Post by Faith Leonhard on May 28, 2018 17:02:57 GMT -8
Faith Gabriela Leonhard
"Firecracker" | 27 | Woman ?????(*) |
Alto | Pokemon League | Bug Gym Leader |
Appearance
{Larger Picture}
Faith stands at 4'11 and she has a perpetual appearance of being slightly underweight, what muscle she has being lean and adding barely any bulk to her stick-thin bones. Her hips are narrow, but she does have something of a bust, though it takes some deliberate clothing choices for its shape to be seen. Her light skin has freckles scattered across it, mostly on her face and her outer arms, and there's a few faint scars on her hands as the remnants of times she threw her fists against walls, trees, or, rarely, other people as a teenager.
The fact that those teenage years are actually pretty far away comes as a surprise to many, not just due to her height, but due to her face as well, which hasn't significantly changed in features since she was about eighteen. Naturally downward-arching brows above her honey-brown eyes, and the downward-turned corners of her lips, give her an epic case of resting bitch face, though with how often she actively scowls and glares, one could be forgiven in thinking that it's not so much the natural state of her features, but because she made so many grumpy faces that it stuck that way. She smirks more often than she smiles, and when she does smile, she often (intentionally) shows just a few too many teeth for some people's comfort, less cheerful in vibe and more like she's in the middle of enacting a plot to kill Gligarman; a small, genuinely sweet smile is reserved for very few.
Not only does Faith look a lot like she did as a teenager, she often still dresses like she did then, too. Baggy hooded sweaters and worn-out jeans are a staple of her day-to-day, even in warm weather, though she can dress up a bit more nicely if she has to, and she's been known to wear things like tank-tops and shorts more often than she used to if the mood strikes her. While black and dull grey, with the occasional muddy brown, had once been a constant for her, she now wears a lot of blue as well, either in accents or the main event of the ensemble. Her favourite, bright blue shade is found in the streaks that have been dyed in her short, straw-blonde hair, and those lucky enough to see it during the times she wears it outside of her shirt, rather than hidden beneath it, will catch a similar hue in the stones of her favourite (and only) necklace.
Personality
Many people who meet Faith tend to sum her up in one word: Angry. It often seems like just existing as a human being in a society ticks her off. She grumbles, growls, grits her teeth, and rolls her eyes at the world, acting as a simmering pot of irritation just waiting for that one thing that makes her blow her top and explode into a rage. She's that person who snarls at you to watch where you're going when you bump into her accidentally, or who hollers at you to get out of her way and then starts shoving when you don't get a move on fast enough. If she drove a car, she would be abusing her horn on a regular basis as if the poor thing owed her money.
And when she's in a good mood? You might be requesting a return to the anger. You'd think that an empath would want to avoid causing pain, but Faith? Faith has a cruel sense of humour and enjoys the rush of a power trip. She intentionally provokes people into fights, and gets a thrill out of scaring people senseless with her psychic powers. It's funny how quickly someone goes from cocky to terrified when they realize that the little lady can lift them up with her brain, ain't it? Even when she restrains herself to verbal jabs, she wields sarcasm like a knife, wearing a smug smirk all the while.
That said...You could call all of that a shield, of sorts. Faith lives in a world full of psychic 'noise' that she can't properly block out, and, as an extra disadvantage, lives in it as a small, young-looking woman. She doesn't like people because she doesn't trust people, able to pick up on the little ways that presentation and reality don't add up, without the ability to read minds and truly know what skeletons are lurking in their closet. So she, in turn, puts up a front, lashing out at the world to keep it from hurting her first, and hesitating to show what she's come to see as weaknesses: affection, vulnerability, femininity...
Still, Faith's mellowed somewhat since her volatile teen years and early twenties. She struggles with a low sense of self-worth, prone to relying too heavily on her accomplishments and a vague idea of 'strength' to make herself feel like she has value, but she's recognized the mindset as unhealthy and is trying to break out of it, and she's now more willing to make tentative attempts to let people in who aren't her best friend or her may-as-well-have-been foster parents, though it's easy for one bad incident to scare her back into her shell, and she'll often still seem aloof in public. Controlling her impulses remains a battle, with not all the impulses truly her own, but it's a battle she's more invested in fighting these days.
All Faith really wants is to feel safe. Become one of the people she feels safe with, and there will be a very different woman waiting for you. Faith's heart doesn't do things half-way, and so once she really, truly cares, she cares a lot. Awkwardness can still crop up with traditional displays of affection, even in private, but she's the kind of person who will drop everything and travel hours if a loved one really needs her, and who will leap to their defense in a heartbeat, regardless of whether it's against a verbal slight or physical threat. While it might take a little work to get her to talk about her own troubles, she'll firmly put a lid on her usual snark and be the shoulder to cry on if required, though her first instinct when seeing a loved one upset is still to ask whose legs she needs to break.
