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The Ninja Viper is among Cobra's more outlandish troops.
Purportedly pulled from the highest ranks of Cobra's most "sinister and cunning" Vipers,
the Ninja Vipers are one of Cobra's attempts at a covert, standardized,
yet not state-of-the-art trooper. Ninja Vipers, supposedly high-ranking masters of various martial arts, use hand-to-hand combat and melee weapons in place of any
serious military hardware.
The original Ninja Viper uniform is highly reminiscent of the operative known as
Storm Shadow's own personal uniform during the time he served with the Cobra organization from 1984 to 1987. However, unlike Storm Shadow, their
typical armaments are relegated to only two traditional Japanese katana swords.
Due to the limited time frame (1992-1993) and small number of the Ninja Vipers
in Cobra's deployment, the Ninja Viper was not encountered in military operations with any degree of frequency. It was presumed the Ninja Viper is primarily experimental and a more clandestine operative, however ultimately a failure.
This was further supported by Cobra's continued employment of the martial arts covert operative Slice (1993 and 1994 and in 2002 through the current "Venom"
operations), Night Creepers (1990
through 1994 and 2002 through current "Venom" operations), and Black Dragon Troopers
(2003) for infiltration and surveillance operations.
In early 2004 however, a new, similar troop type, the Ninja Trooper, was first
observed in
Orlando, FL and later confirmed throughout the United States. Once again, the uniform is a copy of Storm Shadow's outfit with a
teal coloring, but this time Storm Shadow's 2002 uniform. Whether this will be a more serious deployment
unlike the Ninja Viper is yet to be seen.
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