Phoenix Riera

Phoenix Riera is the current leader of Commerce in the Los Angeles Empire. He's one of the major players in Los Angeles, but unlike Napoleon Carmen who's main goal is to get leadership of Los Angeles, he wants to cause as little chaos as possible in Los Angeles and prevent war as much as possible. He is the main antagonist for the fourth book, and made his first few appearance in the third book.

## Physical Appearance

Phoenix is described as average height with short cut black hair and pale skin.

However, during the Burning of Los Angeles, his entire body head to toe is covered in massive burn marks, leaving him horribly scarred and malformed, but refusing to have skin replacements done and keeping his new appearance.

## Personality

Phoenix is a dignified but flawed patriot, militant in achieveing his goals of achieveing as little war as possible by becoming leader of Los Angeles, dissasembling the district system, and becoming the absolute leader of Los Angeles in order to prevent war in the Faction. The very contradiction of being militant in his goals of protecting the citizens of Los Angeles provides the base for his character, unlike Napoleon who is doing this for himself, Phoenix genuinely believes what he is doing will help Los Angeles.

Phoenix's most prominent trait is his deep dedication to keeping the citizens of Los Angeles safe and as he describes "In Favor of the Little Guy." To do so, he intends to become leader of Los Angeles by skipping ahead the paths neccesary to achieve his goal somewhat carelessly, ultimately leading to his downfall. He shows a great deal of determination in achieveing his goal and makes several sacrifices in his goal, even ultimatlely claiming that he will gladly put his life on the line if it means that "The Children in Los Angeles will go to bed with full stomachs and a roof over their head".

Despite his goal of protecting the citizens, he is very callous to the citizens themselves, justifying himself on the fact that if one man has to die to save a thousand, then so be it, never hesitating to sacrifice his own suboordinates for his cause. Just as well, he is a ruthless indivdual to those that purposefully stand in their ways, albeit not him being the ruthless one but having others who are ruthless do his dirty work for him.

He often shows a dignified, calm, slightly charismatic, and composed attitude. He's a polite man, never daring to insult others and even advising Ryker Hernandez to refrain from swearing if he wishes to make a good impression on people. He possesses an overall code of honor, putting his patritotism over his own life, as well as flat out refusing to break his word if he's sworn it no matter how much breaking it will help him in the long run. He even respects the prowess of his adversaries. He is a man of honor at heart, and will always repay his debts to just about anybody no matter what, reimbursing the people that work under him if something they own is damaged while they work under him and paying for all of their medical bills out of his own salary as leader of Commerce.

Phoenix doesn't trust anyone who isn't as cautios as he is, only working with the people he deems ruthless if absolutely neccesary, but over time slowly degrading and devolving into that same ruthlethness and becoming more machine. As time goes on, he begins to kill more people he needs to achieve his goal himself, but not enjoying it while doing so and only enjoying killing people who have done something to him. Even in dangerous situations, he shows a general apathetic mood even with a gun at his head.

The main downfall of him though, is his willingness to skip ahead of the steps neccesary to acheieve his goal and abandoning his methods of becoming leader of Los Angeles in slower manner, and instead killing anybody in his way ruthlessly. Over time, he becomes more ruthless and violent and the citizens take notice of this, eventually being killed in a revolution at the end of the fourth book lead by Napoleon Carmen, establish Napoleon in power at the end of the fourth book and leader at the beggining of the fifth book.

At the end of the third book, like a Phoenix he goes through a "Rebirth" in fire during the The Burning of Los Angeles, supposedly dying but coming back with his entire body scarred in burn wounds. However, when offered the chance to have his skin replaced, he chooses to keep his incredibly scarred skin. After this, he becomes more ruthless than ever, becoming leader of Los Angeles at any costs in a machiavellan manner and putting countless lives at risks, leading to his downfall of the citizens growing to hate him, and his empire being taken over by Napoleon Carmen after a revolution was held by the citizens to take down his empire as well as a series of other events.

Being the leader of Commerce in Los Angeles, he talks like a buissness man would, referring to the people who work for others as employees, calling the leader of the faction "Boss" rather than leader, and so on.

Unlike Napoleon and a lot of other characters, Phoenix shows to have little to no Ego as well as not seemingly caring what other's think about him, unless that interferes with his goal. He barely even mentions his status as leader of Commerce and only when neccesary, just as well knowing exactly the kind of man that he is and having no issues with that.

Him and Michael Redelley are often at odds as, Phoenix believes that Michael is too emotional to work with him and will only interfere with his goals and methodology, while Michael believes that Phoenix isn't emotional enough, thinking Phoenix to be not emotional enough to be leader and protect the citizens, with Michael adding that Phoenix is probably only becoming leader for his own ego while Napoleon Carmen is doing exactly that. However, at one point Phoenix was just as human as anybody else. Phoenix grew up on the streets of Los Angeles homeless, and the only way for him to survive was to turn off his emotions and to stop being sympathetic to the other homeless people around him as he lived in a world at the time where you had to fend for yourself.