Ruby

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

I wonder if I should work out dynamics between Damian and Dick with @Propro like I'm trying to do with Tim?

@Dblade26

Probably, yeah.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

BTW, I think I got everyone on the roster. Double check me, make sure your character is: A) on the roster, and B) under the section you want them under.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

*Doing his best imitation of the Bat-Scowl^TM from the shadows with a sword partially unsheathed*

"Take off that insufferable mockery of a halloween costume and go home before I cut it off you myself!

@Dblade26

yuuuuuuuusssssss

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

<Snipped quote by Ruby>

I guess we're both cruel, then. XD

@Rin

Then we'll get along faaaaamously. ^_^

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

I can't wait for Kuroko to find out that the Robin name wasn't as vacant as she thought it was. :D

@Rin

I can't wait for Damian to go off on her. lol Is that cruel of me?

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Right, written to distract myself while trying to rest and heal from complications from a recent surgery so it might not be that great or accidentally not quite fit what was planned.

Damian Wayne

Name: Damian Wayne

Age: 11

Alias: Robin, Ibn Al X'uffasch: Son of the Bat

Appearance:

Skills/Abilities: Damian was trained almost from birth to be as perfect an heir as possible to Ra's Al-Ghul and one day take over command of the League of Assassins and has taken after both of his parents in terms of sheer natural aptitude for excellence. He claims to be as skilled in martial arts as Batman himself between training from his mother and various League tutors and while this is doubtlessly an exaggeration he is skilled in a wide variety of combat disciplines. His bragging about mastering every weapon known to man is likewise overblown but perhaps less so, given his not just proficiency with but outright fondness for everything from bows to modern firearms to the thrown weapons of the Bat Family, though he has an especially keen love of swords of all types. When combined with a particularly bright mind for combat tactics on all levels and a degree of physical fitness about as close to perfect as is possible for a child of his age Damian becomes a fairly strong contender for the most lethal person on the planet under the age of twelve. Aside from just combat as the future leader of the League of Assassins Damian was required to study a wide range of subjects including environmental survival, economics and business strategy, various forms of engineering and more. Where Damian really, really shines however even among the Bat-Family is all things stealth and infiltration. This is partly due to his small size and youth but also due to being raised among a society of assassins until stealth became second nature. As a bit of an odd addition to all this he's capable of incredibly precise vocal mimicry and has been trained to fight and function entirely without eyesight.

Weaknesses: Despite being under the wing of the Bat-Family for some two years now Damian's biggest weaknesses are still related to his upbringing. He's hardly a social butterfly and struggles at connecting with or understanding others or behaving even remotely like a normal child and especially with showing his genuine emotions without a mask of confident invulnerability over them. Though much of his former attitude has begun to change he still struggles with the extremist ideals of the League and the concept that the world was something that belonged to him. His arrogance and overconfidence in his skills can cause him to be caught by surprise when he underestimates his opponents as he frequently does. For similar reasons while better than the average person and possessed of a genius intellect he's still a relatively poor detective as he tends to be rash and jump to conclusions. Also, despite his technically high degree of combat ability he's far less effective than he should be due to his training primarily focusing on killing his opponents quickly and efficiently clashing with the non-lethal code of the Bat-Family that he's trying very hard to adhere to now.

History: Born 11 years ago, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al-Ghul was raised to be a warrior prince, a young conqueror who would one day command the League of Assasssins and purify the world according to the vision of the Demon Head, Ra's Al-Ghul. As such he was subjected to extremely harsh training methods by a variety of tutors and often tested near to the breaking point, though his mother generally oversaw his combat training personally in what passed for bonding time. When he succeeded he was treated like a prince and lavishly rewarded and as he grew both older and more successful he grew proud and cruel as well, molded by Ra's and an entire court's worth of manipulators that wanted to mold him to their ideas. Fortunately for Damian, Talia disliked how much influence the League was having on her son. Wanting a healthier life than the League could give him and higher ideals for him to strive for in life, Talia secreted Damian away at the age of nine and gave him over to his father in Gotham.

Since that time Damian has found himself struggling with suddenly being part of a very different sort of family and also trying to gain a grasp on a 'normal' life while following in his father's footsteps as a crime-fighter. For around the first year or so Damian was mostly kept secret while the rest of the Bat Family kept a tight leash on him and tried to civilize him, only let out while supervised though he did his best to subvert these efforts. With the exit of Tim Drake as Gotham's active Robin Damian began to pursue what he saw as his destiny even more actively and had only become trusted enough to officially debut as Robin within the last year or so. Now with the disappearance of his father, Damian struggles to find his place in the family as well as keep stability in Gotham in Bruce's name.

@Dblade26

Approved.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

I've decided not to join. So Cassandra Cain is open for anyone who may want to play her.

@Ultimate Spidey

Good luck!

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

<Snipped quote by Ruby>
Yessssssssssssss. I finally get to see her in action.

@GreenGrenade

Hell, I might even just recycle that CS. It's exactly the version of her I'm using.

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

Since this is now a thing.

@Blue Demon

Yeah, I have no idea when I picked up that habit. But damn did I pick it up. I'd be shocked if I didn't do it with Jean Grey.

Also @Ruby expect a PM sometime today-tomorrow so I can discuss some things character wise. I shouldn't do it now because I should be writing for NF. (But I'm not. Shame on me.)

@Blue Demon

Eagerly awaiting. ^_^

Gotham City: Shadow of the Bat

WIP

Name: Helena Bertinelli
Age: Mid-20s
Alias: Don Bertinelli, the Huntress
Appearance:
Skills/Abilities:

Helena Bertinelli is an Olympic level athlete, tall and athletically built. Her training regiment remains extreme, and the equal of anything the NFL or Navy SEALs can offer.

