Work in progress, needs to be sanctioned by Imanek.
Hi guys.
Name: Cornelius Burnstock
Codename: Tegu/Snap
Age: 22
Gender: male
Appearance: Became a towering 7 feet tall monster. He looks like something between a human and a dinosaur on steroids, painted crimson red. His whole body is covered by thick scales, protecting him like a natural armor. Some scales are chipped, or bare deep cuts; memories of previous fights. His shoulders are broad, and his body is quite muscular. His hands remained human, but his fingers end in razor-sharp talons. His head is like of a lizard’s or rather a raptor or another vicious monster from Jurassic Park. His mouth is full of sharp, backward bending teeth. His eyes are bright-green homogenous orbs, without pupil, iris or any structure. His body ends in a long powerful tail, what he uses to balance himself when running on two feet. When moving on two feet he is bent forward, like a lizard, but for casual moving he mostly prefers moving on all fours. He doesn’t wear any clothing, nor has he any worldly possessions.
(
Here is a little hint how he may look like. No, not Spiderman, the other one. Just take away the clothes, and paint him red. And the scales are thicker and more crodile-, armorlike.)
Personality: He isn’t the kind likeable geek he used to be. Years of social deprivation took his toll on him. For a time being he was just like an animal, feed, kill, flee or fight when necessary. After a while his personality mended itself. His memories, feelings, knowledge came back to him. He isn’t the one who worries about everything all the time anymore. He doesn’t have any problem with being violent, hurting, killing animals or even people, if the purpose is right. He is more aggressive, like a predatory animal. Avoid a fight he rather uses intimidation, and scare tactics. He rather growls, screams, displays teeth and claws to scare away an opponent rather than running away right away. When he wants to protect something or someone, he tries to eliminate the threat rather than trying to get away from it.
But that he lacks at the time, a purpose, a reason to live. So he takes the next best thing he can come up with, find the people he liked, and help and protect them.
History: Cornelius used to one of Xavier’s students at the academy for a time being, till he was asked by the Professor to transfer to another institute, the reasons were quite shady, and not of any importance at this point. Cornelius was always stricken with a non-human appearance since his powers started to show. That became sadly his downfall.
After saving a child who was about to fall from a window, the people took him for a monster, trying to abduct the little boy, and the angry mob lynched him. Almost beaten to death Cornelius was found and taken by Mastermind who took him to Genosha. There he underwent physical and mental ‘training’. He was treated with mutagens to ‘enhance’ his mutant abilities, turning him even less human in appearance. To escape Mastermind’s mental indoctrination Cornelius escaped into obedience. He acted and behaved like the pet Mastermind wanted him to be, while his sanity remained. During his time with the Brotherhood he got the name ‘Snap’ from the other members. He kept playing the dog, and waited for the right opportunity for escape, but things didn’t turn out as expected.
The Meltdown hit him quite badly and Cornelius was dead, but not Snap the lizard-like animal. It escaped into wilds and stayed there, hunting, feeding avoiding humans and civilization, just like any animal would do. During the years his physic grew as the effect of maturation, or the aftereffect of the mutagen treatment. Years passed, till the memories of being a ‘human’ being started to come back, and a personality to resurface from the pool of savage instincts. With time names started to come back, feelings for people who trusted and missed, and after a while he started to leave the wilds, in search for them.
Powers: Snap is a Red Killing Machine. He possesses reflexes, speed, strength and stamina way beyond human capabilities. His scales are bordering to being bullet-proof, you need an axe or a decent sword to cut through it, a knife would be quite useless. His claws easily rip through flesh, and his jaw is quite powerful, he can easily tear of an arm with a proper bite. He is able to climb walls and ceiling with ease, run over them, like it would the floor (just like aliens). He has a keen sense of smell, and he can feel the heat radiating from warm-blooded beings with his tongue, giving him a sixth sense of heat-sight. He regenerates quite fast, and can grow back even lost limbs (a finger in a few days, an arm or a leg in a week or two).
