Biographical Data

Player Name: Avarice
Player E-Mail: Wdallnaez@yahoo.com
AIM: ChrisSconill
YIM: Wdallnaez

Codename: Shadowcat
Real Name: Katherine ‘Kitty’ Pryde
Place of Birth: Deerfield, Illinois
Birthday: January 17, 1986
Age: 22
Known Relatives: Carmen Pryde (father), Theresa “Terri” Klein (mother), Samuel Prydeman (grandfather, deceased)
Former Group Affiliation(s): Excalibur, S.H.I.E.L.D.

Physical Description

Height: 5’6”
Weight: 110 lbs
Hair: Chestnut brown
Eyes: Hazel

Distinguishing Features/General Appearance: Kitty is Jewish, and her heritage shows in her lightly olive-hued skin, curly brown locks and the requisite nose…which luckily wound up ‘cute’ rather than ‘massive’. There is a keenness to her eyes, suggesting that the mind behind them is anything but vapid; when added to her earnest features and easy, dimpled smile, it gives Kitty a very approachable quality. While she may not sport a male-idealized ‘hourglass’ shape, and her cups aren’t exactly running over, she does possess a slender, strong body earned though years of dancing and martial arts training.

As to ‘style’, Kitty maintains a wary distance from the concept of ‘haute couture,’ opting for comfort instead. Her closet is stocked with blue jeans, sweatpants, t-shirts, hoodies, tank tops and the like. Even though Kitty has a body that many would consider worth showing off, she prefers to dress modestly, however not to the point of coming off as a prude. Despite her stated dislike for gussying up, Kitty does own some nice dresses, and when she bothers to clean up, she carries herself with impressive grace and aplomb.

The only jewelry Kitty claims to own is a golden Star of David pendant passed down from her grandmother. The pendant is worn at all times, except when she’s sleeping or bathing.

Mascara notwithstanding, Kitty doesn’t usually wear make-up. When she does, Kitty keeps things subtle, not venturing beyond a touch of lipstick and earth-toned blushes.

In line with her ‘More Comfort, Less Style’ sensibilities, Kitty’s hair is often pulled up in a ponytail. It’s simple, it’s practical, and it doesn’t involve a straightening iron. On rare occasions, Kitty will break out the straightening iron and wear her hair down.

Uniform/Costume: Kitty’s uniform is the standard X-Men black leather get-up. In an attempt to inject a little ‘personality’ into the X-Men’s dreary uniforms, Kitty added a yellow stripe down the center of her uniform, as well as yellow gloves. She affectionately refers to them as her ‘bumblebee duds’.

Powers and Abilities (In which appreciation and acknowledgements are owed to Wikipedia and Marvel.com.)

Skills: Kitty earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Chicago and has made no secret of her desire to obtain her masters. She has a genius-level IQ and excels at computer-related activities ranging from hardware repair to programming to hacking…not that a sweet, innocent young lady such as Kitty would spend hours and hours of her time hacking into websites out of sheer boredom…

Kitty speaks fluent Japanese, Russian, and both the royal and standard languages of Shi’ar. She also knows enough Gaelic, Hebrew and German to pass as conversational.

In addition to her massive, multilingual brain, Kitty has been trained in aikido, karate, ninjutsu and Krav Maga. Kitty possesses some experience in samurai sword techniques.

She’s also a competent pilot.

Powers: By rearranging the vibration rate of her atoms, Kitty can pass through solid matter. She calls the process ‘phasing’. While phasing Kitty is intangible, meaning she does not interact with solid masses, nor can solid masses interact with her. She can also phase anything she’s touching along with her. So far the upper limit of what she can carry with her has been show as roughly the mass of six people.

By phasing through electrical systems, Kitty’s ability will short-circuit the system. This is also true for electronic impulses located in human brains.

Through extensive training, Kitty has learned to reflexively phase in response to possible dangers, like gunshots or the sound of Lockheed sneezing.

Special Limitations: While Kitty can phase through most solid masses, some substances, such as adamantium, can hinder or even prohibit her from phasing. She is also susceptible to harm from psionic and mystical attacks, as well as certain forms of energy (see: Harpoon).

Whatever speed Kitty enters an object at while phasing, she maintains for the duration of her phased state. She can only phase as long as she can hold her breath.

