application // undeadroadtrip
I. PLAYER INFORMATION
Name: coffee
Are you over the age of 16: [Y]
LiveJournal: frogginator
E-MAIL: froggy.mcgee @ gmail
OTHER: AIM: brewmegently
II. CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Claire Leonelli
Canon: Heat Guy J
Timeline: Episode 24.
History: Claire Leonelli was born to the Vampire (Don) of the Leonelli Family, the most powerful mafia organization in the futuristic and long-past-post-apocalyptic city of Judeau. His childhood was a lonely and difficult one, as his father was often too busy with his work to pay much attention to Claire, and when he did, he was harsh and difficult to please, hard on him in order to make him stronger, to condition him to be a future Vampire of the Leonelli Family himself. Claire didn't quite understand his father's harshness, neglect, and occasional physical and psychological abuse as an attempt to toughen him up, and as a result he had the consistent, nagging insecurity of feeling never good enough for his father. It is obvious, however, that Claire's father cared for him to some extent - when Claire was quite young, his father picked up a tough vagrant boy with the right look in his eyes, named Giovanni, and brought him to Claire, telling Giovanni that the boy was lonely because his mother was gone (leaving unspoken that his father was also rarely present).
However, because of the spartan way he was raised, Claire grew up always trying to please his father, to be the best that he could be, and relying heavily on Giovanni, and later on, the other two bodyguards that attached themselves loyally to him, Ian and Mitchell, to keep his sanity. Things continued on in this vein until, when Claire was 19 years old, his father passed away, and he was left to take over the Leonelli Family as its new Vampire.
This is the point at which the series starts, so for canon history I will be writing bullet points, since this is too obscure to have a decent wiki entry.
* Claire was chosen as the Vampire of the Leonelli clan with a certain amount of argument. Not everyone wanted him to be, both because of his youth and his nature. Upon meeting with a fellow mafia leader who opposed Claire's position, he was offended and reacted by threatening the man's life with a grenade in his mouth. Though the man wasn't hurt, he ordered a hit on the Leonelli family, and this resulted in the death of many of Claire's people.
* One of his first official acts was to try to smuggle warheads into the city of Judeau, which was foiled by Daisuke Aurora, the protagonist of the series, when he held up the vehicle carrying them on a bridge and caused Claire to destroy the bridge. This is one of his first run-ins with Daisuke.
* Claire enters a game of Russian roulette in order to win over a mercenary that has never lost a game and is rumored to be extremely skilled. After almost losing the game (one of his bodyguards rescues him), Claire recruits the mercenary, Boma, to take out Daisuke's android partner/protector, J, and setting up the hit by taking information from the girlfriend of someone who owes him a ridiculous amount of money. This is his first attempt at revenge on Daisuke for foiling his plans. Ultimately, Boma decides not to continue helping Claire, since he likes Daisuke.
* Claire's next plan to take out Daisuke is to kidnap a child who is an android, which gives him some flashbacks of his difficult childhood, and ask this android to destroy J. The attempt is ultimately unsuccessful, and Daisuke confronts Claire, telling him that whether or not he's the new Vampire, Daisuke won't let him continue doing the things he's doing.
* Claire manipulates the stock market in order to make a killing off stock in tomatoes, with an attempt to blame the problem on Daisuke - he wants to both make money and get Daisuke out of his way with one act. Daisuke manages to correct the problem before anyone loses money, and Claire tries to come up with another similar plan. After his advisor, Moro, opposes his second plan, Claire gets angry at the man and Moro puts a gun to his own head, saying that if Claire doesn't approve of him anymore, then he doesn't need him. Claire freaks out at this, and pulls the gun away from Moro's head, telling him that his father is the only one who can die and leave him alone.
* The Celestials - people with higher technology who run and control the power plants and environment of Judeau - arrive to visit the city, and several of them are killed, leaving only one roaming the city. The Celestials threaten to turn off the power for Judeau. Claire is asked to find this remaining Celestial, and he does so, kidnapping him despite the fact that this may result in all the power, water, air circulation, and other necessities of life in Judeau being turned off. Claire states that he doesn't want to rely on the Celestials for life.
Daisuke is forced to infiltrate Claire's Company Vita building to get the Celestial back so they can avoid having their essentials turned off, and Claire shoots him three times after Daisuke told him that he thought Claire was trying so hard because he couldn't even impress his own father. Daisuke, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, catches up with Claire on the roof of the building while explosives tick down a timer inside, and points a gun at his head, stating that Daisuke's father was killed by an android controlled by Claire's father. He pulls the trigger to reveal that there was no gunpowder in the bullet, and Claire escapes unharmed. J and Daisuke return the kidnapped Celestial and keep the power from being shut off.
