Clarissa Ryte
Name: Clarissa Ryte
Appearance: A slender but maturing girl whose expression is usually presented as stoic in front of others, Clarissa has long light-purple hair and a pair of piercing purple eyes in turn to match. Outside of the public eye she can be found to smile more often around her Buneary and family, her smile can be seen to be generally small but rather distinct looking compared to her ‘usual’ self. She has a braid on the left side of her head that is secured with a purple ribbon, given to her by her grandmother, and generally keeps it on her person at all times. As well. In terms of height she is 5’8”, and her weight is 132 pounds.
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Personality: A person whose psychic powers put a strain on her from a young age, pushing her to learn to control them as well as learn to restrain herself to an extent that has shaped her personally. What became the end result was someone who outwardly enforces a well-trained stoic expression on her face, a true ‘poker face’, who might be mistaken as ‘unfeeling’ in the process. Yet despite rarely showing outward expressions of emotion in a public setting at all, behind closed doors and with loved ones and friends and trusted confidants she is more comfortable letting herself express what she is feeling. Indeed, especially since her powers began developing and she began to train with them Clarissa can be an empathetic and kind person indeed….though this, due to her powers, can be both a good thing as well as a burden that wears on her mentally to boot. Generally she will try to be polite to others, though growing up in Orre she was raised to always keep an eye out on and an ear open to the world around her respectively. This mindset of awareness has been drilled in such that to her it's as natural as breathing air, as well as becoming a personal habit in the vein of drilling herself in trying to maintain a sense of self-restraint.
Beyond this, she does have a general ‘spark’ of curiosity in her that drives her to want to learn about things or look into them. The sort of mindset someone like a field researcher or archaeologist or such might enjoy, or perhaps even befitting of a scientist like her father at that. So despite her ‘strong self-restraint’ in the personal sense, she is more liable to poke her head into something that catches her eye well enough than not depending on the particular situation and case in which something does so. In that vein, getting to be paid and looking into things in her new region of residence is certainly a bonus in her mind.
Hometown: Pyrite Town, Orre Region
Background:One way or another, you find yourself being employed by professor Camphor. That's right, employed. This pokedex isn't a handout you're helping with her research in return for a pokemon. She pays pretty well. Make sure to say how you ended up being hired by her. Skill in battle? Grades at an academy?
Clarissa Ryte was born to Milo Ryte, a man working at the Pokemon HQ Lab in Orre but whose family lived back in The Under, and a mother who had come from Agate Village and met her father in Pyrite Town while visiting to look for different herbs across Orre. Despite living in a version of Pyrite Town that didn’t have CIPHER involved, Clarissa was raised to be aware and wary of the sketchy types and rougher sorts that still definitely called Orre home locally and otherwise. It was a life lived always keeping one eye open, and taking occasional trips to visit her maternal grandmother in Agate Village or paternal grandparents in Phenac a few times a year. There were also many times she went to watch Colosseum fights and such at Pyrite Colosseum, being both a way to get entertainment locally as well as get to see more Pokemon outside of the battles held in Duel Square. On occasion she’d stop by the local fortune teller with her mother, perhaps, or watch TV to see whatever shows were on or whatever the ONBS was saying in the latest news stories.
Living in the Orre Region, she wasn’t exposed to a Pokemon-rich region and most often saw them when it came to watching Pokemon battles or people going about with their own Pokemon. The region itself was, after all, a notable wasteland without much in it to sustain Pokemon save for three curious areas called Pokespots where some ‘native’ pokemon had begun to appear and live in. With her father involved in helping guide the legal and non-criminal importation of Pokemon to Orre, he would also on infrequent occasions get to go to Gateon Port and bring her back some kind of souvenir or trinkets the ships had picked up from some other far-away region. Beyond this, however, her father was often gone due to work most of the time and her mother was the one who was most at home.
At the age of five, however, a young Clarissa would find herself suddenly struck with what seemed like a debilitating condition that made her collapse in the middle of town as she went shopping with her mother. She kept mumbling about voices in her head and feeling all sorts of things even after she would wake up later, but after getting medically checked up the doctors could not find out what was wrong…until she started talking about things they’d been only ever thinking about and never said aloud. Eventually it would be confirmed that she’d begun to develop psychic powers of some sort, which in turn would lead to an attempt to grasp the situation by her parents as they tried to find out how to assist her. It wasn’t exactly an easy thing to raise a child with esp in a region without so much as a school for such things.
