Natasha

Biodata

Background / History

Natasha was born in the Underworld and adopted by parents from the Upper District. Her comparatively sheltered upbringing left her unfamiliar with children needing to earn money: she initially assumed that Chu Mu’s visits to the mines were misbehavior rather than dangerous paid work 10.

She graduated from medical school and assisted her brother in numerous surgeries. Natasha believes that witnessing suffering during her Medical Academy studies may have led her onto the Path of Abundance 11 12.

She returned to the Underworld as a temporary volunteer substitute teacher at Rivet Town Orphanage, intending to open a clinic after her volunteer term ended. Although she taught the children that spring would return, she privately doubted whether they would ever see forests or daylight 1.

Natasha also previously served as a doctor with the Silvermane Guards in the Upper District. This experience enabled her to recognize Fragmentum monsters when they began appearing underground 110.

After the blockade, she fulfilled her plan to open a clinic in Boulder Town. As shortages forced other clinics to close, Natasha’s Clinic remained the only operating clinic in the Underworld, supported by medicinal herbs she could grow and medicine obtained through Sampo 63.

The Old Director died the year after Chu Mu’s departure, leaving Natasha responsible for the Orphanage. Natasha renamed the Children’s Home the Children’s Commune, intending it to unite children around a shared conviction as well as provide a home. She remained at the Rivet Town estate for three years after the Old Director’s death, until Fragmentum corrosion forced its evacuation to Boulder Town 110 111 151.

The blockade prevented Natasha from returning to her adoptive family’s Upper District home for over a decade. When she eventually visited with Stelle during an investigation into Wah’s medicine, her adoptive father had already died, while her adoptive mother was still living 159 199.

After living conditions improved and the Underworld’s residents moved to the surface, the Orphanage relocated to the Upper District. Natasha donated its former Rivet Town mansion to the authorities for conversion into the free-entry Underworld History Museum. The relocated institution subsequently received the name Home of Hope, proposed by Chu Mu 465 468 475 476.

Appearance

• Face: Gentle and serene, with ruby-red eyes 1 12.
• Hair: Indigo 151.
• Age: Described as a young woman in her early appearances; Svarog identifies her as an adult female. During the operation against Cocolia, the two women are described as being about the same age 10 21 169.
• Bearing: Her refined manner makes a visiting Silvermane Guard think she resembles a young lady from the Upper District 10.
• Later appearance: After thirteen years of separation from Chu Mu, her features have softened and her manner is more restrained and mature, although she can scarcely conceal her exhaustion. She smells faintly of disinfectant during their reunion 151 166.
• Power manifestation: Emerald light swirls around or flows from her fingertips when she uses Abundance 11 18.

Personality

Natasha treats the Orphanage as her family rather than merely a workplace. When offering to become its next Guardian, she willingly accepts the condition of never starting a family or having children of her own, declaring that the orphans are already her children 10.

Her affection is paired with firm supervision. She reprimands Chu Mu for disappearing, refuses to permit further mining or scrap-collecting excursions, and allows him to study independently only if he reports his whereabouts and leaves the grounds with her 10 20. She also has a playful side, initiating a cake fight with Chu Mu and Xiao Bu despite first explaining how precious cake is 27.

Natasha is deeply affected by suffering she cannot relieve. She repeatedly apologizes after failing to restore Chu Mu’s eye and grieves when his remaining sight disappears sooner than expected 18 37. Nevertheless, she confronts Scott, challenges the official who confines her during Cocolia’s visit, and gives up evacuation to search for Chu Mu in the unrest 12 42 48.

Her selflessness extends beyond factional loyalties. Her clinic does not refuse patients for being vagrants, even when their faction is in conflict with Wildfire. She regards the Upper District and Underworld as sharing the same fate and argues that Wildfire should help defend the surface rather than leave it to fall 153 156.

Natasha does not seek recognition for her leadership. She keeps her position as Wildfire’s true leader concealed and prefers to remain an ordinary doctor, leaving military planning to Oleg’s greater experience. Even the prospect of a place in Belobog’s history does not outweigh her desire to treat illness and save lives 110 159.

