#Sonic imparted on her that she doesn’t have to carry the world on her shoulders

[inky-axolotl-gaia]

Bit of a hot take, but Blaze’s friendship with Cream and Sonic deserves just as much (if not in some ways even more so) attention and exploration as her friendship with Silver given how much they hugely impacted Blaze and helped her to grow as a person. This applies both to canon and in the fandom space.

[kingsholmrp]

                                       VALENTINA PETROVA

Age: 28 Birthdate: 25th August 1990 Gender and Pronouns: Female, she/her Hometown: Yekaterinburg, Russia Occupation: Funeral Attendant / Hunter for Silvers

                                                              She is a Human.

                                          BIOGRAPHY:

Valentina and her family hail from Yekaterinburg, Russia, an epicenter for Russian commerce and a breeding ground for the likes of organized crime. Pampered though they were, Valentina and her siblings grew up under no delusions as to the reality of their father’s occupation – he was mafia, plain and simple. A ruthless brigadier in charge of keeping men in line, Sergei Petrov ran an equally tight ship back home, though the furs, jewelry, and riches galore always assured there needn’t be too many complaints as far as his parenting was concerned.

The Petrova’s sprawling estate was its own private haven ensconced by the nearby Urals and bordering wooded hills. Growing up it would often feel as though Valentina and her siblings were cut off from civilization, shepherded inside their little golden snow globe with no one else in the world but each other. This was intentional on her father’s end — “People make you weak,” he’d say. “Rely only on your own blood, no one else.” True enough, this shared isolation fostered a bond between the three siblings that seemed unshakeable. After lessons from their private tutors were over for the day, the Petrova siblings would take to the nearby woods with their father to learn hunting, tracking, fishing, and everything else in between. The wilderness was man’s greatest teacher, according to Sergei, and it was here that he believed his children would learn the essential tools for survival. Yet little Valentina, the youngest of the Petrova siblings, had little care for its teachings. She didn’t have the heart to kill any living thing and much preferred the scaling of large trees and practicing her cartwheels to any of the lessons her father tried to impart on her. She’d soon learn that her heart belonged to gymnastics, much to her father’s chagrin. He eventually indulged her whims with a private instructor to help hone her craft, but this came with a caveat attached: she’d forever be the weak link in his eyes. The flighty, silly little girl who chose handsprings and toe tucks to her father’s enduring wisdom. This became the perpetual chip on Valentina’s shoulder as she watched her siblings rise in her father’s esteem while she was left behind, written off as a lost cause. At times she would wonder if she’d been a lamb born to a den of wolves, too soft to ever match wits with her more cunning family members, too cowardly to ever do what was necessary. She’d soon find that when faced with no other option, everyone had the potential to be cruel.

It happened when she was fifteen. She and her siblings had been up late playing Durak when an ear-splitting scream erupted from upstairs — their parent’s room. The Petrova siblings raced up the stairs in time to witness a scene that’s been seared into her memory ever since. Four of her father’s bodyguards stood inside her parent’s bedroom, their own guns trained to their temples; her father lay on the floor as if rooted to it, pleading at the top of his lungs for them to let her go; and her mother, white as a sheet, leaning against the open third-floor veranda with an unfamiliar man’s hand on her shoulder. He’d looked straight at her father and smiled, “You took my family. Now I’m here to take yours. Jump.”

And just like that her mother leapt off the balcony to her death.

Valentina doesn’t remember the specifics of what came after. The screaming, the crying, the man’s escape – it all blended together in a blur of sonic red. What she does remember is the evening following the funeral when her father sat her, and her siblings down and first told them about Silvers. He explained what they were, how his crime ring had gotten mixed up in dealings with them… and how they were going to do everything in their power to eradicate them off the face of the earth. The tutors, the gymnastic instructors, the house staff – every single one of them was dismissed as Sergei’s brutal training regime took hold. Days were now spent in the woods learning not how to hunt for pleasure but how to hunt to kill. Firearms replaced dolls, heels were traded in for combat boots, and Valentina’s life was entirely upended, sucked into the vortex of her father’s rampage for revenge. Her kind nature had to be stamped out to make room for the particular brand of bloodthirsty her father was after as he’d capture Silvers and drag them out into the hills for their children to exact “justice.” The trouble was that Valentina hadn’t been built to be ruthless or cutthroat. With every hunt, with every kill, she could feel a part of her soul being chipped away at, the only thing anchoring her to sanity being the loyalty and love she felt towards her siblings. When she was sixteen her father decided they were ready for the next step and uprooted the family to Kingsholm, a town with a big enough population of Silvers for them to set up shop the Petrovaway. Within a year her father had exploited enough of his connections and money to establish a funeral home in Kingsholm as a front for their true purpose.

It’s been well over a decade since Valentina and her family settled down in Kingsholm to hunt for Silvers and it appears as if no one has caught up to them yet. They operate out of their funeral home and have ingratiated themselves into small town life just well enough to get by as they stalk their prey and pick them off one by one. The years haven’t hardened Valentina’s conscience as much as she would’ve liked, and she takes to anesthetizing herself to the horrors of the family business by way of drinking herself sick and popping the occasional pill or two. That golden heart of hers doesn’t sit too well with the hollowness inside her chest and the blood on her hands, but she plucks up the resolve to carry on for the sake of her family. If that means smiling through the bloodshed and screwing her courage to the sticking place, then that’s what she’ll do because what is she at the end of the day if not a Petrova?

                                     Valentina Petrova is portrayed by Lyndsy Fonseca.