Post by Selina Kyle on May 23, 2011 13:33:14 GMT -5
Subject Facts
Full Name: Selina Kyle
Codename: Catwoman
Age: 38
Gender: Female
Archetype: Neutral
Aliases: Irena Dubrovna
Marital Status: Single
Affiliation: Bat-family; Birds of Prey (reserve)
Subject Attributes
Meta-Human Abilities: N/A
Standard Abilities: Thievery - Selina is a master thief and cat burglar. She steals exotic items rather than cold, hard cash usually. She's a master infiltrator, hacker, strategist, can act and make use of disguises and so on.
Stealth - Catwoman possesses uncanny and seemingly inhuman stealth capability. She can sneak up on almost anyone and disappear without a trace.
Feline Empathy - Selina has a strange kind of connection with felines. She can soothe raging giant cats and strays will even help her in certain situations.
Acrobatics - She makes cityscapes her playground and has Parkour, gymanstics and acrobatic ability on par Olympic athletes.
Agility and Reflexes - Her nimbleness is honed to a razor edge, as are her reflexes. She's been known to dodge gunfire, skirt across tightropes with ease and so on.
Advanced Martial Artist - Selina has trained in myriad forms of martial arts and is an advanced hand-to-hand combatant, taught by Ted Grant/Wildcat. She blends her various disciplines together and twists them in a way unique to her.
Expert Whip Handler - Catwoman is an expert at employing her signature whip.
Paraphernalia: Catsuit - Catwoman's costume is designed to give her maximum flexibility and movement while providing her some protection, anonymity, and stealth. Her mask covers her features, keeping her from instant recognition in her civilian identity. The material is a thick insulating cloth, protecting her from cold and wet, while being fire retardant. There is a communicator and radio scanner built into her cowl and her goggles have nightvision and infrared modes.
Claws - Catwoman's gloves contain special retractable claws which are formed of a strong steel that extend from and retract into her gloved fingertips when she triggers pressure switches. They can shred a bullet-proof vest, punch through an aluminum frame car door, or dig into porous surfaces to climb.
Whip - Catwoman is highly proficient in the use of her whip. She employs a 12 foot long, black leather braided bull whip that is bound around her waist when not in use.
Tools of the Trade - Selina's arsenal will adjust to a given job she's on. She can employ hi-tech gadgetry bought from black markets or tweaked or built by herself, carried in a small pack on her back.
Subject Weaknesses: Daredevil - Catwoman loves the rush of adrenaline that danger puts her in, which makes her take unnecessary risks or put herself in ill-advised positions.
Mortality - Selina is a mortal woman with all of the frailties that that entail. She is susceptible to disease, illness and injury.
Subject History
Selina Kyle's early life was defined by tragedy. Born into the crime-ridden East End of Gotham City, when she was still a girl her brutalized mother Maria committed suicide. Shortly thereafter, her father drank himself to death. Selina was separated then from her younger sister, Maggie, and placed in the Sprang Hall Juvenile Detention Center; an abusive state home for orphaned and/or delinquent girls. Selina soon escaped Sprang Hall, though, and became a pickpocket on Gotham's streets to survive.
She toured with a carnival briefly, but soon left, using the skills honed there to increase her skill at petty theft in Gotham. She joined a gang of children pickpockets run by Mama Fortuna and befriended a girl named Sylvia. When Selina was a young woman she began prostituting herself in the East End to survive and took a girl named Holly Robinson under her wing, defending her from their Pimp, Stan. Once, after being beaten by Stan, Selina was sent by Detective George Flannery to his friend, Ted Grant, who taught her extensively in hand-to-hand combat.
After seeing Batman for the first time, Selina was inspired and created her own masked persona: Catwoman. She beat Stan and took Holly with her, leaving their lives of prostitution, now funded by Selina's thievery. During her first outing, she branded the face of Carmine "The Roman" Falcone with her nails. Stan soon after kidnapped and held Maggie, now a nun, hostage to get back at Selina. When Catwoman confronted him, he tripped on his own shoelaces and fell to his death.