Years of hardship sometimes made her question whether perseverance mattered if destruction was inevitable. She sustained herself by hoping Chu Mu would return and resolving that he must not find the Underworld destroyed. His eventual return after thirteen years gives her renewed hope 166.

Her compassion does not mean abandoning moral judgment or accepting demands from the privileged. When injured Old Nobles require treatment, she leaves their care to the Silvermane Guards’ military doctors rather than intervening herself. The narration emphasizes that she remains selfless while knowing right from wrong 474.

Abilities & Skills

Path of Abundance

Natasha is an established Pathstrider when her abilities are first revealed; no specific awakening scene or later increase in Path rank is documented 11. Later explanations identify selflessness and altruism as the qualities through which she entered Abundance, with healing as the resulting ability 474 487.

• Healing: Channels emerald light over Chu Mu’s body, rapidly regrowing flesh and healing his wounds 18.
• Inducing sleep: Gently strokes Xiao Bu’s head while using her power, causing the exhausted girl to relax and fall asleep 11.
• Attempted regeneration: Tries to reconstruct Chu Mu’s missing right eye. The new eyeball shatters immediately, further attempts produce no response, and his remaining eye turns green with blurred vision 18.
• Secrecy: Avoids using Abundance publicly because discovery could result in reassignment as a court physician serving officials and nobles, contrary to her intention to help the Underworld 12.
• Surgical support: After stitching Oleg’s abdominal wound, uses her Path power to encourage tissue growth and complete the healing process, stopping the bleeding 110.
• Limits: Draws on only a small portion of Abundance’s power. Severe injuries can exceed what she can heal, and she cannot resurrect the dead or reverse the advanced organ damage suffered by a dying shelter resident 110 154.
• Medical significance: Her Abundance abilities are described as sufficient to bridge the gap between Belobog’s medicine and the finest medicine available in the Sea of Stars; this does not remove the previously demonstrated limits of her healing 474.

Conventional Medicine

Natasha’s training allows her to treat injuries without relying on Path power 12.

• Removes Chu Mu’s contaminated bandages, flushes harmful medicinal oil from his wounds with alcohol, and carefully rebandages him without anesthetic 12.
• Tests his vision when he tries to conceal its deterioration 18.
• Recognizes his complete blindness and confirms it privately after noticing that he is staring at an empty space 37.
• Examines Oleg’s abdominal puncture wound for intestinal damage and stitches it before supplementing treatment with Abundance 110.
• Grows medicinal herbs to replace some unavailable drugs during the blockade, allowing her clinic to continue operating 63.
• Recognizes failing heart and lung function, attempts CPR, and confirms death through heartbeat and pupil examinations 154.
• Assesses scarce or expired supplies for practical use, checking gauze for mold and alcohol for sufficient concentration 154 160.
• Offers consultations without charge and sells medicinal ingredients at cost. She sometimes provides ingredients free to patients who are truly destitute 154.

Teaching and Research Support

• Conducts lessons and reads picture books about Jarilo-VI’s lost forests 1.
• Places Chu Mu at a separate desk beside her platform so he can see the blackboard more clearly 20.
• Offers to read to him after he loses his sight and borrows books about Aeons from the Upper District’s library 20 21.
• Accompanies him through Underworld streets while he memorizes routes before going blind 21.
• Provides daycare at her clinic for miners’ children, with the understanding that she will continue caring for them if their parents do not return 163 476.
• Recreates a childhood lesson in the restored Rivet Town classroom to help Bronya recover her memories 200.

Organization and Resource Planning

• Identifies the need for a civilian organization after the Silvermane Guards withdraw 49.
• Proposes restoring security before negotiating supply trade with the Upper District 49.
• Anticipates that supplies will become scarcer and more expensive because the Upper District can rely on its geomarrow reserves while the Underworld cannot stop buying food 49.
• Directs Wildfire from behind Oleg’s public leadership, keeping her identity concealed from most members 110.
• Orders the evacuation of Rivet Town when Fragmentum monsters appear and coordinates the relocation of its children to Boulder Town 110 111.
• Expands Wildfire recruitment after the evacuation to prevent vagrant factions from monopolizing available manpower. The recruitment drive benefits from Wildfire’s reputation and attracts Fight Club fighters, including Kruzer and Luka 112.
• Uses her reputation as a doctor trusted by both sides to negotiate passage through hostile vagrants near the Mechanical Settlement 153.
• Supports negotiations with the Silvermane Guards and agrees to release low-risk prisoners as a gesture of good faith 171.
• Coordinates negotiation procedures with Oleg while keeping Chu Mu’s reunion with Bronya separate from political bargaining 179.

