APPROVED: BACKGROUND_1 Unwanted
Carrie Kelley's mother is a junkie who lives in a trailer park on the outskirts of Gotham City, where she raised her daughter in all the splendor the small cash stipend she could milk out of the government could afford. It was made clear to Kelley that she was a burden from a young age - her mother's favorite nickname for her was 'abortion'. Men would come and go out of her mother's life, usually whoever as supplying her with crank at the time. Carrie's mom usually didn't have a lot of cash, so she paid in flesh. Carrie found out that the library would let her stay all day, so she often spent the entire day there, hiding in the stacks and reading. Sometimes she managed to even stay overnight, ducking the janitor and sleeping amongst the books. Her mother didn't notice and she could eat from the stash of snacks under the library desk.
In school, she got good grades, but continually had 'attitude' issues. Having never been particularly mothered or taught to respect an adult, Carrie largely didn't and felt no compunction about talking back or disobeying if it suited her interests. Not to mention that she had a mouth like a sailor who stubbed a toe, sending her to the principal's office plenty. She forged her mother's name on the notice slips and didn't even tell her about the suspensions. What would be the point?
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_2 Violated
Carrie usually biked her way to school, not much liking the schoolbus. Plus, it was easier to ditch if she wasn't surrounded by a bunch of screaming heathens. Despite poor attendance, Carrie remained a teacher favorite, even if she never made a lot of friends at school. She listened to loud, screechy music and dressed kind of oddly, preferring to make up her own style than do whatever was cool or hip. As she entered her teenage years, she started thinking about getting into computers - she liked computers, spent all her time in the trailer on her laptop with a pair of headphones on, trying to ignore her mother - or maybe writing or doing music.
Then, when she was thirteen years old, a group of boys, teenagers, members of a street gang yanked her off her bike and pulled her into a building. Bad boys, violent boys, cruel boys. They beat her and abused her and violated her in every conceivable way. They kept her for four days, then left her lying in a gutter outside of a homeless shelter. She had three broken ribs, internal bleeding, bruising that made her almost unrecognizable. Five days later, in the hospital, she had a miscarriage for which she was thankful.
Her mother never showed. Just answered the cops questions cause she had to. Showing up would be taking responsibility and she didn't want the bill.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_3 Rage
Even after the physical damaged healed to scars, Carrie wasn't right. After social services deemed her mother unfit, she was placed into the foster system. Or rather, she would be, after two years spent in Arkham Asylum. Nothing says "recovery from trauma" like being locked up with loons, psychos and supervillains. In the eyes of those madmen, though, she saw glimpses of the boys - the men - who had taken her. And, after a while, she did something, the one thing that made all the pain and self-hatred and nightmares go away.
She beat the crap out of one. A weasel nicknamed Carp, who constantly tried to peek under her robe or sneak a grab of her in the lounge. By the time they pulled Carrie off of him, she'd been off part of his nose and spit it into his face. She got sent to solitary for that one. It was worth it. She slept like a baby.
She knew what she had to do. From then on, she calmed herself down, answered the questions she was supposed to answer, told them what they wanted to hear. She took their pills and she learned to fake a smile. And eventually she earned her way out.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_4 Tantrum
She knew she needed to learn. The foster family she was in was shitty, but she didn't ask much of them and mostly helped out, so long as she got what she wanted. She went to the community center and signed up for boxing classes and tai chi and even 'adult gymnastics', anything that could help make her better, faster, stronger. She lifted weights, although it didn't much help given her size. She learned to focus more on speed and agility.
And weapons. She didn't want to kill people - angry as she was, she wasn't sure she had that in her. But even as a kid, she'd been wicked with a slingshot, knocking out windows in abandoned trailers when she was bored. And she found an old nightstick, a police one that got dropped in an alley and left behind. She dyed it red. And, when she felt the nightmares start to come back, when she felt the old memories sh iver…when she saw a man with the eyes of a predator looking her way…she knew it was time to act.
She ran away. Living on the streets, she's eking out a living and, at night, she hunts. She hunts men who hurt women. She hunts them and makes them by. She sometimes screams as she does it and she always, always stomps the living hell out of them. She found a nice set of cleats for the job. She calls herself Tantrum. It seems to fit nicely.
APPROVED: PSY1 Pissed Off
Carrie is angry. Like, really angry. Almost all the time. Even if she's having fun, she's probably having fun doing something that helps alleviate her anger, be it gaming or fighting or just watching a movie and yelling at the TV. While her anger is directed mostly at a certain kind of bad man, it's pretty generalized enough towards the world at large. She's a pissed off kid, no doubt about it.
