Tom

**Thomas "Tom" Leonold III** is a potential character in *Universal Rides* and *Adventure Squad*. He is Diana and Tori's fraternal triplet, and a genetic clone of Thomas Leonold II, inheriting his predecessor's Guardian of Nature mech.

## Biography

Tom, Diana and Tori were cloned by Ricardo Starkley from genetic samples belonging Thomas, Danielle and Tim, created to carry on the legacies of their predecessors after their deaths. After wandering around for two weeks, the triplets ended up stuck in what Tom would later nickname the Global Transit Terminal's "Criminal Metropolis", protecting a number of orphans sorely lacking in protection. As the orphanage in the area they were stuck in was constantly under threat of assassins, Tom and Tori would spend most of their time killing anyone who attempted to attack the group while Diana stuck with the orphans to take care of them. This continued for five months until the triplets managed to lure General Orion and Adventure Squad to their general location, as Tom was unwilling to trust Richard Murphy, the International Safety Committee official in charge of the area. Their involvement ended up bringing down all local crime rings while the orphans were able to be safely evacuated, with General Orion personally overseeing the reforms of the area.

Following the evacuation of the orphans, Tom and his siblings were taken to Sodor and left at The Leonold Yard, where they eventually became part of the North Western Railway fleet. As Adventure Squad and the rest of the Sudrians were still reeling from Thomas, Tim and most recently Danielle's deaths, Tom made great efforts to try and lift everyone's spirits. Despite a few misgivings, the triplets were quickly accepted as friends and family. Tom was later made co-leader of Adventure Squad, and later took Thomas's former place on the Steam Team. He would later prove instrumental in keeping spirits high during the crisis with the Mechatroopers, namely in ensuring everyone stays relatively stable.

## Personality

Tom's personality is almost a perfect carbon copy of Thomas's prior to his death, though compared to Thomas, Tom is much more light-hearted and prone to joking around. He and Tori share multiple bonds with each other and seldom ever argue, a vast difference compared to Thomas and Tim's occasional bouts of bickering. The 2 are well aware of their natures as clones, and strive to keep the reputations of their associates on the right morale, making efforts to help others adjust to their losses. Tom is a very natural leader, and inherited Thomas's number 1 after his passing, which proves his dependability.

During his time in the "Criminal Metropolis", Tom had very violent and hostile disposition and spoke very coldly with an aggressive tone. He was also very calculative and distrusting, though he still allowed himself small moments of vulnerability to care for the orphans. This past in violently killing assassins has left him with a very notable sadistic streak; the more deplorable a person's morality, the more he focuses on making their demise *excruciatingly* painful, which everyone else finds incredibly unnerving. His fighting style when pressed is also brutal and efficient, and to the mass discomfort of everyone around him his killing sprees end with the last victim being crushed to death in his mouth, though he generally shows discontent if his victims don't produce a bone-like crunch once he bites down. Much to his growing concern - and everyone else's increasing discomfort - Tom has been slowly developing a taste for blood, though like Thomas he finds the idea of consuming human flesh to be repulsive.

Much like Thomas, Tom is very protective of his family and friends, though he is more willing to inflict lethal injuries should the call arise. Tom also willingly admits that he is still inexperienced compared to most of his teammates, and compared to his predecessor is not as good at retaining his composure when stressed. This is far more prominent when the family began growing exponentially, and he became very worried about being unable to protect the people he cared for, which only worsened after Carson's death. Fortunately, the others quickly calmed his nerves by reassuring they'd play their part in helping. Due to the amount of time they have spent around him, his peers and closest relatives can easily tell when he is hiding his worries, which he'll reveal without much prompting after being called out on it.

While Tom retains Thomas's preference to stay out of romantic relationships, he is not averse to romance in general and is more willing to humor others who seek such companionship. As such, he allows Lady to act as if they were a couple after Carson's death, though he refuses to make it official. The recent losses of the family and team means that Tom also takes *any* mutually positive relationship *seriously*, and while he will forgive to a certain extent if given a reasonable alibi, he'll forego any forgiveness if the severity of the offense has peaked beyond his usual range of tolerance.

