Appearance: Standing a bit on the average-to-tall side of things at 170 cm, Zhanna has an olive toned complexion and a very athletic body type, with muscles hardened by field and factory work that would make some men jealous. She has deep brown eyes and dark toned hair closer to black then brown, usually in a short messy style that reaches to the bottom of her neck. Zhanna also possesses rather sharp and well-defined features, which she generally dislikes hiding behind makeup for personal reasons. When she's not wearing her dress uniform for formal occasions she tends to dress practically in fatigues and similarly military clothing, preferring to wear her Soviet tank crew jacket loosely over a sleeveless shirt. Said shirt only barely hides the minor burn scars still on her chest.
Personality: Zhanna is not the best or the brightest at what she does, but she's definitely worked the hardest to get there and she's not going to let you forget it. A relentlessly driven individual, Zhanna is a fiercely independent woman who doesn't take too kindly to those that step on others or demand obedience from her or anyone else without earning it first. She will follow someone she trusts and respects to the ends of the Earth if need be, but if she thinks what you're doing is wrong or goes against what she believes, she can and will call you out on it. Suffice it to say this gels with her political beliefs quite nicely; she has her qualms about parts of the leadership in her country, but she's an ardent supporter of communism and the great socialist experiment that is the USSR nevertheless. She also has a great love of engineering and enjoys discovering and learning about new and exciting things almost as much as she enjoys 'borrowing' vehicles and going for a joyride, if the situation calls for it.
Background history: Zhanna was born to a poor family of farmers descended from steppe nomads outside the town of Glazov in the waning days of the Russian Civil War. Her father died in a skirmish against White Russian forces in the Far East before he could come home to see his newborn daughter, leaving Zhanna to be raised by her mother and two older brothers. Life in Glaznov was harsh for young Zhanna, but she persevered through sheer determination, even when her brothers gave in and left the family home to escape the desperation and starvation of life in Glaznov. When she was thirteen her mother, withered by starvation and Typhus, finally passed away, though not before she made arrangements for her only daughter to move in with a distant uncle in Kiev.
While she never really grew attached to her uncle, Zhanna nevertheless found her life in Kiev to be much better then back home in Glaznov. She found a decent albeit difficult job on an assembly line, manufacturing trucks and tanks for the Soviet army. Deeply interested in how the strange new machines worked, she enrolled in Kiev University to study engineering. She was still studying when the USSR launched the invasion of Finland in 1939, and being the good patriot that she was Zhanna attempted to volunteer. When she was rejected because factory work was deemed more suitable for her, Zhanna merely re-volunteered with an assumed male identity and was sent to the front lines. The Winter War soon turned into a grueling, bloody conflict for the Soviets, yet Zhanna managed to serve with distinction and was even being considered for a transfer to an armored unit before disaster struck outside of Kuhmo.
Prior to the fateful assault on the city, a member the Soviet high command had convinced Stalin to deploy some prototype weaponry in Finland to test their merits, one of which was a new type of T-26 tank with a stronger battery and an experimental new fuel source, both of which Zhanna got to know intimately during a push on the city. Taking cover behind one of the T-26's, an artillery shell struck the engine and burst the gas tank, dousing her with the experimental fuel. The tank rolled over and fell into a ditch, and despite the intense combat around her, Zhanna moved up to try to help the tank crewmen escape. She only just saw the last crewman leave before something shot past her ear and knocked her off balance, where she slipped and landed on the now exposed battery. She woke up in an army hospital a week later with burns on her arms and a pair of unpleasant looking guards on either side of her.
Luckily for Zhanna, her heroic actions had not gone unnoticed by the army, so rather then arrest her and put her on trial for crimes against the state, she was turned over to the propaganda men, who detailed her life story and heroic actions to build her up into something of a national hero who had "overcome hardships tenfold and stopped at nothing to fight on behalf of Stalin and the glorious Soviet Union". This move payed off in dividends when Zhanna discovered her new unusual powers, and indeed she became so valuable to the USSR's propaganda efforts that she was kept out of the fighting when the Germans invaded for fear of losing the 'Invincible Daughter of the Revolution' to a stray bullet. Zhanna wasn't pleased with this development at all and made her displeasure with that decision quite clear to her superiors, so rather then having her run off and join the fighting against the Germans anyway, Stalin decided to loan Zhanna to the Westerners, hoping that she and this 'Task Force' would be able to cause enough trouble to take some of the pressure off of the Eastern Front.
Superpower and how the character got it: Zhanna has the ability to generate, control, and manipulate magnetic fields. In layman's terms she has the ability to manipulate and control magnetic and metallic objects, from telekinetic moving them around to deforming and reshaping metal into other forms. This doesn't work on materials that are not magnetic (pure gold, dirt, etc.), and she generally needs to see or be aware of the metal she is trying to manipulate. She can move a key she knows is behind a door with some effort, for instance, but she can't extract the iron from someone's blood since she can't physically see it.
Zhanna got her superpowers in the always classic lab accident method, or to be more accurate a battlefield accident when she was electrocuted and compromised by a prototype for tank fuel. The combination of electricity and experimental gasoline is still heavily classified by the Soviet government however, and there are rumors that they are trying to recreate the circumstances of the accident in question.
