Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light

Chapter 35: I Feel The Earth Move Under My Feet

Kitty Pryde could feel the loathing coming off them, could note their spiteful glares. The people she passed in the street spat at her, flashed obscene gestures at her, occasionally yelled at her. Their hate was directed at anyone who, like her, was cursed with what modern geneticists called the "X-gene", a particular gene that caused humans to spontaneously develop superhuman powers. They were referred to as "mutants", beings with abilities that no ordinary human could replicate.

Kitty was a mutant, and her particular curse allowed her to become intangible and pass through solid objects, including people. She considered it to be completely useless, aside from those rare occasions when she'd locked herself out of her car or home and needed to pass through the door to unlock it from the inside. While she'd been contacted by both the mutant heroes known as the X-Men and the Acolytes of Magneto, she'd refused both their invitations to join, wanting nothing to do with mutant politics and preferring to simply live her own life the way she wanted to.

Now, however, mutant politics had found her again, after a sleazy tabloid calling itself the Daily Globe had publicly revealed her as a mutant and associated her with the mass-murdering supervillain Jack O'Lantern, who had turned out to be her uncle, Steven Mark Levins. She'd received threatening letters in the mail, her mother's workplace had been picketed, and her aunt's house had been vandalized.

All because she was a mutant.

Now she saw the true faces of so many of the people around her, saw how they reacted when they'd learned she was a mutant.

She was so lost in her reverie that she couldn't react in time to avoid bumping into the short, chubby man who deliberately blocked her path. Stumbling back in alarm and dropping her books, she scrambled to pick them up but ended up falling on her face as someone kicked her from behind. Grunting in pain as she landed on the sidewalk, she rolled onto her back and rose to a sitting position in time to see two large hulking young men grinning at her.

"I'll be damned," one of the men grinned at the other. "Kick a mutie and she falls over."

"Now let's see what happens if we stick a mutie," the other man grinned sadistically, as he pulled a switchblade out of his pocket. "Think she'll bleed?"

Kitty felt a chill run through her as she saw the other man pull out a switchblade of his own, and they began advancing on her. The evil looks in their eyes, hate mixed with a perverse pleasure in what they were doing, would have spelled their intentions out clearly to Kitty even without their sadistic laughter.

All because she was a mutant.

SPIDER-WOMAN #35

"I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE UNDER MY FEET"

"Leave me alone!" Kitty spat, fear turning to anger. "What did I ever do to you?" she demanded.

"You were born," one of the thugs sneered. He lunged at Kitty with his knife, only to find himself stumbling right through her as she focused her intangibility powers. The other thug lunged in too, but Kitty phased through him too and began running.

"Nice try, cunt!" one of the thugs shouted, as he and his buddy began running after her. "You don't stop with the mutant crap and face us, we payin' your relatives a visit! Think they'd like that?"

Anger turned back to horror as Kitty paled at the thought. She stopped running and turned around, deactivating her intangibility powers as she stepped into a fighting stance. Her friend and roommate Gwen Stacy had taught her a number of basic self-defense techniques, but they hadn't gotten very far in their lessons yet and Kitty wasn't sure how effective her basic training would be against two men at once.

As the two men advanced on her, a pair of silvery-grey strands shot down from above and entangled their legs, tripping them so they landed face down on the ground. Shouting in alarm, they were suddenly pulled into the air as the strands began to withdraw, hauling the men upwards so they hung upside down in the air. Comically, their pants were pulled down around their knees by the force of the effort, exposing their underwear to Kitty and the rest of the passersby, who'd all been too intimidated to step in.