| Introduction
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xxxxxA striking example of the social construction of crime.
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| Description
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xxxxx5'11", lean, with warm tan skin and a clear complexion. Leo has a thick shock of straight black hair, usually kept trimmed short. Wide deep-set dark eyes, square jaw, sharply defined cheekbones, a bright warm smile.
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| Reputation
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xxxxxIt is next to impossible not to know Leo's name if you are living in America and not under a rock. During the Covid-19 crisis his name and picture both were widely circulated -- first, among government accusations that he was a mutant terrorist who perhaps created or perhaps was working to further the pandemic. It has been equally widely circulated that he is an undocumented immigrant who escaped from ICE custody, has the power to control disease, horrifically murdered a guard in jail. After a heavy manhunt involving several different law enforcement agencies, there was a fresh wave of news about him after Captain America and NYC Mayor Elliott Carruthers publicly attested that he is not a terrorist but was, in fact, working to develop a vaccine for the virus.
Much mainstream media has not come down on one side of this rumor or the other, and in the public eye opinions are heavily split as to whether people believe him to be a dangerous terrorist or a savior. The verifiable facts of the matter, however, are that New York City, once the global hotspot for the pandemic, experienced an abrupt dropoff in cases and is well on its way to an complete end to the crisis, and that numbers have been steadily dropping, concentrated in New York but spreading outward.
Rumors still ABOUND about him, ranging from "he created COVID and wants to murder all humans"; "he has a cure for COVID but world govermnents won't let him deploy it"; "he is working on a bioweapon that will wipe out all humans on earth"; "all of this is wild propaganda and he's Just Some Guy that the government is throwing under the bus to cover up some even darker more horrific crimes". What your character actually believes is up to you! It is very, very, very unlikely that if they've been participating in regular society at all in the past several years they won't have been exposed to at least some of these wild rumors about him, though!
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| History
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xxxxxBorn in the Philippines and raised there until middle school, when he emigrated to the US with his mother and two siblings. It wasn't a great change -- at home, they'd had stability, a large and supportive extended family, a comfortable culture that they fit into. His aunt over in the States had gotten quite sick, though, and his family came over on tourist visas and never left again, as his mom struggled to support her sister and her sister's children through his aunt's lingering battle with Huntington's. His cousins were a bright spot in his new life in Los Angeles; shy by nature and struggling with English, it was hard for him to fit in at school but his home life was always vibrant, his cousins and siblings close-knit.
xxxxxStill finding his feet in a new culture, he spent a lot of time focusing on things that made more sense to him than the troubling question of How To Socialize. Schoolwork, sports, music; he spent a lot of energy practicing at things where he could see quantifiable progress. His dedication to schoolwork earned him few friends but a scholarship to Boston University, where he studied marine biology and work at the New England Aquarium, first as a volunteer and then as a science educator. His plan was to continue on to grad school back in California where he would be close to home.
xxxxxICE derailed all that -- after being picked up for what was, in fact, a case of completely mistaken identity by the BPD (they were looking for a Latino man twice his age) he nevertheless got on ICE's radar for his lack of documentation. It was the stress and trauma of the detention facility that he was put in that triggered his mutation to show itself more directly. Manifested years ago but barely noticeable (he'd always thought he just was particularly lucky when it came to not getting hit by bugs that went around), he triggered an extremely virulent strain of chickenpox in the facility he was in. It was only after transferring him to a different facility en route to deportation and the same oddly resistant strain cropping up, immediately followed by a severe measles outbreak, that a doctor sent to the facility took notice. It took a good deal of sleuthing for Prometheus to get to the bottom of what was actually going on, but once they had isolated the culprit it took very little convincing for ICE to turn him over to Prometheus rather than ship him home.
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| Powers
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xxxxxInformation transfer.
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| Skills
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xxxxxHighly academically inclined and with an education to back it up, Leo excels particularly at math and biology. He's a great teacher, though sometimes has a hard time switching from Teaching Little Kids mode to Talking To Adults mode -- a large portion of his most recent job centered around education and outreach and this involved a lot of talking at school field trip groups about the sea. He's a great swimmer, a good diver, and adroit on sailboats. He loves tennis, and is quite decent at it. He plays the flute very well, although he's been out of practice since getting into Prometheus. Fluent in Tagalog and Spanish as well as English.
