claire leonelli; application information
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Heat Guy J
Canon Format: anime
Character's Name: Claire Leonelli
Character's Age: 19
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. n/a
What form will your character's NV take? Claire's NV will be similar to this concept phone, specifically the one lying down. It has an iPhone type shape with a clear interface when turned off. The screen is entirely touch enabled, and has capabilities for changing the resolution of the display screen and number pad, holographic display that hovers above the phone when held horizontal, video and voice functions, music playback, games, and a host of other features. It may take Claire a while to find them all.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Claire has no supernatural canon abilities - he's got a very high IQ (148), a great deal of strange charisma, the ability to inspire loyalty in others, and a certain internal intensity, but nothing superhuman. He's just a normal human with an affinity for hand grenades and fireworks.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Claire will be gaining the ability of telekinesis or psychokinesis. To sum it up, he will be able to move physical items with the power of his mind. This ability fits Claire quite well, as he's spent his time as a mafia boss leading and generally ordering others to do what he'd like to happen - moving things from afar.
At first, the ability will only work, however, if he can move his hands. He will conduct the items he wants to move like a musical conductor, with a series of broad, expansive gestures indicating where he wants the things he's controlling to go - a sweeping gesture upward and then to the left will lift an item and then send it flying to the left, a flicking movemment of the hand will turn off a light switch, etc. As he improves, he'll be able to move things without the gestures, but it will still take a lot of concentrated effort and he'll only be able to do a fraction of what he can do with the gestures. Additionally, to start with, he'll only be able to move smaller items such as cups, light switches, pencils, and the like, moving up to larger items with practice until he hits his maximum of being able to lift a bus about a foot off the ground.
The drawbacks of his ability are migraine headaches, burst blood vessels in the eyes and face, nosebleeds, exhaustion, and with extreme overuse bleeding from the eyes and ears.
Weapons: Claire will be arriving with two fully-loaded semiautomatic pistols, though he will lose at least two bullets per gun shooting instinctively.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character 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, and the details of Claire's history within the series can be found at this episode guide.
Point in Canon: Episode 24 of 26, Alteration. This is the episode in which Claire awakes from the comatose state he was in due to the death of two of his bodyguards, and the betrayal of his advisor, because Giovanni has disappeared. He goes out in search of Giovanni alone, and finally finds him facing J, who's been given (and is fighting) a command to kill Giovanni. Claire runs forward, takes Giovanni's guns, and spins to move between Giovanni and J, shooting both guns at J. He will be pulled just a second before pulling the triggers for the first time.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: n/a
Character 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 in Siren's Port, 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.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: n/a
Character Plans: Claire, being the leader of a mafia and in the mafia for most of his life, will automatically find himself drawn to AGI. He'll likely sign up with them relatively quickly, and find working for them comfortable. What won't make him comfortable is not being on the top, in a leadership position. In order to avoid him climbing the ranks of AGI and trying to take over, I've planned for Claire to instead end up becoming the manager of a slave establishment - similar to Afterglow xXx Club, but not as large, he'll run a sex slave brothel, taking it over from a previous owner and cleaning it up. He'll improve the place in order to make it more profitable.
I'm sort of hoping that within six months to a year he'll own several such establishments, and be able to help out fellow player characters who may get taken in as slaves, with a sort of "slave laundering" set up where he purchases people and sets them free if they get caught.
Appearance/PB:
full-body character design
bust shot
crazyface
comaface
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[the video post engages, showing the aftereffects of the NV falling to the ground, a beautiful view of the dry brown grasss of the abandoned baseball diamond. the only clue to who the poster might be is a flash of a very thin leg encased in black vinyl.
the silence of the post is interrupted almost immediately by four gunshots going off in quick succession, just a few feet above the NV, their source invisible to the recording device. there are a few ragged breaths, and then a young man's voice speaks quietly]
Giovanni?
[there is a long pause, and then a burst of high-pitched, slightly unhinged manic laughter breaks out, breathless and hitched slightly around the edges.
a hand comes into view, fingers slack around the grip of a semi-automatic pistol, a college ring visible on one of the fingers. the knuckles brush up against the NV and the hand abandons the gun onto the grass to scoop up the device.
Claire's face comes into view, luminous violet eyes surrounded by dyed blue hair peering into the screen]
Recording, is it? Isn't that interesting! Now, would someone care to tell me exactly what in the hell is going on here?
Third Person Sample
It wasn't much of a stretch, getting used to this Siren's Port place. Really, it wasn't much different than Judeau, the atmosphere was the same (besides all the accursed smoke and pollution in the air), and things ran in nearly the same corrupt way. Replace Echigo and Leonelli with SERO and AGI, and you had it. Same damn difference.
Still, he could admit (albeit only to himself) that he felt a bit exposed without all his usual connections, without Giovanni, and Mitchell and Ian, without Moro. Starting fresh wasn't something Claire had intended on, no, he intended to get back what was his. All in due time, though. All in due time.
As he left the car he'd arrived in, he smoothed one hand down the front of his plum button-up shirt, vinyl pants creaking slightly, and held his head high while he walked in, manipulating the pair of dice in his hand. Mitchell's dice clicked reassuringly against each other as he shifted his fingers, clicked against Ian's ring, worn on his finger, and he found himself wishing for a moment that he had something of Giovanni with him.
Then again, he had his sanity, and that was thanks to Giovanni, wasn't it? He smirked slightly, chin rising a bit more, and when he got to the bouncer at the door of the club, he snapped his fingers, said his name, and walked in as if he owned the place. Who could say no to Claire Leonelli, after all, no matter what screwed up world he was in?
Moving through the club, he maneuvered with ease, settling down at the seat across the table from the man he'd come to meet - an agent of AGI in charge of affiliations, sponsoring, and acquisitions. Leaning forward with his elbow on the table, Claire fixed violet eyes on the man, and smirked, chin in his hand, his body language lazy. The place he had his eye on was a shithole anyway, full of drugs and abuse that made the slaves unwilling to work. A good investment - cheap investment, and with a little bit of effort, the slaves could be made loyal and productive, and the place could only move up.
After ordering an expensive glass of wine from the waitress - thick and red wine that would sit on his tongue like blood - he turned his attention back to the man across from him.
"Good evening." he said, voice calm, lazy, purring like a cat, "Have I got a deal for you..."