Once upon a time — April fifth, 1983 to be exact — in a city known as New York, there was born a little boy. Second child and eldest son of John and Beatrice Richmonds (nee Westminster in the latter case,) brother to two siblings, Elizabeth and Mary Richmonds (the latter would be born later.) The boy himself would henceforth known as James Leonard Richmond. A full name he decided to never use personally quite soon, and adapting his middle name to better fit his vision of himself. Leon would henceforth be how he was known.
But we're getting ahead of things, Leon (or James as he was known to people back then) was born to an upper middle class family. His father worked as a dentist at a clinic with a total of three dentists, himself being the most junior of partners at the time. His mother was a teacher at a high school in their neighbourhood, in the Bronx. Life was easy enough growing up as a Richmond.
Kindergarten arrived, and so did bullies. For the next few years, James would become a source of constant teasing, and the boy started to loathe his own name. By the time James was scheduled to go to High School, he finally managed to convince his parents to call him Leon. As such, we shall henceforth refer to James as Leon.
While most of Leon's classmates went to the high school his mother worked at, two reasons made it so that Leon wouldn't. The first is that he wanted to go to somewhere his old name wasn't known. The second one was that he, and his parents, didn't want the risk that he'd get his own mother as a teacher. As such, he was sent to a good but not overly expensive private high school. Leon didn't find any bullies there, which made him much happier.
Leon's high school career itself didn't contain anything out of the ordinary, except for his excellent grades, which were more due to hard work and luck than intelligence. He had a few girlfriends, but nobody out the ordinary. He had friends, but again, nobody out of the ordinary, all in all, Leon was a regular hard working teenage boy at a private high school, and he liked being that way.
Outside of school however, Leon was a different person. He got into poker at an early age, playing illicit games and losing most of his allowance to a group of twentysomething guys. Nonetheless, this was what sparked his interest in poker and gambling, even if he lost a lot, he enjoyed the games. Doesn't hurt that his 'poker buddies' shoved him free beers while he was far too young to drink. In their eyes, it made up for abusing a youngster's interest in their game.
Over the years however, Leon became better at poker. And by the time he was seventeen and a junior in high school, he started playing well enough to stop losing money. At this time, his poker buddies started seeing him as a real poker buddy, rather than a cash cow, and they kept playing together. He won some, he lost some, and that went on like that over time. While his buddies were at least ten years his senior, they were his only real friends.
By the time Leon graduated from high school, his parents had picked a career path for him. They sent him, together with saved up money to Columbia University. There, Leon was to study medicine so he could become a dentist, not unlike his father. Leon didn't like this one bit, but he didn't have the spine to disagree. Not yet.
Leon's career at Columbia didn't start well, and for the first year, it looked like total disaster. He was soon put on academic probatioon for his lack of proper grades. And truly, it wasn't that Leon didn't have the brains to complete his degree, he didn't have the motivation.
His poker buddies eventually adviced him to stop. When he said he couldn't disappoint his parents, they handed him a coin and told him to flip it, heads and he switches to a major better suited to his interests, tails and continue the disaster. He flipped the coin, and it landed heads. This established Leon's habit of making important decisions on a coinflip, trusting fate to know better than himself.
What he didn't know, however, was that one of his poker buddies was a telekinetic, and manipulated the coin to land heads. It was a subtle manipulation, so nobody noticed. It was this friend, Brad Edminster, who had originally proposed the idea as well. Only years later Brad would tell Leon about his ability, and even then he wouldn't mention that he manipulated the original coinflip.
His decision made, assisted by a manipulated coinflip, was harder to explain to his parents. He managed to convince them that his status on academic probation was due to his lack of interest in the subject matter, and that he would do better on the whole by following a career path that would interest him. Mathematics.
So the year after, Leon started fresh. Mathematics, as agreed to, and with his newfound motivation, his grades were actually good. Not quite straight As, but a grade below a B became rare. Leon started to feel better about himself as well, and all in all, this made him feel the decision to trust the coin was a right one, and that he should trust his coin more often.
A month before christmas, exactly, down to the day, Leon went on his first date with a girl, his girl. The one who'd change his life in many ways. Her names was Maria Corleone, a third generation italian. She was Evolved, and while she hid that from Leon at first, by the time they'd been dating for three months, she showed her ability to manipulate water to him. While that reveal was shocking, it didn't change his opinion about Maria, but it did make Leon wonder whether there were others like her. He wouldn't find out until much later.
