Difference between revisions of "Steel"

The origins of Steel go way back, when he was known as Kais, a character I have portrayed in many different games. I felt that the name needed a rest from Champions Online, and so I said farewell to the concept and reconstructed him as Steel. The look and armour concepts were the same, as I really enjoyed them. Instead, all I was doing was trying to create a completely new persona. Something which I had difficulties with putting to paper, rather than actually imagining it.

I wanted to take inspiration from Batman’s past, where the death of his parents changed him. So that’s what I decided to do with Steel. To keep it from being too much like Batman, I made the event occur later in his life, and with different circumstances: an assassination, in which the assassin almost claims his own life. I was initially going to go the way of a deliberate explosion, but a good friend helped me steer clear of it. Driven by vengeance, he creates a suit to counter the assassin’s preference of firearms. Of course, rather than waste his creation after he defeats the assassin, he uses it for the good of the public.

I had to create a location of my own to have a big playground, and so I made Rockwood, a fictional city in Scotland. With this in mind, I also had to create an alibi for why Steel appears in Millennium City, both in-game and in some of the lore I create. Simple, he is a businessman on business, but has no problems donning the armour to combat any threats. Similarly, he has links to UNTIL and the like, so he receives critical hero work like everyone else.

A quick note to everyone, content across all of my pages is strictly out-of-character. Nobody knows Steel’s real identity but a few close allies, so I don’t expect your own character to know, unless given permission. Not even if you have mind-reading abilities or are an expert at hacking computers, as I’ve thought about them and created some gear to counter this.

So, I hope you’ll like reading about Steel as much as I enjoying writing about him.

Stephen O’Connors is not your average person. Publically, he is known as a well-respected businessman in his home city of Rockwood, but has had a tragic loss of both parents at the hands of a cold-hearted hired killer. People hear of him on the news, regarding conferences of new technology unveiled by his company Innovation, to simple interviews of what it is like to be a multi-millionaire orphan in his mid-twenties. But they see him far more on the news than they actually think. What they see of him is simply one side of the coin.

Privately, Stephen is the superhero known as Steel. Equipped with an advanced suit of powered armour, Steel fights against crime with one simple purpose - to make sure that no one else is subjected to the same kind of loss that he has suffered. The citizens see Steel as a shining guardian of Rockwood, while the criminals see an indestructible avenger who makes them warily watch the skies. With a multitude of multitude of armour and weapons at his disposal, Steel can adapt to almost any kind of situation, criminal or otherwise.

“My technology will always advance, and gradually it is becoming harder to counter. It is simply only a matter of time before the criminals I fight run out of ideas.”

Born on June the 9th of 1986, Stephen O’Connors was raised by his parents, Colin and Claire, in the city of Rockwood, United Kingdom. He was brought into relative wealth, as his parents were the CEOs of a family-built company, Innovation. He had his own room in the family mansion, a private residence just outside the city. He showed a remarkable intelligence in science, engineering and technology subjects at school, as well as scoring high marks in other general subjects. Other than this, he had a fairly standard childhood, and there was little to else to differentiate him from the other children at his school.

Stephen left school aged eighteen, with high final grades in his science and technology subjects. As he had gone down a different educational route than his parents, because they had studied management subjects, he could not go straight into the preparing for the role his parents played as CEOs for the company, liked they wished. Instead, he would have had to take a further education course at the city’s college. Stephen didn’t want to immediately get into this, however. He wanted to work in the development laboratories, helping to create new technologies. He parents let him, but asked if he would do an evening course for management as well. He accepted in turn. It would become his legacy, after all.

His working life down in manufacturing was quite good. It was interesting to see how each piece of software and hardware worked in tandem, and he was amazed by the industrial developer machines as they forged away all the time, creating all manners of products with laser cutting. He was given a personal, small-sized one for his nineteenth by the other employees from the lab, which he used to make a couple of interesting items, but nothing ever ground-breaking.

The same couldn’t be said for Innovation’s most powerful industrial rival, Kindlers. They had suffered high profit losses due to a software virus that had infected several different product systems. This in turn cost them clients, many turning to the superior products of Innovation. The events that followed were nothing to do with the employees of the company, as they were good, honest, and hard-working people. It was the “outstanding” gentlemen, and ladies, on the management board.

