Post by Black Widow on Jun 17, 2008 19:09:16 GMT -5
The Character
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Cannon or your own: Canon
Copyright (Marvel/DC/ect): Marvel
Characters civilian name: Natalia Alianovna Shostakova Romanova
Code names/Aliases: The Black Widow
Class [Superhero, Vigilante, Mercenary..ect]: Superhero
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Gender: Female
Age: 78
Apparent Age: 26
Hair: Auburn
Eyes: Green
Height and weight: 5’6”, 131
Appearance:
Though she is not tall, Natalia gives off a rather intimidating image. She gives off the impression of refusing to yield every time she throws her head back to laugh or crosses her arms across a full chest. There is not one inch on her body that is wasted space, a body covered in the strong, delicate musculature common among acrobats and ballet dancers, all of her movements are simple, without wasted energy, but very balanced, always toe first, her footsteps nearly silent. When she’s deep in thought she tends to hold her head at an angle, but she never closes her eyes, only to go to sleep which is a rare thing indeed. She sits and stands very straight, when sitting her legs are crossed at the ankle and held beneath her, when she’s standing she keeps them apart, her hands at her side or behind her back and her feet pointed straight forward.
Now, it’s quite true that mot would consider her beautiful, but Natalia herself would say handsome instead. She has a strong chin set beneath lovely red lips. Her nose is small but very slightly crooked, as though she avoided permanent disfigurement through reconstructive surgery. Her eyes, very wide and framed in thick black lashes, are green, they seem to smolder when she’s angry or glimmer with any good mood she finds herself in. Her skin is fair and, despite a few very pale scars along her torso and limbs, mostly unmarked.
Her hair is auburn, but leans toward red, and falls in a graceful, straight curtain down to her broad shoulders. When she can anticipate having to do something physical, she'll generally tie it back in a braid, but keeps a hair tie on her wrist at all times, just in case. She flatly refuses to wear jewelry, her ears are unpierced, and her nails are almost constantly torn up, the fingers often bruised and swollen.
Her clothing is generally very simple, consisting of either plain flats or military boots depending on the situation and almost always unornamented pants and blouses. When she has to go out, for whatever reason, she can be found in close fitted, very short dresses usually in red or black. As for her uniform, or more accurately, costume, it’s a one piece suit of special black material designed to repel everything from electricity to bullets. The actual suit reaches to her ankles and wrists and stops just at the base of her neck, she wears gloves of the same material covered in tiny suction cups and heavy, heeled boots, along with a belt fitted out with plastic explosives and her distinctive bracers.
Picture [if available]:
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Super Powers:
Natalia was given a variant of the Super-Soldier Serum which has prolonged her life indefinitely and given her the upper hand in many activities. Her speed, flexibility, and strength are at least at the level of an Olympic athlete and sometimes much higher, considering she can bench press 500 pounds at any given moment. Her senses have also been heightened, but only to their peak natural levels.
Learned Abilities:
Natalia was trained in martial arts and espionage; she is an expert lock-pick and hacker and is able to change her appearance quite well within reason (Her hair color doesn’t spontaneously change color or anything). She speaks eight languages, French, Russian, English, Hungarian (including the Latverian dialect), Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and German. She is a trained marksman who only rarely misses. She is also a trained ballerina.
Trained in Tai-Kwon-Do, Jiu-Jitsu, and Karate
Trained Sniper
Trained lock-pick and hacker
Speaks eight languages ( French, Russian, English, Hungarian (including the Latverian dialect), Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and German.)
Trained in most basic hand-held weaponry
Exceptionally limber
Knows how to safely land a small airplane and operate most modern armored vehicles
Equipment:
Natalia is a genius when it comes to weaponry and is one of the top assassins in the world and has trained in nearly every hand-held weapon in the world. She is also possessor to every standard SHIELD issue weapon, including the neural neutralizer (A paralysis device) and several other minor weapons. Her main weaponry, however, is part of her suit. A heavy bracer decorates each wrist, one contains a grappling hook, and the other a high voltage electrical charge (This bracer is also capable of absorbing electrical charges and converting it to useable energy). At her waist she wears plastic explosives, knives in her boots, a syringe held against the back of her neck, and a pair of capped razorblades tucked inside of her cheeks.
