Shadowcat

__** Katherine "Kitty" Pryde / "Shadowcat" **__



__**History **__

Katherine "Kitty" Pryde was a 13½-year old Jewish girl whose genius level intellect allowed her to take college-level courses despite her young age. Kitty led a fairly normal life until she began suffering headaches of steadily increasing intensity, which were a result of her emerging mutant power.

Kitty herself was unaware that she was a mutant until the afternoon that Emma Frost, then White Queen of the Hellfire Club, arrived to speak to her parents about enrolling Kitty in her Massachusetts Academy. During the visit, Kitty suffered her worst headache yet and went upstairs to her room. When the headache stopped, Kitty was surprised to find she was on the floor of her living room. She had unknowingly used her power to phase through solid matter for the first time, passing through her bed and floor into the room below.

After Frost left, Professor Charles Xavier arrived with three of the X-Men, his own team of mutant students who fought for peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants. Following an attack by the Hellfire Club during which Kitty helped the team, the X-Man Phoenix telepathically coerced Kitty's parents into allowing her to join Xavier's school, and she became the newest and youngest member of the X-Men. Kitty originally called herself Sprite, but later adopted the codename Ariel.

Kitty quickly became a valuable member of the X-Men, proving her worth one Christmas Eve by single-handedly defeating one of the demonic N'Garai. Kitty formed a close friendship with both the X-Man Storm and the mutant sorceress Illyana Rasputin. The bond between Kitty and Illyana grew so strong that Kitty was eventually able to manifest the Soulsword, the ultimate expression of Illyana's magical nature.

Kitty also formed a romance with her teammate Piotr Rasputin (Colossus), and she gained a constant companion on an adventure in space in the form of a small alien dragon-like creature she named Lockheed. Kitty gained another close friend when she met Doug Ramsey, a fellow student with whom she shared an affinity for computers. Doug's death on a mission with the New Mutants would prove to be the first of many personal losses Kitty would suffer.

In an adventure in Japan with Wolverine, she learned martial arts and began calling herself Shadowcat for the first time. Shortly after, Kitty’s burgeoning relationship with Colosus came to an end when he cheated on her with an alien healer named Zsaji. Upon returning to Earth, he admitted his disloyalty to Kitty, severing their romance.

During the massacre of the underground community of mutants known as the Morlocks by the team of superhuman mutant assassins the Marauders, Kitty was injured by an energy spear hurled by the Marauder called Harpoon that adversely affected her powers. Unable to regain her solidity, Kitty was saved by the combined efforts of the European dictator Doctor Doom and his arch-rival, Reed Richards of the team of superhuman adventurers known as the Fantastic Four. However, she could now only maintain a solid form through concentration.

After witnessing the apparent death of the X-Men, Kitty helped form the British-based super-team Excalibur. During an inter-dimensional adventure, Kitty became separated from her teammates and, returning to her own Earth, she decided to give up the life of a costumed adventurer and attend college. However, unaccustomed as she was to the British educational system, Kitty was forced to enroll in St. Searle’s School for Girls. After helping save the school from closure, Kitty rejoined her recently returned teammates.

Months later, Kitty learned that Illyana was dying from the deadly mutant-killing Legacy Virus, a disease that targeted mutants. Kitty was present when Illyana finally succumbed to the disease, unaware that the young mutant's death bonded the Soulsword to her. Eventually the arcane magic's of the sword began to corrupt Kitty, and she surrendered the weapon. Soon after, Excalibur was approached by the clandestine organization known as Black Air for assistance on a mission to the island nation of Genosha. They were assigned a liaison in Pete Wisdom, an uncouth British mutant who regularly clashed with the outspoken Kitty. The pair eventually overcame their initial impressions of one another and fell in love. Wisdom even resigned from Black Air and joined Excalibur to be with Kitty.

Later, Kitty was recruited by the international law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. to repair the computer system of their flying headquarters. During this time, Kitty was attracted to a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern her own age, and this made her begin to doubt her relationship with Wisdom. Soon after, she broke off their relationship. Kitty remained a member of Excalibur until it disbanded whereupon she rejoined the X-Men.