Armed Defense

• Carries a large revolving, repeating hand cannon when traveling into the sealed-off Rivet Town for supplies 160.
• Her weapon is identified as a twenty-millimeter hand cannon 162.
• Joins Stelle, Svarog, Gepard, Serval, Bronya, and the others in the battle against Cocolia 188.

Power Progression

Equipment / Items

• Medical kit — Carries the supplies used to clean and bandage Chu Mu’s wounds at the Fight Club 12.
• Wildfire’s initial funds — Holds thousands of Winter City Shields and Credit cards left behind by Chu Mu; presents them to Oleg to finance recruitment 49.
• Chu Mu’s farewell letter — Accompanies the money he leaves behind. It explains his departure for the Sea of Stars and asks Natasha to burn the letter and regard him as missing; she still remembers its contents four years later 111.
• Medicinal herbs — Cultivates herbs that replace certain unavailable drugs and keep Natasha’s Clinic open during the blockade 63.
• Repeating hand cannon — A revolving weapon more than half a person’s height, later specified as twenty millimeters; carried for protection in Rivet Town 160 162.
• Salvaged medical supplies — Preserves useful supplies outside the evacuated Orphanage, including alcohol and gauze later collected for the operation against Cocolia 111 160.
• Damaged Snow Globe — Leaves Chu Mu and Xiao Bu’s cracked keepsake among the Orphanage’s discarded belongings in the hope that Chu Mu will reclaim it if he returns. It later helps Bronya recover her memories, and she eventually gives it to Chu Mu 111 160 200 483.
• Amber Medal — Receives Belobog’s highest individual honor for her charitable work as the Orphanage’s Guardian; the Old Director’s achievements are honored at the same ceremony 468.