History
{Childhood and Friendship}Born in Johto, Faith started out life unwanted. Born to a mother who had never wanted children, her father a man who she has never met, she was cared for only in a very basic, 'roof over her head, food in her stomach, and clean clothes on her back' way. The emotional neglect left her tantrum-prone in a bid to attract any kind of attention, even if it was negative. Her empathy manifesting once she hit school age did nothing to help, as she found herself overwhelmed and thrown off-balance emotionally by the constant psychic 'noise' with no support to be found; she had no known relatives who were psychic who could help her, as it'd apparently been inherited from her father's side.
And, then, when the fact that physical contact amplified the 'signal' led to her becoming extremely touch-shy...The bullying from her peers was intense, and it was all worse in the fact that she could feel the cruelty of the other children as they chased her around and grabbed at her. She could sense the insincerity of the apologies, and of the false friendliness they used to try to lure her back in for another round, and sometimes she couldn't help but lash out when she saw it coming, trying to get them before they got her.
The kind thing would have been to pull her out of school, and to get her a tutor to help her control her abilities, or, at the bare minimum, a psychic pokemon to help keep her emotions steady. But that would have been the actions of a parent who loved her, and Faith knew with a certainty that only an empath could that she had no such parent. She was a burden, a problem child, and that was all she would ever be.
The one bright spot was her neighbours, a kind couple who regularly took in and helped children who needed foster care. She was never one of their kids, not officially, but may as well have been for all the time she spent at their home. It wasn't perfect, as sometimes her presence rubbed the other children the wrong way, since she didn't 'need' to be there like they did and so could be viewed as an intruder, not to mention that there was still a lot of emotional 'noise' to deal with, but somehow it was easier to deal with than being in her mostly-empty house with her mother. The compassion in that home, along with the sparks of hope, made all the difference.
She didn't really make any friends, though, even when she managed to get the foster kids to accept her...until Delilah.
Faith's teenage years were not kind to her, in many ways. Reflecting her peers around her, she grew more volatile, her power growing in strength (though still fairly weak, all things considering) without any increase in control, and she found herself having more and more screaming, fist-swinging outbursts as a way to deal with the fact that everything around her was just too much. The worst part was the fact that, while she didn't have much in the way of growth spurts and didn't 'blossom' in the way some girls did...she was petite, she was blonde, she had a cute face, and some of the people who'd used to torment her for their amusement now found her interesting in ways that left her revolted by them for entirely new reasons. As if answering some kind of prayer to grant her the power to scare away such unwanted attention, telekinetic powers manifested and, unlike with her empathy, she took to wielding them like a fish to water.
But those years were also when her neighbours took in a girl around her age, who'd also dealt with the neglect of a single parent and...something clicked. They looked like complete opposites on the surface, Lilah charismatic and girly, where Faith was prickly and tomboyish, but they fit together in a strange way, and grew close. Suddenly Faith didn't find being in her own home so painful, when Lilah was visiting it to escape the crowded nature of her own, and Faith would selfishly admit to herself that having a pretty girl around to distract her schoolmates and keep them from paying attention to her was nice...though she'd never give said schoolmates a chance to hurt Lilah the way they'd hurt Faith in the past. She promised herself that she'd destroy anyone who tried, consequences be damned.
And, then, when the fact that physical contact amplified the 'signal' led to her becoming extremely touch-shy...The bullying from her peers was intense, and it was all worse in the fact that she could feel the cruelty of the other children as they chased her around and grabbed at her. She could sense the insincerity of the apologies, and of the false friendliness they used to try to lure her back in for another round, and sometimes she couldn't help but lash out when she saw it coming, trying to get them before they got her.
The kind thing would have been to pull her out of school, and to get her a tutor to help her control her abilities, or, at the bare minimum, a psychic pokemon to help keep her emotions steady. But that would have been the actions of a parent who loved her, and Faith knew with a certainty that only an empath could that she had no such parent. She was a burden, a problem child, and that was all she would ever be.
The one bright spot was her neighbours, a kind couple who regularly took in and helped children who needed foster care. She was never one of their kids, not officially, but may as well have been for all the time she spent at their home. It wasn't perfect, as sometimes her presence rubbed the other children the wrong way, since she didn't 'need' to be there like they did and so could be viewed as an intruder, not to mention that there was still a lot of emotional 'noise' to deal with, but somehow it was easier to deal with than being in her mostly-empty house with her mother. The compassion in that home, along with the sparks of hope, made all the difference.
She didn't really make any friends, though, even when she managed to get the foster kids to accept her...until Delilah.
Faith's teenage years were not kind to her, in many ways. Reflecting her peers around her, she grew more volatile, her power growing in strength (though still fairly weak, all things considering) without any increase in control, and she found herself having more and more screaming, fist-swinging outbursts as a way to deal with the fact that everything around her was just too much. The worst part was the fact that, while she didn't have much in the way of growth spurts and didn't 'blossom' in the way some girls did...she was petite, she was blonde, she had a cute face, and some of the people who'd used to torment her for their amusement now found her interesting in ways that left her revolted by them for entirely new reasons. As if answering some kind of prayer to grant her the power to scare away such unwanted attention, telekinetic powers manifested and, unlike with her empathy, she took to wielding them like a fish to water.
