Name: Laura Anna-Sophia Zeiss
Callsign: Big Bertha
Age: 27
Apperance:
Laura is no way around this word, massive. Standing at over seven foot (7"2), her height is one thing but her power is another. Laura's workout routine has chiseled her and pushing a car over onto its side is small bother to her. Safe to say she's merciless in hand to hand- it's not cardio, but pure power, the sort a strongman would have and what she works on. Yet her like of schnitzel and wurst (the dirty jokes start here) has led to her uhh....how do we put this?
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Volume Warning)
Almost elegantly plump, the shape she has is not a lanky tall giantess but a well-rounded, unit of one. Some people even say they've truly come close to understanding just how vast her....assets are. Those people are lying, because they'd be dead if they got close and got to brag.
Remember, that's without almost 250kg of armour on. We'll get to that bit later.
Her lightly brunette hair is left flowing, and she has gentle blue eyes, as if she wasn't German enough. Her face in spite of her gigantism is relatively normal, charming even. She has a burn along her right cheek, making that much more red than her other side, ironically through a childhood. A tattoo of an Germanic heraldry Eagle is across her shoulder and back, indicative of her roots, the only ink she has chosen to have.
Outside of her armour, Laura seems to have a variety of clothing, often wearing an over-sized T-shirt and jeans, often with a pair of old military boots that are specially made for her- her choices are more limited than the rest of the team but she has plenty of choices nonetheless.
Nationality: German
Skills:
-Armoured Pyro:
Laura can take 12.7mm and even 20mm shots, small arms pinging off her suit like nothing. Taking cover behind her is a good tactic- because she can usually reply to the fire she is taking with more than enough of her own. But even more frighteningly, she can lay waste with fire to areas in front of her. While electricity, plasma or railgun based weaponry might be coming to fore, nothing scares the utter shit out of people than high-octane flamethrower juice, specially tuned by Laura.
-Brute:
Laura is relentless in CQC- she's trained in Krav Maga and to be honest, what she has made work for her to be a bear in a CQC situation. Approaching her as a non-heavy is basically a suicide mission - unless you're good, she's brutal in close quarters and doesn't let up.
-Adaptable
Laura is a tank, when suited-up and a Heavy. But out of the armor, she is still incredibly hard to take out. It would take almost a whole magazine of an AK to stop her dead without body armor she thinks, and she is very, very hard to kill indeed- almost comedically (wonder why..). This, combined with the fact that she has some level of stealth-training when unarmored means that she isn't totally useless at being quiet. Though holy shit, it's an act of comedy in itself. She's not stupid- crazy and disobedient she may be, she knows what it takes to not die and to find other ways to get the job done.
-Combat Engineer:
Laura has a certain type of specialism with explosives and engineering on the battlefield. She has lots, and lots of C4 on her person, putting the "Combat" into Combat Engineering. She has hidden it of course, to stop her from being blown apart if shot- and can pretty much take a small destroyer out with. It does go the other way too- defusing bombs is something she can do, and with a cutaway element of her gloves, she can quickly become the team's EOD. Probably for the best her ass is on the line too, most would argue.
-Armourer:
Laura acts as the team's full time armourer, . The Heavies of the team benefit for a purpose-
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History:
A daughter to a East German Stasi Colonel.
A grand-daughter to an actual SS Major.
A great-grand-daughter to a mustache-twirling Count in the German Empire.
And probably beyond that, a whole load of people who probably wheeled, dealed and killed people in Saxony for the last thousand years and did so no matter who owned them.
Laura Zeiss's family history is the sort that the more you look at it, the more it might make sense that a German girl who wants to go fight and make her own place in history makes sense. There's some bad motherfuckers in her past, literally.
Yet Laura is so, so much more than that, and from the day she was born, she literally was bigger than that.
