Stephanie Brown // Batgirl

PERSONAL FILE

HIGHLY CLASSIFIED AND CONFIDENTIAL

GENERAL INFORMATION

NAME: Stephanie Brown
ALIAS: Batgirl, formerly Spoiler and Robin
GENDER: Female
AGE: 20
OCCUPATION: Fighter of Crime, Gotham’s Princess of Crazy Plans and Lover of Waffles
ALIGNMENT: Good
AFFILIATION(S): The Bat Family, Birds of Prey

PHYSICAL PROFILE

HEIGHT: 5’7”
WEIGHT: 115 lbs
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Blonde
CLASSIFICATION: 100% Earth-bred Human
UNUSUAL FEATURES: N/A

BEHAVIOR PROFILE

When it comes down to it, Stephanie Brown’s two greatest weapons as a crime fighter are her incredible determination and her refusal to let the darkness and crime that she fights against get to her. Despite having spent a good part of the last five years of her life fighting people like the Joker, seeing the depths and the extent to which people can sink, despite growing up with a father like Arthur Brown and despite growing up in areas of Gotham that make villainous deathtraps look like a walk in the park, Steph has never lost her cheerfulness, her optimism or her belief that she and those like her can make a genuine difference to the world. Maybe not to everyone, maybe not in a way that really changes the world, but Steph truly believes that every person they save is worth it. That’s her main reason now for fighting the good fight (although there are others – in years past, she was trying to impress Tim, trying to make up for what her father did, acting out of anger at him and she still loves the sheer rush of it).

It isn’t about justice. It isn’t about revenge. These days, it isn’t even really about boys or, though she can’t imagine a life without it, the soaring adrenaline rush of swinging between the rooftops and skyscrapers of Gotham. For Steph, being Batgirl is about something much simpler. It’s about saving people, and she counts every single one she saves as a win, score one for the good guys and so on. That’s what matters to her – not the big wins, like saving the world from Lex Luthor or something (important but not her paygrade), but making sure that the regular people of Gotham have someone looking out for them. It’s about hope, basically. It’s about making sure that no more Cluemasters ruin their daughters’ lives. And it really doesn’t hurt that Steph is generally too chipper by far to pull off the usual Bat-mystique anyway. But the key thing is that Steph actively refuses to let herself turn into the sort of vengeance driven, ‘I am Darkness, I am the Night’ style of vigilante that she loves to mock – she is an optimist by nature and means to stay that way, through thick and thin.

Despite the above and despite Steph being the cheeriest Bat in Gotham, this should not be taken to mean that she is a lightweight. The other defining characteristic of Stephanie Brown is, after all, her determination which is and has always been her refusal to give in – to circumstances, to her parents, to the various Bats, to criminals… You name it and Steph will cheerfully defy odds, her own body and anything else if that’s what it takes for her to get the job done or protect someone else. Admittedly, this shouldn’t always be viewed as a positive trait. It comes mixed with a fairly large helping of recklessness, which tends to lead her to throw herself into situations without thinking them through or even bothering to come up with the most basic of plans in the hope that sheer willpower, making things up on the go and luck can pull her through. This can be seen particularly in her earlier days as Spoiler but, although she’s mostly outgrown it as Batgirl, it still rears its head every so often.

This might fairly be called impulsiveness. If Tim Drake is the man of thought, who plans everything out before hand and only does something once he’s considered every angle and possibility, then Steph is the total opposite. She isn’t stupid. People who think that are likely to get a boot to the head in their near future – she is a Bat after al. But where others plan and execute their strategies, Steph comes up with her plans on the go, after she leapt off the building, and somehow she’s made it work for her. It does make her pretty unpredictable but while she sees it as her strength (and Steph would absolutely call herself an Action Girl – go TvTropes!), others might not agree and there are always situations that are better planned out before leaping into them. A side order to this is Steph’s impulsiveness, where she will do something just because, like doing a touchdown dance around a downed enemy after she won.

And she is as stubborn as any ten mules into the bargain. Steph refused to stop being Spoiler no matter what obstacles life or anyone else threw into her way and the same is true of Batgirl. Nor does she let other people’s views of her define her. If people think she’s weak – fine. Steph’ll either find a way to prove them dead wrong or a way to use that against them. Horror, pregnancy, whatever, Steph will find a way to come right back to the front lines so long as she can keep fighting. With a smile. That’s who she is, that’s who she wants to be and the rest of the world can do what it likes.

Optimist or not, however, Steph isn’t blindly willing to believe in the good in human nature to make people do the right thing. She’s seen how people like her father chose the wrong path time and again, and she’s got a thinly veiled cynical streak where he’s concerned. It took her years to fully learn to appreciate her mother and that’s a relationship still heavily built (on Steph’s end) on lies, half-truths and an exceptional ability to juggle two and a half lives. But her father (and other career criminals) have had their chances, had their time to repent and Steph will happily send them back to jail with a few bruises to remind them of what happens when the Bats catch up to them. Not that she’s at all sadistic but Steph punches hard, isn’t as controlled a fighter as the others and, well, they made their choice so a few broken bones or bruises won’t hurt. Much. People who mistreat children are at the very, very bottom of her list and she fights particularly hard to protect kids – nothing is quite as sad to Steph as a child made to grow up too fast like she was.