But those years were also when her neighbours took in a girl around her age, who'd also dealt with the neglect of a single parent and...something clicked. They looked like complete opposites on the surface, Lilah charismatic and girly, where Faith was prickly and tomboyish, but they fit together in a strange way, and grew close. Suddenly Faith didn't find being in her own home so painful, when Lilah was visiting it to escape the crowded nature of her own, and Faith would selfishly admit to herself that having a pretty girl around to distract her schoolmates and keep them from paying attention to her was nice...though she'd never give said schoolmates a chance to hurt Lilah the way they'd hurt Faith in the past. She promised herself that she'd destroy anyone who tried, consequences be damned.
{Self-Discovery}But childhood can't last forever, and as much as Faith had loathed her schooling, she was at a loss for what to do with herself once she'd graduated. Her mother certainly had no intention of letting her stick around any longer than she "had" to, and Faith was just fine with that, because the urge to just get out of town and do something was overwhelming.
What? Go to college like Lilah did? Hahahaha no! No way was she putting herself through any more of that. She was done with classrooms and teachers and too much noise.
Her solution came to her in the form of a wild paras, and the resulting blundering her way through capturing it. She'd be a pokemon trainer. She was well above the minimum age, after all, and it was often considered inevitable that psychics would end up as trainers...of psychic pokemon, admittedly, not bugs, but anyone who wanted to tell her that she was training the 'wrong' type could go shove their opinions somewhere good and painful. She actually did pretty well, winning a Bug Catching Contest and managing to earn a couple of badges, but even with selling off the non-bugs she captured, it wasn't a very reliable income.
To keep herself afloat, Faith ended up becoming a trainer-for-hire, and she was less scrutinizing of the jobs she took than she maybe should have been. She started walking in shadier circles, relying on the fact that her crude and aggressive mannerisms made it easy to dismiss her as a brute, and hiding the full extent of her powers to keep herself properly underestimated. The less people realized how observant and cunning she actually was beneath the rough surface, the easier it was to sidestep potential consequences of the work she was doing. She had lines she wouldn't cross, of course, even if she sometimes flirted with the edges of those lines because...honestly, she couldn't deny the thrill, and how much she liked the feeling of power some of it gave her.
In time, she and Lilah met up again, and ended up becoming roommates. While Faith was wary of sharing a living space with another person--afraid, even, thinking it was only a matter of time before she blew up at the one person she never wanted to blow up at--it worked out shockingly well. Just like before, something about them just fit, and Faith suddenly had a home that she felt safe and comfortable in, with a person she felt safe and comfortable with, and it brought her a lot of relief to be able to seek out both when the outside world was too overwhelming. Together, for Lilah had also taken up training in their time apart, they gathered quite the menagerie of pokemon, some of them properly creepy and crawly and the rest disgustingly cute, the latter quite deliberate on Lilah's part, while Faith would argue the fact that an audino was necessary for her battle strategies and nothing more until she was blue in the face.
However, things started to change in their comfortable dynamic. Faith was well-acquainted with Lilah's general emotional 'feel' by that point, and so it didn't take much for her to notice that her feelings toward Faith were shifting and...was that attraction? Faith had always assumed that Lilah was straight, and, well, sure, Faith had looked at people before, especially after starting her journey, but doing more than looking would involve letting them get close to her and touch her and just no. But, with Lilah...
Faith loved Lilah. It wasn't romantic, of that she was certain, but she still cared deeply about her and, most importantly, she trusted her. If there was anyone she could see herself with, it was her. That was assuming that Lilah intended to act on it, of course, because Faith sure wasn't going to confront her about this. No, this was a delicate situation and it'd be better to just go about business as usual for a bit until...oooor she could end up getting caught up in a moment and trying to kiss Lilah. That worked too.
Her dubious impulse control aside, though, the transition from friends to friends-with-benefits was a surprisingly smooth and natural one for Faith. It was a bit like having a new piece click into place in a familiar puzzle, really.
What? Go to college like Lilah did? Hahahaha no! No way was she putting herself through any more of that. She was done with classrooms and teachers and too much noise.
Her solution came to her in the form of a wild paras, and the resulting blundering her way through capturing it. She'd be a pokemon trainer. She was well above the minimum age, after all, and it was often considered inevitable that psychics would end up as trainers...of psychic pokemon, admittedly, not bugs, but anyone who wanted to tell her that she was training the 'wrong' type could go shove their opinions somewhere good and painful. She actually did pretty well, winning a Bug Catching Contest and managing to earn a couple of badges, but even with selling off the non-bugs she captured, it wasn't a very reliable income.
To keep herself afloat, Faith ended up becoming a trainer-for-hire, and she was less scrutinizing of the jobs she took than she maybe should have been. She started walking in shadier circles, relying on the fact that her crude and aggressive mannerisms made it easy to dismiss her as a brute, and hiding the full extent of her powers to keep herself properly underestimated. The less people realized how observant and cunning she actually was beneath the rough surface, the easier it was to sidestep potential consequences of the work she was doing. She had lines she wouldn't cross, of course, even if she sometimes flirted with the edges of those lines because...honestly, she couldn't deny the thrill, and how much she liked the feeling of power some of it gave her.
