Katherine "Kitty/Shadowcat" Pryde
Katherine Anne Pryde
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Portrayed By Emmy Rossum
Gender Female
Date of Birth March 16
Age 24
Zodiac Sign Pisces
Aliases Kitty, Shadowcat
Place of Birth Deerfield, Illinois
Current Location New York
Occupation Superhero
Known (Living) Relatives Theresa Pryde, Cousin Kenny
Significant Other n/a
Identity Public
Known Abilities Phasing, Airwalking, Electronics Disruption
First Appearance Uncanny X-Men #129 (Jan. 1980)

Heavy is the head that weareth the awesome.

History

Oh my god. Really? I really have to try and sum this crap up? Okay, FINE. Born, blah blah blah, normal childhood for a super-genius, picture-perfect Jewish family in Deerfield, Illinois— Mom was at home, Dad was a banker, I did little league and swimming and ice skating and ballet and happened to be taking college-level classes at thirteen. And then the bomb dropped, they started fighting, I started getting killer headaches, they decided to send me to boarding school while they figured out if they were gonna make up or break up.

They couldn't pick NORMAL boarding schools, oh no. They had to get their minds played with until there were only two choices, period. Both of them run, of course, by hugely powerful telepaths. Whatever. My introduction to the Fabulous World of Mutants and Superheroics was an attack by a bunch of HFC jerkwads at an ice cream shop while I was getting to know the Xavier's School crowd— I wound up helping save their butts even though I was, you know, only thirteen. I could go into detail here about people and about Jean who was dead by the time I actually -went- to the school — and who's dead AGAIN — but you're gonna get enough about that kind of stuff.

I got a costume, one of the bumblebee-type student outfits. I got a codename, Sprite. I got to be practically Ororo's little sister. I got a massive crush on Piotr. I got over being freaked out about Kurt, who looked like a demon and buckled a swash like Errol Flynn. I made it through my first combat practice session in the Danger Room with my eyes shut. I learned to program and maintain the Danger Room myself. I learned how to pilot and repair the team's modified Lockheed Blackbird. I fought and destroyed a N'Garai demon by myself. I designed my own costumes, and the less said about that, the better. I got possessed by a future version of myself trying to save the world. I baby-sat a six-year-old.

I almost died fighting the N'Garai. I almost died in a lava flow. I almost died falling into a pit. I almost died being zapped by Magneto. I almost died from radiation poisoning. I almost died from being eaten alive by an alien growing inside me, like something out of a movie. I almost die of embarrassment every time I think of the costumes I designed for myself on almost a daily basis.

I went to outer space, and saw sunrise from orbit. I helped save the world a couple times. I met some aliens with really, really stupid hair and got their entire culture telepathically shunted into my head all at once (and found out that, oh God, it wasn't actually hair). I got a real, live pet dragon. I fell in love for the first time.

Then I turned fourteen. You know how there's a Calvin and Hobbes book called 'The Days Are Just Packed'? You don't know the half of it, brother.

Then there was the whole Ogun thing where I became a ninja shut up I'm not kidding, there was Illyana (the six year old) getting stuck in Limbo and trained by demons for years and coming back out the other side older than me and getting to be best friends with her, and then stupid Professor X going 'hey you're a kid, go be on the kid team' and I was like NO WAY and had to prove myself all over again, and there was the Freedom Force (which, you know, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is TOTALLY a giveaway so at least at that point they had better PR), and then there was losing Ray, and there were giant killer robots and people full of hatey-hate, and then the Massacre.

Look, can I sum up even more? Because it JUST GOES ON. AND ON. AND ON AND ON and on and on and on and on and oh my god.

Okay.

Sum-up of the next few years: me and Kurt saw most of the X-Men die in Dallas, my other best friend Doug died in the kid team, Kurt and Ray (who came back at that point) and Captain Britain and Meggan and me and Lockheed (my pet dragon) started a new team in the UK, called Excalibur… then there was Inferno and my other best friend Illyana got turned back into a little kid, and then we got— god. WE GOT SHUNTED THROUGH REALITIES. I'm not even kidding. Time and space. It was like a TARDIS but it was a dragon-and-Widget (who turned out to be me, don't ask) powered super-train (so kind of a little like Back to the Future Part 3 but not)… argh. More friends died, more adventures happened, I almost died a lot more times, we got back, more people joined the team, people left the team, more crazy happened, we met more counterparts of ourselves than you can shake a stick at, ET CETERA ET CETERA.

Um, oh, 'Yana who used to have the soulsword because it was made of her and whatever, when she died (because she died too! As a little kid! With a mutant-killing virus!) I got the sword. That turned out to be a massive headache because it was trying to take me over and I sort of went stupid for a bit (not evil, really, just stupid) and okay, so basically you can tell if I'm gonna be evil and//or stupid if I cut my hair. Or cut my hair and start smoking, god forbid.