The obvious thing most people notice about her though is how talkative she is. It isn’t really fair to say that Steph is in love with the sound of her own voice. But she has a near constant internal monologue going in her head, about anything and everything. Quite often this spills over into her ‘outside’ voice, usually followed half a second later by her realising she hadn’t really meant to say that out loud. On the other hand, Steph is also a talker, usually with something witty to add to proceedings – unless she is extremely deep in thought or very angry that is. She also has an instinctive supply of jokes, taunts and insults, which she throws around in a fight with gleeful abandon usually to the confusion (and serious distraction of her enemies). It’s also partially a defence mechanism, allowing her to make things less serious and thus easier to deal with.

However, while she might sometimes come across as a little snippy and a little ready to be snarky or sarcastic, this shouldn’t detract from the fact that Steph is a genuinely nice and kind person, who is putting herself in harm’s way on a nightly basis for people she doesn’t know and won’t ever meet again (probably). They still matter to her and she’d do anything at all for her friends. Empathy is a big deal for her and so is friendship.

Finally, it shouldn’t be said that Steph is perfect. She has a temper. It can be explosive and can be set off by any number of things. Beyond that, although related to it, she makes things more personal than they need to be. Particularly when it involves things close to her heart, Steph tends to make things about her when they shouldn’t and aren’t. But, despite that, no one can deny her bravery, her persistence and her willingness to risk her life selflessly for others. If you want to know the defining characteristic of Stephanie Brown (other than lacking the traditional brain/mouth filter, that is), it is this: she keeps on going. Whatever the universe has dished out to her, she has taken it in her stride as best she can. And, when she has fallen, she gets back up again, dusts herself off and keeps on trying – always with a smile. Steph never gives up and she never gives up on anyone she cares about. That’s just the way she is.

Some stories started once upon a time. But that’s never been true of Stephanie Brown’s life.

Like her parents, Steph is a Gothamite through and through. Both of them are native to that particular city. Her mother is Agnes, sometimes called Crystal, a nurse for most of her life although, after Steph was born, she fell into addiction. Fortunately, it wasn’t to anything illegal or dangerous, but even prescription painkillers take their toll and, for much of Steph’s life, her mother was not able to take up the role that she was supposed to fill. That she couldn’t was the fault of the man she had fallen in love with and married despite his many, many flaws – Arthur Brown, better known to those inhabitants of Gotham with a deep interest in the court pages or those unfortunate enough to be caught up in one of his schemes as the ‘Cluemaster’.

The Cluemaster was one of the later generations of Gotham Rogues but, despite his best efforts, he was never to rise above mediocrity as a mastermind. Quite aside from simply being rather less intelligent (or insane) than the bulk of the Dark Knight’s principal antagonists, he had an overwhelming compulsion to leave clues to his crimes at the scene, one that he could never overcome – like an addict. This were not the well-thought out, cunning riddles left by a certain other costumed opponent of Batman, but simple enough that, frequently enough, the GCPD didn’t even need Batman’s help to bring the crook to justice. Arthur Brown was rarely there during his daughter’s childhood. Steph didn’t miss him. Her father rarely had time for her, always busy planning his next job or hanging around with his henchmen. She never could decide about him, whether he was actually evil or just weak. But it didn’t matter. He was never really a father to her.

As with most people, there isn’t much to say about her first decade or so of life. It wasn’t until her father came back into her life for an extended period that Steph unknowingly took her first steps towards her future career. For once, Arthur Brown was released on parole rather than escaping, and he returned to his family apparently ready to change his ways.

And so came what Steph would later describe as the good times. Her father managed to go straight for a couple of years, found himself a normal job and had more money and more regular money than he ever had as the Cluemaster. The family even had enough that they were able to give Steph piano lessons, something she adored. She was good at it, maybe not world-class good, but better than most. She loved the lessons and loved her teacher. Even then she was too aware of his nature to love her father, but she was grateful. It was too bad that it was the Cluemaster destined to spoil it all for her. Crook or not, Arthur Brown had dreadful taste in friends just as he did with accomplices. He would bring a friend named Jim Murray to the house, who soon became Steph’s regular babysitter – Arthur was at work and, when her mother wasn’t at work, she was drugged out of her mind. At first, it wasn’t so bad. He was seemingly nice, kind, let her do what she liked and only the odd comments about her made her suspicious.

So far, so good. But then, Arthur decided in his own inimitable fashion it was time for his wife to clean up. Telling Steph they were going to Arizona, he left her in the care of Murray for four nights. The first night was fine. But, the next day, Murray tried something. Steph, in her own words years later, went nuts and bit him until he let her go. Then she ran, first to school but she fled when she heard men coming in for some holiday class. She ran home, careful to check first, but Murray was gone and, although Steph panicked at every sound for three days, he never came back. Her parents did. She told her father, or tried, but he shouted her down. But Jim Murray was never mentioned in the Brown house again. Despite thinking about it, she never called the police. In that way, at least, she was her father’s daughter – the authorities were something to be avoided, something she couldn’t trust. In some ways, it was the moment that she conceived Spoiler, because it was the time that Steph decided that she would deal with it by herself.

Years later, as Spoiler, Steph went after him, determined to make sure nobody ever went through what she did. She found that, just days after he fled, Jim Murray, no criminal record, had been found dead. He had overdosed, on prescription pharmaceuticals. The police ruled it a suicide. Steph never asked her father if he had anything to do with it. She suspects. But, really, she never wanted to know the truth. She couldn’t continue her piano lessons though. It took her the best part of a year to feel safe alone with a man again and longer to recognise that she hadn’t done anything.

