Antigone Gordon / Batgirl

[Antigone Gordon]

Hero

I'm just a step away
I'm just a breath away
Losing my faith today

Name: Antigone Noelle Cassandra Gordon
Age: 16
Alias/Nickname: Batgirl, Andi, Tig, she’s had far too many last names to count.
Affiliation: the Batfamily, but also the Teen Titans and the Birds of Prey
Secret or Public Identity: secret
Occupation: Student, professional athlete
Equipment: First and foremost, she has her costume which is an updated design similar to her mother’s original Batgirl costume. Consisting of a black form-fitting bodysuit that is bullet proof and slightly padded with a short collar, black over-the-knee boots, yellow gauntlet gloves, and features the same bat symbol her mother once used, Andi’s features many high tech upgrades like being completely wired, featuring a gauntlet computer and reinforcements, like steel plates in the tops of her boots. In addition to her regular utility belt, she also has two smaller pouch belts, one that straps to her upper arm and another that straps to her ankle. She has a knee-length black cape, but she disposed of her mother’s cowl, instead she wears a domino mask made with a portion of lead with several sets of lenses that she can use, including a pair that she can use as a computer screen.

The rest of her arsenal includes her escrima sticks that are usually strapped to her thigh, the traditional flashbang pellets, batarangs of several sorts, plastic explosives, tear, nerve and knockout gas, an evidence kit, cutting tools, lock picks, a re-breather, a grappling gun and several other things that often change to deal with specialty missions. Her suit, belts and mask are all tamper-proofed with nasty surprises should anyone try to get past them.

Though only consistently allowed to drive her batcycle, she’s also been known to borrow her mother’s computer system, bat vehicles, or pieces of equipment from the Birds from time to time, including the Aerie One and Two, which she can fly. Sometimes she even asks for permission.

Powers:
Photographic Memory
Genius-Level intellect
Expert Computer Hacker (though not quite as good as her mother)
Master Detective – trained by various members of her extended family, and even by her grandfather.
Master Acrobat – she’s currently an Olympic-level gymnast, though much more behind the scenes.
Martial Arts Master – Trained by her “Aunts” Dinah, Helena, Zinda, her “uncles” and reluctantly by her mother, she’s learned and has been at least exposed to many styles including boxing, Muay Thai, Capoeira, Krav Maga, Hapkaido, Dragon-style Kung fu, pressure point fighting, Savate, Judo, Aikido, Jujitsu, Wing Chen, Tai Kwon Do, Stick fighting and others. She has also been told the basics of street fighting, brawling (particularly in bars) and basic self-defense.
Peak human conditioning
Aviation – Zinda Blake had her in the cockpit of a plane before she could walk and made a point of teaching her ‘munchkin’ to fly many kinds of aerial vehicles even in combat, in addition to curse words in several different languages.
Markmanship – Another gift from Zinda, and from Helena, Andi can hit a target 90% of the time with both projectile and thrown weaponry.
Multilingual - Fluent (Speaks and Reads) in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Greek, Mandarin, and German. Reads Latin, and is currently learning Cantonese and Arabic.
Master Tactician and Strategist
Escapologist
Proficient in Stealth, Disguise, Sleight of Hand and Tracking

Weakness: Andi is currently the smallest and lightest member of the batfamily, which tends to get her thrown around a lot, and even though she’s pretty durable, she’s not quite as sturdy as others. Andi is also completely human, and prone to all those good things that can kill a normal human being, shot, stabbed, maimed, infected, poisoned, all that good stuff.

She has a rather nasty temper too, one that can override her better judgment and higher level reasoning skills if she is angry enough, which in conjunction to her lack of fear can get her into all sorts of trouble in a act first think later sort of way. She’s also rather attached to her family and extended/adopted family members, and usually she’ll do anything to keep them safe.

Canon or Original: Original

I am just a man
Not superhuman
I'm not superhuman

Hair Color: red
Eye Color: blue
Height: 4’10”
Weight: 98 lbs

Picture or Paragraph description here:


At only 4’10”, Antigone is not the type of person that anyone would consider imposing. She's only 98 lbs of pure muscle, and is built like a taller girl, all limbs and not much else. Andi is in extremely good shape, after a lifetime of working her way up to a semi-professional athletic career, and following in the footsteps of her mother, her aunts and uncles. She tends to move with a comfortable grace and easy balance; even in heels that should be illegal they’re so tall. Because she’s so short, Andi has a love for high heels, and a unfortunate habit of begging for new shoes when she’s out shopping. The few times that she does wear flats it is because of joint aches from old injuries, the random fight left her with bruises or she needs to look much younger. She has several types of uniform boots, from flats to heels.