APPROVED: PSY2 Damaged
Carrie's been through a lot, from a childhood of neglect to a violent gang assault to two years spent in the most notorious mental institution in the Western hemisphere. She's seen her share of horrors, and there are plenty of scars to prove it. Nightmares, flinching, flashbacks…she emotionally distances herself from others, not making it easy for people to get close. Relationships of any sort, friend or more, are a nightmare, usually not more than brief flashes that burn bright and then fall to ash. She's messed up.
APPROVED: PSY3 Untrusting
Nobody's ever been good for Carrie, not really. The closest she came was her foster parents, who only had her for a year and mostly just left her to her own devices. They at least didn't call her names or slap her or steal her stuff (all of which her biological mother did). It takes a bit to earn her trust and she's naturally wary and closed off to other people.
APPROVED: PSY4 Snark
Carrie's a blunt instrument. When she has a problem, she tends to solve that problem by hitting it as hard as she can until it stops fighting back or stops moving altogether. Nuance and subtlety just aren't for her. That's as true with her verbally as it is with her physically - she doesn't sugarcoat or lie. She despises liars, and thinks most sweet talk is just another kind of lying. That said, if she says something nice to you, you know you deserve it.
APPROVED: PSY5 Protective
However harsh her exterior, Carrie would never want anyone else to go through what she's been through - especially another girl. She's extremely protective of girls her age (helll, even grown women) if they seem to be threatened. Boys, too, if they're young enough - she's not entirely gender-biased, she just figures most boys are big enough to handle themselves if she is.
APPROVED: PSY6 Motivation
Anger, rage and putting to bed the demons that still live in her head. Probably going to take her a lifetime - which might not be that long, with the risks she takes.
APPROVED: PSY7 Goals
Make the streets safe for girls to walk along at night (hell, even by day in Gotham would be an achievement). Maybe sing in a punk band. Beyond that, not much - she's 17, her goals don't go much farther than next week.
APPROVED: POW1 None
Carrie Kelley does not possess any superhuman attributes or powers. She possesses the physical capabilities of a human girl of her age and stature who engages in intensive physical exercise.
APPROVED: ADV1 Tough as Hell
Carrie possesses an inner rage that would make a professional linebacker jealous. As tiny and slender as she sometimes seems, she has the will and fire for so much more. She's almost impossible to discourage, she never gives up. She has an extraordinary tolerance for pain and suffering. If she gets knocked down, she always gets back up, even when it hurts. She has an almost unbreakable will, when properly motivated. Obviously, she has her fragile points, the things that make her crack and break, those unhealed wounds that haven't quite gone to scar. But, beyond that? You won't find a tougher little bitch than her.
APPROVED: ADV2 Street Smart
Carrie's been living as a runaway for years and grew up on the streets of Gotham. She knows who the drug dealers and the hookers are, what's a good neighborhood and what's a bad. She can usually spot an undercover cop or recognize if someone's packing a gun. She has all the survival skills a street kid needs. Beyond that, she has raw instinct, honed from years of living there. It especially functions as a danger sense - sometimes she couldn't put a finger on exactly what told her something was wrong - but she knows it and she's learned to trust her gut.
APPROVED: ADV3 Cheats
Carrie's not the biggest or strongest girl on the block, no matter how hard she tries. It can make it hard to fight off full grown men. So she cheats a lot. She has her slingshot and a good collection of ball bearings to launch. She has brass knuckles and slapjacks. She carries multiple cans of pepper spray and mace. She has a stun gun, the kind with the prongs that you have to jab into a guy. She has a bag of nails to throw under their seat and a bag of ground up glass to throw in their eyes. She's been seen with everything from her trusty police baton to a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. She wears shoes with cleats that she actually polishes and sharpens to make sure it hurts (they help for climbing, too). Beyond that, she'll claw, bite, scratch, stab and do anything she has to. She never fights with honor - she fights to win, period.
APPROVED: ADV4 Tantrum
Carrie picked her codename because of this particular thing. You know that moment in A Christmas Story, but Scut Farkus pushes Ralphie too far on the wrong day and Ralphie loses his mind and beats the ever-loving crap out of him while screaming a string of profanity? Carrie does that…like, a lot. If pushed too far, if injured or hurt, she's prone to blackout berzerker attacks targetted at whoever she sees as the source, fair or foul. When she does this, she's absolutely brutal and frenzied, like a rabid animal. In this state, her savage assault can often overwhelm and beat down even much larger, stronger or more skilled opponents with the sheer blitzkrieg power of it, her maddened limbs seeming almost stronger. After such bouts, she tends to be weakened and a bit tired, the adrenaline crash that comes in its wake often making her retreat or even run away to cry.
