douglas ramsey: a history

[readtheworld]

As I have become increasingly disappointed in other sources as far as this character's history goes, I've decided to write up my own. Marvel comics go through many writers and there are often inconsistencies as well as storylines that are outright dropped. Because of this, I will be including headcanon explanations for some of these issues in italics for the sake of roleplaying purposes.

Douglas Aaron Ramsey was first introduced in the series as a friend of Kitty Pryde's who she'd met through their dance classes. His parents are Philip and Sheila Ramsey, and his father worked as a lawyer in Salem Center, helping Professor Xavier with legal matters involving his School for Gifted Youngsters (though he was unaware that his employer or any of the students were mutants).

Both Xavier and Emma Frost, the head of the Massachusetts Academy run by the Hellfire Club, discovered that he was a mutant with a skill in languages before he even knew himself. He was invited to join the Massachusetts Academy and wanted Kitty to come along with him to check it out. As she knew the place was bad news she went with him for his final interview to make sure he was safe but ended up getting captured. Frost made sure Doug was unaware of this. The rest of the New Mutants came to her rescue and he got a glimpse of their powers for the first time, but he was soon made to forget that too. The team doesn't take him with them when they leave, but he ends up not staying at the school anyway for reasons that are never shown.

When a techno-organic alien arrives on their planet, Doug is literally dragged out of bed with little more explanation than something along the lines of "Hey, guess what - you're a mutant. Now come translate for us." Making use of language skills he's only now learning he has, he helps the alien (who's name is Warlock) to communicate with the team and both become new members. Doug's code name becomes Cypher, on account of his skills, though his teammates rarely use it.

The first mission he's a part of is one where they rescue pop icon and thief Lila Cheney. He's able to use his abilities to read the symbols on an ancient star gate and in doing so saves them and the Earth from annihilation. Later, he helps Kitty Pryde create a program to alter the computers in Murderworld (home of the villain Mojo).

Doug travels with Dani, Rahne, Warlock, and Professor Xavier to Muir Island. There, they're asked to help an autistic boy named David Haller, son of Gabrielle Haller. As it turns out, this boy is also the son of Professor Xavier and will come to be known as Legion due to the multiple personalities within him that control his various powers. Most of the group is pulled into David's mindscape, where they encounter the three most prominent of the boy's personalities aside from his default one. One of these is actually a former terrorist who's mind David had absorbed in an attack on his mother, who's an Israeli ambassador. He doesn't speak English at first, but because of the nature of Doug's powers he's able to pull the ability to speak it from the other mutant's mind, thus allowing him to finally communicate with everyone. He's no longer an enemy, it seems, and he helps them resolve most of David's issues for the time being.

One of the New Mutants, Karma, is lost in an accident and presumed dead. She appears months later, several hundred pounds larger and evil. She uses her psychic powers to take control of the other mutants. Only Illyana and Dani manage to escape and face off against her. They find out she's being possessed by an old enemy of Professor Xavier's - a powerful psychic named Amahl Farouk. When they attack her, Farouk flees into the body of Doug - the weakest mutant and the least likely to be suspected until he'd made a full escape. Karma faces off against him in a psychic battle and manages to defeat him but is left in the body he's ruined for her.

Soon after, as the group is vacationing, Loki comes to steal away Storm (who's been looking after Karma). He has the Enchantress go after the X-Men but she mistakes the New Mutants for the older group of heroes and tries to capture them instead. Illyana attempts to teleport them to safety and in the process they all become separated around Asgard. Doug ends up among some Vikings in Vanaheim who test his mettle. When they find that he can't even lift one of their swords properly to battle their serving maid they conclude that he's less than nothing and put him in the collar of a thrall. He's stuck there as a slave until the demonic half of Illyana (separated by the Enchantress) comes after him. Her arrival causes chaos among the vikings and he's able to use that to escape. Fortunately he's located by Warlock and the two of them flee together. Warlock's sensors pick up Karma, who's ecstatic to see them. Illyana's teleportations can often accidentally go through time as well as space, so while Doug and Warlock had been in Asgard not even a week, Karma had spent months in what seemed like an endless desert and through the effort is back to her old self again. They're soon attacked by the demonized Illyana again, but as all the members of their team come back together they're able to put together a plan to take the fight back to the Enchantress. This is the first time Warlock acts as armor for Doug so that he can fight alongside his friends. They're able to defeat her, but the group has changed and been through so much since they arrived in Asgard that they aren't even sure they want to return home. Doug finds his old life to be a boring one.

