[hider=Leonardo][b]Independent Comics Universe RPG Character Sheet[/b]

[b]Player Name: [/b]HenryJonesJr

[b]Character: [/b]Leonardo

[b]Power and Abilities:[/b] Leonardo is a large, anthropomorphic, mutated turtle. His mutation has given him strength, speed, dexterity, and agility equal to slightly above peak human levels. He has also been granted a healing factor, allowing him and his brothers to heal quicker from injuries than normal beings. Being a turtle, Leonardo is as comfortable in the water as he is on land, and his shell is incredibly tough.

On top of his natural abilities, Leo has been trained by Splinter to be an incredibly adept warrior. He is skilled with hand-to-hand weapons, throwing instruments, bows and arrows, and hand-to-hand combat. He’s also shown to be an incredible leader, though he sometimes questions his own abilities. Leonardo has the ability to meditate in battle, giving him supreme battle concentration.

[b]Alignment:[/b] Lawful Good

[b]Character Notes [Established Rogues, NPCs, etc]:[/b]

[b]TMNT[/b]
Raphael – Leonardo’s hotheaded brother, Raphael is the strongest of the four turtles. Loyal but pigheaded, Raphael can often let his anger get the best of him. This can sometimes endanger the Turtles in their battles. Still, even though Raphael gives Leonardo a hard time, there is no one more loyal than Raph.

Donatello – Donnie is the smartest of the Turtles. Not one of the best fighters of the group, Donnie’s calculating mind allows him to find holes in his opponents’ strategies. Donnie is also adept at science and engineering. He has helped create their underground lair into a true home.

Michelangelo – The youngest of the turtles, Mikey is a free spirit. His unorthodox fighting style is unpredictable and hard for his enemies to adjust to, but also hinders his ability to work cohesively with his brothers sometimes. He is often the voice of reason when his brothers argue.

Splinter – The Turtles’ sensei and adoptive father, Splinter is the glue that holds the family together. He is a dedicated teacher and loving father. He is worried about The Foot’s connection to the ooze and why they are attempting to take over New York.

[b]Human Allies[/b] 
April O’Neil – Plucky college student April O’Neil met the Turtles when she was saved by them from a mugging attempt. She was the first human to not recoil in fear from the turtles, and they quickly became friends. Acting as a big sister for the Turtles, she helped teach them about the world and introduce them to pop culture. She has also become incredibly close friends with the Turtles’ other ally Casey Jones.

Casey Jones – A collegiate hockey player, Casey is a child from poverty trying to make a better life for himself. His father is an abusive drunkard as well as a low level enforcer for the mob. Casey and Raphael find common ground on their anger issues and feelings of being different. Both have helped one another progress, and are strong friends.

Angel – Leader of the vigilante street gang the Purple Dragons, Angel is Casey’s cousin and sworn ally of the Turtles after they helped her drive Old Hob and his gang out of her neighborhood.

[b]Enemies[/b]
The Foot – An ancient, mysterious, and deadly ninja clan, the Foot have come to New York with a desire to control the city. It is unknown what their end goal is. They have started an effort to bring all organized crime in the city under their control.

Shredder – The leader of the Foot is the most dangerous warrior in the world. He has yet to cross paths with the Turtles, though he knows of them and wants them dead.

Karai – Shredder's teenage daughter and one of his field lieutenants.

Tatsu – Shredder's other field lieutenant. 

Old Hob – Hob is a mutated alley cat. He is missing an eye thanks to Splinter, and has started attracting a dangerous group of followers. He was last seen being driven out of Angel’s neighborhood in New York.

The Mafia – The Italian Mafia were the first foe the Turtles came up against. The Turtles began taking their turf away from them until The Foot appeared in New York.

The Hunters – The Hunters were hired by the Mafia to kill the Turtles, and their true names are unknown. Former big game hunters turned assassins, the hunters took the Turtles to the brink by fighting the mutants on their terms.

[b]Key Locations[/b]
New York City – The New York of this Universe is a bit dingier than the one we’re used to. Outside of the normal tourist locations and the best neighborhoods, it is a much more dangerous city.

Turtle Lair – Located in a subway station on a long abandoned line. The turtle’s home has electricity, running water, and fresh air thanks to Donatello’s mechanical prowess. He has gone on to furnish them with television and internet as well. The Turtles and Splinter have rooms in old subway cars they have furnished to their liking. The lair also contains a lab, Mikey’s game room, training dojos, and an armory containing ninja weapons.

TCRI – Techno-Cosmic Research Institute is a monolithic skyscraper in New York. A highly secretive think tank and research/development corporation, TCRI is responsible for the ooze that transformed the Turtles as well as other technological advancements over the years. Few know the origins of the company, and even fewer have actually been inside the building.

StockTech – StockTech is a robotics firm in New York owned and run by genius inventor Baxter Stockman. April works at StockTech as an intern in their programming division.
Channel 6 News – New York City’s leading news station.

