BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
Eventually, Black Tom made contact with Arianna Jankos of the Jankos Corporation, a company specializing in exotic scientific research. Jankos's business was failing, and she was due to sell off the assets of her company to a cadre of corporate vultures in a hostile takeover. Instead of losing 
her company, she hired Black Tom to take her rich corporate buyers hostage during the takeover meeting and extort their companies to secure their release. In addition to a percentage of the ransom money, Tom also insisted Arianna use her company's resources to find Cain in the void and return him to Earth. Sure enough, Jankos's interdimensional locator retrieved Juggernaut, escalating the stakes of the situation. [X-Force (1st series) #1-2]
The hostage situation in New York eventually became national news, drawing the attention of Cable's new strike team, X-Force, as well as Tom's niece Siryn. While some of X-Force engaged Juggernaut on the street below, Cable's squad infiltrated the high rise and confronted Black Tom directly. Tom was forced to deal with Theresa and X-Force as well as Gideon and Sunspot, who had been among the hostages waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables. Black Tom surprised everyone by revealing how far he was prepared to take the crisis. He had planted plastique explosives around the building, and intended to detonate them in order to cover his escape. Cable attempted to stop him, but Black Tom set off the explosives even while he was still in the building. [X-Force (1st series) #3]
Black Tom's mad plan forced his pursuers to split up, with most of X-Force focused on rescuing the injured hostages from the rubble or still battling Juggernaut. Cable caught up with Black Tom alone in the building near an elevator shaft and opened fire. Tom fell back into the open shaft and caught the edge of the doorway as Cable advanced on him. Seeing his fortunes fall and not wanting to fall with them, Black Tom Cassidy surrendered to Cable. Expecting to be taken into 
custody, he was surprised when Cable refused his surrender. Cable declared Black Tom had proven too dangerous to be allowed to run free. Instead of pulling Tom up, Cable shot him several times point blank, causing grievous injuries and expecting Tom to die as he fell to the bottom of the elevator shaft. [Spider-Man (1st series) #16, X-Force (1st series) #4]
Instead, Black Tom was rescued by Deadpool on the orders of Mr. Tolliver. A longtime foe of Cable's, Tolliver was interested in cultivating others with grudges against the Askani'son. He had Deadpool retrieve both Black Tom and Juggernaut, bringing them back to his chalet. At Tolliver's request, doctors attended to Black Tom's wounds in an effort to save his life and surgically repair his body. [X-Force (1st series) #5]
After several months, Tolliver's contract with Genetech, overseen by Louis Banque, had successfully healed Black Tom Cassidy and even improved upon him and his abilities. An 
experimental form of viral wood fibers were introduced into Tom's body. They grew symbiotically within his flesh, filling out and replacing his lost or damaged tissue following Cable's attack. The benefits of this surgery were numerous: Black Tom was now physically fit enough that he no longer needed his shillelagh, he could channel his bio-blasts directly through the wood implants without relying on an outside focus, and his bio-blasts were tremendously more powerful in this form as well. [Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1]
With Tolliver seemingly dead, Black Tom not only reaped the benefits from their association, but was free of any obligation towards his savior. He and Juggernaut decided to involve themselves in the hunt for "Tolliver's Will," a document turning the full scope of the crimelord's assets over to whoever secured it first. They tracked down Tolliver's former agent Gezdbadah in Cairo, Egypt, at the same time Deadpool did. The potential profit was too enticing for Black Tom to go easy on 
Deadpool for saving his life in New York. Tom blasted the mercenary in the back, burning a hole right through him. Black Tom and Juggernaut then relieved Gezdbadah of the info disk he carried with his briefcase. Tom and Cain decided to fly out commercial in order to maintain a low profile, but Deadpool regenerated from their attack and boarded the plane as it took off. They got into a scuffle over the briefcase in the aisles until Deadpool popped the emergency exit. Black Tom was drawn out the door and Juggernaut leapt through as well to save him. Their role in the quest for Tolliver's Will was done. [Deadpool: The Circle Chase #2]
As time passed, however, the viral wood growths became unstable in Tom's system. They stopped symbiotically supporting his body and began parasitically consuming more of his body mass, turning it into wood. Juggernaut forcibly retrieved Genetech's case notes about the operation in an effort to find out how to improve Black Tom's condition. [Thunderstrike (1st series) #2] Believing he may be on the verge of death, Black Tom returned home to Cassidy 
Keep. His body and mind were both degenerating at this point, leaving Tom on the edge of madness and desperation. Juggernaut and Warpath of X-Force arranged for Siryn to meet Tom at Maeve's graveside, knowing that was the one place he would never disrespect with violence. Tom and Theresa reached an understanding after the rift that grew between them months earlier, and Black Tom surrendered to Interpol in the hopes that he could get better treatment from a prison cell rather than being on the run. [X-Force (1st series) #30-31]
Because he was family, Sean Cassidy arranged for the best doctors he could find to look after Tom's condition while he was in lock-up. Doctor Emrys Killebrew of the second Weapon X Program was confident he had a way to cure Tom when Juggernaut got tired of waiting and busted into the prison to free him. Tom had Cain kidnap the good doctor as well to continue work on his treatment.