The X-Men eventually realize they're missing and come after them. Meanwhile, Canonball is having doubts about staying and that doubt soon spreads among the others. Illyana has Doug translating the Enchantress's spellbooks instead of letting him scout with Warlock. When the alien is shot down by Loki, Doug joins Dani in rescuing him despite Illyana's protests. When Warlock sees Dani he panics and, despite his injuries, runs away with Doug in order to keep him safe from what he sees as potential threat (as Dani is now a Valkyrie and Warlock ran into Hela when he arrived). They come to a stop in an area devoid of anything with any life energy for the alien to use to heal himself, and Doug offers some of his own energy as long as Warlock doesn't transform him into a techno-organic being. Warlock then fuses with Doug's body for the first time - on an organic level and not just as armor. The fusion is temporary, and the two of them rejoin the fray with the others (with Warlock flying in as the Starship Enterprise). The combined might of the X-Men and the New Mutants are eventually able to defeat Loki and they all return home.

Professor Xavier, recouping from injuries with the help of the Starjammers, leaves a recently reformed Magneto in charge of the New Mutants. Magneto doesn't allow Doug to participate in combat training, as all his skills are mental ones and he'd rather the boy not be harmed. Unfortunately not long after he takes over the Beyonder (an immensely powerful being) returns to Earth and decides he wants to remake all of it. That means destroying what's already there - and he starts with the New Mutants. The Beyonder kills every member of the team but Sunspot, who was away visiting his parents. This is the first time Doug dies (DEATH COUNT: 1) and all memory of him and his team is erased from the world. Yet the Beyonder later changes his mind. He's decided he wants to try out mortality, so he creates a powerful machine that can create life. He tests this device on the New Mutants, finding what bits of them remain and bringing them back to back to life. The procedure leaves them as little more than lifeless shells which he then decides to have attack the rest of Marvel's heroes. They are defeated easily enough, and Rachel Grey digs through their minds to find out what's happened with them.

After the Beyonder's defeat, it appears that everyone's memories of them are returned. However, the group is traumatized by this event and go about life in a depressed, zombie-like state until Emma Frost steps in to offer her aid. With Magneto finding himself unable to help them, he believes he's left with no choice other than to let them join the Hellions. Frost does her best to fix their minds and while they do seem happier they're also all plagued by nightmares that don't allow them to sleep well. Their minds had been helped but their souls had not. After they come to realize this, and it comes to light that one of the Hellions (Empath) had been messing with Magneto's emotions in order to have him turn them over in the first place, the group returns to their former teacher.

Mojo returns, and he abducts Betsy Braddock, the sister of Captain Britain. The group ends up facing off against Spiral, one of Mojo's underlings. Doug and Warlock combine into one being in order to avoid being controlled and they manage to break her hold on Betsy, which allows them to defeat Spiral. After these events, Betsy stays with the team and Doug is clearly developing feelings for her.

