a country and ideas she believes in makes a devil out of her. So far she's managed to walk the line, refusing to entertain thoughts of conversion or retirement while there's work to be done. After all, the Communists aren't exactly clean themselves. Hush-Puppy is content to pay penance by making them pay theirs. [b]Rank[/b] Agent [b]Branch[/b] CIA Directorate of Plans, on loan to MACV-SOG [b]Role[/b] Long range patrols and reconnaissance, unconventional warfare, intelligence and counter-intelligence [b]Equipment[/b] [hider=City Carry Kit] [url=https://www.legacy-collectibles.com/media/catalog/product/cache/9d08971813a040f8f96067a40f75c615/i/m/img_1600_7.jpg]Walther PPK[/url] [url=https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0188/2846/products/20200107_080903_1024x1024.jpg?v=1583354438]Penal Rosary[/url] [url=https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/2770/147548/74569783_1_x.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&version=1&width=512]Switchblade[/url] [i]Multiple Fake IDs and changes of clothes [/i] [/hider] [hider=LRRP Kit (to pick and choose from as needed)] [url=https://news.guns.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/hushpuppy-cover.jpg]-Mk.22 Mod 0 "Hush-Puppy"[/url] [url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/MAC10.jpg]-Mac-10[/url] [url=https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/546802855076429824/682336963444867081/Caption-5.png]Suppressed Remington 700[/url] [url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/e6/d6/66e6d6601a82130b0cc2c36684b24053.jpg]-Recurve Bow[/url] [url=https://pics.knifecenter.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiAiZmlsZXMua25pZmVjZW50ZXIuY29tIiwia2V5IjogImtuaWZlY2VudGVyL2l4bC9pbWFnZXMvU0hFMDA2bncuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOiB7InJlc2l6ZSI6IHsid2lkdGgiOiA1NDUsImhlaWdodCI6IDQyNSwiZml0IjogImNvbnRhaW4iLCJiYWNrZ3JvdW5kIjogeyJyIjogMjU1LCJnIjogMjU1LCJiIjogMjU1LCJhbHBoYSI6IDF9fX19]Fairburne-Sykes Fighting Knife[/url] [url=https://americansuburbx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/06.24.12.06_525.jpg]-Zippo[/url] [url=https://cdn1-www.dogtime.com/assets/uploads/2015/05/file_10959_column_famous-war-dog-nemo.jpg]-"Łowca"[/url] [url=https://www.rolex.com/content/dam/rolexcom/watchmaking/history/first_submariner_1953_0001_840x420.jpg]-Rolex Submariner[/url] [i]Various survival equipment (compass, matches, Halazone tablets etc.)[/i] [i]Zip-Ties[/i] [/hider] [b]Biography[/b] Natasza's earliest memories were of luxury and decadence. Born in Warsaw in 1924 to a family of landed gentry turned industrialists the youngest child of four was the most recent addition to a line of minor nobility who could trace it's roots back through to the legendary winged hussars. And as was fitting for one of her station she was tended to by a small army of doctors and servants, the horde of staff making sure she wanted for nothing. Except attention from her parents of course. Her father Jan and mother Karina were away from their estate on business trips more often than not, the near constant checking up on their steel mills and coal mines living them little time to spend with any of their children. With three other competitors seeking to claim that precious resource Natasza quickly adjusted to being alone. in 1929 just after the new year Jan and Karina left their Polish holdings in the hands of capable underlings and moved to the American territory of Alaska, settling down in Anchorage in hopes of capitalizing on the gold, timber and fish to be found. But before final preparations could be made Black Tuesday hit. The Great Depression had hit with full force and the new business was put on indefinite hold. The Zajacs managed to avoid the worst of it and poured money into their adopted home in it's time of need. In an effort to ease the transition into a new country the importance of national pride was impressed upon Natasza and her siblings, her parents making sure their English was immaculate and their accents non-existent. The whole family went through the lengthy process of naturalization before Natasza's ninth birthday, an event she announced excitedly to her class. She and her family had bought into the American Dream wholeheartedly, proud of both their birth country and their new one. Two flags hung from their window and expeditions into the wilderness of Alaska were regular occurrences. Natasza was especially devout in her belief, never missing a Mass or Saints Day at church. It looked like she would have the perfect all-American experience. It was an idyllic period in her life. And then the world exploded. The family listened on the radio as Nazi Germany and Communist Russia split their homeland in two, an event that would haunt Natasza for the rest of her life. All of her siblings signed up to fight within a week of the US joining the war. None of them would make it home. Józef was shot in North Africa during Operation Torch and Leon drowned in the waters of Normandy. Teodora managed to fight her way across Europe before being killed by Soviet grenades during the Prague