Strawberry425 — Roleplayer Guild

| Identity |

Selina Kyle

| Alias |

Catwoman

| Origin & Backstory |

Enter Selina Kyle.

Me. 

Daughter of Rex "The Lion" Calabrese, crime lord and sleazy scumbag, and Maria Kyle, religious church girl turned run-of-the-mill prostitute.

What did my parents have in common, you ask?

Nothing.

Dear old dad did what he did and got what he wanted. And when he wanted women, my mother's hourglass figure and heavy red lips answered his call. I guess the words 'contraception' and 'protection' and 'condom' were non-existent in pre-twenty-first century lingo.

But, you know, how does a church girl get that sultry, anyway?

Skipping over the gory details, I was born.

Taa, daa!

Born in the very heart of Gotham, among the the lowest of the low. Gotham is a beautiful city. Beautiful in it's ugly ways, and unique people, beautiful in a way that is disgustingly opposite from, say, New York, or Los Angelos. 

Rex hid me, like he hid all the others. I have siblings I didn't even know I had. Up till today, I'm sure I have brothers and sisters eons younger than I am; the drooling toddlers and rebellious pre-teens born to mother's like mine, mothers who still don't have those three special words in their vocabulary. Or that controversial fourth, that life-saver for all underage sexually active sillies out there.

I'm sure mom was his favorite; I was his favorite daughter, after all. I was most certainly not the oldest of his multi-mothered group, but his heir, nonetheless. I'm not sure what he saw in me. His green eyes, his high cheekbones, his real black hair, so rare among white people.

His personality? I was a tough cookie growing up. The kind of kid who fell of her bike, scrapped an inch of skin off her knee, and got right back up on that damn bike and kept going. 

Rex gave me everything a little girl could ever want. I got all the girl toys and all the boy toys. Barbie would be in my left hand, G.I. Joe in my right. I learned how to shoot a BB when I was six, and played with lion cubs when I was ten (because Rex loved to collect his exotic animals; power freaks love that kind of thing). 

I learned how to fight. This was oh-so important to Rex. It's not something that started in late childhood, either. It was something that Rex started my life with. It was the cornerstone for the skills I have today, the reason I live such a prosperous life right now. All I know now is derived from everything I knew then, skills I had to refine myself because I didn't have the money to afford the lessons I needed.

When you live like my father did, you live with the metaphorical knife to your back all the time. It's not something I would wish on my worst enemy, and is one of the capital reasons I stay out of organized crime. Sometimes the knife prods harder, others times it nearly disappears. You get months of rest and relaxation, where you believe you've shaken off all the competitors. And then someone new and fresh crops up, and it's a new game, same reward. You worry about your family disappearing at night, and if you're smart, you won't have a family.

And Rex didn't have a family. As far as he was concerned, me and mom didn't exist in the sphere of his elite set of like minded, crime executing competitors. But word always get out. Some worm from the inside always spills the beans. And he knew that.

So, he gave his favorite daughter self-defense training. He took what he must have thought was special precautions, warding away the threat of death to myself and mom. He molded me into a small soldier, his little fighter. When I was a kid, I was so talented, I used to fancy myself invincible. Looking back on it now, Rex took lots of unseen steps to keep us safe. His people would be in the shadows, silent guards for his precious possessions (because, I mean, mom was his possession, not his girlfriend, or anything like that.) It made sense. Even with self-defense training, any person bigger than I was would have been able to overpower me. I was a kid. I wasn't brave enough, or strong enough, to kill somebody, if anybody threatened me. We needed are own personal guards.

We also got lucky. People get lucky all the time. If I was being frank, which I am, my life has been one big stroke of good luck.  

So here I was, his little karate chopping angel, living a great life, living an opulent life. I stayed in a shitty two story apartment for ten years, but I ate like a fat-ass, and dressed like a princess. 

And then, mom killed herself.

Up till today, I struggle to understand why. 

She had everything. She had the best clothes in the apartment, the shiniest rings and flashiest bags. At any given moment, she would have had, had at least a hundred dollars in her purse.

And she loved me. I really thought she did. Everything in the way she moved said it. Her smile in the mornings before school, her warm embrace in the afternoon after a hard day of learning math. She put her soul into making me happy. And kids are supposed to be the very epitome of happiness, right?

