▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉ ☆ ★ ☆ BALLADE
- ★ AGE: 27
☆ REGION: Kanto
★ BRIEF DESCRIPTION: 5' 7", athletic build. Self-cut short-cropped brown hair. Deep blue eyes. Skin is usually rather tanned. Dresses practically, for outdoor excursions. Generally sports at least one small bandage or minor scrape/bruise.
☆ PERSONALITY: Ballade's personality matches her appearance--mostly for practicality and a little rough around the edges. Because she spent most of her childhood interacting with pokemon rather than human friends, she is more comfortable communicating with pokemon than with people. This has helped her in her work, but leaves her a little at a loss with normal affairs. To hide this, she generally comes across as overly blunt and brazen. Her range of expression and tenderness seems to be much broader when interacting with pokemon. Though she occasionally uses it herself, other people's sarcasm is sometimes lost on her.
Aside from human relations, Ballade is quite self-assured in most situations. She trusts her pokemon team implicitly, but she also keeps herself fit to ensure that she can uphold her responsibilities to the team and, if necessary, survive without her pokemon. She will often note that although her pokemon might not be able to take another trainer's pokemon in an official battle, she could probably take the trainer down.
★ HISTORY: Ballade was born near Fuchsia City, Kanto. Her parents worked in the Safari Zone, and she therefore spent most of her childhood exploring the preserve. It was there that she met the small dratini who later became her first pokemon. Like most children of that region, she began officially training pokemon at the age of ten. She quickly discovered, however, that she preferred observing and interacting with pokemon to than battling them. When the Safari Zone moved to Johto, her family followed, but she soon after struck out on her own, traveling across the dual region to collect information rather than pokemon. Her research lead her to work with numerous other researchers and in various locations across all the regions. She has amassed a full team of pokemon, some specially chosen, some befriended along the way. Each serves a vital purpose in her exploratory efforts.
Although she has worked on research teams, Ballade prefers solo expeditions in remote areas. These tend to last at least several months and involve little human interaction. As such, she tends to lose track of current events. Her last assignment was on one of the small islands of the Sinnoh region. As such, she wasn't aware of Sinister Gray's takeover until the monthly SpearowMail care package from her parents (usually containing a lengthy letter, a few RageCandyBars, and the latest serial romantic adventure novel from Luvdisc, Ltd) failed to arrive.
After some covert trips to the mainland in search of news and her parents, Ballade came across the resistance group and offered her services. (She will insist that this is largely because it's very difficult to get research grants when the universities and corporations have been closed.) She asked the island pokemon to notify her if word came from her parents, but as yet she has heard nothing.
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«-- Nixie 
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«-- Tengu 
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«-- Merrow 
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«-- Pooka 
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«-- Gremlin 
«-- Kobold