hellofist | (no subject)

User Name/Nick: Ren
User DW:

blahblahRen
Other Characters: none, previously Cass

Character Name: Cassandra Cain
Series: DC Comics
Age: 19
From When?: Batgirl 73

Inmate: So, what's different about this version of Cass? The most important thing you need to know is that this is a girl that's basically given up. All that she pushed so hard for, the life she made for herself, the love she could have had, her future? It's as destroyed as Bludhaven is and as far as she can see, it's her fault.

By the time she walks away from the burning Bludhaven, all she knows about herself is that she's named Cain and she was never meant to be a Bat. She isn't deserving of that mantle anymore because she's broken Bruce's biggest rule. She's a killer, and now she sees that some deaths are worth it. She's embraced that letting go and fighting without holding back are good feelings. Before she broke arms and legs with no feelings of remorse if it helped her get where she wanted to be, but now? Now if someone shows her they don't deserve to be alive, maybe she'll have no issues with helping that be a reality.

This is, needless to say, a GIGANTIC DEPARTURE from her normal self. This is no longer the girl who cried and begged her best friend to do CPR on someone she had accidentally killed. This is a woman who snapped her mother's neck, hung her from a meat hook, and walked away with a smile on her face.

There were hints of this change before her departure from the Barge in her strong desire to murder for revenge in Cassel's name, and he was the only thing that kept her in line. I had wanted to explore her fall from grace, so to speak, but didn't have the chance to before I had to drop. Now, though, she'll have that chance.

Abilities/Powers: Cass was raised to be basically a human weapon. She's highly trained in martial arts, can lift at least twice her own weight, and has a high enough pain tolerance that she can be shot multiple times and keep moving and doing what she needs to do. She could easily strike killing blows constantly but forced herself to learn control so she'll never kill anyone again.

Her father raised her without teaching her to communicate through words, instead teaching her to read body language to learn what people wanted, what they were saying and what they would do. Because of this she can watch someone move as little as a few steps and know if they're going to attack her. This carries over into social settings as well, letting her know if someone is attracted to her or just doesn't like her at all.

As an inmate her strength can be taken away, but her ability to read body language is the thing that makes her able to understand people and it's a product of the way her brain developed, so that should not be nerfed.

Personality: Underneath all of the Batgirl, trained assassin stuff, Cass really is a normal girl. She has her moments of insecurities, she wants to have the normal experiences she missed out on growing up. When she first meets the Nightwing and Robin, she's friendly and eager to make friends with them and curious about them. She's very sweet and determined to be a good person since finding out what her father had been training her all along to become.

After killing her first "target", Cass read his dying thoughts and immediately knew she could never do it again. She ran away and when Barbara took her in and introduced her to Bruce, it was like a new start. They didn't know about her training or her past, just accepted her strangeness and her gave her something that would quickly become incredibly important to her: they became her family. Training with Batman and working with him gave her the chance to work out some of the wrongs she had done under the direction of her father, but she still harbored a very strong death wish.

It was Lady Shiva who solved that for her, seeing in Cassandra that she wanted to die. When questioned, it's revealed that Cass still holds herself responsible for the murder of her first target, even though she didn't know what he was doing, and she doesn't feel like she has a right to be alive after that. So Shiva kills her, thinking it a gift, and from then on Cass no longer wishes to die. Instead, she wants to use her life to help as many people as she can.

Still very driven, she spent every night out in Gotham protecting the city with or without Batman. She took her job very seriously, was willing to die to protect people to the point of putting herself in the path of bullets because she knew her body could take it instead of letting others get hurt. If she wasn't out patrolling she was training, either alone or with Stephanie Brown, who quickly became her best friend.

She still feels a lot of shame about not being able to read, but has been shown trying to teach herself. She learned to string together basic words, but when Barbara called her stupid under pressure, it seemed to put a stopper to her willingness to learn. She's very insistent she isn't stupid, and she's not, but being forced to look at the fact that she's lacking such basic knowledge hurt enough to cause her to push Barbara away for months.

Cass still has a lot to learn about the opposite sex and her own sexuality in general. It wasn't until she was 18 that she had her first exposure to lust and desire and it wasn't something she enjoyed feeling at first. She dated Superboy for a short period of time and fell very hard for Black Wind, a freedom fighter who was killed before their relationship could really be explored. It wasn't until she left Bludhaven for good that she had her first kiss and possibly more with Zero, a boy from Bludhaven who had been stalking her a little. She's still very naive when it comes to romance and tends to cycle through periods of wanting a relationship and focusing on her work.

Once she was given full reign over Bludhaven, Cassandra really came into her own. She started exploring what it was to be Cass Cain, not just Batgirl. She made friends who had nothing to do with Bruce Wayne, even went to parties, and was excited to see herself "volving" and coming into her own. She was proud that Batman trusted her enough to find her own way.

As time went on and she became comfortable with her job as Batgirl and started seeing why having a real life was a positive thing, she began to question her origins. She knows she's half David Cain, half all the things that make him a bad person, but what about her mother? Until finding out Cain was her father she assumed he had kidnapped her, that there were loving parents out there, so wouldn't it be possible there was a mother out there somewhere who loved her?

The more she considered it, however, the more she began to believe her mother was Shiva. After a an unhelpful "meeting" with her father (she actually just beat the crap out of him hoping for answers) and Bruce having no evidence, she sets out on her own to find her own clues.

