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(AN: This takes place after issue 21)
Class at the Xavier Institute was probably the most normal things ever got for the X-men. In a school where anti-mutant zealots, mutant supremacists, and shady mutant weapons programs could attack at any moment the day-to-day routine of being a normal student was probably the least stressful duty anyone had to deal with. Even for those who had been grade grubbers in regular school, it was a dramatic shift.
Kitty Pryde had been one of those students. Before her powers manifested, getting good grades was about as serious as any mission for the X-men. The mere act of getting a B-minus was demoralizing. Once she joined the X-men her priorities underwent a massive shift. Suddenly, hobbies like training to fight with her Uncle became her major focus and class itself became the hobby. She still got straight-A’s as she did back in public school, but doing so didn’t seem quite as vital anymore. There were far more important concerns in the scope of her everyday affairs. Being normal meant having little impact on the course of world events. Being part of the X-men changed all that. Now her life was tied to the fate of an entire group that the world hated and feared.
“Those that do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it,” she found herself reading aloud.
“Did you say something, Kitty?” said Ororo Munroe, who was sitting at the front of the room going over some lessons with Scott and Warren.
“No Miss Munroe,” said Kitty distantly, “Just talking to myself.”
“Isn’t that a dangerous symptom of at least fifteen different mental illnesses?” joked Bobby.
“Shut it, Iceman-child.”
Kitty kept her attention clear of Bobby Drake’s remarks. It seemed he couldn’t go one class without further cementing his status as the institute class clown. Now was certainly not a good time. They were all in the middle of a lesson in the institute classroom. Everybody was at their computer stations and Miss Munroe was giving lessons at various steps in the process. Kitty had the advantage of being slightly ahead of the others in certain areas. She finished a math test earlier and just got back from a science lesson in Mr. McCoy’s lab. Now she had time to catch up on the subject that held a lot of personal weight for her…history.
She found herself skipping ahead to a lesson on World War II. The areas she focused on were those surrounding the atrocities committed by Nazis against the Jews. Pictures of the holocaust struck her on a profound level. They brought back memories and lessons imparted onto her by her family, who were among the many families affected by the holocaust.
Stripped of all identity, hated for reasons that are completely unreasonable, and slaughtered with a cruelty so disgusting that not even the thousands of words conveyed in pictures could do it justice…that is the legacy the human race has to carry. That is extent of human bigotry. It almost makes me ashamed to call myself human, even if I am a mutated human. It seems there is never a point in history where mankind hasn’t committed an act of unspeakable atrocity.
This is why history has always been a touchy subject for me. There are times I hate it. I would rather get root canal with a rusty nail that learn about certain periods in history. I’m so much better at math, science, and all that other academic junk. That always seemed enough. Why couldn’t I stick with that? Were it not for certain influences in my life, I probably would have. I also would have turned into some snide, arrogant valley girl who wouldn’t be fit to stand in the same zip code of the X-men let alone join them.
My family made a big deal of it since I was old enough to understand. Whereas some families would rather protect their kids from the past, others use it to teach lessons. I’m sort of glad my parents did because it’s a big part of who I am. Our family history is not a peachy subject to say the least. In fact, we Prydes are a dying breed. It’s not entirely our fault. We just had the misfortune of settling in Germany for God knows how many generations. I say only God knows at this point because pretty much any record of our family heritage was destroyed or lost. That’s what happens when you have the rotten luck of being number one on Adolph Hitler’s shit list.
That’s pretty much the defining moment for my family. We were among the first batch of Jews to be shipped off to the death camps. Because of that the Nazis had extra time to wipe out every record and every scrap of heritage my family ever had. I’ll never know the stories my family had to tell. I’ll never be able to trace my heritage back and find out all the neat stories my ancestors had to tell. It’s basically lost to history, a big black hole that will never be filled. That kind of loss will eat at a family for generations. I don’t know if anyone can ever recover from it.
We lost everything. My grandparents on both my mom and my dad’s side faced the brunt end of the holocaust. They told stories to my parents and what few relatives we had left about the kind of atrocities they witnessed. My dad told me a story about how Jews too weak to work were chained to fence posts and left to be eaten by hungry dogs. My mom told me stories about how my grandmother had to watch three of her sisters get raped in front of her and then get cut along their arms so that they would slowly bleed to death. As bad as they were, that was just child’s play to seeing piles of dead bodies get stacked up on a daily basis and then set on fire to burn away. It wasn’t enough to just kill these people. They had to be exterminated from the face of the Earth.
