Sebastian Sterns

"There's a reason I'm called 'the Commander' and not 'the Suggester'. Not only is the latter a terrible alias, but my orders are meant to be obeyed, not selectively followed. Now fix that statistic."

-Sebastian shows his authority over his friends.

Sebastian Sterns, sometimes called 'The Commander', is the son of the (self-proclaimed) smartest man in the world, The Leader.

Personality
If there's one thing that's valued by Sebastian, it's intelligence. If this is even possible, he may be the only kid at the Academy who's more obsessed with being smart than Dexter. He enjoys school, learning and anything academic, especially boasting about his grades. Granted, he does have things to back up this bragging, inheriting his father's large head and the scientific mind that comes with it.

He's a little egocentric and can spend a lot of time gloating about how much more clever he is than anyone else. However, he tries not to let this make him too insufferable. Pointing out that his minions are incompetent will get him nowhere and looking down on others is petty. He tries to be a team player in his group of friends and show everyone that they are valuable members of his injustice syndicate.

However, while he isn't openly mean or insulting to his cohorts, he's a bit of a perfectionist. If you aren't living up to his ridiculously high standards, he's likely to breath down your neck and tell you step-by-step how to improve your performance. He is very fussy in this way.

Sebastian is notoriously nosy and likes to keep tabs on all of his friends at all times. Sometimes, though nobody takes very kindly to it, he scans their thoughts to see if he's being lied to. Yes, it's definitely very micro-manage-y of him, but he needs to know everything he can about his acquaintances.

He likes to think that he's thought out every variable and possibility, that his constant bossing around of others and insisting that they do things his way will help him achieve whatever it is that he's after, but his slight impatience to get the ball rolling and getting this done makes him rush into things without realizing that there's something he didn't take into account.

When he's not thinking of schemes with his friends or studying harder than is necessary for someone as knowledgeable as himself, he has a couple of hobbies he partakes in. He enjoys reading, usually non-fiction books, but he has a soft spot for sci-fi novels and some works of horror fiction, Lovecraft's work being his particularly favourite. He also loves puzzles, specifically Rubik's Cubes.

The idea of perfection, paradise and utopia fascinate him. Like his dad, who almost succeeded in mutating and mind-controlling every person in the United States so that he could create an ideal world under his rule, he dreams of making a perfect kingdom. He has a keen interest in government because of this (you need to know how to rule if you want to be a king or president or dictator), as well as in radiation. Sometimes he feels lonely, being of the green-skinned minority and wants to create others like himself, so he won't be so alone.

Physical Appearance
Sebastian is short, but his height is made up for by his oversized head. His cranium stretches almost a foot higher than most people's heads do, holding a very advanced brain, like his father's before him. He has green skin, the type many people associate with toxic waste. His ears are pointed. He has black hair, kept short and orderly so that it doesn't hang into his almond shaped grey eyes.

His clothes consist of an orange jumpsuit, featuring an odd little design of the planet Saturn over his heart and some bits of grey and black around, mostly along the hems and seems of his outfit. He has grey boots with orange soles. He sometimes dons a lab coat, but only when he's being hardcore scientific.

Family
Father is a little... critical of his son, to say the least, though this may be somewhat justified. Since he has tried to rule the world several times, and nearly succeed on many occasions, he wants someone competent to continue his legacy. Sebastian, as the only child, is obligated to fulfill that lofty goal. He does as much as he can to impress him, but it usually isn't enough. You've joined student council? That's nice, now worm your way to the top. You got a B+ in English this term? Unacceptable, keep studying your giant brain off. Some point off that Sebastian may get some of his finicky traits from him, expecting so much from his peers.

Mother dearest is surrounded with some degree of mystery, as is typical of many children at Iron Heights Academy. Sebastian has never mentioned her, thus leading some gossips to believe that she doesn't exist, that he was grown in a test tube or cloned from his father's DNA or something. That kind of crime against science doesn't seem beyond the Leader. In any case, mom is AWAL and her son doesn't seem too concerned about her existence or lack thereof.

