Leon Kennedy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theamericanpig) wrote2013-05-09 01:05 am
theamericanpig) wrote2013-05-09 01:05 am
application
player.
NAME/HANDLE: Sirea
PERSONAL JOURNAL:warbreaker
ARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: 23
CONTACT: wholemadseason@gmail.com / whole mad season @ AIM /![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
zombifiers
OTHER CHARACTERS: Bardockforebearer
character.
CHARACTER NAME: Leon Scott Kennedy
SERIES: Resident Evil. Here's his normal wiki page because his wikia is way too long and way too editorialized. His "Appearances" section in wiki is clean, concise, and hits on all of the major events of his past. Expansions on each game and movie are available through the page itself. (Though, the RE6 section is definitely lacking, so here's a direct, more detailed link to the events of that game. THERE ARE MAJOR SPOILERS IN THAT LINK.) He was also mentioned in Resident Evil: Survivor as being the one who provided the protagonist, Ark Thompson, with intel for his mission. In addition, he was mentioned in Resident Evil: Outbreak as being assigned to work with protagonist Kevin Ryman as his superior standing officer in the RPD (though, of course, that never came to fruition).
CANON POINT: post-RE6
AGE: 36
APPEARANCE:
PERSONALITY: When it comes to writing personality sections for character applications, Leon is by far the most annoying fucking character I've ever played. It's not because his personality is inconsistent -- far from it. It's because, from RE4 onward, the Resident Evil games are released in real time. That is to say, they take place in whatever year they're released in (give or take a year in either direction). It's been fifteen years since Leon's first appearance in this series, and we've essentially watched him grow up. Unlike so many other characters, Leon develops gradually. Shifts in his personality aren't necessarily due to singular, life-changing events. Rather, the changes he goes through are natural -- the kind of changes that simply come from growing older, the natural cynicism that comes with age, and from being worn down by his job. So, in order to understand who Leon is now, we have to understand who he's been, where he's been, and what he's done. To make this easy, I've split up this section into three parts -- three windows into his life and how he's changed and adapted.
But to sum up Leon pretty easily, the US Army Values are as follows:
Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless-Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage
Though Leon was never in the Armed Forces, he truly is a paragon of these ideals. No matter how tough things get, Leon is a survivor, and still so much more.
Resident Evil 2 (1998, age 21)
If I can steal a line from A Song of Ice and Fire for a second, RE2 Leon is "a boy so green he pisses grass." To make an RE2 Leon cocktail, mix together the following ingredients: 3 parts naivete, 2 parts desperation, 4 parts terrified, 2 parts incompetence, and 1 part really, really bad driver. But make sure you serve it in a glass made out of the biggest heart you've ever seen.
In Resident Evil 2, Leon is not a trained government agent. He has no military or combat experience. He doesn't even have experience as an officer. It's his first day on the job, and he hasn't even clocked in yet. The entire city is in chaos. And not just rioting, looting chaos. Zombie chaos. And this fresh-faced motherfucker is the only known officer still alive in the city. He has no idea what he's doing or how to go about doing it, but he still feels beholden to his title as Officer and his duty to serve and protect, as though such things still have meaning during the apocalypse. Everyone else in the city understands that his "authority" is null without a structured society. But since nobody ever gave Leon that memo, and because he just doesn't have the life experience yet to command respect on his own, he makes an ass out of himself pretty consistently, and then turns around and asks-- several times-- "Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me?"
But he tries his best, god bless him. Even though Claire completely ignores his orders and even hangs up on him at one point, even though the side characters have no respect for him as an officer, and even though the antagonists of this game are the craziest assholes on the planet, Leon still tries his fucking hardest to do the right thing. He drops everything he's doing to help get Sherry an antidote after she's infected. He carries Ada to safety after she's attacked and tends to her wounds himself. He searches through the entire S.T.A.R.S. office in order to help Claire find some sign of what happened to her brother, even though it's just as likely that zombies got to him. Leon even jumps in front of a bullet at one point, for no other reason than it was the right thing to do-- not just as an officer, but as a person. And he's left there for god knows how long, sitting in the sewers beneath Raccoon City, bleeding and alone. That's just the kind of guy Leon is.
