Post by Vanessa / Viola Oldford on Jan 28, 2014 18:17:14 GMT -6
Vanessa / Viola Oldford
They filled out the application. It then took them weeks of hesitation borne of their natural distrust for others to finally send it in.
It was time to see if the woman of two minds, who had spent her life fighting to survive and find her place, was good enough to be an official Survivor.
(Note: Birth / "official" name is Vanessa Cardwell, but she refuses to answer to it.)
Age: 36
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Orientation: Heterosexual
Profession: Survivor
Occupation: Alchemist
Appearance: This is a very memorable woman.
Admittedly, for the most part, she's not too unusual. She stands at a petite 160 centimetres (just under five foot, three inches), with a slender body structure, albeit with some moderate feminine curves. Her skin is ghost-pale, and never seems to tan, merely immediately burning when exposed to the sun. While she doesn't have much muscle, what she does have is lean and she is surprisingly quick and agile on her feet and dexterous with her hands.
Her face, however, is where the unforgettable features come from. While having a soft facial structure, with little in the way of angles in her cheeks and jawline and a small, downright button, nose, how pretty she could be is marred by the fact that the right side of her face is home to a number of scars, and her right eye has been completely torn out. Scar tissue covers the socket and runs down her cheek; more minor scars slash down from the corner of her mouth to her chin and slash from the centre of her forehead to her temple.
Monkiers have been tossed around based on her appearance, the most common, and most polite, being 'One-Eye' and 'Two-Face.' The worst of her scarring, on the empty socket, is covered by her eye patch, and her shoulder-length, straight, mousey-brown hair covers a bit of it, but she can't hide it all. Said hair is filled with premature silver-grey hairs, contrasting with her youthful features; it seems about half brown and half grey by this point in her life, more or less evenly mixed throughout. Her remaining eye is a cold grey, flecked slightly with blue.
More minor scars are scattered across her body, particularly on her hands and arms, from accidents regarding knife blades and the some bites and scratches from pokemon.
Everyday Clothes: Being someone who both loathes the cold and burns easily in the sun, her usual outfits consist of full-length pants and shirts with long sleeves to cover as much of her skin as possible, the fabric thinner during the warmer months and thicker in the colder ones. Everything she wears is either a dull tan or grey, with the only exception being her jet black eye patch.
Formal Garbs: None
Pack: A simple shoulder bag, made of a dull grey material and with a few patches sown onto it.
Personality: Vanessa is, simply put, messed up. And Viola's not any more stable, unfortunately.
You see, this woman suffers from a case of dissociative identity disorder, a personality that's split right down the middle into two extremes: The paranoid, high-strung Vanessa who is prone to crippling social anxiety, and the vicious, foul-mouthed Viola who is prone to temperamental outbursts.
They are both constantly aware, even when not in control, and are able to communicate with one another in their shared headspace, causing their behaviour to come across as spacy and often erratic as they constantly communicate and swap control between each other. They can even seem to 'share,' as their expressions and voices occasionally mingle together. Their relationship is symbiotic, not antagonistic, and they are in fact both very protective of one another and often try to keep each other's respective personality flaws in line to varying success.
If you know what's going on, however, it's not hard to tell who is in control. Vanessa keeps up a withdrawn posture, stammers when anxious--this being nearly all the time--and rarely makes eye contact. Viola stands up straight, speaks very clearly--though, most of what she says consists of brutal honesty and crudeness when it doesn't contain threats--and is known to have a very intense stare.
In general, however, they are largely the same person when it comes to their likes, dislikes, fears, desires, and everything else. If one likes you, so does the other, even if Vanessa's more likely to hug you and Viola's more likely to give you a playful punch in the arm. If one knows about something, so does the other, so if Viola's regaling you with bawdy humour, that means that Vanessa is well aware of the meaning of what she's saying, even if she's a little more likely to try to shut her other side up than laugh along.
The problem is, the psychological scars go deeper than merely their split, and both them are very damaged people. They don't trust many others in the world completely, becoming anxious in crowds, though they in general want to help others and contribute to society. Knowledge of how off-putting their mental illness is causes them to keep others at arm's length, Vanessa due to fear of rejection and Viola more due to irritation over it. Vanessa tends to hide from and avoid stressful situations, while Viola tends to either face them head-on or, if that doesn't work, lash out at them.
When they do trust someone, however, they become extraordinarily clingy. They will follow those they love to Hell and back without a second thought, as long as they are certain they are loved in return. Viola will protect them viciously, and Vanessa will latch onto them whenever emotions run high. They are desperate for affection at the end of it all, and its only each other's presence that has kept them from going even further mad from loneliness.
Likes: Feeling warm and safe, being close to people they trust, dark type pokemon, steel type pokemon, non-psychic pokemon in general (of the domestic, tamed, and peaceful feral variety), sweet foods, the colour grey, overcast days
Dislikes: Being in crowds of unfamiliar people, being completely alone, psychic pokemon, sour foods, neon-bright colours, bright sunlight
Backstory:
Every day and age has its monsters. Not the creatures roaming the wilds with teeth, claws, and breath of fire, but human monsters. People who will sit on their throne of gold while the world around them burns. People to whom everyone else means nothing unless they help play into their delusions of grandeur. In a dying world, such monsters could flourish, able to justify so many things that anyone with a soul would normally condemn simply by bringing up the drought, famine, and sweeping destruction.
Vanessa was a victim of such a monster. She would never know a name for him, as all she'd known him as was simply the master. The master of the manor, and the city.
