COSMOS | Leo Nowiki | -queenofinfires

— UNRELENTING FORCE —

— full name: Leopold Nowiki
— nickname(s):
	° Leo > he prefers to be called this ; it's a shortened version of his birth name
— birthday: October 3rd
— age: 21
— height: 6’ 0” (182 cm)
— weight: 100 lbs (45 kg)
— sex: male
— gender: male
— romantic orientation: aromantic
— sexual orientation/sexualitiy: aromantic
    ° Although he is aromantic and asexual, if the right person came along, Leo may begin to develop some form of feelings for them, no matter their gender. They just have to be really, really patient
— face claim: Jakub Gierszał (black hair)
— backup face claim: Colin Morgan (he has a fitting style from when he cameoed on Doctor Who)

— AURA WHISPER —

— slot: PLUTO
— slot back up: I feel like this form is too slot specific, so I’m going to leave this blank, but I’m willing to edit my form if you want to see my character in a different slot
— birthplace: Krakow, Poland
hometown: Krakow, Poland + Whitehorse, Canada
— nationality: Polish
— ethnicity: Polish

— background: When Leo was growing up, his father was working as a tech support person for the office workers at a company in Poland. His father would always take as many shifts as the company allowed him to have in order to support both Leo and his unemployed alcoholic mother. His father had been infatuated with his mother since they were children and, after she spiraled down the slope of addiction, he was too in love with her to realize there was something wrong.
    When Leo was eight, the company shut down its Polish branch, as it was bought by a Canadian company. As the CEO was staying the same, Leo’s father put in a transfer request, which was accepted because he knew the software the best, and moved the entire family to Canada. It was only a year before he was replaced by someone who could fluently speak English and didn't have a thick accent.
    After that, their family struggled. Leo’s father would take up as many jobs as he could in order to keep them alive and to pay for his wife’s addiction. Leo never really saw him. If there was a police lineup, and Leo had to pick his father out of that bunch, he might not have been able to.
	School was quite difficult for Leo, because he was thrown into it barely knowing the language. His father was never around to help and his mother was never sober enough to bother learning the language. Leo mostly retreated into himself. Instead of going out to play with the other kids, where he would just be made fun of, he started reading and drawing instead. By age eleven, he was assigned a computer in class, and he began to develop an interest in technology and computers, and started reading books about them.
	He was twelve when he found out about the COSMOS program online, and discovered that they let children join. He was just done with his life. His parents never seemed to care about him, he was more like an inconvenience in his own house, and school life was inherently difficult. When he told his father about it, the man was actually happy to see him go. That was one less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe. Leo’s father never wanted children. He only put up with Leo because his wife wanted a kid. All the while, Leo’s mother was too far down a bottle to realize there was a person missing from their house.
	Cadet life at COSMOS was much easier for Leo. Being an important tech company, they spoke in English, so he didn't have to learn a third language, and they had English tutors available. The instructors also loved him because he was already quite mature and showed a great interest in computer sciences.

— personality: Leo had to grow up fast. He was always a mature child who never really let playing games and having fun get in the way of doing what needed to be done. He was pretty quiet, and there were very few people who were able to coax him out of his shell. Even then, he was only slightly talkative and playful when they were alone. Mostly, he just kept his mouth shut and got his work done.
	He a lone wolf, really. He had too many ideas and too much an independent streak to be a follower, but none of the speaking or team building skills to be a leader.
	Honestly, he was a bit selfish in a way. He would get what he needed done, and didn’t take the time to help others because that involved talking with them, which, honestly, scared him a bit. People in general scared him. They were unpredictable and were able to hurt, but computers weren’t.
	Once he was told of the launch, he started to change his ways. He knew that he would have to interact with people, and also knew that he couldn’t continue not being able to work in social environments. He forced himself to get comfortable talking with people. He was only comfortable around some of the other cadets and the trainers, but he was improving. It took him a while, but he also began having patience in simulations and group work, to where he would share his ideas and help others through it. His instincts were always good, and it increased his drive to become more social, around selective people, when he would be praised because of them. He was the youngest one on the launch, which made the people there want to protect him and to make him feel comfortable. But they didn’t baby him. They knew he was just as capable as the rest of them.

