[color=darkgray][center][h1][color=686363][b]B L A C K   C A N A R Y[/b][/color][/h1][img]https://imgur.com/1uCMova.png[/img][/center]

[color=686363][sub][b]N A M E[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent]Dinah Laurel Lance[/indent]
[color=686363][sub][b]A L I A S[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent]Black Canary[/indent]
[color=686363][sub][b]P O W E R S   A N D   A B I L I T I E S[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent]Black Canary is a naturally gifted hand to hand combatant. Remarkable balance, speed, poise, and grace combine with an intuitive feel for technique and form to create what could one day be a world class fighter. A lack of experience is her one great failing, but she’s working overtime on that. Nightshifts, mostly.

While lacking in the skills of detection and investigation that her father had her natural guile and intelligence goes someway in making up the difference. On top of that a misspent youth has taught her some less than savoury skills, such as how to jimmy a lock, and disarm a car alarm. She’s no world class thief, but she does have a talent for getting into places people would rather she’d stay out of.

No discussion of Dinah’s powers would be complete without mention of her [i]‘Canary Cry’[/i], an ultrasonic scream so powerful that it can shatter glass, crack concrete, or disorientate opponents. It might even be capable of more, though Dinah is hesitant to experiment with it. Collateral damage is difficult to contain. 
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[color=686363][sub][b]O R I G I N   A N D   B A C K S T O R Y[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent]
Born to a murdered PI and a former punk rock queen, Dinah Lance led a mostly directionless adolescence, anything to spark some excitement and piss off her overbearing, controlling mother. Ted Grant, a family friend and something of a surrogate father figure inspired a love for combat and the martial arts, but without any real drive for the future she didn’t know what direction she should pursue her passion. All she knew was that she couldn’t end up fighting for fighting’s on sake. Ted had drilled that into her.

The Lance’s discovered they had a mutant in the family during a prank gone wrong. Dinah and some friends decided to break into her high school after hours, though got more trouble than they bargained for when the cops were called. The teenage intruders managed to scrape a narrow escape, but in the ensuing confusion a scared Dinah unleashed her sonic scream, shattering a police cruisers windows, and blowing the eardrums of the officers. Terrified at this turn of events she went to her mother, who decided that to keep her daughter safe they would have to hide her uniqueness from prying eyes. Part of Dinah was happy to go along with her mother’s decree, though another, smaller part worried that it was the wrong choice. That they were covering up something they should have been celebrating.

At the age of nineteen she met Oliver Queen, the charismatic and charming ‘Prince of Star City’. She quickly found herself falling for the older boy, though she retreated from him when she realised he was falling just as hard for her. Without any real idea of where she wanted to go in life, or what she wanted from the world, she couldn’t allow herself to become Olly’s. If she did, then let him down, she’d never be able to forgive herself. Better to let him cut himself loose early, she figured, than allow him to tie himself to her just for them both to drown in each other’s issues.

Drowning would prove to be a poor choice of words however, when in a few short weeks later a ship Ollie was on would sink, leaving everyone to believe the young billionaire had drowned at sea. Tragedy would be heaped on with tragedy when Dinah senior would pass away a few months later. Both these incidents together would conspire to make the younger Dinah realise how half-heartedly she’d been wasting her life. With one eye on the horizon she would leave Star city to travel America, to find that drive she’d been missing for so long. Ironically it wouldn’t be until she returned to Star five years later that she’d finally find that purpose she was missing. Seeing the poverty and crime rampant in her family’s old neighbourhood of the Glades made her realise what dire straits her home town was in, made her realise that she needed to follow in her father’s footsteps. She needed to become a lawman. Only she’d have to do it her own way.

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[color=686363][sub][b]W H A T   M A K E S   T H I S   C H A R A C T E R   " U L T I M A T E " ?[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent]In a lot of ways this concept is really just a streamlining of the various backgrounds and origins that Black Canary has been given over the long years since her inception. Dinah is still a legacy character, though her mother was never a superhero, rather a punk rock singer calling herself the [i]‘Black Canary’[/i] who assisted her husband on his cases. Dinah here is a mutant rather than a meta human, which will allow me to explore themes and storylines that aren’t necessarily open to a DC meta. Most importantly Dinah is younger, angrier, and less experienced than she is usually depicted. Whether she develops into the calm, cool, and utterly commanding heroine she can and should be is the storyline I intend to pursue here.[/indent]
[color=686363][sub][b]S U P P O R T I N G   C H A R A C T E R S[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent][hider=][i]Oliver Queen[/i] – Dinah’s ex. Once lost at sea, recently found. 

[i]Sarah Lance[/i] – Dinah’s younger sister. The only member of her family still alive, though somewhat estranged.

