Katenka

Name: Katenka Petrovin
Age: 15
Species: Dog-girl
Nationality: Russian


From the age of 6, Katenka's father taught her how to handle a gun, to respect them as both instruments of power and weapons of destruction. She learned the art of hunting and a month after her eighth birthday she killed her first animal, a roe deer from 220 meters with her father's SKS carbine. After that she fell into role of hunter rather easily, taking to Siberia's coniferous forests like a fish to water.

Aside from her home-schooling and hunting, Katenka's only other pastime was swimming. She used to swim in Lake Baikal as early in the year as May and didn't stop until the chill of September forced her to stop. Her father called her his rybka, she liked to swim so much. And it was that hobby of hers that put her out in the lake when three covered boats traveling in tight formation went by overhead. Katenka was curious as to what they were doing, and she swam after them, though they moved too fast with their outboard motors. They were headed right for her coastal home where she and her father lived by themselves, and she grew more concerned as she paddled back.

The water was cold, as it always was, liquid ice that flowed through her fingers as she grabbed as much as she could with each stroke. Before she could reach the shore, though, the sounds of gunfire pierced the calm of the lake, echoing harshly over the waters with the report of violence. Katenka head beneath the surface as she watched men leaving her house with automatic weapons, one group spreading out to get back in the boats and the rest piling into a duo of jeeps that had arrived to pick them up. The girl hid until they had gone, and when the coast was clear she entered the house.

Her father lay dead by the fireplace, his hand still clutching the ceremonial sword he had been awarded for his service in the First Chechen War. There hadn't been time to go for a gun, and the intruders had slain him before he could defend himself. Katenka later found out from the Russian officials that took her into protective custody that the murderers had been radical Chechen separatist supporters seeking revenge for the relatively small role her father played in the deaths of almost 100,000 Chechen civilians during the war in Chechnya. As the commanding officer of a company of Russian soldiers that saw heavy urban combat in the Battle of Grozny, he was chosen as the perfect target to send a message. The only message Katenka got was that her father was taken from her, and when the Russian officials refused to do anything to avenge him, she took matters into her own hands.

The first step was to escape from her custodians, no easy task considering they were ostensibly protecting her from the same people who had killed her father. She snuck out in the middle of the night and stole a truck, managing to drive it three miles before crashing into a pine tree. From there she walked, three days and nights back to her home. She followed the same road they had taken her on, and she had to hide in the ditch to avoid being seen by the cars that were dispatched to investigate her disappearance. By the time she made it to her house there were officers stationed there, cordoning off the property as a crime scene. Using her knowledge of the house and its underground access tunnels that she had previously thought were merely for fun, Katenka infiltrated her childhood home and took what she would need. A scoped Mosin-Nagant and plenty of 7.62mm ammo. Then she left, vanishing into the woods with only her gun and the clothes on her back. For nine months she hunted, just like her father had shown her. She pieced together what had happened, broke into the police station to steal reports, used her youthful appearance to charm officers and witnesses into divulging information, and slowly built a picture of the events leading up to and following her father's murder. And then she found the first of the men responsible.

With a bullet in each leg the man had been unable to run. Next was normally the skinning, and Katenka had her knife at the ready. She started slow. He broke before she even finished both arms. Names, locations, the conspirator gave up everything, and then she killed him.

Two years after her father died, the last of his murderers met his end thanks to Katenka's vigilante justice. And then, suddenly, there was nothing. Her entire being had been devoted to the purpose of letting her father rest in peace, and now that she had reached that goal, she felt empty inside, purposeless and unguided. With only her weapon she wandered, killing wildlife for food and finding shelter in caves or makeshift branch tents. In what was either fate or, more likely, simply dumb luck considering how far she traveled thanks to her habit of relocating, Katenka found her way into the park, where she still searches for some sort of reason to continue her struggle for life.