Shadowcat

From X-Men Wiki, the X-Men encyclopedia

Contents 1 Characteristics 2 History 2.1 Discovery 2.2 X-Men 2.3 S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.4 Isolation 2.5 Back to X 3 Shadowcat's Loves 4 Powers and abilities 4.1 Powers 4.2 Abilities 4.3 Strength level 4.4 Weaknesses 4.5 Parphrenalia 4.6 Friends

[edit] Characteristics

• Height- 5'5"

• Weight- 110 lbs

• Eyes- Hazel

• Hair- Brown

[edit] History

[edit] Discovery

Katherine "Kitty" Pryde was a thirteen-and-a-half year old girl living in Deerfield, Illinois who led a normal life but then began suffering headaches of steadily increasing frequency, duration, and intensity. Unknown to her or her parents, the headaches were a result of her mutant power emerging.

Meanwhile, Professor X, founder of the X-Men, a team of mutant adventurers whom he trained in the use of their superhuman powers, located Kitty with his device for finding superhuman mutants, Cerebro. He and three of the X-Men, Colossus, Storm, and Wolverine contact her and possibly recruit her as a member of the X-Men. Unknown to Xavier, the mercenary Warhawk had planted a device that enabled his employers in the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club to monitor Cerebro's activities. The Inner Circle thus also learned about Kitty Pryde, and one of its leaders, Emma Frost, the White Queen, also went to contact her.

Xavier Alarcon trained superhuman mutants at his School for Gifted Youngsters, whereas Frost was headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, where she also secretly trained young superhuman mutants such as the Hellions in the use of their powers. Hence, Xavier and Frost would each approach Pryde and her parents as the heads of private schools seeking to recruit her as a talented student. Neither Xavier nor Frost intended to reveal to Kitty's parents that their daughter was a mutant.

Kitty herself was unaware that she was mutant or that she had a superhuman power until the afternoon that Frost arrived to speak to her parents. While Frost was downstairs, Kitty went to her room upstairs, suffering her worst headache ever. Lying on her bed, she closed her eyes, wishing the headache would stop. It did. Kitty opened her eyes, and, to her surprise, found herself lying on the floor of her living room. Without knowing it, Kitty had used her "phasing" power for the first time, and had passed through her bed and the floor into the room below.

As Frost left, Xavier and his three X-Men arrived. The three X-Men took Kitty to a local malt shop, where Kitty and Storm began what evolved into a close friendship. Suddenly three Hellfire Club mercenaries burst into the shop and attacked the X-Men. Surprised and frightened, Kitty moved out of the way and found herself passing through the wall. Landing outside, she fell unconscious since she was still not used to utilizing her power. The White Queen used her telepathic powers to overcome the three X-Men, whom the Hellfire Club took into their hovercraft.

But the brave Kitty had decided to snoop around the hovercraft before it took off, and discovered the X-Men were aboard as prisoners. Unwilling to desert her new friend Storm or the others, she hid aboard the craft and used her new powers to find the captive X-Men in the Frost Industries complex to which the White Queen had taken them. Storm gave Kitty the X-Men's phone number and asked her to summon help. But one of the Hellfire Club mercenaries spotted Pryde, and the White Queen ordered her capture. Using her powers, Pryde got away long enough to phone the number.

Two Hellfire Club mercenaries in a car were just about to capture Pryde in Chicago when they were halted by Phoenix, who had just arrived with her fellow X-Men Cyclops and Nightcrawler in response to Kitty's message. Phoenix found and comforted the frightened Kitty, who told her story to her and her X-Men colleagues. Pryde then helped the X-Men and their ally, the Dazzler, in rescuing their captive colleagues.

Phoenix used her mental powers to calm Carmen Pryde's rage over his daughter's disappearance. Mr. and Mrs. Pryde allowed Kitty to join Xavier's school, and soon afterwards she became the newest member of the X-Men. She originally took the code name Sprite, but later changed it to Ariel. Kitty quickly became a valuable member of the X-Men, so much so that Xavier retained her in the X-Men even after founding a new team, the New Mutants, most of whose members were closer to Kitty in age than the other X-Men were.

[edit] X-Men

Kitty's friendship with Storm has continued, but her best friend was Illyana Rasputin, the New Mutant called Magik. Kitty was deeply affected by Illyana's recent death from the Legacy Virus. Kitty had a romance with her fellow X-Man Colossus, and although it proved to be short-lived, they remain friends today. Kitty's constant companion is the small, alien, dragon-like creature Lockheed, whom she met when the X-Men were on another planet.

Over time Kitty also grew close to the X-Man Wolverine, who became a mentor to her. While in Japan, Kitty was captured and put under the mental control of Ogun, the martial arts master who had once been Wolverine's teacher but had since become his enemy. Wolverine undertook a crash program to teach Kitty to become skillful enough in the Japanese martial arts to contend against Ogun. At the end of her training Kitty assumed the new code name Shadowcat, which she still uses today.

