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[b]Name:[/b] Cesare "Sardines" Pirone
[b]Age:[/b] 31 (DOB February 2, 1920)
[b]Gender:[/b] Male
[b]Appearance:[/b] Pirone is a thin and poorly dressed man with a bad haircut. Rather than having the stereotypical olive complexion, he is instead pale-skinned and fair-haired. His features are thin and delicate, and his hands are especially long and thin.

[b]Clothing:[/b] Pirone wears a cheap and flimsy brown suit, about ten years out of fashion, as well as a flat cap.
[b]Possessions:[/b] Pirone owns very little- a change of clothes, a cheap watch, and his pride and joy, an Astra 900 pistol that he carries on him at all times.
[b]Current Wealth:[/b] Pirone carries one $10 bill ($94 in 2016), which is literally all the money he has in the world.

[b]Personality:[/b] Sardines is an embittered and disillusioned man. He feels that he has been taken advantage of and that life owes him something. As a result he is cynical and mistrusting- no one is going to play him for a chump again. Pirone wants to make it big in life and get what he thinks he is owed, he will not hesitate to use violence to achieve his goals.
[b]History:[/b] They say you never get over your first love or your first betrayal. In the case of Cesare Pirone, they were both the same person: Benito Mussolini.

There was never a time in his childhood in Palermo when the name was not uttered. Cesare's father Lorenzo was one of the thousands of disgruntled WWI veterans who supported Mussolini's rise to power- some of Cesare's earliest memories are of his father strutting about the house in his brand new black shirt. From an early age, Cesare was taught to revere and adore Il Duce, that the man in Rome would take care of them and lead Italy to a bright future. Youthful and innocent, Cesare believed it all. On his 18th birthday, determined to do his patriotic duty, Cesare Pirone enlisted in the Blackshirt militia.

He was with the 1st Blackshirt "23rd of March" Division when the war broke out and took part in the Italian invasion of Egypt. While historians would call the battle "inconclusive", the 20-year-old found it all to be a grand adventure, fighting against the British in the name of Il Duce. His enthusiasm was diminished somehwat when the British and Australians regrouped and started hitting back, hard. Then came Bardia. In just a few days from January 3rd to the 5th, Pirone watched as the Australians cracked into their "impenetrable" fortress, swept aside their "unbeatable" troops, and completely destroyed his "eternal" division. Cesare Pirone was among the thousands of Italian soldiers taken prisoner and sent to POW camps in Australia.

Behind the wire at Loveday Camp in the flatlands of South Australia, Pirone had four long years to think. Slowly, he came out of denial and began to understand that Mussolini, the man he had once adored and worshiped, had fooled an entire nation into giving him power and wealth, solely for his own benefit. Pirone came to realize he had been the biggest fool of all, throwing away his youth and vitality on a power-hungry despot. Privately, he resolved never to allow himself to put into that same situation, to instead be the one on top.

Time as a POW left a profound effect on him, and it was a thinner, wiser, and far more bitter man who was repatriated back to Italy in 1945. Upon return to his homeland, he discovered that both of his parents had been killed in the 1943 Allied bombings of Palermo. With nowhere to go, he scraped together enough money to get on a steamer to Spain, and lived there from 1945-1950, doing various odd jobs and migrant work, still dreaming of bigger things. One night, at the end of the olive harvest and with plenty of pesetas in his pocket, Cesare purchased an Astra pistol from a pawnshop. To this day, he is not sure what he intended to do with it that night, but he remembers a quote by Mao- "Power grows from the barrel of a gun." And so he keeps the pistol near, dreaming of the day when he will use it to become wealthy and respected.

After five years, it was becoming clear that Spain was not the place to become somebody, and Franco reminded him too much of Mussolini and the bitter disappointments there. Technically not a legal citizen of Spain, it was simple for Pirone to board another ship, this one bound for America, the land of opportunity.

Arriving in Cape Freedom required almost all of his money. Living in a cheap hovel, Pirone can only afford cans of sardines to eat, which earned him the nickname "Sardines" from his neighbors. And so, cleaning his gun and opening another can of smoked fish, Sardines Pirone bides his time, waiting and dreaming for his opportunity to become someone, to never be used again. . .
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