Steele

Full Name: (various wavering cooing noises) No formal name
Nickname(s): Steele
Codename: N/A
Alias(es): N/A
Age: Roughly 20 years, only two years since landing on Earth
Classification: Alien, living metal/conscious space rock
Affiliation: Generally good, though morals may be confused





Hair Color: N/A
Eye Color: N/A
Gender N/A
Height: 5 inches
Weight: 80 lbs
Other Traits: Steele was formerly a floating consciousness attached to a space rock. After falling to Earth's surface, the extreme heat and pressure vented off gasses from their space rock form and compressed their "body" into a sphere of living metal. This metal is for the most part a solid, but can move in a way as fluid as an amoeba. Generally spreading out and engulfing objects can count as eating, though general movement is managed by a succession of spikes protruding to push the rest of the sphere in the proper direction, or four skinny spikes will protrude and allow Steele to walk like a quadruped animal. Steele's voice naturally consists of almost bell-like chimes and wavering cooing or screams, depending on mood, which can be manipulated into a human voice. These chimes and coos are also used to determine their surroundings, much like the echolocation of a bat. Noises are sent out, and they will bounce back to be interpreted by either the smooth surface of the sphere or by tiny spikes sent in the direction required.





Powers: "Super" Strength, Excessive Speed, Amoeba Engulfing

"Super" Strength: Being made of living metal, Steele is stronger than an average human. This is simply due to the physical properties of metal. The drawback to this is that all the properties of metal apply; if Steele's "arms" are super heated, they will melt and fold in on each other. If they over-stretch their "arms" or "legs," with too much weight, as well, they will bend and buckle. Steele can survive under 328 pounds with no compression or damage, and can lift 300 lbs until their "arms" are 7 inches away from their body. At two and a half feet, they can only hold around 250 lbs, can only hold around 125 lbs at the max "arm" length of 10 feet.

Excessive Speed: Again due to not being made of muscle and sinew, Steele can move quite a bit faster than a normal human. While not as fast as the Flash or any similar heroes, they can roll fast enough to match a civilian car's speed, and to launch themselves into the air if a ramp or other similar device is available. A serious drawback to this power is that it reduces the time Steele has to process their echolocation, and so they are much more likely to run into things. Steele speed can max out at 106 mph on flat ground, 120 mph down a steep hill, and 85 mph up the same steep hill. Normal pace is about 7 mph. It may be possible, as well, for the wind of the max speeds to disorient Steele's echolocation.

Amoeba Engulfing: Since Steele isn't a fully solid metal, as well as turning parts of their mass into spikes to move, they can also stretch their body into a thin sheet to engulf objects. This is most similar to how an amoeba stretches its cell wall around its food. The largest object that can be engulfed this way is the size of an average human from the neck down, which would stretch the metal of Steele's body about as thick as a bed sheet to wrap around the object. Once engulfed, these objects are crushed under extreme pressure as Steele reverts back to their normal size. Usually this will leave Steele slightly larger, as there is more mass inside them. This technique is mostly used as defense, to get rid of an immediate danger, especially sources of electricity, as a reflex to being shocked. There is potential to not crush everything engulfed and instead simply hold it, but Steele is currently unable to do this. Eventually Steele will have to excrete the crushed material, which is an unpleasant process of bringing it up to the surface of their body and pushing it out, not unlike vomiting at all.

Skills: Echolocation, Voice Mimic

Echolocation: Steele's natural voice is a combination of chimes, cooing, and screams, with an echoey, wavering metal overtone. They can sense when the sound waves of these bounce off of their surroundings and back onto their body. More detailed information can be obtained by extending hair-like spikes of their metal body to amplify the vibrations when they echo back.

Voice Mimic: Steele is able to mimic human speech, by combining their natural voice with specific patterns of waving metal "tentacles" or "hairs." Any human speech has a wavery overtone to it. Normally their speech is a high-pitched feminine sounding voice, as their natural speech is higher pitched, but Steele can also mimic other voices. Each voice they mimic will have the wavery, metallic overtone to it.

Weaknesses: Electricity, Fire, Sound Blindness, Dulled Senses

Electricity: Being made of metal, electricity is extremely painful for Steele. It works similarly to humans, scrambling their control over their body, causing spasms of spikes and ripples of their skin. Even so much as a static shock is enough to disrupt Steele's control over their body. Steele fears, that if they get a large enough shock, they might loose all control over their spherical body. Steele doesn't know what would happen to their consciousness if they were unable to move their body, but fears for the worst.

