(no subject)

[exceptions]

PERSONAL
NAME: Christina
PERSONAL JOURNAL: Lollobrigida
EMAIL: lollobrigida (gmail)
AIM: onlysayinghello
WIKI NAME: lollobrigida
CURRENT CHARACTERS:

Oliver Queen - Smallville
Jo Harvelle - SPN
Harmony Kendall - BtVS/Ats
Faith Lehane - BtVS/Ats
Pepper Potts - MCU
Katherine Pierce - TVD


CHARACTER
CHARACTER NAME: Selina Kyle
SERIES: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolanverse)
CANON POINT: After dismounting the BatPod to help Batman (Bruce) when he’s been fighting Bane. (she "rides the batpod and shoots that gun thing" then gets off the bike, then wakes up here!)
LOSS: Any item Selina steals that belongs to an individual (personal possession) she will be compelled to return it to the owner after 24 hours. Selina is a master thief and Paradisa is a castle full of people who wish for material possessions. She will have a hard time NOT stealing things. However, in order to help gain CR both negative and positive, if it belongs to a person, Selina won’t be able to keep it. She doesn’t have to be honest about being the one that stole it, but she does have to give it back - either by returning it to where she got it or handing it to the owner.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER:

Selina Kyle, on paper, is a thick folder with a record that starts before age 16. She’s trouble and not to be trusted. She’s the type of criminal that comes with the card “Stop. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to Jail.” With crimes that stack up starting at petty theft and range to kidnapping - what else her rap sheet contains is hardly the biggest mystery about Selina. What we do know is that Selina believes that she has done what she needed to do. She believes that her acts have evolved from petty theft to actually doing something good for those that can’t do well for themselves. Bruce Wayne references Robin Hood, but I believe Selina doesn’t see herself as wanting that sort of fame. Robin Hood was well-known and Selina Kyle is doing anything possible to be wiped off the map.

When we first meet Selina she is immediately not who she appears to be. The tear-away cuffs and collar could even prove that she arrived at the event as a guest, slipped herself in with the catering staff - all it would’ve taken is to take a tray and look the part - and managed to intercept the one person that was trusted to take something to the right place. She’s so skilled in staying one step ahead of everyone, that when Alfred looks for someone to help him accomplish something - she’s right there, poised and waiting.

It’s that sort of preparation that shows us how committed she is to her end goal of gaining absolute freedom from her past. She was given a task by Daggett in exchange for the Clean Slate program and she does everything that she needs to in order to accomplish her goal. By being motivated and driven by her own personal need to succeed in this task, she believes that she’s going to end up with everything she needs. It gives her that cool confidence throughout the event that she needs to ensure she’s always on her game.

”I’m adaptable.”

Her ability to slip into situations without being detected is first proven with her encounter with Bruce Wayne. Playing the part of the younger, coy maid who has been caught doing something she’s not meant to do easily slips away to the confident, older woman who can bring Bruce Wayne to his knees with a few well-placed movements. She’s able to access her situation easily, watching his movements, seeing how he favors the one leg and the use of the cane and take complete advantage of his weaknesses. She keeps her eye on him, even as she knows that he’s caught her in the act. She doesn’t bail on the situation quickly, because there is no need for her to panic at this stage. She’s gotten his prints, she has the pearls, and she knows that she’s going to walk out of there -- or rather -- leap out of there.

Selina Kyle is truly adaptable. However, even beneath all of the poise and grace that comes with being a cat burglar, she can’t let go of her roots. She has a place in Old Town, she looks after a young ingenue in Jen, trying to teach her the trade that got Selina into the very trouble she’s trying to get out of. She stops bullies from badgering younger kids that have less than others and she does it with enough force to make an impression that lasts beyond the initial threat. Even her dialog has broken parts of a lower class thief pressed between the high class society that she tries to slip into.

She mispronounces Ibiza, there are missing words and a hint of an accent when she’s getting too cocky. The best example is when she’s in the bar trying to complete the exchange of Bruce’s prints for the Clean Slate. She says “You don’t count so good, huh?” She calls it “her neighborhood” when she approaches the kids that are being bullies. She uses casual words like “kid” when talking to the young boy she saves and even gives him a tip about not stealing from someone you can’t outrun. It’s a slide out from underneath the high class woman that she pretends to be in order to gain access to everything she needs and wants.

For the most part, she’s excellent at playing the part and what comes as no surprise is that she’s very aware of just how much she doesn’t fit in with everyone else around her. She gets angry, even, when Bruce implies that she cares what the rich people think at the charity function. Even if that’s Selina using a tactic to get Bruce to drop his guard more, she still uses it to her advantage. She gets close enough to Bruce to lift his valet ticket off of him, which all things considered is a thin slip of paper that could’ve been in any of his pockets. That means she had to know her mark or at the very least use every single brush and touch to find where it was before she took it.

