Phantom Thief of Hearts
We live in the Metal Gear timeline
Accepted along with Garrus
“I don't kill. But I don't lose, either.”
Name
Cassandra Cain
Universe
DC Comics
Gender
Female
Sexual Orientation
Heterosexual
Species
Human
The origins of Cassandra Cain are not known to many, and they were certainly not known to her for much of her life. David Cain was a premier member of the League of Assassins, who was most notorious for having trained Batman in the art of fighting, though as his teachings turned to ways of assassination and murder, their paths diverged. Cain longed to make a legacy for himself worthy of the Demon's Head. He searched endlessly for ways to create the ultimate warrior, one "Who Is All" that would be Ra's al Ghul's perfect soldier in his crusade against the hubris of mankind. He attempted to raise numerous children to become his successors (all of whom he "adopted", formally or otherwise), though all of them ultimately failed them, and he tossed them aside, as lost as they had been when he found them. But, in his travels across the globe, Cain eventually found his answer in the two Wu-San sisters, Sandra and Carolyn Wu-San. Secluded martial artists who resided deep in the Kunlun Mountains, they sparred frequently with one another, with a bond that was inseparable. Upon observing them, Cain noticed that Sandra, the younger of the two, was by far the superior, though she always held back, out of love for her sister, and Cain suspected, a reluctance to unleash her true fury. Cain murdered Carolyn in the dead of night, and left clues that lead Sandra to her sister's corpse. As he hoped, Sandra attacked with everything she had, but Cain was still the better fight... but only just. Cain offered to teach Sandra how to be the perfect warrior that he knew she always wanted to be... in exchange, she would bear a child for him. She accepted.
Cassandra Cain knew fighting, and only fighting, ever since she was an infant. Her father intended to make her into "Who Is All", and that was exactly what he did.i The training was relentless, and it started as soon as Cassandra could walk. Cain didn't spare her a single moment, using every chance for an opportunity to beat a new skill into her, and often a new scar to go with it. As Cassandra grew, her back became a mural of pain and abuse, marks of everything she had gone through, and come out stronger as a result. Not knowing any better, Cassandra was conditioned to embrace this torture, and even came to enjoy it, as it was quality time with her father, twisted as that would sound to any decent parent. The foremost skill Cain instilled in his daughter was the extraordinarily rare art of body reading, something that he had seen in Sandra Wu-San herself, who then became known as Lady Shiva upon joining the League of Assassins. Cassandra never saw or met her mother, however, nor was she made aware of her existence. There was only Cain, and occasionally, other members of the League would step in to offer their experience for Who Is All. Cain made a note of only training Cassandra to fight, and other skills that were necessary to be the perfect assassin, but nothing else. This did not include social cues, or most significantly, speech. In Cain's mind, the only language she needed to know was the language of violence, developing severe dyslexia in Cassandra at a very early age.
When Cassandra was at the ripe age of eight years old, it was time for her first mission. Her first kill. The target was Faizul, a book man in Macau, who had been marked for death by the League. Cassandra played along, thinking it was just one of the many "games" that her father had her play. When she struck a death blow to the man's neck, however, Cassandra "read" him in his final moments, and saw death through the eyes of her first victim. Horrified of what she had done, and overwhelmed with guilt, Cassandra fled Macau, her father, and everything she had ever known that night. Alone on the streets, Cassandra did everything she had to to survive, and elude her numerous captors, but she never killed again. Not once. She knew in that moment that murder was terribly wrong, and would never bring herself to that act again no matter what. Surviving on the streets of Hong Kong and abroad, Cassandra eventually made her way to Gotham. After hearing of the so-called Batman, rumored to be one of the greatest fighters in the world, Cassandra wondered that maybe... just maybe... he could help her escape the cycle of violence and death that she was born into. This proved to be the case when she stopped an attack on Commissioner Gordon's life. She was taken in by the Bat-Family and made Oracle's ward, in the hopes that, in addition to training her as the new Batgirl, she could help Cassandra open up and learn how to cope with her dyslexia. It was difficult at first. She found herself caught between resentment Oracle had towards Batman for adopting another into her mantle, and Batman's own apprehension at taking on a case as troubled as hers. For all the training that Cain had given her, life in Gotham was challenging in many other ways.
In spite of it all, however, the new Batgirl managed to persevere. She helped Batman restore order to Gotham after the events of No-Man's Land, and quickly found a place for herself as a strikingly effective stand-in for him when he was called away on League business. However, Cassandra’s ordeal with a runaway psychic jeopardized her standing with Batman, and threatened to unravel her identity entirely. When she learned how to speak and forgot how to body-read, the ensuing crisis brought her to blows with Lady Shiva, who nearly killed her, and worse, exacerbated her personal trauma over her past and how she had come to define herself. Cassandra forced herself to pursue Lady Shiva as a part of the death wish she continued to hold for herself for the murder that Cain had forced her to commit. This trauma finally came to a head when Bruce Wayne was framed for murder, a twisting conspiracy that was revealed to be none other than David Cain himself, a moment that made Cassandra realize that he was truly her father after all. For all of the man’s efforts, however, Cassandra still hated him for what he had done to her, and for the man that he continued to be, what she wasn’t: a cold-blooded murderer. She would never belong to him or the League of Assassins ever again.
