Black Widow (Belova)

Yelena Belova (Scenesys ID: 8855)
Quote
"Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray."
Profile
Full Name:	Yelena Belova
Gender:	Female
Species:	Metahuman
Theme:	Marvel (FC)
Occupation:	Spy
Citizenship:	Russian Federation
Residence:	Variable
Education:	Specialized
Status:	Dropped
Groups:	SHIELD
Other Information
Apparent Age:	Early 20s	Actual Age:	31
Date of Birth	11 November 1999	Actor:	Florence Pugh
Height:	178 cm (5'10")	Weight:	62 kg (137 lb)
Hair Color:	Variable (Blonde)	Eye Color:	Hazel
Theme Song:	"Tomorrow We Fight" by Svrcina "Empires" by Ruelle "Revolution" by UNSECRET

Profile

By all appearances, Yelena Belova is an Eastern European student taking in the New York art scene and trying to scrape by like every other person around her 20-something years.

In a much darker world of intelligence and spycraft, she is a deadly instrument. There, she is the latest incarnation of a Cold War legend that used to keep spies up at night -- and many authors and screenwriters employed with the idea of an agent provocateur.

Sheet

Description

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Description:

A classic beauty boasts certain universal qualities: wide, expressive eyes coupled with a clear complexion and symmetrical features. She could be well carved from alabaster, a faint blush of winter roses softening the delicate fairness. The rest of her is far from soft by any means, features chiseled to an elegant, almost feline cast. A wealth of fair copper hair is pulled back into a stylish ponytail, a few loose gilt-brightened strands carelessly swept off her brow. She lies somewhere in her twenties, blessed by the boundless vitality and athletic, lithe build of a committed dancer. There is something sharp about her, a bearing that shifts from playful to wickedly impudent when directly challenged. She moves like a knife, as graceful and sure as a surgeon's scalpel, purposeful in her effortless carriage.

Her attire is quintessentially twenty-something, balanced between function and fashion. A sleek grey leather jacket tailored the hourglass of her figure lies comfortably over a scooped white shirt, at odds with the notched lapels and sophisticated slashed hemline angling over her hips. Sleek black trousers skate down to tuck into elegant riding boots, the heels and toes continuously treated to avoid showing scuffmarks. Black fingerless gloves protect her hands, and the woven nylon belt slung around her hips rests at a crooked angle.

History

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History:

Subject "BLACK WIDOW" (Yelena Belova) is a graduate of the RED ROOM in Moscow. She entered the program as a young child in the run up to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her parents were told she joined a premier ballerina school. At the Red Room, she excelled in her education.

She exhibited all the traits and talents of an exceptional operative, trained by an elite cadre of spymasters prepared to mold her into a patriotic assassin. Her instructors did more than teach dance and history. No less than James "Bucky" Barnes refined her fighting skills to survive in the field. An already deep loyalty to the rodina - the Russian homeland - grew deeper, twisted and dangerous.

Her initial activities were confined solely within Russia and then later its satellites, notably Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states. GRU stationed her in Kaliningrad and Moscow exclusively while subjecting her to the modernized espionage program. Directives from the highest level reoriented her, first embedding her with an experienced hacking group focused on gathering intelligence and disseminating false information. Then, she was briefly attached to the Winter Guard to improve her fieldwork cooperating with other supernaturally-gifted agents while she herself was not yet altered.

Records obtained via censored indicate she stands as the Red Room's highest scoring graduate, surpassing benchmarks established in firearms, hand to hand combat, and infiltration/exfiltration by her predecessor. Senior officials in the Red Room personally administered the standard graduation protocol to Yelena. Unbenownst to her, they created duplicates of her -- clones in cryogenic stasis, 'grown' in self-contained pods -- and a psychic maintained regular updates of her memories in case the need should ever arise.

Officially employed through the GRU intelligence directorate, Yelena was activated as the Black Widow once her taskmasters struck her predecessor from the role. Her active missions are no longer constrained to Russia. She has an impossible task to achieve: serving her nation and re-establishing its supremacy in a world no longer controlled by two superpowers.