Warlock's father/creator, Magus, comes to Earth seeking his son, as the rules of their world require parents and children to fight to the death until only the stronger remains. He proves to be too powerful for them so Illyana brings them to Limbo to escape, but the technarch reaches them even there. She teleports everyone out, but they end up divided into two different groups in two different potential futures. In one, mutants have been hunted nearly to extinction. In the other, Mutants rule the world and humans are a lower class. Doug ends up in the latter. He and Warlock have a little fun at the expense of the law enforcement here, running from them and writing graffiti like "Humans are people too!" on the side of buildings. He and the rest of the mutants with him are captured while bringing aid to the less fortunate humans. In the struggle, Doug has Warlock merge with him so that he remains hidden. They face the future versions of their teammates Roberto and Amara, who try to persuade them that this is the way the world should be. While the group is restrained in as forcefield, Warlock stretches a bit of himself out from Doug no wider than a molecule that he uses to go below the floor and destroy the electric cable running the field. He then separates himself completely from Doug to fight off their guards. The separation seems painful for Doug, though he claims to only be shaken by it. Their escape proves to be a failure, but thankfully Professor Xavier and Illyana show up to bring them all back to the appropriate time. When they face the Magus again, Doug and Warlock are able to combine and, utilizing both their powers, rewrite the alien's code so that he reverts to an infantile state.

After this, Doug has a nightmare in which all his connecting with Warlock has led him to contract the technovirus. He becomes a techno-organic being and accidentally infects his teammates, thereby killing them. Warlock tells him he'd warned him, then adds that since he is now technically his spawn he must fight him as per the rules of his people. Doug wakes relieved to find this isn't the case, but as he looks into the mirror the panels zoom in to show the reader that the technovirus is in fact growing within him.

They're later invited to a Hellfire Club event, where Doug is approached by both Tarot and Roulette of the Hellions. The latter invites him to a game of poker, and for the first time he realizes that his powers also extend to reading the facial expressions of others. Because of this he's able to handily win several rounds. He's so ecstatic about finally being able to do something that useful with his own powers that he runs off with Roulette to her room, where his team later finds him drunk and sitting on the bed with her. It's only after tensions start rising between the two teams that he remembers Roulette's powers are luck based. Feeling robbed of his victories, even though his own powers were likely evenly responsible, he slaps Roulette. He's threatened by another of the Hellions and the two groups end up challenging each other to a competition. Sam isn't gentle when it comes to helping with his hangover later.

The two groups both try to stop a group of villains from two different angles. Warlock is away with Sunspot for the time being, and Doug admits to the group that he's afraid to fight without him. Yet when the actual fighting happens he jumps in the way of a shot that would have hit Dani. His own life is saved only by the new costume he's wearing. Unfortunately the Hellions end up catching the real criminals while they took care of the small fry so they win the competition.

This arc marks the end of Chris Claremont's time writing the New Mutants, and it's very obvious as in the very next issue characters are already saying things that are counter to established canon, such as Doug claiming he can't dance. When it comes to events prior to Doug's absence from the comics I will always defer to Claremont's canon over retconned facts from Simonson's run.

Lila Cheney invites the team to a party but some aliens get rowdy and a fight breaks out between them and Sam. In the process, Sam ends up running into a tower and breaking off some of the top. Later, they learn that this tower was holding a creature the news had been referring to as the "bird boy". The group decides they need to find him. When they do, they take pity on him, feeding him and trying to teach him to speak. At first Doug doesn't believe the bird boy speaks any kind of language at all, but when he finally tries speaking back to him he's able to begin communicating. They start calling the creature Bird-brain. One night Bird-brain runs off, carrying food back to the place he'd come from. They go after him even though Magneto's grounded them and find that there are others like him being created and tested on an island. He'd wanted to bring them food and perhaps rescue them. The mad scientist in charge calls himself the Ani-mator. He's supposed to be doing studies on ways to stop mutants but is instead making his own creations that he intends to market as slaves. The team tries to stop him but soon the scientist's employer arrives with a small army in mechanical suits. They fight them and win, with Warlock and Roberto arriving on the scene as well, but in the battle Doug leaps in front of Rahne to save her from being shot by the Ani-mator. By the time the rest of the team realizes what's happened, it's too late. (DEATH COUNT: 2)

Doug remains dead in the comics for nearly twenty years in real time. He does appear in some flashbacks as well as one three comic mini-series where the original New Mutants meet their future selves, but the events of the latter are wiped from their memory before they return. There are actually a couple instances in which writers use the character without seeming to realize that he should still be dead. He appears for a few issues in the second volume of the New X-Men comics as a friend of Karma's, but they never elaborate on why he's alive or act like he should have been dead in the first place. They may have realized their mistake as he stops appearing. He also shows up along with Warlock for a couple pages of the short lived S.W.O.R.D. series. As canon later shows that he should have been dead all this time, I will not be acknowledging these appearances. If there's ever a character from the New X-Men in the game that might recognize him from those scenes we may have to go with it being an impostor.