Eventually she does find Shiva, and she gets handed an infodump that basically boils down to hey, you were created for the bad side and you can't escape that, the entire world is bullshit, join us and we'll fix everything. But, you know, in the "starve the lowly, rule what's left" kind of way. She objects, fights to get free of the bad guys, and ends up being murdered by a half brother she didn't even know she had when she jumps in front of someone to save their life.

This is where her personality takes a hard turn from how she used to see the world. Being resurrected via the Lazarus Pit tends to result in insane, violent zombie tendencies where the only clear urge is to kill and fight and kill, and Cassandra is no exception to this rule. She comes out of the Pit blinded by rage and immediately attacks her mother, who is barely able to restrain her. Thanks to her jumbled, recently dead and very impressionable brain, Shiva is able to make Cassandra see that her purpose is to kill people, as simple as that. Shiva had her to be sure there would be someone who would kill her one day, to stop her, and Cass sees that there are reasons to kill.

One life as a trade for 40 lives is worth it. This is violently against everything Bruce stands for, but Cassandra takes up this charge and does exactly as Shiva has suggested. She doesn't just kill her mother, she snaps her neck and hangs her from a meat hook and leaves her there, walking away smiling.

So, she's murdered her mother and turned her back on the things Bruce believed in so strongly, so what's left for her? The answer she decides upon is nothing, she is nothing except a runaway girl named Cain, so she does exactly that. Bludhaven burning behind her, Cassandra walks away without ever looking back.

Barge Reactions: Day to day things on the Barge will likely not give Cass too many problems. She's been all over the world now and she's seen just about every kind of living space there is, she's been on cruise ships and honestly, she'll think she's where she should be. Prison is for bad people and that's what she is so why not a prison ship? Ports and floods will be something she'll learn to tolerate, and maybe even in time appreciate as a change from the norm.

She'll stay out of the limelight for the most part, preferring to let other people go about their lives rather than to shove herself into their day the way she would as a Warden. She'll prefer to be on her own, but will still visit public areas like the mess hall for all her meals. She'll probably steal her food away to somewhere more quiet, though.

Her memories of the Barge itself will be limited to faint recollections of what stuff is but not how to get there or if she's allowed there. She'll know there's a training room, but not that she used to spend all her time in it. She'll know when she goes past Merlin's old room that it makes her feel sad, but she won't know whose room it was or why she feels that way.

As for people, Cassandra will only remember those who remember her. So, if she sees in body language that someone used to care about her, she'll slowly begin to remember them. This will allow her to rebuild those relationships over time and not have to worry about people who are no longer there.

If she is confronted by people who are, in her opinion, the bad guys? They get one warning to get out of her face, but then restricted strength or not she's jumping them and punching until someone pulls her off. This will, obviously, only happen with approval of other muns as she won't be searching out people to punish.

Path to Redemption: First, that self-loathing has got to go. She blames herself for every bad thing that's happened in her wake whether it's been because of her or not. An entire city of people is dead and she believes it's because of her. She doesn't want to be forgiven, she doesn't want to think of herself as anything other than a monster because if she's a monster, no one will get close to her and no one else will die. She's a murderer and there's no coming from back from that, in her mind.

In her case, friendship is magic and love is a miracle. She needs to be shown these things, to have them pounded into her over and over because even before everything else, she didn't think she was a good person. Now there's too much evidence, so it will take someone digging and a lot of stubbornness to get her to see that yeah, she's made some really big, really stupid decisions, but that doesn't ruin her for the rest of her life. There is still redemption, she can still make herself not just good enough in Batman's eyes, but just good in general.

There's also the question of her last death. She was brought back to life with the magic of the Lazarus Pit, but that is a process that results in losing your goddamn mind. Her mother gets her to focus, but she's still a little off her rocker. Violence is more likely, murder is less frowned upon. She'll need someone, Warden or peer, to work with her through this. She needs to be able to start looking forward instead of being mired in the past.

This is a girl that has given up and can't see a way to ever fix what she's done wrong. Show her she still has a good side, get her to reach out and to accept the hands that reach out to her. Be persistent and don't give up on her, show her that there can be a future for her, and she'll be on the road to graduation.

History: here

Sample Journal Entry: This is Cass' return to the barge after her canon update and reflects the mood and mental state she'll be in. If it isn't appropriate let me know and I'll write up something new!

Sample RP:

Parts of this place seem like somewhere she has been before. The hallways are just hallways and the kitchen is just a kitchen, but the deck gives her a sense of peace that she hasn't felt since she was returned to life. The library makes her feel as much annoyance as she'd expect, but she doesn't hate it the way she would expect to hate a room filled with the proof of one of the things she can't and may never be able to do.

But the deck, she likes it there. When her body tells her it needs food she sneaks it from the cafeteria and brings it there, out to one of the chairs to eat and look at the strange starscape. She very pointedly does not try to make out constellations and certainly doesn't think of being curled up against her father's side while he pointed them out to her, but she does make up her own stories in her head.

Little ones, ones that don't mean much more than "I'm bored." There's a fish that swims up what she's decided is the milky way forever without ever making progress. No stories about snow or fire, because she can still feel the weight of all that cold as she died in the snow and everything went black but stayed so very cold. She can still remember the smell of burning bodies and chemicals and hear the sounds of a city crumbling.

So she makes up a story about a fish that isn't going anywhere, and it's not until she realizes what she's done (you're the fish, a voice whispers in her head) that she stands and tosses the rest of her meal over the railings.

Maybe she doesn't like the deck after all.

Special Notes: I can't quit you I missed you :C