Selina left Holly to be looked after by Maggie at her convent. She broke into the socially elite circles of Gotham, secretly made wealthy from her lawless thefts. In-costume she began a flirtatious back-and-forth with the Batman, while out it Selina Kyle started dating Bruce Wayne on and off again. Later moving to New York, Selina became a corporate vice president of Randolf Industries (a mafia-influence family) and, through blackmail, became the CEO. She planned to run for NYC Mayor, but her plans were dashed when the Trickster inadvertently linked Catwoman to her civilian identity, leading to Selina Kyle's supposed death.
Catwoman returned to Gotham City during the No Man's Land tragedy, assisting Batman against Lex Luthor during it. When Deathstroke the Terminator was hired to eliminate her, Catwoman was allegedly killed, vanishing for nearly a year. During that period she was tracked down by Slam Bradley, but convinced him to not reveal her whereabouts or identity. Selina eventually decided to return to Gotham City, to the East End, where she discovered that Holly was working as a prostitute again. She took Holly in once more and, confused and reluctant at first, returned as a newly revised Catwoman, reconnecting with Batman in-costume and Bruce Wayne out of it.
What started as a quest to find a serial killer who'd been murdering prostitutes lead Selina to unexpectedly become the East End's protector; while still carrying out her ambitious career as a cat burglar. Selina recruited Holly as her eyes and ears on the street, but when Holly was shot after witnessing a murder, Catwoman enlisted Slam Bradley's help to find the culprits. Together they found them: corrupt police officers working out of the East End who had pinned the murder on Holly. Selina outed them, leading to their arrests and Holly's name being cleared. Unbeknownst to her, the officers worked for the Black Mask, who swore vengeance on Catwoman for interfering.
Selina noticed an increase in children thieves in the East End and found that they were being orchestrated by her former acquaintance, Sylvia - who had been imprisoned when Catwoman left her on a joint heist after they tripped an alarm years ago. Maggie and her husband Simon visited Selina soon after during the opening of a community center Selina had secretly funded. The center was destroyed that very night, and though Catwoman cornered the bombers they were killed by a sniper before revealing their benefactor. That same evening Simon went missing.
During their search for him, Maggie went missing also and Holly was nearly hit by a car. Selina followed a lead that brought her to crimelord Xavier Dylan, who revealed he'd been orchestrating the events, hired by Black Mask and with the help of Sylvia Sinclair. Catwoman found Black Mask's lair and Holly, who'd been tortured and Simon killed. Selina allowed herself to be captured to spare Holly and, while distracting Black Mask and Sylvia with a bomb she'd planted prior to her capture, managed to escape and best Sylvia. Catwoman allowed Black Mask in their clash to fall to his alleged death off a balcony and Sylvia was shot and killed by Maggie, protecting Selina. Maggie was left insane after the ordeal and Selina placed her in a psychiatric facility.
Catwoman was later put under Ivy's spell before being saved by Batman. Together she worked with him to get to the bottom of what ended up being a multi-layered plan, all leading to the new super-criminal Thomas Elliot, aka Hush. During the process, Batman finally revealed his secret identity to him and the two began an earnest romantic relationship. Once Hush was defeated, however, Bruce broke off their relationship believing it may have been orchestrated as part of Hush and the Riddler's plans.
Selina then assisted Batman and the Justice League fight against the Secret Society, which she'd once been a member of. When she was injured, Catwoman was taken to the Batcave to recover. There, Selina also helped defeat Despero by sending a distress call to rally those League members not in his thrall. After this Catwoman appeared to move soundly into vigilante territory, but rather than pursue a relationship with her, Bruce revealed to her that Zatanna had meddled with her mind in the past, and that could possibly be the cause of her reformation. Selina confronted Zatanna, but was left in a crisis of self.