Personality

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Personality:

Yelena has the shining qualities of a spy: analytical, rational, adaptable. She lacks the rigid thinking that cannot respond to a sudden change in a plan, forever reassessing and re-evaluating her surroundings. Her mind tirelessly crunches through data to produce positive outcomes, feverishly lending alternatives for every situation. Her expert disaster planning talents originate from a deliberate, ruthless regimen training her to wall off her emotional core and focus strictly on the task at hand. She can hyperfocus on an aim with unswerving determination, pouring her energy into a narrowly defined purpose. She would never admit she thrills to the pursuit and the successful hunt, or that a driving fire is an unmet need to prove herself.

Bright and pragmatic, she wields her intellect like a blade undimmed by the jaded nature of the world. Yelena is more idealistic than some, buoyed by an intense loyalty for her country. She can and does distinguish between homeland and government as two wholly separate entities. This capacity for viewing shades of grey to finite segments is essential in spycraft but slowly contributing to a growing weariness for the screwed up politics, nihilistic power-plays, and soul-deadening directives done for personal gain instead of the good of the many. Espionage is a place without ethics, and Yelena has gone without a functioning moral compass for a very long time.

Her idealism is faltering, signalling a tectonic shift in how she views the world she lives in and notably herself. Every mission calls for a separate face, a new persona, given criteria donned and shed like a uniform. Who is the woman beneath? Yelena exchanges masks upon masks to fit the need with exceptional ease, giving off the reaction she wishes and anticipates like the best of them. But who does that make her beneath all the matroshka dolls? Is she a blank canvas waiting for the brush? She would vehemently deny this.

And yet she fears that her guile and mastery of manipulation conceal one deceit greater than all others: that she is merely the next woman to be forged into Black Widow at the cost of her psyche and her self. So she is quietly, fiercely fixated on determining what makes herself tick, and protecting that from all else. It sucks to be young.

Abilities

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Black Widow:
Yelena was biochemically altered by the Red Room's variant of super-soldier serum. The formula permanently enhanced her physique to a degree she is generally beyond peak human condition in all senses. The serum completely inhibits the aging process, suspending her perpetually in her twenties.

Peak Human Agility:
Honed by the Red Room's brutal regimen of balletic education, Yelena is at the very pinnacle of physical agility and possibly a shade beyond. She ranked highest of all recruits in tests related to reaction time and dexterity, which allow her to leap between buildings and balance on narrow ledges or highly compromising positions while accurately taking shots at enemies. She can make broad leaps from standing and running starts, and free-run with ease. While in combat, Yelena can react by dodging multiple attacks in slippery conditions while counterattacking, and move out of the way of danger with speed.

Peak Human Durability:
A Black Widow is expected to endure exceptionally challenging environments (like a Siberian winter) and still function. With her stamina, she can run marathons before tiring or engage in heavy physical activity for hours before falling to the pain. Her endurance coupled with her healing factor allows her attain extraordinary feats.

Peak Human Healing:
The serum infused with Yelena's physiology provides accelerated healing beyond human norms. Minor injuries are halved in recovery time, while she can recover from moderate and severe damage seven times faster than most mortals.

Peak Human Reflexes:
Red Room tactics subjected Yelena to multiple attacks in chaotic situations. Her instructors taught her to deflect and redirect melee attacks, dodge shots, seek cover, and take out a target all while in the middle of a street. Her reaction times are hard-wired to be about as fast as a human can be

Peak Human Strength:
Augmentations to Yelena's bodily tissue plus an extremely physical lifestyle have elevated her strength to the maximum level a human can possibly have. She can lift around 550 lbs, and slightly more in bursts for short periods of time.

Peak Sensory Awareness:

The serum not only augmented the body, it elevated her sensory awareness to peak human standards. She hears better, sees farther with enviable accuracy, and gains a deeper range of input through touch, taste, and smell. Useful for avoiding poisons of course.

Skills

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Athletics:
More a free runner and acrobat than a ballerina, Yelena can take advantage of her superlative flexibility in dizzying ways. She can contort herself to escape confinement as easily as wait, scrunched up in a box, with few physical detriments. Spend an hour suspended by the ceiling with corner anchor points to listen into a meeting of mafioso and their Latverian attache? She can do that. Her parkour skills allow her to break fall damage and traverse the urban environment with shocking ease.