— family: name | relation | age | occupation | closeness 1-5
    ° Alfons Nowiki | father | 34 (when he last saw him) | unemployed tech support person | 1
    ° Krysia Nowiki | mother | 37 (when he last saw her) | unemployed | 1

— BEND WILL —

— cadet life:
    ° social life: he really didn’t have one. He felt terrible anxiety from just talking to a person, even if it was them asking if he could pass them a pair of scissors. He felt most comfortable alone, where he could do his work in peace.
    ° academic life: the trainers loved him. His instincts were great, in his training classes, even if he wasn’t able to work together, he would always make it through the challenge, leaving his group behind. When it came to computers, math or technology, he was a sponge. He loved computers and programming, and read books on them by his own free will. The teachers and trainers tried putting him in groups at first, thinking it would help his social skills grow, but they quickly realized that that just shut down any intelligence he had, because he was too shy and afraid to do or say anything, so, they mostly let him work on his own.
    ° he truthfully didn’t care about his family. They weren’t family to him. They were just DNA donors.

— languages spoken:
° Polish > fluent, but rusty
° English > fluent, but rusty

— likes:
    ° painting and drawing > he enjoys it, and it has always been one of his escapes
    ° reading > ^^
    ° computer programming > it keeps his mind busy and it’s predictable, which comforts him
    ° simulations (before the launch) > he found them to be a lot of fun, honestly
    ° darkness > it’s easier to not be noticed if you could hide in the shadows
    ° building things > he likes being creative
— dislikes:
    ° being the center of attention > he’ll freeze
    ° loud people and places > they make him uncomfortable, and he just sinks into himself
    ° crowds > they make him feel small
    ° alcohol > it reminds him of his mother, and he doesn’t have good memories associated with his biological family
    ° pushy people > he takes his time to talk and to get used to people. he gets uncomfortable whenever someone tries to make him do things he doesn’t want to

— typical clothing: darker colors. Sticking out and being the center of attention is not something he’s a fan of. He would typically wear dark jeans, running shoes or combat boots and a black t shirt.
— why did they join the COSMOS program: he joined COSMOS to get away. He didn’t have a very nice home- and school-life and he couldn’t see it getting any better. He was smart and had a lot of potential, so COSMOS accepted him and gave him a chance to grow.
— favorite subject: computer programming

— strengths: combat training, scavenging - max 3 creativity
    ° creativity > he knows how to turn nothing into something useful, a skill he gained from being an artist
    ° instincts/survival > he always seems to know what to do and he also know how to shut off his emotions so that he can get it done
— weaknesses:
    ° teamwork > it’s not just that he doesn’t work well with others, it’s that he gets too intimidated by other people to work together at all
    ° speaking in front of groups > ^^

— how did they react when they were told of the COSMOS launch? He was both excited and hesitant. He was excited because it gave him something really interesting and useful to do. It reminded him that he wasn’t just a burden, like he was when he was with his family. But, he also knew that it would involve talking and interacting with people, so he quickly had to face his fear and get over it. After being accepted for the launch, he started making progress in his social skills, and even made friends with one or two of the other cadets, after lots of patience on all of their parts. But, something didn’t feel right about the whole thing. His instincts were rarely ever wrong. He caught glimpses of some of the programming for their launch, and it just looked wrong for what they had planned to do. Although, by then, it was too late.