Relationships

• Chu Mu — Student and patient whom she regards as family. He comforts her after the failed eye treatment and asks her to keep his blindness secret; his example later informs her decision to prioritize disaster victims over continuing the search for him 12 18 37 49. His farewell funds make Wildfire’s founding possible, and the hope of his return sustains Natasha through thirteen years of isolation 111 151 166. She embraces him when he returns in a puppet body and is relieved by his claim that it is merely an avatar, although she recognizes that he may be lying to spare her pain 151 152. He invites her to travel with the Astral Express; she mourns their broken promise when he later prepares to sacrifice himself, then is moved to tears of joy upon seeing him return again 163 193 469. She considers him the most outstanding child to emerge from the Orphanage and gives his opinion particular weight when choosing its new name 475.
• Xiao Bu / Bronya — Student under her care. Natasha comforts her during Chu Mu’s absence, puts her to sleep before the Fight Club rescue, and later waits beside her outside the Orphanage 11 27. She helps keep Bronya’s political negotiations separate from her reunion with Chu Mu and later recreates their childhood classroom to restore her memories 179 200. Bronya formally honors Natasha’s charitable work as Supreme Guardian. When Chu Mu’s appearance disrupts Bronya’s museum-opening speech, Natasha encourages her to finish and show her brother how much she has grown 468 470.
• Old Director — A figure she deeply admires and intends to succeed as Guardian. The Director supports her after the failed treatment and trusts her to inherit responsibility for the Orphanage 10 18 19. Before dying, she asks Natasha to keep the children’s home going so Chu Mu can still find his way back. Natasha maintains the Rivet Town estate until Fragmentum encroachment makes relocation unavoidable, apologizing before the Director’s portrait for being unable to preserve it 111. The two Guardians’ contributions are later officially recognized together 468.
• Oleg — Ally in protecting the children and searching for Chu Mu; her fellow Wildfire founder 12 48 49. He acts as Wildfire’s public leader while Natasha directs it in secret. She treats his severe injuries repeatedly and entrusts military planning to his experience 110 152 159. They also cooperate in negotiations, classroom restoration, and crowd-control arrangements 179 200 476.
• Wah, her adoptive brother — Surgical collaborator whom she assisted during numerous operations 12 112 199. Natasha initially welcomes his offer to join her Underworld medical work, but later becomes profoundly disappointed by his undisclosed experimentation on patients. After his expulsion, she commissions Stelle to investigate the continued sale of his medicine and learns that he apparently developed an effective blizzard-immunity formula through self-experimentation before his probable death 112 199.
• Adoptive parents — Upper District residents who raised her after adopting her from the Underworld. The blockade separates Natasha from them for more than ten years; her adoptive father dies before she can return, leaving her adoptive mother behind 10 159 199.
• Svarog — Introduced through Chu Mu. Although initially nervous around the combat robot, she is registered in his records as a friendly life-form 21. She later discovers that he no longer remembers Chu Mu, realizing that the boy erased himself from his records 111. When Svarog blocks access to the Upper District, Natasha argues that both districts must unite for survival. She also watches his recovered recordings of Chu Mu’s childhood and apologizes for not understanding her student’s sacrifices at the time 156 180.
• Sampo — A contact she distrusts and warns Chu Mu to avoid. His greeting of “Boss Lady” becomes the subject of teasing between teacher and student 29 30. During the blockade, he helps obtain medicine from the Upper District and continues addressing her as “Big Sis” 63.
• Kafka / “Fuka” — Meets her under the false identity of a prospective adoptive mother. Natasha initially admires her professed dedication and considers her a suitable parent for Chu Mu 36 37. Later, Kafka helps Natasha plan an impromptu speech and crowd-control measures when the Orphanage’s gathering becomes dangerously overcrowded 476. They also accompany Chu Mu and Bronya through the preserved former Orphanage 483.
• Scott — Adversary during the Fight Club dispute. Natasha rejects his demand for the Orphanage’s estate and openly condemns his conduct 12 13.
• Seele — Wildfire member who reports Oleg’s injuries and the appearance of Fragmentum monsters to Natasha. Like most members, she initially does not know Natasha is Wildfire’s true leader 110. Natasha comforts her during Chu Mu’s return and accompanies the two to Rivet Town to gather supplies 152 160.
• Clara — Cooperates with Natasha in helping shelter residents and obtaining medical supplies. Natasha examines the medicine Clara brings for a dying woman and later offers to share supplies with her for the vagrant shelter 154 161. Clara also participates in the recreated Orphanage classroom 200.
• Hook / Fissman — Natasha watches Hook while Fissman works in the mines. Hook calls her the “Old Witch” and resists her rules, but Natasha finds the girl’s liveliness comforting and compares her to young Chu Mu 162 163 476. At the later gathering honoring Natasha, Hook stops using the nickname and wishes to become someone like her 476.
• Stelle — Assists Natasha with the investigation into Wah’s medicine and helps bring Bronya to the restored Orphanage. She also relays Chu Mu’s farewell to Natasha during the Stellaron crisis 193 199 200.
• Cocolia — Natasha opposes her blockade policy as an abandonment of the Underworld’s people. After the assault on Kliperburg, she questions Cocolia about the Stellaron’s role in her decisions and later participates in the battle against her 110 169 188.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Commitment to the Orphanage

Learning that six-year-old Chu Mu crawls through collapsed mine tunnels for eight Winter City Shields changes Natasha’s understanding of Underworld childhood. She resolves to remain there permanently and offers to become the Orphanage’s next Guardian. The Old Director accepts her as an eventual successor but retains the role for the immediate effort to bring Chu Mu home 10.

Fight Club Dispute and Failed Treatment

Natasha accompanies the Old Director to Scott’s Fight Club, treats Chu Mu’s injuries, and takes over the confrontation when Scott demands the Orphanage’s ancestral estate. She joins the others in urging Chu Mu not to surrender his eye under the First Act, but he proceeds with the sacrifice 11 12 15.

At the Goethe Grand Hotel, she explains Aeons, Paths, and Pathstriders to him before using Abundance to heal him. His bodily wounds recover, but the attempt to restore his eye fails. Natasha does not know why his left eye changes; Chu Mu conceals the dream he experienced during treatment 17 18.