His mutated tongue, the source of his heat-sight ability is very sensitive, and a weak-point of him. Spicy food containing paprika, pepper, mustard, horse radish etc. can render his heat-sight useless by stimulating the heat receptors, overpowering everything (like looking directly into a bright light source with night-vision goggles). The same goes for minty stuff like gums and toothpaste, stimulating the cold receptors. Eating spicy, sour, very salty or minty food leaves his sensitive tongue with a quite painful burning sensation. Because he didn’t eat anything like that since is change he doesn’t know about this weakness.
Other: He didn’t speak a word since he was caught by Mastermind, and that was more than six years ago. With his changed body it’s questionable if he is able to speak at all.
His changed physiology requires an all-meat diet, preferably raw.
A few thoughts going around in his mind:
He is looking for his friends, but are those people still his friends? Do they still like him? Do they recognize him? Hell, do they even remember him? He didn't spend much time at the institute, left everybody hanging quite at the beginning, as he left before the first real mission. So if he will find Ben's group, he won't approach them, but stalk and watch them, and hide when spotted. Especially Hitsui. He still has the hots for the girl, of course he doesn't deserve her, as he left her hanging, and it's now a real monster, so he has no rights to claim any affection from the girl. But she still was the only girl who was nice to him, or showed any interrest despite his looks, and that sticks with you for a lifetime. Writing sample:
Do you know the feeling when you wake up after a night of drinking with the mother of all hangovers, and your mind can’t do anything else than growl from the pain of existence, but your body knows the drill by itself, and you are already brushing your teeth by the time you figure out what day it is? Imagine the feeling, just on a different time-scale. Days maybe weeks pass while your mind goes simply Arrrggghhh, and your body takes care of itself; hunting, feeding, running, jumping. The whole thing is just a mush, because the definition of time is just beyond your comprehension yet.
So you take a piggyback-ride in your own body, slumping down in the back seat while somebody or something else is driving. With time the haze starts to lift, and basic things come back. I’m talking about fundamental things like up and down, good or bad, forward and backward. The first coherent thought I got was a ‘WTF?’ Not with these words, but the essence of the sentence was there. You are crouching over a carcass of some animal, gobbling up big chunks of flesh, crunching on the bones, and you have the strange feeling of something being off. The feeling, that you shouldn’t do that for some reason, that it’s alien to you, but at the same time you know that you do that day by day.
As time passes you start to pay more attention to what’s going on around you. You know what a smell is, the color green and red, and that the ‘driver’ is going into the wrong direction. You reach out and grab the wheel. Moving a body is very strange and tiring at first, so you do that only for a little bit, but more and more often. Finally you take control. The analogy with the driving is a little bit off, as you don’t take the wheel from someone else, and you don’t need to learn the driving again. It’s rather flowing together with the driver, becoming one getting his knowledge and skills, and you don’t need to figure it out on your own. Maybe it would be better to say, that you realize that the driver is you as well. Anyway, it’s a very strange and subtle process and it takes quite some time, but in the end you finally get the distinct feeling of being ME.
Having reached the point of being an individual you finally can address questions, like ‘Who am I? Where am I? What the hell is going on?’ From this point it’s getting really easy. Memories, feelings start to come back. Sometimes in order, sometimes scrambled, and you have to puzzle them together. Your name, the taste of burgers and fries, Captain Pickard, the mansion, The Doctor, The Professor, the people you called friends, the people you called sick bastards, Genosha, and of She of course. You use your memories before the blackout, and after your awakening, the bits of information you pick up along the way, and you place everything together and figure out that the world is in deep sh… .
Everything is broken apart, including you, and you have no idea where you would fit into. You got too smart for your usual running, jumping, climbing trees, but you don’t know how or if you should try to approach the ‘intelligent’ part of the world. But you know, there is no way around it, because with the smarts something else came along; the LONELYNESS. Written in caps and ten feet tall letters, gnawing away on your newly grown soul like locust on a freshly grown radish.
So you set out to find her, or maybe some of the others. You know that they may not be alive anymore, or you won’t ever be able to track them. But you really don’t have anything else to do.
