Cradle

Ryan, known publicly as  is a villain and a member of the Mall Cluster.

Personality
Prior to his trigger event, Cradle was a source of disappointment to the adults in his life. He was generally reclusive, preferring to isolate himself.

Following the trigger event, his clustermates believed that Cradle's personality had changed as a result of personality bleed-through from Rain, as Cradle himself claimed that none of them were the decent people they have been before.

However, once personality bleed mechanics were cleared, Cradle was revealed as a psychopath, that was intentionally spreading his pathology to his clustermates, with Rain having barely any bleed-through effects with any of them.

Snag
Cradle called him a hero for his actions during the mall fire. They cooperated heavily with each other against Rain, trading power tokens at the behest of the other after a moment's consideration.

Love Lost
Cradle seemed to judge Love Lost somewhat for yelling at her daughter, but did not think that she was a bad person. The two cooperated heavily with each other while in the dream room, trading power tokens with each other after a moment's consideration.

Rain
Cradle bears a strong hatred and contempt for Rain, telling him to kill himself and going so far as to hire mercenaries and start a war (with help from Snag and Love Lost) with the Fallen in order to take Rain's life. Cradle feels fundamentally violated by personality bleed-through that he experienced from Rain. Cradle believed that killing Rain would be justice, not just revenge.

Appearance
Cradle is an older teenager, around 18, with blond hair and badly scratched-up glasses; Rain described him as appearing rather nondescript, aside from his glasses, which forced him to look through them at odd angles. While out in costume, he wears a black mask adorned with a claw-like white hand on the side, with a similar black mesh bodysuit festooned with white hands.

Tinker ability
Cradle primary ability is a Tinker one, with a specialty in making limbs. He has a dedicated workshop. His primary ability comes from the shard, Grasping Self.

Equipment
Cradle collaborated with others in his trigger group, designing things with them. By the time of the attack on the Fallen compound, he had been refining his equipment for around a year.

Striker/Shaker Power
Cradle could imbue his tech's attacks to let them hit with an explosive force beyond what they should have hit with. Victoria speculated that this might have been his version of Rain's Blaster power, or otherwise an adaptation of another Tinker's tech. It was later proven to be the case, as when he took Rain's tokens on their sixth night in the dream room, he described the ability to run this power through objects.

The upgraded version of this, resembles a Shaker ability, as Cradle can summon glowing lines in the area surrounding him, that cut anything they intersect, including powers. These lines stay stationary wherever they are placed.

Mover Power
In addition, he appeared to have an intuitive ability to stay balanced, even while standing upon his hand mech; this was his version of Snag's Mover power. This ability, when supercharged with extra tokens, allows Cradle to warp space in a way that allows him to move between spaces extremely quickly, in a way that resembles teleportation.

Emotion Power
Cradle also had a secondary emotion power, his version of Love Lost's power. When boosted, it allowed him to sense people in his vicinity.

Cradle's emotion power allows him to sense the emotional weaknesses in people, letting him know exactly how far he can push things with them before they will break.

This ability comes from his connection to Anguished Heart.

Cluster Dynamic
Unique to Cradle's cluster, every night, Cradle and his cluster-mates re-lived their memories of the mall incident and were placed in a room where they could exchange tokens to shift the balance of power among the cluster. Cradle's tokens were coins. After Snag's death, as the power balance began to be more uneven, Cradle was apparently stronger

He has gained good experience using his knife.

Background
Ryan had psychopathic tendencies ever since he was a child. As such, he was a huge pain to deal with, as he would constantly torment his parents, teachers, and classmates.

Cradle had a tense relationship with his parents and teachers, who felt that he had unrealized potential that he wasn't living up to; this gradually caused him to isolate himself from others.

Things eventually improved for Cradle, and he began to feel happier about his situation in life. Sometime following Gold Morning, however, Cradle was caught in the stampede of people attempting to escape the mall fire set by a group of Fallen, where he lost his glasses and was trampled by the crowd as he tried to retrieve them. Pleading for help but getting none, Cradle had a tinker trigger, becoming part of a cluster with Snag, Love Lost, and Rain.

After his trigger, Cradle buried himself into his workshop, amassing mercenary contacts, resources, and favors.

Glow-worm
Along with Snag and Love Lost, Cradle began working to kill Rain, collecting the money and favors necessary to get people together to do so. Over the course of a year, Cradle developed his Tinker technology.

Early-Ward
Cradle was looking into his cluster's situation, reaching out to someone who "[did] interesting things with people and sleep" to begin experimenting.

Cradle and the others recruited a large number of mercenaries from Hollow Point, with help from Tattletale and the Undersiders, in order to lead an attack upon the Fallen compound and kill Rain. Their plan eventually came to fruition with the Mathers Compound Assault, though not without Rain's team involving other hero groups.

Along with the rest of his cluster, Cradle fainted when Snag was killed. He received one of Snag's tokens.

Later on during the battle, Cradle and his hired mercenary Operator Red were eventually able to capture and torture Rain, until they were found by the heroes. He tried to have the heroes back down, but was unsuccessful. After a fight, Cradle was captured; Tattletale attempted to negotiate for his release, but dropped her request following pressure from the other Undersiders.

Post-Fallen Fall
Cradle was put into custody at the same prison as Rain and Love Lost. He apparently had been "doing a lot of business," but had few allies and was being frozen out by Tattletale. He was presumably dragged into Goddess' attack on the prison.

Post-Goddess' Takeover
Using a scan of Disjoint's power, Cradle created a weapon capable of dismembering people without killing them. He lured the Navigators to a location, where his mercenaries tested the weapon on heroes.

Breakthrough and the Undersiders attempted to keep him from making contact with Love Lost, lest he drain her powers with March's assistance. Unfortunately, all three of villains were already coordinating together, and manage to dispatch two out of three groups sent after them, taking multiple people hostage.

Once Love Lost overstays her usefulness and even dares to bring another parahuman into cluster Cradle proceeds to drain her and her bud.

Cradle retreats to Earth N again, while being protected by an army he had hired.

The remaining active capes of Breakthrough, Undersiders, and several others deploy on a mission to recover body parts and capture Cradle and his accomplices. Despite having an upper hand in battles with them, Cradle eventually gets cornered and forced to give away his method of fixing the maimed people, leaving him to the mercy of a parahuman crowd.

Post-Time Bubble Pop
Cradle was held captive by the Wardens. He was among the first villains to be banished into other dimension. He was contacted in relation to raid on Teacher.

Post-Attack on Teacher
During Breakthrough's invasion into the dream-room, he continued to be uncooperative, attacked them, and was killed. This attack left his body brain damaged beyond repair.

Trivia

 * His name may have been derived from the term "cradling", an action usually done by cupping 2 hands together. It may also refer to cat's cradle, a children's game played by tangling string between fingers to make patterns, which Cradle's mech has similarities to.
 * Making these String Figures is one of the oldest recorded games in history.
 * Wildbow seems to possess healthy distaste of one Canadian children's show. The community, naturally, interpreted it as an influence on Cradle character.