Preparing Chu Mu for Blindness

Natasha supports Chu Mu’s plan to spend his remaining sight reading and learning the Underworld’s routes. She accompanies his walks and his visit to Svarog, while continuing her Orphanage duties 20 21.

During Kafka’s adoption visit, she discovers that he has already become completely blind—not even half a month after her estimate that he had a month of sight remaining. She had hoped to show him the Medical Academy’s preserved plant and animal specimens, but loses that opportunity. At his request, she promises not to disclose his condition 37.

Underworld Lockdown and Wildfire

During Cocolia’s visit, Natasha and the Old Director are confined in the office while guards isolate the frightened children. Natasha challenges the official responsible and demands to know his department 42.

As unrest spreads, she searches for Chu Mu and Xiao Bu. After learning that Xiao Bu has been taken above, Natasha follows Oleg back into the crowd to find Chu Mu, choosing the Underworld over evacuation 48.

With the search unsuccessful and disaster victims urgently needing treatment, Natasha redirects their efforts toward relief and organization. She and Oleg establish Wildfire using Chu Mu’s funds, aiming to restore security and secure bargaining power for supplies. Natasha chooses the organization’s name 49.

Chu Mu also leaves her a farewell letter explaining that he has embarked on a Path and is returning to the Sea of Stars to investigate his origins. Natasha remembers his request not to wait for him, but neither she nor his other friends forget him 111.

The Children’s Commune and Rivet Town Evacuation

Following the Old Director’s death, Natasha takes over as Guardian and renames the institution the Children’s Commune. Her goal is to provide shared conviction and solidarity in circumstances where a home alone cannot secure the children’s future. She also continues treating patients, with a former classroom converted into a clinic 110 111.

Four years after the blockade begins, Oleg is gravely wounded by Fragmentum monsters during a Wildfire patrol. Natasha stitches and heals his abdominal wound, then learns from Seele that the attack occurred in Rivet Town. Recognizing that Fragmentum corrosion has reached their own town, she orders every available Wildfire member to evacuate residents 110.

Wildfire relocates the children to a smaller orphanage in Boulder Town, while the Mechanical Settlement’s robots assist with the wider evacuation. Natasha walks through the abandoned estate, recalls the Old Director’s request to keep it open for Chu Mu, and apologizes before her portrait. She leaves the damaged Snow Globe outside in the hope that he will reclaim it if he returns 111.

After reaching Boulder Town, she immediately works to strengthen Wildfire’s influence and recruit manpower against both vagrant disorder and Fragmentum incursions. News that her brother Wah wishes to join her medical work briefly offers hope amid the worsening conditions 112.

Chu Mu’s Return and the Limits of Shelter

After thirteen years, Natasha reunites with Chu Mu and embraces him in tears. Seeing his puppet body initially distresses her, but his explanation that it is an avatar offers some relief. She tells him how his funds helped establish Wildfire and informs him that the Old Director died the year after his departure 151 166.

Natasha remains burdened by the Underworld’s medical shortages and the needs of its children. At the Wanderers’ Shelter, she attempts to save a mother whose illness and poverty have progressed to fatal organ damage. Clara’s expired medicine is unsuitable, CPR fails, and Natasha can only arrange the woman’s funeral and the care of her orphaned son 154.

The incident emphasizes the limits of the shelter Natasha and Wildfire can provide: not only children, but widowed women, bereaved elderly people, and homeless wanderers need protection that their resources cannot guarantee. Despite this, she continues treating patients without factional discrimination and supplies Clara with medicine for the shelter 153 154 161.

Natasha accompanies Chu Mu and Seele back to Rivet Town to retrieve supplies for the coming operation against Cocolia. She promises to ask about Xiao Bu in the Upper District and checks the salvaged gauze and alcohol while Chu Mu finds the damaged Snow Globe 160.

Chu Mu later invites her to travel aboard the Astral Express once the blockade is lifted and other doctors can share her work. Natasha is receptive to traveling with him and helping other civilizations, though she has never left Belobog and wonders how she would fit into other worlds 163.

Ending the Blockade and the Stellaron Crisis

When Svarog explains his decision to seal the Core Furnace Hub, Natasha rejects passive survival underground. She argues that the Upper District belongs to all of Belobog and that Wildfire should help defend it against the Fragmentum. Both districts share one fate, especially with only 231 days of mineable geomarrow remaining 156.