But that's getting ahead of things. She wasn't born into that life, after all, though the one she was born into was not much of one. She lived in one of the parts of the world that had descended into war and a depth of depravity to feed it, her parents having already sent three young boys off to be child soldiers before she was even born. Vanessa Cardwell was born a small baby who grew into a small child, and while her parents earned enough from their boys' 'military careers' that they could just barely afford to raise her, they cared little for her, and had her 'earning her keep' from the moment she was old enough to walk and understand instructions.
Their sorry excuse for a house was nothing if not clean, as that was all she was capable of for a while. Helping catch and kill what stray pokemon they could find for extra food was next, but she more saw it done than performed the act herself, as while she grew fast enough to sometimes catch the occasionally wounded rattata, she didn't have the strength to hold them down for a killing blow and often ended up scratched and bitten for her trouble. The only possession she could be said to own besides the clothes on her back was an old, stuffed toy resembling a pancham; every time she was upset or hurt, she would huddle in a corner, hug it, and cry.
When she was eleven, the Legend Portal opened up, and that should have been the part of the story where she went through and her life changed for the better.
Instead, that was when the monster stepped in.
What position he had once held in the city they lived in was irrelevant. What mattered was that he was the richest, most powerful person in the city, and he had no desire to give up his 'kingdom' just because Arceus saw fit to give humanity a second chance. Overnight, the streets swarmed with powerful pokemon, blocking every exit out of the city. To get out, you had to pay the price, and it was too high for all but a handful of people. Everyone else was trapped.
For two years, with the portal open, the world seemed to see fit to spiral to its doom. Even pokemon seemed to be fleeing for it, and it was much easier for them to get past the guards. A few were the companions to the poor families and stayed with them, but the wild ones left in droves. The only ones left behind were poison pokemon and the occasional steel or electric type. Nidoran devoured rotting scraps, grimer and trubbish infested abandoned corners, and sometimes magnetmite and voltorb could be seen floating or rolling from place to place. They were bold and aggressive, a few of them even picking fights with humans over food, and some of them even evolved due to the constant struggle; Vanessa found herself slammed into a wall once by a rampaging nidorino, just barely managing escape without being skewered by its spikes.
The strangest and most frightening part, however, was that human guards began to be found amongst the pokemon ones. Young women, many of them outright teenagers, stalked the streets with cold expressions and psychic pokemon always lurking behind them. Whispers passed through the city about these strange women, calling them 'Furies,' the hand of the city's master. Anyone who tried to get past one out of the city would be killed, not by the psychic, but by the woman herself with a slash or stab of a knife. Sometimes, someone would recognize one as a person who had lived in the city, but they didn't recognize their names and would lash out violently if distracted too long by someone trying to talk to them.
The Furies frightened Vanessa, but she would only learn the true terror of them later because, at thirteen, she was unceremoniously thrown into the master's manor by her parents and left there. It would seem they'd found a way to pay their way out of the city after all.
She was to be a servant, so she was told. A maid. Though feeling hurt and betrayed about her abandonment, that was not such a bad thing, since she was very good at cleaning, and at least she was guaranteed regular meals now. However, from the first day, she found herself with an espeon constantly scampering around behind her in her shadow. She would normally have been curious, even welcoming, regarding the little cat pokemon, but there was something wrong about it to her. Its eyes were cold and unfeeling, looking at her no differently than it did a chair or table, and yet it constantly followed her. One rule that had been impressed on her was that she was never to disturb the master's pokemon, and so she tried to ignore it.
That was easier said than done, because for days, weeks, months it was always there, lurking nearby and staring at her, its eyes occasionally glowing eerily. It never laid a paw on her, but her fear of it increased to overwhelming paranoia, something constantly telling her that there was something terribly wrong, and more than once she found herself taking off down a hallway in an attempt to get away from it, even for a moment. Then, one day, it stopped stalking her, but sometimes she'd catch sight of it out of the corner of her eye, eyes glowing, and after a moment she'd feel like she was coming out a of daze and see it scampering off down the hall again.
Those next days went by fast. Too fast. She'd find herself losing hours at a time, and not knowing why. The truth of the matter was something she'd only realize years later: She was a Fury now, and the espeon was her handler. He'd spent the months carefully crafting a switch in her mind, and a second mode to shift into. Cold-blooded and completely obedient, she'd patrol the streets in those missing hours, that espeon trotting at her heels. The master 'affectionately' referred to her as his 'Viola.' An instrument that would play any tune he desired.
The espeon was careful, but while he could ensure Viola cleaned herself of blood, he could do little for the injuries she sometimes acquired in their work. Between the increasingly-aggressive wild pokemon and the people becoming desperate enough to outright attack them, Vanessa would sometimes snap back to awareness with wounds she didn't remember receiving, just further fueling her paranoia. The other Furies were much the same, nervous wrecks when not on patrol, and they bonded over it, to some degree, but their separate assignments in different parts of the manor and their varying patrol times made it hard for any of them to spend significant time together.
Years went by, and the city began to become more of a ghost town, as people died from starvation, disease, the wild pokemon, and the Furies. Even the dangerous pokemon themselves seemed to be starting to either move on or turn on one another. The master didn't care; that madman would gladly sit on his throne until he died on it. Most of the psychics were content to let him ruin himself, some planning to grab what of value remained and run, others planning to stab one another in the back and grab the lion's share. The espeon, however, was impatient, and didn't want to wait until he destroyed himself, lest he drag everyone else down with him. So, the psychic decided to...tinker a bit with Vanessa and Viola.
When Vanessa and Viola were eighteen, the espeon took the barrier that was between them, and weakened it, wondering what they would do with a little freedom. The changes, at first, were subtle. Viola seemed to take in her surroundings more, showed recognition of creatures and places where she wouldn't before. Vanessa, for her part, turned jumpier, often jolting into awareness once switched back, especially if Viola had been doing something particularly violent on her patrol. He weakened it further, and Viola began to actually become talkative, expressing irritation or voicing observations on the state of her surroundings, while Vanessa started to suffer from nightmares and start trembling and hyperventilating when provided with particular stimuli.