Weaknesses (Must Have):
Even though, for her size, her strength and speed might be considered nearly super-human she is still just a regular human being with all of the weaknesses that come with it. She can’t fly and a good length of rope will keep her down pretty well. Otherwise she has an exceptionally quick temper and tends to be excessively paranoid.
Background:
Natalia Alianovna Romanova was not born into any sort of greatness, but rather had greatness thrust upon her at a much later date. She was born to a rather typical family in the industrial sector of Stalingrad, her father had emigrated from the country and was rumored to be descended from the Tsar’s family, though whether this was true had long ceased to be a point of discussion among the women at the munitions factories by the time Natalia was born. Her mother was peculiar in that there was very little special about her, and to say that having Natalia was the bright point in her life would not be a terrible exaggeration. In any case, she was well liked by her parents, who worked very hard to ensure she had at least enough food to eat and a place warm enough to sleep in their tiny two room apartment.
As a very young child she preferred to play outside, but the bitter temperatures of winter often forced her inside with a small doll received from the old woman across the landing. Though not particularly large for her age she was a rather competitive child, and preferred to play with boys rather than girls, whom she generally found a bit tiresome. Her childhood was uneventful, engaged with playing out of doors and in doors and occupying the time between her parents disappearance in the early morning and their reappearance in the evening. When WWII broke out, Natalia noticed little difference in her life, save that her parents were around much less. Still, these facts meant little to her, and life went on until the Nazis pushed in to lay siege to the city.
There was little difference to the child, now, aside from the fact that meals grew increasingly smaller and explosions rocked the buildings so hard that Natalia had trouble sleeping at night. The explosions became so bad that her parents insisted she remain inside to play, feeling that she would be somehow safer within the wooden building. Not that it helped, in the evening, shortly after her parents returned home and Natalia sat in the front hall listening to a neighbor’s radio, the loudest explosion yet kindly shook the building and quickly engulfed it in flames. At barely five years old, the child would have been lost save for a passing officer who dragged her out.
She was first adopted by the officer, Commissar Ivan Petrovich, and his unit. The men and women, none of whom were much older than 19, happily took in the child as something of a mascot, someone who was unfailingly cheerful and bright, assuming she couldn’t hear the bombs. Her adoptive father made quite certain she was kept safe and when 1945 came about and the war ended, Ivan Petrovich was caught with a child he didn’t know what to do with. Having been raised in an orphanage himself he refused to leave her to the horrid conditions wards of the State were placed under, neither was he able to take care of her himself, in the end, he contacted a friend who ran a special program for the KGB, a program codenamed the Black Widow Ops.
It was a program designed to take twenty girls and train them to as espionage agents, serving as foreign intelligence, translators, and even assassins. Natalia, always competitive and now determined to prove that Ivan’s faith in her was not misplaced applied herself wholeheartedly to the tasks given her. When she turned 18 she had received the highest marks on every test given to her, she spoke eight languages fluently, and had become an infiltrations expert. The program heads were still dissatisfied with her excellent performance, before she was permitted to begin active service she was given an experimental form of the Super-Soldier Serum, designed to keep her in peak physical condition for an indeterminate length of time, as well as increasing her already staggering physical abilities exponentially.
For about five years, with Ivan still be her side and serving as her driver among other duties, Natalia happily traveled the world, content to serve in whatever capacity her superiors found necessary at the time. Finally, though, she was transferred to a base in Hungary, where she met and fell in love with the famed test pilot Alexi Shostakov, they married and lived together happily for about a year. In that year, Natalia effectively retired from her espionage work and determined to do something she had dreamt of as a child, she started training as a ballerina. With her physical abilities already at peak levels she became very good at what she did.
