Natasha Markova

Natasha Markova is an agent in the Department of Mary Sues. She is written by Tira.

Appearance
Natasha is fairly tall for a woman, with short, dark-green hair and olive skin. She typically wears a black tank top and jeans under a dark brown trench coat. She is usually seen smoking a Bleepette and carrying at least one firearm.

Background
Natasha Markova is the second child of a family of mid-tier Magi. Her older brother, Ivan Markov, was a well-respected member of the Clock Tower; Natasha, unable to inherit the family's Crest and unwilling to be married off to another family, joined the Enforcers. Unbeknownst to her, Ivan was involved in performing dark experiments on a young girl with exceptional talents, who killed him and escaped. Natasha subsequently devoted herself to hunting the girl down and Sealing her.

Or in other words, Natasha was created to be an antagonist by a Fate/Stay Night Mary Sue known as Angelia Sorayuki. Natasha was supposed to severely wound the Sue and then be violently killed by Gilgamesh, the Sue's Lust Object. Instead, the PPC agents assigned to the fic intervened; however, their lack of experience with the Nasuverse meant that they didn't properly restrain the Sue, and she almost used her magic to kill them. Natasha, who wanted to know who was stealing her bounty, shot Angelia, incapacitating her long enough for the agents to finish charging and execute the Sue. Natasha was subsequently recruited. After completing her training and familiarizing herself with a number of other series, she was assigned to the DMS and partnered with Aaron.

Personality
Natasha is, generally speaking, the experienced one of her team; while she's been an agent for only a little bit longer than Aaron, she has more life experience. It helps that, since her previous profession involved killing powerful magic-users by outwitting and outmaneuvering them, she's basically working in the same field. For her part, Natasha sees Aaron as a protégé of sorts and tends to be a little more protective of him than is strictly necessary. She typically has something of a jaded, Han Solo-esque demeanor, and almost always refers to Aaron as "kid." She has a hard time with the differences between her home continuum and others; she persists in calling all vampires "Dead Apostles" ("Well, they aren't True Ancestors, right?") and struggles to understand how anyone can cast spells if they don't have Magic Circuits.

From an outside perspective, Natasha seems to be almost unshakeable, rarely losing her temper even when faced with particularly egregious badfic. This is less a personality trait and more a side-effect of her training and experience – losing your head in a combat situation is likely to be deadly. Instead of getting angry, Natasha snarks, smokes, and takes it out on her target; she knows how to shoot someone so that they won't die until she's had time to finish reading charges, and she's not afraid to do it. On the other hand, she also tends to overestimate her own abilities and think she's rather more self-sufficient than she actually is. She typically assumes herself capable of handling any situation she comes across and dislikes asking for help, making it easy for her to end up over her head.

Partnered with Aaron Hunter

 * 1) "First Encounters" (interlude)