Natasha Romanoff
This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Natasha Romanoff (disambiguation) and Black Widow (disambiguation).
| Natasha Romanoff | |
|---|---|
 Portrayed by Scarlett Johansson | |
| Codename: | Black Widow |
| Affiliations: | X-Force |
| Birthdate: | November 22, 1984 |
| Journal: | xp_blackwidow |
| Player: | Zippit |
The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I.
Burned former agent of SHIELD, currently sorting out life and her new mutant status.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: xp_blackwidow
Real Name: Natalia "Natasha" Alianovna Romanova
Codename: Black Widow
Aliases: Natasha Romanoff, Tasha, Madame Nikita, Nancy Rushman, Laura Matthers, Nadine Roman, Oktober, Black Pearl, Ebon Flame, Ms. Heck, "Nat", Tsarina, Red, Natalia Shostakova, Natuska, Czarina, Laura Mathers
First Appearance: November 24, 2015
Date of Birth: November 22, 1984
Place of Birth: Volgograd, Russia (formerly Stalingrad, USSR)
Citizenship: Russian and United States (through special exception obtained by SHIELD)
Relatives: None
Education: Red Room Academy
Relationship Status: Single
Occupation: Former intelligence agent with SHIELD
Team Affiliation: X-Force
Biography
Red Room Childhood
While a modern product of the Red Room Academy, the original dictates still held true, and Natasha was an orphan brought in at a young age to serve in the elite Black Widow program. Every potential candidate was tested for the X-gene and monitored as they progressed. At any indication of manifestation, they were transferred to departments that better suited their new talents. Natasha never appeared to manifest and doctors theorized that the early exposure to Red Room procedures suppressed expression or that she was simply a carrier for the X-gene.
Red Room training centered around hand to hand combat, subterfuge, body language, and other related skills. Since Natasha grew up during the rise of the digital age, she was also trained to be a proficient hacker.
A main tenet of the Red Room was competition and it was ruthlessly cultivated in each generation of Widows despite the fact the girls eventually came to consider each other as sisters. The number of girls in Natasha’s generation dwindled over the years as part of the process. It was survive or die. No graduate of the program hadn’t dealt out death herself or felt the immense relief of just barely escaping with their life.
Previous successful products of Red Room programs were periodically brought in to test and train the Widows. As a graduate of the program, Natasha has extensive experience with all the Red Room’s top assets and in the initial period post-graduation, her assignments were completed in conjunction with another operative.
Codename: Black Widow
Intelligence agencies the world over have a file titled “Black Widow” but nothing of substance. Verifiable information is scarce and what little they do have is inconsistent. The variety of descriptions and instances where she’d have to be in two places at once have most thinking she’s a myth conjured up as a catch all for things they can’t explain. This is exactly what the Red Room wants though there are suspicions that the Black Widow is a codename for a variety of agents but like with everything else there’s no hard evidence.
Even as a full fledged Black Widow, competition was still a way of life. The best assignments, the challenging ones, were the ones Natasha wanted but that desire put her into direct competition with Yelena Belova, a fellow graduate from Natasha’s Black Widow generation. Already considered in the top tier of Red Room operatives, their competition elevated them even further. It was why Yelena’s capture and subsequent defection turned the organized world Natasha knew upside down.
She was hauled back into the Red Room facility where she was subjected to every test, scan, evaluation, and training simulation they thought up. Deemed uncompromised, Natasha was sent out on missions again though a close eye was kept on her but not close enough of one that stopped her from gathering intel on Yelena’s new position and employers. Over the course of several years, Natasha planned and prepared. An assignment in a familiar locale with a small, inexperienced handler team was her perfect opportunity. She quickly and quietly took out her handlers, closed or emptied her Red Room accounts, erased her records, and disappeared.
They didn’t let her go easy. Two Black Widow defections within a span of years was too many. They sent elite retrieval teams after her and when those failed they sent some of their top operatives, but Natasha hadn’t been considered one of their best for nothing. She set herself up as a freelance contractor because exchanging one set of masters for another didn’t appeal to her.
SHIELD Recruitment
Then on a mission, she ran into Clint Barton, SHIELD operative, who had orders to kill her. A rogue Widow was bound to attract attention but she’d counted on the Red Room’s continual production of them to keep the waters muddy. She’d evidently had too much faith. What should have been a kill mission turned into a recruitment one because despite herself she found herself listening to Barton’s strange little spiel. Coming in out of the cold had meant returning to the KGB/Red Room or yoking herself to SHIELD like Yelena but now here was a third option.
After some finagling with the higher ups and concessions on both sides, she joined SHIELD for an initial probationary period that graduated into full operative status. Belova was not pleased with this. Tension from their time in the Red Room and at the KGB continued to simmer producing a bit of an unofficial policy where the two of them were kept away from each other as much as possible. No one wanted to deal with the consequences of a fight between two Black Widows.
Belova’s tenure might’ve been longer but since joining, Natasha has carried out her missions without incident. Initially, she was partnered with Barton and Coulson was their handler. As their confidence in her grew, solo missions became the norm, putting her skill set to use.
Coming To The X-Mansion
After the events of Along Came A Spider, where Natasha was burned and her unexpected mutant status was revealed, it was deemed that for the best interests of all parties involved she should stay off the grid until things got sorted out. She moved into a suite with Clint and started piecing together a new life outside of SHIELD and making friends.