But she wasn't happy. 

Personally, I think it was the unacknowledged elephant in the room. Mom had a wicked drug addiction. She would quit for a little while, developing these heavy dark bags under her eyes from the pressure of resisting. Then she would hop right back on the same horse, go in for the same ride. Rex never tried to stop her. Her drug addiction wasn't his problem. 

With mom gone, 'Dad' fell off the face of the planet, and with him went my only source of living income. I was removed from our home of ten years and placed into the cold, callous hands of the shitty foster care system. 

Foster care.

What a joke. 

I stole A LOT as a kid. I steal a lot today.

Some of my foster families couldn't take care of their own kids, much less a bunch a raggedy orphans. And, mind you, many of them were provided with funds specifically to be used for their foster children, but squandered away on personal interests and biological family needs. 

So I stole what I could, because how else would I survive? I became lithe and acrobatic, lean and stealthy, always looking for the opportunity to take what I could take, and have what I wanted.

I was mini Rex, stuck in the confines of dingy houses and rotting apartments.

It was during one of my many foster home transfers that I met Holly Robinson. We had similar backgrounds and became fast friends. Holly's mother, like mine, was a prostitute. It was an unsaid bonding point for the both of us. 

Holly has been with me through thick and thin. Our long standing relationship has meant we've had to be crafty to stick together. On the brief occasion or two, it meant running away from our current foster homes to be together. But sometimes, you've just found that special person you can't let go of, and it doesn't matter how or why, you've got to stick together. That was me and Holly.

Eighteen was a momentous occasion for the two of house. Holly was a fraction of a year younger than I was, so i had to wait around a little. But once she hit that mark...we were out together! Thrown into the big, wild, world, not really sure of what were doing. You can understand then, that the next few years were nowhere near as fun as we'd imagined.

He's handsome.

At least the lower part of his rough, sometimes stubble adorned face is. 

And that body. Wow. Heh.

Batman. I've wanted to snark at that name so many times. Then, I remember what I'm called.

But seriously. Who the fuck is afraid of a giant flying bat? 

Honestly? They're kind of cute. 

Who's afraid of something cute?

But he is the very opposite of cute.

I've seen him in action. The way he prowls in the dark, big and strapping, but lithe and quiet. Terrifying, up close. You think it's funny, "The Batman"; the images you make in your mind, a silly man jumping roof tops with a black, wing-shaped cape, little bat ears peeking up from the top of his shiny dome. But then you see him. You really see him.

I wonder why he chose a bat?

Batman first appeared on the news when I was twenty. He was loathed by the GCPD for being a 'vigilante,' for working outside the confines of the law and law enforcement.

At the age that I was at, with the things I was doing, I thought he was great. A man working past the confines of Gotham's weak system of enforcement, doing the big things and the small things. For a little while, I would even say I idolized him. A lot of young people did. 

However, at the time, Batman was quickly shoved to the back of my mind, only making guest appearances in what brief moments in my hectic life that I saw him, be it on T.V., the news, maybe even in real life, in the sparse occurrences that it did happen. Never up close, not yet.
 
Stealing had become an integral part of my lifestyle. It was how Holly and I survived, thought at first, she didn't quite approve of it. She wanted to do simpler things. For a little while, she took up her mom's mantle and continued on the prostitute business, until I convinced her that STI's would be the death of her.

So, we settled down, two unemployed, young women, depending almost solely on what things I could scrap together on my outings.   

This marks the beginning of a year-long rough patch in my life. I was twenty, and desperate. I didn't know what to do with myself. I sometimes had a job, and sometimes didn't. Holly got depressed often, and it was hard to keep her spirits up when we struggled so much. I wasn't particularly level-headed, and needless cat fights between myself and fellow employees weren't unheard of. I got fired a lot, and we ended up sleeping with all the other vagabonds more times than I have fingers.

Imagine that on repeat for an entire year. That was 2001.

2002 was the upturn.

I had talent. Maybe not book smarts (hold ye horses, I passed high school), but I had common sense, and a fit body. I mentioned this before, but Rex didn't waste time with my safety. One of his many precautions included instilling in me some form of self-defense. I had nursed those skills for the most of my young life; they, to me, were unique, and therefore required my attention and dedication. 