But when Alexi had been recruited by the KGB for a new super-soldier program and Natalia heard he was killed in an accident, she returned to the work she was best at and drowned whatever sorrow she might have felt in hard liquor and an excess of work. Ten years went by and slowly but surely she found her way out of the chilly arms of the State that had born her and in with a new group of friends. At the age of 42 (Still looking barely 23) she left Red Room and became a SHIELD operative, defecting with Ivan to live in New York City. It was certainly an interesting time, she fell in love quite a few times, left SHIELD and returned any number of times, the fact that she was no longer considered expendable was a new thrill as well. She really did enjoy it.
She cried when the Berlin wall came down, sitting on her couch with the news turned on. She had worked the better part of her life for the communist state, she had been raised and indoctrinated by them. In a very real way the State was more of a mother to her than the woman who had born her. In the end she picked herself up and her work with SHIELD continued uninterrupted. Not that this was a good thing. A few years after the Berlin Wall came down and Natalia was buying Russian newspapers for the sole purpose of cursing Boris Yeltsin (“He stood on a tank and… sang? My God, what I wouldn’t give for an ex-KGB agent who regularly murders reporters and brings public companies under government control…”) she was sent to Bulgaria to look into a new leader who had appeared there. Needless to say, the man’s identity was quite the shock.
Her former husband was indeed quite alive, had risen to power in Bulgaria, and was not thrilled about her exploits during her time in the Soviet Union. Indeed, he was so displeased that he had her jailed, put on trial, and handed a death sentence. Luckily for our heroine she is not one to take such things lightly, nor are her friends, she managed to escape her prison cell and disappear into the night. Not that that was the last she saw of Alexi, she tracked him with the help of some friends to a base in China where one thing led to another and Alexi was thrown into the Nuclear reactor core trying to save her and her friends. She went back to New York, having at least seen a body this time.
Time went on, and the war started, and Natalia, because of her work with SHIELD, felt that it was best to volunteer. She was a trained soldier after all, and despite her limited power received a high rank due simply to experience and training. Her training has made it easier for her to return home, and she has experienced far less of the tumult that so many of her contemporaries have gone through. She’s dived back into work with SHIELD, and is, in fact, quite happy doing what she’s doing.
Personality :
Natalia is fiercely loyal, strong willed, and slightly paranoid. All of it at once is difficult to handle, but Natalia perseveres with remarkable strength.
She does not show emotions easily and absolutely refuses to cry or blush in public. In fact, the only emotion she regularly shows is anger and it’s not unusual to see her shouting someone down, even if that someone happens to be one of her superiors. This lack of “Human emtions” can be attributed to her hatred of showing weakness in front of others, particularly men or people she works with. Natalia maintains a stoic face even when confronted with extreme pain and danger and has only been known to relax her almost stone-faced outward appearance when someone she’s fond of is in danger or injured.
Her usual mood is vaguely annoyed mixed with the unusual sort of humor one acquires from spending exceptional amounts of time around death. She keeps a certain black humor about everything she does and it isn’t unusual to hear her crack a snide joke while she cracks someone’s ribs. For the most part these two conflicting sorts of moods remain in a general sort of balance, but small things like a bad night’s sleep or a stubbed toe early in the morning can tip the balance in a very bad way, putting her in a foul mood for the entire day.
Though she’s managed to suppress a good deal of her memories, things like finding photographs or running across an old outfit or pair of shoes can put her into another odd swing. She’ll become far quieter than normal, very subdued and even inclined to talk about her past to a certain point. This is hardly a common occurrence, however, and should be treated with great caution. She might be talkative, or she might snap back into the tough-girl image as a matter of protection.