His utter selflessness and naivete come off as blind optimism at some times and flat-out stupidity at other times. He has to believe that everyone he finds is going to make it out of the city alive, and that everything's going to be okay. It's the only thing that keeps him going. For Leon, the thought of a human person betraying him in the middle of zombies and monsters and death and chaos and the end of the fucking world is just too damn much, and he doesn't want to entertain it. As far as he's concerned, anyone who isn't his enemy is his friend. Period. To be fair, this would've ended up working out great for him, too, if it wasn't for Ada Wong.
It takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him. Leon is so fixated on finding the good in people that he can't see the bad that's so clearly present in them. Her lies are paper-thin, and she runs off on her own at the most inappropriate times-- including right after Leon takes a fucking bullet for her-- and he still is completely and utterly shocked by her betrayal at the end of the game. He still says one of the dumbest lines uttered by any game character ever: "I know her! Ada wouldn't do something like that."
Leon just cares too much, and he's able to use his innate naivete to lie to himself about the situation he's in. He wants everyone to get what they're after, and he wants to believe that they're being earnest about their claims and that it'll all work out. He wants to believe that Ada's just an innocent woman looking for her boyfriend, so he does. He wants Claire to find her brother, so he pushes her off to go find him after the game's conclusion. He wants Sherry to be okay, so he stays with her and takes care of her, even though he's been shot and is likely in danger of losing his arm. It's where the image of Leon as The Optimistic Hero comes from.
The last we see of Resident Evil 2 Leon is shortly after the game's conclusion. Leon and Sherry get plucked off the side of the road by federal agents and brought into custody. The government then holds a metaphorical gun to Sherry's head and forces Leon to work for them. Though this detail was originally only in an epilogue slide at the end of Resident Evil 3, there's now a very poignant scene in Darkside Chronicles about it. It's almost as though you can pinpoint the exact moment when the last of Leon's innocence completely dies.
Resident Evil 4 (2004, age 27)
In Resident Evil 4, we definitely see a more collected, in-control Leon. For the most part, anyway. He admits that it's his first solo mission right at the start of the game, and though he makes it through at the end successfully, he has subtle ways of letting us know that his confidence is still on shaky ground. In fact, the fun part about Leon's development during this game is in all of the ways that he shows us that this is an intermediary period for him. By this point, he's hovering somewhere between his anxious, insecure RE2 self and his future, full-fledged professional Agent Kennedy self that he hasn't quite reached yet. You can see it in his speech patterns. His level of confidence and the vocabulary he uses change drastically depending on whether he's doing well in his mission or fucking up.
"It's Leon. I've succeeded in extricating my subject."
Versus...
Hunnigan: "Leon, have you reached the church yet?"
Leon: "Well... yeah. Uh, sort of."
Adorable.
The not so adorable part of his development is when he doesn't actually shut the fuck up. He's constantly throwing out terrible one-liners out of a desire to put up a tough front, but if you actually listen to the crap he says, it's not remotely tough at all. I could lead you on a trail through Leon's terrible dialogue, but we wouldn't have enough breadcrumbs to get home. The point is, Leon is alone, and he knows he's alone, and he's going to do whatever he has to in order to get through it. And it works. It works a hell of a lot better than throwing himself headfirst into denial and blind hope. In this game, Leon draws strength mostly from within.
Interestingly, things are still personal for Leon on this mission. Just as he did in RE2, he shouts to the fucking heavens when two of his comrades get killed, and he swears vengeance for them over their corpses. When he confronts Ashley's kidnapper-- an old partner, actually-- Leon isn't upset over the betrayal, nor does he even mention the breach in national security. He's pissed off for Ashley's sake-- he yells at Krauser for getting her involved in his stupid bullshit with Saddler. All LEON HEEELLLPP annoyances aside, the amount of affection that Leon has towards Ashley is really quite endearing.
This isn't to say that Leon's without definitive growth. He's certainly gained an expertise in his area of work, and he's reached a point where he's begun to command respect from the people around him. He gets through the mission with a clear head, even through the worst of it, and even in spite of being infected himself at one point. Most importantly, he doesn't let himself get in his way anymore. He accepts things more readily, and his brain is in a constant state of problem-solving. Ashley is his focus. Her safety is the single most important thing. The mission comes first. Everything else is just noise. He's grown up in a big way. He didn't have a choice in that regard, because this is his life now.
He even encounters Ada again in this game, but instead of falling at her feet, he knows to be wary. He even acts coldly towards her during their reunion, and he practically spits the word "Wesker" at her... but it's short-lived. Professionally, he's learned better, and he keeps his distance. Personally, he's not ready to let his memories go just yet, and every time he's about to go soft on her, work gets in the way. He still has a long road to travel. This isn't the last we see of Ada.