Regardless, it was not long before Cluemaster went right back to his old ways. Nothing much changed, really. Steph watched as he was arrested again, and sent back to prison for the umpteenth time. Nothing changed. Her mother went back to the drugs and Steph went back to raising herself. Cluemaster drifted in and out of her life, her mother went on as before and she wondered if her life would ever change.

As was frequently the case, it did but not for the better. By this point, Steph was fifteen. And, one evening, her father came home unannounced, claiming to have changed. He settled back into the house, much to Steph’s disgust, and apparently goes about looking for a job to earn a living. But Stephanie didn’t believe that he had really changed. She started following her father after interview after interview saw him become more and more frustrated. She was sure that he’d go back to trying to steal again and (surprise, surprise) she was absolutely right. About six months after he came home, she happened to overhear her father and some of his ‘mates’ planning a heist. With one difference. While he was gone and with the aid of prison psychiatrists, Arthur Brown had overcome his previous compulsion to leave clues for the police to what he was up to and, while hardly brilliant, he was actually becoming a successful criminal. Needless to say, his daughter was furious. But she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t just report him – the police would never believe a teenage girl. So, instead, she decided that she’d have to stop him herself.

Lacking the resources or the contacts possessed by certain vigilantes that will go unnamed, Steph was forced to go without many of the things that others take for granted. Her first costume was sewed personally, made from whatever she could find, while the contents of the pouches she attached to her belt were mostly things like marbles, a pager she painted eggplant and the like. Nothing expensive at all (except one or two bits she’d borrowed from her father)… but, despite that, thanks to dedication to her self-appointed task and sheer enthusiasm, Steph got by. In particular, the clues (which were deliberate and obvious – such as messages spray-painted on important buildings) that she left for the cops soon drew the attention of other interested parties.

Those were Batman and Robin, who had been tracking the Cluemaster through the clues that Steph had been sending to Commisioner Gordon. They thought initially that they were from the Cluemaster himself, being unaware of the change in his MO just as the Spoiler had intended. It wasn’t until Steph came a little too close while watching what she thought was to be her father’s arrest that she was spotted by Batman who sent Robin after her. The short chase ended when Steph slammed a brick into the Boy Wonder’s face and escaped – but he had seen what she looked like. It didn’t take long for him to find her again and then Steph was meeting Batman for the first time and explaining what she knew about her father’s scheme. She knew more than either of them but, after she explained it, Batman told her to go home. In what was to be the first of several times this happened, Steph ignored him. She appeared at the robbery during Cluemaster’s escape and fought several of his men, downing them before her father took her hostage. But when her identity was revealed, his grip slipped and Steph took advantage. She was about to kill her father before Batman stopped her.

Afterwards, for a while at least, Steph retired the Spoiler. It wasn’t until her father and a group of his cronies broke out of Blackgate that she returned to it, teaming up with Robin to foil her father’s schemes. This time, Steph was clearly expressing her interest in the Boy Wonder but she also managed to save his life – Robin and the Cluemaster were accidentally buried alive in a van holding the proceeds of the theft. She essentially followed his accomplices by herself and ensured that they headed back for the van… Thus rescuing both Robin and her father before they suffocated. It also saw her first kiss from Robin, which ensured that Steph would be seeing him again. It wasn’t exactly ideal though – her father arranged from prison for her to be kidnapped by some of his associates as leverage on him in exchange for plans he provided. Robin freed Steph who not only helped shut down the gang’s final scheme but then paid a visit to Blackgate where she gleefully took out her rage at being kidnapped on her father while the prison staff turned a blind eye.

In the following days, Steph teamed up with Robin a number of times, usually against his instincts and more to keep an eye on her than because he really wanted her there. Both he and Batman frequently told her to stop, but Steph continued to ignore them. She mostly dealt with local thugs, avoiding all the major villains by luck as much as anything else. Still, she had some close calls. During this time, she also grew closer to Robin, despite his continuing refusal to reveal his real identity. It took a while, and Steph was rather less sympathetic to criminals than she might later become. She never suggested killing, but at least twice she was willing to abandon criminals to near certain death to improve their chances of survival. But she began to change her mind when their attempts to rescue a thug resulted in them saving a mother and child from hypothermia.

In time, the two of them agreed to a relationship, though Steph still didn’t know Tim’s identity.

It was at this point, when Steph was sure that everything was turning up aces for her and that nothing could possibly bring her down, that reality chose to give her another mess to deal with. She found that she was pregnant – at the age of sixteen. Fortunately, it was nothing to do with Robin. It was the fault of an ex-boyfriend, who had abandoned her during the chaos of No Man’s Land, but the disappearance of the ‘father’ did not help Steph with her problems. She persevered though, with her mother’s help as well as that of a certain mysterious friend with a double identity. Never in any doubt that she wanted to have the child, she opted to offer it for adoption despite considering the alternative. Fortunately, she and the baby survived labour but, in the end, Steph gave up her child without even knowing whether it was a boy or a girl, without even holding it once because she knew that, if she did, she would never be able to let go.