Then, when they were twenty, he broke the sufficiently-weakened barrier entirely, and sent both minds crashing into each other. They passed out from the sheer stress of it, and when they came to, they flew into a strange mixture between an anxiety attack and a violent fit. It was shockingly easy for the espeon to hide them away from the master and his fellow psychics for the days it took for them to sort themselves out, with the former too full into his descent into madness to notice anything amiss and the latter too wrapped up their own affairs and schemes to care. When it was finally over, memories sorted out and an understanding come to, Vanessa and Viola emerged a changed woman.
For one long year, they pretended all was normal, Vanessa cleaning as asked and Viola going out on the patrols, which by this point were incredibly quiet, but they were constantly conversing in their shared mind. Vanessa now had someone she could depend on, someone who would never leave her, and Viola now had a conscience and something worthwhile to fight for. Together, they knew they were going to kill the master. They knew about the Portal, and that's where they were going to go. That was their escape.
The espeon, meanwhile, put his own plans in motion. There was still one psychic with true loyalty to the master, and she would be of great use in ensuring he would be on top when the dust settled.
Vanessa and Viola slipped out of their room one night, knife in hand, and sneaked into the master's room. It was painfully easy, as he never saw fit to lock it or post guards, confident in the eternal loyalty of his servants. There was a thrill of satisfaction as they slashed his throat, ensuring in that single stroke of the blade that no one else would suffer his influence.
They barely got to the end of the hall before they were thrown down the steps by a telekinetic blast, courtesy of a shrieking gardevoir. It was a miracle they landed without slamming their head against the floor, and they scrambled to their feet and grabbed for their knife with a speed borne of desperation to survive. They hurled the blade, but it missed its target, glancing off a telekinetic barrier the gardevoir conjured to protect herself.
Instead, the espeon, who had raised the alarm in the first place and had been lurking behind the gardevoir to watch his handiwork, didn't have a chance to even see it coming before the deflected knife buried itself in his chest. Taking advantage of the distraction this caused, Vanessa and Viola flew out of the door and charged blindly down the street. They never encountered a single guard, every last psychic either taking off while they could or racing toward the manor to take what they could. None of them cared about the modified Fury running through, and then out, of the city; they didn't stop running until sunrise, when they finally collapsed in fatigue.
From there, they wandered, scrounging what they could from the barren land when they went through what food they had managed to sneak into their pack before making the kill. They barely knew where they were going, but they still eventually found the Legend Portal waiting for them in the distance.
Unfortunately, the moment they saw it, they heard a scream. The gardevoir had been tracking them, it seemed, and had just found them. Unarmed and not standing a chance against a fully-trained psychic pokemon, they pushed their body to its limit and ran straight for the Portal, but it was in vain. It wasn't the gardevoir who ended up attacking them, though, but a Fury who they had, in her original state, known as Tessa. The gardevoir had been Tessa's handler, and seemed to find taking revenge through her more satisfying.
Vanessa and Viola were thrown to the ground by the taller woman, and 'Tessa' sank her blade into their cheek, slashing down it. Rather than aim for a quick kill, she went for pain and mutilation, slashing at their mouth, their forehead, digging over and over into their cheek. They brought their hands up and locked them around 'Tessa's' neck, squeezing as hard as they could as her knife sunk straight into their right eye.
More shouts started to ring out, sounds of blasts of power. More humans? More psychics? They didn't know, couldn't see, and were too focused on survival. The blade was pulled from their socket, taking most of her eye with it, as they managed to throw 'Tessa' off of them. They had barely managed to start getting up when a stray blast of telekinesis slammed into them, sending them hurtling through the Legend Portal. They struck the ground in the middle of Port City, knocked out instantly on impact.
They woke up to stitches, an IV, and a physician not much older than they were having been watching over them. Their initial reaction was...less than peaceful and cooperative, but eventually they calmed down and realized they'd done it. They'd gotten through the portal. It was ten years late, but they were free. There was no word of anyone following them through the portal, which was both a sorrow and relief, and from then on they aimed the gaze on the future.
That first year in Mi-aro was a rough one, as they tried to find their place once they'd recovered. With precious little knowledge and a scant few employable skills, they ended up working in one of Port City's Inns, cleaning the rooms, washing dishes, and sweeping the floor. Some of their downtime involved fishing and hunting, so that they could save their money for things other than food, not that they ever bought much. A bit of their time was also spent reading, to try to compensate for their lack of knowledge. The last few spare hours of the day was eating and sleeping.
While their hard working attitude appealed to the owner of the Inn, Vanessa and Viola were not fond of the place. Port City was too large, too crowded, and it made Vanessa jumpy. Their erratic behaviour bothered people, and they were recognized far too often as 'the girl who came through the portal injured' for their liking. The part they did like was the fact that the Inn offered pokemon healing services, and thus they got the chance to see a number of interesting species. They took an immediate liking to dark pokemon, as the first thing they grasped about them was that they were immune to psychic influence, and they also developed something of a fascination for steel types, particularly the ones with sharp blades on their bodies.
Unfortunately, there were psychic pokemon in and around the town as well, and even ones who one could say probably meant well would still often stare at them, as if the pokemon in question could sense immediately that there was something off about them, and that pricked at both Vanessa paranoia and Viola's temper. So, once year into their new life, they packed up their scarce belongings and money and hit the road for New Pallet instead.