A hard lump formed in Kitty’s throat as her eyes drifted over pictures of holocaust victims. The images of the dead bodies were especially disturbing, reminding her of those gruesome stories she learned at an age when most children were still getting over their fear of the boogy man. To this day she was still deeply affected by it. On some days she hated her parents for exposing her to this horrific period in their family history. On other days she was grateful because it offered a unique and profound perspective.
Most girls at a young age have nightmares about monsters hiding in their closet. For me, it was Nazis. I remember once when I was six I had this horrible dream they stormed our house and attacked. They rounded up my mother, killed my father, and surrounded me while I was still cowering under my bed sheets. When I looked up at them I didn’t see human beings. I saw monsters. I couldn’t see any of their faces. All I could see was their cold, hate-filled eyes. I screamed at the top of my lungs as they reached for me. That’s when I woke up. My father came running down the hall to see if I was okay. I must have cried for hours before I fell back asleep. It was the weakest I’ve ever been. Thankfully, it was also the last time I would ever that way again.
The very next day I went on an impromptu trip with my Uncle, who had just moved to Chicago after living in Israel for most of his life. He’s one of only a handful of Prydes still alive and he was the only other relative besides my parents that I saw consistently. He was also a former Israeli military commando. He was big, strong, and tough in a ways that seem superhuman to me even now as a member of a real life superhero team. My father had reservations, but somehow my Uncle convinced him that he should be the one to take me to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. This is where all those horrible stories my parents told me about took form and substance. Even though they were just exhibits, they still terrified me in a way that I can never escape.
In a ways this was an even bigger turning point than my mutant powers manifesting. On this day at the tender age of six I confronted my worst fear. On this day I would be paralyzed by fear for the last time. That’s because on this day my Uncle sat me down and promised to teach me how to fight. He told me that I was in a unique position. I was the first generation of Prydes from which the holocaust was not fresh in our memory. I had an innocence that the Nazis had not tainted and in order to preserve it I couldn’t afford to be weak. I couldn’t afford to be afraid. I had to learn how to defend that innocence and he was going to help me.
And he did. Boy did he ever. He gave me the full extent of his commando expertise. The day we got back from DC, he took me to his house and taught me some moves in his back yard. He also showed me some of the conditioning he did. To say it seemed excessive to a six-year-old would be like saying the Grand Canyon is a pothole. My Uncle made no bones about it. Being a fighter was hard and he wasn’t going to let me do it half-assed. There was none of that sissy karate or martial arts stuff that other kids learn. That’s more style than substance. He wanted to train me like I was going to be a real commando. It didn’t matter to him that I was so young. All that mattered was that I had the drive and desire. Growing up hearing about stories of fear, despair, and death had already hardened me. It was just a matter of taking it to the next level.
My parents still had reservations. My mom especially didn’t care to see her sweet little Kitty turn into some tough-nosed thug. But this was what I wanted. I told my parents flat out that I didn’t want to be weak. I wanted to learn how to fight. I brought up all the stories they had been telling me since I was old enough to understand. My exact words were pretty harsh.
“If those bad men from my dream ever came for me, I would rather fight than cry!”
That seemed to get the message across. I was not going to sit on this. I was going to learn one way or another, with or without my parents’ approval. They still thought I was too young. They would rather I have as normal a childhood as any family of holocaust survivors could. But I was not normal. I was never going to be normal. The craziest part is I didn’t know how NOT normal I was until much later in life. I like to think I got a head start on being different. I had no idea it would come in so handy when I crossed paths with the X-men.
Kitty’s demeanor shifted as she turned the pages of her history book, focusing now on a less depressing aspects of the past. She skipped ahead to a part in her book that talked about the founding of Israel. Images of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war stood in stark contrast to the grizzly images of the holocaust. It was from this war that her family found hope. Some like her grandparents fled to America to start a new life. Others like her Uncle’s side of the family went to Israel.
Kitty never cared much for the politics of the affair. What stood out for her was a people trying to emerge from the shadows of the holocaust and forge a new future. Her Uncle was part of that future. As an Israeli commando, he was part of the Sayeret. This is the most elite fighting force the country had to offer. Part of their training involved something called Krav Maga, a special brand of hand-to-hand fighting techniques designed to neutralize threats while keeping the user safe. It was the kind of training reserved for the best of the best and she had the benefit of learning this craft from the tender age of six.
