Nero the Sable

Nero the Sable (漆黒の闇ネロ, Shikkoku no Yami Nero, lit. "Dark Nero the Pitch Black") is a character in Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. An antagonist, he is a very mysterious man who keeps to himself.

Nero the Sable is the second in command of the Tsviets. He is also the only Tsviet whose power Weiss does not possess.

He is a thin man, with long, unkempt, black hair and red cat-like eyes (possibly caused as a result of using tainted Lifestream in his creation). Perhaps his most striking features are a mechanical pair of wings that spread from his back, and the various restraints on his body. A mask, vaguely resembling a muzzle, obscures his mouth, while a strait-jacket covers his upper torso. Nero has the power of teleportation and fights with stylized handguns. He always has orbs of darkness that emanate and rotate around him. He speaks with a dry English accent.

Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-
Nero and Weiss appear soon after Genesis is defeated by Zack Fair in uniforms with the Deepground SOLDIER emblem. He and Weiss take Genesis's body away in a helicopter. This takes place after the Nibelheim Incident and Zack's and Cloud's experimentation. A noticeable difference in his appearance here is that his arms are unbound and not a single bit of darkness is seen surrounding him, suggesting that his power was not as great as it was in Dirge of Cerberus. Also, he and Weiss have much shorter hair here.

Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-
Nero is the biological younger brother of Weiss, the only successful experiment from stagnant mako injection while in the fetal stage, similar to the experiment Sephiroth underwent. The experiment itself was the research left by the scientist named Grimoire Valentine who found that a life was created by a stagnation of the Lifestream, and those researchers who were in Deepground at that time believed it. By experimenting with it, they took the stagnation, and put it into children who were about to be born, without understanding of how it's going to turn out. Though they did a few hundred experiments, it looked like Nero was the only one that was successful. It resulted with the death of his mother, who was sucked into the darkness upon his birth. The rest after that is a mystery.

During the events in the Online multiplayer mode of Dirge of Cerberus, the player learns that the Restrictors had chained up Nero because he was considered too dangerous for him to be free.

Just before the events of Dirge of Cerberus, Weiss is taken over by Professor Hojo's data in Hojo's quest to find a host for the Omega weapon. It is during this time, that Hojo (as Weiss) teaches to Nero "the secrets of rebirth" to bring about Omega. Nero learns of Lucrecia Crescent’s theorem of the planet's ultimate and final weapon, Omega, and its herald, Chaos. Nero orders the Tsviets and Deepground under his brother's name to make a pure stream of mako (in Hojo's own words; Lifestream untainted by either Jenova or G-Substance) and to search for the Protomateria to bring about and control Chaos. Shelke's findings of Lucrecia's data eventually lead to information about the ex-Turk, Vincent Valentine, whom the DGS were ordered to pursue.

Although not seen in Edge, it is likely that he was there, as a small group of WRO troops was sucked into darkness. Nero's first in-game appearance is not until the middle of the game, when Vincent is searching in the abandoned Shinra Mansion. One of the Cait Sith robots encounters Nero in the very heart of the Deepground complex beneath Midgar, "Mako Reactor 0". Nero summons darkness to engulf Cait as he did to the soldiers in Edge.

He is next seen during the WRO assault of Midgar, where although he does not engage in the fighting with the ground assault, he discusses tactics with the Tsviet commanders. He teleports onto Cid Highwind's ship, the Shera, and wreaks havoc in the engine room by absorbing the engine room crew into darkness. Shelke enters the room and, after a conversation, they begin to fight. He dodges Shelke's attacks, and releases some of the restraints on his arms and tries to have her be destroyed in the darkness.

He watches over Vincent as he progresses his way down through the Shinra building. He sees Chaos emerge from Vincent, and as Nero teleports away, accidentally drops Shelke's mobile telephone, which allows Vincent to control Chaos for a while again.