The smaller community was nicer, though they did mourn the view of sea they'd had before. They settled into another Inn, and slowly worked on their limited social skills. Their scarring drew glances, and some people did still know about their incident, but all in all it was a much calmer atmosphere, and they were much more at peace. They came to be known somewhat for their 'mood swings' and occasionally heard a mutter regarding them that referred to them as 'One-Eye,' or occasionally 'Two-Face' due to the asymmetry of the scarring, but they could handle that, even if Viola occasionally threw things at the wall of their room in a fit over it.
People didn't have to like them, after all, just accept them and leave them alone.
However, after three years in that New Pallet Inn, they met the person who would properly drag them out of their shell, at least a little. He was Mr. Oldford, a local alchemist, and he prided himself on having managed to grow a number of old-world medicinal plants on Mi-aro soil and knowing how to mix them to maximize their healing capabilities. When Vanessa and Viola first laid eye on him, however, they had no idea about that, and in fact were not paying attention to him much at all.
Instead, they were intrigued by the pokemon standing next to him. Mr. Oldford had a scyther--he was a particularly large specimen, standing at the same height as they did, but they only realized that this was atypical later--with well-sharpened scythes and a number of what looked like old scars on his exoskeleton. Drawn in by curious fascination, they found themselves inching closer and peering at the massive insect as his trainer spoke to the innkeeper, only for the scyther to notice their approach and turn to look at them. Vanessa's startled response to this caught the attention of the old alchemist, and sparked an at-first awkward conversation.
What started as a discussion of his pokemon, however, turned into a discussion of his work, and Vanessa and Viola found themselves fascinated by it. They knew little about plants, even the plants of the old world, and ravenously devoured the information, trying their hardest to commit to memory. Over the next year, Mr. Oldford's visits to the inn would become frequent, and their talks longer. They would ask questions most would consider 'stupid,' things even young children should have known, but he was constantly patient with them and answered every last one.
Then, eventually, he shocked them by doing something they would have never expected: He offered to take them on as an apprentice. He had no children of his own to pass his craft onto, and where most saw a strange, erratic woman, he saw a bright girl with a lot of potential. Though wary, and a bit worried that he may change his tune once he really saw how unusual they could be, they decided to take the plunge.
And, so, at twenty-six, they became an alchemist apprentice. They stayed in a spare room in his home at the outskirts of town, moving their few belongings into it and then rapidly getting to work. When they weren't learning alchemy techniques, helping nurture the plants, or assisting in caring for his scyther, they were cleaning the house, reading or outside continuing their habit of hunting feral pokemon for extra food. Doing nothing simply wasn't an option during their waking hours, though they'd relent and sit for a casual chat with their mentor if he insisted.
He never asked them any personal questions about themselves, but would happily talk about his own past, before and after the portal opened. About adventures with his scyther, or about his late wife, who had passed on a few years back and who he clearly loved very much. Vanessa and Viola absorbed these stories and tried to store their memories of them just as much as they did the lessons about alchemy, the words being their glimpse into what a real life, a happy life, was really like. His stories formed their concepts of friendship, family, and love as they should be.
However, a few months into their new apprenticeship, Mr. Oldford gave them a terrible shock by, one day, addressing Viola by name. They'd always gone by Vanessa, out of a sense of respect for who the original personality was, and to hear that name spoken aloud frightened them, until he quickly explained that he had heard them speaking aloud to one another--it was a habit they'd formed while in private after a couple of years in Mi-aro--when he passed by their room, and had figured it out from there. He shocked them further by assuring them that, split personality or no, he stood by his decision to make them his apprentice. Or, rather, apprentices.
The next five years were the best they had ever had, as they finally had something they'd been lacking: A proper parental figure. Here was someone they could interact with without disguising their mental illness, someone they could genuinely open up to. They soon started addressing him as 'old man,' due to the phrase's meaning as being synonymous with 'father,' and as a bit of a pun on his name. In fact, they soon ended up taking his last name as their own; they'd simply gone by Vanessa's first name since arriving, claiming not to have a last, but now, should they ever require a full name, the one they gave was Vanessa Oldford.
But nothing lasted forever, and Mr. Oldford really was getting on in years. After those five years as an apprentice, they saw old age finally claim him, until he passed away peacefully in his sleep. He left everything to them, from his shop and plants to his scyther. They were grief-stricken, but tried their best to hold things together, as hard as it was when they were naught but a thirty-one-year old who had come ten years late to the new world with only five years alchemy experience.
However, barely a year after Mr. Oldford's death, the building that housed both their home and place of business caught fire. In those years, what had once been the 'outskirts' of New Pallet now had several newer homes in it, and one of these neighbours ended up with their home ablaze, and it spread to theirs before anyone could put it out. The plants, their belongs, all of it was gone, just leaving them and their scyther. They ended up working in yet another inn in town, and the grief and anger over losing their mentor and home so close together left their 'mood swings' even worse, with Vanessa prone to bursting into tears and Viola lashing out at the slightest provocation.
Then, two years later, their scyther succumbed to the same thing his previous trainer had. Old age.
They were alone again, save for each other.
Two more years were spent at the inn, mourning their lost life, until they decided to change things. Their mentor had worked primarily with the old world plants he'd grown, and so their knowledge of Mi-aro herbs was limited, and the years without working with such things had probably left them rusty, but they could only mope for so long before the desire to try to get back some of what they'd had before started to burn inside of them. With pokemon trainers becoming more common due to pokeballs becoming more readily available and the push to expand beyond the scrap of land the people here knew, the path ahead seemed obvious.
They could go to the Emissary to get a pokemon, go out into the wilds to find new plants to cultivate and mix, and be able to help people again.
The only problem: They were insane. Could they really admit that to, of all people, the Ambassador? On the other hand, could they really allow themselves to lie on the application? If they were truthful--if they, for the first time, really told someone who didn't already know--would they even be permitted to have a pokemon?