After she returned home, Steph went right back to training, under the basically true excuse that she needed to lose weight to fit back into her normal clothes again. The trouble was that, while piling her maternity outfits up to get rid of them, her mother had found her Spoiler outfit. While Steph was able to persuade her that she wasn’t turning into her father and that, to the contrary, she had been stopping his crimes, Agnes Brown still demanded that her daughter stop being Spoiler. And for a while, Stephanie did before she went back to her old ways as Spoiler again. Again, she spent time teaming with Robin, but she also found that Batman was showing more of an interest in her, leading to periods when she received direct tuition and support. This lasted until he vanished mysteriously without telling her, leaving Steph locked out of the Batcave and without any idea of what had happened. Later, she was trained by the Birds of Prey, though again this did not last for long before they simply stopped.

During the period of training she did receive before Batman went back to trying to convince her to retire, he chose to reveal to her Robin’s actual identity without asking his permission first – Tim Drake. It nearly tore a gap in the two’s relationship although, with time, the two managed to reconcile and continue their admittedly unusual courtship. Unfortunately, things were destined to go wrong. Steph, fighting a magically powered hitman while Robin was distracted, found herself with a broken leg and forced to temporarily take time off from being Spoiler, though even then she was pushing herself in whatever training she could do. Meantime, Tim was questioning his role as Robin. That might have been fine, except that his father found out that he was Robin and, just as he thought had resolved the issues, Tim was forced to resign. He admitted as much to Steph, who at this point was back to being Spoiler.

Except that, one day, already worried because she barely saw him anymore, Steph went to Tim’s school to check on him – and found him seemingly kissing another girl. Furious, Steph made herself a Robin costume in an afternoon and stormed into the Batcave, demanding the position. Batman allowed it, but not because she was worthy in his opinion - instead to manipulate Tim into returning to the role. It worked, at the cost of destroying Steph’s faith in him. Although she fought Zsasz alongside him and teamed up with the then-Batgirl, Batman fired her as Robin after she disobeyed orders in an attempt to save his life. Steph’s reaction to his manipulations was to break into the Cave and steal one of his plans to destroy crime in Gotham. Then she activated it, seeking to show Batman that she was in fact worthy. Tragically, as Batman hadn’t even revealed the most basic of his secret identities to her, the plan was destined to fail. It ignited a gang war and, in the midst of trying to stop it, Stephanie was tortured cruelly by the Black Mask. Although she nearly managed to escape, by the time she was rescued, her wounds were too severe and she died in hospital.

Or so it seemed. A little later, Batman came to believe that Leslie Thompkins, a long-time ally, had denied Steph medical attention that might have saved her life, so as to prove to him the cost in lives of his war. As a result, he banished her from his city. But this was not true. Leslie had instead substituted a drug-overdose victim’s corpse for Steph’s and taken the young woman away from Gotham in an effort to save her from Batman’s war. Though everyone believed her to be dead, Steph spent time with Dr. Thompkins in Africa in the small villages there, doing their best to help the unfortunates. In that time, she was forced to step back up as a hero to save both the villagers and Leslie from a gang intent on killing them and, as a result, she realised she could no longer stay away from Gotham.

So Steph returned. At first, she didn’t tell anyone. Instead, dressed as Spoiler once more, she kept a distant watch over Tim though he came close to seeing her. It wasn’t until another case was leading him right into an ambush that she showed herself to save him. As a result, he was able to get a tracker onto her, though he believed she was a fake and it wasn’t until he confronted her with Batman that he realised the truth. At that point, she was readmitted to the Batfamily and revealed her survival to her mother. Following this, Steph once again went back to teaming up with both Robin and Batgirl at times, though she spent more time with Tim. Despite that, on Batman’s orders, she orchestrated a series of events meant to make Robin a better hero. She hired an assassin, schemed with his other enemies and was nearly killed as a result. But the plan worked – though it shattered any trust between the two young heroes. As a result, Robin demanded she stop being Spoiler because he could no longer trust her.

As per usual, things didn’t work out that way.

Starting university marked a number of changes for Stephanie Brown. She resumed her studies, enrolling as a first year freshman at Gotham U. ; she was reunited with her mother, who had been transferred to a new hospital and now worked hours that allowed her to regularly see her daughter ; and she found herself with a black super-hero costume on her hands.

Though she had promised Tim that she wouldn't be Spoiler again, Stephanie had actually spent months teaming up with her friend Cass during her nightly patrols. While she felt terrible about breaking her promise, it can't be denied that associating with Cass, a practically invincible fighter, actually made Stephanie safer in the long run by developing her ability to deal with problems.

Shortly after Bruce Wayne's apparent death at Darkseid's hand, Batgirl abruptly gave up her role and vanished. She literally left her costume in Spoiler's hands, implicitly making her her successor.
Steph had no idea what was going on but, despite her promise to Tim, Steph felt that she absolutely had to step in as the new Batgirl. Observing her in action, the new Batman and Robin immediately realised that she couldn't be Cassandra Cain, and handed the matter over to Oracle. She in turn quickly determined what was going on and came to confront Steph in her home. Barbara intended to have Brown renounce vigilantism, but that didn't work at all.

Stephanie refused to stop investigating a drugs ring set up by the Scarecrow, since lives were in immediate danger. Barbara could monitor Stephanie through the tech installed in Cassandra's costume, and her stubbornness forced Oracle’s hand. Oracle started providing support and advice so "Batgirl" wouldn't get killed in the field, planning to yell at her harder once the Scarecrow case would be closed. However, as she monitored the fight against the Scarecrow, Barbara came to realise how serious, committed and determined Stephanie was. She had grown up a lot as a person, as a fighter and as an adventuress, and Barbara - who had been the original Batgirl -realised that she was proud to call her "Batgirl" after a slip of the tongue.

