Here's my second The Batman (2004) OC, Pack Rat. Technically, she's based on the character from Batman: The Animated Series, but it's soooo loosely (only villain name and the "your trash is my treasure" shtick) that I may as well consider her a fully original character.
Real Name: Piper Langstrom
Aliases: Pack Rat, Trash Queen
Nicknames: Street Rat (by Rojas), Fluffy (by Joker and Harley), Neighbor (by Croc)
Relatives: Kirk Langstrom (older brother)
Throughout her life, Piper was in her older brother's shadow. Her parents spent more time and most of their low income on Kirk, leaving the girl with leftovers, hand-me-downs and no prospects for anything higher than basic education. The practicality and economy of this lifestyle made her grow up up with a keen eye for overlooked value and see potential where others see waste.
Piper found herself in the role of a janitor and worked in GCPD for quite a long time before Kirk's first arrest. Chief Rojas made the decision to fire Piper both for her relation to Man-Bat, which could affect his department's already fragile reputation, and her weird habits, like rummaging through trash for still useful items and eating the leftover food in the cafeteria.
She had trouble finding or keeping a job due to Kirk's recurring activity as Man-Bat until his ultimate rehabilitation seven years later when she was landed a job in Gotham University.
After the students David, Amber and Justin had stolen Dr. Langstrom's Man-Bat Serum's recipe from his lab, they decided to use the first sample of the altered serum on Piper since she was the easiest to test the formula on without bringing attention to themselves: the three students left an unfinished drink containing the serum with the DNA of a lab rat in the university cafeteria and Piper drank it. The young trio watched from afar as the janitor went through a temporary mutation into a white rat and used their observations to update the formula and turned themselves into a fox, a vulture and a shark.
Piper told no one about her trasformation neither on the night it first happened, nor during the activity of the Terrible Trio, since she was worried about losing her job over a controversy again. But she couldn't lay low for long... Soon after the arrest of the Terrible Trio, Gotham University was visited by the scientist who worked on different animal whistles and, when the rat one was used, its frequency triggered Piper's rat senses and reactivated dormant traces of the serum in her system, causing transformation into a rat the same way this scientist's bat whistle that was stolen by Penguin caused Kirk's tranformation into Man-Bat. Piper stole the whistle and ran away. Despite the intial panic, she found this change to be a good way to escape her routine, her life's constant dependence on her brother's reputation and society's judgement of her lifestyle.
She gave herself the name Pack Rat and entered a carefree life where she could take any trash she wanted and even started taking things people no longer needed by stealing them before they can be thrown out. But her desire to collect discarded stuff didn't stop at objects — not too long after her acquiring her Pack Rat persona, Piper comes across a few men who were former goons of different Gotham criminals that were supposed to be "dealt with" for disappointing their bosses in one way or another and saves these guys before convincing them to join her team.
• Enhanced Strength: Similar to rats, Piper possesses impressive physical strengh, which allows her to carry a load that is twice her own weight and to bite through different materials.
• Enhanced Agility: Even in her human form Piper is rather nimble but in her alter-ego she displays the full potential of rat agility being able to squeeze into tight spaces, climb narrow surfaces, jump long distances, and even climb vertical surfaces with relative ease.
• Animalistic Senses: Due to being part-rat, Pack Rat has enhanced smelling and hearing.
• Swimming Abilities: Due to her rat physiology, Pack Rat has small membranes on her hind legs which allow her to travel in sewer pipes even against a strong current.
• Intelligence: Above Average. Despite sometimes giving the impression of a naive and silly person, Pack Rat is actually a fairly intelligent and skilled individual. She is very adaptable and diligent and, considering her former job as a janitor, has knowledge of various cleaning products and basic maintenance around building renovations.
• Due to the version of the serum Piper ingested being a middle stage between Kirk's and the students' versions of the formula, she both possesses anthropomorphic characteristics like ability to speak like her human self and more animalistic traits like rat anatomy and occasional episodes of following instincts alone
• Piper has a level of fondness for Chief Rojas due to the general dislike towards him from other workers of the department, which is displayed in her very friendly demeanor towards him and her eating his leftovers the most often
• Pack Rat's hideout is in the sewers area near a dumpster
• Pack Rat's room is filled with abandoned stuffed animals
