Head: Wow! Girls Ice Skater, TARGAT visor, Scoop mic, green stuff.
Torso: Night Force Short Fuse
Arms: Urban Assault Storm Shadow
Waist: Repeater
Legs: VAMP set Pathfinder

The first of a series of customs to expand on Black Ice's crew (or the Cobra Canadian Command as I call them), Icebreaker started from a long held desire to use the TARGAT visor mounted and painted up like the pilots in Top Gun or Star Wars. I've also wanted to make a female machine gunner using Repeater's gun for some time.

After seeing the prototype artwork for the 2007 Canadian meet figure Shiver, the first part for the torso I thought of was Downtown's (or Night Force Short Fuse in this case). I decided to reverse the colours, with white pouches, and all black legs.

The legs were a happy accident; I was simply putting them in place as a colour guide, when I noticed they were nice and bulky like snow pants. The legs and arms were both dark grey by default, so only the waist required a serious level of dying.

The torso and head were sprayed white, and then detailed by hand. I think the Wow Girl's head gives a nice demented smirk which really cements the character.

She was named after the band (and album and track) Eisbrecher, a German dance-metal group. The track itself contains lyrics about fear and cold closing in, so it helped influence her character. I decided to make her someone who is simply evil - not influenced by a traumatic childhood or some incident in their past. The jobs she is listed as having held are ones that seem to fit the sociopath mindset, PR, HR, working at the post office.

I also made her an Ice Viper after reading their file card; Ice Viper's are Snow Serpents before hand, so are really some of Cobra's most elite troops. Finally I named her after the band's founding members Alex Weygand and Noel Pix.

Overall one of my favourite customs and one I don't really have too much to say about as she came together very easily.

Icebreaker also won the 2007 JoeCanuck meet custom contest.

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Icebreaker

Arctic Support

Weygand, Pixi

Freising, Germany

PMS: Heavy Weapons
SMS: Cold Weather Maintenance

As a child Pixi never cared what anyone else thought about her - while an admirable trait in someone who is selfless and caring, it proves devastating in one who is selfish and spiteful. Whilst in preschool she would simply take what she wanted, and by the time she was in fifth grade she had escalated to intimidation and extortion. Her parents both worked long hours in the city, almost an hour away, and she was looked after by a long string of nannies. Forever a loner (both by her and her peer's choice), she took to long periods of study and exercise in her teens to fill in her days. She would often work out on the treadmill or practicing kata (she studied Win-Chun, Aikido and kyudo) whilst listening to audio lectures - psychology and engineering her favourite topics. She believed everything was like a machine, it had a way it worked and a way it could be broken.

In high school the only place she was even remotely tolerated by the other students was on the sport field, where she displayed she knew how to work in a team, but simply chose not to. She was known as an aggressive and fearless forward in soccer and volleyball, and sent more than one opponent to hospital with a well placed tackle or spike. School authorities overlooked her behaviour for a time as she was a top student academically, and that partly thanks to her their sports teams reigned supreme. Her behaviour was never raised with her family as no one ever met them. Every open day or parent-teacher meeting, they were always occupied with business.

It came to a sudden end, however, not long after she bought her first car. While her contemporaries drove beat up Golf hatchbacks and Beetles, she tore around in a v6 pickup with a bull bar and KC lights. That itself was no great problem, but when she drove it through the school grounds in pursuit of a male student who had spurned her advances, it was the girder that broke the camel's back. The Principal called the police, who called the psychiatrist, who called the asylum, who got her a nice padded room, a special jacket, and a psychotic sociopath diagnosis.

Her parents evidently had either been deliberately ignoring her behaviour, knowing one day she would leave or find herself locked up, or blind to it through neglect or self delusion. They disowned her and she was put into the care of the state, still being a minor in the eyes of the law. Some of the psychiatrists believed she was a product of a broken home - others simply saw her as a danger to society. After a few weeks she calmed down, and was assessed to be capable or rehabilitation. Criminal charges were dropped under the condition she attended a special government boarding school and underwent periodic assessment. Pixi agreed and soon on the path to becoming a functioning member of society.

A year and a half later she was considering a career in either marketing or HR, and investigating different universities. The doctor that was managing her case, however, was convinced she was much more of a danger than she was presenting. Having had almost a year of contact with her he became convinced she wasn't a true sociopath, but an intelligent, calculating psychotic who was simply playing along until she was set free. She didn't lack an understanding of or empathy for other people's feelings; she understood emotions all too well, she simply chose to ignore other peoples for her own personal gain. As near as he could tell these reasons were simply that she liked power over people, and fear was the easiest way for her to get it. His diagnosis was ignored as it would cast doubt over the original assessment of having her committed instead of imprisoned, and that was too much of a headache for the government to deal with. That decision was something they would regret quite soon.