Their love was quite steady, though they hold off on children because both of them were still young and hadn't finished their degrees yet. They wanted to wait until afterwards. Maria was a bit over one year younger than Leon, and they were fine with such a small age difference. They introduced one another to one another's families, and by the end of the year, they were engaged. They hadn't settled on a date yet however.
The next four years of Leon's academic career went as swimmingly as his first year in his Mathematics major. He got good grades, not the best in class, not straight As, but most students had the definite right to be jealous of his grades, if they were working as hard as he was anyway. Maria was getting slightly worse grades than Leon, but nothing to complain about either. She also worked less hard, having to spend more time on tasks besides her own schooling.
In this time, Leon didn't play poker a lot. Just his weekly games with his buddies. Well, until after he got his Bachelor's. A new poker buddy joined the group, it happened occassionally, besides Leon, Brad, and two others, the group had never been perfectly stable. This guy was good though. Leon started to lose money again, as did the others, until he started to do the math more. He had been playing more leisurely, but this new guy was pro quality. And a year later, Leon had learned enough by studying literature and practicing that he himself was as well.
Once the new guy realized that he was regularly getting beaten by the youngest person of the group, he invited what he saw as talent over to a pro tournament. Leon won, due to a combination of luck, bluffing, and mathematic skill. The price money was nothing to sneeze at either, and this made Leon realize that it might be possible to earn himself a living with poker. He flipped a coin to decide whether he should try to make a living that way, and the coin said yes.
The next major event of Leon's life would be the explosion that came to be known as 'the Bomb' to most people. He, like most people on Earth, will never forget that day. But to him it stung extra, because his mother got caught in the blast. He himself was at school, following classes when the sound of a big explosion shook everyone awake. He was upset, especially when he heard where the blast was and where his mother was at the moment of the blast — she had been calling with his father at the moment of the blast.
There was a remembral service for his mother a few weeks later, she had been so close to the blast there was no body to recover, so there was no possibility of a true funeral. It was unsatisfying, and he had to go to a few similar ones in the following weeks, friends had lost family as well. Luckily for Leon, his mother was the only loved one he himself had lost.
And then a metaphorical bomb was dropped, the big reveal of the Evolved. It was a while after the bomb, but not long enough for it to not still be fresh on everyone's minds. Including Leon's. He didn't blame the Evolved as a whole, though he feared — rightfully so — that there would be people who would. In a way, however, this did answer a question he had for ages. The question of whether there were others like his girlfriend Maria. Apparently, the answer was yes.
After the reveal, life sure changed. Fear crept into the people, regular people could suddenly have powerful and unexpected powers. The political climate changed, but for Leon? Life didn't change a lot. He finished his degree, as did Maria. He also kept playing poker at pro tournaments. Life was good, even if a little different.
And then the registry was introduced. Maria registered herself without telling Leon — who had advised her not to — and she had shown them the full extent of her power, making her registered as Tier 2. Now all her data was available to everyone. Leon wasn't happy, but he understood Maria was trying to do the right thing.
Eventually, Maria got caught up with an organization known as the Ferrymen. Leon watched for quite a while as she did the right thing, in his eyes, but he was too chickenish to help out himself. She had told him about it, but they didn't discuss it a lot. Yet. In early 2009 however, the continuing tensions and oppression made Leon decide he should make a formal decision, help the Ferrymen or not. The coin came out again, and it said yes.
At first, he helped out only financially. Arranging for money through chips shoved under the table — occassionally literally — to Ferrymen operatives. Never huge amounts, as Leon didn't have the cash for huge amounts. It was, in total, about five hundred dollars a month. This went on like this for a while, with Leon being a mere financial supporter, and Maria doing her more involved thing.
However, June eight, 2010, Humanis First came knocking on the door. As Maria and Leon were discussing the details of their upcoming marriage — they had finally set on a date — and they came with firearms. Maria and Leon were too surprised to defend themselves, and the Humanis First members were gone in a flash. Leaving the dead body of Maria and a broken and sobbing Leon.
The culprits were never caught, and the cops didn't look too hard either. Damn evos, you know? It was in this time that the Ferrymen started paying back, not quite monetarily, but with moral support. And over the months, Leon came more involved with these guys. He taught himself basic gunplay in order to be able to defend himself and others, and started to help out occassionally at the Grand Central Terminal.
He still gambles however, and this eats up some of his time. But it also allows for him to still keep footing those five hundred dollars a month, which is not a lot for the Ferrymen, but it's enough to help them out a little, feed a few more mouths, you know?
