Arcanum OOC

[ Name ]
Soul W. "Wildboy" Grant (Although he wants to forget it)

[ Age ]
15

[ Gender ]
Male

[ Guardian ]
Reshiram

[ Starter ]

Bolt, the male Jolteon
Level 10
- Sand Attack
- Quick Attack
- Thunderbolt

[Appearance ]
Soul is rather skinny for his age, but he is not weak by any means! The young boy is actually a bit muscular and can definitely hold his own in a fist-fight. His height measures somewhere between 170-174 cm, he doesn't know how tall he is (neither does he care). His light-turquoise hair has what might seem like short dreadlocks, but they're actually just pieces of hair bundled together because of dirtiness. Soul never washes his hair.

Although he has some muscular build, it is rarely shown due to the clothes he is wearing. A long, hooded, pitch-black cape with holes and rips in it covers up his body completely (under it he just wears white shorts).

Most of Soul's face is badly damaged and is thus always kept hidden behind a white, grayish kind of mummy-looking mask that he once stole from a salesman. Part of the mask is broken off, remaining three fourths of it which covers everything except the undamaged part of Soul's face. Said part reveals sad-looking, pale turquoise eyes in about the same fashion as his hair. He is also barefooted and barehanded, which makes his toenails, as well as his fingernails quite sharp, dirty and a bit yellow.

[ Personality ]
Soul is a hermit and doesn't like other humans, in fact, he states that he hates them. For him, the only ones that he is able to trust are Pokémon. Although his beliefs sounds similar to N Harmonia's, Soul doesn't want to liberate Pokémon from their trainers, he understands very well that most Pokémon are happy with their humans. It's HIM that doesn't like them and he will RARELY interact with another human being unless he sees them being cruel to their Pokémon, that will make him snap immediately.

Having lived in the wilderness for a long time, Soul is able to understand Pokémon. He will not be able to understand them word for word, more likely reading their emotions. Granted, he can understand the Pokémon language and speak it to some degree, but he isn't very good at it.

Soul is kind of a quick thinker and will mostly come up with solutions for arising problems rather fast, although he is inexperienced in battling other trainers he is by no means bad at battling, as stated earlier he just prefers not to interact with other people. Even if Soul claims that he hates humans, his unliking towards them is more based on fear than on hate. He is afraid of humans, afraid that they will hurt him, afraid that they will torture him, afraid that they will KILL HIM.

Due to past experiences, Soul is scared to death of Fire-types and emotionally instable. One moment he can go from furiously and violently beating up another person to hysterically crying over his misdeed, this is another reason that he doesn't interact much with humans.

[ History ]
Soul was born and raised in a small village to the north of Januyale. His mother was a young, happy and energetic woman that could put a smile on even the grumpiest old man's lips. She always put others ahead of herself, and Soul loved her. His father on the other hand, was an alcoholic that often came home piss-drunk in the middle of the night with either lip-stick on his collar or scrapes and wounds on his face. He used to be a happy man, but his personality suddenly changed for some reason. Soul hated his father, always neglecting him and his mother when he was drunk, never caring about their feelings, beating him senseless for minor things while his mother watched in horror. Sometimes his father would hurt her too when she begged him to stop hitting Soul. The times when his father was sober, which was NOT often, he just seemed pathetic and invisible. He would apologize to Soul and his wife for hitting them, eventually Soul started not care about the apologies, his father didn't even mean them.

As the years passed, Soul started to wonder more and more why his mother stayed with his father… One night he accidentally overheard them talking, he heard his father threaten his mother in one of his drunken rants that he'd kill Soul if she didn't stay with him. His mother begged him, she was crying, she said she'd do anything for him. She sounded so helpless. After all the years of abuse, threats, taking care of his father when he was hung over, THIS was what made Soul finally snap. He simply couldn't take it anymore. His father had crossed the line when he threatened Soul's mother. Soul had ran into the room, screaming, with his fists ready to punch his dad in the jaw. His father had reacted quickly and taken an empty bottle and hit Soul with it, it had shattered in Soul's face, giving him sharp in his face as well as glass in his left eye. His mother had then tried to stop Soul's dad, but to no avail. Instead, he showed the broken bottle in her stomach as part of his drunken rage. Soul watched the whole thing, terrified, his father twisted and turned the bottle around in his wife's stomach, almost as if he did it just to make Soul suffer.