Foot Compound – The Foot’s homebase. At this time its location is unknown.

Empire State University – College where Casey and April attend class.

Second Time Around – The O'Neil family antique store.

[b]Background and Story So Far:[/b]

[b]History of The Foot Clan[/b]
The Foot Clan was founded in Feudal Japan during the times of the Shogun. They quickly became the most effective ninja clan in the country, and only the most powerful and rich shogun were able to hire them. For decades they served their masters honorably, and they were seen as a national establishment.

That is until Oroku Saki took power. Saki was ambitious, conniving, and power hungry. He turned the Foot from an honorable establishment into one designed to achieve his own goals. Saki personally eliminated all opposition to his rule inside the Foot, and then began a shadow conquest of Japan itself. The Foot made short work of their enemies, and absorbed the armies that willfully submitted. Saki installed a puppet ruler to be the face of his new empire. The Foot and Saki ruled Japan for decades until Saki mysteriously disappeared. Without their fanatical leader, The Foot retreated into the shadows.

They did not disappear, however. They continued to attempt to move the world into their own image. Though they were treated as myth, The Foot were very real, and very dangerous.

[b]Birth of the Turtles[/b]
TCRI, or Techno-Cosmic Research Institute, was supposedly working on a serum that would give normal people superpowers. It was believed it was a government contract, but this was never substantiated. The serum was meant to make its user the perfect warrior, increasing strength, speed, mental capacity, and fighting skills.

The ooze, as it was nicknamed, was tested on animals in very small doses. The animals that reacted best during the TCRI tests were four baby turtles and a rat the team had nicknamed Splinter. These five creatures went through weeks of testing, and all began to display increased mental capacity and growth. But the experiments were cut short when a group of masked attackers attempted to steal the ooze and the creatures. They nearly got away with it, but were cut off by the authorities during their escape. In the standoff, the ooze and the animals were dropped down a sewer grate. In the much below, the canister of serum burst, covering all five of the helpless creatures. In turn, they were saturated with its transformational material, changing them into anthropomorphic mutants. 

While they were changing, however, an alley cat also fell into the ooze, and attempted to steal one of the turtles. Splinter, acting on a fatherly instinct that was growing inside him, leapt at the creature and clawed out its eye, sending it into retreat.

All five of them, now sentient and confused, retreated into the sewers of New York. Splinter, by far the eldest and most intelligent after the change, raised the Turtles as his own, naming them from one of the books he discovered in the sewers. Leonardo, the eldest, was disciplined and respectful, with a strong sense of honor. Next came Raphael, a hotheaded and impulsive child, but a loving one at the same time. Donatello came after that, smart and calculating. Finally was Michelangelo, childlike, fun-loving, and optimistic. 

Splinter soon realized he had a keen and complete understanding of ninjutsu stored in his mind. He began teaching it to the Turtles, believing it would help them become disciplined. On top of that, Splinter had troubling visions of men in masks coming for his family. He believed teaching them these abilities would help save them.

[b]Emerging from the Shadows[/b]
After a year of training and growing, Splinter decided it was time for the Turtles to travel to the surface and find what the world was like. Leonardo was designated the leader of the four, though he had some initial misgivings about his role. He always knew his father was grooming him to lead, but he often fear what losing one of his team would do to him. Still, he kept a strong face, and led his brothers into the real world.

The Turtles were quickly overwhelmed by the sights, smells, and sounds of New York, but they eventually found their bearings. On top of that, they also found the world was a much more dangerous and unfair place than they expected. Crime ran rampant, and there were few who seemed to stand up to the evil plaguing the metropolis. Leonardo decided that the Turtles would be the ones to clean up the city.

They began having run ins with low level Mafia thugs and drug dealers. The Turtles began putting the mob’s frontmen in jail, which began to worry the leaders of the families. In turn, the Mafia instructed the Savate, a French group of ninjas they had hired as body guards, to take on the new threat. Fortunately, the Turtles were more than up for the challenge.

[b]Human Allies[/b]
During this time of surface exploration and the beginning of the Turtles’ crusade for justice, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo saved a college student and StockTech intern April O’Neil from a group of muggers. She was the first person the Turtles helped who did not recoil from the sight of them. She invited them to her family’s old antique shop to reward them with all she had at the time…pizza. April explained that the shop was owned by generations of her family, and she looked after it while her mother helped her father recover from a stroke in Northhampton. She usually lived in the dorms of Empire State University. 

The three turtles explained what they knew of their origin, which kept April riveted. As a scientific mind herself, April talked a mile a minute attempting to figure out what the ooze really was. She and Donatello babbled on about the ooze while Mikey struggled to keep up. Leonardo, on the other hand, saw April as their first real friend. When they parted ways, they promised to drop in on each other now and again.