Appearance: Standing a bit on the average-to-tall side of things at 170 cm, Zhanna has an olive toned complexion and a very athletic body type, with muscles hardened by field and factory work that would make some men jealous. She has deep brown eyes and dark toned hair closer to black then brown, usually in a short messy style that reaches to the bottom of her neck. Zhanna also possesses rather sharp and well-defined features, which she generally dislikes hiding behind makeup for personal reasons. When she's not wearing her dress uniform for formal occasions she tends to dress practically in fatigues and similarly military clothing, preferring to wear her Soviet tank crew jacket loosely over a sleeveless shirt. Said shirt only barely hides the minor burn scars still on her chest.
Personality: Zhanna is not the best or the brightest at what she does, but she's definitely worked the hardest to get there and she's not going to let you forget it. A relentlessly driven individual, Zhanna is a fiercely independent woman who doesn't take too kindly to those that step on others or demand obedience from her or anyone else without earning it first. She will follow someone she trusts and respects to the ends of the Earth if need be, but if she thinks what you're doing is wrong or goes against what she believes, she can and will call you out on it. Suffice it to say this gels with her political beliefs quite nicely; she has her qualms about parts of the leadership in her country, but she's an ardent supporter of communism and the great socialist experiment that is the USSR nevertheless. She also has a great love of engineering and enjoys discovering and learning about new and exciting things almost as much as she enjoys 'borrowing' vehicles and going for a joyride, if the situation calls for it.
Background history: Zhanna was born to a poor family of farmers descended from steppe nomads outside the town of Glazov in the waning days of the Russian Civil War. Her father died in a skirmish against White Russian forces in the Far East before he could come home to see his newborn daughter, leaving Zhanna to be raised by her mother and two older brothers. Life in Glaznov was harsh for young Zhanna, but she persevered through sheer determination, even when her brothers gave in and left the family home to escape the desperation and starvation of life in Glaznov. When she was thirteen her mother, withered by starvation and Typhus, finally passed away, though not before she made arrangements for her only daughter to move in with a distant uncle in Kiev.
While she never really grew attached to her uncle, Zhanna nevertheless found her life in Kiev to be much better then back home in Glaznov. She found a decent albeit difficult job on an assembly line, manufacturing trucks and tanks for the Soviet army. Deeply interested in how the strange new machines worked, she enrolled in Kiev University to study engineering. She was still studying when the USSR launched the invasion of Finland in 1939, and being the good patriot that she was Zhanna attempted to volunteer. When she was rejected because factory work was deemed more suitable for her, Zhanna merely re-volunteered with an assumed male identity and was sent to the front lines. The Winter War soon turned into a grueling, bloody conflict for the Soviets, yet Zhanna managed to serve with distinction and was even being considered for a transfer to an armored unit before disaster struck outside of Kuhmo.
Prior to the fateful assault on the city, a member the Soviet high command had convinced Stalin to deploy some prototype weaponry in Finland to test their merits, one of which was a new type of T-26 tank with a stronger battery and an experimental new fuel source, both of which Zhanna got to know intimately during a push on the city. Taking cover behind one of the T-26's, an artillery shell struck the engine and burst the gas tank, dousing her with the experimental fuel. The tank rolled over and fell into a ditch, and despite the intense combat around her, Zhanna moved up to try to help the tank crewmen escape. She only just saw the last crewman leave before something shot past her ear and knocked her off balance, where she slipped and landed on the now exposed battery. She woke up in an army hospital a week later with burns on her arms and a pair of unpleasant looking guards on either side of her.
Luckily for Zhanna, her heroic actions had not gone unnoticed by the army, so rather then arrest her and put her on trial for crimes against the state, she was turned over to the propaganda men, who detailed her life story and heroic actions to build her up into something of a national hero who had "overcome hardships tenfold and stopped at nothing to fight on behalf of Stalin and the glorious Soviet Union". This move payed off in dividends when Zhanna discovered her new unusual powers, and indeed she became so valuable to the USSR's propaganda efforts that she was kept out of the fighting when the Germans invaded for fear of losing the 'Invincible Daughter of the Revolution' to a stray bullet. Zhanna wasn't pleased with this development at all and made her displeasure with that decision quite clear to her superiors, so rather then having her run off and join the fighting against the Germans anyway, Stalin decided to loan Zhanna to the Westerners, hoping that she and this 'Task Force' would be able to cause enough trouble to take some of the pressure off of the Eastern Front.
Superpower and how the character got it: Zhanna has the ability to generate, control, and manipulate magnetic fields. In layman's terms she has the ability to manipulate and control magnetic and metallic objects, from telekinetic moving them around to deforming and reshaping metal into other forms. This doesn't work on materials that are not magnetic (pure gold, dirt, etc.), and she generally needs to see or be aware of the metal she is trying to manipulate. She can move a key she knows is behind a door with some effort, for instance, but she can't extract the iron from someone's blood since she can't physically see it.
Zhanna got her superpowers in the always classic lab accident method, or to be more accurate a battlefield accident when she was electrocuted and compromised by a prototype for tank fuel. The combination of electricity and experimental gasoline is still heavily classified by the Soviet government however, and there are rumors that they are trying to recreate the circumstances of the accident in question.
