THAM

born in the survival zone in sinnoh's battle zone and the son of the couple who ran the local pokemart, jason had managed fairly early on to set himself apart from the majority of the human race. born into a very small community where skill and self reliance were valued above all else, jason spent very little of his childhood there among other people - with only his parents, the people who ran the local pokemon center and one or two other inhabitants in the settlement with no children his age, the boy learned fairly early on how to look after himself despite the entire community treating him as his own. it wasn't long, either, before he had begun to venture into the wilderness surrounding the settlement - an act very, very few sane people attempted on their own without pokemon to protect them from the absurdly strong native species on the island, or to help them traverse the incredibly rough terrain to the east. while he never went particularly far, it did earn the boy a certain amount of notoriety among the community and the trainers who regularly passed through.
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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 jump start a business from nothing, and that kind of money was not easy to come across. jason's parents were not sinnoh natives, 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. 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.
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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. while jason may have simply been viewed as potential collateral at first to force the otherwise reluctant couple to pursue other means of acquiring capital, fate would have other things in mind as word of the situation made its way back to key individuals in kanto.
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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 kanto, 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.
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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 similarly masked figure who would clearly be in charge of the operation. an endeavor 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.
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nearly a full six 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 reevaluated their process, resulting in an accelerated training program for the remaining children - during which further resistance would be crushed. jason, having already been fairly adverse to conflict to begin with would be cut from the program entirely and "repurposed", lacking the innate talent that the others had as trainers and the temperament needed to take on the administrative roles they were being groomed for. 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 place in the world, and with the end of those two years jason and the other children would finally be used as team rocket had intended.
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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. rather than being used as a shock troop and administrator 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 numerous other operatives were captured or even killed as the violence in johto escalated and culminated in the attack on the indigo plateau, jason was among the very small handful still left alive and in service when rocket's leadership underwent an abrupt and violent change.
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with a very successful track record to his name, jason would see continued deployment under orders from the remaining rocket leadership to continue doing what he had done until the team was dissolved once again. with rocket once more dissolved, however, the remaining chaos would become a power grab, and it would be during that time period jason would finally make for his escape, disappearing into the world in the aftermath of the pokemon league's victory.
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while the chaos following the assault on the indigo plateau would result in jason finally breaking free of team rocket, the following years would not be easy ones. ultimately he did not exist - having been effectively gone from the world he had no name, no money and next to no marketable skills, the otherwise reliable profession of pokemon trainer simply not an option due to his inability to effectively work with such partners. jason's existence was one best described as aimless for a number of months following his newfound freedom, drifting from town to town and odd job to odd job, a pattern that would eventually be broken as he would eventually begin meeting a number of the same individuals over and over again - largely trainers lacking the ambition to take on league challenges but too addicted to the freedom the lifestyle offered to settle down.
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despite lacking many of the skills they had jason's own unique talents would still find him a place among that community, as loose as it was, and in those following years he would eventually begin to travel with one or two depending on where the next job was - working relationships that would eventually become something more as time passed. having been effectively freed of his past life, jason was completely blindsided when that life returned to haunt him without warning - a number of former rockets, seeking to reclaim some of the organization's lost power, had discovered his survival and sought to reclaim him. in the ensuing chaos the companion that jason had been traveling with for some time by that point would be taken hostage with the intent of being used as leverage - and in jason's attempt to rescue them, killed. [break][break]

WHERE HE IS NOW

"following the disastrous kidnapping and rescue attempt, a building in Celadon would sustain massive damage overnight. news reports would mention a single trainer relatively well known within the central kanto region being brought to the local hospital in critical condition, passing away later the following morning. investigations of the incident site would uncover a number of bodies, many identified as former members of the rocket crime syndicate - a number of which confirmed to have died prior to the building's collapse from stab wounds and lacerations. further reports will follow as the situation develops." - celadon news broadcast[break][break]

pokemon

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