|level|

two

|role|

reaper

|clan|

korui

|full name|

mikhail ivanov

|nicknames / titles|

baba yaga

|name meaning|

mikhail; in hebrew it means 'who is like god' and in his birth tongue, russian, it means godlike or graceful.

ivanov; the name is derived from mikhail's father ivan, the meaning of his name meaning god's grace, so you can see the prideful nature of both names deriving from being godly in some capacity.

baba yaga; originating from russian folklore, the baba yaga is a creature not too dissimilar to a boogeyman, something used to frighten children. only mikhail received the name because he reminded his enemies of that fear they once held as a child for fictional monsters.

|apparent age|

thirty-three

|time period|

cold war

|gender|

male

|sexuality|

heterosexual

|appearance|

arthur gosse

|personality|

mikhail in a nutshell is a wolf in sheep's clothing. everything about him is fabricated and tailored to the individual he wishes to impress. mikhail is a cold man, he doesn't tend to let it show in public, though when chinks in his emotional barrier appear it can be seen in spurts with his abrasiveness towards those he comes into contact with.

mikhail is also callous, his emotions aren't there, not his real ones at least. mikhail is an actor, he has never truly felt anything in his life, he has watched and analysed others to learn what is expected of him as a person. he learned joy from watching kids in the park, he learned to smile from seeing people take photos and he learned fear from the people who he tortured and tormented in as a child.

mikhail is an extremely manipulative person, he enjoys playing around with others, toying with them either to get what he wants or purely for the fun of it as he enjoys manipulating others. he's also extremely ambitious, setting himself goals of grandeur to push himself in life, many people giving him the title of overachiever.

mikhail could be described as self-absorbed, it's because he's extremely confident in his own abilities and strengths, knowing what he's good at and expressing it through his attitude. mikhail is also a great leader, apart from the fact that he won't take orders from anyone else he has qualities such as intelligence, popularity, power and the will to lead.

mikhail is a curious soul, due to his lack of real emotion he seeks to learn from those who do, he plays with people both mentally and emotionally to gauge their reactions and better understand how he should be acting.

mikhail is egotistical, he thinks he's amazing and the best at almost anything, the only reason it doesn't shine through is due to the facade he places on to attract others to like him because he quickly learned that people don't like when he has a massive ego.

|history|

tw: mentions of violence, abuse and mental health issues.

mikhail was born in a post world war one russia, 1922. the newly established communist party led by vladimir lenin had taken control of the government entirely and thanks to a treaty signed between russia and neighbouring states the country transformed into the union of soviet socialist republics (ussr). mikhail grew up pretty well off, his family prior to the revolution and the war hadn't been well off, yet his father, ivan, had been a part of lenin's inner circle, fighting for the rights of those who had been under the thumb of the tsar for so long, so with a change of regime ivan and his family were quite well off. with ivan being so important now to the new government, he was rarely home and he was raised nearly entirely by his mother, a mother who showed no love or car for him, she was a narcissist who abused him which broke something in his head. mikhail knew there was something wrong with him from when he could first remember, he never understood the people around him, people would tell jokes and while other's laughed he never felt the compulsion, if he was hit for being naughty he felt the pain but he could never understand why what he'd done was bad, so growing up was a lot of learning for mikhail. the young russian had to adapt, he needed to study how to act around other people because he often found other kids being scared or weirded out by him. even though he was aware of his abnormalities, he still struggled to grasp what normal was supposed to be, when he got into fights he'd always go to far, hurting kids to the point of them bleeding, or bones being broken, at one time at the age of fourteen he nearly killed a kid he was fighting with when he bashed their head into the ground repeatedly.

as mikhail approached adulthood the muttering began of a second world war, many people thought they would be kept out of it seeing as one of the reasons the communist party had garnered so much favour to get into power was due to them being so anti-war. that being said, when the fighting started the russian people were drawn into it. many were frightened by the prospect of war, dying in numerous ways was horrifying for the common folk, yet as was stated earlier, mikhail wasn't common. he was rather intrigued by the idea of war, as someone with a proclivity for violence it seemed rather perfect to him, though his father and mother refused his request, both wanting their son to go the political route, to keep the family in a prominent position. while mikhail wasn't disinterested in politics, he didn't desire to go into it so young, the idea of having to listen to the arguing old men bored him, so he waited until he was eighteen to be able to enlist behind his parents back. because of his father's reputation, mikhail was known to the higher ups within the government, so when his application was picked up he was called to meet with a friend of his father's, a man who didn't have the best record publicly, though being the head of internal affairs would do that to you. lavrentiy pavlovich beria was the chief of the people's commissariat for internal affairs (nkvd), the secret police under josef stalin, when he found mikhail's application he pulled it from circulation and decided to hire the kid. working in the nkvd was beneficial for mikhail, he learned how to properly fight, trained by several extremely skilled military veterans who lived through the first war, and even trained with current soldiers before officially taking up his role in the nkvd. mikhail was tasked with keeping the communist party in charge, tracking down dissenters and dealing with them, he tortured those captured for information and he'd kill them before doing the same to the people who had just been given up by the previous dissenter. throughout his years he became known as the baba yaga as he soared through the ranks, eventually being recognised by josef stalin himself for his dedication to the party. of course though mikhail didn't really care what he was protecting, it was something that gave him the legal right to kill and he abused it to satiate his curiosity about humans.

eventually mikhail moved from internal affairs to foreign affairs, joining the newly formed spetsnaz gru in 1949, the military force of main intelligence directorate the foreign intelligence agency of the soviet armed forces. thanks to his decorated service in the nkvd he was given control over a large portion of the military organisation, tasked with the acquisition of american and western nation's secrets. mikhail worked in the field, either using his forces militarily where possible, but due to the state of the proxy wars with america most often he worked akin to a spy, having to blend in and infiltrate places to complete missions, his most often consisting of assassinating targets who were deemed a threat to the soviet union. after he turned thirty mikhail decided to retire from fieldwork and fulfil his parent's desires as a politician, after stalin's death there was a power vacuum and he saw a spot he could fill. mikhail used all his skills and cunning in the political arena to murder his rivals as he made his way for a seat of power, but mikhail's hubris was his downfall, he believed no one would dare challenge him, the politicians in his mind were weak and soft old men, yet he didn't realise their greed to hold onto their power, and so seeing a young and charismatic man winning power with every passing day scared them, and so he was a victim of assassination in his own home, his wife who he had abused for years was approached by one of his political rivals to poison him, and she did, serving the novichok laced tea to him personally while he read in his study, dead moments later.

|sin|

pride

|weapons|

mikhail has an affinity for a wide array of weapons, that being said he does have his favourites, consisting of a avtomat kalashnikov (ak-47), makarov pistol, and a finnish knife (nr-40).

|other|

- after dying mikhail awoke in hell with no recollection of his life, he wasn't sure of what he'd done to end up where he was.