They'd behaved for fifteen years. They'd never hurt anyone, tried their best to be a good person and adjust to Mi-aro society. They'd loved their mentor like a father. They loved their craft. The Ambassador had to realize that there was more to them than just being crazy.Appearance: This is a very memorable woman.
Admittedly, for the most part, she's not too unusual. She stands at a petite 160 centimetres (just under five foot, three inches), with a slender body structure, albeit with some moderate feminine curves. Her skin is ghost-pale, and never seems to tan, merely immediately burning when exposed to the sun. While she doesn't have much muscle, what she does have is lean and she is surprisingly quick and agile on her feet and dexterous with her hands.
Her face, however, is where the unforgettable features come from. While having a soft facial structure, with little in the way of angles in her cheeks and jawline and a small, downright button, nose, how pretty she could be is marred by the fact that the right side of her face is home to a number of scars, and her right eye has been completely torn out. Scar tissue covers the socket and runs down her cheek; more minor scars slash down from the corner of her mouth to her chin and slash from the centre of her forehead to her temple.
Monkiers have been tossed around based on her appearance, the most common, and most polite, being 'One-Eye' and 'Two-Face.' The worst of her scarring, on the empty socket, is covered by her eye patch, and her shoulder-length, straight, mousey-brown hair covers a bit of it, but she can't hide it all. Said hair is filled with premature silver-grey hairs, contrasting with her youthful features; it seems about half brown and half grey by this point in her life, more or less evenly mixed throughout. Her remaining eye is a cold grey, flecked slightly with blue.
More minor scars are scattered across her body, particularly on her hands and arms, from accidents regarding knife blades and the some bites and scratches from pokemon.
Everyday Clothes: Being someone who both loathes the cold and burns easily in the sun, her usual outfits consist of full-length pants and shirts with long sleeves to cover as much of her skin as possible, the fabric thinner during the warmer months and thicker in the colder ones. Everything she wears is either a dull tan or grey, with the only exception being her jet black eye patch.
Formal Garbs: None
Pack: A simple shoulder bag, made of a dull grey material and with a few patches sown onto it.
Personality: Vanessa is, simply put, messed up. And Viola's not any more stable, unfortunately.
You see, this woman suffers from a case of dissociative identity disorder, a personality that's split right down the middle into two extremes: The paranoid, high-strung Vanessa who is prone to crippling social anxiety, and the vicious, foul-mouthed Viola who is prone to temperamental outbursts.
They are both constantly aware, even when not in control, and are able to communicate with one another in their shared headspace, causing their behaviour to come across as spacy and often erratic as they constantly communicate and swap control between each other. They can even seem to 'share,' as their expressions and voices occasionally mingle together. Their relationship is symbiotic, not antagonistic, and they are in fact both very protective of one another and often try to keep each other's respective personality flaws in line to varying success.
If you know what's going on, however, it's not hard to tell who is in control. Vanessa keeps up a withdrawn posture, stammers when anxious--this being nearly all the time--and rarely makes eye contact. Viola stands up straight, speaks very clearly--though, most of what she says consists of brutal honesty and crudeness when it doesn't contain threats--and is known to have a very intense stare.
In general, however, they are largely the same person when it comes to their likes, dislikes, fears, desires, and everything else. If one likes you, so does the other, even if Vanessa's more likely to hug you and Viola's more likely to give you a playful punch in the arm. If one knows about something, so does the other, so if Viola's regaling you with bawdy humour, that means that Vanessa is well aware of the meaning of what she's saying, even if she's a little more likely to try to shut her other side up than laugh along.
The problem is, the psychological scars go deeper than merely their split, and both them are very damaged people. They don't trust many others in the world completely, becoming anxious in crowds, though they in general want to help others and contribute to society. Knowledge of how off-putting their mental illness is causes them to keep others at arm's length, Vanessa due to fear of rejection and Viola more due to irritation over it. Vanessa tends to hide from and avoid stressful situations, while Viola tends to either face them head-on or, if that doesn't work, lash out at them.
When they do trust someone, however, they become extraordinarily clingy. They will follow those they love to Hell and back without a second thought, as long as they are certain they are loved in return. Viola will protect them viciously, and Vanessa will latch onto them whenever emotions run high. They are desperate for affection at the end of it all, and its only each other's presence that has kept them from going even further mad from loneliness.
Likes: Feeling warm and safe, being close to people they trust, dark type pokemon, steel type pokemon, non-psychic pokemon in general (of the domestic, tamed, and peaceful feral variety), sweet foods, the colour grey, overcast days
Dislikes: Being in crowds of unfamiliar people, being completely alone, psychic pokemon, sour foods, neon-bright colours, bright sunlight
Backstory:
Every day and age has its monsters. Not the creatures roaming the wilds with teeth, claws, and breath of fire, but human monsters. People who will sit on their throne of gold while the world around them burns. People to whom everyone else means nothing unless they help play into their delusions of grandeur. In a dying world, such monsters could flourish, able to justify so many things that anyone with a soul would normally condemn simply by bringing up the drought, famine, and sweeping destruction.
Vanessa was a victim of such a monster. She would never know a name for him, as all she'd known him as was simply the master. The master of the manor, and the city.
But that's getting ahead of things. She wasn't born into that life, after all, though the one she was born into was not much of one. She lived in one of the parts of the world that had descended into war and a depth of depravity to feed it, her parents having already sent three young boys off to be child soldiers before she was even born. Vanessa Cardwell was born a small baby who grew into a small child, and while her parents earned enough from their boys' 'military careers' that they could just barely afford to raise her, they cared little for her, and had her 'earning her keep' from the moment she was old enough to walk and understand instructions.
