Professor Schlange

Evil-doer
Full Name	Professor Schlange
Alias	Cruel and Heartless Scientist
Origin	Strider (2014)
Occupation	Directing scientist of Kazakh City’s research institute.
Powers / Skills	Command Technological enhancements High intellect
Hobby	Advancing his research and scientific knowledge
Goals	Serve Grandmaster Meio Create the perfect mechanical warriors
Crimes	Unethical experimentation Murder
Type of Villain	Mad Scientist

“	Each of my creatures...perfect in their own way. You, on the other hand, are not!	„
	~ Professor Schlange rants about his perfect creations.

Professor Schlange is an antagonist introduced in the 2014 Strider as a more traditional reimagining of Herzog Schlange.

Biography

Professor Schlange is the top scientist in Kazakh City and the overseeing director of Grandmaster Meio's Research Institute, a massive manufacturing plant and research station dedicated to provide Meio's Army with their Trooper androids, as well as conduct research in the creation of Grandmaster Meio's "perfect race". Schlange has also used the institute to work on personal projects as well, primarily related to his "ZAIN Project v2", a project aiming to develop a perfect battle machine using human brains as their central core. He's also developed the Ouroboros line with the military in order to create a hybrid biological and engineered machine, although this project was put on indefinite hold following its third incarnation (Ouroboros Mk-III) being impossible to control effectively. As he's not a combatant, he instead relies on the his security android force, the Research Troopers, as well as the many traps in the institute and the mechanical creatures he's developed to eliminate any intruder.

Professor Schlange first appears to greet Hiryu once he invades the Android Manufacturing Plant, sealing the whole area and seeking a Brainwalker on him. After Hiryu eliminates Xi Wang Mu within his facility, Grandmaster Meio himself orders Schlange to take care of him. Schlange meets with Hiryu on his second visit to the institute, praising Hiryu's valiant, yet misguided and pointless, efforts in facing Meio. He sends wave after wave of Research Troopers and other machines to kill him, while following around and gathering combat data from his battles. As Hiryu continues defeating his traps, Schlange starts losing his calm and becomes more and more deranged.

After Hiryu survives his laser wall death trap, destroys a second Brainwalker and finally reaches and takes down the facility's Gravitron unit, Schlange finally has enough and sends in his best creation, the mechanical gorilla Mecha Pon, to deal with him. Upon Mecha Pon's destruction, Schlange starts to violently rant, asking who he is to defy his power and ruin his facility and everything in it. To angry to realize Grandmaster Meio arriving behind him, Schlange is electrocuted to death after failing him one too many times.

Appearance

Professor Schlange is a sleek and slender man with very short black hair, a pointed nose and small, slit black eyes with underlines. He sports a mechanical scope-like contraction on his left eye and has two tubes coming out of his back: one metallic and another showing some green substance. He wears a green researcher uniform with black gloves, and in official art he's seen with a white lab coat marked with a black Research Facility logo over his shoulders like a cape.

Schlange has no legs, having them replaced by a mechanical contraption that connects him to the facility. This contraption is a half-circular cybernetic platforms connected to his chest via two small cables.

Personality

Schlange's sole objective is to satiate his obsessive desire for knowledge, and he disregards any notions of justice, well-being and kindness in order to further his knowledge and research. He is also willing to conduct horrific experiments on even human specimens. Schlange is a heavily disturbed individual, with a deranged an egotistical personality that borders on insanity, displaying exaggerated pride in his creations, calling them beautiful and perfect and thinking of them as impossible to defeat.

He displays an immensely arrogant and smug attitude to Hiryu, treating him like a lab rat and constantly pestering him with his creations and prospects to experiment with his corpse. However, as Hiryu continues destroying his machines and research laboratory, Schlange slowly starts losing his calm demeanor and begins directly insulting him, lauding him for ever daring to desecrate his work and how he has the gall to be defiant of his power and technology. By the end he becomes a deluded lunatic reduced to shouting and screeching at Hiryu for destroying all his traps and machines.

Schlange holds the belief that flesh is a mere vehicle that must be augmented with technology recklessly, and as a result of this view has carried several such ehnancements in his own body, most notably the removal of his entire lower half for a mechanical platform that cybernetically integrates him into the facility and allows him to transverse it with ease. The large amount of cybernetic implants has made him more machine than human.