Cape Issue [a Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel Story]

Prologue: Kamala the Hero

Kamala Khan was always a hero. This observation is one of the constants I see, with few outlying shifts. As it is my duty to observe heroes and their deeds, it can be said that there are, at least, the reticent, the attention-seeking, the imperfect, even the anti-hero, but there is, quite often, someone whose heart shone bright and would shine whether or not they were blessed with gifts that made them exceptional. I am the Watcher and I have seen countless times where one such as Kamala Khan continued to achieve greatness in a world where she was not an inhuman - I have seen her excel as one of the X-Men as a mutant and I have seen her achieve the highest offices in the countries of her birth. They are not always the same; sometimes she is an American hero, sometimes she is in the Caribbean, sometimes she is in the land of her ancestors. The Kamala of this story will be familiar to you, but I will not be the one to tell it and it can be safely told without infringement as it is not made clear if this is the exact Kamala of Earth six-one-six or just one whose path does not greatly diverge from the Kamala Khan most familiar to you, dear guest. I invite you because it is felt this story is worth the telling and reflecting on; a story rooted in what humans correlate in themselves with the roots of vegetation and growth. Migration makes stories and it is often seen generations after that sense cannot be made of the social upheavals that marks humanity as a fighting, ostensibly indomitable spirit. Very few have control of their destinies in this pattern and fewer are permitted to examine when they try to seize their own destiny. Throughout many timelines, Kamala's keys include: empathy and introspection; where she seeks her own destiny, she is one who paves the way for others to do the same when they lack whatever shelter can be found. In this way, with this commonality across time and space, this is one of the many reasons she achieves acts of heroism irregardless of her skills and power sets.

I am here because there are some things you should know before you begin. In this timeline, yes, much is the same as you know her. Her parents emigrated from Karachi in Pakistan to Jersey City in the United States of America. They did so before she was born. For the sake of your understanding, in a timeline that is not fixed, we may plant this story in the year 2023 for convenience. The Khan family emigrated in the early naughts of the second millennium in this localized measure of human calendars. The Carrelli family is tethered to them; as are the Bahadir family and the plethora of community connections Kamala cultivates through her caring nature. The Carrelli family comes from Napoli in the nation known as Italy - they did so in the middle of the 20th century. The Bahadir clan became United States citizens after the Khans. It is through sharing community that I see Kamala become who she is throughout much of the Multiverse. See now where we begin: Kamala of the second grade, quite some time before 2023, and she is an elementary student who confronts fellow students in the hall when they prey with childish ignorance on their peers based on the borrowed prejudices of their environment and elders. The equation that makes this problem sits at the root of Kamala's story scripted here and the telling starts: thus.

"Leave her alone," said little Kamala Khan, standing between one aggressor and one recipient who could not do much to protest against the aggression.

Kamala knew the girl by face from her own second grade class, but had never spoken to her before. All Kamala knew was that the girl and her parents had come from Turkey. Abu and Ammi had words for Kamala when she shared that the whole class, including her, thought it was funny there was a country named after a bird. The general theme of those words were "don't". They told her about Turkey and answered, with parental patience, the question that most burned in Kamala's curiosity; "Did Thanksgiving start there?". Abu found that amusing, but Ammi shook her head, remarking how they didn't even celebrate Thanksgiving in the Khan household and "Where do you get these ideas, Kamala? Astaghfirullah." Truth be told, Kamala did not even recall the girl's name, but the Turkish transplant was nonetheless relieved to pull her backpack out of her cubby along with a stuffed animal that was a brown cat with tall, black-tufted ears. The cat unblocked her name written on tape inside the cubby and Kamala read it out loud.