Some time after this, through means she has yet to understand, Cassandra has found herself in a city that refers to itself as New Tokyo, in a nation called Valpan. Though being displaced from her home and her family has done a number on her, Cassandra has quickly acclimated to the city’s world of heroes and villains, though of a different sort from what she had been a part for the past few years. They were much too like the Justice League that she had never felt close to, and all the more controlling, for that matter. The grime and grit of New Tokyo’s streets were a more welcome place, where likes of darker, greyer vigilantes resembled Gotham more closely than any other part of this place that she was forced to call home for the time being. She has since crossed paths with a monstrous dinosaur and, oddly enough, a little girl genius. Though far removed from who Cassandra typically considered her friends, she has grown attached to the pair, the three of them making for a strange if effective crimefighting team to take New Tokyo by storm. Only time will tell if she will ever see anyone from her home again. Until then, Batgirl has a new city to call home.
Given her upbringing, Cassandra's personality is incredibly subdued, and for many, it would appear that the girl does not have any personality at all. She is extremely quiet, and she is very antisocial and introverted as a result of her father's training. Though she may wish to make friends and to get to know other people, she hasn't the faintest idea on how to do that, and worse, wondering whether anyone would want to be friends with someone like her. A girl, trained since birth to be an assassin, daughter to one of the most infamous agents of the League of Assassins... she wouldn't want anything to do with someone like her. She is uncertain if she will ever be able to be anything different than the life that she ran away from, but the fact alone that she fled her father shows that she at the very least has hope in the contrary.
This is not to say that Cassandra does not appreciate what her father taught her, or that she necessarily hates him. He was her guardian, who raised her, made her who she is, without whom she would nothing. She enjoys being a warrior, with fighting skills without parallel, a sense of physical prowess that helped give her purpose and drive in her developing years. But, she learned that she ultimately despises killing, and is terrified by it. She realized this when she took her first life, something that continues to haunt her to this day. Cassandra harbors a death wish for herself because of this, a longing to somehow atone for her actions, and become something that her father never intended her to be: someone who saves lives, instead of taking them.
Cassandra’s early forays as the new Batgirl were awkward, to say the least. She was the product of an assassin, one of Batman’s own tutors at that. Not only that, but she was a reminder to Oracle of the hero she no longer was, and another ward that Batman would have to become paranoid over. These insecurities have never entirely gone away, even when she is so far removed from her original family, especially with her new one. This inadequacy will likely always be with Cassandra to some extent, and certainly for as long as she wears the Bat on her chest.
Cassandra is a seasoned hero now, though, and has come into her role better than she ever would have imagined when she first set foot in Gotham City. She has developed a dry sense of humor, and a rather sharp cunning in her time as a caped crusader-in-training. As a hero who works outside the bounds of the law, she has little patience for the likes of the Pro Heroes, though she hasn’t been in New Tokyo long, and has an open mind if they can prove themselves to be more than the system that they represent. That, and her partner has a soft spot for them, so they can’t be all bad. Cassandra’s relationship with “Moon Girl” is still a somewhat tenuous one - mainly on the account that she is working with a nine-year-old - though she trusts her enough to be the voice in her ear that Oracle used to be… the jury’s still out on her friend.
Master Assassin
The entirety of Cassandra's experiences and skills thus far come from the brutal training by her father, David Cain. Trained by some of the deadliest warriors on the planet, Cassandra is an incredibly accomplished martial artist and unarmed combatant, preferring not to use weapons of any kind against her opponents.
Peak Human Conditioning
Cassandra's body has been conditioned to operate at near-superhuman levels, with little to no recourse or additional fatigue. Aside from her body reading ability (see below), the main boon of her father's training was the result it had on her body. Cassandra's body possesses an unnaturally high amount of serotonin, giving her an insane tolerance for pain, such as being able to take direct hits from gunfire without flinching (albeit in armor), as well as knives being embedded in her, and keep going in spite of this. This pain tolerance is largely due to the abusive training her father gave her, which focused on gunfire, up to and including high-caliber rounds. If Cassandra has a reason to, she can alter her heart rate at will, lowering or increasing it to make it undetectable or give strange readings to those who rely on hearing her heartbeat. This can be used to the extent of temporarily stopping her heart from beating, to give a false impression of death. However, using this skill for too long may force Cassandra into a deathlike coma.
- Strength - Cassandra's strength is extremely focused, able to project far more force than a teenager should ever be capable of producing. She can shatter a sword with her fist, break through several inches thick of military-grade protective glass, and, if she can locate any structural weaknesses, prison concrete, with only a few strikes. She also has the capacity to knock low-level superhumans out cold, often with a single punch; this is accomplished by her using normally killing blows, which is translated into devastating "nonlethal" blows to their superhuman physique.