Oracle decided to throw her support behind Stephanie, patterning her offer after how Batman had once helped Robin. As a symbol of this support, she assembled a brand-new Batgirl costume for Stephanie, mixing the visuals of the Spoiler costume and of the original Batgirl costume Barbara once wore. Beyond the armoured costume, she also prepared various weapons to improve the new Batgirl's firepower and odds of survival, and took a TA position at Gotham U. to make it easier for them to coordinate.

Though the early relationships with the rest of the Bat-family were rocky, Barbara and Stephanie soon mended fences with Dick Grayson, and even Damian Wayne came to grudgingly accept Batgirl's role - though difficulties remained due to his immense smugness combined with being at the "girls are icky" age. Steph also managed to restore her friendship with Red Robin. As she tried to cope with life as a freshman, Stephanie also found herself entangled in Oracle's difficulties.

Oracle had taken another young woman - Wendy Harris - under her wing, earning the wrath of the Calculator, Wendy's father. Considering that Barbara had stolen his daughter from him, the Calculator went to insane lengths to locate and kidnap Wendy, including turning thousands of Gothamites into techno-zombies by using Apokolipsian nanites derived from a Justifier helmet. Steph and Wendy managed an impromptu team-up, and Batgirl saved Gotham, rescued Oracle and earned the friendship of Wendy.

Under the code-name "Proxy", Wendy then became Oracle's apprentice and came to provide support for Batgirl on certain missions. Batgirl also started developing a working relationship with certain GCPD officers and in particular the handsome Detective Gage, on whom she developed a crush.

Stephanie's career as a student was less spectacular, though. She was a straight-B freshman, and couldn't decide on a major since she felt the only job she was doing well was being Batgirl.
After Oracle had to fake her death, Stephanie was in the small inner circle of heroes who knew that she was still alive - but Barbara was no longer in a position to help as much as she had in the past. Though she was struggling with psychological issues, Proxy agreed to step in, and became Batgirl's support person.

By that point Bruce Wayne had returned - while widely believed dead, he had actually been cast through time and weaponised, but managed to come back without destroying the world. For a while he discreetly observed what had gone on in his absence, and saw that having Cassandra hand over the Batgirl role to Steph had worked well beyond his expectations. While Oracle's network of operatives had to go dark since she was supposed to be dead, a new organisation emerged in the wake of Wayne's return.

Batman, Incorporated, a company founded by the Wayne Corporation, brought heavy backing to a number of allies of Bruce Wayne. At this point Proxy and Batgirl were operating from Firewall, a secret base built under Barbara Gordon's old home. Batman, Inc. had the place upgraded into an equivalent of the Batcave, including more gear for Batgirl.

Stephanie also learned that Cassandra had been operating covertly in Hong Kong for months, when Bruce Wayne had Cass resume operating in costume - as Black Bat - after Batman, Inc. was launched.
However, changes were in store for many Batman, Inc. assets. Wendy Harris decided to leave for Nanda Parbat in an attempt to heal her psyche. At the same time, Bruce Wayne requested that Stephanie Brown enrol in an English finishing school. Brown grudgingly agreed to leave for London for a first trip, and responded to a crisis there along with Squire (Beryl Hutchinson), another young Batman, Inc. operative. Afterwards, she and Batman teamed up to investigate the school, which turned out to be a front for the mysterious Leviathan organisation.

Returning to the US for a while, Batgirl put an end to a murderous conspiracy based in Gotham University, the Reapers, though it cost the life of the Grey Ghost, a young man who had taken to following her around. This victory led her to the discovery that she was being stalked by her father, alive after all. The Cluemaster was the patron of the Reapers, and had become addicted to the Black Mercy's hallucinogenic properties. Despite being exposed to Black Mercy spores, Stephanie once again spoiled her father's plan with a well-placed batarang. Her friends got her to the hospital to detox her, though Batgirl had beaten the hideously addictive spores through sheer stubbornness without needing a transfusion. During her hospital stay Agnes Brown discovered that her daughter was Batgirl, but came to terms with this while Steph was still in intensive care. And that is where Steph stands at the moment –still Batgirl, still doing her very best to make Gotham safe for its people. [Credit to Writeups.org for the Batgirl portion of Steph’s history.]

KNOWN POWERS:Until someone decides that Steph’s ability to be Awesome is a super-power, Batgirl has no known powers.

KNOWN ABILITIES:

• Martial Artist – She may well be the least skilled of the Bats in a melee. But, as far as most people are concerned, Batgirl is still well out of their ability to challenge – Steph will wreck most thugs she goes up against and has decisively beaten members of the League of Assassins in combat now. Her training is a horrible mishmash of styles and mentors, from her predecessors as Batgirl to Batman to Black Canary, but none of them for very long. That said, the dominant influence is clearly from her immediate predecessor, even if Steph’s particular fighting style is fairly unique as an expression of her personality. Still, mishmash or not, expert or not, plenty of people have underestimated Stephanie Brown and then regretted it.
  
  
• Weapons Training – This is mostly a sub section of the above, but Steph is also trained in various forms of weapons. These, as a member of the Bat-clan, are all non-lethal and are principally members of the staff family. She is an expert in the use of the Bo-staff and equally talented with the smaller baton. Beyond that, Batgirl is an excellent shot with the humble batarang, able to hit most targets she chooses with ease and speed. As with her martial arts, she has improved greatly since her earliest days as Spoiler.
  