Resident Evil 6 (2013, age 36)
By the time of Resident Evil 6, Leon has grown into a darker, more serious mindset. Just a few months prior to the start of this game, in Resident Evil: Damnation, we see Leon sitting alone in a hotel room, drinking. And not just drinking, but doing shots. During that film, there's strong hints towards Leon harboring thoughts of suicide, though he also goes on to say that he would never go through with it, because he feels too personally obligated to his job, the world, and the people who have died for him. And when Resident Evil 6 comes around, not only have these thoughts persisted, but they're revealed to have surfaced all the way back during Resident Evil 2.
In this sense, the image of Leon as being The Optimistic Hero is finally shattered. He's not fighting because he wants to -- he's fighting because he has to. He's fighting because he literally has nothing else to live for. He's fighting because his survivor's guilt is too great for him to do anything else. Perhaps the saddest part of it is that he's too far gone to see that there are people in his life who care about him, and he's clearly pushing them away and throwing himself obsessively into his work (and his liquor cabinet). This is most notably shown through Sherry. He says to her in RE6, "Yeah... I heard you became an agent." That was three years ago, Leon. You haven't spoken to Sherry in three years?
But don't misunderstand. It would be disingenuous to think of Leon as cold-hearted or indifferent. People die around Leon. A lot. They lie to him. A lot. He's been used by the people he cares about. He was threatened into the job he works, into the life he leads. I'm not saying that he's paranoid. But when you have someone like Leon, who was once so trusting, so honest, so earnest, and so willing to believe in the goodness of others, and you put him through the ringer and make him revisit Hell again and again, it's easy to get swallowed up by the worst of it. It's easy to forget who your friends are.
Out on the field, all of his uncertainty and insecurity has been smoothed away under his newfound professional attitude. He's knocked it off with the wisecracks and only lets them out when it's appropriate. (The "Got some sins to confess?" line was actually pretty witty.) He's learned how to be constantly in command of whatever situation he's in without being overbearing, fitting into the role of the leader quite nicely. And while these may seem like positive traits to have, they're a result of an entire adulthood of killing. Leon's become willing and able to pull the trigger on anyone these days, most times without even giving it so much as a thought. He mourns less now -- if he even bothers to at all. He's given up on swearing vengeance. Even his methods for killing zombies have become progressively more brutal, because it's become just another day on the job for him.
What's somewhat remarkable is that, in spite of all of it, Leon hasn't abandoned his desire to do good. There are several times throughout the course of RE6 where Leon stops and tries to help civilians, even when it's not conducive to his mission, or if the situation is helpless to begin with. He's still unwilling to leave anyone behind on the battlefield. The amount of trust he has in the people around him (especially Helena and Chris) is astounding, and when he's forced back together with the people he's been pushing away (especially Sherry, but also somewhat Chris), the affection he shows for them is absolutely heart-wrenching. Somewhere hidden beneath his fresh coat of cynicism and disillusionment, the big-hearted boyscout from Resident Evil 2 is still alive.
He even continues to hold onto his romanticized vision of Ada, though it's now out of purely selfish reasons on his part. Ada is a constant in his chaotic life -- she always seems to be there with him during the absolute worst, and he takes comfort in her twisted familiarity. Leon isn't stupid -- he knows that she uses him, and he knows that she helps him for her sake, not his. But he'll never do anything to risk losing her presence in his life, because on some fucked up level, he needs her. When she's around, he's able to remember someone he once lost: a rookie police officer named Leon Kennedy.
ABILITIES: Roundhouse kicking zombies in the face and totaling the shit out of every vehicle* he's ever attempted to drive, pilot, sail, or otherwise operate. Seriously, the biggest danger to any character in Resident Evil isn't any strain of virus. It's getting into a vehicle with Leon Scott Kennedy. Does this guy even have a fucking driver's license?
Anyway.
Leon's a Resident Evil character, so he's exceptionally good at whatever Capcom needs him to be good at depending on the situation at hand. As far as we can tell, Leon has had no formal training outside of police academy, so everything he does out on the field is either due to prior experience, or is a result of him (and by "him" I mean "Capcom") just making shit up as he goes along. New in Resident Evil 6: Leon is apparently a mechanic who is able to fix a goddamn bus. He also is revealed to know how to fly a helicopter, though he had to be coached when he tried to fly a jumbo jet. But he crashed both of them anyway so who gives a shit.