- Agility - Cassandra is incredibly agile as a result of her training, to the point that many may suspect her of being superhuman. She is capable of dodging bullets at point blank range, so long as she is focused on the shooters and is prepared for the attack. Her reflexes border on the unnatural, being even more skilled at dodging close-quarter attacks, which is her specialty to begin with. It goes without saying that she can also deflect or even catch multiple projectiles mid-combat, such as arrows or shuriken, a feat that pales in comparison to her bullet dodging.
- Martial Arts - Cassandra was instructed in virtually every fighting style known to man by her father, as well as other prominent members of the League of Assassins, Ben Turner and Malcolm Merlyn among them. Though Cassandra has begun to invent styles of her own in recent years, Dragon Style Kung Fu, appears to be the most prominent (known) style that she applies to her combat, whereas the Falling Leaf, a nerve pinching technique of sixteenth-century Chinese monks, is one of her most frequently used skills; only Cassandra and her father know this technique. Cassandra often uses it to completely paralyze her opponents in large groups, a seemingly fatal attack that gives the impression of a still corpse. She may also use more direct versions of this on singular targets, able to disable someone with a single strike to the chest, or a similarly vital area, with varying effects (i.e. temporarily pacifying the brain and sending the subject into a brief comatose state (or much worse, if she so wishes) by striking the corresponding lobe) She is also capable of stopping someone's heart with a single strike, and restarting it in a similar fashion.
- Hand-to-Hand Combat - Cassandra is a master of hand-to-hand combat, versed in virtually every assassin technique there is to know, from pressure points to disrupting the flow of chi, and of course killing techniques that her father made sure she could execute flawlessly. She has never used any of these techniques after she made her first kill... though she knows them all the same, and how easy it is to take a life, and in so many ways.
- Stealth - Needless to say, Cassandra is also a master of stealth, a skilled tracker, and an expert infiltrator, as well as able to remain undetected by all but the best hunters when she doesn't want to be found. Her time on the streets in numerous third-world countries, and then Gotham City, has also made Cassandra a skilled pickpocket, and intensely familiar with urban landscapes and how to use them to her advantage.
Detective
Cassandra is no Bruce Wayne, or Dick Grayson, and certainly no Barbara Gordon, though she has picked up on a few things over the years. Her time traveling on her own, before she became Batgirl, her time as such, and her recent experience in New Tokyo thus far have afforded Cassandra intermediate detective and forensics skills. She understands police procedure (and more pointedly, how to best circumvent it while operating as a vigilante), and is able to conduct most steps of an investigation that doesn’t require sophisticated reading or writing skills with significant effectiveness. Though she is the least familiar with computers in her investigative repertoire (helped by and large by Moon Girl), Cassandra knows how to use a computer well enough that she could find her way around, so long as there weren’t any complications along the way.
Body Reading (Strengths) - Cassandra's foremost ability is the capacity to read the movements of her opponents. While this as a principle is not exclusive to her talents, the extent to which she can do so is unparalleled. Even if her opponent is far more skilled than her, Cassandra's brain has been wired to predict what an opponent is going to do before they even do it, with perfect accuracy. She can also use this on individuals far faster than herself, and even nonterrestrials, provided she adapts to any differences in body language. This also allows Cassandra to identify transformed or otherwise disguised people as well, being able to see past any bodily illusion, as well as being able to tell when most people are lying based on their slight change in body language. Cassandra’s body reading is a language unto itself, and is the most common way she communicates to others; at times it is like a dance, using extremely dexterous movements as sophisticated as any oral vocabulary. She may also be able to discern feelings and surface thoughts, though this aspect of her body reading has not been trained to the same extent as the other aspects. Cassandra may also pick up on someone's fighting style while fighting them, especially if she fights them on more than one occasion, and can begin to adapt to simply outfight them. The only other person who has a body reading ability as keen and perfected as Cassandra's is her mother, Lady Shiva.
Illiterate - Cassandra is largely dyslexic as a result of her father's extreme training and conditioning, intending for fighting to be her first language. At first, she could only form basic words. Her thoughts were very simplistic, usually occurring spontaneously, as instincts rather than actual thoughts or words, making it difficult for telepaths to read her mind, only able to pick up on the actions she is planning on carrying out. While this gradually improved over time, Cassandra is still at a great disadvantage verbally. She can form full sentences now, though her speech is very deliberate, and the more sophisticated a sentence, the harder of a time Cassandra has piecing it together (at least if she wants it to come out coherently). For this reason she usually limits her speaking to brief, precise statements or phrases. As an alternative, Cassandra often communicates using sign language, using fast, focused motions to describe her feelings or actions, though it is often lost on those who don’t know the signs.
Body Reading (Weaknesses) - Unfortunately, Cassandra tends to over-rely on her body reading, rather than apply her skills as well. Her ability is ineffective against those that can disguise their movements, making it unclear even for Cassandra to tell what they're going to do next, leaving her vulnerable. Her ability also doesn't work on individuals whose mental focus isn't on their movements, such as a cybernetic or electronic system taking over for their fighting rather than the person doing the fighting themselves. Her body reading also doesn't work on the mentally unstable or deranged, as their body and mind are too far gone for anyone to predict what they will do next.