At the time, Raphael had been fighting with his brothers and set out to crack some skulls on his own. While doing so, he ran into young vigilante Casey Jones. The two quickly bonded and became an effective fighting team. Jones also attended Empire State, and played for their hockey team. When prodded by Raphael, he revealed his vigilante ways were to get back at his father who was working for the mob at the time. Raph and Casey promised to help one another should the time ever come.

[b]The Hunters[/b]
The Turtles continued to take turf away from the mob, but in the process they made them desperate. The families reached out to two of the world’s most deadly assassins. Known only as “The Hunters”, the men were once big game hunters. They were experts in tracking and were the perfect choice to find and destroy the Turtles.

In their first encounter, the Turtles managed to use their knowledge of the sewers to get the jump on the Hunters. In doing so, however, they showed their enemy exactly how they could be defeated. The Hunters set traps in the sewers which funneled the ninjas into an arena where the assassins were waiting for them. Using heavy machine guns and weapons, the Hunters took the turtles to the brink before the intervention of Splinter and some quick thinking by Leonardo saved them.

[b]Old Hob and the Dragons[/b]
After the showdown with the Hunters, the mob retreated to lick their wounds. The Turtles’ work was not done, however. Casey Jones came calling to help a vigilante street gang in his old neighborhood known as The Purple Dragons. The Dragons turned out to be led by Casey’s cousin Angel, who explained they were being targeted by a new, psychotic gang led by a mutated cat with one eye. The Turtles quickly realized this was the cat that had attempted to steal one of their number during their transformation. Hob was planning a final assault on the Dragons to wipe them out for good.

Leonardo and Angel began to strategize, even though the young lady didn’t trust the mutant after what she had seen Old Hob was capable of. Still, she knew she could not defeat the enemy she now faced without them. Casey and the other Turtles prepared the Dragons’ safehouse for the assault. During this time, Casey revealed he was teaching self-defense classes to April, revealing that he was also friends with the Turtles’ other comrade.

When it came time, Hob attacked the safehouse, but was surprised to find the Turtles standing in his way. The situation quickly deteriorated into a melee, where Leonardo took on Hob himself. The cat was unpredictable and unhinged, making him a difficult opponent. Eventually, however, the Turtles and their allies gained the advantage, and drove Hob and his gang out of the Dragons’ turf.

After the battle, Angel thanked her new friends and promised to help them whenever they needed.

[b]The Foot Arrives[/b]
The victory was short lived, however. A few nights after the battle with Old Hob, Leonardo and Raphael witnessed the murder of a Savate ninja by two ninjas of unknown origin. The Turtles intervened, managing to get one of the killers’ masks. After taking it back to the lair, the symbol on its forehead awakened dormant memories in Splinter. He realized these were the men that had attempted to steal them and the ooze before their transformation. After some quick research, April and Casey found them to be the fabled Foot Clan of Japan. Splinter now made the Turtles’ primary mission to discover why the Foot were in New York and what their plans were for the ooze.

The Turtles won hard fought victories against The Foot in their first confrontations, but it was clear that this was a new type of enemy. They were well trained and numerous, and seemed to be taking back the turf the mob had lost when the Turtles first emerged.

The heroes’ difficulty only got worse when The Foot’s enigmatic leader The Shredder arrived in New York with his lieutenants Karai and Tatsu. Working through them, the Shredder decreed to the Mafia and their allies that if they didn’t swear fealty to The Foot, they would die.

[b]Sample Post (At least 3 well thought out paragraphs as well as some dialogue):[/b]

They crept silently over the rooftops, stalking their prey like only the most deadly predators could. Though they looked bulky and clumsy, the Turtles were more graceful than the most accomplished ballerina. Even on the hard, tar and concrete roofs of the city they made little more than a soft scratching sound as they move quickly above their targets. In the alley below a group of Foot ninjas met with an envoy from the Mafia to discuss terms. An informant the Turtles had...convinced to talk told them about it, and Leonardo had decided it was time to insert themselves into the building gang war.

The leader of the Turtles realized that if the Mafia sided with the Foot, the Turtles wouldn't be able to stand in their way for long. The end game in that situation would mean their death and the loss of the city. The eldest turtle knew he wouldn't be able to handle a failure of that magnitude. His honor would be broken, and he would pay for that in the next life. Leo knew he had to find out what the plans for the city were, and the only way to do that was to get one of the Foot to talk.

Unfortunately, they weren't the only ones on the roof.

A shuriken flew through the air, whizzing by Leo's head, sending the Turtles scrambling to get into a defensive position. Leonardo looked up to see a group of Savate ninja standing on the rooftop across from them. He knew there would be a fight, but he also knew making a sound would tip the Mafia and the Foot off.

"Turtles," he said to his brothers, "engage. No weapons. Silent and quick. Hai."

The four, in unison, leapt across the divide, engaging their enemies.as only they could.

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