Laura was born with a rare genetic disorder that correlates closely to gigantism, albeit without the less debilitating facts. From day one, Laura was told she'd have to work hard to overcome disability. This shaped a lot of her life- she was a flare lit, and told to enjoy life given she'd likely die early. Some would say enjoy a meaningful life, Laura interpreted that as burn as hard as you can, as fast as you can. Sometimes, as she did in her later life, literally.
She was laughed at at the private boarding school she attended in Swizterland that she was sent to by her parents at young age given her abnormality, but would often be able to beat up boys with no fuss at all. When they shredded up her dolls, she only went and burnt down their dorm. Twice. Her love for setting things alight was clear and Laura became feared, not mocked. She worked out and overrid the problems that came with gigantism by basically becoming a gym girl. Pumping iron, and building herself up. She won multiple strongwoman competitions aged 17, at which point she hit seven foot. Few women in history have been that tall, but in spite of that, she stayed relatively under the radar by choice, keeping a close circle of friends. She found herself attracted to both genders, finding that with her size and her freedom to do whatever she liked, she'd have any taste she wanted.
She remained distant from her family throughout, her siblings normal, clever, erudite little boys and girls that would party and have a normal life. Laura knew she'd never have anything like it- and hasn't kept much in contact since leaving. I mean, not a bad idea when your other nickname at school is "Commie Nazi" and Laura was not really either of those things.
Upon finishing school, she went to university in Vienna, Austria. She qualified as an Engineer, believe it or not (okay, it was Chemical Engineering, she wanted to set more shit on fire), and she got directly into the German Army as in logistics and combat engineering. She was a total misfit, but the higher ups realised that she was no good at just fixing things and blowing things up, but doing it virtually alone. Break Health and Safety rules literally in two with her bare hands, make shit happen through fear and some clever welding. A loose cannon but one that was too clever, too capable and too versatile. A few whispers in the intelligence community in Germany and after putting her through an intensive course, she was utillised as a specialist unit. And of course, such a girl could only get one callsign- Big Bertha. The artillery shell that the Allies in WW1 saw make crates like small asteroids in the Somme. She was trained in how to use heavy weaponry, and she made some herself, as well as oddly enough, learning the basics of working quietly when it was needed. Laura sometimes had to burn everything to the ground, but sometimes, for someone of her size, killing quietly is possible. In Laura's wise words, the more questions you ask about the methods a seven foot giantess needs to kill people, the more likely you might be to get them. She worked alone, and trained up on a variety of tactics, learned to depend on herself to get through any firefight. She also ended up being a bit of a craftswoman- engineering, tooling and putting together equipment for herself that she could use in combat.
She was the first recipient of a prototype THICC system, a trial run through EU defense conglomarates that while working on exos that needed a proof of concept for an armoured suit that would be less mechanical and more like a muscle-based system to improve movement. Enter a girl that literally needed heavy armour that fit that purpose- and some back and forth, she got what she wanted, exact to spec. Prior armour programmes focussing on just a giant's strength alone. And well, the rest as they say, is history. Her service record, never disclosed, revealed operations that people thought were entire special forces squad, conducted by just one crazy German. Laura was approached quietly by Skye knowing full well what a team like Raven needed- and that they could augment her ability even further. Giants are incredibly rare, military trained ones that are clever enough to engineer things, even more so. While Skye wished Laura wasn't a crazy, disobedient wildcard, you play the hand you've got before someone like Laura starts thinking of working for anyone with money.
That said, Laura isn't used in combat- she's kept as an ace in the hole, used for operations that require a flamer who can be slightly unpredictable. Rather unusually, Laura works as the team's armourer, and sets up the team's heavies primarily- putting her know-how and engineering talent to good use to also work on other aspects of the team's technical capabilities.