Definitively, he's a master at hand-to-hand combat (not necessarily martial arts -- it's military combat style), an expert shot and proficient in seemingly every type and model of firearm known to man, and an acrobat (!!!). By the time of Damnation, he's also a high-functioning alcoholic**. For the purposes of this RP, his skill set will be limited to what we've seen in canon. I'm pretty sure I covered everything.
*He does not actually crash the jet ski he uses for his escape at the end of Resident Evil 4... that we see on camera, anyway. I'm on to you, Mr. Scott.
**In all fairness, his drinking is probably not this bad... but I'm going to make fun of him for it anyway. He does drink a lot.
POSSESSIONS: The clothes on his back. During the after-credits sequence, Leon has dropped most of his heavy gear. He's back to carrying his standard 9mm pistol and combat knife.
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: musebox link.
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: (I haven't technically been in the game for a full month yet, so I'm going to give a sample. o/)
My shoulder is on fire...
The entire world spun past his vision when he tried to open his eyes. It all blurred together into a mesh of gray and brown and red, and it was all turning counter-clockwise. Except for when it wasn't. He closed his eyes again and let his head hang heavy on his neck. In the distance, he could hear the faint sounds of water running, as well as a sickening splorch sound that he wished he couldn't identify.
And footsteps.
"What happened?"
A voice. A human voice. Claire's voice. He barely recognized it. Her hand was on his shoulder -- his good shoulder. She still sounded so far away, and almost like she was talking to him through a tin can. Everything was out of focus, and soon he couldn't hear anything clearly at all. It was just noise and colors and pain.
"You're bleeding!"
I'm never going home...
Leon awoke to a pitch black room, blind and disoriented. His hair and shirt clung to him uncomfortably, both damp from sweat. Gasping, he kicked the bedsheets away and clamored out of bed, stumbling through the dark in the general direction that the light switch should've been. He flicked it on, and the light was just as blinding as the darkness had been, but he didn't care. For a brief second, he'd gotten confirmation that he was, indeed, in his bedroom. At home. The home he owned. In Washington. His pulse was pounding between his ears so hard that he swore he could feel his blood beat against the brain in his skull. Still feeling dizzy and displaced, he shambled back over towards the bed and sat down slumped over at the edge, taking a few deep breaths.
He didn't mind the nightmares. Nightmares had become a familiar friend. The whole 'waking up and not knowing where he was' thing had to stop. The feeling was only ever brief and fleeting, but those few seconds were always upending and disturbing. He couldn't afford to lose sleep over this crap. With a bit of a sigh, he reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, just to get it off of his sweat-lined forehead. This was stupid. He felt stupid. He idly rubbed at one of his eyes with the ball of his hand and immediately hated himself for it. The sweat on his palm stung. Clearly the best remedy for this was to rub at his eye with it some more.
"Can't wait to see what's lined up for me when I really get old," he muttered to no one.
Shaking the thought from his head, he forced himself to stand again. Sure, he'd get back to sleep eventually, but for now, at least, he was up. He headed over towards his desk on the far side of the room -- more specifically, to the bottle of gin and clean glass that were there "just for emergencies." This wasn't an emergency. Not by a long shot. But a few mental hoops and some tight clenching, and hey, he could turn it into one no problem. As far as he was concerned, he was just cutting out the middle man. He screwed the cap off the bottle and let it fall to the desktop with a tiny clatter before pouring himself half a glass.
It was hard to tell what time of night it even was. He glanced out the window to his left as he raised his glass to his lips. DC wasn't a particularly loud city at night-- at least, not compared to somewhere like New York or Boston-- but it definitely had its louder hours and its quieter hours. Right now, though, even the streetlights seemed silent. No voices were sounding off in the distance. Nothing moved along the pavement. There didn't even seem to be a breeze.
From behind him, the familiar sound of plastic vibrating on wood hit his ears. Great. That was just what he needed at Ass O'Clock in the morning after a mini episode. He placed the glass back onto his desk and opted for the bottle instead, grabbing it by the neck and carrying it with him back to the nightstand beside his bed, mumbling to himself the whole time.
"Duty calls..."
