Darcy Brooklyn - Celican

Background | Allies | City

“Change everything you are
And everything you were
Your number has been called”

Linkin Park – Runaway
Damien Rinz was born after her biological father disappeared, leaving her mother to bear and raise the child alone in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Luckily, a few years later Clare met Jack Rinz, a man more than willing to raise four-year-old Damien as if she were his own. A year later the family welcomed a son, Lukas. For years they were the picture of a perfect family.

As a child, Damien was always very active. She started doing gymnastics at a two and continued the sport through high school, where she also ran on the track team. She never exhibited any signs of being anything but completely human until one fall evening in November 2010 when she shifted into a cougar in the middle of her family’s living room.

While Lukas was thrilled that his sister could turn into a wild cat, Damien’s parents were less than happy about the situation. Clare had not known that the man she’d once slept with was Bastet, and so had no idea how to find someone to teach Damien how to handle her new found abilities. Jack insisted that the family retreat to their remote cabin a few hours from Toronto to give Damien a few weeks to get a handle on her uncontrolled shifting. His job as a Media Consultant allowed him to work from anywhere, and Clare was able to turn the restaurant she owned over to a friend until they returned. Although Damien was able to control her shifting, for the most part, she still felt like things were out of control.

Once they returned to Toronto, Jack used his contacts as a media consultant to investigate what exactly his daughter had become. Unfortunately, he found more rumors than truth about shapeshifting cats. He and Clare spent all of their spare time searching for someone to teach Damien.

A few weeks after Damien returned to school, she was approached by Vincent King. He’d seen Damien around town and he knew that she was a shifter of some kind, but he naturally assumed that she was a wolf like him. He was surprised to learn she was a cat instead and reluctantly agreed to teach her what he could. With the differences in their breeds, and the fact that Vincent’s pack was against his teaching Damien, there was only so much he could teach her.

Damian’s family continued to search for another werecat. Vincent’s teaching had helped, but there was still so much about her new existence she didn’t understand. Their search was long and mostly unsuccessful, leading Damian to believe she would never be able to attend college. Then in June of 2012, just after she graduated High School, Jack found some obscure information about a possible werecat living a few hours away.

Jack and Damien went out in search of the werecat and that night Damien’s world changed yet again. They were attacked by something big and scary that Damien couldn’t identify. The beast killed Jack and Damien went into a blind rage. She somehow managed to kill the monster that had killed her adopted father but when it was over, she had no clear memory of doing so.

Confused and mourning the death of the only man she’d known as her father, Damien was further disappointed when she was able to find the werecat, but then learned that the Bastet couldn’t train her. The wild werecat had been born a feline and while he could shift to human form, he knew very little about humans, or how to teach Damien how to incorporate what she was with a human life.

Back at square one, Clare kept looking for someone to mentor Damien. In the mean time, grief at Jack’s death had caused a shift in Damien’s personality. Damien began to believe that she was Darcel ‘Darcy’ Brooklyn, a girl who had grown up in Toronto, and had known the Rinz family well. Clare and Lukas tried to deal with Damien’s gradual change to Darcy as best they could, but it wasn’t until Clare made contact with Psychology Professor Reece Hogan from the University of Washington that they realized what had happened.

Reece seemed to know exactly what was going on with Damien, and warned Clare and Lukas that the shift in identity would continue until Darcy was the dominant personality and Damien was nothing more than a memory. In fact, Darcy came to believe that she had grown up the daughter of Martin Brooklyn, a man who had been friends with Jack Rinz. She believed that Damien Rinz had been her best friend, that they had attended gymnastics classes and track meets together, teased Lukas, even planned on going to University together.

Darcy also believes that Clare had taken her in after Martin, Jack and Damien had died in a car accident. She believes that the sale of her childhood home and life insurance from her father is paying for her college tuition and that she’s saved up money working at Clare’s restaurant for spending money while she’s away at school. In reality, Clare is paying for Darcy’s college herself.

Reece promised to help Darcy learn everything she needed to know, but only if Darcy came to Washington for school. Darcy agreed and Clare made arrangements for her daughter to attend the University of Washington in the fall of 2012.