APPROVED: SKILL1 Fighting
Carrie's a scrapper. She doesn't have a lot of formal training, beyond a few boxing classes and some martial arts crap she picked up at the community center, but she's got plenty of straight up experience. She doesn't have anything much of technique, although she knows how to throw a punch. She makes up for her lack of skill in ferocity, enthusiasm and a ruthless dedication to inflicting pain on her opponents.
APPROVED: SKILL2 Ratchet Weapons
Carrie uses a lot of makeshift weapons. She's not particularly good with swords or guns - even when she finds those kind of things on a baddie, she'll leave them behind. Her usual primary weapons are a slingshot, with which she is frightenly accurate, and a nightstick she swiped when a corrupt cop dropped it. Brass knuckles, bike chains, trash can lids - it seems like the more unconventional her weapons are, the better she is with them and it's made her extremely good at improvising from her surroundings and finding something to nail a bad guy in the throat.
APPROVED: SKILL3 Runaway
Carrie's good at not getting caught. She's good at dodging cops, slipping just out of the grasp of people and generally running like hell. While she doesn't use 'parkour', she's plenty good at using her environment to her advantage. She's excellent at finding hidey holes, both to crash for the night and just under quick notice. She knows where to find shelter and food, who the bad gangs are and how to stay out of the clutches of child and family services. She'll be eighteen in not too long, thankfully, but part of her will always be a runaway in her heart.
APPROVED: SKILL4 Thievin'
Look, sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. On the streets, nobody's going to give you a four course meal. Carrie's done her share of shoplifting, picked a few pockets, even done some light burglary. She's only ever done it from people who could obviously farkin' afford it or who were such scumbags that she didn't feel bad. She'll usuall go through the wallet of a bad guy she takes out. Still, she's gotten good at the sleight of hand of a sneakthief, along with the breaking and entering skills of a low-level burglar.
APPROVED: SKILL5 Computer
She's not a hacker or an expert by any menas, but Carrie always liked computers and had a natural affinity for their use, spending a lot of time hiding out online from her mother. She might be a little out of touch with the latest gear, but she's still tech-smart intuitively and can pretty quickly get up to speed on any device given a few minutes to acclimate.
APPROVED: SKILL6 Deception
Ever since she first had to lie to her mother about where she'd been, Carrie's proven to be a damned good liar. That skill got honed in the asylum, where she had to learn to pretend to be all better and moving on with her life to get herself out of the damn lockup. She can lie convincingly right to someone's face. She's a fairly natural actress and can put on a character and improvise in the moment. She's gotten particularly good at seeming soft and vulnerable lately to lure in the kind of guys she wants to beat into oblivion. Properly honed and trained, she could actually make a good little spy someday.
APPROVED: FLAW1 Untrained
Carrie's just starting out in her vigilante career. She's had some experience with fighting other nuts in Arkham, along with a few boxing classes at the Y and just the general scrapping kids in Gotham do. But she's a long ways away from the kind of serious vigilante that often prowls the rooftops. While she's definitely a step above your average punk, she'd probably be in over her head against a full on supervillain (although she'd probably try anyway).
APPROVED: FLAW2 Nearsighted
Carrie needs glasses. She's tried to sort of make combat goggles out of the pair she's got, but they're still basically just glasses. If they get knocked off or broken, she's not going to be able to see very far in front of her face. Her eyes have just proven too sensitive for contacts. She really hates the Velma routine, so she's hyperprotective of her eyes and face in a fight.
APPROVED: FLAW3 Unbalanced
Carrie faked her way through the last part of her treatment to get discharged. She's still extremely damaged and mentally unstable from what she's been through. While she feels like her aggression makes it better, it's really just another symptom of unresolved issues. She's still prone to emotional breakdowns, panic attacks or flashbacks if the circumstances are right - having any of these occur will also really, really piss her off when she gets to the other side.
APPROVED: FLAW4 Runaway
Carrie doesn't currently have a steady home, mostly crashing in abandoned buildings or with other teenaged runaways. It's not stable, she usually doesn't have much in the way of money, and her food situation is sketchy to say the least. She's underfed and often doesn't get enough sleep. She's trying to get a job (she's obviously not going to school right now), but, at the moment, she's on her own.
APPROVED: FLAW5 Bruised Up
Carrie's almost always nursing something: a scraped knee, a gash in her scalp, a bruised rib. She's almost never operating at a hundred percent. She figures it's part of the learning process - if she's not twisting her ankle or staring out at the world thorugh a swollen eye socket, she's probably not trying hard enough.
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