One day while walking home from her part time job as a Post Office teller she was accosted by a knife-wielding mugger. Heavy winter clothes disguised her powerful body, and she looked simply like a young lady out on her own at night. She easily dodged the muggers first thrust catching, then breaking, his arm with ease. Stunning him with a knee to the face she picked up his blade and stabbed her would be assailant repeatedly in the stomach. Leaving him lying in the gutter she went home and made herself dinner before going to bed.

Several weeks passed without further incident, until a pair of thugs with baseball bats attempted to rob the post office. Jumping over the counter, Pixi wrestled one to the ground, knocking him out cold and taking his weapon. The other tried to flee but she caught him at the door and savagely beat him to a bloody pulp in full view of her co-workers and customers. When the police arrived they found her standing behind her counter, splattered with blood, waiting for her next customer like nothing had happened.

The remaining robber apparently had a rich lawyer uncle - Frederic von Rokba, who also offered to represent Pixi if she would see some of his friends about a job afterwards. Soon after her acquittal (it turned out the fleeing man had a threatened to detonate a bomb and in the confusion everyone forgot to mention it) she found herself a Cobra Viper. Serving for a time in various European garrisons (and clashing with Z Force on several occasions), she was soon sent for Eel training, then quickly on to the Snow Serpent course.

It was during the final test she showed her true, cold blooded, nature to her team mates. The mission was that the training unit would be airdropped at night onto a glacier, where they would have to evade capture by experienced Snow Serpents to destroy a 'radar station' some ten kilometres away known as Ice Peak (using live ammo). Rather than trying to avoid capture, Pixi headed directly towards the closest approaching enemy unit. Sneaking up on the most isolated soldier, she jumped them, taking their place in the unsuspecting enemy unit.

She even helped capture some of her team mates, volunteering to be part of the unit that would escort them back to the base. When they drew near she shot her 'comrades' in the back, throwing a grenade into the nearest guard post. When the guards realised what was happening and started shooting, Pixi shoved one of the two captives into the line of fire whilst she dove into cover. Using the confusion to her advantage she picked up one of the dead men's missile launcher and strapped a grenade to its casing. While her now free team mate provided covering fire, she ran forward and hurled her makeshift bomb at one guard tower before firing her own missile at another.

Both towers exploded almost simultaneously, the blasts providing enough of a distraction that Pixi and her team mate could slip into the base unnoticed. There they played at being on the same team as their enemies again, a false warning shout causing a fire fight to open up between the remaining defenders and another returning patrol. The chaos and destruction around her gave a better cover than anything, and she used it to eliminate more 'enemies', before destroying the main building with C4.

The aftermath was that almost all the guards were dead or wounded, and the base lay in ruins. The commander of the operation was furious, wanting to see Pixi shot on the spot for killing half his command, but von Rokba intervened, pointing out that it was a live fire exercise after all, and she had completed the mission spectacularly. When asked by her team mate why she did it she simply replied 'You'll see..."

Soon stories were circulating through the barracks about how she had fired two missile launchers simultaneously, and then appeared all around the base like a ghost - killing dozens of men with her bare hands before vanishing. They started calling her 'Icebreaker'.

She was held in equal parts fear and awe; it was clear she only worked as a team as it improved her personal odds of success and survival - to her everyone else was an expendable asset. She killed without a second thought if the target presented itself, and proved a cunning warrior. While tracking a group of Action Force soldiers in a snow storm she let them know they were being stalked for several days, howling in the night like a wolf stalking its prey. She also took a stray sentry in the night, leaving his equipment behind - a message to the Action Force soldiers that the Cobra's didn't need it, but they would. Soon the enemy were wracked with fear and were easily overwhelmed.

This only cemented her air of icy terror with the other troops, and impressed command greatly. She was soon sent to further training - first qualifying as an Ice Viper (her aptitude for mechanics making it an easy adjustment), then further training with the HEAT and SAW viper corps. Heavy weapons became her speciality, serving primarily as a gunner on a WOLF, though often on foot in a support element of a Snow Serpent squad.

Her tactics remained the same, using fear as a weapon before any other, then getting as close as possible before attacking, no matter the weapon. She also demonstrated a perverse joy at using really big guns on really little targets (such as calling a Rattler air strike down on a single foxhole), and running people down when behind the wheel. Transferred from the Cobra European Command to the Cobra Canadian Command, Icebreaker was assigned to the team under the leadership of the infamous Black Ice. Operating in a small unit, her overt psychotic behaviour lessened, and she became a valued member of the team. She could see that her best chance of success was by working with Black Ice, Shiver and the others - they would never fear her, as she didn't fear them. But with them everybody feared her.


From the files of Flint (Action Force Tactical Officer):

"This dossier was leaked to us by a classified rout, but we were meant to get it. One only needs to glace at it to tell this character is a total egomaniac nut-job, enamoured with her own cult of terror (Psyche-Out is writing his evaluation as I type). She wants us to know what she's done, and to be afraid.

The problem is, if even half of this is true, we should be."