* Claire pays someone to kidnap Daisuke and, in an act of revenge for the showdown on the roof, shoots Daisuke up with a hallucinogen stronger than LSD in an attempt to make him relive the worst moments of his life. However, Daisuke lives through bad moments and speaks out loud that he just wants his older brother to be okay, which mollifies Claire somewhat. After this, one of Daisuke's other friends, Kyoko, tries to come in to rescue him, while at the same time some enemies of Claire storm in and attempt to hold him hostage. Daisuke and J fight the enemies and defeat them, and Claire lets them go. The two are on pretty good terms at this point.
* When Daisuke's older brother Shun is almost killed in an assasination attempt, Claire is framed for the job. While maintaining that his company does nothing illegal (it doesn't), he has to go to court and wonders why Senator Noriega - someone on Claire's payroll - didn't pull strings to keep him safer. After some speculating on the frame-job, Claire and his immediate subordinates (who double as Claire's closest friends) speculate that Noriega himself may be behind the framejob. Ian, one of Claire's men, goes to investigate, and is killed, with his hand being sent to Claire, who becomes very angry and keeps the ring to remember Ian by.
After this, a meeting of all the families is called, and Claire confronts them in an attempt to find out the source of the betrayal he's been facing. At the meeting, Noriega steps forward to take control of the family from Claire and usurp the position of Vampire. Claire is betrayed by the entire family, including Moro, with only his two remaining closest subordinates, Mitchell and Giovanni, who calm him down and carefully remove him from the scene. Things aren't so easy, though, as the police attack and attempt to take Claire down as they're escaping. They manage to escape when Mitchell sacrifices himself by running a suicide attack at the pursuers carrying a ridiculous amount of explosives after giving Claire his lucky dice. Giovanni drives away from the scene with Claire, who is in a near-comatose state from the stress of being betrayed, attacked, the shock of his own failure, and the death of two of his closest friends on his behalf. Despite Giovanni pleading with him to not give up, Claire remains in this unresponsive state for quite some time.
* During Claire's comatose state, he and Giovanni fall to a state of poverty in the slums, hiding from the people still hunting Claire down, particularly when they become aware that Claire's left eye is needed in order to access the Leonelli family's funds. When Daisuke becomes aware of this, he tracks Claire and Giovanni down, helps them escape the people hunting them, and has the two put up in a spare room in a safe place. Claire doesn't wake up until Giovanni is asked by their new benefactor to carry out a dangerous job, and when Claire wakes up, Giovanni isn't there. He goes out into the street alone and only half-aware, searching for Giovanni, only to find him under attack by a very powerful android (Daisuke's partner, J) suffering from intrusive kill programming. Claire steps in, shoots J with Giovanni's guns to get him off Giovanni, and then throws a grenade at the android to protect his friend.
This is the point at which I'd be bringing Claire in, and it is the turning point that marks the drastic change in Claire's personality (as described below).
Personality: Claire has experienced a lot of change and development through the course of his canon, starting the series as an unstable genius, a spoiled child who ordered strange things at his whims and who had to be carefully monitored by his keepers. Over the course of the series, however, he becomes a powerful, charismatic leader, a complex individual who knew for himself what was right and what was wrong, taking the right measures to protect his men, himself, and the city of Judeau itself.
The basis of Claire's personality stems from his position in life - the only child of a mafia Don, Claire was raised in a rough manner, with very high expectations placed on him. While he did his best to succeed, his upbringing brought with it a host of issues that remain even after his development through the series. Claire's prominent issues are abandonment and an inferiority complex. When Claire is abandoned, he becomes stricken, almost hopeless, and very angry as a self-protective measure, sometimes seeking revenge against the person who abandoned him. In some cases, if he cares about the person enough, he can generally forgive them if they come back to him - for example, his advisor Moro has betrayed and abandoned him on two occasions, and yet Claire has asked him back without violence both times, once again trusting him fully. Still, Claire has a fear of being alone, of having no one to rely on, of being truly unworthy.
