Cerise Widow

Charlize Theron as Yevheniya Zinaida Yusupova

GENERAL Name: Yevheniya Zinaida Yusupova Birthdate: 11/27/1935 Faction: Team KGB Codename: Cerise Widow Position: Black Widow Hometown: Moscow, U.S.S.R. FAMILY STATISTICS Partner(s): None Height: 5'11" Father: Felix Yusupov Weight: 145 lbs. Mother: Tatiana Fyodorovna Hair Color: Blue Siblings: None Eye Color: Blonde Children: Nope

Background

That just depends on whom you believe. Zhenya is everyone. Zhenya is no one. Zhenya probably doesn't even exist as herself in any capacity, and that's just the way the KGB prefers it be.

Identities

• Adriana, overly excitable trophy wife lunging headlong into everything. Obsessed by silver screen starlets and strongly disapproving of 'working girls' or short skirts. Hypocrite, looks great in short skirts.
• Audrey, nurse at Mercy Hospital. Overworked, always a good word for everyone. Calm and competent.
• Bianca, West German with the accent and punctuality to match.
• Cynthia: Travel agent with dreams of seeing the world and being a stewardess on Pan-Am. Loaths golf and Myrtle Beach, probably from Virginia.
• Demelza, Cornish spitfire with a crazy typespeed and hates her job in the typing pool. Anxious, easily draws conclusions, tomboy.
• Evelyn, daughter of a diplomat. Do not ask which one. Knows the rules and ins and outs of many foreign cultures. Quietly condescending.
• Florence: Wildchld with aspirations to be an artistic muse. Actual work is unclear. Professional mooch through 'inspiring' many. Many people. Probably half-Native American.
• Ginny (Virginia), please never Virginia. Librarian associate who can't really hold her alcohol. Meanest Scrabble player ever. Hates her roommates.
• Helena, works at a bank, position suitably neutral to indicate she's much more important than she lets on. Cold and unreachable.
• Imogen, switchboard operator. Kid of a war bride and accountant. Office girl all the way around, knows numbers and tech like nothing.
• Joan
• Kathleen, native of Suffolk County, embarrassed by family wealth. Paralegal for a very successful law office. Diffident and organized.
• Keeleigh: Mechanic, car thief, general fix-it girl. Curt, short statements, and obsessed with music. Frequently a getaway driver.
• Lorraine, the girl you absolutely never mess with. English. Very probably in the intelligence community. Unimpressed by just about everything as the usual veneer. Inverse James Bond.
• Madelyn, Queens girl next door. Model, but not really, not really sure about her future. All about getting along, a few quick quips on the side. Probably not old enough to drink.
• Nora, perfumer of English extraction. Values class and discretion. Part time employment at Macy's in the cosmetics department. Sensitive, cultured, compassionate, and articulate.
• Olivia, romance author who hides it. Writes a column under a pseudonym for the Bulletin and ladies' magazine. Has jaded view of actual romance.
• Paloma, Spanish immigrant dancer 'kind of famous' in her home country. Had a stint in Cuba. Bad English.
• Quinn, fully Sibylla Quinn. Record store employee with an attitude and lyrical knowledge of everything rock.
• Regina, Danish yachtswoman in the mould of Amelia Earhart and other daredevil aviatrices.
• Sophia, Italian bombshell who likes convertibles, cigarettes, and not paying the bills on time. Chronically disorganized with money. Clearly has a lot of it. Heiress of some kind.
• Tabby, thief in Hell's Kitchen. Someone has a serious debt with her.
• Trudi, NYU grad in theatre, dreams of being an actress. Bit parts in forgettable revues. Haunts SoHo, works 10 different day jobs.
• Unity, Pennsylvanian waitress escaping her religious upbringing. Obsessed with tennis.
• Vanessa
• Willow, born and raised in Chicago. Craves the outdoors, usually found in parks.
• Xandra, Dutch designer of jewelry. Closet oil painter and sketch artist.
• Yael, middle child of a large Armenian emigre family. Striving against cultural opposition to study medicine.
• Zella, folk artist from California trying to get her big break. Consummate artist, likes flowers, t-shirts, and being cool.