Once I set out to be a fighter, my Uncle didn’t hold back. He didn’t treat me as a child. He treated me as if I was going to be a real commando. That meant learning to live and breathe by Krav Maga, the fighting style reserved for top notch special forces. He did have to tone a few things down for my tender physique, but the principles didn’t change.
Krav Maga had four basic principles: counter attacking as soon as possible, targeting attacks to the body’s most vulnerable points, neutralizing the opponent as quickly as possible, and maintaining an awareness of surroundings. To uphold these principles, there really are no rules. There’s none of that acrobatic wizardry everybody sees in cheesy kung fu movies. It’s raw, unabated fighting in it’s purest form.
At first it was kind of intimidating. It took a while for me to get over how rough these techniques were. Whenever my Uncle would demonstrate something, I would always need a few minutes to pick my jaw up off the floor. He didn’t let that become a novelty. In addition to teaching me how to fight, he taught me how to be focused and aware. That is what turned out to be my biggest strength. What I lacked in size and muscle mass, I made up for with a keen focus that impressed even my parents.
It became part of my everyday routine. Each afternoon at around the same time I would go over to my Uncles and train. Whether it was a school day or a weekend, I would take a few hours out of my day to train. It didn’t matter what was going on or how I felt. I went out and trained. One time I came down with a 101 degree fever and my mom refused to let me leave my room. I snuck out anyways, went over to my Uncle’s, and trained. He didn’t even know I was sick until my mom came barging in and screamed at him so loud the neighbors almost called the cops. That showed her and the rest of my family how dedicated I was. In a sense it became part of my identity. I am a fighter. It’s not just what I do it’s who I am.
Over the years it really grew on me. Besides the fighting, my Uncle put me through the kind of conditioning that keeps a commando’s body in peak form. It wasn’t enough to jut have the skills. I had to be in the right kind of shape to pull it off. And by the right shape that means I had more muscle tone by age twelve than most every girl in my school. The only problem was my body didn’t keep up. I was always a bit peeved by my limited stature. Apparently the women in my family don’t grow nearly as well as the men. It still bugs me that I’m the shortest one in the X-men, but in a ways it helps me. It forces me to fight that much harder and be that much tougher when the going gets rough.
By the time I was a teenager I had learned as much as my Uncle could teach me. I still trained with him, but he conceded I had reached a point where the learning ended and the refining began. Now that I was a fighter it was up to me to determine how I was going to use it. How was this going to affect my life? I really didn’t have a clue. My whole reasoning revolved around the premise of I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Looking back on it I wish I had thought harder because I really didn’t have much direction back then. I could fight like a commando and I got straight-A’s in school, but for what? It sure didn’t help that my social life was kind of a mess.
Kitty sighed and looked up from her textbook. She took a moment to gaze around the classroom, watching and scrutinizing each of her fellow X-men with a surreal sense of wonder. She was around real life heroes who put their lives on the line and fight for a world that was downright mean to them. Yet remarkably, she was completely at home with them. She fit in with the X-men. It wasn’t just that she already knew how to fight. It went much further than that.
Turning back to her textbook, Kitty flipped the pages back towards the sections detailing the holocaust. As gruesome a subject it was for her, it took on a new meaning now that she was with the X-men. It was a meaning few could understand. Back home, it left her feeling isolated and alone. And this was before her powers manifested.
All that training came at a certain cost. While other kids were spending their after-school hours going to playgrounds, playing sports, or just hanging out together I was running off to be with my Uncle. That made it pretty hard to make friends. I lived in the same house all my life and I barely knew my own neighbors. How could I when I was so focused on learning from my Uncle? It’s not like I’m totally anti-social. I’m not afraid to talk to people or put myself out there. I just never learned all the subtleties that go into making friends and being part of a group. I probably didn’t help myself by being brutally honest to a fault.
It’s one of those quirks of mine that puts me at odds with even the X-men at time. In training with my Uncle, we had a strict no nonsense policy. There was no room for beating around the bush. You said what you meant and you meant what you said. For me, that often included saying what was on my mind before I meant to say it. That didn’t go over well with other kids my age or other adults for that matter. To this day I still don’t get it. It’s probably why I keep rubbing people the wrong way whenever I just blurt out what’s on my mind without being tactful in the slightest.