When Colossus sacrificed his life to release a cure for the Legacy Virus, his body was supposedly cremated, and Kitty scattered the ashes over his Russian farmland home. Mourning the loss of her old friend, and trying to live a normal life, Kitty left the X-men. She enrolled in the Robert A. Heinlein School for Engineering and Astrophysics in Chicago on a full scholarship, yet chose to live off campus and began working as a bartender for her neighbor at his establishment, the Belles of Hell. Kitty found herself unable to escape the ever-prevalent prejudice of humans, and she soon clashed with members of a student anti-mutant organization named Purity. Kitty was put on probation and was forced to attend mandatory counseling. During this time, Kitty faced her most difficult loss when she learned her father was amongst those killed in an attack on Genosha.

It was at this time that Scott decided that the X-Men needed to play a more proactive role in emergency rescue and aid, and thus garner attention on mutants in a more positive light where mutant abilities are used for the good of people. Scott therefore handpicked a team in order to get out into the world more. Scott chose Beast for his intelligence, Emma for her telepathy in the field, Wolverine because of his fighting experience, and Shadowcat as the public face of mutants. The remaining teams, Scott left in the charge of Havok and Storm. The teams' first mission was an alien, named Ord of the Breakworld, during which the team rescued the recently resurrected Colossus and destroyed a cure for mutants.

Not long after, the X-Men's Danger Room became sentient, attacking the X-Men and seeking to kill Professor Xavier. Calling itself "Danger", "she" revealed that Professor Xavier knew she had been self-aware, since the Shi'ar technology was installed in the Danger Room years ago, but chose to ignore her, effectively, inhumanely using her only to train his teams of X-Men. After her defeat on the island of Genosha, the X-Men abandoned Professor Xavier on the island in disgust, and Cyclops stated that he no longer needed Professor Xavier's input at the school or with the team. Shortly after returning to the school, Kitty and the rest of the X-Men were teleported away by S.W.O.R.D. to combat Ord on the Breakworld. There Kitty and Piotr consummated their relationship. Unfortunately, the relationship was not to last. The Breakworld fired a giant bullet at earth to destroy the planet. Kitty bonded with the bullet and made it intangible so that it will pass harmlessly through earth. She was unable to free herself from the bullet, however, and is lost in space.


 * Bloodlines **

Kitty is later returned to the X-Men due to the efforts of Magneto. Due to the experience, she is trapped in an intangible form in the medlab of the school.

__**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Powers and Abilities **__

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Phasing//: Shadowcat possesses the ability to pass through solid matter by passing her atoms through the spaces between the atoms of the object through which she was moving. In this way she and the object through which she was passing can temporarily merge without interacting, and each is unharmed when Shadowcat finishes passing through the object. This process is called "phasing." While Shadowcat is phasing, she is, for all intents and purposes, intangible. Hence, when attacked, she can shift into a "phasing" state (even if she isn’t phasing through an object at the time) so as to allow oncoming projectiles or energy blasts to pass through her harmlessly.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//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.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Phasing Extension//: From the first use of her phasing power, Shadowcat was able to phase her clothing along with herself. Through practice she 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 has to maintain physical contact with the people or objects she phases along with herself for the effect to work with this other person or object.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Electrical Disruption//: She can phase through any material object, even living people. When she phases through an object with an electrical system, the process disrupted the system's workings.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Telepathic Resistance//: Her thoughts are highly erratic while phased, as if there is no mind to telepathically affect.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Expert Martial Artist//: Shadowcat possesses moderate expertise of the martial arts of the Japanese ninja and samurai. These methods of combat were taught her by Wolverine.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Genius-level Computer Expert//: Shadowcat is an expert in the field of computer science, demonstrating genius-level aptitude for programming, modifying, and diagnosing almost any computer system: even those of unfamiliar human and extraterrestrial origin.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">//Multi-lingual//: Shadowcat fluently speaks many languages.