Nikolai Korobeiniki (SWAP AU)

Despite all appearances to the contrary, Nikolai Korobeiniki's blood has always run cold. A lone wolf at his core, he's always found it to be tedious and tiring to maintain any kind of meaningful human connection. Focused above all else on his own survival, Nikolai approaches the world like it's a series of contracts and transactions: he puts his own needs first, and then his family's (given the amount of debt he still owes them), and then the rest of the world can be crushed under his heel for all he cares. He’s easily bored, finding most people’s problems to be both amusing and annoying. Coupled with his propensity for violence, it’s a bit too easy for him to lean into unnecessarily hurting others, just to get some kind of satisfaction out of the way they react.

Nikolai is hollow at his core, rarely seeing himself as anything more than a vague approximation of a human being in human skin. No matter how much he wants somebody to understand him, he’s unwilling to actually let anybody get close to him. On one hand, it’d be too much effort to maintain that kind of relationship; on the other, if they take his mask off, he doesn’t think that they’d find anything underneath worth staying for. The Virion Project is a cheap source of adrenaline, an interesting way to make a salary, and the potential solution to one of the threats that he worries both he and his family will eventually succumb to. If he has to ‘worry’ about the well-being of the three other Investigators in the meantime -- well, he’ll find a way to make the most of it.