Post by Jason Tham on Jun 28, 2013 22:40:54 GMT -5
Alias: None
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Region: Born in Sinnoh, raised
Class: Civilian
Occupation: Ex-Rocket, currently independent vagrant
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APPEARANCE
Generally speaking, though, there are a few outfits that Jason does tend to favor over others, and things to look for if someone wanted to find him in a crowd. The outfit he tends to favor above all others is remarkably simple - a white business shirt, well kept jeans and a loose fitting green jacket, with simple white sneakers worn as footwear. [/ul]
PERSONALITY
Left to his own devices, Jason is, by and large, one of the nicest - if admittedly socially awkward - people you will ever be likely to meet, in spite of what had been done to him over the last decade. While he would much rather simply stick to the sidelines and watch the world go by around him, Jason finds it extremely difficult to not help someone should they need it and he be aware of it - an sentiment he even has difficulty understanding, unable to distinguish it between who he once might have been or as a subconscious means of atonement for his past actions, and it's managed to get him into trouble (aka sucked into other peoples' problems) on more than one occasion since striking out on his own. When actually sought out by others, Jason tends to be relatively soft spoken and agreeable, tending to avoid even verbal conflicts by simply listening rather than speaking should something be said that he doesn't agree with - beyond that, however, there is little to see on the surface, with most emotional extremes seemingly having been burnt out of him, leaving the man an enigma for most.
That being said, though, remnants of who he was - or rather, the persona he projected - while with Team Rocket still remain, most notably the training he had received. Very little goes unnoticed around Jason, and much of his preference for avoiding any and all attention stems from this aspect of his past, and when finally forced into a conflict he cannot ignore, Jason becomes a very different person. Collected, calm and decidedly ruthless in deconstructing threats, even when avoiding the use of lethal force, it is largely for this reason that he keeps on the move in his attempts to leave his previous life behind him.
Ambitions: Live his life - on his own terms, and to atone for his past actions. [/ul]
POKEMON
HISTORY
Starting a business, large or small, is no mean feat - even with a marketing plan and franchise laid out as it was with the Pokemarts, it still required a certain amount of liquidity in terms of funding to jumpstart a business from nothing, and that kind of money was not easy to come across. Jason's parents were not native to the Survival Zone, either, having hailed from Johto before his birth - and with little in terms of money when they had first begun to think of moving to another region, they had turned to other sources. While most individuals would have visited a bank or other reputable loan agency for the cash, many of those places understandably took issue with the fact that they were planning to leave the region with the money should they obtain it, and one by one the Thams were shot down with each loan applied for, and after nearly a year of repeating that cycle again and again they turned to less than legal means of obtaining their starting funds through a loan shark backed by Team Rocket during the organization's early days. While the money had proven to be just what the couple had needed to start their business, keeping it going had entirely been on them. Whether they had been convinced they would pay their loan back in time, had planned to leave or had simply thought that Team Rocket would never find them was something that the world would never know - in the end, it didn't matter, and after nine years of his life had gone by Jason's world would change with a single visit to the Survival Zone by a man dressed in black.
With his parents behind on paying their debt to Team Rocket and their business failing due to the lack of trainers to sell their wares to, their benefactors had seen fit to send a representative to retrieve some form of compensation for the money loaned - upon arriving in the Zone, however, the man would find little else aside from a family that could barely afford to feed itself and keep a roof over their heads, never mind pay back what they owed. And thus began a long period of discussion, lasting several days as the representative from the Rockets attempted to work out an alternative arrangement of payment, clearly recognizing that the Pokemart was not going to provide the cash required to pay off their debts. For every single one of those days, neither group managed to reach an agreement - the representative, being a businessman, recognized that simply making an example of the family would serve no purpose but to draw attention to the Rockets and earn the ill will of the area's inhabitants, but at the same time it seemed that they had little else to offer beyond working to pay off a debt that would require years and years of work at a normally paying job. At the same time, however, he could not simply ignore the situation as a sizable investment had been sunk into their Mart, and it was almost a week later that the man began to overhear mention of their son among the other locals when they were unaware of his presence - and intrigued by what he heard, the representative investigated further.
While well aware of the fact that Team Rocket was, at its core, a gang and little else, the man saw some small amount of potential in Jason, and with the Tham family having little else to offer the representative contacted his superiors back in Johto, explaining the situation and what he had found - and where the man had expected to find an order to keep an eye on a potential future recruit, he instead received an order to take Jason back with him to Johto. While made rather uneasy by the nature of the order as the man had assumed he'd gone there to work out a business arrangement rather than take a child away from his family, the Rocket was still very well aware of what would likely happen to him should he disobey a direct order in such a fashion. He was also equally well aware of what the Thams' response would be, and as such he didn't ask - a week after arriving in the Zone, the Rocket broke into the Tham household that night, subdued the two adults with his Pokemon and abducted Jason as the boy attempted to flee, taking the child into his custody for the long journey back to Johto, and over that journey any sympathy that the man had with the boy was quickly replaced by irritated at his numerous escape attempts, many of which had very nearly been successful. Upon arriving in Johto, the Rocket gladly turned the problem child over to his superiors, and exited Jason's life, never to be seen again.