Combat:
Taught by Russia top instructors, Yelena is a weapon armed with only her bare hands and a smile. She learned a dizzying variety of fighting styles, ranging from homegrown Russian styles of boxing to martial arts. She is an outstanding kickboxer and expert in savate, aikido, wing chun, taekwondo, and the practically unknown style of systema, a fighting style unique to her homeland. She particularly studies blocks and flying kicks.

Dancing:
Yelena has practiced ballet since childhood with an eye to appear professionally on the stage among the best ballerinas in Russia. She has the chops to make a good living if she ever changed careers. She might not be the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi without serious commitment, as she prefers acrobatics, but she still can hold her own.

Driver:
The Red Room didn't stint on training her in evasive and high performance driving techniques. She learned to negotiate high-level skills through the hellish traffic of Moscow and ancient streets of Istanbul. She can push a performance street car hard or force a wheezing saloon car to operate near its maximum. With a motorcycle, she is a downright stand-out, suitably talented to race on a professional level. She can maintain them and perform ridiculous feats, like tight turns or leap gaps in roads, outrun pursuit, and take that bike where it does not belong. When it comes to other vehicles, she has functional skill to manage a speedboat and most outboard motors, and piloting helicopters. Yelena will not be performing any sort of Apache attack maneuvers, but she can get airborne and land safely in difficult terrain.

Espionage:
By her predecessor's standards, Yelena is new to the world of espionage, but she learned all her spy craft at the knees of masters. She understands its many facets well, having practiced her fieldwork extensively in tracking and evasion; stealth; infiltration and exfiltration; and disguises. It's more than knowing how to make dead drops. She knows how to pick her marks and make approaches almost unnoticed. She learned a variety of old school skills like manual lockpicking and pickpocketing, as well as a variety of cutting edge ones like digital reconnaissance, placing bugs, and tracking digital footprints. She has standard training in demolitions. Much of her training focused on counterintelligence to resist interrogation, detection, and erase her presence. She's a very good spy, but those of the highest tier (like her predecessor or Nick Fury for classic examples, and SHIELD's top agents as a baseline) can chip away at her defenses or trace her. Anyone else is going to find her a potent ally or enemy.

Hacking:
A product of the modern age, Yelena was embedded with Russian hacking teams as part of her rigorous training. She knows the ins and outs of breaking into computer and surveillance systems, covering her tracks as she does so. Even advanced technology doesn't slow her down too much. She excels at breaking into systems, acquiring information, and exiting without anyone the wiser. She also understands social engineering by way of hacking, a talent unfortunately used to very questionable purposes.

Linguistics:
Like most spies, Yelena is a polyglot, trained to speak Russian, English, French, German, and Mandarin. She can function in Spanish if she has to. Her recall of other languages where she has been embedded is proficient enough for conversations and day-to-day activities. She has techniques to pick up foreign languages through immersion, but it's not instantaneous.

Manipulation:
Half the art of espionage is knowing how to get other people to give you what you want. It's the dagger in the psychological battlefield, and Yelena uses her natural charm and chameleon personality to push all the right buttons. Extracting information, aid, or other favours uses a variety of techniques focused on leaving a mark completely unaware she is taking advantage of them. Exceptionally observant or wary targets might clue in, and Yelena still makes mistakes with highly experienced spies or metahuman targets capable of empathy. Given her Red Room training, most other military or business targets don't stand a chance and even hardened spooks may never not realize they've been played. With time and experience, Yelena has the potential to be completely devastating in this arena. As it is, she's got room to refine her skills and grow.

Marksmanship:
Yelena achieved one of the highest accolades possible in the Red Room: she surpassed all other peers in firearms, a record that stands to this day. She is a deadly sniper with rifles and expert in using firearms in close-quarters combat or sharpshooting. Put a gun in her hands and she's a prime threat. Though she can push weapons to their mechanical peak, she needs gear she's familiar with to achieve maximum results.

