Cape & Cowl app

[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Al
AGE: 22
JOURNAL: crotalus
IM: daiannecrotalus
PLURK: crotalus
RETURNING: Nu huh

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Leo Valdez | Flame kid
SERIES: Percy Jackson: Heroes of Olympus books
CHRONOLOGY: The beginning of Mark of Athena, right as Leo offers to show Octavius the Argo II to distract him from Ella and her prophecies.
CLASS: Hero! A really snarky, unusual one but he’s very much a tiny hero that wants to do the right thing

BACKGROUND: THERE IS GOING TO BE SPOILERS UP UNTIL MARK OF ATHENA SO BEWARE

Alright, let’s start with Leo’s world. It’s a pretty normal world all things considered; most things work the same as our world. There’s boring people who keep on going to their jobs every day, policemen, lawyers, farmers….
The difference? Some of those are actually demigods, sons and daughters of the old Greek and Roman gods that are trying to live a normal life. It should maybe be noted that the book explains early on that these are gods, if any God with a Capital G exists it’s another matter entirely.
So the gods exists, Zeus lives up in the Empire State Building and looks like a hippy and Poseidon likes to wear a Hawaiian shirt. Not all is this fun and laughter though, along with the gods also came the titans, the giants, the monsters and a lot other dangerous things that love the tasty smell and flavor of demigods.

What is, exactly a demigod? They are the result of a union between a god and a mortal, their sons and daughters. Some of them like the children of Athena are ‘children of the mind’ and they just kinda appear from a carriage, born from her head like she sprouted from Zeus’ one so not all of them are born in the most normal conditions, but the gods consider all of them their child.
And some of the gods aren’t “allowed” to have offsprings, like Hera (goddess of marriage) or maiden goddesses like Artemis.

The demigods are born with a mindset ready for battle, and powers (and sometimes, personalities) that are related in some way to their Olympian parent. Children of Poseidon are able to breathe underwater and control the waves; descendants of Zeus can control the lighting and the air… I’ve explained Leo’s particular abilities on the powers section.
We learn in the sequel books this isn’t just for their direct descendants. Their grandchildren, great-granchildren and more may still have some kind of power as well. An example of this is Frank, whose family retains the powers Neptune granted to one of his sons even if he’s actually Mars’ son.

There is an issue between Greek and Roman gods since they… are basically the same, which has caused them some kind of split-personality. The more different they are the harder their split-personality will be, but how this exactly works hasn’t been revealed in the books yet. Apparently Greek and Roman demigods always end up fighting and most of the Earth’s wars are they fault so the gods decided to make them unaware of each other’s existence.

Why do mortal, completely normal people not notice all this going on around them? Something called the mist twists their perception of things and lets them remain unaware of the dangers they could be in. This ‘mist’ is basically controlled by Hecate and her children, and it’s really not known how powerful it is. It’s able to create completely new memories for Piper and Leo and to completely erase the Roman and Greek memories about each other.
Some people are born immune to it like Percy’s mother, but that’s another matter.

The Greek Demigods like Leo live in Camp-Halfblood. Some only during the summer, some are ‘year-rounders’ but they are all there to train and to learn how to deal with the outside world and its monsters. During the first books only the main 13 goods had cabins for their sons and the Hermes cabin, house of the demigods that were unclaimed or children of minor gods, was a little crowded but thanks to Percy making the gods swear they would claim all their children now there’s a cabin for all the gods that might have children.

Thanks to ‘Thalia’s three’ (long history, before Leo’s time) and the Golden Fleece the camp stays safe from the attack from monsters, which makes it the perfect place for demigods who are too powerful to live outside. The more powerful the demigod the stronger their smell will be, and it will attract monsters that could put everyone’s lives in danger. Once they are old enough to have a normal life out and defend themselves, they go out.
There’s training of all kinds and very intense games of catch-the-flag and just… a lot of friendship between the campers. The demigods train hard and are skilled in a lot of fighting styles and survival skills.

It’s different for Roman demigods back at Camp Jupiter since they are not divided by cabins according to their godly parent and are instead divided by Cohorts. They also can stay inside of the camp’s city to live their lives in there (there’s universities, jobs…). Leo is Greek though, so that’s what matters.

Alright so FROM HERE ON it’s Leo’s backstory in this world. I wasn’t sure what you needed so I’ve summarized the books; I apologize if it’s too much.