incident. As each telegram came home more and more burden was placed upon Natasza to succeed, the young girl not wanting her siblings deaths to be in vain. She threw herself into her studies under the best tutors money could buy and managed to get accepted into Princeton university at only 17, earning bachelor's degrees in International Relations and Linguistics by the age twenty-three. Her plan was to join the Army but her parents wouldn't hear it, terrified at the possibility of their only remaining child meeting the same fate. It was a point of contention that nearly ripped the family apart. Her parents kept pushing her to go into politics, to use their money and connections to become somebody important just like it had been down in their homeland. But Natasza refused again and again, determined to make it all by herself. Eventually they reached a compromise: she would join the CIA. She could have a safe, quiet job as a data analyst or station head somewhere out of the way where she wouldn't get hurt. She took the deal and signed up. Her background checks came up clean and with her outstanding academic record and background she had her pick of any of the four directorates. To the horror of her parents she picked the Directorate of Plans, getting shipped off to Camp Peary to learn how to be a spy. By 1951 she had been taught how to assemble and defuse explosives, how to hotwire cars and pick locks, the best ways to conceal items on her person and all the other various tricks someone in her field would need and was ready for her first assignment. Under the codename Odysseus she was sent to Paris to Europe to root out Soviet and Chinese operatives. Her direct superior was a legend in his own right. Luke Dixon, better known as the Jackal, was a veteran of the OSS and an incredibly talented spy who had worked for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and spent the second World War rooting out collaborators in occupied French. He took Natasza under his wing, the young woman becoming an informal protege as she learned from a master at the craft. It was under his tutelage that her own reputation began to form, Odysseus becoming feared and respected throughout Europe's intelligence communities. For two years she rarely spent more than a week in one place before moving, crossing the continent in search of KGB assassins and Stasi assets. One particularly memorable Saturday she killed five agents in Oslo and escaped via a commandeered fishing boat. The event that would really make her (in)famous in her field would come in 1953. Unbeknownst to her Jackal had been converted to a Russian asset a year after she started working with him, giving up state secrets and disrupting NATO operations. When this was discovered it fell to Natasza to deal with him. Jackal had been tipped off and managed to secure a car and bodyguard to make it to East Germany. With hours to spare she tracked him down and ran him off the road and into a train. Jackal was killed instantly and his heir took up the codename "Hush-Puppy" as a sort of trophy. After that she was temporarily reassigned to Iran and Guatemala in order to assist with the American backed coups and build up the intelligence organizations of the new governments before being recalled back to Europe. She expected to stay there for the rest of her career and maybe even get that station head job her parents had talked about but instead ended up being shifted to Asian operations. His first job was in Tibet, trekking through the hazardous mountain terrain to build up a network of anti-Chinese agitators and dissident. There she learned to how to train and equip a paramilitary force. It was a skill-set that would prove invaluable in her next assignment: turning the often incompetent ARVN and the local farmers and tribespeople into proper fighting forces. When the United States officially entered the war she gained new responsibilities, working with the newly formed MACV-SOG on Operation Phoenix and Project Eldest Son. Hunting down VIPs and sabotaging enemy efforts, she was back in her element. [b]Affiliations[/b] -Jan Zajac (Father) -Karina Zajac (Mother) -Józef Zajac (Older Brother, Deceased) -Leon Zajac (Older Brother, Deceased) -Teodora Zajac (Older Sister, Deceased) -Emily Zajac (Adoptive Younger Sister) -Luke Dixon (Mentor, Deceased) [b]Relationships[/b] [hider=Lucas Whittaker] Worked with him back in '57 to train and advise the ARVN. Upon her being transferred to field duties she looked him up and sent herself to his FOB so she could have a grunt unit to attach herself to when not going solo. Lucas seems solid enough for her purposes. [/hider] [hider=Cynthia Ward] A cub reporter out of her element. HP was only aware of Cynthia through her pieces about New York politics and scandals before one of her contacts at the Times mentioned offhandedly that she'd be coming. Now HP is keeping an eye on her and doing some digging as to just how she managed to get assigned to Vietnam. [/hider] [b]Character Theme[/b] [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqR1cjuPXUg[/youtube] [/hider]