During the massacre of the mutant Morlocks by the Marauders, the Marauder called Harpoon seriously injured the phased Shadowcat with his energy spear, as she leapt between him and Rogue. It also adversely affected her powers so that she could no longer regain her solidity, and gradually began to dissipate. At times she psychic encouragement from Psylocke, who had recently joined the X-Men. She was cured by the combined efforts of Doctor Doom and the Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic. The outcome of this situation was almost halted by Magneto's reckless use of his magnetic powers.

[edit] S.H.I.E.L.D.

Later, G. W. Bridge, the acting commander of the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D., recruited Kitty Pryde to become a temporary S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Bridge explained that the computer system of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying headquarters, the helicarrier, was failing to recognize any user but her. Pryde soon learned that this was because the spirit of the late Ogun had taken control of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier's computer system. Pryde succeeded in defeating Ogun and, with Wolverine's aid, S.H.I.E.L.D. regained control of the helicarrier computers.

[edit] Isolation

Following the tragic death of Colossus, and too many loved ones before him, Kitty left the team to find a new way to help realize Xavier's dream of peaceful coexistence between man and mutant. That road led her to a life away from the front lines of genetic conflict at Robert Heinlein University, where she would be free to pursue her own destiny.

Life away from the X-Men only lasted so long. While studying computer science, her father died in the Sentinel attack on Genosha. Attacking another who was spouting anti-mutant sentiments, she was placed in therapy. Soon after, the Purity anti-mutant group attempted sabotage on-campus, and evolving Sentinels attacked. Kitty defeated both threats with the help of Karma and Shola Inzeki.

[edit] Back to X

Kitty then became involved with Storm's X-Men squad, once again facing William Stryker. Storm then requested her help in fighting Elias Bogan and his mysterious telepath who ended up being Kitty's lost friend Rachel Summers.

Shortly thereafter, Scott Summers and Emma Frost took over the Xavier Institute. Kitty accepted a spot on Cyclops' squad, while also teaching at the school. She is reluctant, as her dealings with Ms. Frost in the past were anything but friendly. Yet, in their investigation of a claimed cure for mutants, Shadowcat discovered the very much alive Colossus being used as a test subject. After a bit of initial awkwardness, Kitty and Peter resumed dating and finally consummated their relationship.

Recently, during the latest incarnation of the Hellfire Club's assault on Xavier's School, Kitty fulfilled the role that Emma Frost envisioned, personally taking down Frost and imprisoning her, only to fall under a telepathic delusion created by Hellfire member Perfection, who claims to be the true, unreformed Emma Frost. Under this delusion, Kitty was made to believe that she and Colossus had conceived a child which was later taken away by the X-Men because its potential mutant abilities were supposedly dangerous. Kitty reacts in the delusion by attempting to rescue the child from a near-inescapable "box" in the depths of the school, unaware that in reality she is freeing an alien entity, "Stuff", who contains the trapped consciousness of Cassandra Nova, the apparent ringleader of this new Hellfire Club. Kitty collapses immediately afterward, driven to unconsciousness by either Perfection or Nova, and Nova's stated intention is to transfer her mind into Kitty's body.

When the Hulk attacked Xavier, Shadowcat went to help the X-Men repel him, but she was defeated.

[edit] Shadowcat's Loves

Iceman, Avalanche, Nightcrawler, Cypher, Pete Wisdom, and Colossus.

[edit] Powers and abilities

Shadowcat is an Alpha-Level mutant.

[edit] Powers

'Intangibility/Phasing' powers to pass through solid matter by passing her atoms through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she is moving. In this way she and the object through which she is passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat has finished passing through the object. This process is called "phasing." When Shadowcat is phasing, she is, for all intents ad purposes, intangible. Hence, when attacked, she can shift into a "phasing" state (even if she is not at the time passing through an object) so as to allow oncoming projectiles or energy blasts to pass through her harmlessly. Shadowcat passes through objects at the same rate of speed at which she is moving before she "enters" it. She has trained herself to go automatically, by reflex, into a phasing state at any indication of danger, such as a loud noise like a gunshot, in order to protect herself.

• Air Walking: Using her phasing ability, Shadowcat can walk on air. In fact, she can use her ability to walk on the air from the ground to the upper stories of a building as if she were climbing a staircase.

• Phasing Extension: From the first use of her phasing power, Shadowcat has been able to phase her clothing along with herself. Through practice she has learned to phase other objects along with herself without harm to them, and at one point phased an entire X-Men team. She can also enable someone as big as Colossus to "walk on air" along with her. However, she must maintain physical contact with the people or objects she phases along herself for the effect to work with this other person or object.

• Electrical Disruption: When she phases through an object with an electrical system, the process disrupts the systems workings.

• Telepathic Resistance: Her thoughts are highly erratic when phased as if there was no mind to telepathically affect.

[edit] Abilities

She is an expert martial artist and dancer, she is also very good with computers and fluent in Japanese.

[edit] Strength level

Normal human.

[edit] Weaknesses

While phasing Shadowcat is still vulnerable to mystical attack.

[edit] Parphrenalia

Wolverine gave Kitty a broken piece of his bone claws. On certain occasions she carries it.

[edit] Friends

She is best friends with Jubilee, Rogue, Rachel Summers, Nightcrawler, X-23, and Storm. She looks up to Wolverine as father figures. Her best friend is Lockheed.