In this world of gods and monsters Leo Valdez was born to his mother Esperanza Valdez, a mechanic that tried to raise Leo with love the best she could. She managed quite well if the memories Leo has of her are anything to go by, eve with Hera interfering and trying to raise Leo for his life at an early age when he was all but a baby… but when Leo was 8 Gaea caused a fire in the workshop that killed her. Leo will probably carry that guilt with him forever.

He was transferred from foster home to foster home because he was determined to run away from all of them until he was sent to Wilderness school. There he met Piper, and later on Jason (who he thought was his best friend because of Hera manipulating the mist)... and in one trip to the Grand Canyon, they were attacked by wind spirits until Annabeth and another demi-God saved them and brought them to Camp-half blood, where the Greek Demigods are trained.

There Leo is claimed as Hephaestus’ son and moves to his new cabin where he is told there’s a curse related to the metallic dragon roaming free. He’s also told people with fire power are few and feared, so he keeps it secret.

When that night a prophecy reveals a son of Hephaestus (along with Jason and a son or daughter of Aphrodite has to go on a quest to save Hera he offers to go. Jason says that if he finds a way for them to travel he can go, and later that night he fulfills his promise by finding Bunker 9 and adding the metallic wings to the dragon, who can’t harm him with his breath because he’s immune to fire. He also keeps Bunker 9 a secret, and names the dragon ‘Festus’ (Happy the dragon, yes, I don’t know how he thought it was funny). And off they go to meet Boreas, a god of the wind that will help them find where Hera is kept.

A magic dragon trip later they met Boreas, and his daughter Khione (the snow goddess). Leo is forced to stay out and isn’t allowed to see Boreas because ice and fire = not a good combination. The talk between Boreas and his friends doesn’t end well, and they end up having to run away on Festus- who later crashes, and Leo has to go and find him. When he does he’s warned by Gaea herself to let his friends die and save himself and Leo throws a toiled lid at her. No, really.

He finds his friends confronted by Cyclopes, and he helps them out with some neat technology tricks and his fire powers. They find out the Cyclopes are reforming faster than they should so they fly away on Festus again. Now his friends know about his fire powers, and they seem to be cool about it.

Later they visit the witch Medea in Chicago that tries to charm-speak them (control them with her words). Luckily Piper is able to resist, and they find out she was the one who told Hera Leo would be important in her future.

As they fly away on Festus and Leo sleeps, he dreams of his father who tells him the Gods aren’t allowed to talk to their children under Zeus’ orders. Leo is visibly upset by this… but he also takes comfort in realizing how much he looks like his father. Hephaestus lets out a hint that there are more kids than the Greek ones (gasp), but Leo isn’t able to see the whole puzzle yet.

ANYWAY he wakes up and the dragon is crashing! The kids manage to survive unharmed but Festus crashes into a house with extreme lasery defense systems and dies, his head the only thing left. Leo is very, very touched by this and promises to reuse Festus’ head somehow.

The house turns out to belong to King Midas! Yes, that King Midas who was apparently revived too and this is where they begin to suspect there’s something off if Death isn’t working as it should- and shenanigans happen because they can’t stay away from fights apparently.
They run away but they find werewolves that also want to kill them (the first werewolf ever) and they can’t get a break what the hell. Leo manages to hold them off with fire until Artemis’ hunters come and save the day.

There they find out Thalia, Jason’s sister is their leader and Leo falls in love with her at first sight but really, he does that with every strong woman not a surprise. The hunters lead them to find Aeolus, the god of the winds- but Leo manages to burn the bridge that connects to their palace when he gets over excited, so Thalia is left behind. Before that, though we’re reveled a little more about Jason, and how having a daughter from Zeus and a son of Jupiter (so Roman and Greek both) born from the same mother caused his godly wife Hera/Juno to be terribly jealous until Jason was given to her to pacify her.

Aeolus gives him a drawing of an impressive ship he made when he was little that Hera had made go away with the wind, telling him it’s the key to his success. Now we know it’s the first drawing of the Argo II, the ship he’ll build.

From here on, it gets real.

They have to fight a giant, Encleadus (the anti-Athena so to speak so he’s extremely smart), who has Piper’s father prisoner and has been blackmailing her in secret (she never told Jason and Leo in fear they would judge her). Luckily Jason saves the day with a lightning bolt
But now they have to actually go and save Hera from Gaea’s jail, guarded by Porphyrion (the anti-Zeus). Thalia has sends them a message that Hera is in the wolf house where Jason was raised (long story about the wolfs, seriously, thing Lupa and the foundation of Rome and you’re set) so they use Pipers newly discovered charmspeak to get a pilot to lend them a helicopter and Leo flies them there.

