Charla

Family: She hopes to never see them again. 

Personality: Caught somewhere between a cynic and an optimist Charla's personality tend to flit between contradictions.  Her life experiences tend to learn her thinking towards more self-centered, apathetic and cynical logic while maintaining optimistic tones and hopes.  It's best summed up in the idea that Charla expects the worst but hopes for the best.  

Confident in her appearance and capabilities of navigating the less than savory aspects of life, Charla very often second guesses her outlook and choices in relation to larger impact decisions.  She has learned to take the punches her life loves to throw at her and to keep moving, though that doesn't mean she has to like it.  Charla is adaptive and quick witted, mostly because she had to be, and is able to blend into social environments around her and adopt outlooks that suit that moment.  She is rather morally ambiguous, navigating moral shades of grey and the like while keeping her own personal code of ethics.  

When angered, she tends to lash out verbally rather than physically because she knows that while she is a decent fighter, Charla is far from being truly formidable.  She can get by and usually hold her own decently well, but will undoubtedly also get her ass handed to her by better fighters.  She is much more adept at verbal lashings or expressing her anger in underhanded and subversive ways.  

It's not exactly hard to earn some amount of respect and/or loyalty from Charla.  She is innately loyal to those she cares about and is able to respect any cat who is able to navigate the less than savory lifestyle.  Although she immensely enjoys the moments and interactions where she doesn't need to be monitoring and observing the other cat's every movement or constantly working out the possible ways something may go wrong.  Times when she doesn't need to be the life hardened queen are incredibly refreshing and rejuvenating to Charla and she hopes that settling further into the tribe may lend itself to that.

However Charla is a very well versed and experienced liar and seductress, allowing for her to read minute cue and social situations well and making it harder for her to be lied too.  Of course she can't catch every tell or lie, she can catch many of them simply because she grew up spouting lies constantly.  

History: Charla isn't exactly sure where she was born, having spent her entire life traveling around the UK.  Born into a small band of travelling cats made up of cons, thieves and mischief makers that comprised of a few families that generally kept together.  She is the younger of a set of twins, her twin brother is her only sibling she's even known.  Although Charla grew up vaguely being aware of a much older brother who had left their family band for another similar band - something that was common among them to keep the bands thriving and growing without the hassle of persuading cats outside of their lifestyle to assimilate to it.  From her early childhood she was taught how to lie and attract attention of others in order to distract them so that they could take whatever it was that they needed, all the while Charla acted as a decoy to keep others - humans, cats, whoever - distracted and focused on her.  She was even taught how best to lift and steal small trinkets with sleight of hand and distractions to avoid being caught.  And on the occasions she was noticed?  Well large kitten eyes shimmering with tears and a trembling lip usually absolved her of suspicion or accusations.  

She remained and perfected the position of decoy and distraction, a combination of learning on her feet and being given pointers by other cats she met through the years.  And as she aged, distractions with her cherub like innocence shifted towards her maturing appearance - her mother and 'aunts' and quickly jumping on the chance to teach her to utilize the beauty that she was growing into against other cats before she was ever really allowed to adjust to the changes occurring with her maturity.  It was a struggle at first, Charla tried to protest not fully being comfortable with the idea as her aunts had her distracting older cats this way or when the toms she'd grown up with and several years older took it upon themselves to "help" and "extend" the lessons her 'aunts' and mother were already teaching her.  Despite her complete discomfort and absolute non existent desire to learn like that, those in her band knew she felt responsible for helping and making sure that they got in and out of their cons, thefts, and schemes without any trouble and played on that responsibility and hypothetical guilt from the idea of messing something up.  And anytime they needed to persuade Charla, her guilt was played on.  She couldn't stand that it always worked. 

There were plenty of things that Charla learned about the places they visited and the cats they blindsided, from amusing knowledge and little facts about where they were staying, to picking out tells and minuscule cues cats gave, and to the harsher realities of her life.  Their schemes didn't always go as planned, often leaving Charla to deal with those consequences if she couldn't adjust her distractions quick enough.  Unfortunately this meant that the grey queen has left to handle the brunt of the anger once a scheme fell apart, this was where Charla learned exactly how cruel anger made others.  And exactly how much apathy frustrated her, as her injuries and experiences were often swept under the rug because apparently it was her fault that someone else screwed up and she couldn't magically adjust despite having no idea of went wrong.  

This was when Charla demanded she be taught how to defend herself, so that she could actually deal with when others messed up and it fell to her to either fix the situation or get the hell outta dodge.  Naturally it was a little hard to be able to seduce others when she was healing from her fighting lessons and temporarily switched places in the schemes.  However ultimately she was once again the decoy and distraction as more and more schemes went sour because of the cat they were conning caught on.  Begrudgingly and manipulated by the guilt Charla once again took up the position, however her resentment towards how her family and small tribe was festering.  She spent years like this, caught between loving and hating her family.  Pretending to not acknowledge the fact that her experiences and traumas were ignored and belittled, so she became cynical and more centered on making sure she was okay before the rest of her family while simultaneously wanting to be able to bond with and feel safe with another cat.  Physical intimacy meant little to nothing, it was mostly business or her attempting to  fill the whole left by an apathetic family.  She knew it too.  

Charla's breaking point came from two coinciding events.  One a tom within her tribe seriously proposing a mating between the two of them and when they for some stupid stupid reason thought it was a good idea to revisit a particularly notorious cat they'd managed to steal from back when Charla was still considerable young.  But now with her matured they believed that she would be able to distract the cat and his associates while the rest of the tribe robbed them blind.   For her part, Charla played her role to a tee, immersing herself in his den and managing to seduce and enthrall the tom who subsequently wanted to show her off and boast about his apparent prowess to his associates.  They planned and played this for several months (their longest planning and preparation to date) to accurately  figure out the best plan to rob them all blind and for Charla to weave her way in.  The problem however was that of course in a plan that thought out something went wrong - and Charla ended up paying for it.  At least until she managed to convince the powerful tom that she had no connection to the cats that tried to rob him, something she did out of pure self preservation.   And once she did manage to make it home to her tribe?  Well they heard of her apparent rejection and met her with apathy, indignant over her actions and refusing to understand she did it out of fearing for her safety and life.  She only stayed long enough to heal properly and for them to travel relatively close to London.  

As soon as they were within reasonable distance Charla disappeared in the middle of the night when everyone else was sleeping, travelling by night and hiding to sleep in the day in order to get to London without being seen.  They wouldn't be happy about losing their best decoy, but Charla knew they'd somehow try to guilt her into returning and that it'd probably work because as cynical as she could be Charla was loyal to a fault and she'd never known any other loyalty than to her family.  Upon finally making it to London Charla joined the Henches, finding the moral ambiguity more comforting and has been in the warehouse several months.  Which has allowed her better clarity in relation to how her family treated her.