They were blind to their own failures, and they saw the clients they lost as being poached from them by Innovation. They had always hated the O’Connors family, citing them as little more than a bunch of inconsiderate bastards who gained fame from simply owning the longest running manufacturing company in the city. Accusations like these were commonly levelled, only rebutted by calm and thoughtful counters. After all, without the O’Connors lineage bringing buyers from around the world, Kindlers might never have existed.

Corrupted as they were, they wanted to eliminate the competition, both permanently and literally. They knew of people who would end lives with expertise, all for a few more bits of paper in their wallets. But they needed something more subtle. They would need someone to infiltrate Innovation itself and kill the O’Connors, something which no amount of security personnel could protect from. And, luckily for them, they knew of one such man.

His real name was Brian Kingston, until he seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth. Since then he was known as Striker, a simple codename he coined himself. An expert hacker as well as an assassin, the plan he proposed to his contractors involved slotting himself into Innovation’s employee network, and giving himself permission to go where he pleased. This included the high-security top floor, where the adult O’Connors’ office was.

It began to rain that day. It had been three days since one of the guys down in security had discovered a glitch in the system, but couldn’t pinpoint what had exactly happened. Everyone in security was trying to figure it out, but nobody could find it. Except for Stephen, he was somewhere on his way. He’d been called in, purely for being another mind able to work the software. He felt that like it was a joke, how he was less qualified than anyone else, and yet he was getting somewhere.

He’d discovered a new file in the employee list, someone who had just been hired, yet had every single possible building permission. Whether it was indeed a glitch or something more sinister, Stephen didn’t really know. But he had to let his parents try and sort it out. Briskly walking towards the elevator, he knocked into another man and fell over. Apologising, he looked up at the face through the now closing elevator doors, and went pale. It was the man from the suspicious file. He had a gun. And he was going up. Racing for the stairs, he only hoped he would make it in time.

Colin O’Connors had his back to the office door, looking at the schematics on the desk in front of him. His wife was on his left, looking out the windows into the pouring rain. She was about to say something to him, before there was a knock on the office door. Puzzled, Colin called out, asking who it was. There was no answer. Instead, the door was forcibly hit once. Claire jumped backwards, moaning a little, and stepped behind Colin. The door was hit a second time, starting to splinter. On the third impact the door came off its hinges and fell forwards. And from that, the figure behind the door stepped into the office, a silenced pistol in hand, and fired once at Colin.

Stephen heard the muffled coughing sound he heard so often on television, and immediately knew what was happening. He sprinted through the hallway, skidding around the corner, and both saw and heard his mother scream. The man with the gun was blocking the doorway, and he was going to fire at his dear, remaining parent next. He doubled his speed, and charged at the figure. But not before the shot was fired. Screaming in rage and pain, he tackled the man to the floor, and the gun flew from his hand. But inside, he knew it would be for nothing.

The assassin was up in moments, rolling over onto his back, crushing Stephen and then kicking himself up. Seconds later he was pounding into Stephen’s face and chest with his fists. Stephen knew he had to get his arms up to protect his face, and tried to do so. The assassin proceeded to break his right arm, causing Stephen to scream in pain. With one arm broken and limp, he held Stephen’s good arm down and continued punching him, hard. When he felt Stephen’s struggling lessen, and then stop, he reached for his gun to end the boy’s life. But he stopped. He realised that Stephen would probably be comatose, maybe with a brain haemorrhage. He would never tell anyone what had happened here, ever.

Fortunately, Stephen did awaken. At first his vision was blurry and tinged with red, but as it drew into focus his head began to hurt, and he shut his eyes again. That didn’t help the pain too much, and he slowly reached with his hands to the back of his head. The thought was wiped from his mind as he realised that he couldn’t feel his right arm, and that there was an intense heat emanating from his head when his other hand drew close. Opening his eyes again and looking around, he saw a glass and a jug of water on the table beside his bed, and reached for it. He knocked the glass, and it fell of the table and shattered on the floor. He groaned loudly, and desperately reached for the jug.

