(I assumed you would know all this Light?)
It was said once and I never noticed it being repeated after that, so don't treat this as gospel, but Cables actual mutant power is the telekinetic ability to move planets. I'm not saying that he's powerful enough to move planets, but that that is the primary function of his abilities at full tilt. He is supposed to be able to "safely" manipulate the orbit of planets, but constantly fighting back techno organic virus threatening to consume him, seriously cripples his telekinetic abilities so that Cable can barely pick up more than a couple phone books at most stages in his development/continuity.
Here's the Rub.
Stryfe is a clone of Nathan Christopher/Cable without the Techno Organic Virus.
A bad guy that can move planets, or do that same level of damage to anything standing in front of him. Hitting some poor bastard with the equivalent force it would take to redirect Saturn to the ass end of the solar system... Code brown?
Okay I've practised this...
Nathan Christopher's mother, Madelyn Pryor is a clone of Jean Grey under orders form Mr Sinister (the Warden of Cyclops Orphanage), an Agent of Apocalypse to make babies with Cyclops because he has been manipulating several family trees for the last 200 years to create a super mutant baby strong enough to hold the essence of Apocalypse (That sounds tacked on at the end? Sinister's motivations always seemed masturbatory in the beginning, but making his undertaking being under the guidance of Apocalypses sleeping hand is weak.) which isn't exactly as immortal as advertised which is why he is always sleeping.
Apocalypse infects baby Nathan Christopher with a techno organic virus for no sane fucking reason. There is no cure in present day, but just by luck, a soldier from the sisterhood of the Askani from the 40th century was visiting X-Factor and sells some leap of faith bullshit, that the only way for Cyclops to save his son from certain death is to send him away with her into the future.
There's some sort of fumble. 40th century Apocalypse winds up with the baby in short order, who says "fuck this" because the child is completely rooted by the techno organic Virus. A clone is made (Stryfe) which Apocalypse adopts as his son, who in 20 years or so when the husk he is currently wearing burns out, or more likely several husks later, Apocalypse can wear Stryfe like a new suit that actually has some give in it.
The crap virus baby is thrown out with the bath water.
Years later in the past, Jean and Scot on their Honeymoon, walk through a time warp, and find the crap virus baby, and then spend the next decade in the fortieth century raising their son all the while being careful not to admit who they are and where they are from because of the negative effects honesty could have on the timeline.
So "Red and Slim" abandon young Cable, when they uncontrollably go back to the past, and it may have made him a little bitter. Meeting his young non virusey clone brother didn't help either, especially since Stryfe is fricking positive that he is the real Nathan Christopher and this shitbrick is just a test tube accident with a dream.
Cable gets older, joins an army, something about a Canaanite revolution, Apocalypse falls, Stryfe falls, Cable joins the Askani priesthood... Oh, a wad of technology the size of a baseball, the sentient conciousness of X-Factors spaceship had been hidden inside Cable all along (Just like a drug mule, but how Dorothy of Oz!) which is actually a Celestials tricorder (we thought it was a massive ship, they think it's a hand held device! Size is relative.) who Cable renames "Professor" and becomes his best friend/butler. So because it's celestial technology and it's the 40th century, Cable builds a space station called Graymalken (the physical address for Xavier's school is 1407 Graymalken lane!) and takes it back in time to the 80s to help shepherd in the new batch of Externals (Mutants who die, and then come back immortal and then are supposed to lead. Royal starchamber shit, y'know?) to stop them from becoming such dicks.
Cable arrives way too early, and then finds that Stryfe is already there being a jerk. It was a prequel comic, before he met the New Mutants. Everything was seriously Reagan. So "The Askanison" is a soldier of fortune for ten years waiting for Xavier to lose control of the New Mutants so that he can turn them into X-Force because he's sure that either Cannonball or Sunspot is the next External.
So years before Scot and Jeans honeymoon, after Cable has established himself as leader of X_Force without telling anyone who his parents are, where they go to the future to raise their Kid, Stryfe pulls some whacky hoodwinks in a massive crossover called "The Executioners Song" where he dresses up as Cable, shoots Xavier with a techno organic bullet, and does all this woe is me Super villain angst shit trying to get Jean and Scott to apologise for sending him to the future because they didn't love him, without actually out rightly telling them that he or Cable are both their sons.
I'm drawing a blank, but it was pretty soon after that that Cable admitted who he was and everything sorta calmed down in the timey whimey department... Although when Apocalypse was a teenager in 3000 BC, the Pharo he paid taxes to was Kang the Conqueror, a time travelling Avengers Villain, who was there on that stage during Apocalypses adolescence, when on the same day crossed swords separately with the Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange and the West Coast Avengers while trying to woo Apocalypse as a henchman becuase as it turned out, Kang (Pharo Rama Tut) was only there to weaponize Apocalypse and use him to win future wars in the future, so la de dah to anyone else who thought they were important.
(I'm out of breath.)
Of course he did get an all new set from Apocalypse circa 1996...
