Elena “Nene” B. Romanova is an NPC played by Doshii Jun. She is a firearms designer for Zen Armaments.

Build and Skin Color: Elena has what might be called a “stiff” build. Her body is not especially feminine, being muscled and toned along all areas, though she is not without traditionally womanly proportions. She has a light olive skin tone.

Eyes and Facial Features: Elena has wide, crystalline blue eyes set into a narrower, rectangular face.

Ears: Elena's ears are a little smaller than the proportion of her face might suggest, with attached lobes. They are somewhat square.

Hair Color and Style: Elena wears her sharply red, voluminous hair, with its occasional hot pink highlights, long enough to skirt the base of her spine. She places it in a braided ponytail when working out, and is known but more often enjoys wearing it free, where its bounciness forms a wide curtain around her neck and shoulders.

Distinguishing Features: Elena wears a gold crucifix around her neck on a small chain. She also enjoys leather pants, “because they show my ass.”

Personality: Elena is not a woman who messes around. In work or play, Elena is serious. Things are done correctly, precisely and to the fullest extent she can do them. Half-assing life means not living it.

This perspective makes it hard for people to want to get to know her. She is a taskmaster, a slave driver. She demands the best of others, without excuses or blubbering. Obstacles are objectives to her that must be overcome.

People who do get to know her, who are close to her, see a woman that loves her friends and wants their company as often as she can. Whether it's drinking vodka and talking on a cold night indoors, or airbike racing on a sunny, muggy day, Elena savors her friends.

• Likes: Cherry-flavored vodka, vodka, whiskey'd cream, firearms, airbike racing, winters, summers, cold autumns, hairy men
• Dislikes: Sake, rain, excuses, “idiots,” “tramps”
• Goals: To fully live her life in work and play.

Maki Motobushi, younger brother  

Elena's history is straightforward, like her. She grew up in the north of Kennewes, daughter to a gruff, hard-drinking father and an equally durable mother. Life was hard, but not brutal in the cold of Kennewes, even with the Greens and Yellows and Reds always fighting. They lived close to a strategic town, and lived life without experiencing much harassment.

Elena skipped the military route, even with her interest in firearms nurtured by her father. She instead attended Kyousou Institute of Technology on a scholarship from the Kennewes government. She was in the top 10 of her class (she was No. 4, a fact that chews her wrong to this day). She studied engineering, metallurgy and physics, but she also completed the school's two-year fabrication program.

Elena had no desire to do anything high-minded with her education. She returned to Kennewes and worked for Zen Armaments for about 13 years, but never rose above assistant chief designer — a position several tiers below what would let her run her own team. She was lured away by the promise of getting her own team at The Paragon Initiative. When Paragon dissolved, she made a vow to someday put a bullet in the kneecap of the bastards who bilked the entire company.

She considered working for Ketsurui Zaibatsu's firearms development division when Zen Armaments made her an offer — the title of deputy chief designer and a small, young team of her own, attached to the Sitanin Zbrojovka Unlimited subdivision. In exchange? Obtain (steal) what was left of Paragon's unfinished designs and bring them to Zen Arms.

Most of the designs were hers, so it was, as she said, “A pleasure.”

Elena is not the most brilliant theoretical engineer, but she is talented with application. Her specialty is firearms engineering.

Elena learned a lot of math in her time, including calculus, geometry, complex analysis and dynamical systems. She's much more of an “applied mathematics” person.

Elena is a very capable shooter, having learned from her father how to handle and use one. She knows her way around a knife, but is not a learned fighter, having received no formal military training.

Elena is familiar with infantry tactics as an extension of her profession. She is trained to apply them in any appreciable way; rather, she knows them enough to design firearms to better facilitate their use.