Silver Tongued:
It's not enough to be manipulative on its own. Yelena can tell an all-out lie and compartmentalize herself sufficiently to largely believe what she says. Her deceptive nature extends into suppressing physical tells and giveaways, thanks to advanced psychological study in the Red Room program. She can sell something with complete sincerity and the appropriate emotional reactions, detectable only to a very few. She has lied to her direct superiors at gunpoint and maintained her cover under advanced interrogation techniques (read: torture), and come through with flying colours. Still, Yelena is only human in this respect. She has many defenses against conventional and some supernatural methods, but seasoned spies or savants will see through the veil. However, if she believes the lie or it's still truth as she knows it, does it come off as a lie? She exists in ambiguity. She so often spins lies that the balance of truth in her statements is middling, though Yelena has an uncanny ability to turn a truth slant so she's not exactly telling a falsehood.

She similarly recognizes efforts to deceive and manipulate her well beyond the spectrum of a normal person. Her inherent paranoia already makes her suspicious of motive, and she is alert for the same craft she uses to disguise her intentions or twist the truth. In practice, she stands a very good chance of noticing most lies and subtle attempts to manipulate her emotions or intentions. But there is a finesse to it she just doesn't have fully mastered, and that's a liability, as +wea Pale Spider notes.

Willpower:

The specific, brutal regimen of reconditioning Yelena from childhood created psychological profile of compartmentalization that, in effect, makes her extremely difficult to completely break down under stress or through prolonged interrogation. Russia intended her to be a high value tool, one that could resist deep or unwitting manipulation. Her conditioning will hold up when exposed to exotic interrogation techniques. She equally received strong knowledge of counter-interrogation techniques, further prolonging her mental endurance. Her defenses do not protect her forever, but they do mean she's a particularly tough nut to crack. At least long enough for the Red Room to reclaim her.

Resources

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Armory:
She calls her armory "Yel's Bells," a play on Hell's Bells, and it's for a good reason. Yelena works with a dizzying variety of firearms in her line of work, and that means having access to an impressive array of legal and generally not legal firearms. Most of these come via the Red Room, therefore made completely anonymous and de-serialized, with the required ammunition similarly handmade or deidentified. She has a small personal cache of semiautomatic and automatic pistols to go with standard issue guns, like the trust 9mm Beretta. Anything more unusual, like sniper rifles, is locked up and harder to access. However, given time or need, she can acquire just about anything short of energy weapons. Atop the firearms and ammo, plus any necessary additions like suppressors, silencers, and scopes, she owns a variety of knives given they're a favourite weapon to use. None of this is bound to make her friends with the authorities, it's worth saying.

Caches:
A girl going worldwide never knows when she might need a go-bag, a safehaven, and a stock of cash. Modern day Russia is riddled by money gone astray and Yelena has a fair portion of her own savings, weapons, and gear stashed throughout Europe. The Red Room doesn't know all of them. Several were created out of necessity, but they provide a means to go to ground for several months before she runs out.

Connections:
Oh, the ties that bind. Yelena has legitimate ties to GRU and other Russian spy agencies, among a greater bureaucracy. The former technically employs her as a captain. She can boss around Russian diplomats and spies with the tacit approval of her handlers, but it's risky. She maintains many contacts among dark web hacking groups, owing to her time embedded with them, though through personas and rarely face to face. They provide an invaluable information source.

The Red Room holds her leash as it were, and she can conceivably tap its allies and contacts for her own.

Finally, she is an ally of the Winter Guard with the assistance and help that brings. It's a two-way street; they expect her to pitch in as much as appropriate if called upon.

Gadgets:
The Red Room outfitted Yelena with her own Black Widow suit. It consists of a highly reinforced fabric that acts as a thermal suppressor, augmented to repel small arms fire and resist extremes in temperature. Its adhesive surface clings to surfaces and supports her if she scales ice, sheer calls or freestanding metal poles. Variations for aquatic, arctic, urban, and desert environments exist, including 'plug ins' for ziplining, parachuting, and other needs.