Many years later, Selene (an ancestor of Amara) begins bringing dead mutants back to life under her command using a version of the Transmode virus. One of these is Doug, who she sends with the long deceased Hellions to break into the X-Men base. Doug is sent on a solo mission to deliver a message to the New Mutants by way of nearly killing Amara. Being brought back to life seems to have strengthened his powers to their greatest potential, and now he's able to read others like he never could before. He comes close to defeating all of them in combat until Karma possesses them all in a way that makes their movements zombie-like and impossible for Doug to read. They knock him out over the balcony, but he is returned in the arms of the long-missing Warlock who demands to know what's going on. He realizes Doug has been "infected by a malicious code" but assures them that this is their old teammate and not just some doppleganger. Unfortunately his efforts to revive him rouse the infected mutant who begins spreading the virus to Warlock before ripping his head off. He's about to attack the others again when his original personality, having been pulled free by Warlock, starts to fight the programming. He's left in a confused mess. The Hellions appear and try to drag him off but the New Mutants beat them and recover him. Warlock, having managed to absorb some animal life and freed of the virus by Illyana's souls sword, regrows his body from his severed head and uses the sword to remove the rest of the malicious code from Doug's body. He remains alive and the team cautiously accepts him back into their ranks.

Upon being examined after the ordeal, it's found that almost all traces of T/O virus in Doug's body have retreated. When asked about it, he claims that he hacked into their code - or rather, he asked them nicely. The whole ordeal has left Doug a different person from what he once was. He barely blinks because there's always so much information to take in, so much about the world to be read. He's in a separate state of being than everyone else, and he tends to talk like he is.

In the Second Coming event, Cable returns from the future with Hope, a girl described as the mutant messiah. Bastion and members of the Human Council (an anti-mutant organization) are after her, and the New Mutants are ordered to attack one of their facilities. In the fight, Karma is nearly killed by Cameron Hodge. Doug instructs Warlock to take the lifeglow from Hodge and his soldiers to save everyone, which goes against the alien's long held rules of not taking energy from sentient beings. They would have lost otherwise, but the action leaves Warlock shamed for a while after. Meanwhile, Bastion is taking out all of the X-Men's teleporters one by one, leaving them unable to leave their island of Utopia when it becomes encased in an impenetrable bubble. He then begins releasing mutant killing robots from his own future timeline into the trapped area. As Doug is capable of speaking with the machines that control the robots, X-Force and Cable bring him with them into the future to confront the source of the problem. This is the first time we see Doug talking to a machine without being connected to it and getting it to do as he asks. He uses the interface of one of their mechs to make contact with a lead sentinel. It tries to absorb his mind into its system, but he uses his powers to basically rewrite what's being unwritten and then shut the machine down, causing the killer robots to stop. Cable then sacrifices himself in order to return them all to the proper timeline.

The team took a vacation after this, but Illyana soon sensed that the mutant Pixie had been captured. She sent Warlock to warn the rest of the X-Men and the New Mutants ended up travelling to Limbo where they ran into a group of young adults twisted by experiments and their time spent in this dimension. These had once been a group of babies rescued by the team (some time after Doug's death) and eventually handed over to the government. Their leader is Trista, a woman who's able to control people with her voice. She uses this skill to make Doug her pet, and though he's aware of what's happening he's unable to do anything about it. He even half-jokes to Dani that he's become a cliche. Trista has him learn how to play a magical organ-like device for her entertainment, though none of them know what it really does. As it turns out, the organ plays magic and Doug uses it to seal her mouth shut so that she can't control him anymore. They manage to survive an attack in Limbo by demons and the Elder Gods with the help of Legion.

