for as long as anyone can really remember, there's been the argument of nature versus nurture. it's something unavoidable, an inexcapable fact of life that at some point, it's going to come up. some people will argue that it the early losses in tara's life that set her on the path she would eventually go down, while others will say that it's because of her own unwillingness to open up to other children. but isn't a more accurate assessment that it's the one thing that will eventually impact the other? that to lose both one's mother, then father, at such a young age would leave them feeling sad and alone. eventually, that that loneliness and sorrow would grow into something worse, because the fact is that kids can be cruel. they'll talk in hused rumors and ask questions you can't answer, tease because you didn't sound like them, because you didn't talk like them. so you don't talk to them. you keep quiet, keep to yourself, keep your head down, try and go unnoticed. you find your friends in books, your lessons logic in numbers, and your amusement in the puzzles of everyday things. and it goes without saying that eventually, you'll just... stop. stop trying, stop trusting, stop caring.
but that's the thing about loneliness. loneliness begets anger and eventually, the anger gets the best of you. it was never tara's intention to be labeled the "problem child". she only started fights she knew she could finish, she only broke things she knew she could fix, it wasn't her fault that no one ever gave her the chance. she never wanted to be the one who was always sitting, waiting for someone to adopt her. hell, she never wanted to be an orphan, but life is a bitch that way.
by the time she was twelve, she had already lived in dozens of different foster homes and been returned to the orphanage just as many times. enter alex and sasha melnyk-- a young, bright eyed couple that came waltzing into tara's life just when she'd finally started to think that maybe the powers that be had gotten the picture, that maybe they finally understood that she just wanted to be left alone. most families would get fed up with her attitude, or her penchant for fighting with her peers, or the fact that she had a tendency to try and fix things that weren't broken, but the melnyks were different. they didn't get mad. instead, they consoled her, and enrolled her in classes that would foster her skills and play to her curiosity. they taught her that she didn't have to fight with fists and weapons, that she was smarter than that, that she was better than that and soon, they gave her the most important gift of all: a home and the sense that she didn't need to be alone anymore. for the first time in her short life, tara felt like she might have had a chance at a normal life. (but if life has taught her anything, it's not to get her hopes up, so she accepts this fact with open arms, but with a wary heart.)
she's thirteen when they move into a bigger house and buy a fluffy golden dog, and later that year is the first time she builds a computer in sasha's office from bits of scrap wire and old chipboards. the same year, she rebuilds the engine in her new-father's classic mustang. she's fourteen when the men in suits knock on the melnyk's front door (it's then that she realizes that she needs to be better about covering her tracks when she hacks into things she shouldn't be hacking in to) and by fifteen, she's finally starting to actually accept the fact that her life has finally started to turn around. she hasn't been in a fight in two and a half years, and hell, she's even made friends, though it's been hard, considering she's two years ahead of her class and smarter than everyone in her grade, but she's happy all the same and for the first time in as long as she can remember, she's looking forward to what's to come.
and so it goes and high school passes in a blur of classes and dances and extracurrliculars and summers spent in the ukraine and russia, learning even then about who she is and where she came from before all the tragedy. there's even been a boyfriend in the mix. (though she has to admit her parents were right when they'd said he was all wrong for her.) her senior year sneaks up on her and she's estatic when she's chosen to spend three months overseas, studying in china and even moreso when she's told she's recieved early admission to boston university. everything is falling into place. now all she has to figure out is what the hell she's going to do with the rest of her life.
of course college is a no brainer. she has a very specific skillset, after all. (she'll be the first to admit that she understands machines better than she understands people.) but that doesn't mean she's got that whole rest of her life thing down pat. still in all, she breezes through without a care in the world other than what test comes next, what odd job she'll work next before she gets bored of it, too or whether or not she'd get the scholarship she needs to be able to go to grad school.
she's only nineteen when she's accepted to MIT's engineering program, a proverbial wunderkind, and for the first time in her life, she's embarking, for her own best interest on her own, because she wants and needs to be that fiercly independant person that the melnyk's had helped her to become. it's strange, going to classes with people nearly a half a decade older than you and helping them when they struggle. there were many times when she wondered what made them choose the path they were on, what they wanted to do when it was all over. would they go on to gain a doctorate and change the world? would they be arrested by the feds for hacking into banks? would they build a robot that would go to space? the possibilities were limitless... and it made it that much harder for her to stop long enough to think about applying for jobs when graduation approached.
