Post by PBK on May 8, 2006 23:33:12 GMT
Name: January Scott (Jai)
Age: 17 (2/11/91)
Gender: Female
Story:
January Scott was born in a small town called Fallen Leaf in Hoenn to Jesse and Laura Scott. Jesse, a pokemon trainer in his younger days had started his own home-based business once their first child, Dylan, was born. Laura supported her husband in every way she could, taking up secretarial jobs when she wasn't busy with their two children. Fortunately they had a vast array of fire pokemon to help them.
Like many small girls, January, called "Janny," was very curious. She was known for asking questions about everything, often annoying those older than herself. She absolutely idolized her older brother Dylan and wanted to do everything he did. So, quite naturally, when he, at the age of eight announced that he was going to become a Pokemon master, Janny was quick to do the same.
During each vacation from school, the two were sent to their grandparents who lived in Hidden Sprout Village, about thirty minutes away when riding their parents' Charizard. Lorelei and Joad, known to Janny as "Grammy" and "Poppy" ran the village's unofficial gym. The two specialized in poison type pokemon, relying more on strategy than brute strength. They were an incredible team, boasting only four losses during their twenty-three years of running the gym. (Of course, the town was so small that challengers were rare, perhaps twice in a year if traffic was heavy, and if it was light, maybe none at all.)
Grammy and Poppy adored Janny and her brother. They taught their two grandchildren about pokemon and battle strategy, but even more importantly about love and respect for all living things.
One summer, when Jan (she had since decided that "Janny" was too baby-ish) was eleven, her grandparents gifted her with and Ekans and her brother with a Koffing. They spent the better part of the summer learning how to train, how to use the poisonous abilities to their advantage, but also how to cure such attacks. "Strength is not measured by destruction," Poppy would often say. Then, Grammy would finish, "But by being able to leave something better than when you first found it." Then, the two would laugh a bit, realizing that there was no way that their grandchildren could understand the magnitude of what they were telling them. Little did they know, they would be experiencing their words first-hand very soon.
Jan knew something was amiss when she got up one day and her grandfather wasn't in the kitchen. She began to search the house for Poppy, and soon found Grammy in the living room watching the news on TV, tears rolling down her face. Jan later learned that Poppy had left late that night to help defend Fallen Leaf from an attack by Team Aqua. Despite his and other people's efforts, the town had been engulfed and destroyed by a tsunami created by Team Aqua. There was no final death count, nor was there any news of survivors. Regardless, Jan never saw either of her parents or her grandfather again. Her grandmother refused to hold any type of memorial, claiming that her husband was strong and would show up sometime.
Within the next week, Dylan who had been greatly angered by the events disappeared, leaving only a note explaining his plans to avenge his parents by joining Team Magma. Jan, who had been dealing quite well with the whole thing (or about as well as anyone could expect too deal) reached an all time low without her brother there for support. Months passed without hearing from him. On the eve of her twelfth birthday, upon the realization that Dylan wouldn't be there to celebrate it with her, Jan decided to go out and join Magma herself.
Jan left a small note for Grammy, instructing her to take care of her Ekans while she was gone. Jan felt that the pokemon had nothing to do with her decision, so should be left out of the potentially dangerous situation.
After a couple of weeks of searching, the girl finally found Magma, but was denied entrance based on the fact that she had no pokemon (though the girl suggested that there were other reasons for their decision.) Unfortunately, by this point the girl had run out of money.
For better or worse, the girl ran into a boy who introduced himself as Xenon and offered her a place to go after hearing her story. Xenon was about Jan's brother's age, and a member of the group that he called the Dark Hand. He explained to her that the Dark Hand was made up of civilian vigilantes bent on undermining the harmful plans of both Team Aqua and Magma. They felt that both groups were destructive to the peace. The Hoenn police force was unable to keep them in check, so the Dark Hand had taken it into their own hands.
With nothing else to do, Jan decided to join forces with the Dark Hand. She was inducted the next day in a ceremony. After being taught the oath, she entered a dark room. A figure cloaked in black stood behind a table. On the table, there were three items. The first was a small candle with a single flame, the only light in the room. The next was a dagger. The third was a small bowl of water. The figure behind the table stood silently as Jan repeated the oath. When she was finished, the cloaked person took the candle and set it to the middle of the table. Then, he held the bowl of water above the candle. He hit the bowl of water with the dagger and the brittle container shattered, spilling water out onto the candle and putting out the flame and leaving them both in complete darkness. Then, still unspeaking, the cloaked man handed Jan the dagger. She was henceforth known as Jace ((rhymes with "ace")).