Killebrew was largely responsible for the procedure that gave Deadpool his healing powers at Weapon X, and believed Wilson's regenerative cellular structure held the key to Black Tom's recovery. Black Tom spent several weeks cashing in his assets to gather a mercenary force loyal to him, and established a hidden base at an abandoned castle on the Hudson River. He then dispatched his mercenaries to capture Deadpool, preferably alive, so that Killebrew could study him. Unfortunately, Banshee and Siryn had been searching for Tom since his escape and intervened when his mercenaries attacked. The Cassidys and Deadpool formed an alliance against Black Tom, Juggernaut and their forces.
Black Tom was frustrated at the failure of his mercenaries, as well as concerned that Theresa was 
now in the line of fire. He sent Cain out to do the job appropriately, and received an unexpected win when one of his mercs returned from a swordfight with Deadpool. The merc had lost, but he also severed one of Deadpool's hands in the melee. In desperation, Black Tom hacked off one of his own (mostly wooden) hands and had Killebrew graft Deadpool's hand on in its place. Miraculously, it worked. The regenerative nature of Deadpool's cells bonded the severed hand to Tom's body, regaining sensation and mobility, while also retarding the spread of the wooden growths in Black Tom's system.
Unfortunately, the nature of Deadpool's cancer-ridden regenerative cells also caused Black Tom considerable pain. The cure was nearly worse than the disease, as it stopped Tom's degeneration 
but began a different form of neurological breakdown as the various factors in his body conflicted with each other. Black Tom was almost mad with pain by the time Deadpool and the Cassidys tracked him down. Black Tom defeated Banshee but was unable to overcome Deadpool and was knocked unconscious. When Juggernaut arrived, Deadpool talked him into yielding so that Killebrew could stabilize Tom's condition in peace. Marko grumbled that he would break Tom out again as soon as he was healthy enough but, in the meantime, Killebrew got Tom's condition under control and Interpol took him back into custody so he could recover from his treatments. [Deadpool (1st series) #1-4]
Sure enough, Black Tom Cassidy escaped custody again, and fixated on taking revenge on Sean Cassidy for their past conflicts. As part of a long con, Black Tom had his private soldiers pose as operatives of Major Arthur Barrington. They entered the Hellfire Club by force and stole a captive mutant named Mondo, who was being presented to the Club by young Cordelia Frost in an effort to buy her way into the Inner Circle. Sean had recently become headmaster of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters alongside Emma Frost, Cordelia's sister. Tom correctly reasoned Cordelia would try to get help from Emma, drawing Sean and his Generation X students into the situation.
Tom freed Mondo from captivity and explained how his "friend" Cordelia had turned on him and tried to sell him as property. Mondo was removed from the situation so Tom could train him to use his powers better and poison his mind with dreams of revenge. In the meantime, Black Tom created a cloned doppelganger of Mondo with the intention of using the clone to infiltrate Generation X and destroy it from within. The clone was programmed as a sleeper agent, initially unaware of its true origins and purpose, believing itself to be the real Mondo. "Mondo" was allowed to escape from "Barrington's" men, who put up a token resistance against Mondo and the arriving Generation X before retreating. As expected, Banshee and Emma invited "Mondo" to join Generation X, and he traveled to the Massachusetts Academy as Black Tom's secret spy. [Generation X Annual 1995, Generation X (1st series) #61]
Even as he kept track of "Mondo" at the Academy, Black Tom himself soon underwent a dramatic transformation. Tom's body reconstructed itself entirely out of wood and plant materials, giving him 
new abilities to manipulate the vegetation around him. The exact explanation for this change is uncertain, but it seemed to involve Tom's implanted wood fibers interacting with the semi-sentient plant matter of Krakoa the Living Island, used by Generation X to fill their interactive Bio-Sphere training grounds. Over several months, Black Tom integrated himself into the Bio-Sphere and the general landscape of the Massachusetts Academy. As predicted, however, this transformation substantially impacted his mental health, driving him to the brink of insanity. [Generation X (1st series) #18, 23-24]
Black Tom Cassidy and "Mondo" finally struck at Generation X, using a series of tactics Mondo had devised from observing the weaknesses of his teammates during combat training. Most of the students were captured with minimal effort, although a few escaped the grounds altogether. Meanwhile, Black Tom used his growing power over plant life to cover most of the grounds with enormous thorns and branches under his control. He expelled Generation X from the grounds in a cocoon of plant matter, apparently traveling through the earth itself. However, he created homunculi of the students to torment Banshee and Emma Frost, forcing them to fight each other to the death under the promise that he would release the "students" once Sean killed Emma. The White Queen used her powers to force Banshee into hitting her with a near-lethal sonic scream, only for Tom to reveal the homunculi's true nature to Sean.
Tom's mind was so far gone by this point, it's hard to say what his intentions truly were. He seemed to enjoy tormenting Sean but, beyond that, his plans were vague and contradictory, 
despite the long-term arrangements he had planned to get to this moment. Black Tom was woefully unprepared for the silent student known as Penance, though. His transformation into wood and plants made him uniquely vulnerable to a girl made of living razor blades. With a single pass, Penance cut cleanly through the trunk of Black Tom Cassidy. The shock to his system forced Tom to abandon the Bio-Sphere and retreat until his mass could be repaired. [Generation X (1st series) #25]
[Note: Curiously, Plant-Man attacked Synch in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #437, claiming he was seeking revenge on Generation X for the above events. An apparent miscommunication at the Marvel editorial offices had indicated that Plant-Man, and not Black Tom Cassidy, was the villain from Generation X (1st series) #25.]