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Entry tags:
App for Apocalypse How
Character Name: Yelena Belova
Age: ~36 chronologically, ~31 physically (being erased from existence for 5 years complicates things)
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Canon point: After the Black Widow stinger, which timeline wise should be approximately a year post-Endgame.
History: Here
Note: It's not outright stated that Yelena is one of the people who was dusted and reappeared during the Blip, but between the lack of any mention, the framing of the stinger scene in the cemetery, and the fact that her actress is much younger than the character would be if she'd lived through the five year timeskip, it seems likely that this was the intention.
Personality:
Cynical: Yelena's life has left little room for optimism or idealism. She's spent nearly her entire life as part of a shadow organization dedicated to training and fielding spies and assassins, and has seen and participated in some of the worst humanity has to offer. She considers corruption to be commonplace, and refers to pain and suffering as a normal part of life. She is skeptical about things like atonement and heroism, and is quick to point out that at the end of the day, both she and Natasha are trained killers, regardless of Natasha's reputation. While she's quick to get on board with taking down the Red Room, and to take point on dismantling the rest of the organization, she approaches it from a perspective of personal vengeance and stopping something horrific, rather than as doing something heroic. She is frequently inclined to look for the worst in people and situations.
Morally flexible: While Yelena doesn't go out of her way to be cruel, and avoids unnecessary collateral damage, her training and the way she's had to live the majority of her life means she's comfortable crossing a number of traditional moral lines in order to achieve a goal. She won't flinch at inflicting violence on someone she thinks is a threat, and doesn't see a problem with, say, stealing a car from a civilian at gunpoint if she needs a getaway vehicle. She is willing to lie, cheat, steal, and even kill if it suits her purposes, and is comfortable dealing with shady individuals. She does, however, have some lines she considers inviolable, as evidenced by her fury and disgust over the mind control mechanisms used by Dreykov and the Red Room, and her commitment to taking down the remainder of the human traffickers involved with the program.
Loyal: Yelena is incredibly loyal to the people she cares about. While she's demonstrably hurt and angry at, as she sees it, being abandoned by her family, she still loves them, and is willing to extend forgiveness over the course of the time they spend working together to take down the Red Room. This loyalty also extends to her fellow Widows - when she's freed from the mind control she's been under for years, she's quick to promise the woman who had freed her that she will release the others, and goes to great lengths to keep that promise. Her loyalty and trust may not be the easiest to earn, but once she's given it, it takes a lot to lose it.
Adaptable: Yelena is very good at thinking on her feet and reacting to new circumstances and information. When she's freed from the mind control the Widows have been kept under, she's able to quickly pivot from hunter to hunted, and is able to escape her own team with only a couple minutes of lead time. She shows the same ability to shift modes of behaviour again later in the film, going from hurt young woman tentatively bonding with her father figure to highly trained agent in the space of a moment when a raid team attacks the home they've been hiding out in. She's also quite capable of situational analysis and improvisation, repeatedly making do with what she has on hand when caught in a difficult situation: removing her tracker with a combat knife in lieu of medical equipment, improvising a dispersal system for the chemical compound used to inoculate against chemical mind control using a grenade, sabotaging a helicopter's propeller with her staff, and so on.
Enthusiastic: In spite of her cynicism, Yelena has a thirst for new experiences that can manifest at times in an almost childlike air of enthusiasm. For most of her life, she's had very few chances to make any choices for herself, and faced with the freedom to do so, she's genuinely excited at the prospect. She's the sort of person who will wax rhapsodic over a vest because it's something she bought for herself and altered for more convenience, and she's proud of it. Show her something new and interesting, and she's liable to approach it with curiosity and delight.
Suitability: Initially, Yelena will stick around the ADI because she'll consider it the best way to find out what's really going on and get home, and because she isn't likely to trust that they'd actually leave her entirely alone if she were to take off into the wide world. She'll consider it a much better idea to use their resources and keep them them in her sights, so to speak. She may not ever develop any sort of loyalty to the organization, but she probably will develop loyalty to some of the people involved, which will serve to keep her rooted once she's determined she can't ferret out the secret to getting back to where she's supposed to be.
Powers/Abilities: Athletics - Yelena is in peak condition, and is incredibly agile and acrobatic. While it's unlikely to come up, she has some training in ballet.
Piloting - Yelena is a capable helicopter pilot, even in adverse conditions. Like, say, an avalanche.
Spycraft - Yelena has been trained in espionage since childhood. She's skilled in stealth, infiltration, surveillance and counter-surveillance, and subterfuge. She knows how to establish a false identity (though she doesn't have the skills necessary to forge documents on her own), and is familiar with bypassing electronic security, though she's not a master hacker. She speaks multiple languages fluently.
Combat - Yelena is an incredibly effective and brutal fighter. She favours hand-to-hand combat and knifework in close fighting, though she's also quite skilled with a staff. She's an excellent sniper, a good shot with a handgun, and is familiar with the use of heavy weapons such as grenade launchers. She's also good at improvisation in combat, using her environment to her advantage and employing improvised weaponry if caught unarmed.
Partial immunity to mind control - While she's completely human, Yelena has been inoculated with a substance that altered her neural pathways to render her immune to chemically-induced mind control. This does not provide immunity against any other mind control methods, or convey immunity to drugs that would merely make her suggestible.
Entity Affinity:
The Web: Yelena spent much of her adult life under a form of mind control, and speaks of it in terms of revulsion. When she describes it, she mentions not being entirely sure which actions she took solely because she was being controlled, and which were her own idea. The thought of being controlled again, particularly in such a way that she can't trust her own motivations, horrifies her.
The End: Given that she's a trained killer, and has no illusions about herself in that regard, she would be drawn towards The End. She's very, very good at inflicting death, and the fear of it usually follows.
The Hunt: Yelena is incredibly tenacious when she has a target, whether it's a person she's hunting down, or a more abstract goal, and has shown that she considers self-destruction a reasonable price to pay if the goal is important enough. She also has experience with being hunted by people she knew and cared about, and given the right circumstances could be led to fear it happening again.
Inventory: Civilian clothing, wallet, combat knife, throwing knife, Glock 26 subcompact pistol, small lockpick kit, iPod loaded with music and maybe an interesting podcast or two
Samples: A conversational thread
And one with a little more thought process