Where the most help would end up coming from, though, would be Clarissa’s grandmother and the peaceful serenity that was Agate Town. With herbs to help the frequent headaches a younger Clarissa would get from her powers, and training to try to restrain and control herself as well as tapping into some old contacts from her trainer days who had such powers to come help, Clarissa’s grandmother would help her and even take her on walks to see the Celibi-honoring Relic Stone the village held so dear. It was also here something that would help spark her curiosity would truly occur, back when a twelve year old Clarissa would suddenly wake up in the middle of the night after yet another day of training with a friend of her grandmother.
Feeling drawn to somewhere, the girl would wander to the Relic Stone and see it letting off little sparks of green light…like fireflies even. Yet she could feel a presence there, flitting about around her. Watching her, even, curious and yet keeping its distance. As the girl reached out to touch the Relic Stone, running a hand gently down it, the presence would suddenly appear behind her. Despite falling to the ground from the sudden spook, the younger girl was shocked to see the legendary pokemon Celebi staring right back at her as it flew lower to the ground to get a better look at her. For a moment, the girl would reach up hesitantly, with the smaller legendary pokemon reaching back to touch her hand in turn, before eventually moving back and disappearing as quickly as it had arrived again in a small flash of light.
Upon telling her grandmother, and her dirty pajamas telling some evidence of the encounter as she wandered back out of the Relic Forest in the early morning hours, it was certainly an event that struck her grandmother as unique. Of it she was told that it was ‘a blessing, a sign that [she was] meant for something great’, though the impression of it all left a sense of wonder in the girl that didn’t seem to fully fade away even as she got older.
Indeed, as she got older, and more of a handle on herself and her powers, Clarissa would become more as she has become by current times. Restrained. Reserved. Putting up a wall and a front to help her create a basis for controlling herself. Etc. It didn’t make her many potential local friends, though, but eventually to try to cheer her up she go with her father and mother to one of his visits to Gateon Port. Supposedly a new shipment of Pokemon had arrived, and he hoped to get her a pokemon of her own to keep her company. Only just having turned fifteen at the time, Clarissa came along with her parents hoping that having a pokemon would help her learn to better express herself. It would also be at this time that Clarissa would, as they walked by the Machine Shop, be struck with the feelings of something that was…suffering. In pain. Wanted to live, and to be happy. Something that felt, even if for a moment, all too familiar to how she’d felt years ago.
Without batting an eye the girl darted away down a side alley, her parents in very worried and hot pursuit, only for her to find a Buneary that seemed wounded and starving for food. It was weak, and only getting weaker, and as she took it up into her arms it seemed to look slowly up at her in the process. It was after this that Clarissa’s parents, as they arrived and watched her turn around with this hurt pokemon in her arms, would later look back on as the ‘moment that [they] realized there was some kind of connection she had to this little, injured pokemon from afar’. Clarissa would ask to bring hope the little Buneary, after her and her parents raced it get it to a Pokemon Center in time, and then help care for and bring the little Buneary back to health the rest of the way after taking it to the nearest Pokemon Center in a hurry, and would want to bring it home afterward.
From here, it was a year of bonding and growing with her new Buneary that seemed to bring them both out of a ‘funk’ they had each been in. Allowed them to see more of how each other was, coming out of their shells, and ultimately leading to her Buneary getting a nickname from her and entering a Pokeball as she decided she wanted to become a trainer. Soon after this, Clarissa and her parents would move to the Eidda Region so her father could work a new position he’d been hired on for. Plus moving to a safer region, one full of many more Pokemon, was something that Clarissa’s parents felt would be healthier for her than reaching adulthood in Orre.
And so they moved to Mireth, and her father took up work at one of the bigger Pokemon labs in the south of Mireth. Another year later, and seeking to take up the task of becoming a trainer, she recieved a video looking like it was made by a coffee-addled lunatic professor. A job offer? Well, it would enable her to make some kind of money and get to become a trainer at least. Wasn’t the same place her father worked at, but hey it was an opportunity that she could seize with her own two hands….better to not pass it up then, eh?
Kind of Pokémon you like: Pokemon she can empathize with, or form some sort of bond or connection to. Doesn’t have to all be psychic types, though there is a plan to have her get at least one psychic Pokemon on her team along the way, but as a psychic individual this would make sense with her.
Quirks/Talents/Aspirations/Other: She works to both become stronger herself (as a trainer and psychic and person) and train with her Pokemon to help them become stronger as well. In a sense, doing for her Pokemon what her grandmother and grandmother’s friends did for her. Become better. Learn. Become stronger. Pursue that path forward, and chase the sun over that horizon!
One way or another, she is going to forge her own path forward. Beat gyms? Definitely Collect and find Pokemon? Of course. Something else too, perhaps? She would have to see, but it certainly wasn’t out of the question.
Items:1x Potion.
Pokédollars: 1000p