[i]Ted “Wildcat” Grant[/i] – Former world champion heavyweight boxer, now a trainer at Grant’s Gym. An old friend of the Lance family. Taught Dinah how to box.

[i]Kurt Pike[/i] – Dinah’s [i]other[/i] ex. Older, worldly, and exciting, she met him during her travels, though called things off between them after Kurt proposed.
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[color=686363][sub][b]S A M P L E   P O S T[/b][/sub][/color][hr][indent][hider=]
Once upon a time a man would think twice before breaking into Ted Grant’s home. They’d think to themselves [i]‘alright, there isn’t much in the way of automated security here, but the owners an ex-heavyweight champ. A flat screen and some loose change probably isn’t worth risking being tagged by the same left hook that flattened Ali’[/i], then be off on their merry way. 

But then that was all before that ‘quake had gone and sunk the Glades, and twenty-five thousand people along with it. Twenty-five thousand souls, all dying slow, their city doing its level best to ignore their plight, with no other option than to steal or starve. Yeah, if anything is likely to make a man break into a boxer’s home, it’s an empty belly.

The fact that he’d went and gotten old could also be a contributing factor, it had to be said. 

Still, old man or not, he wasn’t about to roll over and let some stranger root around his valuables. You have to draw a line. A man’s home was a castle, and these intruders were about to find out just how hostile this king could get when under siege. 

He slipped down his stairs, silent as you like. Ghosts or shadows, mice or sneak-thieves, they could all learn a thing or two about skulking from old Ted Grant. Room by room, he whispered through the house, until he was standing outside the kitchen door. He could hear them inside, rummaging through his drawers. Maybe they were just hungry waifs after all. Only one way to find out. He kicked the door open, a roar on his lips, and hit the lights.

You get surprise on your side and nine times out of ten you’ll win any fight you get yourself into. That’s a lesson Ted Grant learnt early, and he’d stuck by it’s wisdom all these years. When he realised it was Dinah Lance in his kitchen, looking at him like a kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and bleeding all over his clean floor the fight just fell out of him. Surprise. It’ll do that to you.

They stood staring at each other for the longest moment, a greying man in a threadbare bathrobe, and young woman leaking more red stuff than is strictly healthy.  He broke the silence first, but only because all that blood loss was making her sluggish. At her best she was faster than he’d ever been.

“Sit.” He grunted, nodding at the breakfast nook. His tone brooked no argument, so she didn’t offer any. He pulled a first aid kit down from a high shelf, retrieved needle and thread, and sat down next to her. 

It took him the best part of twenty minutes to stitch her up. In that time, she didn’t make a peep. Dinah Lance had always been tough, but he had guys in his stable who weighed more than two hundred pounds who at least had the decency to wince when the suture needles went in. She was like a statue carved out of marble, staring at the table top, waiting patiently for the seamstress to finish his stitching. It wasn’t natural. 

He was finishing up the work, pulling the stitches tight on a nasty gash above her right shoulder, when she finally piped up. 

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“So, aren’t you going to say something?”[/color] Sounded like there was the edge of a wince in her voice, a tailing up of the syllables that spoke of pain bitten back. Good. He was getting worried she wasn’t all human there for a moment. He tied off the stitch before replying.

“Like what?”

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“I dunno, that I was stupid, that I need to stop before I get myself killed. You told me it was dangerous in the Glades, and I went anyway.”[/color] That unvoiced wince was giving way to unspoken weariness, a bone tiredness that sunk deep. He knew that feeling. Knew it every time a fight went to the twelfth round, and you felt like you didn’t have another one in you, and you knew that if that bell rung and you had to haul yourself back into the centre of that ring your heart would give out. It was the kind of exhaustion someone feels when they know they just can’t take another fight, not yet. 

“You want an ‘I told you so?’” He packed away the first aid supplies as he spoke.

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“No!”[/color] She barked, a bit of colour back in her voice. Some people stand tallest when they feel like somethings trying to hold them down. Dinah Lance was one of those people. When she next spoke she was quieter, she hunched her shoulders, she stared at the floor. [color=DarkSlateBlue]“But, I guess I do kinda expect one.”[/color] She never liked to admit she was wrong, never liked to say she was sorry. 

“And would it stop you going out again?” He felt a grin forcing itself onto his features, looked away before she spotted it. 

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“Fuck no!”[/color] Real fire this time. Some people need you to push them, just so they can push back. Dinah Lance was definitely one of those people.

“Well then, way I see it is whether I like it or not, you're gonna keep traipsing into the Glades, looking for trouble?”

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“Looking to help people Ted ... But yes.”[/color]

“Well then. I've got no choice. I'm gonna have to help ya.”

[color=DarkSlateBlue]“Is that right?”[/color] She looked up at him and grinned, and it lit his whole damn world up. 

“It is. After all, you need me. What kinda idiot tries to fight in fishnets?”

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