Traits

Powers

• Super Soldier: A graduate of the Red Room, Zhenya received the Soviet version of super-soldier serums. The enhancements to her body elevated her to peak human condition. Her accelerated healing factor allows her to slough off damage in a fraction the time, burn through toxins and drugs, and take a beating. Falls that should kill her inflict pain and less damage. She can fight on long after fellow agents have all but dropped unconscious from blood loss, pain, and fatigue. The Red Room in particular focused on developing Zhenya as a hyper-flexible, agile fighter able to use her environment effectively. Minor modifications in surgery combined with her training regimens and the serum enhanced her dexterity and agility to surpass the finest Olympians and prima ballerinas. She can run close to 30 mph for extended periods and lift upwards of 500 lbs.
• Sensory Awareness: Zhenya has shocking reaction times as part of her heightened senses. Her sight and hearing are considerably improved over humans, and she can pick out minute details. Her mental processing gives her hair trigger senses that would make any iaido master proud.
• Psychic Weaponry: Zhenya channels energy into psionic weapons. These constructs can vary in size, length, and intensity but presently are limited to melee. She favours knives, daggers, swords, and even claws. They dissipate instantly when removed from her. A psionic weapon inflicts damage, and can cause actual pain, stunning a target up to completely overwhelming their nervous system with agony. Focusing enough for an incapacitating strike drains Zhenya, and forces her to reform her weapon. She risks mental fatigue with overuse and cannot maintain psychic cohesion for long if exhausted. Her psionic weapons can pierce armour when properly concentrated. Their physical form allows her to deflect or interact with physical objects. As a psychic ability, she may shatter minor to moderate mental defenses with precision, pinpoint strikes. Her psi-weaponry works against ephemeral-state targets, like astral ghosts, if she can perceive them. Concentration is necessary to manifest a weapon, but dismissing them is effortless.

Skills

• Assassination: Part of the Black Widow program, she can kill via lots of varied methods.
• Ballet: Zhenya's got the chops to be a professional ballerina worthy of the Bolshoi. Her practice since early childhood tempered her physical abilities under the watch of the Red Room. She is probably captivating on a stage if she ever intended to go that way.
• Crack Driver: She can negotiate her way around standard vehicles and small planes. Defensive driving and dangerous techniques help her manage getaways.
• Espionage: Any Red Room graduate is a superlative spy in the field, seasoned in all aspects of spycraft. Lying comes as second nature, using multiple methods to support various cover identities at a given time. She can ghost after a mark and infiltrate buildings with ease, bypass security, and move unnoticed through an urban or rural environment. She knows how to jury-rig security systems and traps after successfully scoping out a room for the possible dangers. Adopting disguises and concealing her age, appearance, and major features are all part of her rigorous education.
• Linguistics: The Red Room trained her in a wide variety of languages. She's fully fluent in English, Russian, German, Mandarin, French, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, Farsi, Hindi, Urdu, and competent in a number more.
• Marksman: Zhenya learned to shoot things by lying very still for days in a Siberian forest under intermittent sniper fire. She shines as a sniper and her skills with pistols and semi-automatic weapons in guerrilla warfare is only somewhat inferior.
• Martial Arts: She received extensive training in a multitude of fighting styles favouring speed and agility. She can hold her own against soldiers and empowered opponents. Taekwondo, savate, karate, kung fu, jiujutsu, and spetznaz knife fighting all leverage her extraordinary flexibility and psionic weaponry. Of special note, she knows how to deploy her psionic weapons just as effectively as an actual weapon and uses them interchangeably.
• Parkour: Given her enhanced flexibility and absolute physical control, Zhenya's abilities to run down vertical surfaces, break her falls, and tumble are superlative. Errol Flynn-like feats while firing a pistol are fully within her range of abilities.

