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Information
Cypher
Real
name: Douglas Ramsey Former aliases: None
Identity: Secret Occupation: Student, adventurer Legal status: American citizen with no criminal record, a minor Place
of birth: Unrevealed Marital status: Single Known relatives:
Phillip (father), Sheila (mother) Base of operations: Professor Charles
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, Salem Center, Westchester County, New York
Group affiliation: The New Mutants First appearance: NEW
MUTANTS #13
History: Douglas Ramsey was a teenage friend of Kitty
Pryde, who, as Shadowcat, is a superhumanly powerful mutant currently a member
of Excalibur. Ramsey shared Pryde's interest in computers and video games and
they became close. Pryde's expertise with computers was a result of her own natural
(but not superhuman) genius in that area. However, Ramsey had a particular knack
for deciphering both human and computer languages that was a result of a particular
mutation with which he was born.
Both Professor Charles Xavier, founder
of the X-Men and the New Mutants, and Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire
Club, learned that Ramsey was a mutant. Frost offered Ramsey a scholarship to
her Massachusetts Academy, hoping to induct him into the Hellions, the team of
adolescent superhumanly powerful mutants she trained there to serve the Hellfire
Club's secret criminal purposes. Ramsey went to the Academy for his final admissions
interview, accompanied by Pryde, who suspected the Hellfire Club's intention in
recruiting her friend. At the Academy the White Queen captured Pryde, who was
rescued by the New Mutants. Ramsey did not end up attending the Academy after
all.
Although Ramsey became a friend of the New Mutants, he did not
know that he and they were mutants, and they concealed their superhuman powers
and costumed identities from him. Finally, one night when both Xavier and the
X-Men were away from the mansion that served as the base for both the X-Men and
the New Mutants, the techno-organic alien being known as Warlock arrived and,
confused and terrified, found himself battling the New Mutants. Seeking to communicate
with the alien, the New Mutants summoned Ramsey and revealed their costumed identities
to him. Ramsey succeeded in initiating communications with Warlock, and shortly
afterwards both Ramsey and Warlock became members of the New Mutants. Ramsey was
code-named Cypher, after his ability to decipher languages.
Cypher was
killed on a mission by the Ani-mator. He dove in front of a bullet to save his
teammate Rahne.
Height: 5 ft. 9 in. Weight: 150 lbs.
Eyes: Blue Hair: Blonde
Strength level:
Cypher possessed the normal human strength of a young man of his age, height,
and build who engaged in regular physical exercise.
Known superhuman
powers: Cypher was a mutant with a superhuman facility for translating languages,
spoken or written, human or alien in origin. His superhuman skill also extended
to his great facility in deciphering codes and computer languages. Cypher's skills
were such that he was once able to make great headway in translating the written
language of an extraterrestrial race in a matter of minutes.
Cypher's
mutant talent for translating differed from the translating ability that a human
who is a genius in this field, yet not a mutant, possesses, even though both people
might achieve the same results with any given translation problem. Cypher's mutant
talent was an intuitive one which worked on a subconscious level, and which may
in part be related to telepathy. A non-mutant human, even a genius, would have
to work out a translation consciously, step by step. Rather than working the problem
out step by step, in his conscious mind, Cypher instead subconsciously solved
the problem. Hence, Cypher could reach the correct solution by means that appeared
to be leaps of logic, and he himself may not have been consciously aware of the
entire process by which he reached the right answer.
Other abilities:
Aided by his unusual facility with computer languages, Cypher became an expert
at working with computer software. He was brilliant at working with computer programs.
Cypher received a good deal of athletic training as a member of the New Mutants,
and was a fair hand-to-hand combatant. But because his mutant ability did not
lend itself to physical battle, he was not given as intensive a program of physical
training as the rest of the New Mutants.