In a side story of X-Men: To Serve and Protect Cypher stops several suicide bombers by telling the bombs to diffuse through binary. He's wandering the city, taking the world in through eyes that see differently than everyone else. This is the only time we're shown him doing anything like this. He's also often involved in regular X-Men missions, as Cyclops has him do all their scanning and hacking.

After the events in Limbo, Illyana and Sam are off the team for the time being. Cyclops places Dani in charge and has them clean up some of the X-Men's unfinished business. Their first task is to locate Nate Grey, the younger version of cable from the Age of Apocalypse dimension who's been stuck in theirs. They go to the most likely location only to be turned away by Captain America and crew. Doug insists this is the right place. In the graffiti on the walls are codes - hobo codes for those who want to find them, and he can tell that the reality of the building has been warped. They break through the wall, confront the Sugar Man and rescue Nate, who he's been using to open gateways hoping to find one back to his own reality.

When Hela is attacked in her own realm, she calls to her valkyrie for help, summoning Dani into Hel. The team asks Illyana for help getting to her and she provides Doug with a spell to do so, but the spell is old and difficult to manage and he makes a small mistake that ends up sending them to Hell instead. He isn't able to figure out what his mistake was or how he can get them back out, but Mephisto takes a liking to Amara and says he'll transport them right to Hel if she'll go on a date with him. She agrees and he's true to his word. In Hel, they clash with the Draumar - ancient nightmares set on making it into the living world. Nate has Hela show them his memories and they're defeated by the realization that they have no idea how to handle the world beyond the land of the dead.

When a schism between Cyclops and Wolverine splits the X-Men in two, Dani and the rest of the team move to San Francisco. She still holds to Cyclops' beliefs, as he believed in her enough to have her lead the team, but she also thinks the group would benefit from more contact with the real world. Their next mission is to find the mutant Blink. Doug helps to narrow down the potential locations she'll show up in and they find her tailing a band that's gotten a hold of some natural disaster causing power. Warlock goes to "sniff" it out with Doug's help and they find a glowing box inside an empty bus that Doug opens to reveal a small monster with many eyes and many tentacles that zaps him into unconsciousness. The team fights the band but they escape, taking Doug with them. Doug learns what's happening with the creature/device: it's part of a larger ship from another dimension that's controlling the band and using them to generate power. Warlock help's Blink teleport out to the limit of her range to throw the creature out into space, breaking its hold on the band (and Doug, who'd also been affected by the device and now needs a moment).

Mr. Grim, a psychiatrist who often works with the X-Men, has a session with Doug who says he's been thinking a lot about his death lately and how it affected him. He says he thinks he's been afraid to make real connections or have any real relationships because it could happen again - even though he admits to having feelings for Dani. Grim asks if he thinks he should confront this issue and when Doug agrees he turns into the Ani-Mator and attacks. It turns out that this was a nightmare and Doug wakes up screaming. He tells Dani that he wants to go back to Paradise Island to the place where he died. He's been attempting to translate his own dreams and this it what it's telling him. When they get to the island, it's changed from how they remember it. They come across Bird-Brain only to have him attack them. Warlock tells them their old friend has been infected by some sort of virus and in their contact with him they've all been infected. Since Warlock is immune to it he places himself in charge and insists they remain on the island in quarantine or risk infecting the rest of the world. When they finally locate the Ani-Mator's old lab, they discover that he'd been trying to back up his personality in viral form. If he ever died the virus would rebuild him from available genetic material and then reload his mind into the new body. Just as they're learning this, the creature the virus is making breaks into the room. It grabs up Bird-Brain, Roberto, and Amara. When Doug begins to panic Warlock merges himself with him to share his technovirus immunity and keep him safe. He shows Doug how to access a space in his mind where they can talk. (He also says that Doug has showed increased intelligence since the last time they merged, and Doug correlates this with his interaction with the device from the other dimension in the last arc.) They fight the Ani-Mator and defeat him by sending a tiny bit of themselves in on a microscopic level to alter its biological code to be nothing more than a benign virus. Afterward, Doug talks to the real Mr. Grim. Grim wants to go into his nightmares but Doug claims everything is resolved now. The end of the arc leaves a certain air of uncertainty.

