Appears in: Bubblegum Crisis, Bubblegum Crash! (all)

Biography

Sylia Stingray was born on May thirty-first, the year two-thousand ten, according to official records, most of which were destroyed during the Second Great Kanto Earthquake. Sylia's mother died early in her life so she was left with only her father, Doctor Katsuhito Stingray, and her younger brother, Mackie. Sylia would have easily been considered a prodigy at the very least, but she did not attend regular school. She spent most of her time taking care of her brother, six years younger than she, while her father did research on Boomer technology at Whiz Laboratories. When Sylia was ten years old her father created the first known Cyberdroid. Because he lived to perfect his work, Sylia was left almost completely alone, with only her brother for company. Two years later Doctor Stingray was battling to keep GENOM from gaining the rights to manufacture Cyberdroids; he knew that they would abuse the technology. He also saw that in publicly going against GENOM he was risking his life. Thus, Doctor Stingray created a data unit which contained information about his research, and much more. On a night in May, two-thousand thirty-two, Doctor Katsuhito Stingray was assassinated by Brian J. Mason, who was working under the orders of GENOM's Chairman, Quincy. Sylia was rushed to the scene and witnessed Whiz Laboratories burning to the ground after Mason torched it. The next morning Sylia, still in shock from the experience, received her father's data unit that he had compiled. She set it into the computer only to be instantly bombarded with imagery of her father's death, plans for personal body armor called Hardsuits, designs for Cyberdroids, and information on GENOM's structural design, along with many more things than the young girl could comprehend. All this information was transmitted directly into Sylia's mind via a technique derived from her father's research.

Sylia knew that the information in the data unit held a deep meaning. Because it showed images of her father's death she could only guess that someone else had been involved in creating the data unit. Sylia was too young to do anything about it at the time. Three years later the Second Great Kanto Earthquake struck MegaTokyo when Sylia was fifteen years old and her brother was nine. To get the city back together, Quincy offered to fund some of the reconstruction and put to work his Boomers. The Boomers soon became as much a nuisance as a help. They would build buildings and later destroy them during rampages. A malfunctioning Boomer could bring down an large building. Sylia saw these events taking place and slowly realized that there was no way out of her destiny. Two years later the AD. Police were formed to deal with the Boomers and terrorists. When they proved inadequate due to lack of training and equipment, Sylia knew that it was time to make her move, though only seventeen years of age.

Over the next three years Sylia gathered the tools and components needed to create the Hardsuits that her father had begun work on. His designs were sketchy and only one prototype was layed out, that being the one which Sylia would model her own Hardsuit after. Sylia improved upon her father's design drastically, adding in superior weaponry, maneuvability, making the armor more durable, and taking the Hardsuit well above where her father had left it. During this time she acquired contacts across MegaTokyo, Japan, and the world. She had men and women giving her information from GENOM Tower, government, commercial firms, laboratories, the military, and anywhere else where having an informant would conceivably be useful. She also bribed officials at airfields and around her fashion building, the Silky Doll, telling them to not report any strange activities. An ex-CIA agent named Fargo became Sylia's prime fixer, handing her information about jobs and clients. By the end of two-thousand thirty, Sylia Stingray had bound together hundreds of people who were all aiding her in the formation of her team of mercenaries.

Outside of the Hardsuits and contacts, Sylia had other technical worries. She created a vast network of computer links. Her own computer, designed by herself, was more powerful than nearly any others. She could effectively break into almost any computer system around. She had training and measuring equipment in a facility at Raven's Garage, owned by Doctor Raven, an old friend of her father's. She bought and constructed various vehicles from a failed battlemover (the MSX-01) to an aircraft used to transport her materials. With all this done, Sylia then went on to recruit the other mercenaries, Priss Asagiri, Linna Yamazaki, and Nene Romanova. The team of four women was named the Knight Sabers.

Personality

Sylia Stingray is anything but an average woman. She can switch from being outlandishly cold to being a smiling, personable woman in seconds flat. After years of suffering, or possibly something more severe than that, Sylia has become hardened to all pain. She is somewhat cavalier in combat and is more than willing to murder a human being if such an action is necessary. Sylia has a dominant personality and is not one to be questioned about her decisions. Her style is more conservative than Priss, Linna, or Nene's, and she prefers not to rush into battle without being primed and ready first.

By nature, Sylia is calculating and efficient to a slightly creepy point. She knows no remorse for cutting into the throat of a man she had known for years and had allowed her to live time and time again, but she relived the nightmare of destroying a combat Boomer that had blatantly attacked her repeatedly in the span of a few minutes. Seldom one to show or feel emotion, Sylia is not a woman to be trifled with. In fact, the only character that brings out her human side is her nemesis, Brian J. Mason/Largo. This, among other things, has brought about an intriguing question: Is Sylia Stingray a Boomer?.

As a manipulative, secretive woman, Sylia comes across as cold and unfeeling, which she is. She does not tend to take it well when others display normal reactions to a given situation and is not above shocking others in order to get some means of power or control in a situation, such as her 'interview' with General Schwarz of the U.S.S.D. She has no faith in mankind as a whole and, despite her claim that she fights to "defend peace and justice and rid the world of evil," anyone can tell that Sylia is more mercenary than that: She is willing to take morally opposable jobs simply because they pay well.

Sylia is a genius who knows no confines. She is easily the most learned and intelligent Knight Saber, if not the most intelligent character in the entire series. Ironically, contrary to what some people claim about BGC being a feminist's paradise, the only characters who ever outsmart Sylia are males. However, Sylia is an icon of femininty and feminism at once. She has engineering that far exceeds her father's, computer skills that are vastly superior to Nene Romanova's, social and business knowledge that constantly gives her an upper hand, and an ever logical mind that allows her to calculate the moves of opponents she technically knows nothing about. Insightgul, ingenious, and enigmatic, Sylia Stingray would be perfect were it not for her cold, if not sadistic, style.