Advantages

• KGB: Zhenya holds active agent status with the KGB, with all the resources and contacts necessary for her current mission. Support in New York may be superior to what many people think.
• Widow Suit: All Black Widow agents receive a suit resistant to extremes of temperature, small-arms fire, and road rash thanks to its technological weave. The built-in suction cups woven throughout permit her to climb vertical surfaces and cling to ceilings or windows. Several pouches permit her to carry the usual gear for spycraft, lockpicks, gadgets, evidence to plant, and weapons as necessary. Hers is specially modified with reinforced bracelets around the wrist to allow her a greater versatility in deflecting blows.
• Gear: At any time, Zhenya has a plethora of Soviet-supplied gear suitable for her mission. Dead-drops provide her the essentials. Her typical kit includes multiple firearms and ammunition, sights and tripods, explosives, smoke bombs, explosives, tasers, and multiple IDs. Her specialty Black Widow program gear include a spooled garrote, wire ties allowing her to use her supreme flexibility to subdue opponents or free-run, and a grappling line attached by spring-loaded motors and spooling devices to permit her an essential escape when needed.
• Shattered Ego: Psychics have a hard time in Zhenya's mind. Her fake memories, implanted identities, and broken thoughts do not make interrogation or corroborating facts easy. Hidden protocols devised by Soviet psychologists left her a complete mess. Telepathy brings its own very unpleasant dangers for a reason.

Flaws

• Lock & Key: "Lock and Key" is a signature fragrance designed to trigger Black Widow operatives. She cannot act violently towards anyone wearing the organic scent, and Zhenya becomes pliable, suggestible, and protective towards the subject. Her mental conditioning forces her to follow and obey any requests except those which would obviously cause her immediate death. Even with her psionic abilities, she cannot resist and she has no idea of its existence.
• Red Room Graduate: Zhenya graduated from the Black Widow program, and the KGB owns her lock, stock, and barrel. They stripped her fertility and isolated her within a web of agents, contacts, and watchers prepared to correct her harshly for missteps. Her every movement is orchestrated between analysts and handlers. Her independence is an illusion and her leash is held by unforgiving men and women willing to destroy her if she strays from their commands.
• Command and Control: Due to her psychic potential, she has additional 'killswitches.' Playing Rites of Spring" makes her suggestible when instructions are delivered in Russian by a woman. Her programming command string can shut her down as effectively as Lock and Key.
• PTSD: Red Room psychotechnics destroyed Zhenya's identity repeatedly, rebuilding her from a pastiche of superimposed characteristics, assumed events, and implanted suggestions. She's less a person and more a novel constructed carefully over a shattered ego. Heavy doses of therapy and psychic healing would be necessary to rebuild any personal self, if she didn't break first. Zhenya's greatest danger is herself, especially were a competent psychic able to penetrate her mental conditioning.
• Rogue Talent: Under extreme stress or provocation, her psychic abilities flare out of control without regard for who or what they affect. A heavy dose of psychometry or unexpected thought reading might addle her for days.
• Thousand Masks: She has worn many faces over the years. Enemies and dangerous people follow the cold trail she's left. They'd love to equalize the blood on her balance sheet.
• Patriot Games: It goes without saying an active KGB agent operating on U.S. soil primarily for clandestine activities and assassinations risks her life every moment she's there. SHIELD would not be kind if they caught her.

Gallery

Sorry, we couldn't find any images attached to this page.

Logs

▼ Show logs

1965-01-18 - Bargains between Demons (log: elektra power social zhenya)

1965-01-05 - Of Kitty Cat Pots (log: social yuliya zhenya)

1964-07-28 - Down With O'Connell (log: francesca-castle jessica-jones social starfire steve-rogers zhenya)

1964-07-27 - Nachalo (log: bucky social zhenya)

1964-07-26 - The Travel Agent (log: matt-murdock plot zhenya)

---