While she has a love for designer clothing and her mother does let her splurge every once in a while, she has found that more often it’s the cheaper clothing that is the most comfortable and easier to throw away. Andi is all about being comfortable and being able to move, be it designer or not. She’s always mixing the expensive with the inexpensive, though her most consistent part of her wardrobe is gymnastics uniforms. No one quite knows how she stays so pale, but then again, she enjoys the night, and often has a form of insomnia as well as a really good sun block. Around her neck is normally an antique silver locket that belonged to her maternal grandmother, Thelma Gordon, and a rather beaten silver cross, a gift from her aunt Helena. Her usual color palette consists of blacks, or red, but sometimes will get the occasional blue, green, brown, white or gold pieces added in. While during the day she wears toned down versions of popular designs, but after dark it becomes a whole new ball game. Her demure day clothing becomes switched with skintight pants, incredibly short skirts, and higher than legal heels all in leather and other clingy, evening wear appropriate fabrics that drive her mother up a wall.

While most of her skin is the same pale white color but she does have some barely noticeable scars from various accidents, incidents she didn’t share because there are from her nighttime escapades, at least those that aren’t are a road map of surgeries from her early days as a competitive gymnast. She has pretty red hair that is laced with copper highlights from the sun, and falls in loose curls to her mid back. Her eyes are a blue with bits of silver that tend to show watered down versions of her emotions. She doesn’t often use gestures, but she carefully controls her body language, partially so she doesn’t embarrass herself, and partially because she doesn’t see the point of being absolutely completely exuberant and obnoxious. During strong emotions she doesn’t just show it, she radiates it.

She is also maniacal about her mask and disguises, since her face is recognizable in certain circles. So she is constantly changing her hair style, changing her eye color with different color contacts and playing with her makeup to highlight and disguise certain features. She never goes out of the house without perfect make-up and perfect hair, and always completely put together, almost always wearing heels and looking older, taller, and more ditzy. While in uniform her hair is almost always half-wild up or down, she tends to wear little to no make-up, other than playing with different colored contacts and blacking out the area visible of her eyelids through her mask’s lenses.

Tatoos or Scars?: She has no tattoos, but she does have scars from her adventurous nature and other things.
PB: Nataliya Piro

I need a hero to save me now
I need a hero, save me now
I need a hero to save my life

Hometown: I was born in my mother’s birth city of Troy, Ohio. But I spent most of my childhood traveling with mom and my aunts and really, I consider Gotham City my true home.
Parents: My mother is Barbara Gordon, Oracle extraordinaire and my father is one of the many secrets she refuses to tell me.
Other relatives: Roger and Thelma Gordon (her mother’s birth parents), Former Police Commissioner James Gordon (grandfather), Barbara Kean-Gordon (ex-adoptive grandmother, divorced), Sarah Essen-Gordon (deceased, killed by the Joker, grandmother), James Gordon Jr. (uncle)
How did your parents meet: I’m pretty sure it was a one night stand and they were both long past each other when mom figured out she was pregnant.
What drove you to become a hero/villain?: You could say it’s sort of a family business. I grew up around the best cop Gotham City has ever produced, not to mention all the heroes and things running around under mom’s supervision, Mom never tried to keep me from it until I was ten and running around the clocktower in one of her old cowls exacting justice on the gym equipment. She came around though, even if I had to train extensively with practically everyone she could bribe, including herself, she has say on what I investigate until she says I can go off on my own and I have to stay in extracurricular activities at school (though she’s been giving me more freedom on what I investigate as long as I’m in Gotham unless I have permission and stay far away from the Joker’s brat).

History To say Barbara Gordon’s pregnancy was unexpected would be the understatement of the century. It was always accepted that Babs would never be able to have children, or if she did manage to get pregnant her body would likely reject the child before she knew. Through some unlikely events, first Barbara’s brush with the Brainiac Virus and second a failed attempt at completely bridging the nervous system gap in her spine with a cybernetic implant, somehow restarted her reproductive system. Unfortunately a depression over recent events and a failed transplant drove Barbara to the unusual behavior of seeking companionship outside of her normal circles. And she did, but the unfortunate result was a one night stand and them both going their separate ways, Babs back to her tower and him elsewhere. His identity has since remained a mystery, one that Barbara works hard to keep from her daughter and pesky members of the Bats and Birds.