She was still uncertain of who she really was as a person when Black Mask resurfaced, having survived his fall during their last meeting. Black Mask decided that just like the Joker and Batman were constantly in a struggle, he and Selina would be; even knowing her secret identity. He threatened everyone who was dear to Selina - from Slam to Holly, torturing Slam - and gloated over this new paradigm, convinced that there was nothing Catwoman could do to stop him. Selina proceeded to shoot Black Mask in the head, killing him and sparing her loved ones from his future plans.
Even more conflicted now, Selina had a one-night stand with Slam's son, Sam Bradley Jr, after meeting him in the hospital where Slam was recovering from Black Mask's torture. She became pregnant and decided to abandon her costumed identity, giving it to Holly. Selina had her daughter, Helena, and sought a normal life under the alias Irena Dubrovna. Angle Man and Film Freak soon kidnapped Helena and though Selina defeated them and had Zatanna erase their memories, she was left uncertain if she ought to raise Helena, with the risk inherent from her life as Catwoman.
Batman had Selina infiltrate the Bana Amazons during their widescale attacks, stopping an attack meant for Gotham City. Finally at terms with the threat to Helena, Selina had Bruce help fake the deaths of Irena and Helena and had her adopted, denying herself the knowledge of her new family and removing Helena entirely from her future life. Another meeting with Zatanna made Selina realize she could no longer function as a criminal, and she briefly joined Batman's Outsiders. Selina ended up on Prison Planet briefly, but managed to negotiate her return to earth on a jimmy-rigged teleporter of Lex Luthor's creation.
Following aiding Batman against Dr Aesop, Selina spoke to Zatanna about her feelings for Bruce, who encouraged her to pursue them. That night, however, Selina was attacked by Hush, who stabbed her in the stomach and then surgically removed her heart. Dr Mid-Nite and Mr Terrific cared for Selina's body while Bruce sought her missing heart which he recovered. With Mid-Nite and Terrific's help, as well as Zatanna's, Selina was saved. She reconciled with Bruce, but their rekindled romance only lasted one night because he needed to continue pose as his then-girlfriend, Jezebel's lover to bring down the Black Glove.
Enlisting the help of Oracle, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Slam and Holly, Selina stole every cent of the Elliot family, leaving him utterly penniless. Afterward, discovering that Hush was impersonating Bruce Wayne, Selina tracked him down, captured him and delivered him to Nightwing and Robin. She operated as part of their contingency plan "The Network" after Bruce's death. When Arkham Asylum was destroyed, flooding Gotham with its occupants, Selina assisted the city's defense alongside its vigilantes. She saw the Black Mask, which shook her, and fought a pretender Batman, but was saved with the intervention of the Riddler, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn.
Fearing the dangers that a post-Bruce Gotham posed, Selina proposed that she, Harley and Ivy team up and rely upon one another. They agreed, after using Ivy's botanic drugs to coerce Batman's identity out of her - which she avoided doing thanks to a trick taught to her by Talia al Ghul three years previously. They moved into an abandoned animal shelter fixed up by the Carpenter. During the Blackest Night, Selina fought Black Mask who was brought back to life by Nekron and attacked Maggie in the psychiatric facility she was housed in. They defeated Black Mask, but Maggie went missing.
Maggie, psychologically unhinged and operating as "Sister Zero," later attacked Selina but with Ivy and Harley's help she fended her off and Maggie vanished again. Ivy, Harley, Talia al Ghul and Zatanna helped rescue Selina from Shrike and Sempai, who were trying to force Batman's identity from her. Talia, believing that Selina couldn't live with the knowledge of his identity, attacked her but was driven off by the Sirens and Zatanna. Afterward, Selina reunited with Bruce, who had returned from the dead as "the Insider."
Selina encountered Kitrina Falcone while the latter was trying to steal from her. The two raced to claim a bounty on Black Mask's head, with neither being able. Impressed, Selina took Kitrina on as her sidekick, "Catgirl." After a near-fatal encounter with Riddler's gang, Kitrina accepted Batman's offer to send her to an upstate boarding school. With Bruce reclaiming his mantel as the dark knight, Selina accompanied him on missions to further his creation of "Batman Incorporated." With him, she stopped Harley from breaking the Joker out of Arkham Asylum and burned her bridges with Harley and Ivy.
