Name/Alter ego: Steven Emerson Rush
Work Place: Morgue Macabre (though prefers to work with pharmaceutics, DNA splicing, and Cybernetics... he does this stuff at the Asylum - just send him an email if you need/want his services...
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Personality: Moderately social, witty, passionate about the sciences and computers, adaptable, and determined. Has a love-hate relationship with patience, and a mostly dark sense of humor. He's a bit selfish and is not overly friendly towards people he doesn't know. Don't expect him to risk his neck unless you either obviously mean something special to him or are offering him a nice bonus for doing so.
He’s a bit of a mad scientist, having a distinctly solid grip on medical sciences and cybernetics. Most of his “upgrades” were done by himself on himself, though certain other modifications were done under his careful instruction of only the most trusted of allies he has.
Snakebite is the more openly-insane technological menace with a penchant for poisons that Steven only half-heartedly tries to hide. He is unreasonable and manipulative. A bit of a sadist, he won’t hesitate at much to get what he wants when he wants it, creating suspicion and fear before the storm-cloud of chaos bursts. But, not to worry: he’s not exactly some over-muscled maniac with a thirst for blood – he’s more a lurking in the shadows until just the right moment kind of psychopath. A real snake in the grass with venomous “fangs” to boot. Simply put: Snakebite works by stealth, creeping through the veins of city and victim alike...
After all: “Good things come to those that wait.”
Supername: Snakebite (formerly Plague; permission to change supername acquired from Lustre/Lisa)
Other Aliases: Necro23 (computer-related alias/screen-name)
Powers: - Electrokinesis - Steven was struck by lightning as a child, and thus can produce/manipulate electrical currents via fingers or eyes, and spheres from the palms of his hands.
- Toxicity - Occurred by splicing his DNA with that of different venomous creatures while working at a genetics research lab. Transmits poisons through small fang or barb-like protrusions on the pads of his thumb, index, and middle fingers of each hand. Because they are toxins directly from his body it is safe to say he is also immune to them. His blood could potentially be used as a cure as well. Too bad he's not that charitable...
- Cybernetic Projection - Snakebite has undergone several self-surgeries to install cyberware into his body, enabling his consciousness to travel through various electronic devices. Though most of what is visible consists of computer chips beneath the skin, he also has a few ports built into various areas on his arms, neck, and head. Some are USB-like (click here for diagram) while others support TRS connectors (see this image).
Weaknesses:- Antibiotics/Antidotes - With all the poison in his veins, he can't tolerate certain medications. He isn't immune to disease, which makes this scenario rather tricky.
- Plastic - touching anything plastic either diminishes or cancels out Snakebite's power of electrokinesis for as long as the substance remains on his skin. This is why he wears leather gloves under latex ones in the Morgue. Prolonged contact with certain plastics can result in weakness and physical harm.
Superhero or Supervillain: VILLAIN! *evil laugh*
Archrival: None yet...
Appearance:Steven/Snakebite stands at five feet nine inches with a moderate build and narrow shoulders and a gaunt, Vaudeville-esque face. His hair is long and black, with a slight wave and frizzy-ness to it. Because of his cybernetic implants, he tends to wear conservative clothing and prosthetic coverings to hide the holes, though some of the computer chips and wires in his neck in particular can still be seen through the skin. Steven’s nose is difficult to describe: some attribute size or length, but it is unmistakably curved downward into a slight hook.
At work he wears a white lab coat that is heavily stained with fresh and dried blood. One wonders just what it is that he does at work...
When not at work, and not as Snakebite, Stephen has a goth/biker/rocker look about him. Almost everything article of clothing is either black, dark blue, hunter green, red, white, or gray. Leather jackets or vests are rather prominent, with jeans being the preferred material for trousers. Knee-high motorcycle boots are his favored footwear.
Snakebite has yet to decide on an official costume. However, he does wear cosmetics. Black mascara-like makeup forms heavy circles around his eyes, with one or more lines like spikes coming from the circle outward onto his cheeks and forehead. Two similar lines form a rather huge “frown” from either side of his mouth. Tends to lean towards 'snake skin leather'.