Making friends when you're a former burned SHIELD agent proved difficult, and for the most part Natasha ended up keeping to herself - though she sometimes teamed up with Clint's girlfriend to torture him, because that's fun. In April 2016, Clint took her on an unofficial mission to Alaska after his former partner went missing. But she was taken out when Kyle, under the control of Fixer, used a trigger phrase to knock her out. She woke up in a closet several hours later.
Luckily for Natasha, life wasn't all doom and gloom at the mansion. It wasn't easy for her to connect with people, but she had her hands full with making sure Clint didn't do stupid things, like kill himself testing an antidote for her poison, or going in and out of the country for months at a time trying to set up his new team. She coasted easily through 2017 - a welcome break after so many years of spy drama.
2018
Spy life wouldn't leave Natasha alone for long, of course - she was lured into joining X-Force by Wanda, and was even lucky enough to miss out on most of the things that come along with that life - for this year, at least. She almost got out unscathed, until a Danger Room mishap trapped her in a dystopian, zombie-riddled future. They all got out, though.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 5'7
Weight: 131 lbs
Eyes: Green
Hair: Naturally Red
Other Features: Two red hourglasses on her wrists at the base of her palms indicating the location of poisonous prongs hidden under her skin.
Powers
She has the ability to weaken people she touches directly with her hands. This aspect of her mutation manifested long ago and, since there are no visible indications of its use, has gone unrecognized. The energy absorbed by Natasha allows her to subdue her victim more quickly than she might otherwise, siphoning from them and supplying her with a bit of a boost. Skin-to-skin contact is necessary along with the presence of adrenaline in her system. She has no control over this and the amount of energy she drains is dependent on the duration and number of times she contacts skin. She cannot absorb another mutant’s powers or memories (nor those of any other type of enhanced human) and she will never be able to drain a person of enough energy to kill them. This aspect of her mutation simply gives her an edge in hand to hand combat.
The first physical indication that Natasha is a mutant is the development of poisonous prongs that she can extend from the base of her palms with a sharp flicking motion. They’re only a half an inch in size, if that, and not particularly wide. Their location will eventually be marked by red hourglasses on each wrist where they emerge. Normally (i.e, before her intro plot), her body produces poison in direct proportion with the amount of adrenaline excreted by her adrenal glands. This balancing act between her biological functions means that any adrenaline in Natasha’s system is essentially eaten up as fuel for the production of poison. Thanks to her body’s use of adrenaline, she’s far more level-headed during high-stress situations, often appearing unnaturally calm as she analyzes potential courses of action, formulates a plan, and proceeds. (Meaning her blood is slightly poisonous all the time but there was never any danger to herself or others and no need for a further manifestation.)
However, introduce abnormally large quantities of adrenaline to Natasha’s system (as a result of torture or artificial injection via epi-pen) and her body reacts by utilizing it all for poison - which means she needs a way to get rid of the poison or she risks becoming a danger to herself and others. (Basically ODing on her own poison/actually killing someone if they’re accidentally exposed to her blood.) She will eventually find out that milking the prongs like a snake for venom is best.
The rapid production of poison comes at a cost because, once the adrenaline is out of her system, she suffers from a typical adrenaline crash. However, due to the extreme nature of the introduction of the adrenaline as well as the energy her body uses to convert it into poison, Natasha is left in a catatonic state for a period of time until her body regains equilibrium. Essentially, should she ever purposefully introduce ridiculous amounts of adrenaline to her system, she’ll need to weigh the amount of poison she requires against the time she needs to use it while factoring in how long she’ll have before she goes catatonic. A situation like this might lead to symptoms akin to an overdose: fever, sweating, muscle contractions, and debilitating pain as the signs preceding a lapse into catatonia.
Due to the uniqueness of the poison, there are currently no antitoxins that she can use to lessen or stop its production in her system. Cyclically, the energy siphoning aspect of her mutation can act as a mechanism to combat the adrenaline crash, supplying non-adrenaline based energy to neutralize the excess byproducts in her system.
The poison prongs typically carry a single dose of poison in them, enough to incapacitate or kill a single person, depending on their size. After utilizing them, she will need to wait for a period of time (and adequate introduction of adrenaline to her system) for the poison glands to refill. Natasha will begin milking the glands on a regular basis to create poison pills and coatings for her weapons. This will also inspire research into other ways to utilize it along with the development of an antitoxin.
The majority of this she’ll find out after she comes to the mansion because the Red Room didn’t think she needed to know she had the gene and what files she did find on herself before she went freelance didn’t mention it. She’ll know she has the X-gene from her SHIELD agent induction but since she has no detectable mutation they also assumed she was simply a carrier for the gene. She’ll be ambivalent that suddenly she’s now a mutant and be more concerned about learning control.
Equipment
Prefers to carry a garrote and two handguns.
- Will field test whatever items Clint has invented
- Occasionally carries plush pea pods stocked with mission useful items
Trivia
General
- Provides Clint with a constant supply of vodka and sour Skittles from whatever country she was currently in
- Loves trolling people
- Created a passport for Clint's Buckybear with accompanying visa stamps
- Enjoys having pretty nails
- Texts like Clint when hungover
Natasha's Flings/NPC Relationships
- No strings attached fling with an MI-6 agent whenever they're both in the same country and won't jeopardize mission status
Pea Pod Personalizations
- Natasha - darker green with red hour glass zip pull
- Clint - purple with bow and arrow zip pull
External Links
Plots
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
Operation: Dewey Deceptional System
2022
Clan Akkaba - Operation: Ascent
Meta
Player: Zippit
Email: 
Player Icon Base: Scarlett Johansson
Meta Trivia
Phase 1 Natasha was an NPC (Natasha Romanova), introduced and socked by Dex.