In time, she and Lilah met up again, and ended up becoming roommates. While Faith was wary of sharing a living space with another person--afraid, even, thinking it was only a matter of time before she blew up at the one person she never wanted to blow up at--it worked out shockingly well. Just like before, something about them just fit, and Faith suddenly had a home that she felt safe and comfortable in, with a person she felt safe and comfortable with, and it brought her a lot of relief to be able to seek out both when the outside world was too overwhelming. Together, for Lilah had also taken up training in their time apart, they gathered quite the menagerie of pokemon, some of them properly creepy and crawly and the rest disgustingly cute, the latter quite deliberate on Lilah's part, while Faith would argue the fact that an audino was necessary for her battle strategies and nothing more until she was blue in the face.
However, things started to change in their comfortable dynamic. Faith was well-acquainted with Lilah's general emotional 'feel' by that point, and so it didn't take much for her to notice that her feelings toward Faith were shifting and...was that attraction? Faith had always assumed that Lilah was straight, and, well, sure, Faith had looked at people before, especially after starting her journey, but doing more than looking would involve letting them get close to her and touch her and just no. But, with Lilah...
Faith loved Lilah. It wasn't romantic, of that she was certain, but she still cared deeply about her and, most importantly, she trusted her. If there was anyone she could see herself with, it was her. That was assuming that Lilah intended to act on it, of course, because Faith sure wasn't going to confront her about this. No, this was a delicate situation and it'd be better to just go about business as usual for a bit until...oooor she could end up getting caught up in a moment and trying to kiss Lilah. That worked too.
Her dubious impulse control aside, though, the transition from friends to friends-with-benefits was a surprisingly smooth and natural one for Faith. It was a bit like having a new piece click into place in a familiar puzzle, really.
{Change Of Scenery, And Of Heart}But all things change, and Faith started looking for a job that was a bit less unpredictable than her current one. She wasn't going to give up training, though, far from it. In fact, she was actively looking for something that would involve working with pokemon, and give her some opportunity to keep training her team, just in a slightly more steady, and less shady, capacity. Such jobs tended to have a lot of competition, however, and so Faith ended up casting an ever-widening net in the hope of getting something.
And eventually, she did. She got the opportunity to work in a Safari Zone, which would be exactly what she'd been looking for.
A Safari Zone in Hoenn.
She'd...have to move.
Come with me.
Faith never said it, but she thought it. Those words crossed her mind more than a few times, but she knew it'd be ridiculous to ask that of Lilah. Faith was a big girl who'd been just fine training on her own before they'd met up again, and she didn't need to cling so much to herbest and only friend. So the two made arrangements to keep in touch, and Faith left for Hoenn, ending up settling into an apartment in Lilycove City.
It wasn't a bad city to live in, and Faith ended up finding a few places that she considered worth spending her time: a coffee shop that sold what she would claim were the best baked goods in the city and fight you if you disagreed (the girl usually working the counter was kind of cute, too, and Faith ended up avoiding the place for a week and a half after catching herself thinking that, only to return due to missing the lemon poppy seed muffins just that much), an arcade with some great fighting and rhythm games for her to beat the local teenagers at (also a claw machine, which Faith frequently sent Lilah prizes from that she'd won...though she did keep a few for herself), and a bar that rarely got too crowded and had some decent drinks (she even managed not to get thrown out of it for fighting!).
Having a job outside of said city was good too. Working in a place with semi-wild pokemon wandering around was dangerous, sure, but she was good with pokemon, even ones outside of her specialty, and she had the enviable ability to recognize the temperamental ones and keep them at more than arm's length when interaction was required. Her telekinetic abilities improved in leaps and bounds throughout her employment, and while her ability to split her attention remained below average, she grew to be able to stop some pretty impressively-sized specimens in their tracks when needed. And terrify would-be poachers, of course. Faith was really good at that.
Yet, despite how quickly she settled into her new surroundings and got a routine going, the homesickness hit her hard. She had all kinds of distractions, but the time in between left her feeling lost, restless and miserable, uncomfortably similar to how she'd felt after graduating high school.
Then she met Bianca.
It had been completely by chance. She'd gone to the coffee shop in the morning, like most mornings, and found the line unusually long. Settling into her usual grumble-fest in response to long lines, she'd been just about to holler at the person at the front of the line, humming and hawing over the menu, to just pick something already, when the girl in front of her turned around and decided to make small-talk to pass the time. And Faith...obliged her, reluctantly letting go of her bad mood once the shock that someone had engaged with her wore off.
