ShadowCat
Real name: Katherine "Kitty" Pryde
Former aliases: Ariel, Sprite
Identity: Secret
Occupation: Student, adventurer
Legal status: Citizen of the United States with no criminal record
Place of birth: Deerfield, Illinois
Marital status: Single
Known relatives: Carmen (father, divorced), Theresa ("Terri," mother,
divorced), Samuel Prydeman (grandfather, deceased), Chava Rosanoff
(great-aunt, deceased)
Base of operations: (current) Muir Island off the coast of Scotland,
(former) Exalibur's lighthouse off the coast of Britain, Professor
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Salem Center, Westchester County,
New York; Moira MacTaggert's Mutant Research Center, Muir Island,
Scotland
Group affiliation: (current) Excalibur, (formerly) X-Men, S.H.I.E.L.D.
First appearance: X-MEN (first series) #129
History: 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 Charles Xavier, 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, set
out for Deerfield to 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 trained superhuman mutants at his so-called 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 the Jean Grey version of 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.
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 injured Shadowcat with his energy spear. It also
adversely affected her powers so that she could no longer regain her
solidity. She was cured by the combined efforts of Doctor Doom and the
Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic.
Subsequently, Shadowcat became a founding member of the new
British-based team of adventurers Excalibur. She eventually became
romantically involved with her teammate Peter Wisdom.
Recently, 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.
Shadowcat has subsequently returned to Excalibur, where she has
continued to be a valued member of the team.
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 110 lbs.
Eyes: Hazel
Hair: Brown
Strength level: Shadowcat possesses the normal human strength of a girl
of her age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise.
Known superhuman powers: 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 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. While phasing Shadowcat
is still vulnerable to psionic or mystical attack, however.
Shadowcat passes through objects at the same rate of speed at which she
is moving before she "enters" it. Since she is unable to breathe while
"inside" an object, she can only continuously phase through solid
objects (as when she travels underground) as long as she can hold her
breath.
Shadowcat can phase through any material object, even living people.
When she phases through an object with an electrical system, the process
disrupts the system's workings. 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.
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.
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 can
now phase a living person as big as her teammate Colossus along with
herself. She can also enable someone as big as Colossus to "walk on air"
along with her. However, she must maintain physical contact with the
person or object she phases along herself for the effect to work with
this other person or object.
Special skills: Shadowcat possesses moderate expertise of the martial
arts of the Japanese ninja and samurai. Shadowcat is a genius in
computer science. She has continued to take dance training under the
tutelage of Stevie Hunter, and is highly agile. Shadowcat demonstrated
great knowledge of ninja methods of combat when she was mentally
possessed by the Ronon Ogun. With the possession over, Shadowcat has
forgotten the knowledge of ninja techniques he gave her, but she has
retained the knowledge of Oriental methods of combat taught her by
Wolverine.