Selina hated New York.
It hadn't been so bad once. No worse than Coast City or Keystone, last time she'd been there. But that had been back when she was still a teenager. It'd changed since then. Most people blamed Giuliana, but Selina personally held Disney accountable. Them and six other megacorporations. Couldn't make money on a city with personality. They had to turn it into an oversized playground - a McDonald's on every corner, an Apple billboard on every roof.
Give her Gotham any day.
Sure, Gotham was a hellhole, but it was a hellhole with
class
. The soaring cathedrals, the intricately carved gargoyles, the good old-fashioned brick and masonry—no wonder people still lived there after all the shit that got dumped on it. Living there, you felt like you were in the last bastion of individuality in a world of conformity. Like every Gothamite was in it together, holding out against everyone who wanted things to be safe and rounded. Hell, they threw all their bad guys into a Victorian-era insane asylum. If that wasn't commitment to a gimmick, Selina didn't know what was.
But needs must. Selina had been tracking the Statuette of Bast for ten years; the jewel-encrusted ditty was worth millions and it hadn't been stateside in a decade. And whoever owned it was smart enough not to send a cat-themed museum piece to Gotham. So, road trip. She went to New York, rented an apartment at a cost that used up her entire cut from the Monte Carlo job, and prepared. Soon, that cute little baby would be all hers. She'd hang onto it for a few years, until the heat had died down or she got bored of it (whichever came first), and then sell it. Take a little cut for herself, give some money to the homeless shelter in the East End, and give the rest to her favorite wildlife refuge in Kenya. A big win all around.
Well, except for the good people of New York that wanted to see a sculpture of an Egyptian goddess. But since she'd come to the Big Apple, two dozen of them had called her a dyke, just because she had her hair cut short.
Fuck 'em.
***
Felicia loved New York. Had the T-shirt to prove it. It was just
fun.
Something like thirty superheroes in residence, and God knew how many supervillains—there was always something happening. Some plot to destroy the world, some Avengers going out for schwarma... who knew? And with all those heroes around, a girl felt safe walking the streets at night. Of course, Felicia always felt safe, considering that she'd once cracked a man's skull with a pen, but getting 'rescued' by a caped do-gooder was a great way to meet men. Or whatever.
She couldn't see herself living anywhere else, even Gotham. Sure, with only seven superheroes around—and them only people who dressed up as bats and had seen too many kung-fu movies—it was easy to pull a job there. But at the price of living in
Gotham
! Even the playgrounds had little friezes of demons and shit. Talk about trying too hard. It was like the whole city was going through a goth phase.
Thankfully, there was no need for Felicia to set foot in that craphole. She'd read the paper that morning and seen that the Statuette of Bast was being exhibited at the Jonheim Marcus Museum of History, a new museum that was just getting itself sorted out. This probably wouldn't help them out much. But cat-god, Black Cat, how could Felicia resist?
Besides, she might run into Peter. Or Matt. Or both.
You had to love the nightlife in New York City.
***
The museum had good security, Selina would give it that. If she'd been ten years younger, it probably would've kept her out. But she was edging up on her forties by now, and if her only consolation was that she'd gotten really good at breaking into places... well, she couldn't go around wasting that, now could she?
It'd been as simple as buying a ticket. She'd taken the tour, and then wandered at leisure for a couple hours—getting a very nice comment that she looked like Audrey Hepburn in her sun hat and Persol sunglasses. She'd thanked the commenter profusely; obviously not a native, too polite. One of the Midwestern tourists that New York so despised. Of course: couldn't have someone displaying common courtesy in the City That Never Slept. The rest of the country might have to stop calling them 'the mean streets of New York.'
Museum security, clever boys, had given out tickets with micro-dot RFID transponders in them. They could track everyone inside the museum, and see if anyone wasn't who they claimed to be. Still, they could be fooled. After striking up a conversation with her fellow Hepburn fan, Selina had given him a friendly hug—and "accidentally" slipped her ticket into his back pocket. When he left, the system would register that she'd left with him... in his wildest dreams, perhaps. Meanwhile, Selina would be behind a duct in the bathroom, waiting for the museum to close.
The only downside was having to listen to dozens of conversations between New York women. But then, that was why iPods had been invented.
And it wasn't like Selina had another option.
***
With her mask off, a coat over her costume, and a nice bonnet, Felicia attracted no attention as she walked around the museum four times, scoping it out. She knew that she would've been even less conspicuous if she'd been walking a dog, but—theme.
After four passes, she'd seen all she needed to see. Ducking into an alleyway (one free of perverts, thanks to a massacre by the Punisher last month. Felicia loved New York), Felicia fully changed into her costume. As she did so, she gauged the odds of running into Peter—and remembered that she'd heard something about him being off with the Avengers, fighting Graviton.