Jace later learned that her brother Dyl had also joined the Dark Hand. However, he wasn't nearly as happy to see her as she was to see him. He told her that she should go home, but the girl refused and Dyl didn't push it any further. Seeing that Jace had no pokemon when she joined the Dark Hand, her brother went out and caught her another Ekans, which Jace named Viper.
Jace trained with the Dark Hand. As time went on, both the team and Jace became much stronger. Within a year and a half of joining, both Team Aqua and Magma had been forced to disband. At the same time, the Dark Hand became larger and larger. What used to be an intimate group grew into something that covered large regions of Hoenn in such a way that the members didn't know each other by face or name, and often didn't even know whom they were working for.
Around this time, the majority of Jace's relationships began to fail, all at once. She had gotten into a particularly nasty fight with Xenon, and since he was upwards in the ranks, this put her at odds with most of the rest of the Dark Hand. She then pulled back, withdrawing from even Lauren who was possibly her only real friend at the time. Jace felt that nothing could make any of this worse. Little did she know, life as she knew it was about to go up in flames. Literally.
The mission was simple: to destroy the opposing town of Orange Tree Grove. Though the girl had never been to, or even heard of the town before this, she knew from her superiors that they had staged some sort of resistance, and were bent on bringing the Dark Hand down. The Dark Hand knew how to punish its enemies.
Despite their growing infamy, the Dark Hand was still a covert group. Rather than directly attack the town in daylight, they chose to burn to surrounding forests late at night. Though the physical destruction of the town wasn't guaranteed using this method, they would be burning away the town's primary economy: the fruit from the trees. Jace was assigned to this mission along with other members. So, off the girl went during the night, pokemon out and flamethrower in hand. The group worked quickly; each had their part to do. Within seconds, the area was ablaze. However, they hadn't been quick enough. Soon, they were met with resistance, and the whole thing turned to mass chaos. In the confusion, Jace found herself trapped. She fainted after inhaling too much smoke and was left at the mercy of the flame.
The girl woke up a few days later in bed. For a moment, she felt that she was back at Grammy's house, but soon realized that this was impossible. She was actually under the care of a sweet old lady who went, fittingly, by the name of Maple. Maple and her son, a blacksmith by the name of Andrew, lived in the town of Orange Tree Grove. Over the next few days, Jace picked up that sometime during the fire, she had become unconscious and Andrew and some of the other men of the town had dragged her out of the fire. Maple had been treating her burns, and everyone who knew anything was surprised- very few had believed the girl could survive in her condition.
The townspeople had taken to calling her Jane or Frankie because, in her half-witted state when first becoming conscious, she had answered, "What is your name?" with, "Frank," knowing that she had to use some sort of alias, but not mentally up to speed enough to come up with a convincing one. However, those around her had simply assumed it was her last name, and the girl played along with this assumption.
This perhaps marked some of the happier times in her life, at least when she could forget exactly how it was she came to be at such a place. The girl was soon up out of bed, though she needed to use crutches to get around for the first few weeks. She grew especially close to Maple who reminded her so much of her own grandmother. Though she had resisted the old lady at first, there is only so much one can do. Despite her age, Maple was very persistent.
Life could almost be considered normal. For Jane, it was like a dream. A dreamland which turned nightmarish during the night. The girl would often wake up from dreams about the fire, dreams about the Dark Hand coming back for her. This was something that confused her, even during the day. On one hand, they had left her to die in the fire. On the other, she knew that she would be treated as nothing less than a traitor if she returned after spending this time in Orange Tree Grove. She tried not to think of these details. Nonetheless, they ate away at her.
One night, she awoke a particularly heated discussion between Maple and Andrew. They obviously thought that she was asleep. The girl listened as a man who was always kind to her face argued that she shouldn't be allowed in the village. Despite the fact that she had tried to hide it, the people of Orange Tree Grove had picked up on the obvious: she was not one of them, nor was she simply an unlucky passerby the night of the fire. Though she wanted more than anything for herself to wake up and have this to be just another nightmare, she never did. She continued to listen as Andrew spoke daggers which cut into her. Somewhere in the conversation, she picked up the fact that Andrew had had a son who had died in the fire. The boy, Jay, who was only a bit older than herself at the time, had been determined to fight the fire. And now, according to Andrew, Maple was trying to replace him with "this monster." She was crushed.