NAME/HANDLE: Sirea
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
warbreakerARE YOU 16 OR OVER?: 23
CONTACT: wholemadseason@gmail.com / whole mad season @ AIM /
OTHER CHARACTERS: Bardock
forebearercharacter.
CHARACTER NAME: Leon Scott Kennedy
SERIES: Resident Evil. Here's his normal wiki page because his wikia is way too long and way too editorialized. His "Appearances" section in wiki is clean, concise, and hits on all of the major events of his past. Expansions on each game and movie are available through the page itself. (Though, the RE6 section is definitely lacking, so here's a direct, more detailed link to the events of that game. THERE ARE MAJOR SPOILERS IN THAT LINK.) He was also mentioned in Resident Evil: Survivor as being the one who provided the protagonist, Ark Thompson, with intel for his mission. In addition, he was mentioned in Resident Evil: Outbreak as being assigned to work with protagonist Kevin Ryman as his superior standing officer in the RPD (though, of course, that never came to fruition).
CANON POINT: post-RE6
AGE: 36
APPEARANCE:
PERSONALITY: When it comes to writing personality sections for character applications, Leon is by far the most annoying fucking character I've ever played. It's not because his personality is inconsistent -- far from it. It's because, from RE4 onward, the Resident Evil games are released in real time. That is to say, they take place in whatever year they're released in (give or take a year in either direction). It's been fifteen years since Leon's first appearance in this series, and we've essentially watched him grow up. Unlike so many other characters, Leon develops gradually. Shifts in his personality aren't necessarily due to singular, life-changing events. Rather, the changes he goes through are natural -- the kind of changes that simply come from growing older, the natural cynicism that comes with age, and from being worn down by his job. So, in order to understand who Leon is now, we have to understand who he's been, where he's been, and what he's done. To make this easy, I've split up this section into three parts -- three windows into his life and how he's changed and adapted.
But to sum up Leon pretty easily, the US Army Values are as follows:
Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless-Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage
Though Leon was never in the Armed Forces, he truly is a paragon of these ideals. No matter how tough things get, Leon is a survivor, and still so much more.
Resident Evil 2 (1998, age 21)
If I can steal a line from A Song of Ice and Fire for a second, RE2 Leon is "a boy so green he pisses grass." To make an RE2 Leon cocktail, mix together the following ingredients: 3 parts naivete, 2 parts desperation, 4 parts terrified, 2 parts incompetence, and 1 part really, really bad driver. But make sure you serve it in a glass made out of the biggest heart you've ever seen.
In Resident Evil 2, Leon is not a trained government agent. He has no military or combat experience. He doesn't even have experience as an officer. It's his first day on the job, and he hasn't even clocked in yet. The entire city is in chaos. And not just rioting, looting chaos. Zombie chaos. And this fresh-faced motherfucker is the only known officer still alive in the city. He has no idea what he's doing or how to go about doing it, but he still feels beholden to his title as Officer and his duty to serve and protect, as though such things still have meaning during the apocalypse. Everyone else in the city understands that his "authority" is null without a structured society. But since nobody ever gave Leon that memo, and because he just doesn't have the life experience yet to command respect on his own, he makes an ass out of himself pretty consistently, and then turns around and asks-- several times-- "Why doesn't anyone ever listen to me?"
But he tries his best, god bless him. Even though Claire completely ignores his orders and even hangs up on him at one point, even though the side characters have no respect for him as an officer, and even though the antagonists of this game are the craziest assholes on the planet, Leon still tries his fucking hardest to do the right thing. He drops everything he's doing to help get Sherry an antidote after she's infected. He carries Ada to safety after she's attacked and tends to her wounds himself. He searches through the entire S.T.A.R.S. office in order to help Claire find some sign of what happened to her brother, even though it's just as likely that zombies got to him. Leon even jumps in front of a bullet at one point, for no other reason than it was the right thing to do-- not just as an officer, but as a person. And he's left there for god knows how long, sitting in the sewers beneath Raccoon City, bleeding and alone. That's just the kind of guy Leon is.
His utter selflessness and naivete come off as blind optimism at some times and flat-out stupidity at other times. He has to believe that everyone he finds is going to make it out of the city alive, and that everything's going to be okay. It's the only thing that keeps him going. For Leon, the thought of a human person betraying him in the middle of zombies and monsters and death and chaos and the end of the fucking world is just too damn much, and he doesn't want to entertain it. As far as he's concerned, anyone who isn't his enemy is his friend. Period. To be fair, this would've ended up working out great for him, too, if it wasn't for Ada Wong.