Despite sharing similar nudity and sexual activity tolerances with Thomas, Tom has the uncanny ability to tell whenever people have copulated even without witnessing any part of it, able to piece together clues left behind following the act. Much to everyone's collective discomfort, Tom always reveals his findings nonchalantly and bluntly, particularly when the act was meant to be secret. For this reason, and the fact that everyone rarely gets past him, Lysander saddled him with the nickname of "Peeping Tom", which he does not deny in any manner.

Later on during his time in Adventure Squad, Tom developed a habit of rescuing *any* child that was currently suffering under their current guardians, usually against his better judgement. Because of his personal morals, he always ends up taking care of them, lacking the heart to cast them out afterwards. Because of his upbringing, Tom treats everyone he cares the same way he treats his siblings. As such, any relationship he makes ends up having a familial level of intimacy.

Being very well aware of his high healing factor and potentially long lifespan, Tom is very disillusioned about complete immortality, and has openly stated that he would refuse the opportunity if offered. This is because he considers being immortal a permanent separation from the souls of his loved ones, and he retains as much of his mortality as possible to keep some form of connection to them.

## Appearance

Tom is based on the LB&SCR Class E2 0-6-0T, particularly the second batch of locomotives built with extended side-tanks. These engines were built by Brighton Works between 1913-1916 to replace the ageing Stroudley E1 class and were primarily used for heavy shunting and short-distance freight trains in the London area and on the south coast. During their final working years, the E2 class worked as shunting engines at Southampton Docks, until they were replaced by the BR Class 07 diesel shunters. All of the E2s were scrapped, with none surviving into preservation.

Tom has several major differences from the original E2 class. He is much shorter in length than his original basis, he has two extra windows on his body the sides of his cab and he has wheel splashers, something the E2 class lacked. Much like Thomas in the *Railway Series* following *Branch Line Engines*, his footplate was leveled out from smokebox to bunker. Multiple tank engines in the series used the same modified basis.

While his face is very much identical to Thomas's in his youth, Tom has two key features that distinguish him from his predecessor: he has a pair of fang-like canines on his upper row of teeth and he has segmented heterochromia; both of his eyes have two colors, being an even split between a light brown and a vibrant purple. Both of his eye colors are shared with Diana, though Tori only shares the purple color of his irises. While his eyes retain these colors under normal circumstances, Tom at his angriest will instead sport "Killer Eyes"; his pupils become purple, his irises become all black, and his scleras turn yellow with red bloodshot veins.

Tom is painted in charcoal black with white lining surrounding colored panels, painted in a deeper shade of NWR sky blue. This same color applies to the front, top and rear of his cab, boiler and side tanks. He has red bufferbeams and coupling rods and sports a running board and access steps in a jet black color. Tom sports a blue version of Thomas's speaker equipment and he has silver nameplates on the sides of his smokebox. His number is painted on the sides of his tanks in yellow with red lining, and on his bunker sides, he has the NWR's initials painted in yellow with a red drop shadow. Prior to receiving this livery, Tom was painted in a plain black with red bufferbeams and silver coupling rods. This remained relatively unscathed until he entered the "Criminal Metropolis", where he regularly received facial scars and his bodywork was constantly riddled with bullet holes and knife gashes.

## Mech

Tom's Guardian of Nature Mech, despite sharing his predecessors' designation, is not the exact version used by Thomas at the time of his demise; rather, it is the latest iteration, Model C, which retains the exact same abilities as the previous version but upgraded and much more refined.

## Behind the scenes

Both Tom and Tori currently exist as potential characters.

## Notes

* Tom's livery is based on one of the E2 livery options from Bachmann's junior lineup. Coincidentally, the tooling used for the junior E2s is reused from Bachmann's Thomas model.
* While both of them share purple as their secondary eye color, Tom and Tori's primary eye colors are those of each other's predecessors. As a result, Tom has Tim's brown eyes instead of Thomas's blue eyes, and vice-versa with Tori.