Black Cat: A Gotham Legacy
The rain drummed against the fire escape like skeletal fingers tapping out a funeral march. In the shadows between the flickering neon signs of Crime Alley, a figure crouched with predatory stillness. Her obsidian suit melted into the darkness, broken only by the ethereal green glow of her eyes—eyes that held the weight of two worlds and the fury of orphaned justice.
Black Cat had inherited more than just her father's brooding intensity and her mother's fluid grace. The night she watched the Time Lords tear through reality itself, reducing her parents to echoes of what they once were, something fundamental had shifted in the fabric of her being. Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle—Batman and Catwoman—had fallen not to bullets in an alley, but to beings who existed outside time itself, cosmic executioners who deemed their timeline "problematic."
Left alone in a Gotham that didn't even remember her parents had existed, she'd learned to survive among the feral cats that prowled the city's forgotten corners. They'd taught her their language—the subtle tilt of an ear that meant danger, the arch of a spine that preceded the strike. In the cold concrete maze of the undercity, surrounded by creatures who understood that survival meant becoming shadow itself, she'd discovered her inheritance.
Her powers had manifested gradually, like dawn creeping across rooftops. First came the enhanced agility—the ability to land on her feet from impossible heights, to slip through spaces that shouldn't accommodate human bones. Then the speed, moving through Gotham's skyline like liquid mercury, her movements too quick for security cameras to capture clearly. But it was the foresight that truly set her apart—split-second glimpses of what was to come, allowing her to dodge bullets before they were fired, to anticipate her enemy's moves like a chess master seeing twenty steps ahead.
Tonight, she perched above the Iceberg Lounge, watching through the rain-streaked windows as Penguin's latest scheme unfolded. Her enhanced senses picked up fragments of conversation carried on the wind, her feline intuition parsing truth from lies with surgical precision. Three heartbeats in the alley below—muggers waiting for their next victim. Her lips curved into a smile that would have made her mother proud and her father concerned.
The first thug never saw her coming. One moment he was lighting a cigarette, the next he was unconscious on the wet asphalt, his weapon scattered into the storm drain. The second managed to turn before her claws—retractable and razor-sharp—traced a warning across his jacket. The third dropped his gun and ran, and she let him. Fear was often more effective than violence.
As sirens wailed in the distance, Black Cat melted back into the shadows. She was neither the symbol of hope her father had been nor the elegant thief her mother had mastered. She was something new—a fusion of justice and survival, of nobility and street-smart cunning. The Time Lords had taken everything from her, but they'd also freed her from the weight of legacy expectations.
In this timeline where Batman had never existed, where Catwoman was just a whispered legend, Black Cat would write her own story. She would be Gotham's guardian and its ghost, its protector and its predator. The city's criminals would learn to fear the flash of green eyes in the darkness, the soft padding of feet that never quite touched the ground.
The night was young, and Gotham was calling. With a grace that transcended human limitation, Black Cat answered, disappearing into the urban jungle where she belonged—forever hunting, forever protecting, forever free.
NEAL LLOYD