Background

Personality: For the most part, Kitty is a lively, affable soul with a radiant sense of humor. She connects with people easily and is quick to make friends. With her friendship comes deep loyalty. When a friend or teammate is down, they can count on Kitty to do whatever she can to be a helper-outer or a cheerer-upper. This includes everything from ‘Bringing Food to Make it All Better’ to ‘Shadow Puppet Theater’. Sometimes Kitty’s desire to uplift leads to her being unintentionally overbearing, but she’s usually willing to leave worse-off alone if she’s told to scram.

Her sense of humor is quick and witty. The only thing she loves more than a good laugh is making someone else laugh, and she’ll gladly exchange banter with anyone who’s willing to play along.

When Kitty gets upset, her modus operandi involves hiding in her room and doing one of two things. If she’s just a little sad or slightly flustered, she’ll sit on her bed, hug a pillow—okay, sometimes she’ll scream into the pillow…it’s good stress relief—and seek sympathy from her trusty purple alien dragon sidekick. If she’s Pissed, Kitty’ll light up her X-Box 360, throw in ‘Hitman: Blood Money’, and spend hours committing mass homicide, which probably says all sorts of unhealthy things about her psyche. During these sulky/angry times Kitty likes to profess in unnecessarily loud tones of voice that she doesn’t need anyone’s help and wants to be left alone. It’s a lie; she just wants to know that you want to stay around, which makes her feel special, loved even.

Despite her well-documented reputation as a World-Class Sulker, Kitty has a hard time putting up with the whining and self-pitying of others, to the point of trying to cajole or browbeat her fellow mutant out of his or her funk. It’s not her most ingratiating of traits.

Once upon a time, Kitty was the Littlest X-Man. It is important to her that everybody knows that ‘Once upon a time’ happened long, long ago in the far, distant past. She’s grown up now, and even though her energy level and babbling can bring to mind a childish energy, Kitty will not—under any circumstances—tolerate being treated like a child. To this end, Kitty strives to project a collected, decisive, independent aura.

In contrast to her mature aura, Kitty is not particularly good at keeping her emotions off her sleeve. She’s working on getting better at this, but it’s still a work very much in progress. When she’s in a good mood, it’s nearly impossible to drag her down—and if you do succeed in this horrifically suicidal feat, may God have mercy on your everlasting soul because Kitty sure won’t. On the other side of that coin, if Kitty is in a sulky/angry/pissy mood, it is just as hard to pull her out of it—but if you succeed here, she’ll love you forever. Honestly, she might even share her Mallowmars with you…maybe.

While it’s not something she’s proud of, Kitty has a temper. A fiery temper. It takes a lot to push Kitty into a full-blown snit, but once there, she’s more than capable of drawing blood—figuratively speaking, of course; she could never bring herself to physically harm a friend. Colorful threats, however, are fair game. Much like her sulking, Kitty has two variations of Angry. The first involves her razor-sharp wit being pointed in the offending party’s direction with intent to severely maim. Then there’s the rarely seen White Hot Fury, in which words flail and flutter, and you tend to get grunted at before being stormed away from. Kitty has been known to hold grudges against deserving parties, but don’t worry, she sucks at grudge maintenance. For the first day or two she’ll be steadfast, but by the third day she’ll have forgotten why she was mad in the first place.

Speaking of ‘Forgotten’, Kitty is highly skilled in the art of Not Remembering. The more mundane the task (e.g. laundry, room cleaning, returning dirty dishes to the kitchen and washing them) the more likely she is to not remember. Also, if she doesn’t do something at the exact moment it’s on her mind, it’ll never get done. This is especially true about returning phone calls and e-mails.

Kitty loves knowledge. She’ll read anything about anything in anything. Even if the information is of no use to her—even if she’s not really that interested in it—she’ll learn as much as she can. Now, she may forget what she learned by the next day, but that just means it’ll feel new when she encounters it again. This love of learning also manifests as a sort of intellectual elitism. She’ll never disparage, or even think ill, of someone who can’t grasp a concept while making an honest effort, but she has no patience for blatantly ignorant people.

Lastly, Kitty is the consummate un-girly-girl. She enjoys video games and computers, cannot cook to save her—or anyone else’s—life, and detests getting dolled up. However, as ‘tom-boy’ as she might be, Kitty loves being treated like a lady. Open doors for her, shower her with chocolates, buy her flowers, and she’ll be your friend for life.

