Vorona

Vorona (ヴァローナ Vorona) is a 19 year old Russian assassin. She was employed in a weapon dealing organization led by Lingerin Douglanikov and his collaborator, her father Dracon. She escaped to Japan with a truckload of illegal weapons taken from Lingerin and Dracon.

Characteristics
Vorona is described in the novels as very good looking and has extensive knowledge about even the most trivial of subjects and can bring up such information right off the top of her head. Aside from her shoulder length blond hair and icey blue eyes, her most distinctive (though rarely seen) feature is the cross shaped scar on her left breast.

Although physically, very healthy, Lingerin remarks that mentally, Vorona is still very much a child, by which he means that there is still a lot about the world that she has yet to experience.

She is regarded by her partner Slon as a "fighting addict". She enjoys defeating opponents that are much stronger than her in order to increase her strength and loves to fight enemies that bring something unusual to the table (such as Celty, Anri, and Shizuo). Surprisingly, she also has a rather large sweetooth. This is first shown in Volume 08 where, after Shizuo and Tom ask her about her home in Russia, she somehow steered the conversation over to Russia's history of cake. Shizuo took this as a sign that she had a craving for sweets which vorona admitted although she was a bit embarassed by it.

Background
As a child Vorona lead a rather lonely yet still contented life style. Her father Dracon rarely ever spent time with her and she remmbered only ever facing his back. The children at school also kept thier distance because they knew her father's job wasn't exactly what you'd call legal (weapons dealing). Becauseo of this, she never knew what it was like to love or be loved by someone. In order to fill this gap left by her family and peers, she turned to the large collection of books her father kep in his study. Her father was impressed by how quickly she could go through his books at such a young age and always bought her new ones whenever she asked. She read, re-read, and memorized almost all the information she could, especially those about weapons. Such knowledge would prove to be usefull much earlier than Vorona could imagine when a bruglar broke into her home while her father was away on business. While the criminal's back was turned, Vorona shot him in the neck with on of her father's pistols. Although she felt a small amount of fear, she also felt a strange sense of satisfaction. Once her father got home, he hugged her for the first time in her life. Vorona initially suspected that it was becaus she managed to kill someone stronger than her, but she had a feeling that that wasn't entirely correct.

After this incident, her Father hired two family friends Samiya and Dennis to train her in self defense which she excelled at. Eventually, she asked them to teach her how to handle weapons which Samiya initially refused but eventually agreed to under Vorona's insistance. Vorona began to test her strength against the various thugs and gangsters around her home town, upping the ante each time. When she turned 15, she heard of a large gang that was interfering with her Father's business and decided to take action. She went to their hideout and killed each and every single one of it's members all on her own. Once her father found out, he slapped her hard across the face for being so reckless. It was then that she realized that the reason she did this wasn't to win her father's approval but it was to fullfill her own satisfaction. It wasn't killing that she enjoyed, nor was it fighitng. She enjoyed proving her strength. She enjoyed taking down opponents that seemed nearly impossible to take down for someone her age. Once she realized this, her abilities as a fighter skyrocketed as she distanced herself from her father. Once she hit 19 years old, she and her partner Slon stole several crates full of weapons manufactured by Vorona's father and left for Japan.

Biography
Volume 05: Vorona and Slon enter into a small Karaoke room to meet their next client, Yadogiri Jinnai. Yadogiri charges them with two jobs. The first is to neutralize, but not kill, Anri Sonohara and the second is to kidnap the grandaughter of the head of the Awakusu, Akane awakusu. Yadogiri explains that the second objective may be more complicated than it sounds due to the fact that the awakusu have hired the Headless Rider as a bodyguard. After witnessing Celty in action on a news video, Vorona becomes exited at the prospect of fighting somehthing inhuman like Celty.

Vorona locates Celty on the highway and attacks her while she's unaware. Vorona knocks off her helmet, thinking she cut off her head and drives off dissappointed at such a short encounter. After a small break, she and Slon pursue the next target, Anri. Vorona exrpesses some guilt over attacking someone so young but pushes it to the back of her mind as she breaks down Anri's door. She attacks a perplexed Anri with a pair of garden scissors but is (pleasantly) surprised to come into contact with saika. The two of them fight briefly on the walkway before they are interrupted by Celty. Slon urges Vorona to retreat for now to avoid being seen and they withdraw using a delivery truck they stole. Vorona notices Celty chasing after them and chases her off with a few shots from an anti-tank rifle she had stored in the back of their truck. With Celty gone, Vorona notices a thin web of some black substance wrapped around the back of her motorcycle. She deduces that that was how Celty found them so easily and decided to use it to lure Celty into a trap.

The duo retreat to an abandoned warehouse next to tokyo bay and they park Vorona's motorbike behind it. Celty arrives to investigate but just as Vorona and Slon are about to attack, they are stopped by the untimely arrival ov Mikado, Aoba, and the remnants of the blue squares. With too many witnesses, Vorona and Slon opt to wait it out until either Celty leaves or Mikado and the others do.

Volume 06: As they observe the situation between Mikado and Aoba from a safe distance, Celty suddenly picks up Mikado and they both ride off out of the warehouse. Their plan foiled, Vorona suggests they split up. Vorona goes after Celty while Slon tries to find Akane Awakusu. Vorona tails Celty until she sees her meet up with Anri and Akane. After a while Vorona sees Mikado and Anri separate from the group leaving Celty and Akane alone. Vorona calls Slon and informs him of Akane's location. Slon says to capture Akane there while Vorona slips off to go after Anri and Mikado. She follows the two of them until the arrive at the practice fields of Raira Academy. Slon calls Vorona on her radio and informs her that he successfully captured Akane and that he was heading toward her positon. She tells him that she is at Raira and asks him to get the truck ready.

