[{Introduction}]

Greetings, it’s me, yun1qu3, otherwise known as T0X1C. This is my first entry to a blog series I will be posting on this amino where I analyze the agents’ abilities functions in the real world. Throughout the blogs, I will be capitalizing the first letter of important words, despite obviously being a grammatical error.

If you’re a hardcore cosplayer with thousands of dollars to spare on functionality, keep reading. If not, keep reading.

Today, I will start off easy. Cypher. His abilities are technology-based, with very little “fantasy” and “magic”.

-=Magnets and Magic=-

Before delving into each individual ability, I want to start off with how he picks up his Spycam and Trapwires. Geez, Riot, just call em Cameras and Tripwires. The Cameras aren’t exactly Spycams, and Tripwires is just what everybody calls that kind of trap.

Anyways, here are a couple screenshots I got of him picking up the Trapwire.

As we can see, his palm, or at least the part of his glove that is upon his palm, releases an electrical surge that attracts the Trapwire towards it. His Spycam uses the left hand, and the palm is facing away from us, but we can safely assume it’s the same deal.

Some of you may be thinking, “Case closed, it’s electromagnets.” However, that is most definitely not the case. Electromagnets come in different forms, but they all function in the same way.

An electromagnet is comprised of a ferromagnetic material (Iron, Cobalt or Nickel and their alloys being the most common. You will rarely find the others in your local hardware store.) wrapped in an electrical current, just like in the photo above. This makes the ferromagnetic substance act like a magnet.

Here comes the issues with the electromagnet theory on Cypher. Keep in mind that Electromagnets are Magnets, and that they would have a very strong field (based on the range at which Cypher can pick up his items).

• Cypher’s Spycam. We know that Cypher uses his Spycam to look through it live. Therefore, it’s not like CCTVs that are simple analog cameras with a digital video recorder. It is more likely that the Spycam is similar to a cellphone on a video call. To put it simply, the magnet could permanently damage the inner workings, causing his Spycam to be completely unusable.

•Other magnetic objects. The Vandal or rather, its real world counterpart, the AK-47, is made out of steel. The combat knife is made out of carbon steel. They will therefore be attracted to Cypher’s magnetic palm. If electromagnets were truly the way Cypher picks up his tools, I would think he would rather use this ability to pick up the enemies’ weapons.

So, what now? It’s not a magnet, so what is it? Here is an image of the Trapwire in “flight”. I know it’s far, but it’s the best screenshot I could get after 100 attempts.

Here’s my theory. What if, the electrical surges aren’t there for the actual current, but rather, exist for their heat signatures. I’ve been in robotics clubs for a few years now, and I sometimes worked with programming the robots to react to heat signatures using thermal cameras. Electricity doesn’t have a temperature by itself, but electrical sparks can heat up the surroundings. Assuming Cypher is intelligent and is wearing fireproof clothing, the heat would spread out into the air around him. Then, the Trapwires and Spycam will boot up a command to “fly” like drones towards the area where they sensed it. By the time the tools reach his hand, most of the heat will have dissipated, leaving only a weak trace.

What about Phoenix, won’t it fly into his flames? Finding the heat caused by electrical sparks is nigh impossible in Google, but I found something else. Lightning are large-scale electrical sparks, and they can reach up to 29726.85°C. Let’s say Cypher can replicate about only 5% of that energy. He would be able to heat up the surrounding air to 1486.34°C. That’s much higher than the average heat for orange-yellow fire at 1100°C. And that’s for orange-yellow fire. Phoenix’s flames are a tad red. Reddish flames generally only go around 600-800°C. So we can assume, on the high end, that Phoenix’s flame are around 950°C.

In conclusion, Cypher might be picking up his traps from range using thermal sensors and releasing a burst of thermal energy from his palms. It’s not a perfect theory; if you have other ideas, please comment down below.

-=Lasers and Wires=-

Now comes the Trapwires. From what we can see in the photo just below, it is obviously a laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). One of the discs releases an a laser. The other has a sensor reacting to the laser, keeping a circuit open.

When a person walks past it, the laser is temporarily blocked, causing the sensor on the other end to start a reaction which closes the circuit (allows the current to pass through). Now that we know how the system works, it’s to to analyze what it does.

Ears ringing, greyed out and blurred out vision, along with what seems to be staggering movements. It’s a lot simpler than it seems. Before the victim gets affected, a sharp loud sudden noise is rung. Such experiences can cause temporary (or permanent if extreme enough) tinnitus and dizziness.

The tinnitus is obviously caused by the eardrums being damaged by the noise. The dizziness (and slight consequential vision blur) is caused by the vestibular system being shaken up by the sound-waves.

-=Lenses and Eyeballs=-

The Spycam is a rather simple concept. It’s a camera that connects to presumably a cellular device upon which Cypher can look through.