I didn’t realize how big a problem this was going to be until my first day of high school. I mark it down as one of the lowest points in my life up until I stared down a killer mutant-hating robot for the first time. I was as anxious as any freshman, but being the pig-headed fighter I was I didn’t fear anything. Maybe a little fear would have done me good because in my very first class of my very first day, I spoke my mind before I realized that public school was all about keeping your mouth shut.
By whatever fluke of horrendously bad luck, my first class was an advanced math class being taught by this teacher who had to be in her seventies at least. I found out later that she was one of the toughest and most ridged teachers in the school and because of that she really didn’t take kindly to students commenting on her style. She started the day by going over a quick probability lesson to get us ready for what we would be learning the first semester. She worked out a few problems that were pretty advanced, but I noticed she was doing them the long way. She was making these charts and number graphs to show all the little details that went into solving the problem. I was already familiar with this stuff and understood that a quicker way was to work out a few equations. That’s when I opened my big mouth.
It started when she made a simple mistake in the addition and subtraction. She wasn’t using a calculator so it was easy to miss. I pointed it out to her without raising my hand and while she thanked me for correcting her, she told me with this mean look in her eyes that students had to raise their hands and wait until she was finished making her point before addressing her. I countered by saying that would have just made it harder because the way she was working the problem would have been messed up and she wouldn’t have gotten the right answer. I could have stopped there and spared myself any further looks, but then I had to point out that she was doing it the long way and the whole problem would have been finished by now without the mistake if she just used a few simple equations. By the time I finished my sentence, I realized I had just stepped in a proverbial mountain of shit.
I might as well have grown a second head that told her to fuck off and drop dead. I swear this woman looked at me with the same look a serial killer gives a disgruntled ex-girlfriend. Me being the tough commando trained girl that I was, I didn’t cower to her evil gaze as most other 15-year-olds would. The others in the class looked at me like I was a cow about to walk into a slaughterhouse and I might have envied the cow because for the next five minutes the woman went off on this rant about respecting authority and following her strict class guidelines. The whole time she kept staring me down and I kept staring back. When she finally asked if I understood, I said yes but not in the way she wanted. I could tell she wanted me to be afraid of her. That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t afraid of anything and that started a trend that would continue right up until I met the X-men.
I got the whole class in trouble for that stunt. It also began my reputation as a social pariah who nobody wanted to hang out with. It’s not like I didn’t try. My problem if you can call it that was that I never showed any fear or concern for being this outcast. It almost became a new school sport. My classmates would try and scare me the same way that teacher tried to scare me. They always failed because my Uncle trained me to resist fear. Compared to the stories he told me and the stories of the holocaust my family never hid from me, there was little a typical Chicago high school student could do to intimate me. Some had to learn the hard way that I was not to be messed with.
As was tradition in the annuls of public school hierarchy, the seniors were basically obligated to haze the freshmen. I don’t know the logic behind it either. It’s like some perverse order meant to keep the younger students in their place while the older students reap the benefits of being a few years older. Naturally, I became the top target among the seniors. These three guys who were on the track team along with these three cheerleaders who looked like they belonged in a bad rerun of the OC planned to jump me after school and tie me to a tree with duct tape. It was an act I had seen done to at least several freshmen within the first month. It was supposedly all in good fun, but that’s probably because most freshmen weren’t foolish enough to fight back. Me, on the other hand, I can be pretty damn foolish sometimes.
It was a Wednesday afternoon and class just let out. I just started walking home and was minding my own business when I passed by a row of trees that lined the edge of the football field. That’s when they jumped me. At least, that’s when they would have jumped me if I hadn’t picked up on their lousy stealth skills. The two guys jumped out first and the two cheerleaders followed closely behind. They tried tog grab me and corner me so I couldn’t escape. That was probably the worst decision they could have made because my commando training kicked in before they were halfway there.
What happened next was something right out of a parallel universe. I slipped out from the grasp of the two guys and took them both down in six seconds flat. I twisted the arm of the first guy behind his back and kneed him right at a nerve cluster around the upper hip. Before he even hit the ground I hit the second guy with a swift kick to the knee and hard fist to the neck. I swear they both cried out like they were 8-year-old girls who just saw a spider climb up their leg. At this point I wasn’t thinking. I was just reacting. The two cheerleaders who were coming up behind the two guys were so shocked they froze right in place. I saw them both with duct tape in their hands so I figured they were going to attack as well. That meant I had to take them down and this is where it got a little out of hand.
