Name: Aidan Cameron
Age: 43
Gender: Female
Appearance: Standing at five feet and ten inches, Aidan is tall for a woman. Her body is all lean muscle. Before the world ended she achieved and maintained these muscles through a combination of a rigorous workout schedule and a taxing profession. Food rationing now has prevented her from softening up too much, as that would require ingesting enough food to convert the excess into fat. The penalty of having to spend most of her days in a safe shelter is that her once tanned skin has begun to lighten. Her body frame is long and lean with a boyish figure. Feminine hips are not discernible on her body, nor does she sport notable breast curvature. As a result of her natural build she tends to walk in a more masculine fashion, moving her shoulders more than her hips. Her upper body is long, which in her youth caused her to hunch her shoulders forward and slouch. But her confidence and discipline grew as she aged and she now stands tall and proud. Still, her natural way of moving can at times be compared to that of an alley cat, shifty and distrustful.
Aidan's straight red-brown hair is kept short, rarely even growing past her jawline with a bit of fringe allowed to cover her forehead. Faint creases on her forehead betray the side effects of a past career that brought her much worry. Her eyes are large for her face and are a vibrant green that tends to run in her family on the paternal side. Crow's feet are plainly visible next to her eyes. If one were to get close enough they would see a faint smattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Her lips are of medium fulness, her jaw angular. Hers is the sort of face that positively lights up when she smiles, but that doesn't happen all that much anymore. Her eyes are dark, bags forming underneath them, and her mouth is frequently set in a harsh thin frown.
On both hips, starting nearly even with her navel and following the curve of her hip bones, are handguns tattooed in black ink. They're carefully shaded, as they cover up a less presentable version of the same tattoo. These were gotten as a result of far too many mind-altering substances and urging by an old frenemy, who got a matching tattoo on the same occasion. She often jokes that this is a reminder for her never to get that intoxicated again. Though she doesn't necessarily like the tattoo, she keeps it rather than removes it as she believes that marks that show where a person has been ought to be kept.
On her back between her shoulder blades is an exquisitely detailed female Pyroar lying down in the classic regal lion's pose. Her eyes are vibrant green and her fur is red-brown. This tattoo was inspired by a satirical drawing done of her by her adopted sister, Leanna.
Over her heart is a large canine paw print. It is the exact replica of her first R-K9's paw print. Above it is his name, Buzzer, and below it is the motto "first in, last out" in stylized script.
About halfway down her right upper arm is the last line of her wife's wedding vow, tattooed in her wife's handwriting. It was spoken in Portuguese and translates to "forever and always, I am yours".
Since the apocalypse Aidan carries the last of her belongings in a navy blue backpack. It's in decent condition, considering what it's been through. Inside, among other things, is a grey sweatshirt for when it gets cold, a second pair of jeans, two extra t-shirts, and a skin tight long sleeved workout shirt. The sleeves on the workout shirt have been coated in duct tape. In risky situations where she will be around a lot of the dead she wears this shirt, as they have trouble biting through the tape. She still possesses the bulletproof vest she would have worn daily at work, and she now usually wears this over her clothes. To protect her palms from injury and wear she sports a pair of black fingerless gloves. Strapped to her hips is a holster where she keeps her two handguns. Her pocketknife is kept safe in her pants pocket, and she hides a longer, more dangerous knife in her boot. Also in the backpack is a thick, long leather leash for her partner. She carries a canteen and tries to keep it filled as best as possible, considering the closest water source is salt water. Luckily Hoenn is a wet region and she can often top it off with rain water.
Since the holster is police issue, there's a mechanism to hold six Pokeballs that would normally house an officer's partners. Three of these slots are occupied by a Pokeball and two Ultra balls. To remove a ball from the belt it must be pushed in and twisted counterclockwise. This prevents a ball from being lost unintentionally.
On her left ring finger she still wears a plain gold wedding band. Around her neck is a thick steel chain, threaded through a smaller gold wedding band with several small diamonds set into it. This is her most important belonging and she wears it under her shirt to keep it safe and close to her heart. She'd kill a man for taking it from her just as fast as she'd kill one of the dead.
Personality: Police training has helped Aidan to cope with the horrors of the new world, but there is only so much coping one person can do when they've seen everything they ever cared about crumble before their eyes. Though she prefers not to lead Aidan is quite capable of doing so if she must, and if she determines herself to be the most capable person available she'll certainly try to take charge. She has little patience for frivolity or good humor anymore. Once she was an easygoing soul, slow to anger and quick to befriend. She loved parties and family gatherings and would often both irritate and entertain with jokes that were truly horrible and not that funny. That spark of good humor and amicability has fizzled and now burns only faintly. She never was the type to approach others in an attempt to instigate friendship and now that is more true than it ever was. But she won't turn away someone who shows a genuine need for companionship, though she keeps it at as shallow a level as possible.
