Cyber

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Cyber’s skin is laced with Adamantium , which makes him mostly invulnerable. He’s also superhumanly strong and nearly unkillable. This is what allowed him to survive the Adamantium treatment in the first place.

He’s got an Adamantium claw on each finger, tipped with poison (on one hand) and an addictive hallucinogenic drug (on the other). Those drugs are potent enough to take Wolverine down. A top toxicology lab could brew up antidotes, though.

He also has low-level psionic  powers. These allow him to track specific, individual brain waves.

Cyber is a devastating hand-to-hand fighter. During their various clashes, he proved to be at least Wolverine’s equal in a brawl, and perhaps his superior.

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History

During World War One, Silas Burr was in command of a special Canadian army unit, the Devil’s Brigade. He was already famed as a close combat instructor and unarmed fighter. Among the soldiers in this unit was a young Logan, who would later become Wolverine. Logan admired Burr for his fighting skills and formidable killing instincts.

Howbeit, Burr murdered a lass whom Logan was romancing. He then brutally beat the young soldier, gouging out one of his eyes and psychologically scarring him for decades.

At some unclear point, either after or before WWI, Burr was with the resurrection men who found Wolverine’s skeleton in a peat bog. This skeleton was the product of a… complex temporal paradox. Burr would only understand the significance of this find decades later.

In the next 80 years or so, Burr became a reputed killer, criminal and mercenary. He accumulated many, many enemies along the way, and cared little about that since he was so incredibly deadly. He’s been a crimelord wannabe, and an enforcer for drug cartels.

Burr somehow had his skin laced with unbreakable Adamantium, and adopted the nickname “Cyber”.

Unstoppable

In 1991, Cyber was sent to Madripoor by a drug cartel to oversee the distribution of a new, powerful hallucinogenic. He clashed with the two local crimelords, General Coy and Tyger Tiger, which led to a fight with Tyger Tiger’s ally, Wolverine. During the brutal battle Wolverine neither could shake his deep-sated fear of Burr, nor access the memories explaining why he feared him so.

Nevertheless, Logan managed to shake the fear when Cyber didn’t expect it. Burr lost an eye before falling in a batch of the hallucinogenic. Delirious, Cyber ran far away and threw himself into the ocean.

His healing factor  allowed him to mostly recover from the drug. But it wasn’t powerful enough to regrow organs, and the lost eye was replaced with a cybernetic implant.

I bring the payment narcotic

Still drawing pay from a drug cartel, Cyber was ordered to terminate an important witness in a drugs trial in the US. This person, the Shrew, was a former member of the cartel’s superhuman enforcement team, the Hell’s Belles.

Taking command of the Belles, Cyber located the witness. This led to a clash with the government team X-Factor II. The Belles were defeated and Cyber was slammed into a speeding subway train, which took him away from the field of battle.

Burr was next employed by the Coven cult to retrieve a mystic gem called the Tear of Heaven. He was successful. The Coven wanted to precipitate a major mystic event on Koma Koi, a tropical island on which Wolverine was trying to catch some R&R. Logan saved the damsel the Coven wanted to sacrifice, ruining the ceremony.

Everything went bad, and the Coven seemingly decided to take both Wolverine and Cyber down and sacrifice them to complete the ritual. They bound the two men together using Adamantium manacles. This development was but a ruse from Cyber, but Wolverine eventually defeated him.

The most impregnable alloy on Earth

Cyber had been looking for the Wolverine skeleton he had found decades ago. He now understood its significance, and saw it as a way to have both an Adamantium skin and an Adamantium skeleton. Wolverine stopped him, but during their fight Cyber viciously broke Logan’s right-hand claws (which no longer were reinforced with Adamantium at this point).

Cyber continued to chase Wolverine, though he was hampered by a relapse of hallucinations caused by his previous narcotics exposure. On Muir Island, Shadowcat and Nightcrawler tricked him into getting locked into a super-secure cell. But he didn’t stay there for long, as Genesis sent in the Dark Riders, who freed him.

Genesis’ plan was to again lace Wolverine’s bones with Adamantium, and Cyber had simply been procured as a source of the extremely rare and expensive alloy. Genesis tricked Cyber and unleashed a swarm of mutant deathwatch beetles on him. The bugs killed and ate Cyber, only leaving behind the indestructible Adamantium.

Description

Cyber is impossibly muscular and broad-shouldered. He wears a plain black jumpsuit which only leaves his lower face and both arms bare. The Adamantium is visible on his arms, shoulders and hands, all of which look like Colossus’. He has a very square jaw, and is normally ill-shaven. He also wears fingerless black gloves.

His claws are sometimes described as retractable spikes on the end of his every finger, or as a single retractable Adamantium claw.

When not wanting to attract attention, Cyber wears very heavy leather gloves, a huge greenish trenchcoat and a large, wide-brimmed hat. This remains conspicuous, but given his built he can’t do much better.

Personality

Cyber is a super-tough Wolverine villain, demonstrating extraordinary cruelty and brutality. He enjoys shouting extremely graphic threats to his opponents, and loves to be feared. He’s what every hateful bully dreams of being.

Cyber won’t pull any punch and favours dirty, underhanded scare tactics. His idea of negotiations with crimelords is to have *them* pay huge sums for the right to distribute the drugs of the men he represents (on top of the normal cut), or be messily slaughtered where they stand.

He loves uttering “mysterious movie laconic tough guy” one-liners.

Cyber is very big on controlling people and forcing them to do stuff. One of his classic moves is to poison someone with a slow-acting toxin as blackmail, promising the antidote if his victim follow his orders.

After his Madripoor encounter with Wolverine, he had occasional fits of hallucinations. This was caused by permanent damage to the neocortex from the hallucinogenic. This didn’t seem to lessen his abilities or his overall ability to act rationally. Still, he had weird visions and spoke incoherently. These relapses were are, but could last hours.

Quotes

Contact : “Are you the gentleman called Cyber ?”
Cyber : “The name is correct. The description is questionable.”

Random guy : “There’s blood all over the floor ! What happened ?”
Cyber : “Someone bled.”

(Having slaughtered a bunch of henchmen) : “You can see this as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of human life… or just chalk it up to me being a sick, bloodthirsty monster. Both are equally valid.”

“NOW I’M GOING TO CARVE YOU UP, SON ! Feed you your intestines on a stick !”

“NOBODY does this to Cyber ! And when I finish with all you shortbread-baking, kilt-wearing geeks, I’m going after that RUNT Wolverine, and I’m gonna make me a wallet out of his FACE, just so’s I can keep it in my back pocket and SIT on it !”

DC Universe History

The Adamantium, which is so essential to Cyber’s characterization, is quite specific to Marvel. The DCU also has fewer sources for advanced cybernetics.

In the DCU, Cyber would thus be a renegade member of the Hybrid. His skin and hair would be infused with Promethium instead.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Helper(s): Wouter Vlemmings’ site, Peter Piispanen, Wolverine OHOTMU (2004), Azrael.

Source of Character: Wolverine and X-Factor comics (Marvel Universe).