Fire: Like all metal, Steele is weakened by fire. At high enough temperatures, they will melt somewhat, making their movements sluggish and weaker, as the melted metal of their body can't support their weight. Fire doesn't hurt Steele as much as electricity by measures of pain, but it does heavily hinder their movement, and high enough temperatures will blind them, as sound waves will reflect onto them in unpredictable patterns, and they are unable to form solid spikes or hairs to collect more detailed sound waves. Similarly to electricity, Steele fears that if their body is damaged enough by heat, that they will not be able to recover, resulting in the equivalent of death, even if their consciousness survives attached to a useless body.

Sound Blindness: There are many things that can disrupt Steele's ability to hear and "see." As mentioned above, fire and anything that affects their base structure will muddle sound waves and make using them nearly impossible. High speed can reduce reaction time so much that Steele doesn't have time to interpret them, in essence running with their eyes closed. Situations with lots of noise can also interfere with their collecting sound waves reliably, because they can either be interrupted by other sources of sound, or multiple sounds can bounce of many surfaces, muddling the sounds and greatly confusing Steele.

Dulled Senses: Steele doesn't have nerves like carbon-based life forms. They can feel pressure, but it's much duller than a human's sense of touch. This means Steele finds it difficult to tell when they are damaging or hurting something. This results in many destroyed items, and makes Steele reluctant to physically interact with living things, since they have accidentally killed small animals before

Because of their basic Biology, Steele doesn't need to breathe, and will also sink in any liquid medium. Water greatly muddles their sight, however, and Steele tends to avoid water if possible.

Equipment: N/A




Personality: Before falling to Earth, Steele had lived completely alone, drifting through space. They never craved company, in fact, never even knew there were other beings capable of thought. Because of this, they can be quite timid when meeting new people on Earth. Despite this, Steele is fascinated by humans and their complex social structures, even if they still don't understand many of them.

Unlike Starfire (face it, the resemblance here is strong), Steele has no former frame of reference for social interaction. It's fascinating for them, but often times they will find themselves confused by social norms that seem illogical. Among these are some forms of morality, which Steele has a particularly difficult time with, having never needed to develop a sense of empathy. Steele does recognize that being of a good moral standing tends to result in positive interactions with many more individuals than what is morally bad, and their goal is to be good, but often the differences between good and bad are frustratingly confusing.

Another part of human interaction Steele can never quite seem to grasp is gender and romance/reproduction. The latter of the two is completely ignored by them, as they do not have hormones or reproductive organs, and no reason to bother with such things. When confronted with gender, however, things are quite different. Most humans understand innate genders, and they will tend to try to pinpoint Steele's gender. When asked, Steele will usually suggest that the gender-neutral they is ideal, but either "he" or "she" pronouns are acceptable as well. Steele will tend to use gender neutral terms for others, as well, because when they attempt to use gendered pronouns, it ends up backfiring and others get very angry at Steele. They don't know this, but it's because they often use the wrong pronoun, calling males "she" or females "he."

Often times Steele misses the solitude of floating in space, usually when they have made a mistake interacting with another Human. Despite this, they greatly enjoy being social, viewing it as the greatest challenge they have ever found. It's fun, learning about humans and their interactions, even when mistakes are made. Where others might pine for their home, Steele has no inkling that anything could ever change. This is probably an attitude influenced by spending unknown ages in space, with no way to move your trajectory. Steele became accustomed to dealing with any situation that arose, though living on Earth is infinitely more engaging than floating in space.
While Steele is fascinated by humans, they do tend to come off as cold and unemotional. This comes from the fact that they will resort to facts when confused or feeling overwhelmed. Humans can change their emotions on a whim, seemingly unpredictably, while facts never change. Sometimes, though, facts are not enough when dealing with volatile personalities, making it difficult for Steele to get along with very abrasive people or those who change emotions rapidly or take what Steele says with too much of an emotional reaction. This stems from both sides becoming frustrated, Steele at the unpredictability of the person, and the human at perceived emotions that Steele doesn't intend to convey.

Strengths:Steele is rather intelligent, and is great at discerning what is important information. They generally have a cool head and stable personality, working well under pressure, especially when social interaction is not needed. With enough experience, Steele could be a great planner, especially for tactical operations, though they are much less skilled at managing the people on a team. Beyond the tactical aspect of being emotionally detached, Steele makes a great confidant, able to listen to one's problems and suggest what appears to be the best action logically.

Interests/Habits:Steele is fascinated by cinema and television media. Even being unable to see the images on a screen, it serves as great research on human interaction, and the background music is usually very soothing. Live theater and music are even more enjoyable. Not long after falling to Earth, Steele was collected by an unknown agency and studied, which was viewed by them as more akin to torture. After learning that such mistreatment was not the norm, and that most inhabitants of Earth were quite kind and enjoyable to be around, Steele decided they disliked those who mistreated and abused others, ad wished to help in any way they could.