When I went for the first girl, she fell flat on her butt before I even got there. I still managed to grab her by the shoulder and hit her right in the upper sternum, which essentially knocked the wind out of her and left her heaving like she was about to throw up. The other one threw the roll of tape at me and tried to run. She made it about two steps before I pulled her into a grapple from behind and tripped her so she fell flat on her face. From there, I dug my knee into her lower back and held her on the ground as if she had just tossed a hand grenade at a bus full of handicapped children. She cried out louder than the other three and called me so many names I think she got fined by the FCC. While this was going on, the last two were standing about twenty feet away from where they were going to tie me to the tree. They had a camera ready and everything. When I looked up and saw them it looked as though they had just seen Bigfoot or something. I shot them one angry look and they dropped everything and ran. I’ll never forget their fleeting words.
“You’re a freak, Pryde! A FREAK!”
Kitty shifted somewhat as those harsh words echoed in her mind. She looked up from her textbook and out into space. It was amazing how one moment in time could have so much meaning in so many ways. It was almost prophetic in a sense. To this day she was still called a freak, but for an entirely different set of reasons. She almost broke out into laughter over how crazy it was.
A smile crept across her face as she gazed back towards her fellow X-men. They were all still caught up in their class work. From a completely ignorant perspective, they looked like normal students going about normal lives. Yet so much of who they were and what they did was anything but normal. It was a perfect summation of everything that made her life so crazy. It also reminded her why she fit in so well at the Xavier Institute as opposed to her old life back in Chicago.
It was a hell of a way to start off my high school career. That little incident got me in trouble with my parents, the principle, the parents of those four kids, and even the police. I was lucky the parents didn’t press charges. I tried to be gentle and leave no lasting marks. That’s not as easy as it sounds when the vast majority of Krav Maga was built around being as deadly as possible. But since they were the ones that hazed me, it couldn’t qualify as assault. And since it took place just outside of school grounds, it wasn’t grounds for suspension. The parents still threatened a lawsuit, but it eventually fell through. Through the whole ordeal I didn’t regret what I did for a second. That essentially sealed my high school fate.
Word travels fast when a petite freshmen girl beats up four oversized seniors with her bear hands. I quickly earned a reputation as someone not to be messed with. It earned me plenty of respect, but even with respect that didn’t earn me many friends. I basically intimidated the whole school. I admit it was a reputation I kind of relished for a while. I tried not to grow too big an ego. My Uncle was pretty strict when it came to getting overconfident, but I did sort of embrace being a tough girl. I was the kind of fighter that nobody expected to be a fighter.
I still came across a few bullies here and there. I always went out of my way to show them that they couldn’t beat up on people just for the hell of it. Bullies reminded me too much of the Nazis my parents told me about. It was only natural that I take it upon myself to stand up to them. It may have earned me bonus points from the victims, but it still left me as the social equivalent of a desert island. Other girls were afraid of being around me when a fight broke out. The guys were too intimated to ask me out. I wasn’t a total outcast, but I was on my own little island. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t belong.
That’s when a beautiful thing called irony kicked in. It all happened in the span of a single day. I found out that I was a mutant. So being called a freak and being seen as too different for what passes as normal these days took on a new meaning. If that weren’t enough, being a mutant introduced me to a new world in which I did fit in. Being a mutant wasn’t enough. Being a mutant and a fighter was the perfect combination that made me an X-man.
Still smiling, Kitty looked back down at her text book and thumbed through a few pages. She soon located as section in the World War II chapter that covered the fall of Nazi Germany and the liberation of the concentration camps. Pictures of Allied soldiers freeing captive holocaust victims were a refreshing turn. The subject of the holocaust was full of so much gloom and despair, but since she joined the X-men she gained new appreciation for what brought it to an end.
In a sense the X-men were like those Allied soldiers. The mutants of the world were in a position not at all unlike what the Jews dealt with during the 1930s. Hatred was on the rise. Fear trumped humanity and hatred trumped compassion. That made the battles the X-men fought all the more important.
So here I am, Kitty Pryde of the X-men. My codename is Shadowcat. I can walk through walls, disrupt electronics, and fight like a commando against the kind of people who would bring a second holocaust. I couldn’t have found a more befitting role if I had been given three wishes from a genie.