  
• Acrobat – From an early age, Steph was an accomplished gymnast, a fact that played into her early and, indeed, her modern fighting styles. She is not the greatest and wouldn’t claim to be, but she is extremely good - if not great.
  
  
• Detective – This is not Batgirl’s forte. As noted elsewhere, she has her moments, but she is not given by temperament to the hard grinding work of detective work. Still, people keep trying to train her and some of it has sunk in despite her best efforts. Joking. But, basically, Steph has a grasp of the easy bits and knows more about the harder stuff than she would admit.
  
  
• Tough – While it is not an ability per se, Steph is far tougher than she or any other girl her size has any right to be. This is a girl who was tortured by Black Mask for days without breaking, and even came close to beating him – only her hesitation to break Batman’s one rule stopped her escaping. Her tolerance for pain is ridiculous, incredible even, and she has defeated both Scarecrow’s fear toxin and the infamous Black Mercy poison by sheer force of will and stubbornness. Steph is simply hardwired not to give up to anything short of death.
  
  
• Stealth – Steph has actually always been the sneaky sort, even before she was trained. These days, she has the ‘Batman’ entrance down pat, being able to just materialise out of shadows and all the rest of it. Admittedly, her propensity for chatter tends to undermine it but, when she can keep her internal dialogue internal, Batgirl is as silent as any of the Bats.
  
  
• Driving – As it sounds, Stephanie is skilled at driving. This is primarily in the Ricochet and the Compact, but she could theoretically drive any of the Bat vehicles as well as cars and motorcycles.
  
  
• Athlete – She might not be quite in the same barely-human league as some, but Steph could easily compete in most Olympic events if she chose, from running to swimming. It is just a necessity of fighting the fight that she does.
  
  
• Pianist – Not really a useful skill in combat, but once upon a time, Steph used to play the piano. She used to be pretty good. These days, she is rusty, but still above average.
  
  
• Improvisational Genius – While she has her moments, Steph isn’t a forward-planner. She likes to play to what to she sees as her strength, which is to jump in and plan on the go. And, to be fair, she is pretty good at it – Steph has a knack for spotting an opponent’s weakness and exploiting it as when she defeated Slipstream by coming up with innovative tactics on the fly, even with limited clues. But, as noted in Weaknesses, there is a downside to this as well.
  
  
• Escape Artist – Another of her Bat-taught skills, Steph knows how to slip out of most standard forms of restraint with a little time and wriggling.
  
  
• Interrogation – Steph isn’t the scariest girl out there. But the bat on her chest helps a lot and she knows all about the basic ways of getting intel out of bad people. She just prefers other ways.
  
  
• Sewing – As a girl who sewed her own first costume, Steph is quite adept with a needle and thread.

STRENGTH LEVEL: While definitely not peak-human, Batgirl is impressively strong for her size, able to knock grown men out with one or two blows and lifting over double her own bodyweight.

WEAKNESSES:

• Human – This is the big one really. Behind all the Kevlar and the gadgets and the ‘here we go’ attitude, Steph is just a girl. She isn’t the biggest or the meanest or the strongest in Gotham and, while she makes up for this in other ways, it is still her major weakness. If you shoot her, will she not bleed; if you beat her, will she not break and so on. In short, while she is good and always getting better, Steph has to be wary of knives, guns, baseball bats, poisons and many other things that actual metahumans can afford to ignore. On top of this, while she again is above the norm in this regard, she still needs to eat, sleep and all the rest of it and can easily get tired over the course of a long night or a particularly tough fight.
  
  
• Impetuous – This ties in to the one above. Despite just being a squishy human, Steph tends to stubbornly throw herself into situations as if she were immortal, relying on skill, her equipment and her ability to improvise and make plans up on the fly to pull her through. Usually it does, if only because she is very good at coming up with crazy plans mid-fall, but sometimes it comes back to bite her. Alternatively, some situations cannot be resolved like that and, while Steph can be surprisingly prepared in certain cases, it isn’t her default mode (unlike Batman himself and a certain ex-boyfriend of hers…).
  
  
• Tim – Speaking of the Devil! Stephanie and Tim have a long, tangled and somewhat thorny history with various incidents on both sides that Steph, at least, would love to forget ever happened. It started with her hitting him with a brick, after all, continued with them dating ‘in-costume’ and recent highlights include more of the same. At this point, Steph has no idea what is going on but Tim remains important to her, likely the most important one in the Bat-Family with the possible exception of Cassandra Cain. Otherwise, when she sorts her feelings on the topic out, she’ll let you know.
  
  
• Double-Life – Last but definitely not least, like all of the Bat-Family, Stephanie is forced to lead a double-life to protect herself, her mom and her friends from what would happen if her secret got out. This tends to lead to a lot of lying, half-truths and generally pretending to be a normal girl to all of the above. It also means that she pulls disappearing acts at weird times, has odd hours and occasionally can be seen associating with people she really shouldn’t know. All of this, but without the benefit of being a billionaire to explain her eccentricities, which means that a lot of her friends think she’s just weird and/or unreliable. Still, a more… enlightened observer might be able to put the pieces together.