The neighbor across the street from the New Mutants has been spying on them for some time and at last the team finds out that he's more than he seems. He is in fact Sigurd, and he mistakes Dani coming to his house as being found out, as she's a valkyrie. He uses a spell to warp reality, causing all the gods to think they're mortal. For a couple reasons the New Mutants aren't affected the same way as everyone else and they're soon able to figure out that things aren't right. They grab up a young Loki who plays along with them as though he's in on it as well when in reality he things they're all nuts. He doesn't come clean about this until the counterspell he provides proves to be a failure and cause even more damage. The Disir, former shieldmaidens turned into cannibalistic demons, have escaped from where they'd been held by Mephisto and are now causing havoc. The team learns their true story (spoilers: it involves a jilted lover) and free the Disir from their curse with the help of Loki and Hela. Everything is reverted back to the way it should be.

While fighting a demon threat, the team is approached by Dr. Strange, the Silver Surfer, and Iron Fist. The purpose of their visit is to let the team know that there is a temporal disturbance focused on them. At this time, Roberto becomes possessed by something and attacks all of them. They get him under control and Strange tells them they have 72 hours to resolve this issue before they step in and resolve it for them. After they're gone, Bobby admits that the possession felt exactly like Karma's. This leads to them checking in on Shan and Sam, who are both at the Westchester school. Shan claims she isn't responsible for the attack, but both she and Sam admit to have had some strange out of body experiences recently. As they're all talking privately, a strange temporal event happens and both Shan and Sam vanish into mist. Meanwhile, future versions of them appear in the area where the concert happened and Doug had made contact with the ship creature. They talk of this being the place where "it" happened. The others are alerted to their position due to a scan by Rachel Grey but they ignore them when they approach until Dani tries to touch Sam and a protective field emitted from his suit knocks her back. Sam doesn't like the idea of hurting anyone and tries to convince Shan they need to explain themselves but Shan insists they not make any further contact. She uses Amara against them so they can make an escape, but Doug figures out the frequency of their force fields and has Warlock knock the fields out so both of them can be taken down. Back in their home, Sam explains that this had been a last resort. They'd been trying to make the change remotely but it was too difficult to mind control someone across time. This explains the strange experiences some of them had been having. The Sam and Shan from their time were temporarily removed because both versions couldn't exist at the same time. Sam shows them images from their future. They all look pleasant enough. It shows them getting armor made from Warlock's tech - the kind they're currently wearing. Doug realizes he isn't in any of the later pictures and asks why, assuming he might have died again, but before he can answer Shan screams out and Sam panics. They must have caused too many ripples, he says, and "he's" found them. "He" turns out to be a man the call the True/Friend: Doug. An older version of Doug speaks to them through their helmets, his face over theirs, chastising them for what they attempted to do. As they've made too many ripples he must now fix their mistakes, so he attacks using their bodies. He brings them outside of time so they cause no more damage to his timeline and here they learn that the device from the ship he'd come in contact with had enhanced his mind, allowing him to speak the language of dimensions which he used to make things better - the way he believed they should be. He's become a world-dominating dictator. The Doug of the current time doesn't understand why he would ever want to do that and finds this future hard to take in. He believes that this isn't their true future but a possible one, and the future Doug is afraid of events being altered to keep it from happening. Without Warlock around, Doug uses Nate to help him get into his own mindscape, since whatever happens to him now will affect this future version of him - outside of time or not. He disrupts his own latent control of the transmode virus which allows Sam and Shan to break free of his control. They bring their current selves back to the present, which forces them (and thus future-Doug) back to the future. The team celebrates their victory and most are happy to accept that their Doug won't become evil, but Sam and Dani agree that they'll need to keep their eyes on him.

