Black Cat and the City that never sleeps, but sometimes dies

Yes, I know what I promised, sweetheart. Yes, I know it has been a long time since the last time we saw each other, but I´m here now and I want to hold up my end of the bargain. I came to tell you a story. But I get to choose the story. And I´m tired, so I´m probably going to tell you a fraction of a story. Not even a day in a lifetime. More like a couple of hours of a day in a lifetime. Yes, like a little chapter between two bigger chapters. Those are my terms. Oh, and it will be a sad story. Those are the only ones I know by heart. Do you accept those terms? Good. Then we can start.

It was a very gray day in New York City. The skies were grey and so were all the buildings behind it. The JFK Airport, with all its metal doors and walls, was gray and all the faces in it were grey. Some were pale, yes, but all of them were lifeless.

Oh, and Black Cat was dead. Yep, she was drowned. At the moment, her body was probably laying beneath the ocean, not so far from the shores of Staten Island. That was what the police said.

But, no, that wasn´t the sad part of the story. Nobody gives a damn about Black Cat. She was the clumsiest and the stupidest criminal who ever lived and she deserved to be dead. No, the sad part was that Felicia Hardy (her pointless alter ego) was still alive and kicking.

She was there, at the JFK Airport, examining carefully the screen with all the times and destinations, wondering where to go next while standing behind twelve other people in a line. They were also waiting to buy a ticket and get out of the city. She was tired, and grey. And blue. But she wasn´t scared, of course. Nobody would find her. She was a thief, and thieves are excellent at hiding. She learned that the hard way. Her father was a thief, and he disappeared from her life years ago, without leaving a trace. Spider-Man had stolen Black Cat from her, and she hadn´t even been able to get his real name. Jean DeWolff had a role in that crime too, and she was probably hiding in some dark office surrounded by cops, pretending to be Captain America.

Time passed quickly. The line got shorter and shorter. It came the turn for Felicia to approach the lady behind the desk, but she didn´t. She realized in that precise moment that she had nowhere to go. She had spent the last hour looking at the screen, but noting seemed to be written there. What was out there, in the world, for her? Everything was in New York: the mobsters, the mutants, the spider/super-people, the shiny things… No, she needed more time to make up her mind.

She left the big grey building in the way that only way sad lonely pretty people can. Nobody noticed her. Nobody was really there.

Hardy discovered an ugly old café a few blocks from the airport. She sat down at one of the tables outside and ordered a cup of coffee. She kept thinking where she could go next. She wouldn´t visit her mother, that woman hated her and made her feel miserable. She couldn´t go after Spider-Man, not like this. She drank the coffee alone and everything around her seemed to be dead.

That was the sad part of the story. Black Cat was dead, and she was the one who had kept Felicia alive for all those years. She had given her life a meaning. And Hardy couldn´t realize that. She maybe was about to, but the sound of gunfire and the scream of a woman took her out of her thoughts. Suddenly, two kids passed beside her, one of them holding a green purse and the other one hiding something large in the left pocket of his jacket. A few meters from them, two adults, a fat policeman and an old lady, were trying to keep up with them and failing miserably. The whole picture was silly and kind of comical, but Felicia didn´t laugh. She started running.

Nobody was faster than her, she took that for granted. Her speed, her inhuman senses, and her agility made it easy for her to slide between the cars, the people and the cracks of the city. She also had "bad luck" powers (a gift from Kingpin, no less), but those were unpredictable and required a lot of concentration.

The race ended shortly after it started, in a dark alley (New York has those too), when the kid with the purse tripped and fell on the ground. Did he do that because of her powers or was it just plain chance? Felicia couldn´t care less. The other kid, the tinier one, stopped, turned around and stepped into the light. He pulled out a gun from his pocket and started to point at the big bad lady standing menacingly beside his friend, his neighbor, his brother. Who knows?

How old was he, anyway? He looked like he was thirteen, maybe fourteen. What was she doing when she was thirteen? Memories couldn´t come to her at that moment. Time itself became stale and slow. The boy started trembling. He was scared. Good.

-Don´t be scared. I mean you no harm. I can´t harm you. I´m not Spider-Man. I´m just another one of those people you barely notice passing by on the streets.

Felicia decided to start getting closer to the child.

-Just another grey silhouette…

One step, two steps, three steps. The boy just stood there, without taking his eyes out of hers. By the time he realized the woman was approaching him, it was already too late. Her right hand grabbed the hand with the gun and pushed it away from her. The gun fired and a bullet hit a garbage bin beside them. Her left fist hit him on the face. She was strong, and he fell hard. Blood was coming out of his nose and tears started pouring from behind his closed eyelids.

The woman formerly known as Black Cat (holding a gun once again, like in the good old days) turned his back on the kid and picked up the purse. The person who had been holding it was pretending to be knocked out and his face was still against the pavement. Thank God. She quickly sat down on his back while facing the boy with the broken nose. He was still crying, but not because of the injury she had inflicted on him. Who knew what kind of life he had? Did he come from a broken family? A poor family? A family of thieves? Was his father a violent man? Did that man abandon the house when his child was just a baby? She couldn´t tell.

-Please, stop crying, sweetheart. Stop listening to the angry voices in your head. I know it´s hard. I´ve been trying to do that for a long time. Try listening to the city. That sometimes helps. Can you hear the men and women in the streets? Don´t you hear them running and shouting and talking? Listen to the musicians, playing all those wacky instruments inside the subway stations below us and in the corner of the avenues. I know I can hear them. New York may be alive, after all.

Suddenly, Felicia Hardy started feeling proud of herself. Those were nice thoughts, happy thoughts. They were finally coming back to her.

The kid opened up his eyes and looked at her. She smiled.

-Sorry about the nose, handsome.

A couple of policemen came, and so did the old woman and few bystanders. The children and the purse were lying on the floor, but the mysterious woman who had gone after them was nowhere to be found. She was probably somewhere near, standing quietly in the shadows, watching.

Day turned into night. Grey turned into black. New York was beautiful again. There was a lonely woman sitting on the top of rooftop watching it glow. She was smiling a laughing.

And Felicia Hardy wasn´t her only name.

So that´s my story. Did you like it? Would like to share one with me? You must have like a thousand. I´m sure every neighborhood you visited can´t be THAT friendly.


The Story takes place after the events of The Amazing Spider-Man 226-227. That would be the second arc of the character in the series, and the first arc written by Roger Stern. But you don´t need to know that.