Svetlana

Svetlana
Created by	Coda
Information
Full name	Svetlana Petrova-Whitaker
Alias	Rusalka
Species	Skuntank
Gender	Female
Orientation	Bisexual
Main Kinks	Vanilla sex, pegging, role reversal
Occupation	SVR Special Operative
Family	Dmitri, Sunflower
Children	Thomas, Malcolm
Nationality	Russian

Description

Svetlana Whitaker is a pointy-faced Skuntank, a Russian spy, and the primary antagonist of Coda's stories. Her clashes with her son Thomas, and her desire to reconcile with him, characterize her conflicts with Cafe Plaisir.

Once a sultry, deadly globe-trotting secret agent, Svetlana is now a shell of what she once was. Touching the cosmic horror of Ultra Space drastically altered her mind, and now she desperately tries to make sense of the world around her while floating in and out of lucidity. Drink and psychedelic drugs often seem to make her more lucid, and as she struggles, grappling with hazy visions of the future, she needs all the clarity she can get.

History

Early Life

Svetlana grew up in Sergino, a rural settlement hidden deep within the mountains. From an early age, she possessed a 'data processing' ability which let her take in huge amounts of information and pull out the individual details. She was a voracious reader, consuming everything in front of her, and soon became deeply unhappy with her secluded village life. Believing that it was the quickest way out, she sought placement with a trainer and entered the military as soon as she was old enough to do so.

From Recruit to Agent

Consistently scoring highly at aptitude tests, Svetlana was considered gifted and was given further resources to help her grow. She attracted the higher-ups' attention, however, when she disobeyed her trainer and recovered a piece of covert information that was being investigated by the then-active KGB. She turned the information in, and insights that she added led to the prevention of a terrorist attack. Svetlana and her trainer were given higher-profile missions, and though the KGB didn't reach out to her, they did keep a file on her for future use.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, branches of the Russian government were restructured, and with it, its intelligence agencies. The new establishment promoted Svetlana and her trainer, and started sending them on intelligence-gathering missions, all of which Svetlana excelled at. It became apparent that Svetlana was leading her trainer to succeed in every mission, rather than the other way around, and this eventually drew some higher-ups' attention. Major General Jacobi, recently promoted to head of the SVR (the Russian foreign intelligence service), took note of Svetlana's track record. He offered to separate her from her trainer and promote her to a full-fledged agent, where she could take on covert missions for the Russian government. Svetlana eagerly accepted.

From Agent to Mother

Paired with the young, affable, dependable Dmitri, Svetlana went on all manner of missions for the SVR, traveling all across Russia and eventually worldwide. Her quick thinking, deductive skills, seductive air and overall capability made her something of a legend within the SVR, and rumors of her exploits were passed through all departments of the military. Svetlana often went above and beyond in the line of duty, but her detached air and calculating nature made her few connections. Her new partner Dmitri saw past her prickly exterior, and they became friends.

In Dmitri, Svetlana saw a youth who was everything she wasn't- kind, well-adjusted, full of love, happy to relax and enjoy the simple things in life. She realized that she'd tried to get ahead so obsessively, she had never considered anything else. Somewhat impulsively, she began going out with gold engraver David Whitaker, and they quickly married - a shotgun wedding soon followed by two children, Thomas and Malcolm. This arrangement didn't really seem to work, as neither Svetlana nor David were committed to be faithful to one another, both having affairs just months after the wedding. Svetlana did, however, now have two children to deal with.

Unfortunately, Svetlana didn't have a nurturing bone in her body. She tried her best at first, but soon started leaving her two sons alone with their father, spending more and more time away from home until she was barely present. David refused to divorce her, and seemed comfortable raising their children on his own. Svetlana was largely annoyed and disinterested in her children, until she learned that Thomas had the same 'data processing' ability she did - and moreover, that it was much more powerful than hers.

From Mother to Monster

Svetlana began spending more and more time with Thomas, in order to train her as her potential successor. After divorcing David, she gained custody over Thomas and began taking him away from his family, 'homeschooling' him by bringing him along on missions. She and Thomas traveled all over Europe, and even overseas, but Svetlana never showed genuine interest in her son beyond his abilities. Her parenting was neglectful at best and abusive at worst, and she instilled Thomas with deep, neurotic fears of inferiority and abandonment. She only rewarded her son when he succeeded, and on her terms, believing that it would 'toughen him up' and that he needed to struggle as much as she had to get ahead in the world. She introduced Thomas to Dmitri, who befriended him and taught him how to fight... but she spent Thomas' entire youth treating him like an accessory, or a hindrance, while she pulled him from one mission to the next. It didn't help that she was unabashed about the contents of her missions, which involved everything from infiltrations, to seductions, to assassinations - for example, booking a hotel room for her son and then killing her target in the next room over.

Thomas did occasionally have breaks, where he'd go back to Portugal and visit his father and brother, but he was soon brought back to join Svetlana on her next flight. The pair clashed more and more over this time, and Thomas eventually started trying to find a way to break Svetlana's custody. The moment he could be legally separated from her, he left. Svetlana was open about how much she resented him for leaving her.

Breakdown

In the years after Thomas left her, Svetlana continued working for the SVR. She never made an attempt to contact her son, resenting him and calling him a 'failure' for refusing to go along with her plans. She was, however, forced back into a situation where they would meet again. The SVR sent her and Dmitri to Louisiana to investigate the newfound portal to Ultra Space. When they arrived, Svetlana entered the portal, an act which would change her forever.

Ultra Space's hallucinogenic atmosphere gave Svetlana a complete psychotic breakdown. Hallucinating like mad, she believed that she needed to spread Ultra Space's influence all over the world, which led to her kidnapping Ultra Beasts and putting them in shipping containers so that they could be distributed across America. Dmitri, realizing what she had done, left her to try and get the Ultra Beasts on the trains - and without Dmitri there to stop her, Svetlana went back into Ultra Space, greatly exacerbating her condition. Ultra Space is inhabited by entities that experience non-linear time, and longer exposure to its atmosphere started giving Svetlana that ability, as well. She was given a form of precognition, but at the same time, her mind was falling apart. Suffering from late-stage effects of exposure to the atmosphere, she found Thomas in Ultra Space and confronted him, raving like a lunatic - until Thomas punched her and knocked her out of the portal.

Road To Recovery

Mentally scarred and near death from her experience, Svetlana was found by Dmitri, who took her into hiding and nursed her back to health. Her mind, however, was near-irrevocably damaged. Blurry visions of the near future swirled within her head, along with deep pangs of grief and regret for the past. Seeing Thomas stand up to her in Ultra Space made her realize how she'd wronged him, and just how deeply he'd been hurt. It took everything out of her just to sit up in bed every day, to try and make sense of the spirals in her mind, with the cosmic landscape of Ultra Space so great that it crowded nearly everything out. From here on, Svetlana shifted between periods of delirium, distraction and depression, trying her hardest to keep herself together while feeling like she was being torn apart. She desperately wanted to make amends with Thomas, but didn't know how. The ever-caring Dmitri stayed by her.

From there on out, Svetlana and Dmitri kept a low profile, hiding out in rural America while reporting back to the SVR. Svetlana was in no state to travel overseas. The Mojave Registeel incident offered a new mission that kept them in America - and also provided them with a ward, the youthful, kind Excadrill Sunflower, whom Dmitri rescued from her abusive trainer. In Sunflower, Svetlana was finally able to meet someone she could mother and care for - to parent, and properly, this time. She was determined to give Sunflower all the love that she'd lacked when raising Thomas. Still, Svetlana felt a deep need to make amends with her son - which she still does, to this day.