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Locke's family kept a large arcanine in their household. Locke's father specifically was its trainer, as he had attempted and failed the League Challenge in his youth, but the pokemon kept guard over the entire household. On Locke's tenth birthday, his parents had agreed that it was only right that he receive his own pokemon. They gave him an eevee. The eevee loved shuca berries above all other treats, so the young Locke ingeniously named it after its favorite food. To all outward appearances, it was a perfectly happy and functional family.

However, Locke's father was somewhat unbalanced. No one knew why; perhaps something traumatizing had happened on one of his adventures when he was younger. In any case, on occasion, he would snap. He rarely hit Locke, as his temper seemed to most often flare after the young boy's bedtime, so his mother was left alone to suffer the brunt of it. After these violent phases, he was always very apologetic, so the family continued its happy facade.

One night, however, Locke's father was much worse than usual. He lost all control over his temper and sicced his arcanine on his wife. The arcanine, torn between its loyalty to its trainer and its family, accidentally started a fire in its distress. Locke's mother was quickly engulfed in the flames; it was her screaming that awoke Locke to a smoke-filled room. In the process of escaping his house, he and the eevee he was carrying were badly burned. The last thing he saw before fainting were police officers arriving on the scene with water pokemon rushing to put out the flames.

Locke awoke alone in a hospital bed. The nurses informed him of what had happened; his mother had died in the fire, but his father and the two pokemon had survived. Locke's father, who had received minimal injuries, was currently under arrest and his arcanine contained. Shuca was in the pokemon center receiving treatment for burns that matched Locke's.

Locke's father was found guilty of arson and murder, and so once the pair recovered, they were sent off to an orphanage. They stayed there for some time before being shuffled from foster home to foster home over the next several years. When Locke turned 18, he was sent out into the world to survive on his own. He discarded his father's surname, got a job at a pokemon center, and made a decent living.

When aqua grunts approached him with the opportunity to make something more of his life, and gifted him with a water stone, he decided to make a change. He took them up on their offer, setting the agreement in stone by evolving Shuca into a more formidable vaporeon. He vowed to prevent the fire that had destroyed his life from harming anyone else again.