Natasha supports Wildfire’s operation against the blockade while keeping her leadership concealed and leaving military matters to Oleg. After the assault begins, she questions Cocolia about whether the Stellaron drove her decisions. She also advocates negotiations and releasing low-risk prisoners to demonstrate that Wildfire seeks cooperation rather than indiscriminate violence 159 166 169 171.

During negotiations with Bronya, Natasha helps separate political demands from the siblings’ reunion. Bronya agrees to reopen the passage, recognize equal rights, remove district distinctions from identification documents, permit Underworld students to apply to Upper District universities, and cooperate with the Stellaron operation 179.

While waiting with Chu Mu and Svarog, Natasha watches encrypted recordings of his childhood sacrifices for Xiao Bu. She embraces him and apologizes for not understanding him then. The moment is followed by Bronya’s denial that she has an older brother, revealing that she does not yet remember him 180.

Natasha joins the group confronting Cocolia and witnesses her assimilation by the Stellaron. Dan Heng explains that those consumed by the Fragmentum become parts of a collective will 188.

When Chu Mu chooses to destroy the Stellaron’s will rather than risk being overwhelmed, Stelle relays his farewell. He asks Natasha to tell the Old Director that he returned and encourages her to travel with the Astral Express. Natasha grieves over their unfulfilled promise to journey together 193.

Wah’s Medicine and Bronya’s Memories

Natasha commissions Stelle to investigate the continued circulation of drugs left by Wah, whose experimentation on patients had disappointed her and led to his expulsion. Their inquiry takes them to Natasha’s adoptive family’s house, where she learns that her father has died and receives Wah’s previously undelivered letters 199.

The letters and Silvermane Guard accounts indicate that Wah repented, continued researching immunity to the blizzards, and experimented on himself in Belobog’s outskirts. His formula appears to have succeeded, although he is probably dead 199.

Meanwhile, Natasha and Oleg restore the Rivet Town classroom to its childhood appearance, with Wildfire repairing wiring and plaster. Natasha gathers Hook, Clara, and other children for a pretend lesson and welcomes Bronya into her old seat. The desk carvings and cloth-wrapped keepsake bring Bronya’s memories flooding back 200.

Home of Hope and Public Recognition

Once the Underworld’s residents and the Orphanage’s children move to the surface, Natasha donates the old mansion for conversion into the Underworld History Museum. At its Paskonja Festival opening, Bronya formally honors both Natasha and the Old Director, awarding the Amber Medal in the first official recognition of the Orphanage’s charitable work 465 468.

During the ceremony, Natasha spots Chu Mu in the crowd and struggles to contain tears of joy. When Bronya’s speech falters upon seeing him, Natasha encourages her to finish as Supreme Guardian and let her brother see her growth 469 470.

For the relocated Orphanage, Natasha plans a new name better suited to a reborn Belobog. She asks Chu Mu’s opinion, and he proposes Home of Hope, identifying the children as the city’s hope for the future 475 476.

Her planned parent-child gathering becomes a mass tribute from people whose children she cared for during the thirteen-year blockade. The crowd overflows into the street, creating a stampede risk and forcing Natasha to cancel the event. Kafka suggests an impromptu speech to calm the gathering while Oleg brings soldiers to maintain order 476.

On a later visit to the former Orphanage with Chu Mu, Bronya, and Kafka, Natasha measures the siblings and adds new height marks to the infirmary wall. The group revisits the preserved classroom and the portraits of the Old Director’s family, while Bronya gives Chu Mu the Snow Globe as a wish for his safe journey to Deep Blue Star 483.

Notable Quotes

“Old Director, I want to change this world. I'll stay in the Underworld forever.” 10

“I already have a very, very big family: this Orphanage. All these children will be my children.” 10

“Let's call it Wildfire.” 49

“Svarog, it doesn't belong solely to the people living there. It belongs to everyone in Belobog! If they can't hold the gates against the Fragmentum, then let us defend them!” 156

“Maybe that child would come back. When he did, I couldn't let him find the Underworld destroyed.” 166

“You're already Belobog's Supreme Guardian. Let him see how much you've grown over the years.” 470

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