Sylia Stingray

Real Name: Sylia Stingray

Identity/Class: Human (?- see comments), technology user

Occupation: Entrepreneur, owner of "Sexy Doll" lingerie shop

Affiliations: Knight Sabers

Enemies: Boomers, Largo

Known Relatives: Dr. Katsuhito Stingray (father), Mackie (younger brother)

Aliases: Celia (another variant on the Anglicised version of her name)

Base of Operations: Lady633 building, MegaTokyo, c. A.D.2030

First Appearance: Bubblegum Crisis (February 1987)

Powers/Abilities: Sylia is extremely smart. When she was twelve, her father used Boomer programming technology to downloaded many of his technological discoveries directly into her brain. Her mind is capable of functioning like a human computer, processing information quickly and efficiently. Another side effect of this is that she appears to be able to transmit and receive radio signals without the aid of equipment. She is a skilled scientist, engineer and computer hacker. As well as being a scientific genius, she is also a tactical one.

Sylia has an extensive network of contacts, allowing her to get hold of military hardware and intelligence, keeping her one step ahead of her opponents.

Like all the Knight Sabers, Sylia's most impressive powers come from the powered battle-armour "hard suit" she wears. To operate the suit, a special skin-tight sensory suit is worn against the skin (no underwear allowed), which serves to exactly transmit every body motion to the hard suit, making them far more agile than they would be otherwise. This also allows the onboard computer to monitor the wearer's health at all times.

The suits all have a combination ceramic/metal alloy armour, which absorbs and disperses energies which strike the suit, whether they be lasers, particle weapons or the kinetic energy from punches or bullets. Small arms fire cannot penetrate the suit, and other attacks have a much reduced affect on the wearer. The suit functions provides a full range of protection from NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) attacks - it's sealed system keeps out chemical and biological weapons, as well as radioactive fallout, and it's internal life support and temperature control protects the wearer from heat and pressure changes. The internal batteries allows the suit to function for up to fifty hours without needing recharges, in optimal conditions. The armoured helmets both protect the faces of the wearer and provide Heads-Up Displays (HUD) for tactical purposes.

The suits are also offensively armed. The exoskeleton amplifies the wearer's strength to about 10 times their normal level - since each of the Knight Sabers are at peak human fitness to begin with, this means they can lift between one and two tons on average while wearing the hard suits. Each suit is also equipped with at least one in-built blaster weapon in one of the gloves, most commonly a laser cannon and a "knuckle blaster", which creates an electromagnetic explosive capable of blowing up Boomers.

For transportation purposes, all the hard suits include jump jets built into the back and hips, allowing the wearer to make impressive leaps or break their fall from great heights.

To maximise team efficiency and to prevent hard suit theft, each suit is tailored for a specific user, making it difficult to operate if stolen (and frankly, considering how form fitting they are, all but impossible for anyone with a dissimilar build to even get into). Each suit is customised to take into account the given Knight Saber's own skills and weaknesses.

Sylia's first hardsuit had a number of customisations. It was more heavily armoured than the other suits, providing the team leader with the maximum protection. For added mobility, she had extendable flight wings and more powerful thrusters on the back, allowing her to fly for short distances. Each of the gauntlets had a built in laser edged sword which could fold out. She also has the standard laser cannons and knuckle blasters.

Sylia later modified the suit to its second design, giving the lasers' greater firepower, modifying the laser swords so that they slid out of sheathes rather than folded out (which allowed them to be double edged rather than the old, single edged design, and removed their former weak point at the pivoting spot). She also souped up the thrusters to allow her to fly faster and longer than before.

History: The daughter of Katsuhito Stingray, Sylia became an orphan in 2022 when her father was assassinated by Brian Mason, working for the Genom Corporation. Before he died, he managed to utilise a data download process normally used to program Boomers, to download his entire research database into Sylia's brain. This knowledge, combined with the fortune her father also left her, equipped her to seek revenge for Dr.Stingray's murder. Vowing to stop Genom's perversion of her father's work, and their plans for taking over the city, Sylia continued to develop his plans for a series of "hard suits", prototypes for heavily armed but compact powered armour. By 2030, by which time Sylia had turned 20, the armour was ready for use. A year later she had recruited her team, and the Knight Sabers made their debut.

Sylia remains detached and calculating in almost every aspect of her life - whether this is down to the loss of her father when she was at an impressionable age, or perhaps a side effect of the technology which the doctor used to input information into her mind, or perhaps another, more sinister reason (see comments), is unknown. Other than her brother Mackie, whom she raised herself, the rest of the Knight Sabers are the closest thing she has to a family. She acts the mother to them nearly as much as she does to her brother. In spite of that, she has shown her willingness to sacrifice their lives (or her own) if that is what is required to win. In battle she acts as the team co-ordinator, with her suit being the least specialised of the hard-suits. She does have some compassion for her enemies, preferring to "kill" Boomers as quickly and painlessly as possible by destroying their heads.

Comments: Created by Toshimitsu Suzuki and Ken-Ichi Sonoda.

Sakakibara Yoshiko provides her voice in the anime.

There is some debate as to whether or not Sylia is herself a Cyberdroid (an early version of the Boomers), based on her computer-like mind, her ability to receive radio signals, and the fact that Largo, a Boomer who hates all humans and wishes to see the species wiped out, seems willing to spare her, and even a little enamored of her.

CLARIFICATIONS: Not to be confused with

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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