"As an officer, it’s my job to look out for you. But we’re not going to get through this alive if we don’t work together."
It takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him. Leon is so fixated on finding the good in people that he can't see the bad that's so clearly present in them. Her lies are paper-thin, and she runs off on her own at the most inappropriate times-- including right after Leon takes a fucking bullet for her-- and he still is completely and utterly shocked by her betrayal at the end of the game. He still says one of the dumbest lines uttered by any game character ever: "I know her! Ada wouldn't do something like that."
Leon just cares too much, and he's able to use his innate naivete to lie to himself about the situation he's in. He wants everyone to get what they're after, and he wants to believe that they're being earnest about their claims and that it'll all work out. He wants to believe that Ada's just an innocent woman looking for her boyfriend, so he does. He wants Claire to find her brother, so he pushes her off to go find him after the game's conclusion. He wants Sherry to be okay, so he stays with her and takes care of her, even though he's been shot and is likely in danger of losing his arm. It's where the image of Leon as The Optimistic Hero comes from.
The last we see of Resident Evil 2 Leon is shortly after the game's conclusion. Leon and Sherry get plucked off the side of the road by federal agents and brought into custody. The government then holds a metaphorical gun to Sherry's head and forces Leon to work for them. Though this detail was originally only in an epilogue slide at the end of Resident Evil 3, there's now a very poignant scene in Darkside Chronicles about it. It's almost as though you can pinpoint the exact moment when the last of Leon's innocence completely dies.
Resident Evil 4 (2004, age 27)
In Resident Evil 4, we definitely see a more collected, in-control Leon. For the most part, anyway. He admits that it's his first solo mission right at the start of the game, and though he makes it through at the end successfully, he has subtle ways of letting us know that his confidence is still on shaky ground. In fact, the fun part about Leon's development during this game is in all of the ways that he shows us that this is an intermediary period for him. By this point, he's hovering somewhere between his anxious, insecure RE2 self and his future, full-fledged professional Agent Kennedy self that he hasn't quite reached yet. You can see it in his speech patterns. His level of confidence and the vocabulary he uses change drastically depending on whether he's doing well in his mission or fucking up.
"It's Leon. I've succeeded in extricating my subject."
Versus...
Hunnigan: "Leon, have you reached the church yet?"
Leon: "Well... yeah. Uh, sort of."
Adorable.
The not so adorable part of his development is when he doesn't actually shut the fuck up. He's constantly throwing out terrible one-liners out of a desire to put up a tough front, but if you actually listen to the crap he says, it's not remotely tough at all. I could lead you on a trail through Leon's terrible dialogue, but we wouldn't have enough breadcrumbs to get home. The point is, Leon is alone, and he knows he's alone, and he's going to do whatever he has to in order to get through it. And it works. It works a hell of a lot better than throwing himself headfirst into denial and blind hope. In this game, Leon draws strength mostly from within.
Interestingly, things are still personal for Leon on this mission. Just as he did in RE2, he shouts to the fucking heavens when two of his comrades get killed, and he swears vengeance for them over their corpses. When he confronts Ashley's kidnapper-- an old partner, actually-- Leon isn't upset over the betrayal, nor does he even mention the breach in national security. He's pissed off for Ashley's sake-- he yells at Krauser for getting her involved in his stupid bullshit with Saddler. All LEON HEEELLLPP annoyances aside, the amount of affection that Leon has towards Ashley is really quite endearing.
"What is it that you fight for, comrade?"
"My past, I suppose."
This isn't to say that Leon's without definitive growth. He's certainly gained an expertise in his area of work, and he's reached a point where he's begun to command respect from the people around him. He gets through the mission with a clear head, even through the worst of it, and even in spite of being infected himself at one point. Most importantly, he doesn't let himself get in his way anymore. He accepts things more readily, and his brain is in a constant state of problem-solving. Ashley is his focus. Her safety is the single most important thing. The mission comes first. Everything else is just noise. He's grown up in a big way. He didn't have a choice in that regard, because this is his life now.
He even encounters Ada again in this game, but instead of falling at her feet, he knows to be wary. He even acts coldly towards her during their reunion, and he practically spits the word "Wesker" at her... but it's short-lived. Professionally, he's learned better, and he keeps his distance. Personally, he's not ready to let his memories go just yet, and every time he's about to go soft on her, work gets in the way. He still has a long road to travel. This isn't the last we see of Ada.
