⸻ sofia carson, 29, cis female, she/her // in the MOUNT PLEASANT neighborhood of Vancouver, you’ll find KIMI CASTILLO who’s lived there for FOUR YEARS and they spend their days working as the OWNER OF THE PURRING CAT. They’ve been described as INTELLIGENT, FEARLESS, BLUNT, AND AGGRESSIVE by the people that know them. This is her story.
❝ I looked at her and said, “There are Goddesses of terrible things less troublesome than you.” She smiled wickedly, lit up a cigarette and responded, ‘I know.’. ❞
Trigger warnings: knives and violence mention
Born and raised in the heart of the Atlántico Department, a city called Barranquilla in Colombia, Kimi was one that never quite fit in to any setting. Even as a baby it was painfully obvious, to the disappointment of her parents, that she was nothing like them. One classification would be that Kimi was an introvert and growing up she didn’t like to play with others and kept mostly to herself. It was an immediate challenge her socialite mother, she had a hard time finding footing in motherhood since her life was all about the town’s social calendar and making sure her family was well thought of and regarded. Most of the time, when Kimi was young, she went along with what her parents wanted and requested of her as far as dressing and acting a certain way. She couldn’t quite comprehend their meaning, on a personal level, of blending in to the expectations of society and having an image to uphold. Most of her knowledge growing up came from books, rather than learning in a social way from other kids and adults. She immersed herself in books, it didn’t matter the subject as long as it was based on facts, that’s what she was interested in. Kimi was pretty much self-taught growing up, being sent home a lot since grade 6, the girl honestly didn’t have much of a choice. Teachers and parents had no idea what to do with Castillo. She hardly spoke and when she did it was always something foul. Only did what she wanted to do, and if she wasn’t given any other choice, it ended with swinging fists and biting.
Believing that there was no other choice, her parents took her out of school. They were too engrossed in their own lives with the fancy gatherings and travels for her father’s banking business he had started before moving to Barranquilla from Bogotá. They gave up on her, they didn’t even bother to home school her, which was actually heaven to Kimi with being on her own and only having to worry about herself. She became smarter over the years, not only in reading, but in math also and her memory became sharp. Kimi could remember facts only after skimming over it once, could read at an exceptionally quick rate, and taught herself virtually anything by devouring books on whatever subject was interesting and available. Kimi’s parents pretty much let her do what she wanted when she became a teenager. As no one wanted to deal with her mouth or having to clean up a mess. When she was 15, Kimi cut her own hair and started to carry knives and dress too provocatively. Of course, this was something that the Castillo parents didn’t approve of, they worried about their own reputations and as soon as Kimi turned 16, her parents kicked her out; leaving her only with a bag of clothes and the shoes on her feet.
This only fueled the fire that was burning inside of Kimi.
For some time, all she did was travel and bounce around from place to place with her stick tied handkerchief. It was hard, a major struggle with no money and no real social skills, so Kimi often did whatever she had to do to survive. Whether that was stealing, fighting, or doing a number of various illegal tasks to make any sum of money. She never really stayed in one place too long, eventually leaving Colombia all together and bounced around the United States in the same way that she had in the South American countries. Life on the streets and as a wanderer were cause for Kimi to hone her skills in fighting, because it was always a fight to stay alive when living on the streets and starving. She began to collect knives, and to this day usually has one on her at all times, likely tucked away somewhere completely unnoticeable. Born tough was one thing but by the time she’d made her way to Las Vegas, at age 19, she’d become an absolute pro on survival. She was savvy enough to have a collection of small illegal tasks to make money here and there and when in Sin City, not too long after turning 20, Kimi decided stop struggling from small job to small job. Using her intelligence and natural but supreme computer skills, Kimi stole a laptop and furthered her brief earlier teenage stint as a hacker and started siphoning money from banks and corporations into a few different offshore accounts of her own, making herself rich.
It took a good year to build up accounts the way Kimi wanted, learning her way around the various computer systems in the world, before she was able to build a decent paper trail to give background to her sudden wealth. Kimi even went as far as gaining American citizenship, teaming up with a forger. Once she felt confident in what she had, she opened a lounge called Snake Eyes in Los Angeles and it was successful, especially with Kimi devouring knowledge on how to properly run a business. Eventually trouble caught up with her, still considered a little green in the hacking world, she had made some mistakes and began to be pulled in for questioning by the FBI. They didn’t have much more than suspicion on her, at least nothing to give her any hard time over and at that point Kimi could afford a top notch lawyer. Still, the series of being brought in for questioning got under her skin and she decided it was time to make some changes. She sold her lounge in Los Angeles and moved up north, finding a city where a little sin might be welcomed. Quickly after settling into Mount Pleasant, converting an old loft into a home and secure work space for her computers, Kimi bought a building and opened up a strip club called The Purring Cat.
Business went well, both her strip club front for official income and her illegal businesses. She learned from her mistakes in the past and cleaned up all errors made, making Castillo even harder to keep watch on. The FBI and maybe other branches of law enforcement had Kimi on a “watch list” with her being considered one of the top hackers in the world but with her being that good at what she did behind a computer meant that anyone beneath her level of expertise wouldn’t have a clue on how to track her. It left Kimi feeling comfortable, not over confident, she had read that that was usually one of the major downfalls. While a petite woman with a love for knives most never took her as a serious threat, which was a mistake when rowdy and rough patrons of the club came in and created chaos and havoc with the way they hassled the women and other patrons of the club. After her security getting themselves beat in a fight against the guys of the group that wanted to push their way around when trying to kick them out, Kimi got involved.
Not only did one of the members end up with multiple stab wounds and a stay in the hospital, Kimi shut down all their accounts and turned over paperwork on major assets the men owned. Their houses suddenly getting notices for foreclosure and cars and bikes being repossessed, Kimi made it clear that while they could out muscle her, she could easily destroy every little bit of their lives while she sipped on a glass of wine in her desk chair. Sometimes the really bad offenders got to see how easily she could tear every bit of their life apart. She liked to exact vengeance from behind her computer. For a cut or a hefty sum Kimi will take on an odd hacking job here and there but mostly she enjoys sitting back and running her club.