EQUIPMENT:

• Batsuit – Although her original days as Batgirl were spent in the ill-fitting costume she received from Cassandra Cain, Steph’s current uniform is custom-designed for her. The lowest layer is a fitted eggplant leotard, which covers pretty much everything from her neck to her wrists and down to her ankles. This is to protect Steph – the Batgirl uniform is skintight or almost. It is also armour, so the leotard acts as protection for her skin from the armour’s rubbing as well as acting as protection from bruising and a way to staunch bleeding.
  
  The main suit goes over the top of this. It is made of the same Nomex/Kevlar weave as the bulk of the Batfamily’s costume, ensuring protection against almost all small-arms fire with the exception of those rounds specifically designed to counter the armour in question, the material is flame-r3$@&dant and it is insulated well enough to take a strike from an electricity-controlling meta and shrug it off. Steph’s costume is principally black in colour. However, the undersides of her arms and the sides of torso and legs down to just above the knee are instead coloured eggplant and appear to be striped. The material is the same, it is just the appearance that is different. Finally, in terms of the basic suit, there is a bat emblazoned proudly in golden yellow on her chest. The suit is designed to include light body armour against both bullets as mentioned above and knives or other bladed weapons.
  
  As with the rest of the family, her costume has a cape and a cowl. Steph’s cowl is closer to that worn by the original Batgirl than her immediate predecessor. It has openings around her eyes and a larger one that starts at her jaw and leaves her mouth, nose and cheeks largely exposed. A gap at the back is to allow her hair to fall out while a communicator is built in, which is able to access police bands, the Batfamily’s secure channels and a link to Proxy - this has video as well as radio, while the link also includes a piggy-backed signal that monitors Steph’s vital signs in the field. The cape is black with an eggplant lining, and is of the standard design. It starts on her shoulders, kept in place by a v-shaped piece of armour, but otherwise pinned on the front of her outfit. Armoured gloves and boots cover her forearms and calves respectively, both in black with the scallops that allow Batgirl to catch and break edged weapons while the boots, in particular, are reinforced enough to deliver a very powerful kick.
  
  Lastly, Steph wears two belts of pouches. One is kept low-slung and loose around her waist, with ten pouches and containers. The second is of half a dozen and is worn around her left thigh. Both are used to store batarangs and other essentials (batarangs, zip ties, more batarangs, breathing gear, detective kit, some more batarangs, tracking devices…), while Steph’s Bo-staff attaches to her belt on her right hip.
  
  
• Binoculars – Aside from being compact, top of the range and having night-vision capacity, these are mostly what you would expect from binoculars. They are stored in Steph’s thigh-belt.
  
  
• Lenses – Most of the time, Batgirl’s eyes are visible. However, her cowl contains what appear to be opaque golden lenses that can slide down on command. These act both as protection for her eyes in dangerous situations and as a means of night vision in the dark where the binoculars are impractical or unavailable –this includes infrared and a degree of zoom.
  
  
• Grappling Gun – Again, fairly self-explanatory and standard equipment for members of Batman’s family. It’s basically a pistol sized device which fires a length of de-cel line attached to a grapnel, designed to take Steph’s weight although it can also manage a certain amount more under particular circumstances.
  
  
• Breathing Gear – Last but not least, Steph carries a translucent rebreather designed for use both against gas and for diving where necessary. This, it should be added, includes skydiving.

TRANSPORTATION:

• Ricochet – The more often used of Batgirl’s two vehicles, the Ricochet is an odd duck, which may be why Steph loves it quite as much as she does. The bulk of the vehicle is a capsule of dark metal with a front viewport somewhat similar to that of a Star Wars TIE Fighter (tinted eggplant). This holds the driver, who lies prone and parallel to the ground, but also acts as an ejector seat if necessary – a function which Steph has been known to use as an attack mode. It has three wheels, two at the front and one at the back, and was designed for use as an escape vehicle so lacks any real weapons. Instead, it goes really fast and has an impressively over-powered engine worthy of a Bat-vehicle. Still, it has the usual functions – autopilot, GPS, emergency brakes, as much armour as feasible and a distinctive silhouette.
  
  
• Compact – A more recent acquisition, the Compact is what Steph takes when speed just isn’t enough. In the vein of an old Robin vehicle, the Compact is a transforming vehicle (yes, Steph programmed the GPS to sound like Optimus Prime, why do you ask?) with two modes. The first is a civilian car, fairly standard and done up in eggplant. From the outside, there is nothing special about it, although it has the usual Batmobile high performance specs, GPS, connections to Oracle’s servers and a variety of other non-standard options which are probably highly illegal. It is also an awesome car. The other mode, however, is what Steph uses for heavy duty combat. In this mode, other than the colouring, the Compact looks nothing like its car mode. It is visibly a paramilitary vehicle, with viewing slits instead of windows, lots of armour capable of shrugging off small-arms fire and a turret mounting twin cannons for anti-vehicle combat. And a remote.

WEAPONS:

• Collapsible Bo-Staff – Made of titanium-alloy, this is Steph’s go-to-tool for hand to hand combat. It comes in three modes. The first is the full-length Bo-staff which is about two thirds of Batgirl’s height. The second is a combat baton, useful when dealing with one enemy or in confined spaces where the longer staff is just a nuisance. Finally, it collapses down into a shortened form about 15 cm in length, which is for ease of storage. Steph also has a garter for this, which allow her to wear it hidden under a skirt or dress for those formal undercover occasions.
  