This brings us to his second main issue, his inferiority complex. As stated before, Claire's father was very rough on him, hard and always demanding more strength, more cleverness, more of everything required to be the Vampire of the Leonelli Family. Because of this roughness, Claire has developed something of an inferiority complex, always trying to assert his dominance and superior intelligence and strategy because he feels he must still prove himself to his deceased father. When he remembers his father it can stop this powerful young man in his tracks, sending him back to childhood, blanking him out for several moments before he reacts again, usually with violence. The mere mention of these father issues can send Claire into a fit of rage, vengeance, and in the series he has kidnapped Daisuke and dosed him with LSD in an attempt to make Daisuke feel as badly as he did after Daisuke simply accused him of acting better than everyone else because he didn't feel good enough for his father. Still, over the course of the series, with the support of his Family and his right hand man, Giovanni, who repeatedly proves through actions and eventually tells Claire straight out that Claire himself is what matters to his followers, not the Leonelli Family name, Claire comes to terms with his issues to some extent, and is able to navigate his life according to his own expectations.
As mentioned before, Claire is charismatic, and very intelligent. He's been well-educated, and uses this to his advantage when making strategic decisions in his position of power. Partially because of his abandonment issues and partly because of his general personality, Claire is incredibly loyal - if someone shows him loyalty, if he cares about someone, if that person has stuck with him or done him a favour or kindness, Claire will go to extreme lengths to pay back that loyalty. If you're a friend of Claire's, you can expect him to hang on tenaciously. He doesn't want to be alone, he doesn't want to have to rely on only himself, and while he'll expect reciprocation, he certainly won't betray. For example, in his canon there was the aforementioned request for Moro to rejoin him even after betrayal. There is also a later example where he wakes up from a traumatized stupor after the betrayal of Moro and the loss of two of his closest henchmen (both of whom died to protect Claire) and goes into the streets alone, finally shooting at an android hundreds of times stronger than him in order to protect his remaining bodyguard and close friend, Giovanni.
Claire is also very ambitious, with his sights set high. He was born to be a leader, he knows his place in the world - at the top - and he aims to stay in his place. Claire takes risks to get what he wants, and he can be a very good leader, especially later in the series after learning his lesson about his Family. He knows how to inspire loyalty in people through his own charisma and through knowing how to treat people right - he is tough but fair on his followers, and they tend to see something in him that inspires them to follow him, to believe in him. His intelligence shines through, and with the development and growing he's done through the course of his canon, learning the value of the people around him, the value of doing the right thing for the people who follow him and the people he has an effect on, he's grown to be a powerful enough leader that the same mafia that once turned on him asked him back and follow him without question.
However, Claire is definitively not all good, and his weaknesses at times can outweigh his strengths. The fact that he's an unstable genius is something that never changes about him. His mental state is questionable at times, and he can be incredibly flighty and impulsive, making decisions on a whim that aren't always good for himself or his people. While this has toned down considerably by the canon point I'm pulling him from, earlier in the series he's quick to violence, responding with force when people do things he doesn't like - he has an affinity for fireworks and grenades, and frequently had to be restrained from simply blowing peope up when they defied him. Though this has toned down seriously by the end of the series, once he's on his own, without his support network, I can see him reverting slightly and reacting with a more subdued violence and explosive words.
His ambition is also a bit of a negative, leading him into things he can't always handle as well as he thinks he can, getting in over his head and needing help to get himself to safety now. He does rely quite a bit on Giovanni and his other followers in his canon, and without that support network, he'll likely end up getting himself into a few fights or situations where he's out of his depth alone.
Claire's mental instability is also apparent in the fact that when things go drastically wrong, when he's reminded of his father, when he's betrayed, when things hit the bottom of the barrel and he doesn't know what to do, he can shut down rather than struggling through. This is demonstrated in canon where he is betrayed by his men and is attacked on his way out - two of his close friends and bodyguards, Ian and Mitchell, die protecting him, and this stress causes him to simply shut down, going into a comatose sort of state despite Giovanni, his remaining friend, trying to snap him out of it and saying he needs him. Claire will likely be more resistent to this after having gone through it once in canon, but considering his canon point and his remaining mental instability, the right set of circumstances could cause him to temporarily shut down like this again.
All in all, Claire is a complex, flawed individual with a lot of personal development under his belt, and the opportunity for a lot more.
Retained Abilities: n/a; Claire is a normal human.
III. SAMPLES
First Person Sample:
Links in reverse chronological order!
From sirenspull; Claire discusses the murder of slaves with Magneto.
From sirenspull; Claire has a freak-out after Daisuke leaves, and talks to Re-l about getting a memento.
From sirenspull; Claire reports on finding someone who was missing, and has a verbal spar with Edgeworth.
Third Person Sample:
An actionspam log with Re-l at sirenspull where Claire is investigating the murders of slaves in the City. (warning for description of a mutilated dead body)
A prose-style log with Replica Riku in sirenspull where Claire rescues him from a brush with being taken in as a slave.