Within the first few sentences, Faith had decided that this woman was entirely too chipper for someone who hadn't gotten her morning coffee yet, but that cheery mood was infectious even beyond the influence of Faith's empathetic powers and she found herself actually enjoying the conversation. They got onto the subject of pokemon--Bianca was apparently a coordinator, in Hoenn primarily for its contest circuit but also simply enjoying the sights--and Faith was mildly impressed with the fact that she didn't even flinch when told about her bugs. In fact, she seemed to be very interested in them, asking all kinds of questions.
Faith found herself disappointed when the line in front of them was finally gone and they could order, then baffled when Bianca paid for her coffee and pastries alongside her own, then downright stunned when she scrawled out her phone number on a napkin to hand to Faith before leaving with a smirk.
It was only as she was standing there, holding the napkin with a deer-in-headlights expression, that it dawned at her that Bianca...kind of looked like Lilah. Not a lot, not really, but there were some undeniable similarities all the same, and while Bianca had that unfamiliar accent, some sort of blend of Alolan and Orren, the way she talked...She'd called Faith 'sweetie' at least three times over the course of the conversation and Faith hadn't thought about it because Lilah also...
Oh, gods, she'd gone and developed a type, hadn't she?
Faith kept the number. She didn't call right away, but she couldn't bring herself to throw it away either. It took a few days before Faith acted, after she'd gotten into a verbal altercation with a coworker that had come within an inch of turning physical, and was left angry and frustrated and homesick and just...needing company. Lilah had a date that night, and Faith had been making an effort not to interrupt those with her texts, but the only other number she had that wasn't work-related was Bianca's.
"Want to get drinks? I know a good bar."
They ended up in a booth in the corner, just sitting, nursing drinks, and talking for hours. There was something very honest and genuine about Bianca, something that had Faith letting her guard down more than she thought she ever would with someone she'd known for such a short time. Faith also found out something about Bianca that night, and that was that, underneath the charming and flirty demeanor, she totally just a big, dorky goofball whose sense of humour was downright groan-worthy.
They swapped pokemon training stories, and stories in general, and Faith managed to accidentally make a pun four times; she knew exactly how many because Bianca kept noticing and escalating from loud snorting laughter in response to the first one, to shrieking, nearly-falling-out-of-the-booth laughter at the last one.
Everything nearly derailed, however, when Bianca leaned in to kiss her and Faith panicked (though she'll deny for the rest of her life that that's what it was) enough to push her away. Hard. With her telekinesis. She really did fall out of the booth then, landing on her backside on the floor and staring up at Faith in confused hurt, while Faith stared back with wide eyes. She realized right away that it would be easy to double-down on her moment of impulse, to yell, storm out, throw away the number and pretend that none of this had ever happened...but she didn't.
She didn't, because out of the emotions she could sense, Bianca was mostly concerned, and even apologized for acting without asking first as she picked herself back up off the floor. In response, Faith...well, she didn't tell her everything, but still explained enough to get her to understand that the shove hadn't exactly been the rejection that it no doubt had looked like. Bianca listened through all of it, and then she assured her that she'd been enjoying the evening, and would continue doing so regardless of whether anything more than talking occurred.
So, the night went on, and Faith managed to make two more puns by the end of it, one of them even intentional. And Bianca did get her kiss by the time they parted ways, in the form of a very tentative, Faith-initiated one that wasn't much more than a peck. It turned into the first of several evenings, and Faith grew bolder and more comfortable with each one, until they reached the last one before Bianca planned to leave Lilycove to continue her traveling and Faith pulled the eager woman into her apartment for a, in her own words, "proper send-off."
They kept in contact after that, if infrequently. Every once and a while, Bianca would send her pictures, mostly of landmarks of places she'd visited and the inside of various contest halls, but occasionally of herself dressed in all manner of costumes that she'd donned as part of her routines (alongside similarly-costumed pokemon), and there were a few times where they ended up chatting on the phone well into the night, just like they had in person, but Faith also grew accustomed to the fact that there would be large gaps of silence in between these moments of contact.
Regardless, she, to this day, still considers Bianca a good friend.
And eventually, she did. She got the opportunity to work in a Safari Zone, which would be exactly what she'd been looking for.
A Safari Zone in Hoenn.
She'd...have to move.
Come with me.
Faith never said it, but she thought it. Those words crossed her mind more than a few times, but she knew it'd be ridiculous to ask that of Lilah. Faith was a big girl who'd been just fine training on her own before they'd met up again, and she didn't need to cling so much to her
It wasn't a bad city to live in, and Faith ended up finding a few places that she considered worth spending her time: a coffee shop that sold what she would claim were the best baked goods in the city and fight you if you disagreed (the girl usually working the counter was kind of cute, too, and Faith ended up avoiding the place for a week and a half after catching herself thinking that, only to return due to missing the lemon poppy seed muffins just that much), an arcade with some great fighting and rhythm games for her to beat the local teenagers at (also a claw machine, which Faith frequently sent Lilah prizes from that she'd won...though she did keep a few for herself), and a bar that rarely got too crowded and had some decent drinks (she even managed not to get thrown out of it for fighting!).