There is a tattoo on Steven/Snakebite's left bicep. It contains a skull and a rose, with a serpent slithering into and around said skull.
See image here."Played by" none other than Alice Cooper
Marital Status: Single; his former domestic partner (named Ethelyn) lives with him but she's a cyborg with little to none of the previous fondness she had once held for him. She's only living with him because he's the only one that really knows how to fix any glitches she might have.
History/Backstory (How you get your powers in story from):Steven had a normal enough childhood in the metropolis near Superville, with nary as much as a complaint despite the amount of villains in the area that arose and were subsequently thwarted by the heroes in the area. The lad of the past has very little to do with the supervillain of the present, as before the accident he didn’t have a single power to go on. The aforementioned accident had occurred while on a family camping trip when Steven was eleven years old. It had been storming – a drastic change in the day’s weather forecast. The small boy left his tent in search of frogs headed to the nearby stream...
That was when the lightning struck.
Neither parent knew where he was at first, but the moment he was discovered Steven was rushed to the hospital. The only thing he recalls of this incident involves his parents calling his name in an attempt to get him to respond. Though he couldn’t verbally communicate, he did find that while hooked up to the various machines he could at least make them go temporarily haywire. Faulty wiring, or a budding power involving electricity? Unfortunately, Steven doesn’t remember a thing about the incident. Though he made a full recovery, there was it seemed a slight change that had taken place. Neither of his parents knew whether it was a good change or not.
As a young adult, Steven found his passion in the sciences and in technology. His bedroom was littered with various gadgets and chemistry sets, and after graduation went right off to college. He learned about poisons in toxicology, and how to modify DNA. The young man earned top marks in his computer sciences class, much to the envy of certain classmates. After earning his degrees in the aforementioned fields, Steven began a steady career he’d made mostly by accident via the internet: creating computer viruses and worms, and selling them to corrupt corporations for use on their rivals’ technology. Several other computer-related crimes followed, all the while under the alias of Necro23.
When he wasn’t being a technological menace, and as demand for a good hacker seemed to start declining (that or he just wasn’t looking hard enough), Steven dabbled in the field of DNA manipulation and actually got an honest job in a genetics research lab. One of his own, rather private ventures into research involved the splicing of DNA from miscellaneous arachnids proven to have lethal venoms in their bite and adding it to his own. Perhaps not the smartest of moves, but Steven was willing to be his own guinea pig. After several failed attempts, he gathered several different strains of DNA from not just arachnids but poisonous lizards and snakes as well, and examined how they managed to coalesce successfully. More curious than he ought to have been, Steven added this experimented piecemeal of DNA to his – an experiment that nearly ended his life. Especially when a strong dosage of antibiotics refused to work...
A huge investigation began at the lab in Steven’s absence, but pretty much all of his evidence had been cleaned up. All that was known was that he had clearly and deliberately placed whatever he had created into the way of his body’s natural functions and that the reaction had been a poor one. The next day he returned to work – about a week after he’d made it out of the bout for his life with the various poisons – Steven’s employer basically gave the young twenty-something a good long dressing-down and basically fired him on the spot. Irate that his research cost him his job, Steven hadn’t even notice the protrusions from the pads of his fingers as he shook hands with his employer until after leaving the office. Only hours later did the CEO die of “a strange neurotoxin overload”. Steven couldn’t help but celebrate the success of his experiments; he never really liked the other man anyway. However, he learned the hard way about a little unexpected side-effect regarding his power: the fact that he was now a walking encyclopedia of poison made it clear that certain medicines would clearly do more harm than good if he took them.
In this transitional period of Steven’s life, he met a woman named Adelaide McNamara – who went by the alias Excessum – and was asked a rather unique favor. Despite having just been practically fired from his place of employment, she requested his help in genetically alteration for to help her withstand the hypersensitivity she had to light. Though he gave it his best shot, Steven was unable to help. It surprised him that she was not disappointed at his failure, and that they had become friends in the process. But hey – Steven wasn’t going to complain!