Things seem to be back to normal. Doug gets check out by Hank who gives him the all clear and they meet up with Kitty Pryde. Then the topic of the divide between Wolverine and Cyclops comes up and she denies that such a thing ever happened. Doug starts realizing things then that he'd been too upset to notice before, small things being the wrong color or out of place. Their reality has been thoroughly merged with another one. A few of them seek the help of Dr. Strange, but when they find him he's a shell of his former self - a product of this new timeline. He'd recognized that their reality had been warped some time before but no one believed him. As this is happening, Doug is researching all the many changes of this timeline and comes to the conclusion that it was forced into being by an outside source. There are too many paradoxes. (This is, coincidentally, similar to what Dr. Strange tells the others.) As they're chatting, Karma comes in with Face (a former member of the group from Limbo who's power blew his face off and who now relies on Karma to experience the world). For some reason, Face turns on Doug in anger and fires at him. While Doug is only grazed by the shot, Karma is killed. After her funeral, the group hides away in the mountain lodge of Mr. Grim so they can avoid interacting with the messed up world as much as possible. Doug has nightmares of the risen dead and of monsters like the device with his face and many eyes. They look to Strange for help. Having pulled himself together, he's able to advise them on their next course of action - altering the future to save the past. They need to stop Doug's future self from messing with the timeline. Before they can perform any ritual to do so, however, they're attacked by the same tentacles from his dreams. As the attack ends, Doug is convinced he knows what to do. If he ends himself now, there won't be an evil version of him in the future, but he also admits to himself that he isn't brave enough to do it. As he stands on the edge of a cliff contemplating this he's stopped by the once more resurrected Hellions. Their job is simply to keep him alive long enough for his future self to take over his body. His teammates arrive, but it's too late as the Hellions delay them just long enough for the change to occur. They fight, though Dani has the upper edge since, as a valkyrie, she can cut free the souls of the dead. The True/Friend begins switching everyone he touches out with their future selves that he's dominated. At last he gets a hold of Dani and brings her into the future where he tells her that this new timeline is a direct result of their meddling. He had gone from a benevolent custodian of the human race to taking full control. The Earth is a burnt shell and he maintains everyone on the moon. Dani's powers over the dead don't allow him to control her the same way, but he wants to keep her close and safe because in every other reality he knows she dies and his love is unrequited. He intends to merge his future with their timeline, making it a certainty. But as he's talking to Dani, the past version of Doug begins fighting back for control of his body. He insists that he won't be ruled by this potential future or whatever was in the alien black box. He asks Dani to kill him. She realizes then that he'd planned this out the whole time, planted the ideas in his mind for his future self to use, given him the idea to raise the Hellions so that being near the dead would activate her valkyrie powers. She stabs him through the heart and he thanks her. Destroying the future ends up saving their past, just as Strange had said. Doug awakens at the Westchester school to find Dr. Strange performing mystical surgery on him to be certain all remnants of the interdimensional entity are gone from him, thus assuring that future can never happen. Dani brings him to the window so he can see how everything is back to how it should be, including Karma. The sight brings tears to his eyes.

This run of the New Mutants ends on a party with friends that's briefly interrupted by another technarch, an acquaintance of Warlock's fighting off the control of its sire. Doug uses his previous experiences to connect with the alien and help it break free. And everyone was happy.

Note that in this last issue Doug connects to the alien "transmode virus to transmode virus", which confirms that although he has full control over it he still has some of it in his system. This never comes up again but I believe it's an important detail.

