Strychnine (Human AU Strychnine)

Oh he's a menace. He genuinely wants to be a cartoon supervillain, half of his persona is ripped straight from the large collection of comics he keeps in his lab. He’s very eccentric and a little childish, and extremely persistent in their friendships. If you befriend him he will NOT leave you alone. He's very cartoonishly "evil", prone to bouts of maniacal laughter and monologuing about his "totally evil plans" to Ambrose.

However, he’s actually extremely intelligent and competent, he knows exactly what he’s doing and how to do it, and he’s charismatic enough to get lots of clients and be somewhat popular as a “doctor” and necromancer in the criminal world. Despite his fairly non intimidating appearance, he does not take well to people trying to push him around or intimidate him into doing things he doesn't want to, and the threats of horrific violence with a smile like :D on his face usually do a good job at getting people to not try that again.

Beyond his persona, he’s actually got a lot of issues with his perception of self and his "evil" is often a coping mechanism to ignore his past. People like him, they’re… they’re not supposed to be the good guys, right? Ever since he was a kid he just related to the villains in the comics he liked to read much more than the heroes, and his interests in general were always quite morbid, so he was treated like he was offputting and scary and just thinks that’s the kind of person he has to be.

Strychnine is a very small man, standing at about 5’2 and being pretty scrawny and babyfaced. He’s been mistaken for a teenager on more than one occasion, but he is not a teenager, and does have enough strength to be able to move bodies throughout his home and lab. He’s got about a shoulder length mullet of dreadlocks made of goo, all of them naturally bright cyan and similair to silly putty in texture. His eyes are red, with naturally yellow schlera, and more downturned in shape, often looking a little teary despite all the smiling he does. He has a decent amount of scarring, with both a large Y shaped scar across his entire chest and chemical burn scars all over his hands and lower arms. His palms of his hands also constantly drip black acidic goo, and his fingers have a black gradient on them. Despite wearing gloves all the time, he still paints his nails. In addition to his scars, he’s also got stitches tattooed around his neck, shoulders, thighs, and ankles, and also an entire ribcage and spine done in cyan ink. The tattoos are actually meant to purposely draw attention to the scars, he claims to just make himself look “more scary and fucked up”. Beyond that he has a variety of other tattoos on his body, most of which are done with UV ink so they glow.

However, most people don’t see those scars or tattos because of how he dresses, his work outfit being a dark grey older style labcoat that he customized to have neon drips on the sleeves, a lead lined apron, and a pair of goggles that look more like they’ve come from a radioactive steampunk cosplay then anyone actually trying to be lab safe. Underneath that he's almost always wearing a mesh shirt. His pants and boots stay pretty much the same regardless of if he's working or not, being a pair of dark purple straight legged jeans with caution tape safety pinned to the left leg and some sort of belt. He's almost constantly wearing atleast 2 inch platforms, though what the shoes actually look like varies wildly and they never seem to actually make him look much taller.

While not working his casual clothes vary a lot, but lean towards a combo of more punk and scenecore asethetics. He probably has a radiation or biohazard motif on more then one piece of his clothing, and knowing him, something probably glows in the dark or under UV. He doesn't wear a ton of makeup but he's commonly got a little bit of eyeliner on, which runs when he gets nightmares since he keeps not buying the waterproof stuff, and maybe occassionally a little black lipstick if he's really feeling like it. His right ear is pierced but he never wears earrings.

#07 was created in a lab, a flawed clone of Dr Belladonna's biological son, Oliver Remeron. He was used as lab rat for the first few years of his life, undergoing various tests, surgeries, and even a vivisection from his mother. Dr. Belladonna was extremely physically and mentally abusive to him, but with nothing to compare it to, #07 merely thought this was normal. Until one day, when he was eight years old, it cummulated in Dr. Belladonna deciding that she was going to kill him, and all the pieces clicked in that this was NOT how a mother should treat her son. #07 fought back, and wound up killing her instead with his acid hands. He panicked immediatly after, kneeling in a puddle of gore and chemicals, until he would up passing out. Afterwards, he managed to make his way out of the warehouse where Belladonna kept her lab, and found his way to the doorstep of a fostering program, still wearing a hospital gown covered in blood and black goo.

Strychnine seemingly recovered decently from the trauma of his childhood, being a decently happy and energetic child, though a little… off putting by most people’s accounts. His interest in dead things started early, as did his fixation on superheroes. He spent most of his free time as a kid reading comic books and trying to dig up the bones of small animals in the backyard of the foster home. He was fostered a couple times but... none of it ever stuck. He was too "hyperactive" and "offputtting" and... sometimes the foster parents would find dead things in their homes despite not having a cat...