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| Connections
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Smooth Sailing
- Akihiro - Moon jelly. Looks common, still endlessly fascinating. Will likely survive us all.
- Dawson - Irukandji. Overlook at your own risk.
- Heather - Upside-Down Jelly. Does things its own way. Valuable to its ecosystem.
- Ion - Portuguese man o' war. Bold. Dangerous. Collectively-minded.
- Jax - Flower Hat Jelly. Weird, bright, beautiful, a rare find.
- Joshua - Black Sea Nettle. Enigmatic. A safe place to shelter.
- Kitty - Mauve stinger. Beautiful, fierce. A light in the darkness.
- Lucien - Crystal jelly. Graceful. Easy to miss. Indispensible.
- Marinov - Cauliflower Jelly. Turns that bizarre mashup into something striking. Thriving despite such a cold environment.
- Polaris - Lobed Comb Jelly. Striking, gorgeous, handle with care.
- Ryan - Atolla jelly. Unafraid to stand out. Wields flamboyance like a weapon.
- Steve - Cannonball jellyish. Gentler than one of his names would suggest, but a fierce protector all the same.
- Winona - By-the-wind-sailor. Brilliant. Adaptable.
High Seas
- Ansel - Microplastics. Toxic, pervasive, so deeply embedded it's hard to remove.
- Mall Goth - Six-pack ring. Ugly, obvious, will choke you; easily neutralized with the right tools.
Uncharted Waters
- Carnage - Smooth-head blobfish. Often considered hideous because of damage done by removing it from its environment. When seen in its natural environs, still ugly.
- DJ - Yellow-lipped sea krait. In the sea, but not of it. Not innately aggressive. Will kill you if provoked.
- Erik - Zoarcid fish. Top of its food chain and well adapted to a deeply hostile habitat. May not adapt well to less specialized conditions.
- Hive - Coral. Both creature and colony. At once so tough and in need of such protection.
- Iolaus - Pufferfish. A lot of pomp but to what end?
- Matt - Clownfish. Will add cheer to any day spent dabbling in shallow waters.
- Rachel - Mackerel. Forgettable. Doesn't offer much in the way of substance.
- Sam - Yellow sponge. Worth further study.
- Sarah - Blue Tang. With so much energy into being colorful and bright, what's left for anything else?
- Wendy - Common Cuttlefish. Fascinating, but hard to pin down.
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| Trivia
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- Has been working on his marine biology Ph.D. (studying functions of bioluminescence in jellyfish), a prospect that will likely take even longer than the usual Long Time due to the small setback of being an internationally wanted fugitive. Due to a good deal intervention by a good friend, UC Berkeley has been remarkably understanding of the difficulties he has been having and his need for frequent and unusual accommodations.
- Though most of the world knows him for either curing or creating COVID depending on which conspiracies they believe, actually spends a very large portion of his time globe-hopping with Joshua to disease-outbreak hotspots that have nothing to do with COVID at all.
- Does actually quite enjoy the game Pandemic. Regrettably nobody has played it with him in several years.
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| Gallery
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| Leonid Valentino Aquilo Concepcion
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| Codename
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None
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| Birthdate
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August 17, 1995
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| Birthplace
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Manila, Philippines
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| Species
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Mutant
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| Affiliation
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Brotherhood of Mutants, Prometheus
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| Alignment
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None
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| Powers
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Memes
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| Occupation
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Fugitive
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| Played By
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Manny Jacinto
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| RP Hooks
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| Q Sent Me - Conspiracies and misinformation ABOUND about Leo; it's near impossible just from watching the news to sort fact from fiction, but nearly everyone has SOME kind of opinion prior to meeting him.
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| Anyone for tennis? - He's eager to take advantage of public courts and get back in the game!
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| On the Water - A skilled sailor and avid swimmer, he's happiest off of dry land; very happy to take people out on the water or teach them how to sail, as long as they are not the type of people who want to kill him.
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| Sea monsters - Only too happy to geek out with people about all things weird and wonderful that live under the ocean.
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| Family Ties - With the Brotherhood as more of a refugee than a committed co-conspirator, he's kind of an uneasy peripheral-terrorist.
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