With a sigh, Felicia zipped her costume up to the neck. No point in having a big target (two of them, even) flashing about in the dark when there'd be no one to appreciate her. With her luck, she'd probably run into Northstar.
Stupid Graviton.
A little parkour later and she'd made it to the roof. From there, one jump with her enhanced leg muscles left her atop the museum. Nice and clean—Gotham probably had scads of pigeon droppings for 'atmosphere'.
Felicia made her way to the skylight. It was glowing with alarms. But if it weren't, there'd be no fun. Flipping her wrist-computer out from where it was stealthily, and fashionably, hidden in her fur trim, Felicia set to hacking the museum's systems. She may not have known a lot about computers, but she did know a lot about computer programmers, and the smaller the T-shirts she wore around them, the better the worms they made for her tended to work.
In a matter of seconds, skylight security was offline.
Felicia smiled. God, imagine how long this would've taken in the old days.
***
Back in her leather, Selina felt more like she'd taken off a second skin, instead of putting one on. Outside the suit, she was a whore, a criminal, a dozen other names she didn't dispute but didn't particularly
like.
Inside, she was
Catwoman
—something Jungian and iconic and oh, Bats probably had five words for it. She just knew that she liked it. Liked the way she walked, slinking through the museum's darkened corridors.
A week ago, she'd bribed an official to schedule some server downtime for now. So the cameras were recording, but not to the security room. When they reviewed the tapes later, they'd see her sashaying around like she owned the place. And tonight, she did.
She'd also spent the past few weeks befriending a security guard in a cancer survivors support group. His wife had it, and he needed a friend. Selina felt like shit playing on his trust, but she'd get over it. A girl did what she needed to do to survive, even in Disney New York. And he'd probably gotten more out of having a shoulder to cry on than she had.
After all, all she'd taken was one little security code.
Boop-beep-boop, and the metal shutters that cut off the 'Native American beads' portion of the museum from the 'my, how expensive' part were open for her. And then
there
... there was the Statuette. Lovely little thing. Her favorite black kitty sitting tall and proud, slender and regal and fluid, the size of a scepter, polished to a black onyx sheen and encrusted with jewels. Even if the ears
had
been broken off by some unappreciative, unprofessional grave robbers in the past, it was still a thing of beauty.
Of course, the only reason Selina could see it right now was because of her goggles' magnification. In the real world, there was thirty feet between her and her prize. As well as laser tripwires, tamper-proof glass, a weight sensor, and a security guard whose rounds would bring him here in another thirty minutes.
In the old days, back when she had more purple spandex than sense, Selina might've tried doing a gymnastics routine through the lasers. But she was getting old, so why bother?
Carefully, she slipped a few of her lovely little mirrors out of her belt. It would be a few minutes' work to neutralize all the lasers, but still, the guard wouldn't come around for half an hour.
All the time in the world.
***
With her lovely derriere through the skylight, it was a simple matter for Felicia to crawl along the ceiling. Retractable claws on her gloves and boots. An idea she'd gotten from Peter. If he would only give up the Great Responsibility spiel, what a second-story man he'd make...
Not to mention a backdoor man. God, she was getting worked up. Stealing always
had
excited her. She checked her phone, and her Supergroupie app showed that Iron Man was flying around in the area. Might he stop by? She'd always wondered if that old dog Tony had built a fly into his suit.
Felicia pulled her zipper down to her clavicle, just in case. And then down a little further, just to be sure.
She made her way to the Egyptian room. Lots of guards, lots of lasers. But the guards didn't look up, and the lasers were no match for the honey diet Felicia had been on.
What was she forgetting? Oh yeah, escape route.
Felicia figured that she'd just go back the way she came in—maybe a little faster, if a do-gooder decided to do good in her direction. So she flicked a few of her cat's claws onto the security cameras, reprogramming them to loop footage. A nice clean getaway, just in case.
Who said that she didn't plan ahead? She had condoms in her belt and everything.
She made it into the Egyptian room. A bunch of dusty old coffins and sepia-toned pictures of guys in pith hats, mostly. What a horrible place for her Bastille to spend the rest of its days. It would look much better in her game room.
But oh, what was this?
Leather catsuit like they were holding auditions for
The Matrix
, a whip just in case anyone wasn't getting the all-points bulletin that 'I'm sexy!', goggles and a big D-ring on the zipper for that
Elsa, She-Wolf of the SS
vibe... she'd fit right in on a Gotham tourism poster.
Oh.
Oh, no way.
It was Catwoman, that old bitch who every wag thought
she
was ripping off. Like the idea of a cat burglar with a
cat theme
was so original. She was just in it for the puns. Christ! Dressing up a little kid in red and green and sending him to fight serial killers—
that
was original.
And
