Re: Character Sheets
- Character name: Léontine LaRoche
D.O.B: 31/12/87
- Country of Origin: France
- Current City of Residence: Mont St Michel, France
- CityPic:
- CharPic:
Character description:
Any fashion guru would tell you, never mix red and green. Conflicting signals, danger and security, stop and go, anger and calm - the contradiction screams like a sore thumb. But Léontine LaRoche lived in contradictions.
Messy red hair, sharp green eyes to match fine-boned cheeks, and a slim, athletic build with height to match, standing taller than most of her male peers at two inches short of six feet, make up this angry young Frenchwoman. Preference given to dark clothes, tight-fitting, almost uniforms, close-fitting coats to keep out the winds of her home. Although one might expect a tan from living in sunny France, Léontine's skin is pale, as if making a point to those around her
A swift, flowing accent that takes a little from her Southern French mother, more from her Parisian father, is more often that not deliberately incomprehensible. She retains the faintest trace of an accent even in English, out of sheer wilfulness more than anything else. In conversation, a terse, barely veiled impatience to get every necessary social dealing over with, serves to cover the real difficulty the Frenchwoman possesses in dealing with people.
Biography/history:
Léontine's father, Thierry LaRoche, was never home. He brought in an income sufficient to keep her and her mother in luxury, send her to private school, and pay for medical treatment whenever it was necessary. You don't miss what you've never known, so their arrangement was fine. Thierry was a man who'd arrive at the family home for a week-end here or there, usually bearing gifts from far-off places, but no more.
In January 2001, he didn't come home. Instead, the 14-year old Léontine saw him in the paper, villified and held up as a foreign spy. He'd betrayed France, the statement said, sold secrets to their enemies, and paid the price. According to the press, Thierry LaRoche was the worst traitor their country had seen since the days of Vichy. More, he'd been killed by the men he'd been dealing with, on a deal gone wrong.
At first, the surprisingly level-headed Léontine refused to believe it. Then she was inconsolable, surprisingly so for a girl who'd lost a father she'd never known. Then, a week after the article, some men came to visit the family home (now on the market). Léontine's mother, Catherine LaRoche, had taken the news rather worse, and hadn't left her room, so Léontine met the men and served them coffee.
Over coffee and biscuits in nerveless fingers, the truth came out. Thierry LaRoche had been black operations. Blacker than black. He'd been killed valiantly in the defence of his country, on a mission no one could ever know about. The public villification had in fact been his idea. "The girls will understand" he'd said. In French, but you get the picture.
In short, the suited men bought Léontine's silence with barely veiled threats, and a great deal of money. They left her to think their "offer" over. They wanted her to go into the equivalent of Witness Protection, change her name, live a lie for the sake of the country's reputation. They left Léontine with a suitcase of cash - 50,000 Euros, as a "show of good faith".
That night, Catherine shot herself. The day after, the 14-year old Léontine took the offer - on her terms. She wanted an isolated place to live - a house on Mont St Michel would do nicely. In fact, the Church itself would be perfect.
On top of that, she wanted a continued payment, a steady 100,000 Euro income every year, no taxes, and to be left alone entirely. Oh, and the small matter of a ten million Euro lump sum. The French government, or rather, a small, not democratically elected section of the French government, looked at her proposal for all of ten minutes and said yes, and Léontine LaRoche disappeared.
For the next ten years, what she did was anyone's guess. She is believed to have left the island briefly to compete in a naginatajutsu competition in Paris, which she won, then walked away without giving a name or details, so was never awarded a prize.
Aside from the obscure medieval-era weapons training, Léontine spent a great deal of her isolated time in study. From a 14-year old with no qualifications whatsoever, came a young woman with a deep, if theoretical knowledge of medicine (but not law, she thought it irrelevant), history, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and languages. Psychology was the one field that flummoxed her. She just couldn't get her head around people.
Thus in 2012, Mademoiselle LaRoche enrolled in the university of Paris for a Psychology course. She made it through a single semester, which barely started the basics, before the world turned upside down. December 22nd, she left Paris in distress, quickly retreating to her island home to seclude herself, even more than usual, as things began to change within the world.
Notes
- Particularly fond of music. Carries an advanced iPod prototype which (it is rumoured) she designed herself, based on bioelectrics and solar power, along with a high-powered set of sound insulating earphones, at all times.
- Despises guns, owing to their involvement in the violent deaths of both her parents.
- Carries a slim black box with a few medals in it - specifically, those her father was owed but never received because of the cover-up.
- Fluent in German, Spanish, English, Chinese, Arabic, a limited amount of Hebrew and is currently learning Italian. However, she refuses to speak anything but French, as she's a bitch.
- Very well-read at the cost of social skills. Possesses a theoretical knowledge of medicine, biology, philosophy, and a more practical knowledge of mathematics, physics, and engineering. Hates works of fiction with a passion.
- Refuses to fly in a plane unless it's privately owned, holds a pilot's license for plane and helicoper, but not a driving license. Exists "out of the system", carries nothing in terms of money or ID but a Black AmEx card.
- Has very little respect for the law or other people in general. She does, however, spend time praying in the Church on Mont St Michel, so is perhaps religious, at least by appearance.
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