After this little event, Soul's dad threw him in their dark basement with only a candle as a source of light. The walls were depressingly gray and had cracks in them, the only other thing in the basement was a mirror which had surely seen better days. It was cracked and had a thick layer of dust all over it, it didn't smell too good either, mostly like wet, rotten wood for some reason. Soul was never let out of the basement, the only times that the door to his new residence opened was when his dad threw him a piece of meat. It was often raw and smelled disgusting, Soul never knew where his father got the meat from. Sometimes, there was no meat at all. The first few days in the basement, Soul could do nothing but scream. He cried hysterically for help and even though he surely disturbed his father, the man never tried beat him up just to gain his silence. After some days, Soul had stopped screaming, he had realized that he was wasting his voice in vain.

As time passed, Soul started to see shadows creeping around in the basement. They could possibly be described as horribly disfigured lumps of meat. Soul feared these shadows, the only thing keeping them away from him was the light from his candle, he tried to keep it alive as long as he could. But one night, it eventually died. The shadows began creeping closer, at this point, Soul didn't know if the shadows were just in his imagination or not. He screamed and cried for his mother to protect him, of course, he didn't get any answer. The shadows eventually got ahold of him, everything went black and cold. After that, Soul just laid on the floor with a pale look on his only functioning eye, the other one was closed, he wouldn't eat, wouldn't drink, he just laid there. As if he was in a coma.

One day, his father came down to him in the basement, piss drunk as usual. He had looked down at the boy, kicking him in the stomach and yelling at him to wake up in a slurred voice. Surprisingly, this made Soul sit up with the same pale look in his eye. Only this time, he rose up and started to walk away towards the door. His father expectedly tried to stop him, but as the man put his hand on Soul's shoulder, the boy turned around and hit his father in the face. Soul was weak and scrawny, but the punch was so unexpected that his father let go of him for a second. That was when Soul saw his chance, he quickly ran out of the house as fast as he could, of course he hadn't eaten for a long time and his legs could barely carry him as fast as he wanted. So to avoid his father, Soul hid in the nearby wilderness, his father came looking for him but was too drunk to actually bother searching. As nightfall came that day, Soul started journeying towards the south, he didn't dare to sleep for fear that the shadows might find him and take him again.

After a while of trekking, he found a village known as Januvale. Soul settled in the wilderness outside of the town, he made his home in a tree to avoid the shadows in case they might've followed him. He spent the next day befriending some Pokémon that lived in the area with him. Soul had little experience with Pokémon at the time, but he would eventually grow closer and closer to them. He also set his mind on getting new clothes. His old ones reminded him too much of the past, and they started to feel like heavy shackles. He tried to steal clothes from some of the townspeople, but to no avail, he eventually found a black cloak tossed aside at a road, even though it was dirty and had a lot of holes in it, Soul took quite a liking to it. He then later snatched some shorts from a person who was swimming in the ocean.

Soul eventually grew accustomed to living in the wilderness, you could say that he became more and more like a wild Pokémon, but his manners as a human still remained. The people of Januvale was suspicious of him at first, and some people were even scared of him, they eventually accepted him, but not before giving him the nickname "Wildboy". This made him famous around the town and whenever he was seen roaming the streets, people would start talking about him, changing rumors about how he got there and so on. Some even offered him food out of sympathy, but Soul never accepted it, he couldn't trust any of them.

One day when Soul was strolling along in the wilderness, minding his own business, he came across a small Mankey being cornered by hunters. Oh, how Soul despised them. They only came here and brutally took away Pokémon from their homes just because they were labeled "rare" in all the other regions besides Arcanum. It was despicable, Soul had encountered them about a month ago but then he was too weak to do anything. This time however, he rushed towards the hunters and made sort of a jump kick. It hit one of the hunters square in the face and knocked him out and making him lose a few teeth as well. The other hunter had quickly given off a swear and sent out his Heatmor, he ordered the big Pokémon to use Slash on Soul, but the boy swiftly leapt over the attack and landed behind Heatmor. The Pokémon then quickly turned around and without it's trainer's command, it scorched Soul's face.