The nurse who came into the room at the sound of breaking glass found not a comatose young man, but a moaning child pouring water straight from the jug into his mouth, causing it to splash all over his shirt, bedclothes and the floor. When she saw that he was finished with it, he lowered the jug from his face, smiling a little, and asked for more. Then she saw the smile fade and tears begin to well up in his eyes as he realised the scope of the damage. He’d lost everyone dear to him.

Stephen learnt, during through his slow recovery over the next week or so, that he had been in a coma for around three months. He had suffered from three cracked ribs, a single broken one which almost punctured his lung, a fractured skull in two places, a broken nose, a heavily bust lip, a plethora of cuts and bruises, and the broken arm, which was still setting. He had also suffered a broken leg, but Stephen had no recollection of that happening. Maybe he’d had it forcibly stood on. In any case, he was very lucky to be alive.

As far as he was aware, the man who had assassinated his parents and put him in his condition had not tried to finish off what he had started. To Stephen, this was a blessing. That meant that he was unaware that he was awake and alive, and this gave him the element of surprise. Normally level-headed, the only thing that now crossed Stephen’s mind was avenging his parents. But he knew it wouldn’t be as easy as simply finding the killer and busting a cap in his ass, as the saying went. He knew he’d have to draw the killer out into the open, and take him down there. But the question was, how?

An idea had formed in his head soon after he was let out of the hospital, under the cover of dark, where there were no people to notice him and tell one of the many television stations that he’d come back from the dead. An officer from the police department had briefed him, telling him to lay as low while they tried to find out the identity of the killer, in case he returned to eliminate the sole remaining witness. That, and the motive for the killing could be linked to his family name, which Stephen suspected. But he intended to lay as low as he possibly could, only until he gathered what he needed. And then there would be a reckoning.

Dropped home in one of the disguised squad cars, Stephen slowly, with the aid of crutches, walked into the dark and gloomy house. The staff had been away since the incident, but Stephen intended to call them back as soon as he was settled. Rummaging in one of the drawers of the tables just inside the house with his good arm, he found one of the small emergency torches and turned it on. Panning it over the many family pictures arrayed on the tables, showing images of him and his smiling parents, he stifled a sob, but started to cry anyway.

Waking up the next morning, he drew the curtains of his bedroom. Opening the door into his study, he flicked the light switch and the room was illuminated. He saw what he was looking for, the production device he had been given as a present from the staff at Innovation. He turned it on, switching his computer on at the same time. As the cool, blue glow of the screens lit his face, he smiled. The first time he’d truly smiled for a long while.

First off, he wanted something bulletproof, some kind of armour. That was easy for Stephen, all he simply keyed in the desired material and created a 3D-representation of what he wanted it to look like. Due to the size, however, it could not all be done in a single go. Another problem that was easily overridden, programming the developer to produce smaller items. It would take a little longer, but Stephen didn’t mind. He had all the time in the world. He was dead, after all. And he went down to the ground floor to see who was knocking on the door at this time in the morning.

When not adorning one of his suits, Stephen appears as a young, handsome man in his mid-twenties, with short dark-coloured hair. His eyes are also quite dark, almost black in pigment. He is of average height, measuring around six feet, while his body build is relatively slim, although he is quite athletically muscled. He tends to be very well-dressed, commonly wearing expensive tailored suits. His casual clothing style is no less expensive, as he is seen wearing designer jeans, shirts and jackets.

When it comes to personality, Stephen and Steel are almost two different people. Stephen tends to be well-spoken and sociable, often going to celebrity hotspots and social events in work. To many people, interacting with him is an enjoyable experience, with his emphasis on politeness and a natural intelligence to almost any conversation subject.

Steel, on the other hand, is quite the silent type. He very rarely speaks out, but when he does it tends to be tactical advice or an intelligent remark. His voice sound quite mechanised, a product of a voice changer to further conceal his identity, which makes him more threatening to his enemies, and slightly unnerving to the general public. He is not one for a monologue, whether issuing or listening. He actually tends to interrupt most villains, taking them out while they get preoccupied “storytelling”.

He prefers working alone, but when working in tandem with the police department of Rockwood, or sometimes the Millennium City equivalent, he like to distance himself. This gives him freedom to act, generally succeeding where a group of multiple officers fail. He admires the police, but finds them a little interfering. Overall, he feels that working alone creates less collateral damage.