Their sorry excuse for a house was nothing if not clean, as that was all she was capable of for a while. Helping catch and kill what stray pokemon they could find for extra food was next, but she more saw it done than performed the act herself, as while she grew fast enough to sometimes catch the occasionally wounded rattata, she didn't have the strength to hold them down for a killing blow and often ended up scratched and bitten for her trouble. The only possession she could be said to own besides the clothes on her back was an old, stuffed toy resembling a pancham; every time she was upset or hurt, she would huddle in a corner, hug it, and cry.
When she was eleven, the Legend Portal opened up, and that should have been the part of the story where she went through and her life changed for the better.
Instead, that was when the monster stepped in.
What position he had once held in the city they lived in was irrelevant. What mattered was that he was the richest, most powerful person in the city, and he had no desire to give up his 'kingdom' just because Arceus saw fit to give humanity a second chance. Overnight, the streets swarmed with powerful pokemon, blocking every exit out of the city. To get out, you had to pay the price, and it was too high for all but a handful of people. Everyone else was trapped.
For two years, with the portal open, the world seemed to see fit to spiral to its doom. Even pokemon seemed to be fleeing for it, and it was much easier for them to get past the guards. A few were the companions to the poor families and stayed with them, but the wild ones left in droves. The only ones left behind were poison pokemon and the occasional steel or electric type. Nidoran devoured rotting scraps, grimer and trubbish infested abandoned corners, and sometimes magnetmite and voltorb could be seen floating or rolling from place to place. They were bold and aggressive, a few of them even picking fights with humans over food, and some of them even evolved due to the constant struggle; Vanessa found herself slammed into a wall once by a rampaging nidorino, just barely managing escape without being skewered by its spikes.
The strangest and most frightening part, however, was that human guards began to be found amongst the pokemon ones. Young women, many of them outright teenagers, stalked the streets with cold expressions and psychic pokemon always lurking behind them. Whispers passed through the city about these strange women, calling them 'Furies,' the hand of the city's master. Anyone who tried to get past one out of the city would be killed, not by the psychic, but by the woman herself with a slash or stab of a knife. Sometimes, someone would recognize one as a person who had lived in the city, but they didn't recognize their names and would lash out violently if distracted too long by someone trying to talk to them.
The Furies frightened Vanessa, but she would only learn the true terror of them later because, at thirteen, she was unceremoniously thrown into the master's manor by her parents and left there. It would seem they'd found a way to pay their way out of the city after all.
She was to be a servant, so she was told. A maid. Though feeling hurt and betrayed about her abandonment, that was not such a bad thing, since she was very good at cleaning, and at least she was guaranteed regular meals now. However, from the first day, she found herself with an espeon constantly scampering around behind her in her shadow. She would normally have been curious, even welcoming, regarding the little cat pokemon, but there was something wrong about it to her. Its eyes were cold and unfeeling, looking at her no differently than it did a chair or table, and yet it constantly followed her. One rule that had been impressed on her was that she was never to disturb the master's pokemon, and so she tried to ignore it.
That was easier said than done, because for days, weeks, months it was always there, lurking nearby and staring at her, its eyes occasionally glowing eerily. It never laid a paw on her, but her fear of it increased to overwhelming paranoia, something constantly telling her that there was something terribly wrong, and more than once she found herself taking off down a hallway in an attempt to get away from it, even for a moment. Then, one day, it stopped stalking her, but sometimes she'd catch sight of it out of the corner of her eye, eyes glowing, and after a moment she'd feel like she was coming out a of daze and see it scampering off down the hall again.
Those next days went by fast. Too fast. She'd find herself losing hours at a time, and not knowing why. The truth of the matter was something she'd only realize years later: She was a Fury now, and the espeon was her handler. He'd spent the months carefully crafting a switch in her mind, and a second mode to shift into. Cold-blooded and completely obedient, she'd patrol the streets in those missing hours, that espeon trotting at her heels. The master 'affectionately' referred to her as his 'Viola.' An instrument that would play any tune he desired.
The espeon was careful, but while he could ensure Viola cleaned herself of blood, he could do little for the injuries she sometimes acquired in their work. Between the increasingly-aggressive wild pokemon and the people becoming desperate enough to outright attack them, Vanessa would sometimes snap back to awareness with wounds she didn't remember receiving, just further fueling her paranoia. The other Furies were much the same, nervous wrecks when not on patrol, and they bonded over it, to some degree, but their separate assignments in different parts of the manor and their varying patrol times made it hard for any of them to spend significant time together.
Years went by, and the city began to become more of a ghost town, as people died from starvation, disease, the wild pokemon, and the Furies. Even the dangerous pokemon themselves seemed to be starting to either move on or turn on one another. The master didn't care; that madman would gladly sit on his throne until he died on it. Most of the psychics were content to let him ruin himself, some planning to grab what of value remained and run, others planning to stab one another in the back and grab the lion's share. The espeon, however, was impatient, and didn't want to wait until he destroyed himself, lest he drag everyone else down with him. So, the psychic decided to...tinker a bit with Vanessa and Viola.
When Vanessa and Viola were eighteen, the espeon took the barrier that was between them, and weakened it, wondering what they would do with a little freedom. The changes, at first, were subtle. Viola seemed to take in her surroundings more, showed recognition of creatures and places where she wouldn't before. Vanessa, for her part, turned jumpier, often jolting into awareness once switched back, especially if Viola had been doing something particularly violent on her patrol. He weakened it further, and Viola began to actually become talkative, expressing irritation or voicing observations on the state of her surroundings, while Vanessa started to suffer from nightmares and start trembling and hyperventilating when provided with particular stimuli.