Once there, Khione attacks them again revealing it was her fault Festus died, but Leo isn’t having any of that and uses his fire to scare her off and his creepy snowy monsters. Now it’s time to defeat Porphyrion… but they need a God to do it because Giants can only be beaten by combination of a demigod and a God’s power. So while Jason fights the giant Leo and Piper combine forces to burn and charmspeak the jail (seriously, made of earth, they charmspeak it don’t ask) and sets Hera free. And from then on it’s a piece of cake.

Once back at camp-half blood (after Leo throws up to the fire where they have to offer food to the gods, hope they liked that) they have enough information to guess Hera has made a switcheroo between the Roman camp and the Greek one. The Greeks got Jason… so it’s obvious the Romans got Percy. Leo, now leader of the Hephaestus cabin after he showed the others Bunker 9 and his fire powers, will build the Argo II to travel to the Roman camp (Camp Jupiter).

And now we get to the second book, that deals with the Roman part of the equation so Leo is only mentioned. Percy has some visions of the camp where he sees him and it’s revealed Hazel’s long lost first love might actually have some relation to him because they are carbon copy of each other, but that’s it.

In the demigods diaries there’s a mini adventure where Leo’s almost sentient table runs away with syncopators that Leo needs to stop the ship from blowing up. Not much is revealed here apart from Leo’s capacity to think of a crazy plan rather quickly, that Jason and Piper are definitively dating and Jason’s memories are slowly getting back, but that’s it.

And I’m taking him from the beginning of the Mark of Athena! When Percy and Annabeth finally are together again, the two mini teams meet each other and they are all happily eating in the demigod camp and Leo invites Octavius to take a look at the Argo II.

All was well.



PERSONALITY: THERE IS GOING TO BE SPOILERS UP UNTIL MARK OF ATHENA

The first thing you notice about Leo is all the energy he has inside of him, all bottled in. His body language, his sudden movements while he speaks… he could make people nervous just with that. He doesn’t do it on purpose; it’s just hard for him to keep his mind and attention to a single thing. His brain is always ready to try new things, to adapt and build whatever he can come up with.

He comes across and happy, easy going and without a worry in the world. He always has a joke coming out of his mouth and loves teasing people (especially those he doesn’t really get along with). He’s a quick thinker and it’s sometimes hard to follow his trail of thought… especially where machines and technology are involved, so most of the time he doesn’t really even bother to try to explain it. If he wants to use a wii remote to control a flying ship he will do it, don’t try to understand why.

He doesn’t really just ‘build’ or ‘fix’ stuff. He makes it better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster. He can rebuild it he has the technology. And he enjoys doing it. He might not have had the easiest life, and he sure as hell doesn’t have it easy right now but as long as he has something to do with his hands he can deal with it.

Sometimes people who just met him can get annoyed by him and his way of disregarding problems and not taking them seriously. It’ kind of hard to come up with solutions when an annoying teen with a fast mouth is teasing and laughing around instead of actually helping out.
But that’s only the image he wants to project, the way he wants others to see him. His friends and those close to him know that under that cover he’s just waiting, his mind going 100 miles an hour until something brilliant or until some brilliant solution will pop into his mind (usually at the last minute).

Leo just doesn’t like facing his problem upfront. When he was little he caused his mother’s death and started running, and he hasn’t stopped doing it ever since. If you run the problems can’t catch you, and that’s Leo’s life motto.
That doesn’t mean he would run away from a battle, though. It just means he’d rather look around for an alternate solution than to charge into it à la Superman. In their little trio Jason Grace is the strength and power, Piper McLean is the charm and the one who calms the whole group down.
Leo is there to build a flying ship that will let them travel around. To pretend to be Dionysus if they come across some angry Maenads. To distract Narcissus by pretending to be him ‘cooler than him’. Leo is just… really good at coming up with alternate solutions.

Leo is also very loyal, be it to people he considers his friends or teammates, his family, or even his own ideals. When he’s dead set on protecting someone or helping someone out or simply getting something… there are few things that will stop him or change his mind. And- fine, okay, maybe I should have said he’s a little ‘stubborn’ instead of loyal. It takes a lot for him to change his mind about something.
That translates the other way round as well though. When Leo dislikes someone it will take a lot to change his opinion about that one person, you can ask Frank about it. And even if all the weapons he uses are his snarky tongue and teasing, Leo isn’t someone you want to have against you if you’re about to share a team with him.