The famed "Black Widow" gauntlets underwent modernization when Yelena was activated. They have several primary and secondary functions built in.
- Widow's Line: A retractable cable line linked to a burst-loaded grapple can support up to 500 kg individually and allow swift movement and negotiating difficult terrain.
- Widow's Bite: The bracelet can discharge electroshock blasts up to 250,000 volts in projected strikes that disrupt electronics or injure living targets. Lower settings can disorient targets while higher shocks incapacitate or outright kill.
- Widow's Sting: She can discharge electrified, magnetic disks to a distance of 50m that unleash an electric shock. These are largely intended to stun targets or destroy equipment.
- Smoke Pellets: Loaded pellets in her gauntlets produce a variety of effects depending on the chemical compounds, including obscuring gases, blinding components, aerosols that cause respiratory distress, or inhalants that weaken or leave subjects unconscious.
- Lockpicks: Yelena has digital and physical lockpicks on hand.

Widow's Eye: This is an augmented reality, fused-sensing mask. The mask allows thermal, HD cameras, and nightvision receptors to fuse into a singular sensory output. The "eye" is sufficiently sensitive to spot footprints on rough terrain in cool temperatures and can operate in total darkness without the need for IR light. Uplinks permit transmission of data through secured satellite lines into a locked-down database with its own analyst in addition to providing quantified layouts and data downstream. Having projected maps is highly useful.

Identities:
GRU, the Red Room, and various black ops teams have all supplied Yelena with a variety of identities complete with deep digital profiles, necessary documentation, and records to support a name, face, and place. She can withdraw from German accounts as easily as pass as an Argentinian grad student. With her own hacking skills and Winter Guard help, she has established false identification in several secure locations. If she needs to bug out, she can.

Motorcycle:

Yelena owns a tricked out Ducati, the kind of luscious speed-demon motorcycle suitable for the Italian Dolomites and outrunning most cars.

Weaknesses

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Inferiority Complex:
Imagine the person held up as an icon fell from that pedestal. Yelena is dealing with the dichotomy of that reality. Natalia Romanova's graduation from the Red Room set the benchmark for every recruit past, present, and future. Her spectre haunted the training rooms and ghosted through every exam. Each recruit was held up against a legendary figure of the Cold War, her achievements measured up against the infamous Black Widow's. Yelena absorbed those stories as every instructor lectured on them and developed a strong case of hero worship for the woman who redefined spy games, hunting enemies of the Motherland. As she strove to match her heroine's service to country and people, she achieved stunning results of her own -- but they were never enough. Yelena was never sure she could match Romanova, much less surpass her. That fear gnaws at her still, buried deep. When Black Widow mantle passed to her shoulders under the worst circumstances, Yelena's awe and respect turned to contempt. It still doesn't change the fact she is stepping into the large boots of her elder 'sister.'

Long Shadows:
The Black Widow mantle came into being in the shadows of the Second World War. Her predecessor's tenure stretched over decades compared to her few years. Yelena has a tremendous reputation in the world of spooks to live up to, and it puts her at a disadvantage dealing with people expecting her to match Ms. Romanova or, worse, be her.

Pale Spider:
The cloak and dagger game of espionage rewards experience. Yelena is damn good as a spy and an assassin, but that doesn't make up for opponents in the game since the Stalin regime. Great potential with contacts and intuition honed by fieldwork still has gaps she cannot make up for. There are things she simply does not know, situations she has not faced, and that can be a detriment when she encounters them.

Ruthless:
The Red Room instilled ruthlessness in Yelena before she was old enough to tie her shoes. She will manipulate her foes without remorse, relentlessly pursuing her targets. They taught her the ends always justify the means for sake of Russia. Even with a tidal shift in her thoughts of late, it's hard-wired into the system she will do what is necessary.

Sheltered:
Yelena spent many years in long and specialized training, walled off in special compounds or embedded missions. She didn't begin her tenure as the Black Widow until the least few years. She doesn't have the comparable 10+ years of spy experience and fieldwork her chronological age would suggest, and that is a definite deficit.

The Rodina:
Yelena truly loves her homeland, the black earth of Russia. It defines her identity. Every sacrifice made for her people and her country wash the red ledger clean. She gives of herself to assure their happiness and independence. Russia gives her purpose and meaning in this world. It's practically unshakeable. Even if the system and leadership prove corrupt, the Rodina endures. She draws strength from that bond of love and home (the only one she has). With the right arguments, someone might turn her allegiance or redirect her mission if they can convince her her homeland and its people are at risk.

