I don't own Batman. Or Catwoman, come to that.
The Birth of Catwoman.
When she saw him for the first time, swooping down surrounded by dozens of bats, his black wings flapping gently in the breeze as he terrified a trio of thugs, Selina Kyle was hooked.
She had been forced to steal ever since her parent's deaths; Selina would have been lying if she said she missed them, she did and she didn't; Maria Kyle had been a distant bitch, the only good things she had done was to teach Selina how to be independent since nobody could be depended upon, and to encourage Selina's incredible gymnastic talents which were enhanced with ballet dancing to teach her grace and precision, while her father had been a drunk.
No, that was too harsh.
There had been moments when her father had helped her here and there, and despite his alcoholism, he encouraged her to do well and to be independent while he taught her some practical skills.
When both of them had died, she had been forced to live on the streets of Gotham, which were truly not for the faint of heart. Sadly, Selina's early escapades into theft were mixed; while she had proved she was good at it, she needed to become better. It wasn't until she was caught trying to steal an apple, of all things which led to her spending a few years in an orphanage. Her escape from that bastard orphanage and juvenile detention centre had shaped her, for the better before her life-changing discovery of the administrator embezzling the funds - granted, Selina knew she had made a truly nasty mistake confronting the evil hag, who'd tried to have her killed, but once she had escaped and stole the book giving her the proof of what the administrator had done, a big mistake on the woman's part, it was easy to get the woman to erase the records of Selina Kyle for good.
Privately, she'd had an epiphany.
She had been thrown into the sea in nothing but a sack. It would have been easy to let herself drown in the water, but Selina had struggled to get out, to survive.
Survival was a choice. If she didn't fight to survive, something she had been doing for so long before and after that incident, she would have perished.
It was the reason she kept going. But when she grew older, everything changed.
Once Selina had left, she had taken to the streets again. She was better now. And soon she moved up the ranks, going from a sly and stealthy pickpocket to a cold, calculating cat burglar. It was her desire to survive which made Selina move up the ranks. She forced herself to become a cat burglar, after spending so many years as a pickpocket, knowing if she was to survive and make herself bigger, she would need to become the best.
It had taken Selina a long time to employ calculated moves, throwing bricks into the glass windows of jewellery stores to sell for hard cash to not only buy new food and clothes to survive in but also to buy lessons for self-defence and to resume her original ballet lessons. She wanted to become stronger, and faster, and she got what she wanted by learning and mastering kickboxing and Krav Maga. Over the years Selina also met and learnt from some of the best burglars in the city as she learnt more tricks and moved up the rankings of the city.
All to become the best.
All to survive. And in a city like Gotham, you had to be good in order to survive. Gotham was a true jungle in every sense of the world. Every animal was fighting and vying for supremacy, and it was killed or be killed, eaten or be eaten, beaten or be beaten; it was that reason, that desire to survive, that made Selina into a cat burglar, to begin with. And she had been content with where she was; she had moved into a luxurious apartment, she had her cats, and she even had money….
But when she saw Batman in action, it struck her and changed her life forever. There had been rumours and horror tales of a weird menacing bat creature in Gotham for a while, but she had always ignored it; the criminals in Gotham tended to come from the medieval times where brainpower was concerned, and so she hadn't bothered to pay it any heed, believing it to be a rumour although its sources had to have been strong, otherwise there would not be so many frequent stories of it in the papers.
No.
Batman did not exist.
Or so she had thought at the time. Selina had been on a routine burglary, and she was just returning home when she saw Batman in action. He hadn't noticed her; if he had then Selina knew she would have been caught by him. No, he was focused on two thugs in the alley, and she had been enthralled by him swooping down. When he turned around after dealing with them, Selina's sharp eyes caught the speaks of blood on the lower half of his mask. And then it struck her with a shard of disappointment that he wasn't a supernatural being at all, but at the same time, she realised he was an ordinary man dressing up in a costume of some kind that was designed to terrify his opponents.
And then it struck her. Selina had always felt she was different, and this wasn't arrogance but pure fact. Unlike the girls she had known in her days before the deaths of her parents, Selina had grown up in a dysfunctional family home, and as a result, she had known things she was totally different from the other girls and boys around her. By the time she met the administrator of the centre, Selina had already become a pickpocket, just like some of the girls there too, but her drive was what she felt made her different.
As she looked at the Batman, those thoughts made Selina realise she wanted to be different from the other criminals in the city. Beforehand she had been content with being a cat burglar, but when she saw Batman in action for the first time, realised that he was different and she wanted to be different as well.
But where he was a Bat, Selina wondered…why could she not be a Cat?
Selina's decision/question took two years to fulfil. She went into more intensive training, mastering new martial arts and gymnastics moves until she was twice as good as before, and with her contacts, she was able to make small retractable claws for her gloves and she mastered the bullwhip to use as a long-distance weapon and tool before she began designing her outfit. It was a simple suit, tight fitting to emphasise her body, but with practical night-vision goggles and claws.
After two years of work, Selina Kyle disappeared as she donned the suit, and Catwoman was born.