Then, when they were twenty, he broke the sufficiently-weakened barrier entirely, and sent both minds crashing into each other. They passed out from the sheer stress of it, and when they came to, they flew into a strange mixture between an anxiety attack and a violent fit. It was shockingly easy for the espeon to hide them away from the master and his fellow psychics for the days it took for them to sort themselves out, with the former too full into his descent into madness to notice anything amiss and the latter too wrapped up their own affairs and schemes to care. When it was finally over, memories sorted out and an understanding come to, Vanessa and Viola emerged a changed woman.
For one long year, they pretended all was normal, Vanessa cleaning as asked and Viola going out on the patrols, which by this point were incredibly quiet, but they were constantly conversing in their shared mind. Vanessa now had someone she could depend on, someone who would never leave her, and Viola now had a conscience and something worthwhile to fight for. Together, they knew they were going to kill the master. They knew about the Portal, and that's where they were going to go. That was their escape.
The espeon, meanwhile, put his own plans in motion. There was still one psychic with true loyalty to the master, and she would be of great use in ensuring he would be on top when the dust settled.
Vanessa and Viola slipped out of their room one night, knife in hand, and sneaked into the master's room. It was painfully easy, as he never saw fit to lock it or post guards, confident in the eternal loyalty of his servants. There was a thrill of satisfaction as they slashed his throat, ensuring in that single stroke of the blade that no one else would suffer his influence.
They barely got to the end of the hall before they were thrown down the steps by a telekinetic blast, courtesy of a shrieking gardevoir. It was a miracle they landed without slamming their head against the floor, and they scrambled to their feet and grabbed for their knife with a speed borne of desperation to survive. They hurled the blade, but it missed its target, glancing off a telekinetic barrier the gardevoir conjured to protect herself.
Instead, the espeon, who had raised the alarm in the first place and had been lurking behind the gardevoir to watch his handiwork, didn't have a chance to even see it coming before the deflected knife buried itself in his chest. Taking advantage of the distraction this caused, Vanessa and Viola flew out of the door and charged blindly down the street. They never encountered a single guard, every last psychic either taking off while they could or racing toward the manor to take what they could. None of them cared about the modified Fury running through, and then out, of the city; they didn't stop running until sunrise, when they finally collapsed in fatigue.
From there, they wandered, scrounging what they could from the barren land when they went through what food they had managed to sneak into their pack before making the kill. They barely knew where they were going, but they still eventually found the Legend Portal waiting for them in the distance.
Unfortunately, the moment they saw it, they heard a scream. The gardevoir had been tracking them, it seemed, and had just found them. Unarmed and not standing a chance against a fully-trained psychic pokemon, they pushed their body to its limit and ran straight for the Portal, but it was in vain. It wasn't the gardevoir who ended up attacking them, though, but a Fury who they had, in her original state, known as Tessa. The gardevoir had been Tessa's handler, and seemed to find taking revenge through her more satisfying.
Vanessa and Viola were thrown to the ground by the taller woman, and 'Tessa' sank her blade into their cheek, slashing down it. Rather than aim for a quick kill, she went for pain and mutilation, slashing at their mouth, their forehead, digging over and over into their cheek. They brought their hands up and locked them around 'Tessa's' neck, squeezing as hard as they could as her knife sunk straight into their right eye.
More shouts started to ring out, sounds of blasts of power. More humans? More psychics? They didn't know, couldn't see, and were too focused on survival. The blade was pulled from their socket, taking most of her eye with it, as they managed to throw 'Tessa' off of them. They had barely managed to start getting up when a stray blast of telekinesis slammed into them, sending them hurtling through the Legend Portal. They struck the ground in the middle of Port City, knocked out instantly on impact.
They woke up to stitches, an IV, and a physician not much older than they were having been watching over them. Their initial reaction was...less than peaceful and cooperative, but eventually they calmed down and realized they'd done it. They'd gotten through the portal. It was ten years late, but they were free. There was no word of anyone following them through the portal, which was both a sorrow and relief, and from then on they aimed the gaze on the future.
That first year in Mi-aro was a rough one, as they tried to find their place once they'd recovered. With precious little knowledge and a scant few employable skills, they ended up working in one of Port City's Inns, cleaning the rooms, washing dishes, and sweeping the floor. Some of their downtime involved fishing and hunting, so that they could save their money for things other than food, not that they ever bought much. A bit of their time was also spent reading, to try to compensate for their lack of knowledge. The last few spare hours of the day was eating and sleeping.
While their hard working attitude appealed to the owner of the Inn, Vanessa and Viola were not fond of the place. Port City was too large, too crowded, and it made Vanessa jumpy. Their erratic behaviour bothered people, and they were recognized far too often as 'the girl who came through the portal injured' for their liking. The part they did like was the fact that the Inn offered pokemon healing services, and thus they got the chance to see a number of interesting species. They took an immediate liking to dark pokemon, as the first thing they grasped about them was that they were immune to psychic influence, and they also developed something of a fascination for steel types, particularly the ones with sharp blades on their bodies.
Unfortunately, there were psychic pokemon in and around the town as well, and even ones who one could say probably meant well would still often stare at them, as if the pokemon in question could sense immediately that there was something off about them, and that pricked at both Vanessa paranoia and Viola's temper. So, once year into their new life, they packed up their scarce belongings and money and hit the road for New Pallet instead.
The smaller community was nicer, though they did mourn the view of sea they'd had before. They settled into another Inn, and slowly worked on their limited social skills. Their scarring drew glances, and some people did still know about their incident, but all in all it was a much calmer atmosphere, and they were much more at peace. They came to be known somewhat for their 'mood swings' and occasionally heard a mutter regarding them that referred to them as 'One-Eye,' or occasionally 'Two-Face' due to the asymmetry of the scarring, but they could handle that, even if Viola occasionally threw things at the wall of their room in a fit over it.
