"Well, aren't you lookin' like a snack..."
Villain Name: Virus
Civilian Name: Charles Richmond
Origin City: Lexington, MA
Hometown: Truth or Consequences, NM
Sex: Variable, Originally Male
Race: Variable, Originally Caucasian
Height: Variable, Originally 5"10
Weight: Variable, Originally 190lb
Age: 25
Birth Date: October 13th, 2001
--------Costumed Appearance: Virus' preferred form is also
his original: a man with short-cut dark brown hair, wearing a dress jacket, shirt and a tie, slacks, and loafers.
Civilian Appearance: Virus can become anyone you'd see on the street, from the average businessman to a career criminal, from a stray cat to a goddamn tree. Extremely variable. You could be able to tell it was him if you could somehow tell the clothes he was wearing were attached to his body.
Icon: Doesn't associate himself with trivial icons.
Personality: Virus is insane, no questions asked. Not only does he tend to eat people as a food source, he takes pleasure in killing and eating them. He tends to laugh while slaughtering innocents. In an actual difficult fight, however, he becomes much more stone faced and serious. He also has an unnatural fascination with becoming stronger, or in his words,
"the top of the food chain".
That being said, he's extremely cunning and clever, taking steps to ensure his own survival and avoid capture. He's not against using others for his own benefit, through deception or otherwise.
Super abilities:-Skills:Mastermind level intellect
Various combat skills (Hand to Hand, Weapons, Marksmanship, etc.)
Various menial skills (Cooking, Writing, Origami, etc.)
-Powers:Cell Manipulation:Virus can manipulate his own body's cells into a sort of "hivemind". These cells are highly advanced and much more complex than the average animal cell. Any cell can become any other cell. Virus can even disappate his form to walk through mesh and gain flexibility. These cells as a whole, however, get hungry... Which leads to our next ability.
Assimilation:Virus' main ability. His cells break off his body in a swarm and begin consuming a nearby living being, be it plants, animals, or human. It's mostly human, though. This allows him to not only absorb the energy from the being, but also gain access to it's memory (if it has one) and DNA codes, allowing him to essesntially "copy" abilities. The stronger the ability, the more people he needs to eat to make it work properly, depending on the "quality" of the person.
Shapeshifting:Virus can perfectly mimic anyone or anything he's assimilated, all the cells in his body shifting to accomodate the form. He can also re-arrange his biomass into different weapons: Armor, Shields, Blades, Claws, etc.
Assimilatiing more people means that Virus's body will become more dense, meaning more biomass to work with.
Healing Factor:While not exactly "healing", Virus can use excess cells to replace damaged or destroyed ones. He does have an extremely minor regeneration, though. Comined with his cell manipulation, and given enough time, he can potentially regrow his entire body from a single cell.
Asorbed Powers:His mimic powers are gained from assimilating, and tend to be weaker than the orginals. They include the minor healing factor above as well as Super Strength, Flight, Energy Manipulation, Telepathy, and other mundane abilities such as water breathing and enhanced reflexes.
-----Biography-----Character History/Origin:Charles Richmond used to be an average man. He was single, and didn't have many friends. He grew up in a wealthy family, went to M.I.T and graduated as a Bioscience major, and was hired to do government research in a facility in New Mexico. Originally, the facility was used to research the effects of disease on animals, testing various cures and vaccines for human use. Following the rise of superheroes and the One Week War, however, the facility was redirected to developing top-secret "countermeasures" against these metahumans, should the population be threatened again.
For the next five years, Charles would work on various bioweapons. Originally, they'd tested the weapons on animals, but to his shock and surprise, the project shifted to human testing, on prison inmates sentenced to death. He was horrified and partially disgusted by this course of action, but still convinced in the project's intentions, Charles continued working. This continued until 2025, when the accident occured.
Charles was preparing to test a new virus, one that would re-program cells to instantly become cancerous and attack the body. The man he was about to inject this virus into the biggest behemoth of a man Charles had ever saw. Bulging muscles, tattoos covering his body, you
know this man's killed before. Turns out he had an intense fear of needles. No amount of sedation they could have gave him that day would have been enough to stop him from breaking free of his bonds and stabbing Charles with the needle.
The needle punctured his hazmat suit, and the virus entered his body. At first, Charles collapsed and screamed from the pain of his cells being re-written and eating each other. Then, for a few moments, there was nothing. No thought or consciousness. A moment after that, Charles was back, still laid on the floor, his collegues staying as far from his body as they could while a security team was restraining the inmate.
But now, Charles had a certain...
hunger.His body morphed at an impossible shape and he'd burst from the hazmat, this form rushing the nearest guard and tearing him open, the cells breaking off Charles and entering his gaping wounds, eating him from the inside-out. The rest of the team open-fired, but this monster was too quick, killing them all one-by-one and feasting on the remains in seconds, nothing left of them but the torn clothes and weapons.
The inmate tried to escape this formless beast, but he too was cut down and devoured. It was as if on instinct. The scientists on the other end of the room were frantically trying to leave, but the room was sealed by security glass until the biohazard was contained. Taking this moment to gather his thoughts, Charles pulled himself back together: he'd formed his head, then his chest and arms, then his legs, then started working on the details such as his hair and face, his hands and feet, his fingers and toes. It was all second nature to him.
And when he'd gazed upon his terrified coworkers with his reformed eyes, all he saw was his next meal.
A few minutes of bloodcurdling screams and then a few more of silence, Charles had finally had his hunger sated enough to think clearly. He was horrified. He'd just killed over a dozen people. Why?! What had he become?! He couldn't live with himself. He'd looked inside himself, thinking on what he'd do, when he heard the voices. The memories of the people he'd killed, all playing at once inside his head. All of them synced to his killing frenzy. Replaying over and over, because he couldn't stop thinking about it. That's when he'd snapped.
Charles was a monster. It's what he was now. He had to embrace it. To give in to the hunger. It was natural now. It was him now. He was the Virus.
After morphing his hand into a heavy fist, and a couple hard pounds, Virus broke the security glass, proceeding to slaughter the entire complex. His cells were happy, so he was happy, laughing as he tore through the staff, absorbing them. He'd entered areas that before he didn't have clearance for, finding a few projects about giving powers to normal humans.
Not only did the test subjects give him more power, but according to the cells,
they were delicious.After cleaning the entire facility, Virus escaped, leaving behind nothing but his inhibitions.
Optional information
Virus can only assimilate organic substances. He can't anything artificial.
Potential Weaknesses:
Destroying every cell in Virus' body.
Cutting off his food supply, causing the cells to eventually eat themselves.
Having him eat something/someone with genetic defects or disadvantages, causing him to purge the defected cells.
A cure for the man-made virus that has taken over Charles.
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Nemesis: N/A
Allies: N/A
Team: N/A