What I want to focus in this section is the Spycam’s camouflage system. The Trapwires are simple to camouflage, but a camera?

It’s purely theoretical for the moment, but there is a way you can do this. For anyone that watched the recent The Invisible Man, you’ll know that there is a possible method where tiny lenses pick up light on one side of the object, and light sources on the other side continue that flow of colour.

For example: A lens on one side detects the colour blue. The camera obviously blocks that ray of light from passing through. However, on the other side, a screen creates a new blue ray, creating the illusion that the camera is “invisible”.

Many sci-fi movies employ this technique to explain invisibility. With our current technology, we are incapable of employing such a technique to an effectiveness that would trick people with 20/20 vision. However, we aren’t far.

-=Projections and Fields=-

Now comes one of the tricky parts, and I am looking forward to neither this nor the ultimate. However, I have to do this to complete the analysis. Ugh.

Okay, let’s start with the obvious. He uses a remote to activate the traps from a distance. It’s definitely not infrared, because he can activate them over layers of walls and air. Infrared bounces a lot, but not forever. Thankfully, there exists another type of remote which can penetrate walls. It is the Radio Frequency remote.

Now, it’s time to analyze the trap itself.

We know a few things right off the bat. It’s supposed to slow people down, and it is done through holograms.

Here is where we go into the realm of speculation. Currently, the closest things we have to holograms are:

1) That small DIY projector that you saw in your Primary School’s Science Fair, and

2) Hatsune Miku.

Neither of these work. The former because the projector is in a much larger scale than the hologram (unlike what we see with Cypher). Also, it requires a physical transparent material (which Cypher clearly doesn’t utilize). The latter because it works more like a 3d movie without the glasses.

So, how can we possibly replicate Cypher’s cage in real life? First, we must address the issues that holograms face.

We know from the rays of light that Cypher’s trap is a sort of projector. We must figure out a way to make it stop in the middle of the air, rather than on a surface. What if, instead of being just a light projector, the device jets out smoke/gas up to a specific distance. The substance must be lighter than air, but must be able to block light. There are a multitude of choices. However, based on how quickly we need the substance to dissipate, I think a stream of smoke (through combustion) would be the best choice.

Now that we worked out the visual part of the Cyber Cage, we need to figure out how to replicate its effects. It slows people who walk through it. This can be done in many different ways: a poison that can cause weakness to the legs, a chemical that alters the ground, an adhesive, etc. There are a few qualifications that the techniques must observe.

•Must be hard to see or transparent.

•Must provide slow movements without any other immediately noticeable side effects.

•Must lose effects immediately or shortly after exiting the zone.

The closest I can get to these requirements is if the trap fires streams of minuscule darts that injects a small dosage of Mivacurium into the victim. Mivacurium is a short-acting neuromuscular blocker, that will relax the muscles (causing a groggy or slow movement). With a small enough dose, it won’t last long. So, if the victim stays within the cage, the drug will be reapplied by another dart, extending the duration of the effects. However, when the victim walks out, the density of the smoke fumes will slow down the needle enough to not reach.

-=Hats and Heads=-

Here comes the most unlikely of all the tools. Cypher throws out his hat and looks into the memories of a fresh corpse to find out the locations of all enemies.

Let’s address the elephant in the room. Can a dead body have memories? I’m actually surprised at the findings. For thirty seconds after death, the memories are actually protected by a chemical that the brain releases. Know that little story about your life flashing before your eyes when you’re about to die? Turns out, that comes after your body dies. So yes, a dead body will have memories for a very short while after death. Is that what we see in Valorant? Absolutely. If an agent had died for far too long, Cypher cannot cast his ultimate.

However, even if you do manage to find a way to locate specific memories within the clusterfork that is our brain, the ultimate makes no absolute sense. The entire point of the ultimate is that Cypher analyzes a dead person’s memories to find out the present locations of said person’s allies. This one main issue: A person’s memories are of the past, not the present. A dead person’s memories will surely not contain the time after they died.

Okay sure, maybe Cypher is hyper intelligent and uses the memories to deduce the locations. This still has a lot of problems. One example is if Omen uses his ultimate to teleport during the time between his ally’s death and Cypher throwing out the hat. Jett dashing during that time frame too. It is impossible for Cypher to deduce all those possibilities, especially if comms are turned off and nobody is pinging.

-=Conclusions and Concussions=-

My head hurts from all this, so let’s wrap it up. Most of what Cypher can do can be reproduced in real life, at the exception of his Ultimate.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this, and maybe even learned something new.

Please do not actually replicate these in real life, unless your job is to create more weapons for the Americans to wave around. Most of these are illegal: the tripwires can be lethal when the sound isn’t calibrated properly for example.

With that, have a good day Valorant Amino. Do vote on who I shall analyze next on this poll.

Artist: Tenkain