At first Babs didn’t even know she was pregnant, not until Dinah actually spent time with her for longer than a couple of minutes before heading out on patrol. After that, Babs was quietly panicking, after swearing Dinah to secrecy while trying to act completely normal as Oracle. She went to specialists outside the city and under an assumed name, but they all told her the same thing: this pregnancy was dangerous for her and the child and it was unlikely either would make it through alive. She was even told to abort the baby, but Babs who had wanted a child for a long time and had already looked into adoption, refused. Once she started really showing she quietly slipped out of Gotham with Zinda, and returned home to Troy, Ohio for many reasons, one being that she always had a target on her back and the other being that she wanted to keep her child secret until she was sure.

She had bought her childhood home, and had been using it as a secret computer hub and safe house for years, but converted it enough before she was ordered on bed rest that she could be Oracle and keep up the charade that she was simply in hiding. Unfortunately a piece of bad news managed to upset Barbara enough that her water broke dangerously early right before Christmas, and after a long labor and a c-section, Antigone Noelle Cassandra Gordon was born right at midnight as Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day. She was premature, but miraculously both Barbara and Antigone pulled out of it well and without any life-threatening complications, though Barbara was never going to be able to have another child. They were both stronger than they looked.

Though consistently tiny, Antigone, or as she was nicknamed Andi, was a fast learner and very precocious, after she hit her first baby benchmark she didn’t stop hitting them, by the time she was a year old she was already passing children that had no complications with their birth. As soon as she could she started giving her mother, her mother’s staff and the Birds the slip, having never been prone to separation or stranger anxiety, with how much she was passed around as a baby she quickly got over it. One of those times, one when she was out in a very large group of adults, she found her way into a gymnastics gym and started climbing and bouncing and avoiding capture. From then on she was in gymnastics classes at home and at the gym. As active as she was, she was also prone to times of quiet watching, that was how she learned things that people wouldn’t teach her at first.

Slowly things began to change though. As long as she made good grades she was trained by Dinah starting when she was six in martial arts, acrobatics and other things, but her mother didn’t realize what was going on exactly until Andi was ten and nearly shut everything down. But people eventually convinced Babs that letting her daughter take up her original name wasn’t such a bad thing. At thirteen she was allowed out with a partner, at fifteen she was allowed out on her own more often after she graduated high school early, though her mother has more control over what she does than Andi would like. She’s currently sixteen, and elite level gymnast and part-time college student, though her days are endless rounds of gymnastics practices, as soon as she comes home she’s in the door as Andi and out a window as Batgirl.

Personality: Even at a young age people could categorize Antigone as fearless. When she was little it was a problem, people had to keep an eye on the girl to make sure that she didn’t hurt herself on her adventures through the various homes that she lived in while she was a baby. As she grew older, her need to climb on things and jump off got more and more generalized, and taller. She loved the thrill, the adrenaline rush and soon she became addicted to it. That fearless quality also started to go over into the rest of her personality. She’s not afraid to ask any question, and she’ll do anything at least once. That kind of attitude has gotten her into trouble more than once, and lead to several injuries on the gymnastics floor. Sometimes she worries her mother and friends because she gets a little extreme.

Andi can be a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and it doesn’t matter where she gets the thrill. Dangerous stunts on any of the gymnastics equipment and beating up bad guys are her usual fix, but sometimes fast driving on her motorcycle and other somewhat different forms of thrills are needed to fulfill whatever need she has. Her outlets vary, there is always her car or motorcycle, and jumping off of a building never hurt. Since she started at full-time gymnast and part-time college, and since it was highly stressed that she keep her head down, she’s had a little bit of withdrawals, but she has gotten used to the long periods of less than adequate thrills unless in costume. She finds things to fill her hard-to-locate free time, especially since she expects nothing less than the best from herself. Her lowered inhibitions also have led to several other noticeable personality quirks, including her temper and the ease she has at flirting.