Vincent later encounters him deep in the Deepground complex, where they duel. Upon being defeated, he taunts Vincent about Shelke's fate and then tries to absorb Vincent into the darkness. As he turns to go, Vincent and Shelke unexpectedly appear from the darkness. He then realizes that Vincent is immune to the effects, as he has Chaos, "a soul wrought of terra corrupt" inside him. The "terra corrupt" is tainted Lifestream, something, which Nero's darkness is formed of. As he is about to question them, Yuffie intervenes by giving a speech. Slightly confused, Nero vanishes into a portal, insisting that his brother has called him.

He is finally encountered in Weiss's chamber, where, after Vincent and Yuffie find Weiss's seemingly lifeless corpse, he informs Vincent, and the accompanying Yuffie, of Weiss's rebirth and the start of Omega's awakening. Then, the reactor activates, briefly illuminating the chamber with blinding light. Vincent and Yuffie draw their weapons and attempt to attack Weiss. Nero, in a furious rage, sucks them and himself into darkness.

Upon exiting from the darkness, to find that both Yuffie and Vincent are still very much alive, Nero comments to Vincent that, "there are somethings that cannot be absorbed by my darkness...the heart of a daemon". Nero then transports Vincent into a hellish world, with mysterious floating platforms and crystals above a pool of lava. Nero himself appears in a spider-like machine and is known as Arachnero. Eventually, the machine loses it's footing and plunges into the lava pit. In a scream of both agony and anguish, Nero blasts upwards in a pillar of fire. He floats down to a rock, and draws his guns, while Vincent clambers up to meet him. Then the battle with Gorgonero commences.

After the gunfight, Nero and Vincent return to Mako Reactor 0, where a fatigued Nero limps off to Weiss. Back in Weiss's chamber, Weiss has become 'reborn'. An excited Nero rushes over to Weiss and embraces him, begging him to never leave again. Weiss just sneers and tells Nero that he has no further use of him. Nero glares at him in disbelief. Weiss then plunges his hand into Nero's chest and throws him across the room.

A few moments before death, Nero uses his powers to extract his soul from his dying body, and proceeds to "infect" Weiss's body. After it is revealed to Vincent that Hojo is in control of Weiss, Weiss and Vincent battle.

After losing the battle to Vincent, a shocked and confused Hojo wonders why Omega's power has begun to wane. Nero, in a spectral form, appears, and begs for his brother and him to become one, so that they'll never be parted again. Hojo orders him to leave and stop polluting Omega, Nero merely ignores him. Weiss, now nearly free of Hojo's influence, agrees, and proceeds to hug Nero. Nero then fuses into Weiss, completely freeing him of Hojo's control. Weiss walks slowly towards the center of the Mako chamber, with the compulsion that he needs to bring about Omega, and vanishes in a ball of light.

Nero's actual fate is speculative. He is either in some form of existence inside of Weiss, or he may have been destroyed along with Hojo when Weiss entered in Omega, since they both were tainted beings.

Battle
Nero is fought as a boss at the end of Chapter 10. Two other forms, Arachnero and Gorgonero are fought in Chapter 11, one after the other.

Weapon
Nero's weapons of choice are guns (from their appearance, possibly handguns based on the real life IMI Desert Eagle), two of which is carried by him and used by his mechanical hands (on his mechanical wings), and two identical ones drawn from darkness which he uses with his real hands. He also has the power of darkness, which he can use to transport people, objects, etc, or, indeed, absorb them into the darkness like a black hole and destroy them. While fighting him in the game, he is shown to be able to spin around using his wings as melee weapons, and able to shoot dark orbs at Vincent, which he calls "Dark Rain." Vincent is revealed to be the only person capable of entering and leaving Nero's darkness, for his own darkness is apparently far deeper. It is said that the restraint like outfit he wears is to keep his power under control.

Etymology
Nero is the Italian word for "Black". Sable is an adjective commonly used to describe the black fur of some animals.