”Everything sticks. We are the sum of our mistakes.”

Selina has learned the hard way that mistakes are what shape your life. Her career as a criminal starts before the age of sixteen with her first instance of actually breaking out of women’s being when she was sixteen. She is a thick file of crimes and her biggest mistake, the one that actually gives her pause and a moment of regret is when she realizes that she’s turned Bruce Wayne over to Bane. She had made comments to Bruce about him not giving enough and in the moment of recognizing that Bruce and Batman are one in the same, she sees that as another mistake that is going to cling to her.

It is also the one thing that was going to keep Bane and his men off of her. She’s considered a witness to being able to connect Bane to Daggett and as the plan is still unfolding, Bane couldn’t have her as an open risk like that. However, her freedom is short lived because kidnapping a Congressman isn’t exactly something you can walk away from. As she tries to flee by plane she’s stopped and her mistakes catch up to her. They offer her protection, but she won’t reveal what she knows so they have to lock her up. It’s one more instance of Selina doing what she has to do in order to save herself.

She does have a great deal of fear when it comes to Bane, which is something we haven’t really seen from her. She’s been confident and adaptable, but seeing what he did to Bruce Wayne has stuck with her and she warns off Blake, stating that he should be as afraid as she is. It’s one of the few flaws in the armor so to speak that we see that is from fear rather than experience.

”Storms coming - remember? This is what you wanted.”
“No. It’s what I thought I wanted.”

When the plan starts to move into action, Selina’s “release” from prison shows her exactly what a storm would look like. She’s faced with more than just her own mistakes, but she’s faced with the greed of the common man. She sees how little respect people have for each other, how they take a simple concept and use it to destroy each other. That there is no common bond among those that are trying to survive. It’s a wake-up call that she’s not entirely prepared to face. It’s this shift in her world that causes her to re-evaluate what is important to her. She knows that she can’t leave the city, that she’s trapped with all of the people that she had been hiding amongst, and that any chance for real freedom has long since passed her by.

Selina needs to make a choice as to what she’s going to do with her life - especially considering how short it might be. Even when she’s got the Clean Slate in hand and talking about the state of the city with Bruce, she can’t let in that she doesn’t want the city to be the way it is. She keeps up her bravado and replies: “Who says it needs saving? Maybe I like it this way.” She keeps up the act of needing to be one step ahead of him, even though relief is evident that he not only has given her what she’s been seeking, but that he might have a way to save them. It’s a moment of hope and that’s generally not something she seems to like relying on.

Now, one thing to take notice of is that despite trying to run from Bane and now being trapped in the city, Bane and his men still trust Catwoman. When she approaches them to retrieve people from the holding areas, she just tells them that Bane wants them to himself and they trust her with that information. It is a testament to just how powerful she could be within that group if she stayed with them. Handing over Batman gave her that much “street cred” with Bane’s mercenaries that she can walk freely among them if she wants to. It also goes to show that if the city goes into utter chaos and the bomb doesn’t blow up - Selina knows as Catwoman she can have a big chunk of whatever is left of Gotham, but she doesn’t choose that path. In holding onto that hope that Batman can save the city, she chooses herself - but also she chooses to trust someone else.

Of course, she does still make a point to inform Batman that she has zero faith in his ability to pull this off. She tells him that she will clear the tunnel but that she’ll leave. It’s a show, certainly to try and make one last effort to remain who she thinks she needs to be. Even when he tells her that there is more to her than that, she tries to keep it down, to not show him anything she’s not ready to reveal. It’s a difficult balance for her to hold onto, because she does regret turning him in and she does know that he has done a lot for the city. When she tries to reason with him, to get him to come with her, she’s faced with what a real hero of Gotham is -- someone who stays behind even when the odds are horribly stacked against them.

It’s something she takes a long look at too, before she takes off to go do her part of the plan. She even has a chance to just leave, but the part of her that wants the clean slate, that wants to just disappear can’t live with the part of her that knows she was needed and that she can still do something good for “her neighborhood”. She knows the methods that Bane uses and even if she doesn’t agree with Batman’s “No-Gun policy” she knows that Bane’s methods are far worse. Witnessing Batman get his back broken/dislocated lumbar was pretty much the only proof she needed to realize just how screwed this city is - bomb or no bomb.

A woman like Selina has very few choices with her current record, especially with the city being in the standings that it is when she makes her choice to stay behind. If she used the Clean Slate, she would still be without much of a start-up. All of her possessions were in Gotham, ransacked and stolen from probably. The entire banking structure of Gotham was taken apart when they attacked the stock exchange, so most of her funding is probably tied up somewhere, and she would still need a change of clothing, because you don’t get very far in a catsuit with a customized bat-themed motorcycle. I doubt it would be street legal outside of Gotham.

