Carmen Sandiego

Trained by the best thieves in the world, Carmen was also a prodigy in all the basic skills. She's stealthy, quiet, an excellent lockpick of both electronic and physical locks, and pickpocketing without the subject even being aware of her. This includes various skills like shadowing and keeping a low profile(even if her favorite color, red, tends to be eye-catching)

Carmen is very good at hand to hand combat, favoring unarmed combat or simple, short implements like batons or knives. She is best at unarmed, able to hold her own with experienced fighters, but against a combat specialist she has to rely on trickery or environmental advantage. She's very good at using her surroundings and her natural agility to aid in her fighting, relying on doors, objects, and other hazards to slow down or trip up her enemy. She avoids lethal strikes, preferring to leave her foes dazed or stunned, even though she is somewhat proficient with firearms.

A practitioner of parkour, Carmen tries to get from point a to point b in a straight line, if possible. This involves lots of leaping, sliding, tumbling, and climbing. She's quick and agile on her feet, and also aided by a hidden grappling hook she keeps up her sleeve to make a quick getaway or aid in scaling tall walls.

Carmen is usually well-equipped, often carrying a small backpack with an ultralight glider that deploys from within. She also carries basic tools for any of her jobs, including lockpicks and emergency smoke pellets for a getaway, along with anything needed for that particular job. For example if she knows there are infrared beams or she'll be navigating at night, she'll bring night vision goggles. She lacks this equipment if she is not expecting such a situation, since she likes to travel light.

Being a history and culture buff, Carmen is well-versed in most modern Earth customs and basic local history on at least a passing level. If she has any preparation at all for where she's headed, she will do some quick research if possible. She also speaks at least a dozen languages, many of them fluently, so has a knack for picking up spoken languages, but is not at the level where she can easily translate ancient writing or other specialized linguistic tricks.

Carmen has been trained in driving most modern ground vehicles, including cars, trucks, and motorcycles, and is very skilled in driving them. She can also pilot simple aircraft, though at a more basic level. The farther any of these deviate from typical 21st century vehicles the harder it will be for her to pilot them.

An erstwhile ally and friend, Player is the codename of a highly-intelligent young man who is Carmen's coordinator and research assistant. While on a job he can do quick lookups of trivia if it is accessible via network or reference, and presuming Carmen can provide him with a network connection, can operate as a hacker for her. Player has his own life and school to deal with, though, and is often unavailable.

As a lover of history and culture, Carmen prioritizes preservation of cultural artifacts and will not just avoid destroying them, but will often risk her life to save them from damage or theft. This is something that becomes extremely obvious quickly, too, making the less scrupulous opponents able to use that tendency against her fairly reliably.

For much of her life, Carmen has not been given a fair chance with the local authorities. It isn't that she doesn't respect what they do, and she will in fact try to help them out whenever possible, but she will do what needs to be done to help people and prevent injury, even if it isn't strictly legal. This has lead her to become a 'thief who steals from other thieves' and other such monikers. She is generally bad about explaining herself and usually avoids even trying to explain when she can act immediately. Carmen tends to try to do things without even informing the authorities, and will only willingly work with them in matters of life and death, or if there are no other options to achieve her goals... and even then she will slip away without warning as soon as the threat is passed.

In her distant childhood, Carmen faced a terrible fire. Being inside burning buildings, or in the midst of a large amount of fire, will cause her to hesitate or even freeze up. Smaller fires, like a campfire or thrown fire attacks, will not cause this, but a prolonged battle leading to lots of fires likely will.

Having faced far too much loss in her short lifetime, Carmen treasures those friends and companions she does make. It's quite understandable for people to go out of their way to save friends, but Carmen takes it to another level, and even casual companions for a short period get a level of loyalty that's enviable. Even if she doesn't LIKE a person, she's willing to go out of her way to keep them safe.