Around people she’s very fond of, her close friends, she is an immaculate confidante and is capable of being both loving and supportive. It’s not uncommon for her to spoil her friends, probably a side effect of having far more money than she’s ever had in her life. When it comes to boyfriends, however, the opposite can be said. Though in the beginning of the relationship and periodically throughout she’ll be loving and affectionate for the most part she views romantic relationships less as something to be enjoyed and more as something that needs to be gotten out of her system as quickly as possible. This may be because of her poor luck when it’s come to her love life or simply another facet of her business-like attitudes toward life.
When it comes to being polite for work, and managing to get information out of people she’s very good. It isn’t difficult for her to bottle her anger when she needs to get something out of someone, she’s very good at being coy. When she needs to, she can be exceptionally manipulative and, when it comes down to it, she’s very good at what she does.
Other:
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Brief Sample Roleplay
“And I don’t understand why we need to move every time I get a promotion. I like this apartment.” Her voice was almost plaintive when it came to dealing with her adopted father on the phone, even someone who didn’t speak a word of Russian could tell that she was annoyed with the man on the other end. “You can’t say it’s for the good of the state anymore! That hasn’t worked since I was a child!” She was pacing back and forth in the living room of her current apartment, a few rooms that would be of no consequence at all had one of them not contained an arsenal of Russian weaponry and another not contained the woman on the phone. She crossed to the window, her bare feet padding against a wooden floor, and twitched the curtain aside with a hand that looked to have been badly bruised at some earlier point in the week. “I’m not saying you can’t look, I’m just saying I don’t want to move… What? Oh, fine. I’ll see you in a bit Ivan.” She snapped the phone shut and tossed it onto a blue couch, crossing back to the other side of the room.
This woman, who had just spent the last ten minutes complaining about the prospect of moving again, was none other than Natalia Romanova, whose childhood had been spent in a bombed out city, tagging along with a collection of Russian soldiers, and finally in the warm cocoon of a state run program to train female espionage agents. Now in her adult life, the auburn haired femme fatale was an open member of a group she had once sought to bring down, an agent of S.H.E.I.L.D. Had she not been so annoyed she might have taken the opportunity to reflect on the abrupt changes that had followed her life, the startling shift between a childhood spent scrounging food in back alleys and a comfortable apartment in a brick building in New York City; as it was, she did not.
She was about to leap over the couch and turn on the news when her bare toe caught on something and caused her to let out a stream of curses so vehement that to translate them from Russian would require more censorship that it is worth. She looked down and caught sight of a small wooden box about a foot across and half a foot wide. She couldn’t remember taking it out but picked it up in one hand anyway and carried it to the couch with her, puzzling over its sudden appearance. She sat down and put her bare feet on the glass table-top, balancing the little box on her outstretched legs, the minor pain in her foot completely forgotten. “Now, what are you doing out of the closet this time?” She muttered, running a finger along the rough wooden top, before hooking a finger on the latch and opening the thing. Inside were a variety of little objects, trinkets, and other such items she had collected over the years. As a matter of security, she began to pull everything out, just in case something was missing.
A handful of old Soviet medals wrapped in old newspapers were all there, relics from her days in the KGB. A few old letters she didn’t open, small pieces of trash or old coins she had collected as a child, the empty wrapper of an American candy bar. A pair of ballet slippers she investigated quite closely and gave a small, fond smile. Even if her time as a ballerina had been quite short, it was still a rather pleasant memory, tied in a knot with her memories of… Her fingers brushed against a worn old frame and she drew a little square of glass and cardboard from the box, blowing away the thin layer of dust that masked the image. Standing on a little street in Hungary dressed in heavy coats were two people, Natalia next to a young man with his arm around her waist, on the picture, printed in rather spidery Russian was written, “I can’t believe you said yes.” Natalia stared at it for a very long time, not entirely sure what to make of it. It had been years since she’d seen that old picture, of her with her then fiancé and later husband.
She didn’t know how long she had spent examining at the old thing when footsteps worked their way up the stairs nearby. Without so much as a heartbeat’s pause she repacked all of the items into their box and shoved it without ceremony into the dark closet by her front door. It didn’t do anyone any good to dwell on the past.
