Leo Menendez

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Name: Leo Alejandro Menendez
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Height: 5’ 10”
Weight 166 lbs.
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Kills: One or None
Weapon: Red, White, & Blue Roman Candles x3

Appearance: Leo has the slim build of a long-distance runner, standing at 5’10” and weighing 166 pounds. He is beginning to build up some muscle on his arms and upper body, but his legs are still more toned. He is of Hispanic Latino and Native American heritage, with a light tan complexion, straight, dark brown hair, and bright blue eyes. His hair falls just past shoulder-length, and he normally wears it in a ponytail. His facial hair grows in quite thick if he lets it, but he shaves regularly to keep that from happening. He has a tattoo of a stylized blue sun on the back of his neck. Leo has a diamond-shaped face and fine, almost delicate features, with angled eyes and a thin, pointed nose.

Leo prefers clothes that are comfortable and afford easy movement over any particular style. He tends towards sweaters and jeans in cooler weather and tank tops and cargo shorts when it is warmer, and always wears a simple silver cross on a beaded chain around his neck. On Announcement Day, he was dressed a bit more formally than usual, wearing a light blue button-down shirt, khaki pants held up with a brown leather belt, and running shoes, along with his cross necklace. He wore a gray woolen button-down coat over it all due to the weather. His hair was pulled back in its usual ponytail, and he had made sure that he was clean-shaven that morning.

Interests: Leo is an amateur filmmaker and actor, a hobby developed throughout his childhood and adolescence after being gifted a video camera for his tenth birthday. He is a member of the drama club in school and often features in his own short films; he is more talented as an actor than as a screenwriter, though his directing skill has been steadily improving. Leo runs cross-country for the school track team and enjoys being able to focus on his own thoughts during a run without being overwhelmed by them. In the last few years, he has had increased interest in philosophy and religion, owing to his struggle to reconcile his family’s Christian beliefs with the militaristic attitude of his country.

History: Leo lives with his parents, Luis and Silvana, and his brother Dylan, who is ten years younger than him. The family owns and operates a motel in Denver along with Luis’s brother Filipe and Filipe’s family. The two small families live comfortably enough on their income and have strong, loving connections with each other.

Leo’s life was fairly smooth and uneventful until he was eleven years old, when his father was called in for his second term of military service. Leo was shaken at suddenly being confronted with something which he had treated as an abstraction for most of his life and went through periods of depression and worry for the duration of Luis’s absence. Luis returned from his service when Leo was sixteen, physically unharmed but clearly suffering from trauma stemming from his combat experience. In the two years since his return, Luis has still not completely adjusted to being home, and his wife and children are often at a loss for how to help him when he struggles with paranoia and insomnia, leading to strained feelings in the home.

Leo’s greatest personal struggle in recent times has been his attempts to reconcile his Christian faith with America’s pro-military attitude, especially in light of the way his father was affected by war. He is fearful of violence and his own inevitable military service, and he once became ill and fainted in his history class when the teacher showed a documentary featuring actual war footage, which did not help his anxiety regarding the topic of war and bloodshed.

Personality: Leo is generally a friendly, playful person and a frequent joker. Though he is given to periods of depression and withdrawal from others when overcome by his worries, he keeps up a cheerful face in public and is not eager to let other people in on his more negative feelings. His joking and teasing is always good-natured and he is good at defusing situations through humor, but there have been times when he has taken it too far and had to apologize for hurt feelings.

Reputation: Leo is modestly popular with his classmates for his charisma and friendly attitude, but his joking nature and tendency to exaggerate lead some to find him annoying or untrustworthy. His squeamishness around the topics of violence and combat are common knowledge thanks to the incident where he fainted in class, which some people use to taunt him. He is, however, generally well-liked.