Her temper is one of her most serious flaws, and one of the things she has the least control over. It’s hard for her to keep her head when she’s mad, especially when it involves a friend. Andi often feels the need to be insulted for other people, particularly when it comes to those who are shy and don’t stand up for themselves. Of course, she dishes insults and sarcasm to whoever she feels deserves it, and some that just get on her nerves. Getting on any of Andi’s nerves isn’t exactly very hard; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out when she’s in a foul mood. The thing to watch out for when it comes to Antigone’s temper is when she goes quiet and cold. That means she’s really angry, and there is no telling what she might do. On occasion, particularly when her anger is directed at an instructor or teacher or mentor she does manage to swallow it somehow and keep herself from losing her calm, but those times tend to be rare and she equates it to running flat out into a wall, almost drowning or missing the mat in the gym.

Andi also has a bit of a complex about her height. Just because she isn’t over five feet doesn’t mean that she’s dumb, just short. She hates it too, because with her genetics she was supposed to be taller like her mother and grandfather, but instead she drew the genetic short straw and didn’t grow into her coltish appearance. Even her old coaches believed that she would grow taller, and until she turned fourteen they were cross training her for rhythmic gymnastics, though her heart was in the danger and the thrill of artistic gymnastics. Sometimes, and those times are rare, she likes to use her looks to her advantage. Who would suspect a poor little girl from being a cape in disguise with an interesting rolodex, an ear for gossip and an agenda? Not that she really has that much of an agenda. It’s more that when she has things she wants done, she finds a way to get them done, even if it means stroking a few egos and using her looks or name as a trump card.

All her life, Andi has been a city girl, preferring concrete, steel and glass mazes to wide open spaces and large animals. She’s stayed on her in the country and she knows what goes through the heads of those big livestock animals. Every one of them was plotting ways to step on little Andi. At least that was what Andi thought the whole time she was forced into petting zoos and around big animals. She was pretty sure that her mother might have enjoyed watching Andi freak out for once on the back of a horse. At least, that was what she believed of her mother and her aunt Zinda. Helena, Dinah, Creote and Brian, not so much. Andi loves her grandfather very much, but sometimes she wishes she could be a cop like he was, especially since she has chosen to fight the good fight with a mask instead of a badge. Sometimes James Gordon’s way seemed easier, but those thoughts only show up when she’s dead exhausted and back a dawn for the third night running. Ever since she has taken up her mask in defiance she has done everything to prove herself and to prove everyone else wrong.

She has a deep and abiding love for both helping people and her extended family. But that is almost eclipsed by her sheer vanity. She’s very particular about what she puts on her face that she only uses certain skin care regimens and make-up that she likes. All of it can be found neatly lined up on her dresser, categorized and sorted by use. Most of her property is sorted like that, she has borderline OCD. Though she doesn’t really tap or count, she does have a compulsion to keep everything around her neat and tidy and in some semblance of order. It’s the same with her books, and her work, as well as her extensive notes in and out of classes, on varieties of subjects. She’s one of those people that has to know everything whether people want her to know or not, and her strangeness is one of the few things that she doesn’t let stop her. She likes figuring out secrets, the more difficult the puzzle the better. But the secrets themselves are valuable to Andi without her mask, because its information that gives her insight into whom the people are around her. Not what they are on the surface, but who they are underneath. Sometimes she just likes it because it gives her a kind of, leverage over people who would feel the need to harm her as a civilian, or get to her mother, or feel the need to make her family and partners miserable. She likes that, because after a world of liars and double faces she has learned a thing or two about being wary of those she can and can’t trust. Her favorite words are ‘no comment’ and ‘confidential.’

While Andi was a perfectly well-behaved child, when she moved in with her assorted extended family she was trained in a variety of things that no girl her age really should know. But her family has always been strange, which was why she started learning self-defense and other things when she was little. And though she can be a bit of a brat sometimes, she’s generally cheerful and outgoing, and loves her mother more than she can ever say. When she was thirteen and starting to rebel as a teenager she managed to hack her mother’s private casebook and journal and after reading, listening and watching everything she knew that she wanted to be more like the amazing woman her mother is. And that she was absolutely loved and cherished by the woman who gave her birth and wanted nothing more than to protect her. And that she would probably never know who her father was, much less meet him. After that it didn’t matter so much to her anymore.

A hero's not afraid to give his life
A hero's gonna save me just in time

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[Jake Grayson]

Welcome to the Titans! Pretty PB by the way.