Later Soul found himself surrounded by his Pokémon friends, they looked down on him with worry and pity in their eyes. The young boy sat up with a stinging pain in his face, he walked over to a nearby pond and looked at his reflection. The sight of his face made Soul jump back a few meters, his face was completely deranged! It was read and fresh burn wounds could be seen on most of it, then Soul started to cry, he cried the rest of that day and his Pokémon friends stood by him until he fainted out of a fever-attack. He didn't recover for weeks. When Soul was finally healthy enough to stand up he went into Januvale with his hood over his face so that no one would recognize him. There he saw a salesman selling masks, Soul thought that this one must be a passing merchant because he had never seen him before. But a mask would surely cover up his face! So the young boy swiftly swiped a white mummy-looking mask from the salesman as he went to assist some customers.

Afterwards, Soul put on his mask, he had accidentally broken it on the way home but it didn't matter. He was like a new person now, and many years later he would dream of Reshiram asking him for help. Soul had said yes without a word of hesitation and was now determined to help the legendary Pokémon. And in return, it would maybe help him to create a place only for Pokémon, there they would be able to hide if they felt threatened by any human.

Soul was going to help Reshiram, no matter what.

[ Sample text ]
Poke. Poke. Poke.
Soul awoke to the sound of Squee, the Mankey that he met so many years ago, poking his cheek, wanting him to wake up.
"Uurrgh. Not now Squee, a few more minutes will ya' please?" he said in a sleepy voice,
"Mankey!" Squee shouted, which translated into something like: "No! I'm hungry!". Soul sighed, "Fine then." He said and jumped down from the tree that he called his home.
"Wait here, I'll get you some food." Soul said slowly, as he wasn't completely awake yet.
"Mankey!"[No, I wanna come with you!] Squee protested, he was still just a child and Soul worried that he might get hurt in Januvale.
"No." he said. Squee pouted and looked at Soul with his always angry eyes,
"Fine." he said in an annoyed tone as he crossed his arms.
"Good." Soul spoke with a calm voice, he jumped up the tree again and stroked Squee's fur gently before heading off to Januvale. He loved that little Mankey and he was not going to let anything bad happen to him.

As he entered the town, people quickly began to talk quietly about him. They exchanged rumors and theories about the one that they called "Wildboy". Soul didn't care about them, they were just stupid humans after all. As he walked along the street, a sudden smell caught his interest, it was the smell of bread baked with Papaya Berries. The favorite food of Mankey, this would be perfect for Squee, Soul smiled. He entered the bakery,
"Hello!" the baker greeted him with a smile. He was a short and chubby man clothed in white traditional wearing, his hair was flame-red and so was his moustache. Soul always felt uneasy around this man but still greeted him with a cold, "Hello."
Hey, he may hate humans, but he has manners dammit!

"So what it'll be today, a Papaya Berry loaf?" the baker asked Soul, "I hope that you have money this time, I still haven't forgiven you for stealing the last one you ordered." He continued. Soul looked at him, a smile crept onto his lips behind the mask, as if he cared if the baker forgave him or not.
"Yes, a Papaya Berry loaf." he said in a cold voice.
"Okay, I have one here!" the baker said joyfully, seemingly unaware of the cold tone that Soul talked to him in. Maybe he was just so happy that he didn't care about other people's coldness and so on Soul thought. He took the loaf and reached into his cloak, as if to pull out money, but instead he took out a Watmel Berry which he threw at the baker and then ran off with the bread.

*THUD*
Soul was flung backwards by the impact, he probably hit something bigger than him. The boy looked up to see that he was right, in front of him stood Joresh Ja, the strongest trainer in Januvale. Granted, Januvale wasn't such a big town so being the strongest here probably didn't mean much in the rest of Arcanum.
"Ah, Wildboy." he said in almost a mocking tone it seemed to Soul, "Stealing bread again are we?" he gave off a warm chuckle. Soul just stared at him with his pale, cold eye, this made the man chuckle even more until he noticed the white mark on Soul's wrist. He immediately stopped laughing and pulled Soul up from the ground,
"Follow me back to my house, we need to talk." he said in a stern voice.
"No." Soul simply said, he was NOT coming with this man, why should he really? Joresh Ja then reached out and grabbed Soul's arm, he then started to walk away with him. Soul quickly reacted and bit Joresh's hand hard, the man released Soul with a pained grunt and sweared quietly. Soul jumped back and hissed at Joresh, he crooked his fingers like clawes to try to seem threatening to the man.
"Hm, I see why people call you "Wildboy", if I didn't know better I could almost mistake you for a Pokémon." Joresh said in an unamused voice, he grabbed the hissing Soul yet again but instead threw the young boy over his shoulder this time and walked towards his house.