Catalina Flores

## Catlina Flores

Tarantula

Catalina Flores

## Biography

### Early Life

Catalina Flores was born on September 2nd, 1986, and grew up in the shadow of her older brother, Mateo, who was a do-gooder and model student. Catalina, however, had many issues. She rebelled against authority and found it difficult to sit still and pay attention in most of her classes in school. In high school, she was suspended for knocking a girl’s teeth out.

To get her to straighten her act out, her father, the then Mayor of Bludhaven, Denis Flores, had her sent away to a private military academy, hoping it would whip her into shape. Turns out, it did just the trick, and got Cat a nice scholarship for the deal, and so she attended Ivy University.

While in college, her father was killed during a riot in Bludhaven, but evidence appeared to show that a group of corrupt cops had taken the riot as an opportunity to kill him. After obtaining video footage of their badge numbers, Cat planned to track down the five cops and kill them, but Mateo, who was then in the late stages of a law degree, convinced her to step down, saying he would prosecute them.

Cat graduated from Ivy University, and became a private security officer and courier for Carapax Security. Carapax recognized her ingenuity and her supervisor eventually convinced her to pursue a position within the FBI. They offered a competitive program to put top agents through Quantico to eventually work with the Bureau. Cat took this path, and within a few years, she became an FBI Special Agent.

She was assigned to Bludhaven, to investigate their increasingly dangerous organized crime, where she lived in the same apartment building as Dick Grayson, while he and Barbara Gordon were on a break, which started a tumultuous sexual relationship between the two. She made friends with an elderly man, John Law, another one of her neighbors. She discovered he was a former FBI agent and Cold War era spy codenamed the Tarantula.

Cat and John grew close, prompting her to eventually reveal that he was a Checkmate plant to keep tabs on her, as they saw her as a potential agent. When Cat found this out, she demanded John introduce her to his supervisor. When she met Maxwell Lord, Checkmate's White King, she punched him square in the jaw. He admired her tenacity, and so he recruited her to be a pawn. However, Max recognized her distaste for government surveillance, and often assigned her on missions meant as distractions while he pursued greater achievements elsewhere.

On July 4th, 2018, Cat was trailing Roland Desmond to a meeting with Tobias Whale, believing them to be reforming the 100 Gang. She was in Gotham spying on them when the OMAC Crisis occurred. She took shelter in the surveillance van until the attack had passed. She was very nearly attacked by an OMAC, were it not for the intervention of the Birds of Prey.

She was devastated to learn of Bludhaven’s destruction at the hands of a hijacked Watchtower, and learned that John and Mateo had been victims to the attack. In her grief and rage, Cat became disillusioned with superheroes and vigilantes, and turned her back on them. With Checkmate disolved, she used her savings to go off-grid, where she did extensive research on vigilantes and the corporations and organizations that enabled them, developing a hit-list of those that lead to the July 4th attacks.

### Tarantula

Her research allowed her to deduce Batman’s secret identity, so Wayne Enterprises became her ultimate target. She decided to go after smaller companies first. As a means to an end, she hired the Madmen and Squid Gang to help her pull off attacks on TerrifiTech. She offered them a chunk of stolen technology as a reward, but saved some of it for herself, designing her own combat armor to become the second Tarantula.

These events put her in conflict with Silver Scarab, Technique, and Misses Terrific. When the Madmen and Squids eventually turned on her, she teamed up with Silver Scarab and Booster Gold to defeat the espionage groups.

Now, she found herself to be an anti-hero, pushing the heroes and their corporations for change. She semi-retired the Tarantula persona to return to the FBI full-time. Now-and-again she goes back to the mask, usually working with the Birds of Prey.