Huntress

Personal Information

• Legal Name: Helena Rosa Bertinelli
• Alias: The Huntress
• Age: 28
• Sexuality: Bisexual
• Part of Gotham Residing In: Mid Town Gotham

Physical Description

Helena stands approximately 5’ 7”, is slim, with olive tanned skin, and a soft face, delicately featured, almost charmingly elfin, and dominated by a pair of wide, hazel eyes. Her hair in a dark auburn in color, worn in a slightly below the shoulder length style. She has no tattoos, piercings, or unnatural marks on her body. Her right shoulder has a mass of scar tissue from a bullet wound, and her left wrist has a small burn mark from an accident with the stove as a child.

Persona

Helena, during her day job as a junior high teacher at Lieberman High, is the very picture of responsible. She believes it is her job and calling to shape the mind of the young boys and girls in her classes. She takes that responsibility very seriously, often going above and beyond with help with assignments, extra credit, amongst other things. She finds giving them a hope for a future that was denied to her very rewarding.

However, inside there is a rage, whether for the life that was taken from her or the family lost not even she can say for sure. She strikes out, some nights with reckless abandon at the most convenient target, sometimes continuing her mission to bring down the families of Gotham.

Key Skills

• Expert Marksman: She has spent thousands of hours honing her skills with the crossbow, to the point where she can load; reload in seconds, and hit targets no larger then the size of a penny.

• Kenpo: She has spent many an after school day in different martial arts schools, finally settling on Kenpo as her chosen field, focusing on the hard blocks and strikes.

• Bo staff: What time she doesn’t devote to the other things that fill up her life, she spends practicing and drilling with the bo as well, finding the reach it provides very effective.

Advantages

• Athletically gifted: She’s been practicing gymnastics since an early age, and as such is as physically fit as one can be.

• Absorbing/processing facts: Being a teacher, and having focused her education on learning and teaching she finds it rather easy to piece together facts, clues. While she’s no great detective, she can put together a puzzle.

• Reputation She has no problem putting down criminals that she feels deserve it, and the knowledge of that fact helps in the image she projects during her nightly activities.

• Say Die: She refuses to quit, even when it would be healthier, saner, and overall the best choice.

Disadvantages

• Temper: She’s known to have a bout of rage, leading her to blindly lashing out and taking risks and chances that she probably shouldn’t, leaving her vulnerable.

• No Higher Education: While she has practiced her chosen martial arts extensively, along with her weapons, she’s never trained with a true master of these arts. This makes her better then the average fighter but still not up to a “masters” level.

• Lack of Funds: While she did have a trust fund set up as a child, a lot of this went towards her college education as well as her startup of her night venture. She does not have the bottomless wealth, or the inclination to steal those others in her line of work do.

Background

Helena Bertinelli was born to Francis and Carmela Bertinelli in Chicago, growing up in an almost normal lifestyle despite her parent’s involvement in the family business. Francis was the Boss of the Bertinelli Mafia, an organization that ran Chicago with an iron fist, controlling the drug, prostitution and illicit gambling of the entire city, everything tightly managed and well run. For as ruthless as Francis was outside of the home, he indulged is daughter, hoping to keep her away from the brutal life style he led. Her interests in gymnastics and ballet were encouraged, private instructors hired and paid well to turn Helena into a perfect performer. Of course, even at the fancy private school she went too there were still whispers, rumors that she over heard, and by the time she was 13 she had figured out where her father was going to every night, what those meetings were about behind closed doors.

She was never truly affected by it however, until her father’s greed exceeded his grasp. He began to try and expand his enterprises, making headway into Keystone City before turning an eye towards Gotham. The families of Gotham saw this encroach on their territory and were, to say the least, not pleased. They sent one of their top hitters, Mandragora, to express their displeasure. And so it was at the age of 14 she watched her parents brutally tortured and murdered for 3 hours, while she hid in a closet. A surviving, overly loyal bodyguard, managed to drive off the attacker as he was searching for the young girl. Per instructions left for this event, she was taken to a maternal cousin with a drop bag of cash and an envelope of instructions and passwords for when she became 18. For weeks she refused to talk, barely eating or drinking anything. It took a lot of time, patience, and love from a stranger who didn’t have to care any more for her then the money would last but did, but she finally came out of the shell she was curled up in after a few years. While she would never be normal, she learned to at least have some fun with life.

Her new caregiver was a teacher at the school she attended, and soon she decided to follow on the career path, doing her best to sink herself into the work load, to convince herself she could have a normal life. Relaxing for a few minutes in the student quad, she was looking at a few news sites when she saw him. The massive man who had taken her life from her in a bloodbath. She had walked out of the room as if it were filling up with toxic gas, and the first frat boy asshole who said a word to her that day ended up at the emergency room with a broken nose. The nerve of the man, to appear in public like some polite member of society, to be photographed was galling to her. He should be a boogie man, an invisible killer who never showed his face once more.

It was then and there she decided she was going to hunt the bastard down and make him pay. Not only him, but she would find out who ordered her family’s execution and make them pay, along with any who supported them. Knowing it would take time, training, and most of her money she threw herself into these things, becoming closed off from the world once more. Friends became an extraneous luxury, parties, movies a thing of the past. At the same time, she continued her studies to honor her caretaker as well as finding, much to her surprise after her initial rage cooled some, that she genuinely enjoyed the work itself.

She worked for years after school at local gyms, martial arts academies, and archery clubs, realizing she would need something to combat the guns that would be brought against her. After several years, she finally graduated college and graduate school and began teaching. She found a substitute position at Hill Elementary for a bit, using the time she spent there as practice almost. She went after small time crooks and thugs, piecing together what little information she could gather from them. Her confidence growing, she gained a position at Lieberman high and also deemed herself ready to begin her war with full vengeance.

Character Extras

• Face Claim: Gina Carano
• Ons and Offs:
• On: One night stands, no emotional connection, almost violent sex.
• Off: Weak partners, needy partners.