Character/Player Info
Name: GG
LJ: ggmoonycrisco
Email: theggning@gmail.com
Messenger: FullArmoredGG (AIM)
Timezone: Mountain (GMT -7)
Feel free to use this post as an HMD. All the anon and IP stuff is on and off, respectively. If you have any issues with the way I'm playing little Stevie Burnside, please bring them to my attention in whatever method makes you comfortable.
VITAL STATS:
Name: Steve Burnside
Age: 17 (at death-- now 18 by his estimate)
Height/Weight: 5'8" / 149 lbs
Origin/Nationality: Hastings, Minnesota, USA (American)
Hair: Red
Eyes: Blue
Personality: Steve is your basic stereotypical teenage emo kid. Though he's outwardly cocky and acts overly confident, behind the constant attempted wisecracks he's sullen, moody and short-tempered. Steve is fairly misanthropic and thinks very little of other people. He dismisses others as being stupid or greedy, and would rather place his trust in himself than anybody else-- though he is incredibly protective of the rare individuals who prove themselves to him. He is prideful and overconfident where it is almost never due, but can just as easily get discouraged and kick himself when he fails. He's very reckless and is most definitely under the influence of raging hormones at all times, often having trouble controlling his emotions or allowing himself to be provoked. Steve can be easily distracted by pretty girls or the type of things that teenage boys think are cool, like guns, vehicles, explosions, etc.
Getting to know him a little better (if you can put up with him) reveals a sad, angry young man underneath all the sarcasm and posturing. Steve is clearly having difficulty coping with the recent events in his life and feels like he has to shut out others for his own protection. He is very lonely and craves attention from someone who genuinely cares about him-- having lost both his parents and all the respect he once had for his father. He can be extremely sensitive and thinking too much about his former life is enough to send him into a breakdown. Even though he can be incredibly immature, much of his attitude is understandable-- he is still young and has seen many horrific things at an age where most kids are getting their first cars, going on dates or planning to go to prom. Steve longs for the normal life he left behind, even if he knows all too well that it's gone forever. All he can do is search for ways to cope with his situation the best he can, and he easily loses sight of the bigger picture.
Still, despite his attitude problem and no matter how he may pretend to be a bad boy, Steve is completely transparent as a good kid. He has a powerful sense of right and wrong, refuses to betray his own principles, and won't hesitate to throw himself into danger if it's the right thing to do. He is annoyingly persistent and likes to help others whenever he can-- he especially likes to watch out for those close to him, whether or not they actually need his protection.
Steve is a bit of a gearhead and loves cars, planes and motorcycles-- and typical of a teenage boy, he loves to eat just about anything.
Background:
Steve Burnside was an only child-- his mother was a homemaker and his father had a high-paying job, working for the pharmaceutical giant Umbrella Corporation as a researcher. Life was pretty much normal for the Burnsides, until the day Steve arrived home from school and found a group of armed soldiers in his living room. His mother was gunned down before his eyes, and both Steve and his father were beaten into submission and taken into custody. The soldiers were a unit of the Umbrella Special Service sent to arrest Mr. Burnside, who had been caught selling company secrets to rival businesses for cash. His wife and son, both with no idea of the white collar crime he'd been involved in, were considered witnesses and ordered to be captured or killed.
Steve and his father were taken to the Umbrella Corporation's penitentiary on Rockfort Island, a remote base off the coast of South America operated by the maniacal Alfred Ashford. Father and son were imprisoned in appalling conditions for an unknown period of time when suddenly, the island was attacked by outside forces. One of the bombs destroyed a lab containing samples of the T-Virus, and soon the island was infested with zombies, guards and prisoners alike. Steve escaped the prisoner barracks but could not find his father, and now alone and otherwise defenseless, he holed himself up in a watch tower manning a gatling gun.