Likes/Dislikes:

Likes: Lockheed (and anyone who doesn’t like—nay, adore—Lockheed cannot be classified as an Intelligent Life Form), Mallowmars (the ultimate food), take-out Chinese, reading, learning new things, dancing, movies, computers, books, playing video games, hacking into online video games and screwing with the character of the annoying twelve-year-old kid who just called her a ‘bitch’ and instructed her to ‘suck it’

Dislikes: Anyone who doesn’t like—nay, adore—Lockheed, getting dressed up, being whistled at (You whistle at dogs. And Kitty is not a dog. So if you whistle at Kitty, don’t be surprised when she’s bitch-slapping you into next Tuesday.), fighting with friends, Emma Frost, Harpoon, Lindsay Lohan, being bored

History: (Wherein much credit must be given to our former Kitty Pryde players and, again, Wikipedia.)

Carmen and Terri Pryde gave birth (admittedly Terri did most of the work) to Katherine Anne ‘Kitty’ Pryde on January 17, 1986. The early years of Kitty’s life were spent in the upper-middle class town of Deerfield, Illinois. Kitty’s parents were good, honest, salt-of-the-earth folks who provided Kitty with a strong foundation of love and morals. She was very close to her paternal grandfather, Samuel Prydeman, who took it upon himself to equally spoil Kitty and reaffirm her moral standings. When Kitty was eleven, Grandpa Sam passed away, leaving Kitty broken.

Scholastically, Kitty proved to be something of a prodigy, and testing revealed her to possess a genius-level IQ. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, Kitty loved her studies, and her test scores provided her with the opportunity to pit herself against harder intellectual challenges. At the same time, it caused a rift between her and most of her classmates, who weren’t quite as interested in ‘higher intellectual challenges’ as Kitty was. Ultimately, Kitty was too much of a social butterfly and went out of her way to make friends. She even took up dancing for the sole purpose of expanding her social network. A new kid, who was actually smarter than Kitty, moved into town; his name was Doug Ramsey. He and Kitty quickly became close friends.

Like most good Jewish girls, Kitty had a bat mitzvah at the age of thirteen. But unlike most of those other good Jewish girls, Kitty began suffering from violent, migraine-esque headaches. When she was fourteen, Kitty suffered from the Mother of all Violent, Migraine-esque Headaches, and she phased for the first time, falling straight through her bed and into her house’s living room. She was more than a little freaked.

Afterward, Kitty and her equally-as-freaked parents were paid visits by both Charles Xavier of the Xavier Institute and Emma Frost of the Hellfire Club, each wanted to recruit Kitty into their respective fold. Between the two of them, Kitty trusted Xavier more than the woman Kitty described as, “looking at me like I was something tasty to eat” and decided Xavier’s was where she wanted to go. Not one to accept defeat with any sort of grace, the Hellfire Club’s White Queen tried to have Kitty abducted. There was much fighting. And cages. And henchmen with funny little masks. But in the end, the X-Men proved victorious, and Kitty found a new home.

While at Xavier’s school, Kitty became very close to the stately Ororo Munroe and even managed to slightly thaw the heart of Wolverine. Then there was the cute hunk of Russian farm boy named Piotr, whom she had no small crush on. Piotr, ever the gentleman, did not reciprocate the young teen’s crush. It was also during this time that Kitty befriended Piotr’s sister, Illyana.

One of the biggest early challenges for Kitty was learning to accept physical mutants. Being from a smallish town in Illinois, she’d never before encountered anyone like Kurt Wagner, the incredible Nightcrawler. At first Kitty was unsettled by, and even afraid of, Kurt because of his demon-like appearance, but once she managed to see beyond their physical differences, she found one of the best friends she could ever have hoped for.

Speaking of ‘best friends’, Kitty made a somewhat peculiar one on a mission in outer space. The X-men were fighting against the Brood when Kitty was saved by a small purple alien dragon. Figuring the poor girl would only succeed in getting into more trouble without his guidance, the dragon, whom Kitty had named Lockheed, hitched a ride with the X-Men back to Earth, where he adopted Kitty to be his provider of food and petting. They’ve since developed an intuitive connection that borders on being psychic.

Later, in Japan, a demon ninja named Ogun brainwashed Kitty, intending to make her an assassin. Ogun sent her to kill Wolverine, but with the Surly One’s help, Kitty managed to break free of Ogun’s influence. Afterward, Kitty retained some of Ogun’s knowledge in the art of ninjutsu. Wolverine took her under his wing and trained Kitty to put that knowledge into practice.

During the Mutant Massacre, Kitty was struck by one of Harpoon’s charged walrus-pokers while she was in the act of phasing. Harpoon’s energy mussed up Kitty’s molecular structure and switched her natural state-of-being into intangibility. Kitty could only maintain a solid physical state through extreme concentration. Over time—and with a little help—Kitty’s power was returned to normal.