the worry is all swept out the window, however, one fateful day in the late winter of 2004, when a then twenty year old tara is approached by a man in a suit. (and of course, she has a flashback to when she was fourteen and immeidately begins explaining that she hasn't done that in years, that her code is more elegant now, that she's better at hiding her tracks...) but the man explains that she's done nothing wrong, that instead, the fbi wants her. it's a startling revelation. she expected to build game consoles or design machines for companies like bergman or cordon electronics, or maybe go work on the super collider or just wind up holed up in a tiny apartment, making a living of hacking into people's private lives. what she never once fathomed was becoming an analyst for the fbi's cyber security team. nevertheless, she doesn't skip a beat, accepting the job without so much as a second thought.
a year later, she finds herself behind a desk. it's routine, it's monotonous. it's not at all what she thought it would be and there's that little gnawing voice in the back of her head that seems to be whispering, you're better than this, you could be doing so much more. she's listened to it countless times, but those jobs hadn't mattered nearly as much. she didn't care about being a barista or that time she worked in the geek squad at best buy (that one had been hellish), but she did like this job. it had purpose, it gave her meaning and direction in a life that had been so chaotic. she just... wanted more. she wanted to be in the field. and so rather than quitting, she enrolled in the fbi academy field training to become an actual agent.
soon after she completes her training at quanitco, she moves through the ranks at an impressive rate. barely a year into her new position, she's recruited into the central intelligence agency. she's the perfect canidate: an orphan distant from the small handful of people in her life, she is unattached, cold, calculating and cunning. she's told she'll maintain her position with the fbi as a cover when she finds herself stationed in the states, that she'll be sent from washington dc to various other offices around the country and she embraces this new adventure with open arms. she spends the next seven years travelling around the world, here and there, on various jobs, finding herself in all corners, doing all sorts of things, some legal, some barely, some not at all. she can only justify her actons as doing the wrong things for the right reasons. she learns to compartmentalize. sometimes she's only gone for days, sometimes for months at a time.
it's january of 2015, when everything changes. a simple job in munich goes horribly wrong and she wakes up a week later to the hum of florescent lighting and the beeping of a heart monitor. she doesn't recall the events immediately and only knows that she's lucky to have made it out alive. nearly eight months go by, filled with bed rest, recuperation and aggressive physical therapy. it's another month before she's finally cleared for field work again, despite the director's reservations on the matter and in october of 2015 she's told she's being stationed in boston for a long term observe and report assignment. it's home, she has ties there that her doctors hope will make it more comfortable for her to adjust.
the following months changed her in ways that she never imagined. moving back to boston made her realize all the things that she had in her life, all the things she could have, that she had denied herself for so long. in late may of 2016, she turns in her resignation, citing that she is no longer emotionally able to perform her duties as an agent and is medically discharged from duty.
she is presently trying to figure out where the hell she fits into the civilian world.
Tessa lived in a harem in the Balkan region of Europe. In her teenage years, Russia invaded Afghanistan so she had to learn how to use weapons and fight against soldiers and local bandits. One day, she felt compelled to enter a local cave and found Professor Charles Xavier trapped under some rocks, his legs crushed. Soon after, some bandits who had raped and killed a convoy of U.N. workers attacked them, but Tessa drove them off, killing one of them.
Some time later, Professor X recruited her into the X-Men, but kept her secret so she could use her telepathic power to spy for his fight for peaceful co-existence between mutants and humans. Tessa’s first mission was to infiltrate the Hellfire Club and become Sebastian Shaw’s adviser. Shaw even kept her after his leadership, due to her usefulness of keeping large amounts of information.
Tessa was then given the codename Sage by Storm, who recruited her into the X-Treme X-Men who had been set out to search for a mutant named Destiny who could predict the future. On their way, Beast was almost killed by Vargas but Sage used her previously unseen ability to advance his evolution to the next stage.
Shaw found out that Sage was a spy for Professor X and he allied himself with Lady Mastermind, the daughter of Mastermind to plan his revenge. Lady Mastermind created an illusion against Sage, making her believe that she was an assistant for Shaw once more. Sage was freed once again thanks to Lifeguard, a mutant with the ability to use any power, depending on the situation. The X-Men defeated Shaw in the end.
Sage later increased Slipstream’s power and allowed Rogue to control the powers she has absorbed over the years. Sage would also help out Bishop in his other missions. (source)
Point of Canon
Some time later, Professor X recruited her into the X-Men, but kept her secret so she could use her telepathic power to spy for his fight for peaceful co-existence between mutants and humans. Tessa’s first mission was to infiltrate the Hellfire Club and become Sebastian Shaw’s adviser. Shaw even kept her after his leadership, due to her usefulness of keeping large amounts of information.
Tessa was then given the codename Sage by Storm, who recruited her into the X-Treme X-Men who had been set out to search for a mutant named Destiny who could predict the future. On their way, Beast was almost killed by Vargas but Sage used her previously unseen ability to advance his evolution to the next stage.