Friends
Sebastian is the unofficial leader of the strange, motley band consisting of himself, Johnathan Craddock, Aria C. Sharpe, Paulette Batroc and Dexter Torque. The group of them get along famously, though he is known to be a tad picky towards them. When he gives an order or issues an incentive, it must be followed to the letter and then some. The others find him kind of bossy because of this. He does care for them, though, a lot in fact and will apologize when things get too out of hand.

He and Dexter, his roommate, tend to butt heads the most, both being rather assured of their own intelligence and often engaging in arbitrary contests of smartness. Sebastian takes these duels very seriously, unlike the game-loving Dexter, but this sometimes leads to actual blocks in their friendship.

He has an odd interest in the transfer student from a few dimensions over, Jylndmkwyx. She doesn't care much for the attention, but he seems rather intent on... studying her? We're not sure, he has some interest in her species and wants to know more about her. Weird.

Pet
That really should be 'pets', as Sebastian doesn't have a singular pet. He owns a small ant farm, consisting of about a hundred or so black ants. The 'black' part is always stressed by the very precise Sebastian, as he wouldn't want them to be confused with red ants. He'd never have red ants as pets. Ants are industrious, smart and tend to get things done quickly. Since all these traits are admired by Sebastian, he thinks that they're the ideal pets. He keeps them in his room and is very protective of them. No way is Dexter getting that ugly spider thing of his near his precious ants. Not all of them have names, but the queen of the colony (marked with a green dot on her back, so he never loses track of her) is named Elizabeth, 'Betty' for short. He's been trying to see if he can make them do his bidding, but with fruitless results. Plus, that motif might come across a little too... Henry Pym. They also aren't really useful for testing any of his experiments on, but he couldn't find any bigger lab rats. Now actual rats... that would be useful.

Romance
Romance is, well... not high on Sebastian's agenda. It won't, at present, advance any of his plans, so it doesn't really matter right now. He doesn't dislike the idea of dating, in fact, rumour has it he's got his eye on someone (Brainiac's little girl or Psimon's, the opinions differ depending on who you ask and when. Heck, some of the wilder stories have implied that he's taken an interest in a girl relating to Kite Man!). He denies all such rumours and simply says that right now, he doesn't have any time for this sort of thing. If anyone's interested, they need to wait until he's gotten closer to his goal. For now, he's single and not really looking for anyone.

Trivia

 * Sebastian's ant, Betty, though she shares her full name, Elizabeth, with many English queens, is meant to be an homage to Betty Ross, daughter of General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, a supporting character in the Hulk's comics.


 * A couple of references were made to some other characters played by Jeffrey Combs, an actor Missy is fond of and the voice of the Leader on Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. A reference to Kite Man (played by Combs on Brave and the Bold) was made in the section above. Sebastian enjoys reading, particularly about Lovecraftian abominations, this being a reference to a parody of said author, H.P. Hatecraft, played by Combs on Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated. Finally, Sebastian hints at wanting rats as pets in addition to ants, as a nod to Doctor Falco/The Rat King from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who controls rats and formerly had telepathy like Sebastian.


 * That being said, the Jeffrey Combs Leader is the version of the character that Sebastian is the son of, unlike the weird amalgams that some of her other characters are related to.


 * Two weird fear factoids about Sebastian: Other than ants, he is terrified of bugs. His father kind of had some bad times with bugs. He doesn't like talking about it. Secondly, he has an odd superstitious belief that the colour red is bad news. Red Hulk is defeated more often than the regular, green Hulk is, so he believes that turning his skin red or associating with it at all wouldn't end well.


 * Sebastian is obsessively clean. Perhaps the fact that his father, in the comics, is a former janitor has something to do with that.


 * Rubik's Cubes? Cubes in general? Say, isn't 'The Cube' the name of that one Marvel universe prison? The one the Leader was incarcerated in? No wonder he likes those things...


 * Appropriately enough, Sebastian fills the role of 'The Leader' in Missy's Five Man Band.