That very night, the girl ran away. She took with her the basic supplies she would need for her trip- food and some clothing. She also took the crutches she had used. Though she didn't need them to walk, she could use them as a disguise, something she'd need in case she ever ran into the Dark Hand again. She contemplated leaving a note, but couldn't put words to her feelings, so she left nothing.
The girl wandered for quite some time, picking up an odd job here and there to keep herself fed. She never spent more than a few days in any given place- too restless, not to mention the overbearing thought that she didn't belong, couldn't belong anywhere. It was a year before she even considered training again. She was reluctant to do so, not wanting to become the ruthless trainer she had been in the Dark Hand. She had been separated from her pokemon during the fire, and new nothing of their current whereabouts. Eventually, she realized that there was nothing she could do- she was a trainer at heart, not to mention it made decent money, enough to support a lifestyle better than the vagrant one she was currently living. If nothing else, she would have company. She didn't want to be in Hoenn though. There were far to many familiar things. So, she saved up money and caught the first boat she could to another region, a place called Kantex.
Personality:
Façade:
Jai tends to hang to the background in newer situations, though she quickly warms up to people. Once she is accustomed to a place or a person, she will do one of two things: either become excessively loud, often sarcastic or become next to silent, only speaking when spoken to.
You know I'm crazy…
Sweet to pokemon, sweet to people. But you know, it's all a show. Defense mechanism. Everything is just fine. But it's not. Oh, it's not. Jai is compassionate. She doesn't really want to hurt anyone or anything. The act of making pokemon fight for her can make her uncomfortable at times. She questions the ethics of it all. However, she will often poke fun of other people, just to see them squirm, especially if she likes them. She'll laugh and play along, but she's not really there. That's okay though: she's an expert actor.
…but I can get the job done.
Switch modes. One moment, she was happy, now she's all business. Cold toward her pokemon, cold toward her friends. This is survival. In this "mode," Jai is single minded. She can be a ruthless battler…can hurt people and pokemon to get whatever it is that she wants. Feeling is just too hard. Sarcasm is her chosen form of communication.
Onions have layers:
Of course, there's a great deal more to Jai than her dual-minded persona. She harbors a great deal of guilt due to her past. Her scars remind her every day of what she's done. Despite this, she is determined to change. But, old habits die hard.
I'm afraid…
She remembers all too clearly the fire than nearly took her life. She remembers the rage that boiled within her and the absolute conviction that this was the only thing to do. More than anything, this scares her. Jai doesn't want to turn back into the person that she was. She doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore than she already has.
…I shouldn't be alive.
The girl has this sinking impression that she shouldn't be alive. Her life has been a series of near-death experiences and she often wonders why it didn't end at any of those points. On one hand, this makes her determined to somehow atone for what she has done. On the other, it can leave her feeling depressed.
Kiddie Dreams:
Jai rarely shows the child-like aspects of herself. The curious, fun-loving dreamer has somehow been buried beneath sorrow. But at times, maybe she forgets to be sad, forgets to regret, forgets her circumstances. Then, maybe you'll see her smile, really smile. Maybe she'll forget she has something to hide and be real for a moment. These times are as rare as gold, maybe worth more to those who care.
Primary Motive/Goal:
More than anything, Jai just wants to find her place in the world. Easier said than done.
Random Trivia:
-Jai is a huge fan of fire types, something she inherited from her parents. For a time after the fire, she was pyrophobic, but training her Ponyta Dez has helped her to overcome that.
-Jai also likes dark types. She fell in love with them after her encounter with Breeder Herald.
-Jai's other favorite type is poison, something she picked up from her grandparents.
-Jai has a thing for illusions. She went through a phase when she was younger where she was sure she'd be a magician and forced her family and friends to call her "The Great Perriwinkle."
-Jai will eat just about any food. She is very willing to try new things. Except pickles. Heaven forbid you should offer her a pickle.
-Jai is far too independent for her own good.
-Jai is madly in love with Darkaan (she just doesn't seem to know it.) For this reason, she is determined to beat him in pokemon and anything else she can think of.
-Jai's favorite color is green and her favorite number is 4.
-Jai is currently looking to train a Houndoom and Charizard and Umbreon (of normal coloration).
-Jai has been made the sister of the Cynda-kai tribe on Route 3.