— CALL OF VALOR —

— when they crash landed on their new environment, what did they first do?
    He almost suffocated. Pluto’s atmosphere is almost entirely nitrogen. Leo began to feel the effects of nitrogen asphyxiation almost immediately, as his space suit had a leak in it, and he wasn’t able to get any oxygen. He didn’t realize anything was wrong. He was getting light-headed and dizzy, but he associated that with a concussion from the crash. His extremities were going numb and he couldn’t think straight from the lack of oxygen. He collapsed. Lucky enough for him, he fell through a hole in the surface. Unconscious, he fell below the crust and into the waters below. Along the way, he hit his head on a rock, which has left him with a scar over his left eye.
    Thankfully, there was a small amount of oxygen in the air below the surface. It wasn’t as much as he needed, and he eventually developed alternate ways to obtain oxygen, but it was enough to keep him alive.
    It was his first encounter with an alien that made it so he survived. There was a Lazi (described below) that was managed to escape their civilization, who took care of him. This Lazi was shunned from the civilization because he wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, hence why he didn’t kill Leo. Leo was able to survive because of the combined knowledge of the Lazi and his creativity and inventiveness.
    Leo spent about five Earth years with this Lazi, until he was torn apart by the other Lazis, when they were caught trying to steal food from their warehouses, as the whole planet was going through a bad growing season (underwater plants were the only things that could survive).
    After that, Leo shut down everything he didn’t need, mentally. He closed off all of his emotions, and just did what he needed to, to survive. He racked up quite a large death count, to the point where the Lazis would use him to scare their children not to wander out after dark. The Lazis were scared of him, but, because of their inherently violent nature, there were young Lazis that would get a group together to hunt him, hoping to bring him back as the perfect piece of meat to prove themselves. Leo slaughtered them all.
    After being on Pluto for an Earth year, he stumbled across a piece of his rocket that fell through the same hole he did when he arrived. The fog of apathetic survival cleared. He wanted to leave. Some shred of human in him wanted to leave. He listened to it. He managed to fight his way through the Lazi capital. He was able to hijack a Lazi rocket. Being a genius with computer programming, he didn’t need to know how to fly it or run it, he just deciphered their codes and programmed it to do everything for him.

— were there other lifeforms? Yes. Leo titled them Lazis (l-ah-zee-s, plural), because they were the color of the gemstone lapis lazuli. They are covered in scales and have webbed fingers, toes, and arms (like sea wings), but are still able to grab things like humans. They were completely hairless, had white blood, had large eyes that enabled them to see in the water, and were quite thin.
    They were intelligent, to the point where they had created rockets for space travel. But they were also bloodthirsty. They were carnivores, even though there weren’t many other forms of life on their planet. They would send out ships to capture lifeforms from other planets and bring them back to Pluto to eat. It was like a coming of age thing. If a Lazi was unable to bring something back, kill it, and eat it, they were eaten themselves. In times of lack of food, the Lazis would eat each other.

— discoveries they made:
    ° The Lazi alien
    ° There is some oxygen under the surface of Pluto
    ° There are underwater geysers that keep areas heated

— life in their new environment: (I explained a lot of this in the “what it was like part”, so I’m just going to add what I missed)
    ° There was no sunlight, but the Lazis had blood rich with Vitamin D. After one human month, the impacts of Vitamin D deficiency were really hitting Leo. His bones hurt, his muscles were weak. His Lazi friend seemed to know what he needed, and would cut himself to get blood for Leo to drink. After his friend died, Leo would have to hunt the other Lazis and drink their blood.

— adaptations: (because he was only 19/20 when he launched, it was easier for his body to adapt)
    ° gills + less oxygen needed to survive > Leo developed gills in order to breathe underwater, because the atmosphere wasn’t oxygen rich enough to survive breathing air alone
    ° the skin on his chest and torso hardened > this was to protect his internal organs from the cold
    ° he grew a smattering of small white, blue and black scales in places on his body > they’re in random patches ; his right collarbone, left shoulder (going over the top), the small of his back, down his neck from his left ear, over his right eye, his right hip and thigh and his left calf and ankle
    ° his fingers and toes grew webbing
    ° he lost the need to eat large amount of food > it makes him sick now
    ° his heart sped up, when he first arrived, as a way to keep his body warm, but, once being there for a while, and getting acclimated to the temperature, his heart beats very slowly > if his heart rate were to rise to the normal human rate, he would either be having a heart attack or would be dead ; he doesn’t bleed much
    ° his body’s rate of growing slowed, because the years on Pluto are much longer than those on Earth > it is likely that he will live longer than the normal human
    ° lost all of his body hair, except that on his head > losing it helped him to be more smooth in the water, but the hair on his head stayed to keep his brain warm
    ° developed a third eyelid to protect his eyes from the water

— abilities:
    ° his skin frosts over when he gets too hot
    ° he has a “thermal vision” that he used to see underwater
    ° he can swim very fast and is quite graceful in the water