Having a job outside of said city was good too. Working in a place with semi-wild pokemon wandering around was dangerous, sure, but she was good with pokemon, even ones outside of her specialty, and she had the enviable ability to recognize the temperamental ones and keep them at more than arm's length when interaction was required. Her telekinetic abilities improved in leaps and bounds throughout her employment, and while her ability to split her attention remained below average, she grew to be able to stop some pretty impressively-sized specimens in their tracks when needed. And terrify would-be poachers, of course. Faith was really good at that.
Yet, despite how quickly she settled into her new surroundings and got a routine going, the homesickness hit her hard. She had all kinds of distractions, but the time in between left her feeling lost, restless and miserable, uncomfortably similar to how she'd felt after graduating high school.
Then she met Bianca.
It had been completely by chance. She'd gone to the coffee shop in the morning, like most mornings, and found the line unusually long. Settling into her usual grumble-fest in response to long lines, she'd been just about to holler at the person at the front of the line, humming and hawing over the menu, to just pick something already, when the girl in front of her turned around and decided to make small-talk to pass the time. And Faith...obliged her, reluctantly letting go of her bad mood once the shock that someone had engaged with her wore off.
Within the first few sentences, Faith had decided that this woman was entirely too chipper for someone who hadn't gotten her morning coffee yet, but that cheery mood was infectious even beyond the influence of Faith's empathetic powers and she found herself actually enjoying the conversation. They got onto the subject of pokemon--Bianca was apparently a coordinator, in Hoenn primarily for its contest circuit but also simply enjoying the sights--and Faith was mildly impressed with the fact that she didn't even flinch when told about her bugs. In fact, she seemed to be very interested in them, asking all kinds of questions.
Faith found herself disappointed when the line in front of them was finally gone and they could order, then baffled when Bianca paid for her coffee and pastries alongside her own, then downright stunned when she scrawled out her phone number on a napkin to hand to Faith before leaving with a smirk.
It was only as she was standing there, holding the napkin with a deer-in-headlights expression, that it dawned at her that Bianca...kind of looked like Lilah. Not a lot, not really, but there were some undeniable similarities all the same, and while Bianca had that unfamiliar accent, some sort of blend of Alolan and Orren, the way she talked...She'd called Faith 'sweetie' at least three times over the course of the conversation and Faith hadn't thought about it because Lilah also...
Oh, gods, she'd gone and developed a type, hadn't she?
Faith kept the number. She didn't call right away, but she couldn't bring herself to throw it away either. It took a few days before Faith acted, after she'd gotten into a verbal altercation with a coworker that had come within an inch of turning physical, and was left angry and frustrated and homesick and just...needing company. Lilah had a date that night, and Faith had been making an effort not to interrupt those with her texts, but the only other number she had that wasn't work-related was Bianca's.
"Want to get drinks? I know a good bar."
They ended up in a booth in the corner, just sitting, nursing drinks, and talking for hours. There was something very honest and genuine about Bianca, something that had Faith letting her guard down more than she thought she ever would with someone she'd known for such a short time. Faith also found out something about Bianca that night, and that was that, underneath the charming and flirty demeanor, she totally just a big, dorky goofball whose sense of humour was downright groan-worthy.
They swapped pokemon training stories, and stories in general, and Faith managed to accidentally make a pun four times; she knew exactly how many because Bianca kept noticing and escalating from loud snorting laughter in response to the first one, to shrieking, nearly-falling-out-of-the-booth laughter at the last one.
Everything nearly derailed, however, when Bianca leaned in to kiss her and Faith panicked (though she'll deny for the rest of her life that that's what it was) enough to push her away. Hard. With her telekinesis. She really did fall out of the booth then, landing on her backside on the floor and staring up at Faith in confused hurt, while Faith stared back with wide eyes. She realized right away that it would be easy to double-down on her moment of impulse, to yell, storm out, throw away the number and pretend that none of this had ever happened...but she didn't.
She didn't, because out of the emotions she could sense, Bianca was mostly concerned, and even apologized for acting without asking first as she picked herself back up off the floor. In response, Faith...well, she didn't tell her everything, but still explained enough to get her to understand that the shove hadn't exactly been the rejection that it no doubt had looked like. Bianca listened through all of it, and then she assured her that she'd been enjoying the evening, and would continue doing so regardless of whether anything more than talking occurred.
So, the night went on, and Faith managed to make two more puns by the end of it, one of them even intentional. And Bianca did get her kiss by the time they parted ways, in the form of a very tentative, Faith-initiated one that wasn't much more than a peck. It turned into the first of several evenings, and Faith grew bolder and more comfortable with each one, until they reached the last one before Bianca planned to leave Lilycove to continue her traveling and Faith pulled the eager woman into her apartment for a, in her own words, "proper send-off."
They kept in contact after that, if infrequently. Every once and a while, Bianca would send her pictures, mostly of landmarks of places she'd visited and the inside of various contest halls, but occasionally of herself dressed in all manner of costumes that she'd donned as part of her routines (alongside similarly-costumed pokemon), and there were a few times where they ended up chatting on the phone well into the night, just like they had in person, but Faith also grew accustomed to the fact that there would be large gaps of silence in between these moments of contact.
