#dc oc’s universe is filled with my own hopes and dreams

[arunoy]

uhm uhm insert dialogue about how the identity “batman” is flawed because it was sorta a thing for Bruce to cope after trying to be convinced to pass the handle down to one of his kids and and add on to said dialogue smth along the lines of “I don’t need you to honor Batman, I need you to be better than he could ever be” and BAM gotham has a new cryptic vigilante creature of the night that’s simply referred to as “the Bat” not Batman or Batwoman, THE BAT. Who no one can really tail and never be able to tell if the Bat’s human or not cs they’re—it—-whatever is just that good… ‘cause Cass has been good like that…

[kuh-boose]

eeeey!!! Time to share about my OCs some more! Next in the line up is Kelli Amelia Belrose! Kelli is honestly two separate characters. Her initial appearance in my head began with a little story I started in class in high school because I was bored and have not touched in years now. Initial Kelli, who we’ll call Kelly (with a y), is internally nervous and externally snarky, and has an incredibly dry and kind of self-deprecating sense of humor when she’s not being kind of distant. She’s always frustrated with her situation and has a voice in her head name Aries who doesn’t help. And she’s a badass that’s rather confused and annoyed that she’s a badass. She swears quite a bit.  Current Kelli is placed into the DC universe, particularly with the Red Hood and Batman. This Kelli is far sweeter, almost stubbornly so, despite having undergone a bit more trauma. She’s the one I’m gonna talk about in this post. 

Kelli was born to Coralynn (Cory) Belrose. Before we get to Kelli I wanna take some time on Cory. Cory grew up in France with a devoted father and an absent mother. Her father was military and it led to her moving about quite a bit, though Cory generally didn’t mind. Her father was diligent on six things: kindness, education, patience, discipline, preparedness, and courage. These would be the same things that Cory would desperately instill into her daughter. Cory grew up to be a number of things as it turned out. She simply wasn’t satisfied with just one, but eventually narrowed down to first a ballerina, then into a neuroscientist when she realized ballet couldn’t be maintained into her old age. 

I wish I could say Kelli was a child born of a deep love between two people, but... I’m too twisted for that. 

Cory became the target for, honestly, a man I don’t have a name for yet so we’ll just call him Victor because why not. Victor is... well, incredibly paranoid and his goal in a world filled with super people and super monsters and threats from space and other dimensions was to create a super thing of his own. His plan? Create a human weapon. After years of amassing supplies and staff, he kidnapped some of--what he thought--were the best humans humanity had to offer. Coralynn fit that description. She was taken, impregnated through artificial means, and then gave birth to Kelli. Initially, Kelli was one of the “guinea pigs:” children who were born within the facility and were simply beta testing for the methods they would use on the actual products. This allowed Kelli to remain with her mother in what was essentially an apartment-like prison cell. Kelli was taken, often daily, for experiments and testing. On these trips out of their cell, Coralynn would get Kelli to observe everything she could and report back to her, despite how much it hurt for them to take her (the for the first few months she tried to fight it, but that only resulted in a ton of beatings and tranquilization). By the time Kelli was four Coralynn managed to get them out, though by the time she got to safety and blew the whistle on Victor and his assistants, the facility was destroyed, hundred of charred bodies found at the site. 

Buckle up kids, it only gets worse. 

Coralynn got five years with her daughter. They lived in Paris, moved into different places around the city frequently since Coralynn never really trusted anything, even with personal protection provided by the government. But they loved each other so much. After a rough adjustment period to being back on the outside, Coralynn made certain her daughter had experiences and taught her to be kind and smart and strong and to see hope when everything was all darkness and despair. She kept fresh flowers and plants in their home, read to Kelli every night and climbed trees with her in the park and went to bakeries in the mornings to share the cookies she helped Kelli make the night before with the bakers. They visited libraries frequently and visited Kelli’s grandfather when they could manage it. Cory even maintained a ritual they had in the cell: dancing. 

They had a kind of content bliss like this for five years. One evening Coralynn and one of the personal guards was shot in an alleyway by some men in suits. Kelli tried to pull her mom up until the other guard pulled her away and got her to safety. Despite protective custody, she was kidnapped during a transport and found herself back under Victor's thumb. Victor began using what was left of his guinea pigs and desperately trying to turn them into the final product he had dreamed of for years. Kelli spent years being tortured through cruel experiments and attempts at psychological molding but clung fiercely to the memories and lessons of her mother. These experiments pushed her closer towards the weapon Victor wanted, strong, quick reflexes and stunningly agile, but not significantly past that of a human at peak condition. And for all his efforts Kelli wasn’t budging in her willingness for cruelty (at this point it was mostly out of spite and luckily there was one or two of the staff that managed to be at least little decent to her and encourage her decisions). 

The experiments turned her skin and hair white, drained the color from her eyes from brown to a pale gray, and strengthened her muscles, teeth, bones, and skin. Still, it wasn’t enough. Finally, Victor managed, through a full year process, to give her something no one else had, and that he himself didn’t fully understand (he would never admit he used alien tech to do it). Kelli was “outfitted” with glands (and a chemically changed body that would respond to them) that would produce god-only-knows-what. This mysterious stuff would “charge” Kelli, making her always kind of prominent purple veins glow and produce some kind of energy. In a state when it’s active Kelli is stronger, faster, smarter, and more ruthless, but she overheats quickly, to the point where her skin will begin to burn from the outside in. Luckily it heals relatively quickly but is still excruciating and if she uses it too much she’s out for days in a feverish and unconscious state. No one is sure if it can kill or her not.

