BIOGRAPHY - Page 5
SHIELD soon took the initiative against Cable, sending in their top manhunter, Agent 18, as well as the Air Cavalry in order to sample the T-O virus and create better Life Model Decoys. Cable managed to survive their experiments and, as a side effect, regained full access to his telekinesis. Nathan then met up with Nate Grey again, as they battled a resurrected Stryfe in Latveria for their very survival. Stryfe was defeated, but the rise of Apocalypse was upon them. [Cable (1st series) #59-63]
Rachel Summers traveled back in time to implant Nathan with the identities of the legendary Twelve, just before the Harbinger returned to lay waste to the world. Cable took the battle to the creature, but even the combined might of Captain America, Vision, Iron Man, Thor and Wonder Man couldn't help in defeating the Harbinger. Cable finally managed to unleash his full psychic power upon the Harbinger and destroyed it. He passed through an extra-temporal realm and returned to Earth, in full control of his telepathic powers once more. The rise of Apocalypse had not been abated, however. [Cable (1st series) #68-69]
Around that time, Cable was mentally contacted by Jean Grey, who informed him that Xavier had disbanded the X-Men for unknown reasons, and now a crisis involving the Mannites acquired their attention. Besides him, Cyclops and Phoenix gathered Archangel, X-Man and Wolverine, who remained from the previous team. Together, they proceeded on a mission to save the Mannites from Death, one of the new Horsemen of Apocalypse. In their battle with Death, the X-Men were unable to hold back the Horseman. He brutally beat Cable and the others and killed Wolverine with one thrust of his sword. The remaining X-Men rushed Wolverine’s corpse back to the mansion and met up with Xavier and the recently scattered team as well. Xavier revealed that he had pretended to lose control in order to uncover a traitor he had sensed in their midst. The traitor was discovered when Wolverine's deceased body reverted to its true form: that of a Skrull warrior. The true Wolverine had been kidnapped weeks ago by some Skrulls working with Apocalypse, who had brainwashed Logan into becoming his Horseman of Death. [Astonishing X-Men (2nd series) #1-3, Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #375]
Cable found that it was time to gather the Twelve and battle Apocalypse. Expecting to die in this conflict, Nathan went to San Francisco to check in on his former charges in X-Force to make his final goodbye. However, he came into conflict with the new War and Pestilence... Deathbird and Caliban. Though they fought valiantly, X-Force failed to keep the Horsemen from kidnapping Cable for Apocalypse. In Apocalypse's citadel, Cable broke free and battled Apocalypse, but he surrendered when the villain threatened to kill Caliban. [Cable (1st series) #73-75]
Learning that Apocalypse’s Horsemen had captured some members of the fabled Twelve, the X-Men traveled to Egypt with the remaining Twelve and confronted Apocalypse and the Skrulls. During the battle, Apocalypse and his forces captured all of the Twelve, using them in a ritual to give the Chaos-Bringer a new body and incredible power. Magneto and Polaris created opposite magnetic polarities, Iceman, Storm, and Sunfire provided elemental extremes, Cyclops, Phoenix, and Cable gave the unity of family and the vast energies of the Summers bloodline, Xavier provided the power of mind, while Bishop and Mikhail Rasputin represented control over time and space. The Living Monolith linked all their energies together as a power conduit. Nate Grey was to be Apocalypse's new host, a powerhouse to store his massive life-force. Fortunately, the Twelve managed to free themselves before the transfer was complete, but Cyclops sacrificed his own body and life-force to keep Apocalypse from getting Nate. Instead of merging with Nate Grey, Apocalypse fused, body and soul, with Cyclops. This new gestalt being attempted to use the absorbed power of the Twelve to rewrite history at various crucial points in order to dominate the future. The X-Men defeated the new Apocalypse, who escaped. [The Twelve crossover]
Cable felt guilty and blamed himself that his father had died in the fight he had prepared for his entire life. In Cyclops' absence and presumed death, Cable began to spend more time with his "mother," Jean Grey, as they consoled each other over the loss of Scott. Kind of to replace his father, Nathan even joined the X-Men and added a new mask to his costume, covering one eye as an homage to his father’s codename. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #381] The X-Men team of which he was a part was apparently not based at Xavier’s mansion in Westchester and their adventures led them all over the globe, to such places as Russia and Venice in Italy.
Cable’s duties as an X-Man didn’t keep him from visiting Irene and Blaquesmith on a regular basis. In one night at the safe house, Nathan was dragged into a conflict with some energy beings called the Undying, three MacBeth-style witches, and two rival future timelines for Earth. Apparently, Apocalypse’s demise completely wiped out Cable's "Askani" future while instating two potential courses of history for mankind's future. “Harmony“ was the artistic future of an Earth free of war and disease, built upon genetic engineering but disabling all mutations before birth to keep the race pure. The “Ranshi Empire" was the militant future of Earth where a mutant monarchy proudly ruled over a galaxy-spanning civilization. The plot centered around a present-day psychomorph named Randall Shire. He was who was possessed by one of the Undying energy beings named Semijan, who used his mutant host's gift to preach unity and harmony in order to consolidate a power base and control the world. Semijan was also targeted for death by Aentaros, another of the Undying. The crux point lay in whether or not Cable would save Shire's life: if he lived, Semijan/Shire would go on to establish a worldwide empire which would one day lead to the Ranshi Empire. If he died, mutants would be blamed but his initial message would live on to forge the Harmony future. Cable had to deal with Aentaros possessing people in his life such as Blockade, Irene and Domino, while simultaneously having to decide the future of two timelines.