My fighting...is not to the books. I don't have particular move sets like Batman. Everything I have has been created by me, to suit me. 

I wasn't Batman. I didn't have a body too big for my head, packed to its brim with muscles. But, I was lean, flexible. I like to fancy the idea that I can do the roof-hopping thing a helluva a lot better than he can, and live doing only cartwheels for the rest of my life.

And I could (can) steal. Oh boy. I had it perfected by 2002. I could slip a cell phone from a man's hand in broad daylight and snatch a purse from an unsuspecting lady without ever being seen. I pilfered houses and stores, and even tried my luck with a bank one night (and failed; I didn't have the equipment for that kind of thing yet). Props to me for trying. 

I also discovered my deep passion for helping kids and women more deprived than I was. 

Because, I mean, who do you think I see in them? 

Holly was always slower with this kind of stuff. Maybe she was more easily frustrated than I was. She didn't have the same background after all. She didn't come from a rich daddy who had afforded her the ability to take self-defense classes. She struggled to learn the moves I thought her, to become as deft as I was. Sometimes she would give up, opting to stay at home, skulking all day, watching T.V., wasting away tubs of sweet chocolate ice cream. I always worried for her. I didn't want to loose someone the same way I'd lost my mother. 

That is how I spent the next two years of my life. I wasn't Catwoman, not at the time, and I didn't carry with myself enough confidence or power to do something about the thousands of girls and women who suffered daily in Gotham. But I tried. I stole, both for myself, and for a sector of people who needed it as much as, if not more, than I did.

I worked hard, and steadily, and eventually acquired enough connections and experience to procure for myself some semblance of an other identity. 

"Catwoman" wasn't made up by me. Some clever guy in the Gotham Times coined the term first, and I took it for myself. By that time, I was used to taking everything for myself. I built a woman around the name, created a suit to match the title. And I loved cats too. It was a sweet coincidence. I had, maybe, five, by then? It's ballooned out of control by now. 

I am the queen of cat burglars, if I do say so myself. Unmatched in what I do. I like to consider it a form of self-employment. It makes it sound less...scummy?

I didn't interfere with the superhero world when I donned my cat mask. The superhero world decided to interfere with me.

I guess I have a bit of a reputation now. I'm at place of fame and notoriety that I never dreamed I would be at.

I can't pinpoint where it started. I'm not conscientious of when my made-up name began cropping up in newspapers around Gotham. I was so...amateur? Seriously. Pick a up a paper from around 2003, and you'll see me, captured in what few pictures I was captured in, with the most novice of equipment, the worst of disguises.

Eventually, I started to pick up speed. 

Cue Alice Tesla, tech nerd extraordinaire. After all, a girl can't get by on her own, especially when she knows next to nothing about the...tech-y stuff. Alice crafted for me things that were and are as top of the line as it could get, what with funds provided by a cat burglar and a work space fit for something smaller than a hamster. In other words, we weren't and are not doing so bad.

Holly, finally hopped on the bandwagon. It took her long enough. It really did. Days would go by where she would sit at the "nerd table" watching Alice assemble all sorts of weirdo shit, watching me out of the corner of her pretty blue eyes, trying to see if I understood an inkling of what jibberish Tesla would speak. 

She...helps. She's not adverse to donning the mask when the time calls, but she tend to stay out of the limelight, or works behind the scenes. We take in a lot of girls, sometimes, get them settled, give them money, and send them on their way. 

North Gotham is our playground. Our people live here. The ladies here live under my watchful eyes. They feel safe and protected around me, and who would blame them, when I have my whip noosed around the neck of any person that dares to harm them. I'm not always successful; it would be a stroke of good luck for me to save every girl I ever encountered. I'm too young, and I know it, even if I don't always acknowledge it. 

Holly tries to keep tabs on the girls we help, make sure they're not straying, or returning to prostitution. North Gotham looks a lot more prostitute free than it was a few years ago.    

Of course, alongside our more noble exploits, I continued my thievery. If I hadn't, we wouldn't have been able to survive, much less help the girls who come to us. Of course, I started messing with some big shit, stealing from museums and the rich. 