She is one of the premiere marksmen in the world.

With an extensive and often times merciless martial arts training record, Helena has forged herself into an incredible martial artist.

On the surface a Technohobbyist, behind the scenes a technician, mechanic, and engineer that has been trained from the start to create her own tools and equipment, to depend on no one. Still room to improve as a hacker, and has no experience with hyper-advanced technology.

After a long campaign to successfully embed herself within the American Mafia, on top of her Sicilian upbringing, Helena holds all the resources and power of a Mafia Don without many realizing it. Thus far the Huntress has primarily used this as an intelligence resource.

Weaknesses:

The Tight Rope - Helena lives a life not even Bruce Wayne would live. While she is the vigilante Huntress at night, there is no break in intensity or danger with her day time persona: as Don Bertinelli, danger is always around her. One misstep, and everything falls apart. And if the Mafia ever found out Don Bertinelli was truly the Huntress...

Helena...Wayne? - According to Jim Gordon, the member of the Batfamily most similar to Batman in terms of personality is the Huntress. And that's not a good thing. Obsessed with her mission to the point of dehumanizing herself, it can be nearly impossible to get close to the Huntress, or Helena.

History:

Helena Bertinelli was born a princess in a Mafia Empire she blissfully knew nothing of. She knew her parents loved her, and her family loved to get together at her father's house. They would descend their home in Gotham Heights to see musicals in the city, or go to the zoo, or the circus, or the museums to see the dinosaur bones.

It was a happy childhood, until the day cruel men in black masks kidnapped her right after school ended at Saint Sebestation's in the Heights.

What exactly happened to Helena is hard to work out. Police reports suggest various mental and physical traumas, but Don Bertinelli pulled whatever strings necessary to ensure no one would examine his baby girl and put that filth on a report any of his enemies could pay some clerk to get ahold of. Her father told her to put it behind her, that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", and encouraged her not to speak of it again.

Not even a year later, a van full of masked gunmen burst into the Bertinelli estate in Gotham Heights, and murdered every living member of the Gotham City Bertinelli family. All except the little girl too numb to be scared; without fear little Helena could think, slipping under the corpse of a still bleeding out uncle, allowing her to escape the gunmen and live.

Immediately after Helena was returned to the Sicilian Bertinelli clan, the "mother clan." There was talk of marrying Helena off to a distant cousin, or a rapid riser in the Sicilian scene. It was then one of the greatest assassins of the early 20th century, Giovanni Bertinelli, took Helena with him one early morning to hunt fowl.

Giovanni would later admit perhaps he was pushing himself to find something when he took the girl hunting that morning. His own parents had been murdered in a war within the Cosa Nostra. He knew that drive for vengeance. Just as much as he knew a natural born killer when he saw one; and in Helena, he saw it in spades.

Helena Bertinelli had no childhood after that day. Her training began immediately and unrestricted. She holds a degree in Corporate Communications from the Sorbonne, and both a masters and PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. She achieved this by the age of 22 while receiving training in secret from Giovanni and Lady Shiva.

Where her father was a quick minded and ruthless businessman and Don, Helena had become a true master in the art and science of international business. Applying such radical approaches to business as the Theory of Constraints, Lean theory, and Six Sigma, Helena bought failing and crumbling business after failing and crumbling business only to turn downsize, raise product quality, and worker efficiency...and in turn cost efficiency of the bottom line. Sometimes called a 'corporate terrorist', the result was nearly inevitable, what businesses would assist her the most in her ultimate goals were kept while all others were sold off piece by piece to the highest bidder.

When Helena Bertinelli returned to Gotham City it was on the cover of Business Week and being covered by Bloomberg and CNN. Using the ultimate power broker of money, Helena used to the fact that she could make more of it than anyone else available to usher her return to not only the Gotham Mafia, but to the American Mafia as a whole.

Now the majority owner but never direct manager of multi corporations, Helena has turned her focus squarely on Gotham City's Mafia...and her quest to ruin it from the inside-out. Taking on the mission given to her by God the day she played dead under the corpse of an uncle, Helena has decided a theatrical method of hitting the Mafia from the outside while secretly exposing and bleeding them from the inside by taking on the mantle of a former feared and dangerous enemy of the Gotham City Mafia: The Huntress.

Her revenge would leave a bloody trail across Gotham City, until the Batman finally caught up to her. Even he wasn't able to keep her from killing her final target, though the fallout between Batman and the new vigilante was intense, and would lead to Helena leaving the city. She'd return in secret to visit family graves, and pay respects. Instead she found herself caught into the Cataclysm--an earthquake that left Gotham City in ruin and cut off from the rest of the world. For reasons unknown to her, all of the Batfamily was out of the city when it happened; leaving the Bat mantle to her, and her alone.

When Bruce finally returned, he found her with a self made Bat suit, spray painting Bat signals, and chasing the Joker. He would return to Gotham as Batman during it's hour of greatest need, but in part out of respect for her efforts, and in part because he had no better options, Batman brought Huntress into the Cave and formally made her part of the Batfamily.

After Cataclysm, Helena would leave once again, taking the Huntress on an international crusade agaist organized crime, with a focus on human trafficking. Though she would accept an invitation to the Justice League, the Huntress wouldn't stay with the team long. Her latest return to Gotham City is not secret.

Despite her ties to the Batfamily, Helena is neither villain nor hero, merely a very dangerous and resourceful young woman on a fanatical quest to kill the Gotham Mafia for once and for all. A quest that can only end in her own death or the death of the Gotham City Mafia as it is known, or had ever been known. A fact she has willingly accepted.