  
• Batarangs – Just to get it clear and out of the way, Steph loves batarangs. Her pouches tend to be stuffed with as many as she can carry and she uses them with cheery abandon. Right. The standard ones she uses are just that – standard. While designed for her specs, Batgirl’s batarangs are mostly the same bat-shaped shuriken as the rest of the family uses in various forms. However, those are just the standard ones. More recently, Steph has been given a small arsenal of batarang cartridges. These can be combined. And are colour-coded. And her headquarters includes a machine to make more. Each batarang contains two warheads, which can be different to allow for some… interesting effects.
  
  So far, Steph has used or been heard to gloat over the following cartridges: Electric/Yellow (used to disable tech or act as a taser), Magnetic (used to hold the batarang to the target while it works – this is a coating rather than a cartridge), Incendiary/Red (as it sounds), Ice/Blue (ditto) and ‘Goop’/Green, which contains a fast-hardening ‘goop’ ideal for subduing targets without the use of force. All of these can be used individually, but Steph likes customising her batarangs to the target, hence her use of such things as electro-gooperangs, flaming-icerangs and, her favourite, electro-magnarangs. Technically, electro-magna-gooperangs. Thus, even if she isn’t specifically geared up for a single target, there is every chance that a hail of her batarangs will hold at least one extremely nasty surprise for the other person.
  
  Steph also has access to the standard explosive batarangs. She can rig her batarangs (all types) to detonate their cartridges either simultaneously or sequentially, either by remote, by impact or by timer and multiple batarangs can easily be synchronised to the same detonation method.
  
  
• Grapple-Gun – Primarily described under gear, however, Steph also has been known to use this to snag bad guys on rare occasions.

“So, you guys are what? The seven deadly dwarves?”

Batgirl’s comment, delivered with a raised eyebrow and one hand (the one not holding her boomstick) resting on her hip which was cocked at a thoroughly insouciant angle, wasn’t meant with the universal applause it probably deserved. Alright, she didn’t think they were actually dwarves, because while they were all the shortest crooks she’d ever seen, maybe that was just because in the Great Game of henchmen hiring a la Gotham, everyone went for the big bruisers. Ok, or, if they were the crazy Joker man, for the equally crazy blondes in weird outfits, but… maybe she wasn’t in a position to throw stones on that front. Maybe. Possibly. In a weird, bizarrro-world of her being crazy.

But, not allowing the train of her thoughts to be diverted into the siding that was pondering the Gotham criminal class’ dress sense, Steph wrenched it back to her point. Which was that anyone who was under six feet tall need not apply. So, facing off seven thugs who were all five-five or under was about as close to fertile Snow-White joke material as she’d ever come. For Batman’s sake, she was taller than them! That never happened! Not since Tim actually grew up, though if she teamed up with the Prince of Darkness (and Dorkiness), she’d be the tall one there. But he was like ten. And still had a creepy fixation with the contents of her sports bra, so clearly Bruce’s genes were going strong. Shiver.

Anywho… Moving her staff from where she’d draped it over one shoulder, Steph levelled it at one. “See, you’re Doc. You’ve got glasses.”

The point shifted to the next one in line, who was smiling. Not an actual smile, more one of those creepy grins where he’d taken a knife and… uh, made it permanent, know what I mean? Mostly because Steph wasn’t exactly eager to keep looking. Maybe he’d sharpened them. Ugh. “Happy.”

At that point, she was rudely interrupted as the next one along the line lowered his head – showing off a very fetching set of tattoos, Steph particularly loved the little roses-as-hearts motif he had going on – and ran at her. He didn’t bother even trying to punch, he just went to butt her in the stomach. “Which would make you ‘Bull’.” Ooops, outside voice, just one of those things she had to keep working on. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to care. He probably cared a bit more as Steph planted one hand on his back and somersaulted over him, leaving him to run into the wall behind as she resumed her pose as if she hadn’t been so rudely interrupted. “But there isn’t so I’m guessing… Dopey?”

There was a thud behind her. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then.” Batgirl deadpanned.

Another, who needed no introduction, promptly shouted, “Get her!”

That was followed by several moments of general violence, more shouting and the whirring sound of batarangs being thrown about with a gleeful disregard for how much they cost. Steph loved her batarangs, even the normal ones, and rarely a fight went by that she didn’t hurl them around like they were going out of fashion. Which they weren’t, because seriously, who didn’t love batarangs! Grumpy actually turned out to be a bit of a challenge, forcing Steph to step up her game a bit, breaking out Cass’ moves on him as she blocked and dodged and weaved and then caught him with an uppercut to the chin that laid him out cold.

Dear Diary, she thought, gooping Grumpy, Doc and Bashful up alongside the ones batarang-ed (possibly not a word) to the walls, it is so cool to actually be the tallest here for once.

“So, that’s the seven dwarves done for,” She announced to the night air, “Which just leaves… Hang on.” She jabbed a finger at one. “Doc. Happy. Grumpy. Bashful. Sneezy. Dopey.” Her finger moved to each in turn, before Steph sighed and let her shoulders slump.

“I missed one. Rats.”

About a street away, the last ‘dwarf’ was sneaking carefully back to base. He hadn’t been bothered enough to fight and, when he’d realised the way it was going, he’d crept away. And he’d thought he’d made it too, until, frequently glancing behind him, he turned around a corner to find something coming at his face.

It was black. It was also a boot sole.

Standing over his twitching and newly unconscious body, Steph grinned cheerfully down. “Hey there, Sleepy. Ok, now that just leaves Snow White…”

subject examined by Doctor Cyber

B A T G I R L