Regardless, she, to this day, still considers Bianca a good friend.
{A New Beginning}The entire affair with Bianca left Faith strangely invigorated, and her pokemon training, which had wavered, was now something she threw herself back into with new fire. When she could take the time away from work to travel, she managed to get herself a couple more badges, though the last of the wins was very much by the skin of her teeth, and mostly due to her ariados relying on some very unsportsmanlike tactics (hey, Attract was a legal move by League rules, so...) to pull it off. Still, not bad for a girl from Johto who'd gotten into the game late and specialized in bugs.
Lilycove even started feeling more like a home. Faith tried to reach out a little more to the acquaintances she'd made over the course of living there, and even dated a little, albeit very casually and rarely with a second date in the cards for any of them, but she managed to get through it all without a repeat of the telekinetic shove she'd given Bianca (she also confirmed that Bianca hadn't been a fluke and she definitely had a type, now, much to her annoyance), which was something. She was meeting people, making an effort not to be immediately abrasive to everybody at all times, and...it felt good, for the most part.
However, this new fire came with a dose of new ambition, too. She liked her job (and had more or less patched things up with that coworker, to boot, at least enough that a second incident never happened), but it didn't feel like a destination so much as a step on the path. Unfortunately, she wasn't sure what the end of the path actually was, in that case, and the fact that it'd taken some serious luck to score the position she currently had made her reluctant to just go throwing it all away unless it was for something especially good.
Hah, since she was a type specialist, maybe she should try becoming a Gym Leader?
...Wait, that might actually be a good idea.
Not that Faith saw herself getting much of anywhere with such a goal in Hoenn, or back in Johto for that matter. Old, well-established Leagues were hard to get into. Some Gyms ended up tied up in families, and those without a child interested in the title still often had apprentices of some kind. On the rare occasions a Gym Leader vacated the position without someone in mind to take over, the competition was still fierce, and the suddenness of these vacancies often meant that people found out about them long after they'd been filled.
Too much time investment, or too much of a gamble, for too little chance of making it. What she needed was a region with a newer League, a little more open to outsiders.
Hey, what was the region that Lilah had run off to with her boyfriend and girlfriend? No, not Unova. The one she moved to after Unova. Right, Veria. Faith had looked some stuff up about it out of curiosity at one point, and it supposedly had a younger League. Maybe that was worth a second look.
Oh, would you look at that? There was an opening for a Bug Leader, and it looked like Alto Town in particular was in need of a Gym or three.
...
Hey, wouldn't it be priceless if Faith didn't tell Lilah about any of this until she was almost literally in her backyard? Yes, that would be hilarious, and totally wasn't a way of keeping as few people as possible knowing about what she was trying to do, in case she was rejected. Nope, no ego-protecting going on here at all.
Not that it would be Faith's fault if they turned her down. That just meant that they didn't realize how good an applicant she really was. She was an experienced trainer with a solid bug team, one that had earned her badges and everything. And the shadier stuff had never been linked to her, so she had nothing to fear from the background check.
She'd have to keep working on that whole 'social skills' thing, though. And the whole 'impulse control' thing. Gym Leaders kind of needed those.
And she'd have to move. Again.
But...this felt right. This felt like the next step.
Time to take a leap of, well, faith, she supposed.
Lilycove even started feeling more like a home. Faith tried to reach out a little more to the acquaintances she'd made over the course of living there, and even dated a little, albeit very casually and rarely with a second date in the cards for any of them, but she managed to get through it all without a repeat of the telekinetic shove she'd given Bianca (she also confirmed that Bianca hadn't been a fluke and she definitely had a type, now, much to her annoyance), which was something. She was meeting people, making an effort not to be immediately abrasive to everybody at all times, and...it felt good, for the most part.
However, this new fire came with a dose of new ambition, too. She liked her job (and had more or less patched things up with that coworker, to boot, at least enough that a second incident never happened), but it didn't feel like a destination so much as a step on the path. Unfortunately, she wasn't sure what the end of the path actually was, in that case, and the fact that it'd taken some serious luck to score the position she currently had made her reluctant to just go throwing it all away unless it was for something especially good.
Hah, since she was a type specialist, maybe she should try becoming a Gym Leader?
...Wait, that might actually be a good idea.
Not that Faith saw herself getting much of anywhere with such a goal in Hoenn, or back in Johto for that matter. Old, well-established Leagues were hard to get into. Some Gyms ended up tied up in families, and those without a child interested in the title still often had apprentices of some kind. On the rare occasions a Gym Leader vacated the position without someone in mind to take over, the competition was still fierce, and the suddenness of these vacancies often meant that people found out about them long after they'd been filled.
Too much time investment, or too much of a gamble, for too little chance of making it. What she needed was a region with a newer League, a little more open to outsiders.
Hey, what was the region that Lilah had run off to with her boyfriend and girlfriend? No, not Unova. The one she moved to after Unova. Right, Veria. Faith had looked some stuff up about it out of curiosity at one point, and it supposedly had a younger League. Maybe that was worth a second look.
