My good friend @wossarem.bsky.social had a birthday recently. He's been a good friend to me for well over a decade, so I finally got off my butt and drew something for him.

I have long thought that I prefer Cassandra's fighting prowess to be showcased more through technique and mastery of her tools and body than visual shortcuts like bandaged hands. Someone with her level of skill should be using her cape like a Choy Li Fut or Wushu practitioner uses a war fan.

She has built in taser electrodes in the knuckles on her gloves. These also double as the activator for her bullet-resistant smart fabric cape, which can stick and stiffen into glide mode the moment they receive a charge from the knuckles.

[Right side is a drawover of @psudonym.bsky.social 's work]

A predator lurking in the shadows; stealth and fear are her primary weapons against the petty crooks in Gotham. I know it might be sacrilege to some people to get rid of her stitches, but this is a Cassandra who's moved on from being mute. She still doesn't speak much by choice, not by limitation.

My base concept for this suit is two fold. I wanted to unify both Cassandra's Batgirl and Orphan looks to acknowledge her origins and move forward, as well as play on what I believe to be her strongest visual theme; fear.

While less armored than Bruce's version of the batsuit, this would be a significant upgrade to mainline Cassandra's relatively simple outfit.

The concept here is a future Elseworlds setting where Cassandra inherits the mantle from Bruce and becomes the primary Bat hero for Gotham (with backup from Oracle and Tim who help handle other parts of the technology and detective side of things).

[These images make use of a character turn-around base that was found online. I have attempted to reverse-search to find and credit the origin but I failed. Also the highlights were rendered by @layerindustries.bsky.social ]

This is my take on an updated/redesigned Cassandra Cain from DC.