He did fairly well in school, showing immense interest and talent in chemistry and biology, but still failing to make many friends due to his eccentricity. He spent most of his time hanging out with his few friends he made in foster care, drawing, and being on the internet. He was a full on scene kid, and totally 100% wrote fanfiction in middle school. He STILL has a DeviantArt account. There was a period in highschool where he tried to be more "normal" but that failed pretty miserablly so he gave up on that right afterwards.

Once he was 18, like many kids in the foster system are, he was kicked out after having not been adopted. Thankfully, he didn’t need to fend for himself for too long and had enough friends to couch surf, before through his own academic merit… and a lot of forgery, he got himself into college on scholarships alone. He went to college for pre-med and biochemistry, doing quite well in his classes and actually finding an identity that actually worked for him. The crime started then, mostly being grave robbing and small amounts of necromancy, as he didn't have the supplies for anything too serious, but he could bring back someones dog if they really wanted. Over this time, he also worked on entirely erasing himself from legal records, ensuring that as soon as he graduated he could pretty much entirely disappear. And that’s what he did! As soon as he got his degree he disappeared himself, slipping entirely into his persona and disconnecting himself from the person he used to be. He wasn’t sure exactly what he actually wanted to do with his life but honestly, he had a couple student loans to pay off still, he never wanted to be an actual doctor, and… crime does pay, right?

Strych pretty quickly found his place in the actual criminal underworld in that well… knowing a decent amount of science and medicine, not being scared to get your hands dirty, and having… a little morbid fascination with dead things makes it REALLY easy to make yourself a go to guy for everyone’s illegal medicine/organ theft/grave robbing/necromancy needs. He did start off small, just finding people who needed patching up but couldn’t go to actual hospitals, or graverobbing for fresh bodies to sell to less ethical medical institutions, but his skill and kind of… unnerving charisma helped him get some more clients and the funds to build an actual lab in the attic of the somewhat rundown rowhouse he bought in the city.

He also really worked up the persona over this time, fully committing to being a “supervillian” simply just for fun! I mean, having a recognizable brand is always helpful, and he finds it very very fun to be able to dress up and act as unhinged as he wants. It also helped him gain a bit of a reputation, just in that he was… recognizable and well, anyone who thought his whole shtick was stupid also had to deal with the fact that he was VERY good at his job and also just… a little fucked up. The first couple times he beat the shit out of people who were much bigger than him were surprising, but by now, the people in the circles he likes to be in understand that you do not try to push him around. He’ll play up the weak and helpless vibe that people sometimes get from him on first glance if it’ll get him what he wants, but it is entirely a facade.

He met Ambrose after he was fairly well established in what he liked doing, established enough that someone tipped the cops off to the graveyards he preferred digging up graves in. Ambrose picked up the case and cornered him in an alleyway one night, immediately trying to put Strychnine under arrest which Strych just… went with. Mostly since he recognized Ambrose as being his roommate for one year in college, which Ambrose sure did NOT remember. As soon as Ambrose actually got him into the police car, he used his gloves to slip the handcuffs and immediately melted a literal hole in the door of the car and threw himself out. He waved at Ambrose before running off so Ambrose couldn’t go and chase him back down, but that was the start of a relationship that would spiral VERY fast.

The spiralling started after he decided Ambrose was a good “rival” to his “supervillian” and immediately decided to stalk him and then break into his house. Ambrose freaked the fuck out (understandably) when he realized Strychnine was in his house and wound up launching a cup of coffee all over him, before Strych forced him to sit down and explained that they were going to be rivals before once again scampering out of the window he broke in through. He was determined to have that not be their last interaction.

It’s been a year and a half since Ambrose and Strychnine officially met, and well, Strych was very determined to force him down the rocky enemies to friends arc, and he did. He simply just did not leave Ambrose alone, just… showing up to pester him until Ambrose eventually stopped being so hellbent on arresting him and instead started to warm up to him. He loves it, and while he still considers Ambrose a “rival”, he also considers him his best friend. They quite literally went from Ambrose trying to arrest him multiple times to the two of them having movie nights, and Strychnine sees that as a win.

He’s still doing quite well with his job, despite now having a police detective hanging around quite often, as he covers a lot of it up and also sort of just… desensitised Ambrose to some of it. He’s just… very much trying to keep the relationship a secret, since while it’s strictly platonic, he doesn’t want anyone knowing he has a fondness for a cop and trying to find a way to hurt one or both of them through that.