Oh, would you look at that? There was an opening for a Bug Leader, and it looked like Alto Town in particular was in need of a Gym or three.
...
Hey, wouldn't it be priceless if Faith didn't tell Lilah about any of this until she was almost literally in her backyard? Yes, that would be hilarious, and totally wasn't a way of keeping as few people as possible knowing about what she was trying to do, in case she was rejected. Nope, no ego-protecting going on here at all.
Not that it would be Faith's fault if they turned her down. That just meant that they didn't realize how good an applicant she really was. She was an experienced trainer with a solid bug team, one that had earned her badges and everything. And the shadier stuff had never been linked to her, so she had nothing to fear from the background check.
She'd have to keep working on that whole 'social skills' thing, though. And the whole 'impulse control' thing. Gym Leaders kind of needed those.
And she'd have to move. Again.
But...this felt right. This felt like the next step.
Time to take a leap of, well, faith, she supposed.
Pokémon
Pokedex Name: Parasect
Nickname: Prism
Gender: Female
Ability: Dry Skin
Moveset: Stun Spore, Poison Powder, Spore, Slash, Venoshock, Leech Life
Pokedex Name: Scizor
Nickname: Scarlet
Gender: Female
Ability: Light Metal
Moveset: Slash, X-Scissor, Night Slash, Iron Head, Brick Break, Aerial Ace
Pokedex Name: Ariados (Painted)
Nickname: Willow
Gender: Female
Ability: Swarm
Moveset: Infestation, Shadow Sneak, Psychic, Poison Jab, Attract, Swagger
Pokedex Name: Leavanny
Nickname: Elegant
Gender: Female
Ability: Overcoat
Moveset: Endure, Sticky Web, Grass Whistle, Leaf Blade, Dream Eater, Safeguard
Pokedex Name: Armaldo (Shiny)
Nickname: Archie
Gender: Male
Ability: Battle Armor
Moveset: Smack Down, Metal Claw, Brine, Crush Claw, Earthquake, Swords Dance
Pokedex Name: Heracross
Nickname: Hercules
Gender: Male
Ability: Moxie
Moveset: Feint, Counter, Close Combat, Reversal, Bulk Up, Stone Edge
Skills (3/11)
Psychic Empathy Minor (1 Point)
From a young age, Faith has both been grateful for and hated her empathetic powers, seeing them both as her best way of detecting threats early and a disorienting source of constant, unwanted outside influence. Despite years trying, she's never been able to develop an off-switch, and suspects by now that it's impossible for her to do so. As empaths go, however, Faith is actually kind of weak, having only a range of 20 square feet to a Minor's usual 30, with the 'signal' from a person, as is typical, growing stronger with proximity.
A particular quirk of Faith's empathy has to do with physical contact, as making skin-to-skin contact will cause the emotions of the person touching her to suddenly become much sharper to her senses and much more likely to overwhelm her, drowning out anyone else she can sense as well as her own feelings; so much as a sudden hand on her arm can knock her off her emotional balance and has given her a strong aversion to being touched without warning and/or by strangers. It's also during skin-to-skin contact that Faith is most likely to get "echoes" of physical sensations as well, which are equally overwhelming.
Telekinesis Major (2 Points)
Faith's telekinesis manifested later in her childhood, and it's the power she has much more of a handle on. Usually utilized for mundane tasks (and the occasional brawl) it's not so much that she's deliberately trained it as she's constantly exercising it in her day-to-day life. In a reversal of her empathy, Faith is actually stronger than average in this area, able to lift up to 125lbs with ease and having an upper limit of 250lbs, rather than a Major's usual 100lbs and 200lbs, but where she suffers is her ability to split her attention between multiple targets, as she still has the 10-object limit of a typical Minor, with anything upwards of 5 making it increasingly difficult to keep her focus.
Other Information
* Faith's attempts to define her orientation over the course of her life have been an exercise in frustration, and have led her to throw her arms up and decide to answer with "none of your business" for the rest of her life. She once thought that she might be on the ace-spectrum before discarding the idea, she's still not entirely sure she's not on the aro-spectrum somewhere but hasn't quite embraced the term, and while she does catch herself looking at women more often than other genders, that's mostly because she most consistently finds her eye caught by people who remind her of her best friend, so she's not sure whether to define it as having a gender preference or just a type that women more often fit into. Not to mention, she tends to internalize other people's feelings of attraction via her empathetic powers and need to later puzzle out how much of her response was actual reciprocation and how much was emotional mirroring. Feelings are confusing and she is just done with searching for words for them.
OOC Information
OOC Name: Windchime
Face Claim: None - Image made in Sims 4 Create-A-Sim
Continuity: Import - Link
Other Characters? Celeste Hunter
Starter Items: 4 PokeBalls, 2 Great Balls, 1 Ultra Ball, 4 Move Techs, 2 bonus Starter Pokémon,
made by Wolf of GS