Leo is, like I just said a good loyal friend, yes but he’s not perfect. He likes keeping some things to himself. Jason and Piper were his best friends (first thanks to the mist, then for reals) and yet he took forever to reveal his pyrokinesis to them. He’s a very private guy, you won’t catch him oversharing. In the two books he’s in there’s one moment when we catch him sharing and really opening himself and that’s (surprisingly enough) with Frank. Meeting someone who’s also lost his mother and feels guilty about it does that to you.

The fact that he keeps his feelings very inside of himself probably has to do with how afraid he is of being the third (seventh!) wheel. He, like his father isn’t very good with people and would rather have to deal with machines, so he always feels like he doesn’t fit in.
You only have to check the Argo II’s crew: 3 couples on their honeymoon… and Leo. It doesn’t take a genius to realize why he feels left down. So that’s one of his biggest fears and something those who want to get to Leo are quick to play with (like Nemesis when he met him).

Another fear he has is being always used, never actually loved. When he was little Hera knew would need Leo in the future so she posed as his Tia Callida to babysit him and put him through a couple of ‘tests’ that’d get him ready for the future… tests which involved putting him in a fireplace (he survived) or asking him to light up a fire and causing him to leave his fingerprints into the tble. Gaea, who knew Leo would play an important part in her demise used Leo’s pyrokinesis against him and caused his mother’s death. Later his friends simply waited around for him to build the ship (even though they helped as much as they could). He just can’t get rid of the feeling that if it wasn’t for his abilities, people wouldn’t want him around.

His other biggest fear is actually failing his friends. He doesn’t have delusion of grandeur about it but he did have the great responsibility of building the Argo II, and he spend all summer working hard on it while his friends trained because he was afraid of failing at it. He was on the verge of a mental breakdown when he thought Hazel and Frank would get hurt or worse because of him, and he even asked for a certain help that he had been told would come at a high price. When he had a Roman ghost inside of him controlling him that caused an attack to the Roman camp, causing the roans to come after them he felt terribly, incredibly guilty about it even if it wasn’t technically his fault.

POWER:
These are all canon abilities!
I will list his powers in three categories: the demigod general abilities that come from being Hephaestus’ son, Pyrokinesis and his magic belt.

> Demigod abilities

Leo is the son of a Greek god with a human woman, which makes him a demigod. What does this exactly mean for him? Well, every demigod in Riordan’s world gets a couple of abilities that might come off as a nuisance in the real world but are actually pretty damn useful in the middle of a battle.

Leo is even by demigod standards seriously ADHD, which means he can pay attention to a lot of things in the middle a fight and is ready to battle fast or multiple opponents. Leo himself hadn’t had much training when it comes to fighting before he found himself in Camp Half-Blood, and even when he spent a couple of months in there he was too busy having to build the Argo II to actually assist to many training classes. The children of Hephaestus aren’t really known for their skills in battle anyway.
But! Leo is still able to pull a fight if he has the right weapons, and he can hit pretty hard with a blacksmith’s hammer if he has to (perhaps unsurprisingly that’s Leo’s favorite weapon). He’s still better at coming up with weapons and crazy ideas to beat others than he is at actually face-to-face fighting, something he showed clearly enough when he managed to win the Cyclopes with his wits. So he’s not good at battle, but he can put up a fight if needed.

Leo is also dyslexic because his brain is wired to ancient Greek instead of more modern languages. The fact that the Greek demigods can also read ancient Latin if they put a lot of effort in it is mentioned in passing, but they will always find Greek way easier.

And specific to being a child of Hephaestus, Leo is… very, very good with machines. To the point where he actually prefers them to people sometimes: when a machine is broken you can fix it, you can make it better. When a person is hurt, broken or dies there isn’t much you can do about it. Hephaestus himself mentions his children have a tendency to get along better with machines than with people.
Leo is able to almost instantly understand how any machine works, has been seen building things out of scratch and making them better than they were, is able to force any locks open in a matter of minutes, can drive any vehicle if he’s given enough time with it… he’s simply a technophile.