That was when the big guy started taking an interest in me.   

Batman is a nice guy, but he never lets me off the hook. He's always trying to convert me.

"Do the right thing, Catwoman."

Pfft.

In case he hasn't noticed yet, stealing is my life. It's the reason I can afford my luxurious apartment, the reason I can keep twenty cats and never go low on kitty litter or cat food. Stealing has given me everything I have today, has allowed me to live a life, that, otherwise, would have been impossible. I attend parties for the rich and sleep with people who could pay my bills for the rest of my life. Unless batface can offer me a equally decked out alternative...I'm not about to "do the right thing."

I live my life of luxury and help my type of people. I'm content. Batman can go stick his nose up someone else's ass.

The persona of Catwoman has only been in the scene of Gotham for approximately two years now. While Selina has been doing some elementary (and not so elementary) crimes to provide for herself and her people, as she calls them, she has been working alone, or for...lesser, rich people.

Its is only very recently that some of the big names have begun to take an interest in her, namely Penguin. Presently, she's supposed to be infiltrating the Gotham Museum and stealing a rather expensive painting for her employer. 

| Attributes |

Original Fighting Style (Derivative of Martial Arts)
Selina, while not a professional in Martial Arts, is a professional in whatever she has created for herself. A lot of her fighting style owes its origin to her knowledge on Martial Arts. She has refined some of her skill by taking sparse classes, but mostly relies on her self-made style to get by. 

Thievery/Cat Burglary
Selina has perfected the art of theft, and, given her reputation, it only makes sense. If you need something stolen, she's your girl. Of course, nothing is for free in Catwoman's world, except for the things she procures for herself. Hiring her means paying some price, large or small. Selina has an unacknowledged moral compass that occasionally leans towards the side of "good," meaning that...favors from her are not unheard of.

Disguises
Catwoman isn't her only mask. Selina is extremely proficient at disguising herself, utilizing a variety of aesthetic tools to help her pull off appearances that are so totally not Selina Kyle. She's fortunate enough in this skill to be able to appear as a different person for every ball she's ever attended. Not to mention the fact that I.D. forgery helps push along the authenticity of her disguises.

Flexibility
Well, the name says it all. Selina is able to maneuver her body around tight spots when it's called for. It's not a superhuman ability; just a talent she's nursed since childhood.

Bullwhip 
She's daft with that whip of hers. Catwoman can use the bullwhip for a plethora of purposes; it is the Catwoman equivalent to Batman's grappling hook whilst simultaneously being Selina's weapon of choice. Alice is tinkering with the whip to see if she can create an electrified version of it, but no luck so far, or rather, not enough resources at the present moment.

Diamond Encrusted Claws
An extremely recent addition to her weapons, crafted by Alice from diamonds stolen by Selina. Retractable diamond claws that fit snuggly against Selina's hands, protruding and retracting with the click of a button. Of course, the whole thing isn't diamond. Just the tips of the claws. The rest of the thing is sturdy metal skeleton.

| Character Notes |

BATMAN

PENGUIN

Dr. Leslie Thompkins - Leslie has frequently given medical attention to the girls that come to Selina and Holly for help.

Holly Robinson - Best friend, occasional lover. Holly and Selina work well together, and have a strong, seemingly unbreakable bond. Holly occasinal dons the Catwoman mask when Selina can't attend to it.

Alice Tesla - In Selina's words, "nerd extraordinaire." Alice takes care of the Selina's equipment. She's young, and isn't quite close to either to Selina or Holly. But she helps them, and the ladies appreciate and like her.

| Character Goals |

"Be rich. Money, money, money."

Selina is young. What semblance of a privileged life that she did have was stripped from her when she was ten. The subsequent eleven years were spent in poverty and, frequently, desperation. What would you do, if you realized you could do something?

So, yes, she is young, and she is naive, and she is selfish. The world is ripe for her picking, and as far as she considers it, she doesn't have to share with everyone. As a result, to say she desires to help superheroes in any way is a long shot. She works on a 'me' agenda, where her well-being comes first and foremost, with the only exceptions being Holly and children and other similarly young and deprived women, all of which she has tender spots for. 

It could also be said that she feels safe in her present position. Vigilantes can deal with the world's people and the world's problems.

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