People didn't have to like them, after all, just accept them and leave them alone.
However, after three years in that New Pallet Inn, they met the person who would properly drag them out of their shell, at least a little. He was Mr. Oldford, a local alchemist, and he prided himself on having managed to grow a number of old-world medicinal plants on Mi-aro soil and knowing how to mix them to maximize their healing capabilities. When Vanessa and Viola first laid eye on him, however, they had no idea about that, and in fact were not paying attention to him much at all.
Instead, they were intrigued by the pokemon standing next to him. Mr. Oldford had a scyther--he was a particularly large specimen, standing at the same height as they did, but they only realized that this was atypical later--with well-sharpened scythes and a number of what looked like old scars on his exoskeleton. Drawn in by curious fascination, they found themselves inching closer and peering at the massive insect as his trainer spoke to the innkeeper, only for the scyther to notice their approach and turn to look at them. Vanessa's startled response to this caught the attention of the old alchemist, and sparked an at-first awkward conversation.
What started as a discussion of his pokemon, however, turned into a discussion of his work, and Vanessa and Viola found themselves fascinated by it. They knew little about plants, even the plants of the old world, and ravenously devoured the information, trying their hardest to commit to memory. Over the next year, Mr. Oldford's visits to the inn would become frequent, and their talks longer. They would ask questions most would consider 'stupid,' things even young children should have known, but he was constantly patient with them and answered every last one.
Then, eventually, he shocked them by doing something they would have never expected: He offered to take them on as an apprentice. He had no children of his own to pass his craft onto, and where most saw a strange, erratic woman, he saw a bright girl with a lot of potential. Though wary, and a bit worried that he may change his tune once he really saw how unusual they could be, they decided to take the plunge.
And, so, at twenty-six, they became an alchemist apprentice. They stayed in a spare room in his home at the outskirts of town, moving their few belongings into it and then rapidly getting to work. When they weren't learning alchemy techniques, helping nurture the plants, or assisting in caring for his scyther, they were cleaning the house, reading or outside continuing their habit of hunting feral pokemon for extra food. Doing nothing simply wasn't an option during their waking hours, though they'd relent and sit for a casual chat with their mentor if he insisted.
He never asked them any personal questions about themselves, but would happily talk about his own past, before and after the portal opened. About adventures with his scyther, or about his late wife, who had passed on a few years back and who he clearly loved very much. Vanessa and Viola absorbed these stories and tried to store their memories of them just as much as they did the lessons about alchemy, the words being their glimpse into what a real life, a happy life, was really like. His stories formed their concepts of friendship, family, and love as they should be.
However, a few months into their new apprenticeship, Mr. Oldford gave them a terrible shock by, one day, addressing Viola by name. They'd always gone by Vanessa, out of a sense of respect for who the original personality was, and to hear that name spoken aloud frightened them, until he quickly explained that he had heard them speaking aloud to one another--it was a habit they'd formed while in private after a couple of years in Mi-aro--when he passed by their room, and had figured it out from there. He shocked them further by assuring them that, split personality or no, he stood by his decision to make them his apprentice. Or, rather, apprentices.
The next five years were the best they had ever had, as they finally had something they'd been lacking: A proper parental figure. Here was someone they could interact with without disguising their mental illness, someone they could genuinely open up to. They soon started addressing him as 'old man,' due to the phrase's meaning as being synonymous with 'father,' and as a bit of a pun on his name. In fact, they soon ended up taking his last name as their own; they'd simply gone by Vanessa's first name since arriving, claiming not to have a last, but now, should they ever require a full name, the one they gave was Vanessa Oldford.
But nothing lasted forever, and Mr. Oldford really was getting on in years. After those five years as an apprentice, they saw old age finally claim him, until he passed away peacefully in his sleep. He left everything to them, from his shop and plants to his scyther. They were grief-stricken, but tried their best to hold things together, as hard as it was when they were naught but a thirty-one-year old who had come ten years late to the new world with only five years alchemy experience.
However, barely a year after Mr. Oldford's death, the building that housed both their home and place of business caught fire. In those years, what had once been the 'outskirts' of New Pallet now had several newer homes in it, and one of these neighbours ended up with their home ablaze, and it spread to theirs before anyone could put it out. The plants, their belongs, all of it was gone, just leaving them and their scyther. They ended up working in yet another inn in town, and the grief and anger over losing their mentor and home so close together left their 'mood swings' even worse, with Vanessa prone to bursting into tears and Viola lashing out at the slightest provocation.
Then, two years later, their scyther succumbed to the same thing his previous trainer had. Old age.
They were alone again, save for each other.
Two more years were spent at the inn, mourning their lost life, until they decided to change things. Their mentor had worked primarily with the old world plants he'd grown, and so their knowledge of Mi-aro herbs was limited, and the years without working with such things had probably left them rusty, but they could only mope for so long before the desire to try to get back some of what they'd had before started to burn inside of them. With pokemon trainers becoming more common due to pokeballs becoming more readily available and the push to expand beyond the scrap of land the people here knew, the path ahead seemed obvious.
They could go to the Emissary to get a pokemon, go out into the wilds to find new plants to cultivate and mix, and be able to help people again.
The only problem: They were insane. Could they really admit that to, of all people, the Ambassador? On the other hand, could they really allow themselves to lie on the application? If they were truthful--if they, for the first time, really told someone who didn't already know--would they even be permitted to have a pokemon?
They filled out the application. It then took them weeks of hesitation borne of their natural distrust for others to finally send it in.
It was time to see if the woman of two minds, who had spent her life fighting to survive and find her place, was good enough to be an official Survivor.
