[hider=Luca Petulengro]
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/MA3AzxC.jpg?1[/img]

[img]https://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjExNi5iOTk4YTkuVEhWallTQlFaWFIxYkdWdVozSnZJQSwsLjAAAAAA/catharsis-requiem.regular.png[/img]
[b][color=#d1a9c1]Age:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6]17[/color]
[b][color=#d1a9c1]Gender:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6]Male[/color]
[b][color=#d1a9c1]Clique:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6]New kids[/color]
[b][color=#d1a9c1]Nationality:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6]Romani / German[/color]
[b][color=#d1a9c1]Sexuality:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6] Asexual[/color]

[b][color=#d1a9c1]Personality:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6] Luca is a sweet kid, but he's very timid and shy. His meek demeanor makes it difficult for him to stand out in any kind of crowd, or to be heard in a sea of loud, teenage voices. Luca's tone of voice is almost always just barely above a whisper; below the normal volume but loud enough to be heard in a quiet room. That, mixed with his German accent, make him difficult to understand. 

Luca is very easily intimidated, particularly by men, and even more particularly by men bigger than him. Being that he's not very big himself, this means almost half of his peers. Part of the reason he's being enrolled in public school is to help him overcome such social anxieties. Having never had the chance to truly be socialized in his short life, Luca majorly lacks the ability to cope with his people-induced fears. He is also somewhat emotionally stunted from the years of abuse and lack of socialization. There may be some instances where he seems almost childlike; typically when he's afraid. Which is always. Luca has all the bravado of a trembling chihuahua. 

Another one of his glaring personality issues is his lack of self esteem and sense of worth. While this is something his adoptive parents have been working on with him, it's still easy to see in his day to day interactions. It's not something he's bound to get over quickly.[/color]

[b][color=#d1a9c1]Appearance:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6]Luca is 5"6' with a lean, muscular build. Having spent the past several years of his life doing hard manual labor on a farm, he's in pretty good shape. He has short, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and copper tone skin. He has a little facial hair, which is usually kept neatly trimmed. Luca doesn't have any piercings or tattoos, but his back and arms are marred with scars from beatings he took while working on the farm. Because of this, he often wears long sleeves. If it didn't get too warm in the summer, he would probably wear sweaters all year round. As it is, he can almost always be found sporting multiple layers of clothes.[/color]

[b][color=#d1a9c1]Other:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6]

Luca doesn't like being touched. The only people he's comfortable coming in contact with are his adopted parents, and that took several months to achieve. If someone puts a hand on his shoulder or hugs him, he'll freeze up like a statue. It's something he's working on, along with many other things.

Luca is bilingual. He speaks German and English fluently. He can also kind of muddle through a few other European languages, having traveled around in his youth.

Luca's adoptive parents are very active in the local church. So, naturally, Luca is as well. He was a bit of a celebrity among the congress for a while, as the church had been donating hundreds of dollars a month to get him into the states. His story was blasted all over pamphlets, handouts, and posters asking for help. The attention was pretty jarring at first. But, luckily, it died down.[/color]

[b][color=#d1a9c1]History:[/color][/b] [color=#f7f4f6] Luca was a happy, energetic child that lived among a large family of oldschool traditional, traveling Romani. They made a living by selling wood workings, crafts, hand made pottery, and other novelties. His family could get a bit rowdy with a few drinks, but they were good people.

Unfortunately, not everyone saw it that way. Luca learned from a young age not to stray from his family's campground. The locals of the towns they visited, which were typically small and rural, didn't always appreciate their presence. Most places put up with them until they left, but it was when they reached a small town in Germany that their band was met with retaliation. The mayor of the town called immigrant authorities on them, having them rounded up, arrested, and deported. 

Some of Luca's family fled, and some were captured and removed. But in the chaos, Luca was separated from them. At the tender age of 9, the boy was left to fend for himself. He was fortunate to have the basic survival skills needed to travel alone to the nearest significant city. There, he lived on the streets until he was 11. The two winters he suffered were long and hard. Then, one spring, a farmer approached him. He offered him work in return for food and shelter. He had no intent of paying Luca, making the transaction completely illegal and slavery by definition. But Luca was a desperate, naive child, so he agreed. 

Luca worked long, grueling hours on the farm. He did anything asked of him, from herding livestock to picking crops, to clearing the crawlspace under the barn. He was never allowed to come into the house, and was made to sleep in the barn, with one of the supply rooms serving as his quarters. Although he was no longer freezing to death or starving, he was still miserable. The farmhands took to tormenting him, calling him a dirty gypsy boy while he did the work they refused to. If Luca ever tried to defend himself, he was beaten until he learned to keep his mouth shut.

It was during these hard years of his life that Luca reflected on his mother's teachings of God. Before, he had never given it much thought. But laying in the straw that was his bed, aching from the day's work, faith made it possible to pull through. He snuck off of the farm one day to visit a bookstore in town. He had scraped together just enough money laying around to buy a Bible. He would hide it under the hay in the barn loft, because he knew if the farmhands found it, they would take it from him. He would only read it by moonlight. It was difficult, as he was practically illiterate, but over the years, it got easier.

Reading the Bible helped him endure years of abuse at the hands of his 'employers'. He was 15 when a couple of Christian missionaries happened to come to the farm to buy fresh produce. They saw the boy in such poor, filthy living conditions. After pulling him aside to speak with him, hearing his story, they couldn't leave him there. By this point, Luca had become so accustom to his loss of freedom that when the farmer refused to relinquish him to the missionaries, he didn't even fight it. It didn't occur to him that he didn't [i]actually[/i] belong to the man and his awful farmhands.

The missionaries went to the law. Police came to the farm and demanded that Luca be set free, eventually arresting the farmer for unlawful imprisonment and several workers for their treatment of the boy. Knowing that Luca was destined to wind up in an already overloaded foster system, the missionaries decided that they would, somehow, take the boy home with them. 

It wasn't easy. Getting the papers together to migrate an undocumented minor across the ocean took months. Luckily, the Pearsons didn't give up. Mr. Pearson, an engineer, went back to the US to work up enough funds to, aided with donations from the church, make it possible. His wife, meanwhile, lived in Germany with the boy until they would finally make the adoption official and bring him to his new home. 

The Pearsons had never been able to have children of their own, so when Luca fell into their laps, they felt as though it was destiny. Getting the boy accustomed to a normal life had it's bumps in the road. He was desperately behind on his education, and had to take long classes with a private tutor to get mostly caught up. This was accompanied by staggering medical and therapy bills. The Pearsons knew they wanted him to be able to live as normally as possible, and that meant getting him to interact with people his own age; his peers. They decided to try sending him to a public school once they felt he was ready. 

Luca ended up joining in the middle of the semester, as he still had a few academic tests to pass before he could be properly enrolled. As it is, almost all of the classes he's taking are remedial. But, he's anxiously looking forward to the first day of Big Boy school. (and trying not to shit himself) 
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