I also like to believe that she knows even if she uses the program, Bruce/Batman would still find her and even if there is a part of her that gets a thrill out of the chase, the thought that by her walking away from her city she is also making it impossible for someone to chase her, because she knows Bane will kill Bruce/Batman if he gets a chance. Rather than keep her safety and freedom, she opts to try and make up a debt and returns to save Bruce/Batman from Bane if possible.

That act alone is a huge risk for her to take. It proves not just growth of her character to move away from looking out for herself in the situation but to trusting someone else with her life and her future. She works with Batman to accomplish a mutual goal of saving the city that both of them care about. It’s a vulnerable spot that she puts herself into, even more vulnerable than when she asked him to go with her, to run and leave the city to ruin, because it shows that she cares about the city that she at one point thought deserved whatever desolation it got. She saves the rich and poor alike in this set-up and at the risk of her own life.

At the core of Selina Kyle is a girl that made mistakes that stuck to her through out her life. Instead of being able to get out from under them, she simply let them stack up because she always assumed she’d be able to stay one step ahead of them. If at age 16 she could break out of a correctional facility, this gives her so much confidence in her craft and skill that she probably saw herself as an unstoppable force. She dresses the part of someone who isn’t to be taken lightly. Skin-tight uniform, razor-sharp heels - all things that make her stand out as a seductive woman that could be a distraction - but with the truth that she will kill you if she has to. She can play the coy, meek girl but the exterior is always just a show. From the catsuit to her keeping the pearls she stole from Bruce Wayne’s “uncrackable safe”, Selina is about presenting the package of a girl who belongs among the crowd that she wants to rob blind.

”The whole no-guns thing? I don’t feel as strongly about it as you do.”

Beneath the exterior is just a girl who has fears and lives through her mistakes instead of learning from them. It’s a slight difference, but it’s the one that she uses to keep herself alive. She doesn’t stop stealing from people, she just does it better. She doesn’t run away from the problem, and give into the preferences of the male in her “partnership” -- she instead plays by her own rules and returns because she wants to and she knows that she is an asset to the situation. It’s all in her ability to see those extra few steps ahead of the game. She knows where the big players are and what better way to prove herself as the best than to be in the middle of the action.

It’s where the big boys play, after all.


ABILITIES:

The Con:
Selina is a con artist. Not only is she skilled in body language and perception of body language, but she’s capable of deceiving even the most intuitive people. She’s good with accents and knows a decent number of languages.

The Heist:
There probably isn’t a safe that Selina can’t get into. The words “uncrackable” don’t mean much of anything to her. She’s able to crack a safe with very few tools, using her intelligence and experience to break through security protocols. She has a light touch that allows her to perform lifts at close-range and is very good at covering her movements with distraction or diversions.

The Escape:
Risk-taking isn’t really a risk in her mind. She’s willing to leap from windows, jump from rooftops, leap across buildings - all to ensure her own safety. She’s flexible and very adept at gymnastic-style movements.

The Fight:
Trained in the skills needed to survive, Selina is able to fight in hand to hand combat. She uses a lot of her flexibility as well as her skills with body language to avoid most critical hits, but she is not afraid to strike a blow or raise her knee to a groin to get her point across. Her fighting style is mainly focused on high kicks and thrusting movements. She doesn’t seem to get into fisticuffs where she can be overpowered by a repetitive striking pattern that wears her down.

The Equipment:
Selina uses guns. She’s able to fire them, load them, and hit people with the butt of them when the clip empties. Her catsuit and gear include night vision goggles that also give her range and probably environmentals. Most standard tactical gear she’s probably researched in case she ever needs to use it. (proven in her ability to drive the BatPod, despite it not being standard equipment)

The Technology:
Not only is Selina capable of using modern technology, she’s familiar in the methods required to search for that technology. Her research got her to locate the Clean Slate program, which I’m sure wasn’t exactly a commonplace discussion, even if it wasn’t there when she went to pick it up. It also brings up the point that she would know how to use the program, even if it was intended to be as “point and click” as described.


THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE:

Her chin touches to her shoulder as she turns her head to listen to the sound down the hall. Gloved fingers touch lightly to the metal exterior of the safe in front of her. They were supposed to be out. Swallowing, she shakes off the sound of keys being scattered across the kitchen counter and focuses on the combination. False tumblers make her job a bit more difficult, but it’s nothing she hasn’t tackled before. All the fake clicks that slide into place as she listens to the first spin are giving her the right amount of information. She knows that if she slips, if she takes the lead those little serrated wheels are trying to offer her that the entire safe will lockdown from the inside out. There won’t be a collection of uncut diamonds waiting to be placed into the palm of her hand. All she’ll have is a locked up safe that when opened will reveal someone had been inside. All her work, all the planning, gone to waste.