It was a few months after this that Steven fell in love with the lovely Ethelyn Taylor. Well, love was a relative term. It was quite clearly a love-hate relationship, and Ethelyn followed the vampiric subculture. Eventually, however, they both learned to coincide peacefully and care for one another. For convenience’s sake they moved to Superville, specifically in a mobile home. She worked at the nightclub Enigma as a bartender, while Steven continued his scientific and technological affairs. He had even set up a laboratory in what was supposed to be the spare bedroom, to further his experiments. At this point in his life of crime and other not-exactly-smiled-upon activities, Steven had once again taken up the alias Necro23 in a string of assignments for his standard list of shifty clients. Most of them were interested in an experimental field called cybernetics. Well, anything with the word ‘cyber’ in it certainly got Steven’s attention...
The first few cybernetic implants were made and for all intents and purposes installed into his body by himself. However, the rest of the implants in order to make the ones he’d put into place work required experienced medical and surgical hands. There weren’t many that Steven trusted with his life, but one reassuring factor was that Ethelyn had been a nurse before she’d been fired from her job for a mistake almost akin to the one he’d made. So, with no small amount of trepidation, he went under the knife...
When he woke up, he realized he was staring around at himself on a hospital bed, with a variety of wires that had nothing to do with medicine strapped to his body and whatever it was he could see out of. With a bit of practice and a lot of luck, Steven fully immersed himself into his new means of computerized communication, and was back to experimenting and quite literally surfing through cyberspace only days after the operation. Though, he had to admit: the computer chips and wires in his neck felt terribly awkward.
Disaster struck some five years later, when a bit of an accident occurred. One of his experiments had gone awry and caused a massive explosion, reducing the mobile home to splinters of wood, hot metal, and rubble. Despite being the closest one to the blast, Steven had not been that badly hurt. Ethelyn, his domestic partner, however - she was in pretty bad shape, and dying fast from not just the wounds but the poison spillage throughout the wreckage. Her superpowers did not include healing, or anything else to stop what seemed to be the inevitable. Not even the local hospital would have been able to do much for her. So, Steven made a beeline for the last hope he had left: to Adelaide McNamara.
After explaining the situation, the fellow supervillain obligingly placed Ethelyn into a cryogenic sleep. Even though he was already friends with the woman, he vowed to attempt to make it up to her someday. Knowing his partner was now saved from certain death Steven began working harder than ever on various cybernetics. Ethelyn was going to need a lot more than he had ever dared do on himself...
While building his domestic partner the replacement limbs she would need in order to have any semblance of normalcy, provided this much cyberware would even be accepted by her body’s systems, Steven had developed a pair of eyes that had built-in sunglass lenses to keep the sensors from overloading with high-intensity light. The eyes were entirely experimental and largely untested, but Steven did come up with another idea...
Some months later, Steven had developed a magnetic clip-on sunglass lens with a chip installed, and another wireless chip that would allow the plastic-like material of the lenses to block out as much light as needed with the merest of thoughts. Considering that this new plastic did not mix well with his electrokinesis powers, the gesture of making and delivering them to Adelaide was all the more meaningful. Having dabbled a little bit in surgery at college, and furthermore afterward for the impending surgical procedures he’d need to do on Ethelyn, Steven inserted the loose chip cosmetically under the scalp skin at Adelaide’s hairline with her permission to do so. Because lens and mind were linked via the cyberware, Adelaide was now able to stand out in sunlight without worry of the hypersensitivity she was prone to. Another layer had been added to their friendship.
At present, Steven lives in a small house on Psycho Street with his successfully-augmented partner, Ethelyn. However, the moment she had woken upon recovery, even he noticed that the old Ethelyn – the woman he loved – was gone forever. More machine than human, or so it seems, Ethelyn has once again resumed her job at the Enigma nightclub as bartender. She also assists Steven in his diabolical schemes or experiments when not at the center of Superville’s nightlife.
Tue Jul 05, 2011 10:29 am by 
Subject: Steven Emerson Rush / Snakebite (a.k.a. Necro23) 