Nine years old and separated from his family, Jason's mind had no idea what to make of the situation beyond the fear and confusion that came with it, and it was only after being moved between several facilities under Rocket control that he would finally find himself accompanied by other children for the first time in his life - most of them kidnapped as well, and never allowed to converse with each other or show their faces from behind white, porcelain masks they were provided with during the brief periods that they were brought together. With that change came one other as well - aside from the handlers that Team Rocket had assigned to the children, another person would enter Jason's life at that time, a cloaked, masked figure that claimed to be the one responsible for bringing them all together, calling them the future of Team Rocket. A future that Jason and many of the other children wanted little part of, but after several weeks passed by most resistance found itself beaten down either in the literal sense or through systematic conditioning. As time passed by, the children involved in the program were cared for in the most basic sense of the word, physically conditioned, taught what they needed to know to operate and function properly in society and raised to hold true to Team Rocket's purpose and ideals - lessons that some would embrace, and others silently reject, unable or unwilling to openly do so.
Nearly a full three years of Jason's life would pass in that fashion, the monotony broken by little else beyond his own physical growth and progress with the skills he was told to learn before something different would happen - a sign of open rebellion as two of the other children made a successful attempt to escape the masked man and the other Rockets, although one that did not go without consequence for the remaining children. Unwilling to risk another break out, the program tightened down on security, and accelerated the training for the remaining children - a process that was likely meant to have taken their entire adolescent life crammed down into a space of two years, during which any sign of further resistance was crushed. Jason, having already been fairly adverse to conflict to begin with, was spared the worst of it, simply nodding and doing as he was told to avoid the consequences, as a result retaining much of his core self and identity. During that time, he would only be vaguely aware of what had transpired outside of their prison walls - the abrupt change in Team Rocket's leadership and priorities and of the events that had occurred in the world on a broader scale, and with the end of those two years Jason and the other children would finally be used as Team Rocket had intended.
While the other children had been trained for direct confrontation in the manner that Team Rocket's operatives tended to favor, Jason's trainers had instead accentuated on his natural talents - to move through terrain that others couldn't easily traverse, to blend in and pass as unnoticeable, and rather than being used as a shock troop as the other children were, Jason was used to deal with problems that they couldn't - quietly, discretely. As his comrades were used to further Team Rocket's main objectives, Jason was used to preserve what they still had left, sent to retrieve evidence that the League and police had gathered against them and their operatives, but more importantly, to remove witnesses and other troublesome people from the equation entirely. An act that Jason had initially refused to do, feigning incompetence until his superiors began threatening other people instead, forcing him to choose between his assigned targets and completely uninvolved individuals - and forced between a rock and a hard place, Jason chose his targets, completing his missions quickly and efficiently as trained despite the emotional and mental strain it placed on him. By the end of it, Jason's discretion and assigned role proved to be what kept him trapped with Team Rocket - as the other Masked Children were all defeated by the Pokedex Holders and Gym Leaders during the attack on the Pokemon League, the remainder of Team Rocket retreated back into the shadows, Jason having little choice but to follow their lead.
With a very successful first year to his credit, Jason would see continued deployment under orders from the remaining Rocket leadership to continue doing what he had done, protecting what secrecy, assets and personnel they had left through the same methods he had used to begin with, relying on stealth, discretion and speed to accomplish his goals, and assigned Pokemon on a mission to mission basis to ensure that he remained compliant by robbing him of the chance to form any sort of bond with potential allies. With the individuals that had trained him gone, however, those in a position to give orders would fail to see the warning signs as Jason's psyche would begin to slowly break, tormented by the knowledge of the lives he took - it was in observing each and every one for the most efficient means possible of reaching them that he came to know each and every one of his marks as people, fellow human beings, and things would only continue to get worse with the passage of time. It wasn't until nearly a full ten years after he'd originally been taken that the strain that had been slowly building in him would finally come to a head during Team Rocket's second resurgence in Johto. In finally being ordered to fight alongside Team Rocket's front line Grunts to secure Goldenrod City's borders during the takeover of the Radio Tower, Jason instead bolted at the first possible opportunity, leading the squad he was assigned to into a densely wooded area north of the city before proceeding to systematically separate and pick the Rockets off, incapacitating the trainers before fleeing the city and heading west for Kanto. Unaware of the events that had transpired at the Sinjoh Ruins, Jason has been on the run ever since.
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OOC INFORMATION
[url=link to accepted application will be added by staff][b]Jason Tham[/b][/url]
Face claim: [b]Darker than BLACK[/b] - Hei, [i]Tham, Jason[/i]
Continuity: Original
Other Characters: Ryusuke Ugumi, Elinda Aspen, Kurogane Shizubaya
Role play Sample: If this is your first character, an import, or a canon character, you are required to give us a short RP sample. Import and canon RP samples must be a post using the character you're applying for.
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