They’re both home. She can hear the murmur of discussion and the clink of a bottle being placed onto the table. Silently scolding herself, she tries to figure out why exactly they’re home early. It’s a distraction enough to keep her mind relaxed at the task at hand. One rotation down and she’s positive she’s found all the false clicks. The hard part is finding the correct ones.

Her heel shifts, ensuring her balance as she begins the second rotation. She doesn’t listen for them, she feels them. When people know a combination to a safe, they whip the wheel around the numbers. They don’t go for precision, which helps her. They try to make those notches hit a bit too soon, a bit too late. They pull on the lever and when it doesn’t open they try again. It’s silly and foolish, but men all like to believe they know better. The lock is just too sensitive.

When she turns the dial, feeling all the right spots falling into place, she smirks. An eyebrow lifts beneath her goggles before she tugs them up rest atop her head. With a single pull she’s tugging the door of the safe open. It always gives her a rush, that thrill of satisfaction. She wants to take her time, to savor the moment, but he’s watching Sports Center and she isn’t going to join him for that. Within a heartbeat she’s snatched the black velvet bag up, tucked it into her suit, and she’s rising to her feet to try and find a new exit.

The door is out. The living room where tonight’s highlights are being recapped is blocking her way. The fire escape is a risk, but it might be her only option. Her head tips to the side, seeing the window of the room she’s in and wondering how big of a leap it is from here to the escape. When she presses her temple to the glass, her estimation is only a bit off. That estimation being off doesn’t help her though. Instead of being closer it is actually further away.

“It’s fine.” She muses to herself. Her fingers unlock the latch and she pushes it up along its track. The cold air whips into the room and she almost worries about it hitting the hallway or rustling papers. She’s running on a clock though and time is ticking away rather quickly. One foot out the window she exhales, “It’s not even the penthouse.”

The stop of her heel settles to the edge of brick as she ventures out onto the ledge. Her weight balanced against the wall in a slight lean she uses her hand to grip to the frame of the window. Watching the street below she takes one more look toward the iron ladder that’s a windows length and some change away from her.

A single push to the side and a good dig-in of her heel to the mortar of the wall and she’s airborne. A long stride extends as she tries to get a foothold onto the rail before she nearly misses it completely. She can hear the clink of the toe of her heel hitting metal before she extends her hand to reach for the bottom of the landing. The sheer force of her weight yanks hard on the socket of her arm. Swinging now, she shifts her weight as she drops down to the landing below -- a much better option than flat on the street eighteen floors beneath her.

In no time at all she’s street-level and the sound of her heels clicking on the pavement mutes the yelling of her mark having discovered the open window and empty safe. She tsks quietly to herself, already nothing more than a shadow in a dark alley. “I’m sure he’s mostly upset at the extra cost on his heating bill. Poor thing. Whatever will he do without his diamonds to help defer that cost.”


FIRST-PERSON JOURNAL SAMPLE:

[The room is nondescript. It isn’t her room and more importantly it isn’t a jail cell. Her instincts tells her it was Bane. Her little display of firepower she thought had sent him across the floor. She doesn’t want to admit that one of his mercs had gotten the upper hand.

Then there is the book. It doesn’t exactly scream Bane. It does scream though. Slightly alarming. Taking a breath, she tries the door. Unlocked.]

That is... unexpected. [Glancing outside, she doesn’t understand where she’s been taken, but she sees people and that’s always interesting. She also sees people talking into that book. It explains the screaming. Curiosity killed the cat, but she can’t help herself.]

Excuse me? [Her head drops, shoulders forward a bit. Voice drops to something softer. Remarkably the book captures her words. That’s a problem.]

I’m sorry, but I just arrived here. I don’t mean to be any trouble, but if someone could possibly explain what’s going on? I really would like to know where I’ve ended up. [Not the most brilliant of plans, but she can’t exactly stride down the hallway of a place she doesn’t know the first thing about. Intel is alway valued. She’s also in her catsuit. Not exactly blending in.]

I’m reading this book. [She says it as she flips pages casually, then stands up to turn to the close that she didn’t even see before. For a woman who prides herself on being aware of her surroundings -- that did just show up.]

Everyone seems to express that it’s a castle and we’ve been taken and there’s no way out. Can someone tell me if it just moves large pieces of furniture into your room?

[Opening the doors, she smiles. This isn’t bad. Well, other than appearing out of thin air.]

Just any help would be great. [She calls it across the room, over her shoulder, still able to manipulate from a distance. Yes, this will do nicely.]


INTENT: NO INTENT FOR YOU!! It's for the app-readers only. :| secrets. I haz them too.