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Personality:
If Laura was as volatile as the flame tank she carries into the fight, she'd be blown up a long time ago. A cool collected and very efficient engineering German on one side, a wild, totally freaky girl on the other side, Laura doesn't have boundaries and isn't exactly sane. She is loud, proud, and well, does as she likes- she hates rules and frankly makes her own. While kind and nice to all those around her, it definitely comes across in a very, very odd way- but she cares from a place of heart and understands about doing the right thing. Her ingenuity is different to Skye's- she seems to be resourcesful with tools and can MacGyver things into will, usually in a very chaotic way. What can't be done with that can be done with brute force, and Laura doing violence to appliance with all her size is usually something you run for cover from. She's a great drinking friend, though it may take her a lot, the concequences are frightening of that too. Her pyromania is also quite clear, and it's almost at this point a running gag- if it moves or happens to be not a target, she's setting fire to it unless told not to. The same goes for her drive, hell, even her approach to people, it is manic and disorderly, almost as if all the power has gone to her head a bit. All aside from Skye are going to get some of her manic, oddball personality, whether it be efficient German or the full crazy big girl.
You are guaranteed fun with Laura, but holy shit, it's going to be chaotic and mad.
Tactical Suit:
The Tactical Heavy Intervention and Close Combat, or as everyone who will call it in reality, the THICC suit, is six inches of liquid body armour, nanofiber weave, kevlar and dragonskin plating backed by a titanium and carbon-fiber anti-blast membrane coating, with a loose layer of comfy fire-retardant composite and Nomex at the base. A matt black suit, though the lining is blue velvet, just to make it extra comfy. Built specifically to Laura's standards, among heavy armour suits, it's a unique propostion given it isn't as robotic or squared off, but flowy and curved...accordingly. A layer of actuated muscles help the suit out instead of an exoskeleton, though Laura does most of the lifting. An internal ventilation system airs the suit and stops it becoming as hot as the outside, though it can be battened down to CBRN standards. Armoured up it can take almost all small arms, including .50 and even a handful of 20mm rounds- the gas-mask come helmet less so, but it still offers a high level of protection.
A heavy pair of tactical boots take the weight of the suit, while a pair of heatproof armoured gauntlets woven into the suit keep her cool while using her flamethrower alongside an insulating layer on her front. The suit also has an in-built low-level AI system, built into the suit's gas mask / helmet interface, with an interactive HUD and monitoring software. The gas mask is a full face model, with an highly-armoured core and two classic holes, with a filter (think Pyro). A PDA on her arm helps with anything her blinking and voice commands won't do. A Trophy System helps with stopping projectiles that could turn her into a BBQ on feet, and a mini-missile system for light AT, AA and smoke-screen purposes.
The suit does however, translate the user inside's movements quite directly out across the suit given the liquid-gel content of the armour's anti-blast composition (ie the bit that means she can survive getting blown up). The suit is modelled on her following her proportions, no less, it amplifies it given the armour's depth. Remember what was mentioned above? Your imagination can fill the blanks, ya' filthy animals.
And yes, Laura did ask for that. The logic being, well, it's hardly like anyone outside of her team is going to know, right?
There's no obvious etchings or markings on the suit, but Laura won't tell you what there is unless you ask nicely. Or, find out the hard way...
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Weapons:
Carried:
Custom-Made Flamethrower + 2x Backpack Fuel Tanks
Shoulder-Mounted:
Trophy System (Left)
Mini-Missile System (Right)
Sidearms:
2x H&K MP7A2s
2x Unica 6 Revolvers
Equipment:
CS Gas Grenades (2x)
V40 Clsuter Frags (2x)
Hobbies: Skydiving, Weightlifting, Strongwoman Comps, Metalworking, Drinking,
Likes: Metal, Classical Music, Spontaniety, Fire, German Beer and Wurst
Dislikes: Boring People, Rules, Paperwork to do with "Collateral Claims", French Beer, IEDs wired in Sudan
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LadyAmber,
stormphrax,
Estylwen,
Snowdrops,
wintersoldier,
Pen Name,
Rhona W,
Sylvan,
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