Resident Evil 6 (2013, age 36)
By the time of Resident Evil 6, Leon has grown into a darker, more serious mindset. Just a few months prior to the start of this game, in Resident Evil: Damnation, we see Leon sitting alone in a hotel room, drinking. And not just drinking, but doing shots. During that film, there's strong hints towards Leon harboring thoughts of suicide, though he also goes on to say that he would never go through with it, because he feels too personally obligated to his job, the world, and the people who have died for him. And when Resident Evil 6 comes around, not only have these thoughts persisted, but they're revealed to have surfaced all the way back during Resident Evil 2.
"To tell you the truth, I even thought about ending it - several times, actually - with just a quick bullet to the head."
In this sense, the image of Leon as being The Optimistic Hero is finally shattered. He's not fighting because he wants to -- he's fighting because he has to. He's fighting because he literally has nothing else to live for. He's fighting because his survivor's guilt is too great for him to do anything else. Perhaps the saddest part of it is that he's too far gone to see that there are people in his life who care about him, and he's clearly pushing them away and throwing himself obsessively into his work (and his liquor cabinet). This is most notably shown through Sherry. He says to her in RE6, "Yeah... I heard you became an agent." That was three years ago, Leon. You haven't spoken to Sherry in three years?
But don't misunderstand. It would be disingenuous to think of Leon as cold-hearted or indifferent. People die around Leon. A lot. They lie to him. A lot. He's been used by the people he cares about. He was threatened into the job he works, into the life he leads. I'm not saying that he's paranoid. But when you have someone like Leon, who was once so trusting, so honest, so earnest, and so willing to believe in the goodness of others, and you put him through the ringer and make him revisit Hell again and again, it's easy to get swallowed up by the worst of it. It's easy to forget who your friends are.
Out on the field, all of his uncertainty and insecurity has been smoothed away under his newfound professional attitude. He's knocked it off with the wisecracks and only lets them out when it's appropriate. (The "Got some sins to confess?" line was actually pretty witty.) He's learned how to be constantly in command of whatever situation he's in without being overbearing, fitting into the role of the leader quite nicely. And while these may seem like positive traits to have, they're a result of an entire adulthood of killing. Leon's become willing and able to pull the trigger on anyone these days, most times without even giving it so much as a thought. He mourns less now -- if he even bothers to at all. He's given up on swearing vengeance. Even his methods for killing zombies have become progressively more brutal, because it's become just another day on the job for him.
What's somewhat remarkable is that, in spite of all of it, Leon hasn't abandoned his desire to do good. There are several times throughout the course of RE6 where Leon stops and tries to help civilians, even when it's not conducive to his mission, or if the situation is helpless to begin with. He's still unwilling to leave anyone behind on the battlefield. The amount of trust he has in the people around him (especially Helena and Chris) is astounding, and when he's forced back together with the people he's been pushing away (especially Sherry, but also somewhat Chris), the affection he shows for them is absolutely heart-wrenching. Somewhere hidden beneath his fresh coat of cynicism and disillusionment, the big-hearted boyscout from Resident Evil 2 is still alive.
He even continues to hold onto his romanticized vision of Ada, though it's now out of purely selfish reasons on his part. Ada is a constant in his chaotic life -- she always seems to be there with him during the absolute worst, and he takes comfort in her twisted familiarity. Leon isn't stupid -- he knows that she uses him, and he knows that she helps him for her sake, not his. But he'll never do anything to risk losing her presence in his life, because on some fucked up level, he needs her. When she's around, he's able to remember someone he once lost: a rookie police officer named Leon Kennedy.
ABILITIES: Roundhouse kicking zombies in the face and totaling the shit out of every vehicle* he's ever attempted to drive, pilot, sail, or otherwise operate. Seriously, the biggest danger to any character in Resident Evil isn't any strain of virus. It's getting into a vehicle with Leon Scott Kennedy. Does this guy even have a fucking driver's license?
Anyway.
Leon's a Resident Evil character, so he's exceptionally good at whatever Capcom needs him to be good at depending on the situation at hand. As far as we can tell, Leon has had no formal training outside of police academy, so everything he does out on the field is either due to prior experience, or is a result of him (and by "him" I mean "Capcom") just making shit up as he goes along. New in Resident Evil 6: Leon is apparently a mechanic who is able to fix a goddamn bus. He also is revealed to know how to fly a helicopter, though he had to be coached when he tried to fly a jumbo jet. But he crashed both of them anyway so who gives a shit.