All the while, Kelli’s grandfather (Coralynn’s father) is still looking for her, long after everyone else has given up. Eventually, he released a number of the videos of Kelli and her mother had made together on their adventures around Paris, desperate to renew public interest in finding her. Victor the asshole strikes again and poor grandpa dies of a “heart attack” while trying to gather some old acquaintances in Gotham city who can “find just about anyone.” This brings about the attention of the world’s greatest detective, AKA Batman, AKA the ONLY DC SUPERHERO THAT MATTERS (besides all his kids and like, wonder woman). After, y’know, doin what batman does, he and Robin find and take out Victor's operation (though Vic manages to escape with a good chunk of data), with Kelli being the only survivor left, unbeknownst to her (harming the others was a frequent threat used on her). It’s actually Robin (Jason Todd) who finds her in her cell near death after a particularly harsh test and actually convinces Batman to let her stay with them while she recovers. By this time she’s seventeen.

It’s with Jason and Alfred that she kind of reacclimates to being treated like a person, but it doesn’t last all that long before Bruce, with Kelli’s permission, admits her to an organization that will study and try to cure her. As is always the case in comics, that organization turns out to have some not so great backings and Kelli almost finds herself in hot water again, except she escapes this time, only to return to Gotham find out that Jason has died. She kind of just leaves then, a bit numb that her first friend since her kidnapping is just gone she just wanders the world a bit. In true Kelli fashion, she offers help where ever it’s asked of her and this eventually turns into a life of heroism, albeit a very humble and almost sneaky version since she tends to keep a low profile with it.

 Eventually, she meets three important people in her life. Vera Martin, and older woman with an elegant face and a stocky frame who refuses to share her real last name but is an older woman who grew up in the countryside of who-knows-where and eventually fell into mercenary work. At least that’s as far as anyone can guess. She tends to be pretty briefly spoken, but she keeps a locket of a man and a young woman around her neck and is very, very, very fiercely protective of Kelli. All that Kelli cares about is that Vera is very much a good person with compassion and wisdom that comes from years of experience. Vera tends to smack Kelli when she does something reckless and gets hurt, but bandages her up with the precision of a full medical staff. She also kisses Kelli’s forehead when Kelli is asleep and provides some support of particularly tough missions. She gives Kelli classic books every holiday, no matter how little, and writes her own commentary in the margins. They’re usually very snarky and clever jokes. The two others are Joseph and Harold. Harold is an active mercenary, and Joseph is his boyfr--tech support. Harold is sweet pea with a mean face, and he uses it to his advantage. As talented of a mercenary as he is, he has a soft spot for kids and kind of wishes he had gone on to be a teacher instead but opts for making children’s books in his spare time under a pen name. Kelli loves making him baked goods and reading his books and just generally being in his company. Joseph is a mastermind at anything, honestly, and he loves having Kelli test his armor, weapons, and disguises (which come in handy since Kelli stands out quite a bit otherwise). Vera tends to get kind of annoyed and insist Kelli looks fine as she is, to which Joseph will reply “I think so too, hon, but to the populous at large, she’s Frosty the Undead.” 

Vera tends to “accidentally” break a lot of Joseph’s things when he’s not looking. 

But that’s okay because Joseph replaces all of her black cloths with pastels. (Harold switches them back because, tbh, Vera kind of scares him.)

Woah! With that over lets get some fun stuff in here:

Kelli. Loves. Strawberry. Strawberry cake, icing, milk, jelly, milkshakes. You name it. If it’s strawberry, she loves it. She even has a strawberry print shirt and raincoat. 

She likes sleeping in “cramped” spaces. Under beds, in cabinets, boxes, crates, etc.

Despite liking cramped spaces, Kelli still gets a bit panicky being confined to places like room. The easiest way to freak her out are putting her in a public shower setting or having her lay back flat on a table. She can manage it for a little bit with some breathing exercises, but after about ten minutes she goes nuts. 

She enjoys libraries, and actually, lives in an old one filled with books from all over the world and those picked up at yard sales and free boxes. She sleeps in a hammock under a stained glass skylight strung high up amongst the shelves and keeps a few personal items on a shelf next to her.

Her headquarters of sorts is under the library in the basement.

Out of all vehicles, she prefers motorcycles for the maneuverability. 

She is crazy agile and flexible. Like contortionist level flexible. 

She has a crow named Cherise and an opossum named Pêche. Though since she runs around quite a bit they tend to hang out with Vera a lot. 

She still loves to dance, any style, but ballet is her favorite. 

She has a ring with a bird on it and a necklace with a sunflower on it. They’re recreations of ones her mother had and they were made for her by Alfred and Jason. She never lets them far from her and doesn’t take them off at all if she can help it. 

She also has a sunflower tattoo on her shoulder and a bird tattoo on her shoulder blade. 

That’s enough for now, this got really long (story of my life). Thanks for reading!