Harley and Ivy soon confronted Selina. They fought, and Selina explained that she had seen good in them and had only tried to help them pursue it. Batman arrived to take them in and, as a last show that Selina had cherished their friendship, she attacked Batman long enough to let Harley and Ivy escape.
Subject Interview
The pawn shop was quiet, and lit only by a few outlying bulbs to make its interior seen from the street to discourage attempted burglary. As far as pawn shops went, it was a fairly nice one. When you took into account that that pawn shop was in Gotham City, its impressiveness increased. Then, adding on top of that that it was located on the fringes of the East End, it was a goldmine. The establishment had connections to the mob, actually, which was probably why it remained mostly safe from harm - the owner's brother-in-law was a noteworthy member of it, or something along those lines.
The Gotham night, visible through the front windows, carried on in sinister shadow while the shop's valuable inventory rested behind locked, bulletproof glass. That is, until a flash of yellow light and a swirl of mist the same color enveloped the center of the room. With a faint sigh, the phenomenon dispersed as quickly as it had congealed, revealing three people. Their hoods were pulled low, their faces covered in scarves and eyes hidden behind sunglasses. They even wore baggy clothes to disguise height, weight and build.
"C'mon, we gotta get movin'!" The one that spoke elbowed the smallest of the three, who also happened to look the most nervous. "Get the stuff out so we can bag it," he urged. The anxious one moved to a glass counter within which lay jewelry on threadbare velvet. With a hesitant gesture, the valuables were veiled in the same yellow mist and light from before. Another curtain of the stuff curled over the top of the counter, and when it was gone the jewelry rested in easy reach. "Aw &#$@ yeah," the one doing the ordering said. He moved in and opened a duffle bag to begin scooping the items into it.
Except, when his hand was about to fall into place to sweep the items off the counter into his possession, the air split with a crack. The end of a cat'o nine tails whip was curled around his wrist, keeping him from proceeding. "I get that you're trying to start out small," a voice interrupted. The three turned their heads in unison toward the back of the store, where Catwoman stood, one hand holding the handle of her whip, the other propped on her hip. "But this is the third place you've hit in the East End. My East End."
The hoodlums were stunned, which offered Selina time to monologue just the barest bit. While she spoke, however, the third of their number - the one that neither transported them there, or gave orders - tried to flank her. He rushed in with both fists ready. Catwoman released her whip's hold on the leader and unleashed a neat kick to his solar plexus, stunning him, then another to his temple: he fell in a heap on the floor. The click of a gun cocking brought her attention back to the head of the three. Selina scowled at the firearm pointed at her.
"Rude," the Cat chastised. The twitch of her wrist let her whip crack the air open again, this time hitting the knuckles of the laden hand. Reflexively, he pulled the trigger, but Selina was already ducking to avoid the discharge. After firing off a shot, which embedded harmlessly in the back wall, the idiot dropped the weapon - just like Catwoman knew he would. Another lash of her whip sent the gun skittering out of reach and then she was upon him. Two decisive hits, one to the chest, another to the shoulder, stunned him and then Selina grabbed the side of his head and connected it forcefully to the glass top of the nearest display. The glass cracked, but didn't shatter. He slid to the floor with a groan.
The Cat turned toward the last of the three, who had backed up against another display case during the scuffle. "Hopefully you're smart enough not to try something. You've seen what that gets you," Selina gestured to the two battered thieves. "Kit! Get rid of her," the loud one murmured from the floor through his pain. Catwoman looked to him, then back to the smallest person - this Kit - but they were already gesturing with shaking hands at her. "Well, fu-" Selina was gone in a pulse of golden light and swirling smoke.
Author's Notes
Player Alias: Di
Other Characters: Diana Prince
How did you find ARFD?: Creator
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