A robbery in progress

She leapt off the ledge of the building she had been crouched upon for the past half hour. The mystical power of the cat surged through her effortlessly as she scaled down the building's ornate facade, her muscles coiling and releasing with perfect synergy. She landed on the roof of the nearby, lower sitting building, right next to the broken skylight. Her enhanced senses perked up and painted the scene in vivid detail for her before she even had a chance to look in. The crunch of broken glass, telling her at least five men were moving around, the coppery smell of blood hanging faint telling her someone had been wounded, not too heavily but enough to be incapacitated. Whoever was inside, they had a hostage. She could almost taste the steel, aluminum, and rubber-like polymers of guns, at least four of them.

Catalina peered over the ledge, through the skylight, and could see that she was crouched above a jewelry store that was, in fact, being robbed by five men. All wore masks, mostly your typical dark ski masks, but at their forefront was an older man whose silver hair immediately caught her eye. He was dressed more like a classical gentleman, in a white dress suit, with silver accents and a bold, blue bow tie. On his face was a silver domino mask that did not hide his eyes tracking to Catalina's crouching spot. Her heart froze as her body zipped out of sight, hopefully before she was seen.

She recognized him immediately from her mother's study guides. He calls himself The Curator, a thief with the power to translocate items with the wave of his hand. Not a high-level threat, and probably perfect for her first outing as Catseye, but there was a note her mother had on his file: "More diabolical than he seems." Remembering it gave her pause. She leaned back over the edge to see what they were up to as she heard the villain and his goons move on.

The Curator held up a hand, fingers shimmering with a strange, oily light, and swiped it over a case containing fine diamond necklaces and assorted jewelry. The entire display--glass, velvet, and gems--vanished with a sound like tearing silk, reappearing neatly stacked by the door in separate pieces easy to carry or move as the group needed. He had a self-satisfied smirk as he tilted his head towards the pile, and one of his men rushed forward to stack the display as a barricade, and the other rushed to collect the valuables.

"The police are on their way! Just take 'em and go!" a security guard pleaded from where he was pinned to the wall by a translocated marble statue, a still-bleeding gash on his forehead visible even from where Catalina was perched. She could sense the tremble in his voice, and it sent a chill down her spine.

The Curator turned, his face obscured, his body language unreadable. "Take 'em and go?" He scoffed. "Such a crude phrasing. I am not just stealing these jewels. I am assessing them. Weighing their value. Envisioning how they would look in my collection. There is an art to-"

"Hey!" Catalina's voice echoed in the vast, plundered store. It came out stronger than she felt. "This assessment's over."

The Curator's eyes, visible through his mask, lit up with cold amusement. "Well, well. A new exhibit. 'The Alley Cat,' if my memory serves? It has been a good long while since we encountered each other, has it not?" There was a pause as he devoured that information before clapping his hands together in excitement. "Ah, you must be new blood. Well, the silhouette is promising, but the posture is a bit... uninspired."

That made her self-conscious. Catalina quickly fell into a fighting stance. "First, it's Catseye. Second, shut up."

He sighed, as if bored by a tedious guest at a gallery opening, and turned his back to the heroine. "Let's appraise this new piece. Boys, shall we see what lies beneath the veneer?"