Shaw found out that Sage was a spy for Professor X and he allied himself with Lady Mastermind, the daughter of Mastermind to plan his revenge. Lady Mastermind created an illusion against Sage, making her believe that she was an assistant for Shaw once more. Sage was freed once again thanks to Lifeguard, a mutant with the ability to use any power, depending on the situation. The X-Men defeated Shaw in the end.
Sage later increased Slipstream’s power and allowed Rogue to control the powers she has absorbed over the years. Sage would also help out Bishop in his other missions. (source)
Sage is pulled from Marvel Earth-616.
nonlethal handguns
s.w.o.r.d. ship
genetic sight
telepathic firewall
telepathy
x-factor sense
jumpstart
reboot pressure point
master martial artist
weapons expert
master spy
super genius intellect
the hellfire club
exiles
excaliber
the x-men
the crystal palace
s.w.o.r.d.
being sage
"tara" is a play on "tessa"
tara is an expert in cybnetics and cybersecurity, while tessa is, for lack of a better term, a human computer
like tessa, tara has a habit of doing bad things for good reasons
both are originally from southeastern europe and have questionable pasts
both are trained spies and have worked for covert government agencies
tara is an expert in cybnetics and cybersecurity, while tessa is, for lack of a better term, a human computer
like tessa, tara has a habit of doing bad things for good reasons
both are originally from southeastern europe and have questionable pasts
both are trained spies and have worked for covert government agencies
ba, computer science; summa cum laude.
c/o 2005, massachusetts institute of technology
SM/ECS electrical engineering & computer sciences; summa cum laude.
misc 2007, fbi academy @ quantico
fbi field agent training; honors.
birth mother: kseniya tvardovsky
died in childbirth, 24th march 1984.
birth father: ilia tvardovsky
killed by drunk driver 24th April, 1989.
adoptive mother: alex melnyk
pediatric physician, 57.
adoptive father: sasha melnyk
computer programmer, 59.
biological mother died in childbirth, but she can remember her father telling her stories as a child, prior to his death. she still has a few tattered photos of both of her parents that she keeps in a chest at the foot of her bed.
a wunderkind, tara graduated from high school at 16, finished her undergrad at 19 and her masters at 21.
has a long history of hacking and digital forgery, save for one slip up at 14 that landed her on a federal watchlist, her tracks are untracable.
was recruited to the fbi as an analyst right out of MIT in 2005. in late 2006, she decided to undergo field training and has been working as a field agent since early 2007. she began working with the central intellignce agency, maintaining her position within the fbi as a cover, in 2008.
while she greatly enjoyed her time with the agency and the experiences it offered her, she does deal with a great deal of personal shame due to some of the things that she has had to do in the name of the job while in the field. she doesn't talk about it, she doesn't want to.
as of may 30, 2016, tara has resigned and been subsequently discharged from active duty with the cia.
speaks russian, german, french, spanish, mandarine, arabic and farsi, and is conversationally passable and/or can read in several other languages.
a wunderkind, tara graduated from high school at 16, finished her undergrad at 19 and her masters at 21.
has a long history of hacking and digital forgery, save for one slip up at 14 that landed her on a federal watchlist, her tracks are untracable.
was recruited to the fbi as an analyst right out of MIT in 2005. in late 2006, she decided to undergo field training and has been working as a field agent since early 2007. she began working with the central intellignce agency, maintaining her position within the fbi as a cover, in 2008.
while she greatly enjoyed her time with the agency and the experiences it offered her, she does deal with a great deal of personal shame due to some of the things that she has had to do in the name of the job while in the field. she doesn't talk about it, she doesn't want to.
as of may 30, 2016, tara has resigned and been subsequently discharged from active duty with the cia.
speaks russian, german, french, spanish, mandarine, arabic and farsi, and is conversationally passable and/or can read in several other languages.
"mors certa, vita incerta," is tattooed in cursive over the scar on her side. (a quote from do androids dream of electric sheep, meaning "death is certain, life is uncertain.") she plans on getting more now that she's no longer with the agency.
doesn't do sports. like, at all, and was actually kicked out of a bowling class when she was in college for accidentally putting a dent in the bowling alley floor.
can actually cook very well, but has maintained a pretty steady diet of crappy takeout over the years.
often comes across as cold and aloof toward people she doesn't know, and can even come across as abrasive to those she does, but she is a very caring person when it comes to the people she's close with and will go to great lengths to keep them safe.
stereotypical though it may be, tara is an avid proveyer of all things nerd; as a child, she learned to love fantasy and science fiction as a reprieve from the real world and her less-than-awesome circumstances, and it has followed her into adulthood. she enjoys everything from video and table top gaming to bad horror movies and loves cosplaying and conventions.