Family Members: N/A
Place of Origin: Space
History: Steele is not certain when they first recognized being conscious. They're certain it happened when they were still a rock floating in space, but without anything to do, they had mostly languished and felt only the basest emotions. One day (or a moment in time, rather, as there is no way to measure days in space) they felt themselves drifting further off their path than normal. There was a strong pull from one side, not unlike what they felt when coming into contact with other non-sentient rocks, but much larger. The force became greater and greater the more it pulled Steele off their path, and Steele could feel themselves moving faster as time went on. Later, they would learn that this was when they entered Earth's gravitational pull, but at the time it was a completely new experience.
When Steele entered Earth's atmosphere, the heat and pressure of falling to the surface compressed their body, boiling away ice and compressing metal compounds, forming their current body shaped like a sphere of metal. It took a while for Steele to get used to their new body, a cycle of maybe two or three days, judging by the cycles of warmth and cold they felt as they tested their limbs. Eventually, Steele found a decent method of moving around their crater, testing their newfound voice as well. They had only felt the vibrations they made in space, and had never thought they would be able to sense those vibrations in any other way. It was while enjoying their voice that Steele learned to use it to sense what surrounded them. Eventually, they managed to climb out of the crater they had formed on impact, and they were excited to explore their surroundings. Until they felt a warm touch and the sensation of the ground falling away from them.
This was Steele's first contact with humans. Later Steele would learn that this one was a scientist, though never for whom they worked. The scientist brought Steele to a cold place with very geometric shapes to climb on. Though the humans didn't seem to like it when Steele climbed on them, and always moved them back to the same spot. While being studied, Steele began to learn human speech, and how to interact with them. It was all great fun, except for when the humans inflicted pain on Steele. Included were heat tests, which were fine at first, until they began interfering with Steele's sight, which scared them very much. The tests of pressure weren't very fun either, though both were much less painful than the electricity tests. The electricity tests were horribly painful, and Steele even worried that they could permanently harm them.
Sample rp:
Steele felt a subtle tugging. It was strange, familiar, yet different. They couldn't really discern what was familiar about it, though. As the consciousness thought, it was pulled further off course, faster and faster. Finally, with a shiver of triumph, Steele realized that the pull was similar to when they bumped into other debris floating around as they were. The consciousness was quite pleased with themselves, and stewed in their smug satisfaction for a while. Then, suddenly, the pulling force changed.
Steele felt as though they were being pressed in on all sides, something crushing them. Heat melted off ice from their body before burning straight through them. Steele could feel themselves breaking apart as they got hotter, but also the terrible pressure crushing what remained of their rocky body into a smaller and smaller space. Steele vibrated in terror, realizing with a start that they were sensing something new. Steele vibrated again, and again sensed something, realizing that it was coming from their vibrations.
As quick as the pain and pressure had started, it stopped increasing. Steele had his something firm yet forgiving, slowing their descent until the object rested against one side. There was still a terrible pressure pushing the consciousness into the firm object beneath them, but it was bearable. As Steele cooled down from the flame that had engulfed them, they realized their body remained in its smaller form. Pondering, Steele vibrated in thought, feeling that strange, new sensation. That was right, here their vibrations caused a new sensation. Steele cooed at the discovery, enjoying the sensation of hearing their own voice.
When Steele had finally cooled off enough to maintain a solid form, they found that they could stretch the material of their body. One protrusion rolled them a little, another new feeling of the object underneath them shifting. The orb rocked back and forth, throwing protrusions out in the direction of the object on it's one side, vibrating out a coo as they realized that the pulling was still there as well, coming from the object they were in contact with. This sensation was very familiar, but much stronger than the sphere was accustomed to. Their spiky protrusions could counteract it, but not forever. Cooing in concentration, Steele suddenly realized that there was a second noise, similar to their own voice, but muffled. They chimed in their wavering voice, waiting for a response. It came almost immediately, from the object in contact with them.
Steele kept sending out loud chimes, wondering if maybe they were in contact with another consciousness. The muffled responses didn't sound like answers, however. Tiny spikes rippled from a central point in a confused gesture, and Steele pushed themselves along the object underneath them, chiming every so often, testing where the responses came from, finding that as they had to exert more pressure to move themselves along the object against the pulling force, the responses came from different areas. It was fascinating. Steele had never had this much to interact with and think about while floating. They decided they liked this object with the pulling force, and hoped they could stay for a while.