Lepin P. Regensturm

Success was always expected of Lepin. The latest in a long line of genius scientists, everyone always had the highest expectations of Lepin. From a young age he was hailed as the next Vegapunk. But to Lepin, this was a curse not a blessing. None of his achievements were his own, not really, they were the achievements of his family. To achieve was the norm, but to fail was to disappoint. For a long time, this was Lepin’s life. But everything changes, and Lepin found love. A no name scientist from a family that had never entered the scientific field before. Lepin’s family was enraged that he’d break generations of tradition and a marry a girl for something other than genetics, but for once Lepin stood up against them, calling them stuck in their old ways, with no idea of what true intelligence was.

For a time Lepin and his love were happy, living in the countryside, doing science for themselves and no one else. One day she got pregnant, and they had a little girl. But tragedy struck, as happens to all mothers in One Piece, his wife died. The childbirth was too difficult. Her lasts words to him were to endure, for the sake of the world.

And endure he did. For 12 years he did his best to be both a single father and carry out his family’s work. But this story doesn’t end here. His clan, embittered by the loss of their greatest talent, schemed his downfall. They planted a bomb in his laboratory, planning to kill his daughter and destroy his work, and blame it on faulty construction. They had already synthesised a drug capable of blocking parts of his long-term memory and planned to use this to get him back under their control. But things didn’t go according to his plan, instead of coming to the family meeting to ‘apologise’ like they planned, he ignored the invitation and stayed in his lab, and was caught in the explosion.

His whole body hurt, and he couldn’t feel his lower half. Was all this blood his? He knew this pipe wasn’t meant to be jutting out of his stomach. That didn’t matter. Where was Emily? His hope, his joy. The building was full of flames, but he couldn’t leave her. He ran into the flames, not caring about his own safety.

There! Under the rubble. He pulled her battered body from the rubble. Good. She was still breathing. Now to get out. He vomited up blood. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and ran out the building.

Ah good. People. A crowd had grown around the burning building. “Please… Please help her…” He offered the headless corpse forward. “She must live…” It’s awfully easy to find breath in the body of a dead loved one.

Although him being caught in the explosion wasn’t apart of their plans, it ultimately worked out in their favour, as they were the only ones with the technology needed to keep a man in his state alive for an extended period of time. They keep him under their control through use of the drug mixed in with his regular medicine.

Appearance
Lepin is covered from head to stump with a dark cybernetic life support suit, mostly of his own design. Despite his condition he still tries to keep up his image as a gentleman, wearing a suit over his cybernetics, covering as much of his cybernetics as he can. Underneath the suit, Lepin’s body is one huge scar from head to toe, a hunk of plastic implanted in his chest keeps his lungs moving. His legs end in stumps at the knee, having been amputated. Before the accident, Lepin was a dapper man with an average build despite his tall height, with smooth black combed back and hair a somewhat boring face. He still wore his signature suit.

Personality
Lepin is a polite and sophisticated man, caring deeply about his self-image and how people see him. Lepin is a very intelligent man but doesn’t look down on others for having lower intelligences than him. Lepin believes strongly in manners, and treats others with respect at all times, even if they don’t treat him the same. Lepin is noted as a man of exceptionally strong will, choosing to live on despite everything he’s been through. Lepin sometimes comes off as slightly cold and robotic, but is actually very emotional, and attaches to others easily. Lepin believes in the beauty of all living things, and humanities power of always prevail and conquer all. When working on a project, Lepin has trouble holding back, and often includes dozens of unnecessary features, often doubling the length of construction. Lepin dreams of someday turning the world into a scientific utopia, a world with no problems. Lepin understands the foolhardiness of his this dream, but believes absurd dreams are what moves the world. His likes and interests include, tea, wine, fine-dining, classical music, quiet afternoons, art and all forms of science. Despite his lack of taste buds, he still keeps up the formality of savouring his food. His dislikes are explosions, modern music and being a cyborg.

Injury and cybernetics
Lepin lost basically all of his internal organs, weather they were really damaged that badly or if the Regensturm clan replaced them to keep him dependant on them is unknown. He has an artificial pace maker, artificial lung, liver and more. His sweat glands were destroyed by the burns, so his suit is designed to monitor his body temperature and keep it at a constant 23 °C through use of a built-in boiler and refrigerator. Lepin’s senses are also extremely damage, his ears and nose were destroyed leaving just holes in his head. His tongue was severely burnt, taking away all sense of taste. His eyes were also damaged. His head piece is designed to accommodate for his lost and damaged senses, plugging camera in to his eyes and tubes into his other face orifices. He has to consume nutrients through tubing and has a funnel for drinking and his helmet actually contains a small blender for solid food. Lepin went overboard with the design of his suit, creating it mostly from a carbon material called graphene, which is known to be stronger then diamond. Blows that could punch through steel can be blocked by only an atom thick layer of graphene. A large pack like structure is connected to his back, which most assume is vital to his life support, but is actually only for brewing tea, needless to say, Lepin considers it the most important part of his suit. Lepin’s suit is powered by a small dyna stone. It should be noted that Lepin’s suit is not built for combat, but quality of life. The suit has built in mechanical muscles capable of moving impressive weights.

Inventions
Despite being a candidate for smartest man in the world, Lepin is surprisingly uncreative, most of his successes being perfecting other peoples’ inventions rather than creating anything from scratch himself.

For the marines he created high quality weapons, like guns with improved fire power and grenades that only damage flesh not buildings. Lepin sometimes regrets creating these.

Anne MK2: A ship designed to go anywhere, from the bottom of the sea to the reaches of space. He named it after his lost wife, who originated the idea.

Some people speculate that Lepin has a secret project he's working on in the background.

Trivia

 * Image is Bondrewd from Made In Abyss*