I already got a taste of what I’m in for. Not long after I joined, Magneto did his little uprising on Genosha and Cameron Hodge pulled his stunt with the sentinels. My first mission involved stopping both of these psychos before World War III: The Mutant Edition broke out. I got to free a bunch of prisoners held captive on Genosha. I got to destroy giant robots meant to inflict all out war on mutant-kind. I got to fight the kind of fight that really meant something. It wasn’t just for mutants. It was for an entire world that was on the brink of repeating a very dark period in history.
That’s why I keep coming back to that old quote. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I heard enough holocaust stories from my family to want to avoid another one at all costs. I’ll fight with every fiber of my being to ensure that the mutant race doesn’t have to suffer their own holocaust. Professor Xavier believes we have to be willing to fight against the forces of hatred in order to ensure peace. It’s a belief I share completely.
At the same time I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for guys like Magneto. The man may be a psycho, but I don’t blame him for hating the human race. The Professor told me that he actually had to live through the horrors of the holocaust. He didn’t just hear stories about it. He endured it, watching his own family die right in front of him. That’s the kind of experience that would scar a man for life.
I remember seeing a lot of hatred in his eyes during our battle on Genosha. What bothers me is that he can’t seem to look beyond the hatred. His response to the horrors of the holocaust is to promote one of his own, this time turning the oppressors into the victims as if somehow that would make the pain of such an experience go away. It’s vengeance in it’s purest form. I have no doubt he sees himself as a liberator for our kind, but he’s ignoring the lessons of history. Men like Magneto, no matter how tragic their lives may be, will always wind up on the wrong side of it. As Professor Xavier once said, you can’t fight tyranny with more tyranny.
Kitty’s smile faded as she continued reading over the lessons of history in her textbook. There was a lot to be learned from events like the holocaust. As part of a family that carried this grim burden and an X-man looking to avoid another, she found it daunting at times.
As she read through more pages of her book, she saw other events like the Civil Rights movement, the Gay Rights movement, and the explosive growth of the mutant population that had sewn the seeds for it’s own movement. There seemed to be a cycle of struggle for those seeking peace and equality. It was a struggle that didn’t seem to end. So many complications emerged along the way. The X-men were already facing plenty and there was little doubt they would face more. It was overwhelming to contemplate just how far they had to go. Men like Magneto seemed to accept it as impossible. Kitty Pryde, however, was a bit more hopeful.
Sometimes I worry that the X-men may not succeed. We may carry ourselves as heroes, but in the real world the heroes don’t always win. It’s very likely that we could slip up along the ways and make life for mutants all the more difficult. There’s so much uncertainty right now with Genosha, the sentinels, and the growing mutant population that it’s almost impossible to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
So how does a girl like me keep fighting? How does anybody keep fighting when the path in front of them seems practically endless? Whenever my mind drifts to these dark places I remind myself of a story my Uncle told me that was passed down from my grandfather. It’s a story about a group of American marines in World War I during the Battle of Belleau Wood. It was a brutal battle, one in which the marines were expected to hold their ground against advancing German forces. For four days they were bombarded and blasted, taking heavy casualties and wearing down to the point of exhaustion. They managed to stop the attack, but that wasn’t enough. The plan was to fight back despite their weakened state. For the marines it seemed beyond their limits. Their every inclination was not to fight in their current state. Then they were given some powerful words of inspiration.
“When it’s too tough for them…it’s just right for us!”
Eventually, the marines pushed the Germans completely out of Belleau Wood. They were victorious. Over a thousand marines died in the battle, but they didn’t die because it was too tough for them. They died fighting for a cause. Those words held true on that battle and they hold true today.
The way I see it the X-men are on one hell of an uphill battle. Humans hate us and they’re going to keep hating us. Mutants are going to keep growing and cause more tension along the way. Guys like Magneto are going to pick fights and start wars. For everyone else the idea of fighting for peace and understanding will just seem too tough. But for the X-men, it’ll be just right.
That’s how I know the X-men are on the right side of history. We’re still willing to fight the tough fight. We’re still willing to stand up where others succumb to despair. All my life I’ve heard stories about the tragedies of human cruelty and hatred. Now I have a chance to ensure that the next generation won’t have to tell those same sad stories. I may not be the biggest, the strongest, or even the smartest mutant in the world. But I’m still a fighter who can fight her way through anything both literally and figuratively.
There may still be many out there who do not learn from history and are essentially doomed to repeat it. But I won’t be one of them. So long as I’m an X-man, I move forward into the future while never forgetting the past.
Next Issue: Magneto
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