Definitively, he's a master at hand-to-hand combat (not necessarily martial arts -- it's military combat style), an expert shot and proficient in seemingly every type and model of firearm known to man, and an acrobat (!!!). By the time of Damnation, he's also a high-functioning alcoholic**. For the purposes of this RP, his skill set will be limited to what we've seen in canon. I'm pretty sure I covered everything.
*He does not actually crash the jet ski he uses for his escape at the end of Resident Evil 4... that we see on camera, anyway. I'm on to you, Mr. Scott.
**In all fairness, his drinking is probably not this bad... but I'm going to make fun of him for it anyway. He does drink a lot.
POSSESSIONS: The clothes on his back. During the after-credits sequence, Leon has dropped most of his heavy gear. He's back to carrying his standard 9mm pistol and combat knife.
samples.
JOURNAL ENTRY SAMPLE: musebox link.
THIRD-PERSON SAMPLE: (I haven't technically been in the game for a full month yet, so I'm going to give a sample. o/)
My shoulder is on fire...
The entire world spun past his vision when he tried to open his eyes. It all blurred together into a mesh of gray and brown and red, and it was all turning counter-clockwise. Except for when it wasn't. He closed his eyes again and let his head hang heavy on his neck. In the distance, he could hear the faint sounds of water running, as well as a sickening splorch sound that he wished he couldn't identify.
And footsteps.
"What happened?"
A voice. A human voice. Claire's voice. He barely recognized it. Her hand was on his shoulder -- his good shoulder. She still sounded so far away, and almost like she was talking to him through a tin can. Everything was out of focus, and soon he couldn't hear anything clearly at all. It was just noise and colors and pain.
"You're bleeding!"
I'm never going home...
Leon awoke to a pitch black room, blind and disoriented. His hair and shirt clung to him uncomfortably, both damp from sweat. Gasping, he kicked the bedsheets away and clamored out of bed, stumbling through the dark in the general direction that the light switch should've been. He flicked it on, and the light was just as blinding as the darkness had been, but he didn't care. For a brief second, he'd gotten confirmation that he was, indeed, in his bedroom. At home. The home he owned. In Washington. His pulse was pounding between his ears so hard that he swore he could feel his blood beat against the brain in his skull. Still feeling dizzy and displaced, he shambled back over towards the bed and sat down slumped over at the edge, taking a few deep breaths.
He didn't mind the nightmares. Nightmares had become a familiar friend. The whole 'waking up and not knowing where he was' thing had to stop. The feeling was only ever brief and fleeting, but those few seconds were always upending and disturbing. He couldn't afford to lose sleep over this crap. With a bit of a sigh, he reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, just to get it off of his sweat-lined forehead. This was stupid. He felt stupid. He idly rubbed at one of his eyes with the ball of his hand and immediately hated himself for it. The sweat on his palm stung. Clearly the best remedy for this was to rub at his eye with it some more.
"Can't wait to see what's lined up for me when I really get old," he muttered to no one.
Shaking the thought from his head, he forced himself to stand again. Sure, he'd get back to sleep eventually, but for now, at least, he was up. He headed over towards his desk on the far side of the room -- more specifically, to the bottle of gin and clean glass that were there "just for emergencies." This wasn't an emergency. Not by a long shot. But a few mental hoops and some tight clenching, and hey, he could turn it into one no problem. As far as he was concerned, he was just cutting out the middle man. He screwed the cap off the bottle and let it fall to the desktop with a tiny clatter before pouring himself half a glass.
It was hard to tell what time of night it even was. He glanced out the window to his left as he raised his glass to his lips. DC wasn't a particularly loud city at night-- at least, not compared to somewhere like New York or Boston-- but it definitely had its louder hours and its quieter hours. Right now, though, even the streetlights seemed silent. No voices were sounding off in the distance. Nothing moved along the pavement. There didn't even seem to be a breeze.
From behind him, the familiar sound of plastic vibrating on wood hit his ears. Great. That was just what he needed at Ass O'Clock in the morning after a mini episode. He placed the glass back onto his desk and opted for the bottle instead, grabbing it by the neck and carrying it with him back to the nightstand beside his bed, mumbling to himself the whole time.
"Duty calls..."