In short order Steve ran into Claire Redfield, another prisoner. The two teenagers teamed up with the goal of escape and bailed each other out of danger multiple times, though Claire frankly deserves a medal or two for putting up with Steve's attitude and his impulsive behavior that nearly got them killed repeatedly. As they made their way through an abandoned jeep depot, Claire was attacked by a zombified Mr. Burnside and after a near disastrous moment of hesitation, Steve snapped and emptied his guns into his father. He finally told Claire the story of what happened to him, then broke down sobbing over his father's corpse. Claire left him alone to mourn for a while and after a final goodbye, Steve caught up with her. The two reached the island airport and escaped in a cargo plane that Steve was somehow able to fly.
At this point, it was made painfully obvious that Steve was nursing a massive crush on the older girl. He proceeded to fail utterly at anything resembling putting the moves on her.
Alfred hijacked the plane's controls and directed it to another Umbrella base in Antarctica. When they landed, Alfred got the drop on the pair in an attempt to murder them, but Steve shot him and sent him down a cliff in a rare moment of coolness. With Alfred out of the way, Claire and Steve reached a large snow CAT and tried heading in the direction of an Australian research base in the distance. Unfortunately, Alfred's twin sister Alexia was newly awakened from cryostasis and seeking revenge on the pair who had killed her brother. Using her tentacles, she tipped the CAT over and captured the teenagers.
Alexia imprisoned Claire behind a staircase and took Steve to her laboratory, where she injected him with T-Veronica, the strain of T-Virus she had created. Steve slipped out of consciousness and awoke chained up in a chair deep in the base's dungeons. Claire arrived with news that her brother Chris was there to rescue them, but when she tried to undo Steve's bonds, he complained of feeling ill and his heart began to race. Screaming in pain, Steve mutated into a hideous and hulking Tyrant. The virus' effects on his brain removed all reasoning and sense of self, and he immediately attacked Claire. He came close to killing her but at the last moment was able to resist and awaken his human mind in time to save her life. Alexia impaled him with one of her tentacles and again, possibly through his own resistance, he was able to revert back to his human form. Steve weakly confessed that he loved Claire just before dying in her arms.
With the base on countdown to self-destruct, Claire was forced to leave Steve's body behind. It was quickly picked up by men under the command of Albert Wesker, who was at the base seeking a sample of T-Veronica and found more than enough left in the teenager's body. During a standoff with Chris, Wesker taunted Claire with the suggestion that he might be able to bring Steve back to life through studying his corpse, but nobody knew how seriously to take this.
Guess they should have listened more.
Supernatural Abilities:
As the result of an experiment performed on him by Alexia Ashford, Steve carries a strain of the T-Veronica virus in his body. Soon after he was infected, it transformed him into a monstrous Tyrant, though he was somehow able to keep control of his mind and fight against the virus' berserker influence to the point of mutating back into his own body before he died. Now that he has been revived, the virus continues to influence his body.
Probably as a result of the virus, Steve seems bizarrely resilient for an ordinary teenager, with a higher than usual tolerance for injuries. He runs an abnormally high body temperature and he carries the classic trait of an incubated T-Veronica victim: his blood is highly flammable and will ignite if exposed to air. If he's stressed enough, the virus can send very short bursts of superhuman strength through Steve's body (enough to, say, break a wall or push something very heavy) but this is not as useful as it sounds-- Steve has very little if any control of these abilities, and any resurgence of them will stagger him with crippling pain afterward until he calms down.
Fortunately, due to medical advancements on the ship, the Veronica virus has been stabilized in Steve's body and is no longer contagious, nor does it carry the risk of transforming him (again.) He reports to medical for treatment once a week to ensure that the virus stays dormant-- skipping his treatments will once again put him at risk for mutation.
Non-superhuman special abilities of note:
Steve is just a teenager and most of his abilities come down to a combination of youth and dumb luck, but emergency situations have forced him to become rather adaptable. He's passably familiar with the use of firearms (he prefers to dual wield a pair of submachine guns) and capable of surprising athletics if he needs them.
Also, in one of the most jarring unexplained moments in RE history, Steve "empty a quarter of a clip of ammo into a wall while throwing a tantrum" Burnside is fully capable of flying a plane. He's actually something of a gearhead and good at driving/piloting/tinkering with a wide variety of small vehicles and machines. That doesn't make the fact any less jarring.