Catwoman: The Gilded Prowler by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Catwoman-The-Gilded-Prowler-1179030532

Catwoman: The Gilded Prowler ANIMATION

The Velvet Hunger

The night had teeth.

Not the kind that glimmered beneath moonlight and whispered promises of danger—but real teeth, serrated and sharp, gnashing in the darkness of what used to be Gotham City. The year was lost somewhere between cataclysm and chaos; the maps no longer mattered. Gotham was a carcass. The bridges had fallen, the government had fled, and what remained were tribes of desperate survivors clinging to territory like scavengers over bones.

Selina Kyle—Catwoman—had prowled many nights across rooftops, but this one was different. The skyline no longer blinked with life; it smoldered. She moved through the ruins like a sleek phantom, her whip coiled at her hip, her catsuit torn but still regal in its defiance.

She paused on the ledge of a gutted skyscraper, her green eyes sweeping the wasteland below. A fire burned in the husk of a subway entrance. She could hear them—the Ravagers—mutant things born from whatever toxin had leaked into the floodwaters after the quake. They had been men once. Now, they were nightmares with muscle and hunger, their skin an ashen gray, their voices like the scraping of stone.

Selina whispered to herself, “You’d think the apocalypse would dull a girl’s taste for trouble.”

Then came the scream.

She dropped down, three stories, landing in a crouch among shattered glass and ash. The scream came again—high, human, female. She followed it through the hollow streets, past a fallen gargoyle and a rusted police cruiser with vines curling through the windows.

When she turned the corner, she saw them: five of the Ravagers circling two survivors, a mother clutching a boy no older than ten. The mutants’ eyes gleamed yellow in the firelight.

Selina’s whip sang.

It coiled around the throat of the first Ravager and pulled him backward into shadow. She moved fast—grace and fury in one heartbeat. The whip cracked again, the sound echoing off the abandoned towers. One mutant fell, his leg slashed. The others turned, snarling.

The woman screamed again, “Please—help us!”

“Helping’s extra,” Selina purred, stepping into the light. “But I’m feeling generous tonight.”

They lunged.

She twisted, rolled, and struck—every motion a whisper of feline precision. A Ravager’s claws missed her face by inches. She countered, striking his throat. Another rushed from behind; she somersaulted, landed behind him, and swept his legs out with a kick that snapped bone.

When the last one came, bigger and faster than the rest, she let him charge. At the last moment, she ducked low, the whip looping his neck. She yanked. The mutant slammed into a streetlight, head cracking against rusted steel.

When it was done, she exhaled. The whip uncoiled like a sigh.

The mother held her son close, trembling.
“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Someone who likes cats,” Selina said softly. “And hates bullies.”

She knelt beside the boy, who was staring at her goggles. “Got somewhere safe to go?”

The woman shook her head. “They took our shelter. There were others… the Ravagers dragged them off.”

Selina’s expression darkened. “Dragged them where?”

“To the Narrows,” the woman stammered. “They said something about a nest.”

Selina stood. The Narrows. She had avoided that part of the city since the first tremors. Word was that something had been breeding there.

She sighed, half to herself. “I was planning on a quiet night.”

The boy looked up at her with wide eyes. “Are you… a hero?”

She smiled faintly. “I’m whatever’s left when the heroes are gone.”

Hours later, the firelight of her small refuge flickered over cracked brick and tattered velvet curtains. Selina moved among the shadows like a wraith, her cats padding silently at her feet. The mother and child slept in a corner, wrapped in a faded blanket.

Selina stared out a broken window at the city below.

The wind carried a sound—a low hum, metallic, almost magnetic. It crawled up her spine. She turned. One of her cats hissed, arching its back.

Then, she saw it.

Far off, on the broken bridges of the Narrows, lights flickered—unnatural, pulsing. And beneath the light, shadows moved in rhythm.

“Something’s waking up,” she murmured.

A voice answered from behind her. “You should let it sleep, kitten.”

Selina spun, whip raised.

From the shadows stepped a m
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