— aftermath:
    ° nightmares > he gets them every night, and wakes up screaming half of the time
    ° insomnia > goes with ^^ ; after a nightmare, he is never able to go back to sleep, and will try to work on some kind of programming or paint something so he didn’t have to think about what he went through too much
    ° he overheats quite easily and will either throw up, pass out, or get terrible migraines when he’s somewhere that’s really hot
    ° he can’t do physical contact > body heat is too warm for him to handle
    ° he is on edge all of the time > he jumps at the slightest noises
    ° he has to wear sunglasses all of the time > bright light hurts his eyes and his head, and makes him want to throw up
    ° he’s claustrophobic > Pluto’s air is mostly nitrogen. When he landed, he was suffocating. Although he didn’t realize it, he remembers the burn in his lungs, and that’s the same feeling he gets when he’s in tight spaces or around a lot of people
    ° he needs to drink a LOT > he got used to being in or around water all of the time that he needs much more of it to survive

— BECOME ETHEREAL —

— personality: On Pluto, he had to shut off his emotions. If he got emotional, he knew that he could make a mistake and wouldn’t make it. He had to become this apathetic shell whose only goal was survival. He’s still having issues to fix that. He’s developed an inability to open up. It’s taken him a long time to...care about anything but still breathing the next day.
	He’s scared. He’s just so scared about everything.  Everything is a potential threat. The door slamming takes him back to the crash. That person, they’re smiling at him because they’re imagining how they’re going to stab him in the back. It’s all just too much for him at times.
	He feels that if he thinks about it all too much, he’ll break. On Pluto, if he had a breakdown, he would have died. He is so afraid of breaking down now, because his mind is still somewhat in his Pluto mindset. He fears that he’ll die if he lets himself breakdown.
	He sees the time before the launch as just a fantasy or some dream he had that’s impossible to ever happen. He wants to go back to the times he was happy, when he became social, and when he had found the people he trusted. He wants to go back to it so badly, but he’s afraid that if he tries, the fantasy will break. It’ll just vanish because it’s not possible.
	Despite this, his drive to bring COSMOS down is strong. He’s not able to go around swinging punches at everyone associated with it, like Mercury, but he knows that it’s his job to do something. He will talk to people about bringing it down, no matter how much it scares him. He can’t share what happened to him, he just can’t bring himself to relive it, but he hopes that just seeing him and seeing what’s it’s done to him will be enough.

— how do they react coming back to Earth? It wasn’t healthy for him. The culture shock was the worst it could be for anyone. Going from doing whatever he had to survive and being alone all of the time to having cameras shoved in his face and people who bandage up his wounds, it’s too much. He has retreated so far into himself, he’s afraid he’ll get lost. He doesn’t talk much. He wants to, but he just can’t.
    He’s always had trouble sleeping, but it’s on a whole new level now. He stays up late painting or programming, trying to get his mind off of everything.
    He paints so much more now. He paints paintings of blue skies and water and ice. He paints paintings of white blood and dark meat and scales. He paints his experiences on Pluto and his nightmares, and it’s just up to those around him to try to decipher it all.
    He didn’t talk for a solid month, when he came back. He was numb (pun not intended). He would just sit and stare off into the distance. He wouldn’t do anything unless someone told him to. The nurses had to sit with him and watch him to make sure he ate everything. They would have to lead him to the bathroom to shower. He would just stare out the window while a psychiatrist tries to analyze his mental state.
    It wasn’t until Mercury was allowed to visit him that he spoke. He didn’t say anything to Mercury’s questions, but when Mercury was leaving, he asked if they were coming back. Leo recognized that Mercury had gone through the same things he did. They never got “close”, per se, but they were more like a link to sanity for each other. A reminder that they weren’t alone or crazy. That it all actually happened.
He will snap. If someone gets too in his face, too touchy with him, he’ll snap. It’ll send his mind back to the times on Pluto when he killed Lazis who were trying to kill him. He’s killed before and, if needed, he’ll kill again. If he did nearly hurt someone on Earth, he would lock himself away in his room for at least a week after he came back to his senses, feeling the guilt and the thoughts that he was a monster would eat away at him.

— will they go against COSMOS or side with them? Leo used to love COSMOS. It was the best thing that happened to him. Now he wants to see it burned to the ground.
— will they keep their discoveries secret or not? He would keep their discoveries a secret until they knew for certain that COSMOS was dead and buried, and never coming back. Leo wouldn’t want to give anyone more of a reason to keep COSMOS around. He would prefer that the job of investigating all of this stuff go to a more responsible facility.