After her Harpoon-induced injury, Kitty stayed on Muir Island to recover. While there, she helped form Excalibur with Nightcrawler. There was much adventure and entirely too many fish-and-chips jokes as the new team did the superhero thing in and around the U.K. area. It was during this time Kitty met an insufferable British troll going by the moniker Pete Wisdom. Initially, there was much hating, which soon turned to dating, and ended with their relationship abating.

Kitty also spent some time working as an intern for S.H.I.E.L.D. As far as she’s concerned, the less said about that, the better.

As Kitty was off saving worlds and making odd friends, her parents went through a rough time, leading them to separate for a time. They were unable to work out their differences and ended up getting divorced. Kitty did not take the news well. To this day she’s still upset over her family breaking apart, but she tries her best to keep her hurt under wraps.

After Excalibur disbanded, Kitty went back to her home with the X-Men, only to get burned out. Needing a breather—and wondering about the possibility of leading a ‘normal life’—Kitty enrolled at the University of Chicago, where she earned a bachelor’s in engineering. But normalcy was just too boring for her, and soon enough, Kitty found herself once again back at The House Xavier Built.

Sample RP: She had cleaned her room. In a manner of speaking. It wasn’t like there were vacuum cleaners or dust rags or pungent industrial strength cleansers involved, but there was a very real spirit of cleaning. Okay, it was more like light straightening, but in Kitty’s mind, that counted

She’d gathered up and arranged the DVDs strewn about the room, thrown away the nearly three months worth of receipts, mail, and random scraps of loose-leaf paper blanketing her desk, and even picked up the bundles of clothes littering her floor. True, she’d just wedged most of the clothes into her closet, but it was like Epicurus’ theorem about the Conservation of Clutter said, “Clutter can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transported from one spot to another in an effort to fool judgmental neat freaks who have nothing better to do with their lives than berate your style of housekeeping.”

Feeling all sorts of accomplished, Kitty turned to her trusty sidekick for some well deserved affirmation. “So, what do you think? Am I a regular June Cleaver or what?”

Lockheed—who’d been lying on Kitty’s bed watching the whole cleansing debacle with wary eyes—snorted and stormed off to the far side of the bed. Once he’d gotten as far from Kitty as he could without actually dismounting the bed, Lockheed flopped down in dramatic fashion.

“Hey! What’s with the pouty act?” Kitty asked, gesturing toward the room in general. “I just saved us from the overwhelming menace of piled up pizza boxes and sweatpants, and you--” A look of horror fell across her face like a curtain. In her fervor to return the room to a more livable state, Kitty had stuffed the pile of sweatpants and tank tops that Lockheed had claimed as his cot into her closet. Her shoulders sagged as she finished her early sentiment. “…you don’t have anywhere to sleep.”

Knowing how much trouble she was in, Kitty rushed around the bed and knelt down front of the miffed dragon. “Locky, I am so, so, so, so, so sorry. Really. Let me make it up to you? Please?”

Lockheed tilted his head and squinted, indicating he was willing to listen to her supplications, but they’d better be good.

“Uh,” Kitty strained, desperate to come up with a suitable offering. “Oh, I know. Would you forgive me for a tummy rub?”

Lockheed responded by turning up his nose.

“Okay, okay… Would you forgive me for a plate of bacon?”

With a derisive snort, Lockheed turned his nose up even more.

“Would you forgive me for a Scooby Snack?”

At Kitty’s jest, the purple dragon leveled his sidekick with a glare of the ‘Don’t Patronize Me’ variety.

“Fine. I admit it. I’m out of Scooby Snacks. Logan finished them off last week,” Kitty exclaimed, hoping the joke would buy her some leeway. When there was no look of amusement to be found in Lockheed’s scaly features, she knew one thing, and one thing alone could get her out of this. With a deep sigh of defeat, Kitty pasted on a smile. “How about if I let you sleep on the bed tonight?”

Lockheed turned his head to the side expectantly.

“By yourself.”

Lockheed turned his blazing yellow eyes toward the ceiling as if he was contemplating but needed a little something more to close the deal.

“And I’ll throw in that plate of bacon.”

A single shake of his head indicated that Lockheed would accept her humble offering.

Pushing herself up from the floor, Kitty started to mumble, “Vanquished by a spoiled, little…” but came to a halt as Lockheed cleared his throat. “Huh? What? No, I was just saying…I…love you?”

With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, Lockheed went back to luxuriating on His bed while Kitty headed toward the kitchen. If they were out of bacon again, she was going to be pissed.