Steel
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Claire O'Connors - Mother (Deceased)
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.
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.”
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.
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.