His problems were only augmented by the presence of Eyla Cire of Harmony and Sandella Ranshi, the two versions of his dead wife, Jenskot, from these futures. He also met a mysterious reclusive mutant named Clarity, who trafficked in information and made a valuable contact for the future. In the end, Nathan stopped the assassination of Randall Shire but discredited him in the eyes of the public, effectively eliminating both futures. [Cable (1st series) #79-84]
Later, while on a mission for the X-Men, Cable was assaulted by an unseen psychic force that curiously healed his scars and T-O mesh, yet caused him to strike out at his friends. Neither the Goth nor the Crimson Pirates - the enemies that the X-Men were fighting - seemed responsible for this and it was never fully dealt with. After this conflict, Cable and his grouping of X-Men moved back into the mansion with the main team. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #384]
Meanwhile, Nathan had been having visions of Rachel Summers being held prisoner somewhere in a far distant future, so he launched himself into the timestream to search for her. Eventually, he found himself two billion years in the future and was forced to fight the deposed warlord Gaunt in order to free his sister. Cable succeeded and brought Rachel back to the present day, though she asked him to keep her return a secret, at least for the time being. [Cable (1st series) #85-86]
Soon thereafter, the X-Men learned that someone was planning to assassinate Senator Robert Kelly. Cable was planted in Kelly’s support staff to keep an eye on him and, together with his 
teammates, he managed to stop several members of the Brotherhood of Mutants before they could get to the politician. However, Cable ultimately failed to keep Senator Kelly safe, as he was shot by a fanatic human who couldn’t deal with the fact that Kelly had changed his views on mutants. A second death hit the X-Men even worse; Moira MacTaggert died of injuries she received when the remaining Brotherhood members blew up her lab complex on Muir Island. Nathan took the death of the woman who first welcomed him to the 20th century particularly hard. He questioned his role with the X-Men and, considering their approach to be too passive in the long run, he quit the team. When he informed Storm of this decision, though, she reminded him that the X-Men were a big family and that they would welcome him back with open arms whenever he was ready to rejoin. [X-Men (2nd series) #108, Cable (1st series) #88]
In contrast to the recent deaths, Nathan managed to save his father's life at least. Apparently, a portion of Cyclops was still fighting the merger with Apocalypse. The composed individual had 
reverted back to Scott Summers in appearance, no longer displaying any mutant powers and was amnesiac. Apocalypse's servant, Ozymandias, enlisted the aid of Cable and Phoenix to track down "Cyclopalypse." In the final battle between many forces aligned either for or against Apocalypse, Jean managed to divest Apocalypse's spirit from Scott, and Cable dispersed it with his Psimitar. Cable had now truly fulfilled his foretold destiny as the Chosen One and even managed to bring back his father at the same time. [X-Men: Search for Cyclops #1-4]
Unfortunately, Cable's peace of mind did not last and he soon became the target of the Dark Sisterhood, an international family of thousands of psychic women who directed criminal actions across the globe. The Dark Mother of the Sisterhood was, in fact, the prophetic Clarity's sister, who had built the Sisterhood out of her own bloodline over the past centuries: a family of assassins. Their actions forced Cable to abandon his safehouse in Manhattan and break off his ties to the X-Men, Irene and Blaquesmith. How unlucky for them, however, that isolating Cable made him all the more dangerous. Nathan made eliminating the Sisterhood top priority in his life: he began by mentally disabling the Sisters, one at a time or in small groups, and also downloaded and erased many of their computer files. With the help of Rachel, Irene and G.W. Bridge, Cable stopped the Sisterhood's plan to assume control of the United States and defeated the Dark Mother in single handed combat. [Cable (1st series) #89-95]
Following these events and with his life long mission against Apocalypse come to an end, Cable took up a new role in life. Remembering what he was best at, Cable became a one-man counter 
terrorist unit, traveling the globe to change the world... one war at a time. While doing so, Cable discovered that the cure for the Legacy virus, which had been released into Earth’s atmosphere, had interacted with his own techno-organic infection, making it possibly for him to remove the virus core with his powers. Traveling to a deserted beach, Nathan looked inwards and managed to isolate the virus core from the rest of his physiology, vomiting it up onto the sands. He tossed it away into the ocean, and the initial release of his untethered powers collapsed the rocky cliff behind him and pushed back the ocean itself. [Cable (1st series) #100] Now unrestrained by the virus, his powers were too strong for him to control; simple telepathic tricks would now lobotomize anyone in his path, and a release of his telekinesis would demolish buildings. His powers expanded to the point where he could rearrange the molecular structure of matter, and heal his own wounds - even while unconscious, his telekinesis saved him from drowning, lightning strikes and even a bullet to the head.
After that, Cable successfully thwarted a rebel group blackmailing a nation in South America, destroyed human cloning and genocide virus laboratories in the Balkans and uncovered a Russian mutant girl with the power to manipulate lifeforce, to heal or to kill. [Cable (1st series) #101-107, Soldier X #1-7] All his efforts at "healing the world," though, did little to protect Nathan's heart when an innocent mutant girl was put to death for her parents' murders. [Soldier X #11-12]