She attacks Anri while her back is turned with her combat knife but Anri blocks it just in time. The two of them fight for several minutes before Vorona notices another fight going on several yards away. She sees several toromaru members fighting the dollars and she runs off to lure Anri into the chaos to give herself an edge. As the two of them clash, Vorona manages to kick out Anri's legs, causing her to stumble. Before she can deliver the killing blow, however, Rokujou Chikage blocks her strike, saying two beutiflul ladies shouldn't be fighitng like this. Before she can react, another overwhelming prescence makes itself apparent before Vorona. Standing behind her with her motorbike on his shoulder was Shizuo Heiwajima.

An odd mix of emotions welled up inside her. Topping the list was a strange mix of Fear and (what vorona described as) ecstasy. Unable to control herself, Vorona throws her knife at shizuo's chest and, much to everyone's surprise, it only goes as deep as a fingernail. Unfortunately, the knife reminds shizuo of Izaya and he flies into a rage and starts chasing Vorona across the field. Vorona spies Slon and the truck on the side of the road and urges him to get it started. She jumps into the rear compartment and keeps shizuo back with several shots from her rifle. Shizuo spots Akane tied up behind Vorona and backs off to think of a plan. As they drive away, Vorona notices something out of the corner of her eye. She see's Shizuo kicking around a rusted broken down car like a soccer ball and running towards her. Shizuo kicks the car at Vorona's truck but vorona blows it away with her anti-tank rifle. However, Shizuo is nowhere to be seen. As she scanned the area looking for him, shizuo suddenly busts in through the roof of the storage compartment of the truck, having used the car as a distraction and a nearby fence as a spring board. He bends the barrel of Vorona's rifle, making it unsusable. Vorna pulls out her pistol and attempts to shoot shizuo in the head, silently apologizing to him in her head and pulls the trigger...or rather, she tried to pull it, but a small black thread held the trigger in place.

Vorona turned around to see Celty barreling towards them on her bike. Before either her or Slon can react, Shizuo punches the floor of the storage compartment, splitting it in half. Vorona is flung out of the rear door but Slon drives back to pick her up. They discharge the rest of the storage compartment and drive off.

Later, Vorona and Slon regroup at their hideout (a construction site in the middle of the city) and discuss thier next move. They decide that they should take a small vacation for a while and resume thier job at a later date. Before they can continue their conversation, they are interrupted by Aozaki and Akabayashi of the Awakusu. They taunt Vorona and Slon before one of Aozaki's henchmen shoot Slon in the legs. Vorona attempts to retaliate but is pinned to the floor by Akabayashi. Akabayashi explains that they were supposed to kill them both but Vorona's father managed to work out a deal with the Awakusu. In return for sparing Vorona, the awakusu will be considered top priority customers when purchasing weapons from Drakon. As Vorona protests, she sees Igor, Simon, and Dennis appear out of the shadows. They take Vorona away while Slon is taken in by the awakusu. Simon expresses a bit of happiness seeing Vorona safe and sound but also regret at having to meet under such stressful circumstances. Several weeks later, Simon introduces Vorona to the same debt collection agency Shizuo and Tom work for. Their manger assigns Vorona to work under Shizuo (Shizuo doesn't recognize her due to the fact that she wore a full helmet when they fought) so she can learn the ropes.

Shizuo Heiwajima
Vorona views Shizuo as the ultimate opponent. He defies every single thing she has come to understand about humans yet at the same is still perfectly human by nature. She expresses a desire to know everything there is to know about Shizuo (his personality, what makes him tic, weaknesses). After she has learned all she can, she intends to defeat Shizuo in armed combat. A desire that shizuo remains completely oblivious to. Akabayashi comments that she is in way over her head if Shizuo is her next target. On the flip side, Shizuo is actually a little exited at having Vorona around. Through every single job he's been in, he always got fired before he had someone who could call him sempai. He takes Vorona under his wing and tries to teach her what he can but soon comes to realize that she is very adept at acting as a bodyguard. Shizuo frequently gets the feeling he's seen vorona once before but she always changes the subject or answers indirectly whenever this is brought up. Over the course of Volumes 7 through 9, the two of them begin to warm up to each other and work remarkably well together. Although Tom is pleased, thinks having both Shizuo and Vorona as bodyguards at the same time is bit of overkill.

Slon
How Vorona and Slon met is never really touched upon. The two seem to have known each other for a long time and work well with one another. Slon would constantly throw random questions at Vorona who would answer them in detail seemingly off the top of her head. When Slon was shot in the legs by the Awakusu, Vorona showed genuine concern and expressed a desire to share Slon's fate if he was going to be killed. This was proven not to be the case as Slon's was simply forced into doing several jobs for the Awakusu such as keeping tabs on Izaya.

Akane Awakusu
Vorona's relationship to Akane is somewhat of an odd topic. Although she was the one responsible for kidnapping her, Akane as well as Shizuo and Celty are completely oblivious to this fact. Akane considers Vorona as a rival as she also wishes to defeat Shizuo in a fight. Vorona's feelings towards Akane are still unclear.

Drakon
Vorona's relationship to her father is strained to say the least. Before the robbery, Drakon never paid much attention to Vorona likely to keep her out of the affairs of the underworld. However, after the attempted break in, Drakon spent much more time with Vorona, supposedly trying to make up for lost time. Vorona even assisted her father in a few of his dealings. After the incident with Drakon's rivals, Vorona began to distance herself from her father and eventually decided to run away with Slon to Japan to escape her father's eyes. Drakon, by this point, didn't really consider Vorona a daughter. but when her life was put in danger he managed to work out a deal with the Awakusu to spare her life. He would give them priority treatment whenever they bought from him in exchange for letting her daughter live. Judging by this action, Drakon may still have some lingering feelings left for his daughter.