[I just turned the next two questions into Leo’s feeling about each cadet. I hope you don’t mind!]
— who are they closest to? [positive feelings]
° Mercury: even after Leo not being helpful to the groups in the past, they would try to include him when he began to be more social. Also, Leo heard about the punch they gave to the scientists waiting, and he wished he had the strength to do that. I don’t feel like they would be close, but there would be some kind of unspoken respect between the two.
° Venus: back at the academy, Leo wasn’t the biggest fan of him. He felt he was just manipulative, and he never could tell when he was being truthful. But, now, Venus is dead set on getting COSMOS to listen. Venus is good at speaking, and share’s Leo’s drive on bringing down COSMOS.
° I feel like Leo and Jupiter would become close after their experiences. They both keep things bottled up and are having a difficult time adjusting. To me, it feels like they’re so similar that, even though they don’t talk about anything, they feel comforted by the fact that they aren’t pushing one another to talk and are both content to just sit or distract themselves with something else, without feeling like their experiences are a big secret between them that pushes them apart.
° I feel like Neptune would have been a person that Leo would have gotten close to before the launch. No one wanted to be in a group with either of them, so it made sense that they would gravitate towards one another during group projects.
— who do they dislike the most? [negative feelings]
    ° Leo used to be somewhat close with Uranus. They both loved reading and learning, and Uranus was open to sharing knowledge. Now, Uranus sees their expedition as a “necessity.” Leo doesn’t understand how he can think of it so apathetically after seeing how the other cadets are falling apart.
    ° Saturn always felt too over-the-top for Leo. She was too bubbly for him to get close with, and, even now, she kind of scares him because she reminds him of himself. He was getting better and more social before the launch, and then he lost all of that progress. It scares him to see just how much she lost every ounce of her hope and her happiness. Just seeing her reminds him of all of the bad he went through.
    °I feel like Deep Waters would be someone who scared Leo in a different way. He is willing to do anything to hurt COSMOS, and Leo may see him as too dangerous, too extreme, too much of a loose canon. Leo would try to avoid him at all costs.
[[ Mars’ description left quite a lot of interpretation for his personality, so I didn’t do this one. ]]

— habits:
    ° chewing on his lip > he draws blood from it a lot, as he never gives it time to heal ; the pain helps him to focus
    ° drawing > it’s become a nervous habit, and he is almost always drawing, even if it’s just tracing his finger along a desk
    ° being as small as possible > whether it’s wrapping his arms around himself or always sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest
    ° wearing tank tops and muscle shirts > it helps him to stay cold
    ° carrying a water bottle and an ice pack (he tries to keep it on the back of his neck whenever he can) with him at all times
— hobbies:
    ° painting, drawing, doodling on anything within reach
    ° programming software
— suggested scenes:
    ° Leo passing out from overheating
    ° His sunglasses getting knocked off or broken and Leo curling up into a ball in the corner of the room, with some of the other cadets trying to coax him out of his shell and shielding him from the light with their jackets
    ° the cadets he was friends with from before trying to get him to talk to them. They know they’re all suffering, and keeping it bottled up won’t help anything
    ° the other cadets trying to interpret his paintings
    ° Leo being in a really stressful or anxiety-filled situations, and drawing all over his arms in pen
    ° Leo looking in a mirror, seeing his scar, and lashing out and breaking the mirror. Then, the other cadets find him crying in the bathroom, surrounded by broken glass and blood
    ° Someone, possibly an interviewer interviewing him on live tv and trying to get Leo to spill his story, getting in Leo’s face. The other cadets with him noticed how Leo wasn’t looking good (gripping the chair arms, biting his lip so hard it bled), so they tried to distract the interviewer. When the interview walks toward Leo, Leo snaps and tries to strangle the interviewer.

— STORM CALL —

— anything you’d like to add: n/a
— message to author: I really love this idea, and I hope you get a lot of forms that you can work with! Even if you don't use my character, I hope it was at least an interesting read. I don't know how I managed to write 4.8k works in less than a day wow
— password: tap water. I only ever drink water and tea, it's weird