I'M SUMMING UP. God I really need to stop with the tangents, here. Because if I go off on tangents, it'll go into maths, and this is supposed to be a bio, not a maths lecture.

SO! Right. Met Pete Wisdom. Who was, I will note here for the record, a COMPLETE JERK. He smoked and smelled bad and had a foul mouth and a bad attitude and didn't play well with others and drank and ew ew ew. That was pretty much my reaction at the time, and I had JUST got done being evil/stupid over the Soulsword at the time, which was ALSO right after I lost Ray to the timestream and Brian started talking in bad Shakespearean knockoff English and Moira found out she had Legacy and Rahne showed up and Douglock showed up - Douglock being a techno-organic alien who looked a whole lot like my DEAD BEST FRIEND Doug Ramsey, and had his memories, but wasn't actually, y'know, him. Go figure - and I was DEALING WITH TOO MANY CHANGES AGAIN so I wasn't the best company, either.

We all went to Genosha, there was a lot of being shot at and crashing, there was a lot of waiting around, and there was a good deal of finding out creepy things about Brian's dad and a lot of blowing things up. There ARE REASONS for most of this but my god I don't have time to go into them.

So we went back to Muir, and Pete stuck around because he didn't want to deal with his boss, who not only wanted him dead but had broken her word one too many times and sent him into combat again after promising not to. While he was schlepping around before dawn, smoking indoors and masochistically trying to drink Moira's jet-fuel coffee, he checked his voicemail and got a message from his friend that he was in really deep, and Pete immediately flipped and decided he had to get to London pronto. He couldn't fly our obscenely fast hovercraft and I didn't trust him, so I flew him, and we checked around his friend and his friend turned up dead. While we were talking to this other friend of Wisdom's, Jardine, I got a newsflash from the guy that Pete was actually a really great guy who'd take bullets for a stranger and steal his employers' helicopter to get a friend to the hospital in time to NOT die of appendicitis, thank you. Me, sheepish. Again. And then it turned out Pete and Dead Guy's mutual employers were making really horrible diseases out of alien bits. Said bosses let Pete's friend get killed by the really horrible disease made out of alien bits. This, understandably, really pissed Pete off. So he and I went and blew up the base where they were making the really horrible diseases. This got him so very fired that he stuck around Excalibur some more — except, see, he wanted to stay anyway because we'd fallen helplessly in love. Shut up, I'm serious!

Then Piotr (my at-this-point four-years-ago puppy-love first-boyfriend ex) showed up after WALKING HOME from like MARS or something where he'd been Magneto's evil sidekick, and beat the crap out of Pete for making out with me, and Pete almost killed HIM because he thought Piotr was gonna go after ME next, and THAT was a huge mess and what the HECK, and I'm still annoyed about the whole thing even though they both wound up okay…

Details again.

More stuff happened. I went a little nuts thinking that Pete was gonna leave me like my dad and mom splitting up years ago, and pretty much stopped talking to him, and he understandably left. Brian and Meggan got married, and that broke up what was left of the band. Me and Kurt and Piotr went back to the States, and even DUMBER stuff happened. Repeatedly and with great fervor. I thought Pete died working with X-Force. He didn't, but he couldn't actually TELL me he was okay because I WAS ABANDONED IN SPACE at the time, I just…

…this really just won't get any better. This story.

Piotr got himself whacked to take out the Legacy virus that'd killed lots of mutants, and Moira and his baby sister/my best friend, and I just had e-dang-nough and quit the team and went to go work on actually getting a for-real degree (which, if I had never become a superhero, I WOULD ALREADY HAVE HAD SEVERAL OF BY NOW THANKS). Then Genosha blew up, my dad with it, because it turned out he was there in the witness protection program and doing good works to atone for being a dink.

I went a little more nuts. I think I go a little more nuts every day.

Eventually Scott kind of extorted me into coming back to the School to teach and to keep an eye on Emma Frost, and I'm STILL not sure why I agreed, or let him guilt me, or believed him that I was the only one who could do it, but—

—at least I have a degree now. And at least Pete's alive. Even if he is still a jerk.

Timeline

  • Check out all pages tagged with Kitty.

Quotes

  • "You wanna hit me? Come on, then! Come on, hit me! I wanna see it!"
  • "Oh gosh. Oh golly! Oh WOW!"

Trivia

  • Kitty has met more of her own alternate-universe counterparts (paraforms) than she can keep immediate track of.
  • The only good dating experiences Kitty has had involve going out with black-haired, blue-eyed guys.
  • Since the Morlock Massacre, Kitty's default state has been phased, rather than solid.
  • Kitty Pryde is a total mary sue. (Teenage mutant ninja hacker with a genius IQ and a cool name! Come /on/.)

Gallery

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