> Pyrokinesis

Hephaestus is not only the good of technology, machines or forges... he’s also the god of fire. His sons and daughters are used to work next to it and they can stand the heat better than any other. But in case being a demigod wasn’t weird enough for Leo, he still has an extra weirdness attached to him that only a couple of Hephaestus children have had.

He can control fire. This isn’t common even for the children of the god of fire, and those who have this gift are said to carry a curse with them as when they appear, trouble tends to follow. Leo was pretty convinced about it at first and hid his powers, but eventually he’s learned to accept them and use them.

He can create columns of it, surround himself with fire, shot big balls of burning white fire as if it was a weapon and he’s immune to it, unable to get burned. He’s still learning how to cope with this ability and sometimes parts of his body (his nose, his hair, his fingers…) will set on fire when he’s nervous, angry or surprised without him even realizing buuuut he’s doing his best.

> Magic Tool Belt

Inside of Bunker 9, Leo found a magic belt he decided to keep. I’m using one of the power slots for it because it’s pretty damn powerful, even though I plan on keeping its abilities to a minimum.

Leo can grab almost anything he wants out of the belt, and it will appear even if it wasn’t there to begin with. How does that work? Where does it all come from? Well, not even Leo himself knows. So far he’s shown to be able to pull food, little weapons and tools out of it… but it has its limitations. No magic items, nothing too big (that wouldn’t fit inside a normal tool belt), and if he takes something too powerful out of it the belt will feel hot and need some time to ‘recharge’ before he grabs anything out of it. Here's a list of things he's taken from it, to get an idea of what he will be able to keep inside it.

The belt it’s also a giant, impressive storage unit. He can put anything inside (anything that fits, obviously and like I said before magic doesn’t work well with it) and it won’t break, spill or even move. He isn’t sure where those things go either, but they will be there when he reaches for them somehow.

When Leo appears in the city he won’t be able to grab anything from it that he hasn’t put inside of it before so it will only have the ‘impressive storage unit’ function. Leo is a really, really practical guy so he will soon think of putting almost everything he might need in a daily basis or in emergencies inside of it, but this way he won’t be able to grab anything from his world or pull a Belt ex machina out of it in the middle of a crisis.


[CHARACTER SAMPLES]

COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

Well, okay. I'm used to really weird stuff happening by now but this goes up to a 7 in Leo's scale of weird.

I mean this is all fine and dandy [He waggles the pamphlets in front of the cameras, not-really refraining from rolling his eyes because really? Pamphlets? So 40ies.] but I was kind of in the middle of something back at home. Something... important.

And dog-tags aren't really my thing anyway. [He waggles them as well, making the metal 'clink'.] And apparently this here is going to be my room? F Y I I don't plan on staying in here long enough to need one so this is kinda creepy. Is the mist playing around with me head? Again? Because seriously I am pretty sure that's gonna cause some permanent damage and I don't mean to imply I'd sue but [Have a dramatic finger pointing out right at the screen] I'd totes sue.

Soooo Jason? Piper? Percy? Annabeth? Hazel? ...Uh, Frank? [Yes he's indeed calling for Frank this is serious stuff going on here.]

If you're around just tell me what's going on so we can get the hell out, okay?

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

Leo sighed after ending the feed, running a hand through his curly hair as he mentally ordered himself to calm down. The warmth he was starting to feel around the tip of his fingers wasn’t a good sign, and setting himself on fire in the middle of an unknown city wasn’t going to end well. He’d tried to play it brave on the post, but he seriously doubted this was all the mist’s fault. He even doubted the mist was even working in here. At least the network phone he’d been given seemed safe enough, seeing as how Iris didn’t seem to be replying in here.

He’d gotten away from the porter’s room as soon as the machine had stopped being interesting. Or as soon as he’d realized he couldn’t reach the machinery in the tower, anyway.
And damn, but it was cold out there. If he could just summon some fire on his hands he’d feel better, but there were quite a couple of people around and he was so not risking himself to be spotted while he wasn’t sure it was safe around.

While he waited for replies on his post, he decided the safest thing to do was try to reach San Francisco. If the others hadn’t been transported in here they would still be in Camp Jupiter after all. So reaching the bus station or something similar seemed to be the smartest course of action.


He put the communicator in one of the pockets of the belt and started walking, discretely covering the little flames that had appeared on the tip of his fingers by scratching his arm with them.

He’d been alone before, plenty of times actually. This was so gonna be a piece of cake.

FINAL NOTES:
Nope! It’s all covered in the other sections I think.