Thin Red Lines:
Little ballerinas raised to be assassins of the first water rarely have ethical or moral limitations. Yelena nevertheless has certain lines she would really rather not cross and she'll fight tooth and nail not to.

She will not kill young children without serious coercion. She's more likely to ferry them to safety with adoptive parents than pull the trigger on them.

The idea of betraying her country for its own good causes her difficulty. If it benefited the people to remove a corrupt president, general or GRU leader, she would do it without question though they all presumably share the same loyalties. Dropping the electrical grid to flush out a mid-level target and leaving 50,000 citizens of a Siberian town to freeze to death in mid-winter is unthinkable.

Those who manage to break through and earn her loyalty she would be hard put to ruthlessly strike down. She can go through the motions, but sooner or later the attempt will break her.

Untrusting:

Teach a child the world is a cold, cruel place and they will learn to view every relationship as a transaction with the potential to hurt them. Yelena knows you can never truly trust someone. The Red Room built independence and pride, but stripped Yelena of the natural connections nearly everyone has. She was taught she has only herself to fall back on, depriving her of any natural trust in others. The spymasters severed competing loyalties at the cost of leaving her alone in the world. She is learning with disconcerting force how damaging her upbringing was.

Logs

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
Two Years is Too Long	May 26th, 2024	Summary needed
Art Galas to Remember	May 2nd, 2024	Yelena protects Damian as his security at a gala. They manage to get along better than expected.
Better Offers.	May 8th, 2023	Assassins, detectives, job offers and pizza!
Mystics and Mandarin	April 16th, 2023	And mahjong!
Goodbye in Dubai	April 13th, 2022	First direct attempt on Tony's life is at an 'event' in Dubai. It was the old waiter switcheroo! No one expects that!
Ladies night at the Lady.	April 9th, 2022	Thomas gives Yelena the tour of the Lady including the Apartment upstairs. They then spend the evening watching I love Lucy and playing Monopoly... She managed to get all the railroads on her first trip around the board. Obviously cheating.
Green on the Hudson	March 17th, 2022	St Patrick's Day turned a few people green in different ways.
Reallocation of resources	March 16th, 2022	Perfectly good Indian food is wasted.
The Russian Summit	March 16th, 2022	Natasha and Yelena end hostilities while Alex plays referee
Home Sweet Penthouse	March 15th, 2022	After the attempt to grab Pepper, Yelena and Pep make it back to the penthouse. Vodka and feelings are shared.
Widows	March 14th, 2022	Yelena meets Alexander. Then the Widows meet. And it doesn't go as expected.
Girls Just Wanna	March 14th, 2022	A night out at a dive bar. Yelena talks about her feelings while Pepper almost gets got.
The Pre-Interview	March 13th, 2022	A reporter from the Daily Planet, Clark Kent, comes to meet Pepper to ask her about the new STEM school that Stark Industries is sponsoring in Metropolis. Yelena is along for the ride as Pepper's body guard. Poor Clark was not ready for Yelena.
Enter the Devil's Playhouse	March 12th, 2022	Troublesome stuff in Lux. Iron man, Black widow, Pepper pots... and the Lux crowd. Friction ensued.
A welcome home like no other	February 19th, 2022	Tony gets home and is met by Yelena. They chat.
Meet the New Girl	February 16th, 2022	Pepper meets her new bodyguard, then Steve Rogers brings America's butt to the party.
Intervention	February 15th, 2022	Carol and Yelena come to Tony with information. Important information.
Silk Stalkings	February 13th, 2022	Carol catches Yelena spying and they have an encounter.
From highbrow to Lowenbrau	February 6th, 2022	Dodging death after a lecture? Tony and Henry meet Yelena Belova on the steps of Columbia. They're not the target this evening.
Don't Blame It on the Whiskey	February 3rd, 2020	Happy sammiches!
Pauk I Stal'	January 30th, 2020	Summary needed
A Game of Espionage	January 16th, 2020	Summary needed

Cutscenes

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Gallery

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