When X-Factor (at that time consisting of Polaris, Quicksilver, Gambit, and Danger and being run by Serval Industries) has some issues with the techno-organic aliens Magus and Warlock, they call in Doug for help. He's been living away by himself and is still having nightmares about his potential evil future self fighting his teammates. It's gotten so bad, in fact, that he's contemplating suicide when X-Factor shows up. Danger, the robotic member of the team, scans Doug and finds that he has a piece of Warlock inside him - placed just above his heart. When they confront Warlock about it, he tells them he'd been using it to keep tabs on his "selfsoulfriend" as he was worried about his state of mind. Magus ends up no longer being a threat, as the rest of their race has been essentially wiped out and destroying his son would be counterproductive. They how have a truce. Warlock develops a crush on Danger and both he and Doug end up joining the team.

Later, after coming across a livestream broadcast by a girl named Georgia, the daughter of mutant hater Scott Dakei, that makes it appear as though she's being held in her home against her will, Doug convinces Quicksilver and then the others to seek her out and rescue her. When they find her, however, the girl isn't as willing to go with them as they thought. It's revealed that she's a mutant, and in her protests she accidentally drains most of the liquid from Doug's body. (DEATH COUNT: 3) Fortunately she's able to restore him (but I add this to the death total because there's no way he wouldn't have been legally dead in that dried out state). She's been unaware that mutants weren't the norm all over the world, as her father has been keeping her in the dark. With some convincing from the head of Serval Industries, Dakei tells her to go with them, denouncing her as his daughter.

It ends up being true that he isn't even her real father. She had been adopted. When they search for her real parents they find her mother first. Then her father, who'd been keeping tabs on her mother, finds them. Her father is a supervillain, which causes them some trouble. By the end of the story arc, she loses those parents as well. She ends up blaming Doug for a lot of this, as he's the one who'd originally sought her out, and forgiveness is slow to come.

Meanwhile, Warlock's interest in Danger has sparked some curiosity within the female robot. She asks Warlock if he's interested in having sex with her, and when he isn't ready for this sort of question she begins asking other members of the team. Eventually she joins Doug in his room one morning when he's slept in late and they do the deed before he even realizes what's going on. The whole situation is very confusing for him, while not entirely unpleasant, and his relationship with Warlock is temporarily strained until the alien comes to terms with what's really going down with Danger.

This run of X-Factor lasts only 20 issues, and it can be assumed that the team breaks up afterward, leading Doug to go back to living on his own before the events of Hunt for Wolverine.

Cypher has a home to himself somewhere in New Jersey, and it's there that he goes to be by himself for a while. At some point he decides to try and decode the internet, a task his powers likely pushed him toward. Once connected he found it impossible to stop. He had to decode and find meaning in the whole thing, a task made impossible by the net's infiniteness. When Daredevil's group comes looking for him in order to get his help in the search for Wolverine, they find him a mess - half starved and surrounded by computers. He becomes violent when his cords are cut, firing on the group with a laser rifle until Daredevil knocks him out. He's calmer after they feed him, and he agrees to help. His addiction remains a problem, though he says he has everything under control. When following up on a distress call in Canada that might be connected to Wolverine, the group is too late to save anyone but not too late to go after the killer. While the others search, Doug leaves the safety of the jet to pilfer a cell phone off one of the dead bodies. Wolverine's cyborg clone Albert, the one it ends up they'd been on the trail of, attacks him and slices his throat open. Luckily the rest of the group finds him in time to save him but it's a while before he can speak again. Doug proves essential in getting information on the real Wolverine's whereabouts. When it's all over, he finally admits to Daredevil that he needs help.

Daredevil makes sure he gets that help, too. He even checks in on Doug's progress when he meets with Kitty Pride and Tony Stark to share what they've learned. Doug goes through therapy with Jean Grey, dealing with his issues on a psychic level, and keeps himself busy so the temptation to get on the web isn't as strong. Matt Murdock ends up asking for his help with a case on the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk. He even goes so far as to reveal himself as Daredevil to him and the others he's working with so they're not in the dark about anything. (This is revealed to be all in Matt's head as he's dying so Doug is not canonly aware of that connection.)

This is where he is in the current timeline.