It can be difficult to anger Aidan, but once it's been done she holds grudges. She is capable of harboring resentment for someone for perhaps longer than is strictly necessary. It burns underneath the surface, an insidious force that often does more harm to her than the intended target. Since it's become more dangerous to be open with other people Aidan tries to remain stoic and impassive. She does a decent job most of the time, only letting her emotions flow when she has the night watch. Even so, she has a soft, compassionate heart and at times her first instinct borders on altruistic. It was hard for her before things went quiet, when screams surrounded her and every fiber of her being begged for her to try and help these people. But in her gut she knew she could not, she couldn't save everyone. Choosing self preservation when she could have tried and most likely failed to help others is one of her greatest sources of guilt.
Aidan has a major soft spot for children. She loves kids, and even now she'll go out of her way to help them and save them. She believes children are the only hope for the future if by some miracle the virus is ever contained. Along with this, she's particularly soft for mothers. Whereas she might turn away an opportunity to help someone else out of necessity, she would never turn away a mother and her children.
With the woman she'd spent her life with dead, the rest of the world turned into monsters by infection or necessity, it wouldn't be farfetched to say the only reason she continues to live is hope that she might one day be reunited with her son. She knows most of her other family is lost, some of them on the ships that were overtaken, others having fled on Pokemon, and the rest most likely devoured by the dead. All of her desire to live now hinges on the fleeting hope that Ethan is still alive somewhere.
At first when the virus began to spread, Aidan's heart went out to the infected just as much as the truly dead. She thought they were just sick, out of their minds, perhaps rabid. But her wife's bite and infection changed her mind quickly. And if that had not, the first time she came face to face with one of them up close with its dead eyes, snapping jaws, and sagging flesh would have. Now she sees them as the scourge of the earth and would like nothing more than to see them all burn.
History: Aidan was born in Mauville to Cathy and Don Cameron. Their marriage was a precarious one, existing only because of her elder brother's conception out of wedlock and continuing only because of their religious aversions to divorce. Two years younger than Ethan, she idolized him from a young age. Both children were encouraged to participate in sports and other outdoor activities. They found a particular affinity and skill for baseball. Unfortunately, as Aidan began to mature and not exactly be the little girl they had hoped she would be, her parents pulled her out of baseball at age eleven. This was something it took years for her to forgive them for, as she'd really enjoyed it and Ethan was allowed to keep playing.
From this point on her parents pushed religion and feminine activities on her, as though that would change the trends in her personality that they didn't like. All of these were rejected as she began to recognize that her parents didn't like her the way she was. This was when her rebellious phase began. Despite the lack of necessity for them, Cathy bought her bras and tried to get her to wear them. These attempts often ended with the garment in question in the garbage disposal or toilet. Aidan was not allowed to have her hair shorter than shoulder length, and even then it was a battle to have it that short. She was constantly hounded to sit up straight, act like a lady, stop saying such crude words, don't get so dirty. Unfortunately, these attempts to mold her into something she wasn't pushed her farther and farther away from her family. Aidan began to make friends with older kids that she knew her parents wouldn't approve of simply for the sake of rebellion. These kids coaxed her into trying illegal substances that were not in her best interest at age thirteen. Thus her alienation from her family worsened.
Don and Cathy adopted Leanna, twelve, when Aidan was fourteen. The girl had come from an abusive family and immediately grew close with Aidan due to her calm, easygoing nature. With aspirations to become a tattoo artist one day the girl produced impressive works of art for her age. One drawing that was meant to be a joking stab at Aidan's natural lethargy was used as an actual tattoo later on. Leanna became Aidan's only trustworthy family member at a time when her parents had no idea what to do with her and her brother was on their side.
A blessing in disguise, Don Cameron walked out on his family without warning when Aidan was fifteen. Without his presence Cathy began to calm down. In a twist of irony she began seeing a cop named Val that would become Aidan's main role model in life. Aidan's relationship with her mother slowly began to heal and she found herself feeling at home again. She wore what she wanted to wear, acted like herself, and was treated like she was perfect the way she was. Val grew close with Aidan, acting as more of a paternal figure than Don ever had. In fact, it was Val that made Aidan want to join the police force in the first place.
But her downward spiral into the murky world of narcotics was still underway. At age seventeen she began to experiment with more malicious substances and only a year later she left home to live in Slateport with two of the friends that had coerced her into the lifestyle. One of these was a particularly beautiful girl two years younger than Aidan. She quickly was overwhelmed by an infatuation with her and they began an on and off affair that would last for two years before they attempted a real relationship. It ended after only six months. Needing a change of pace, Aidan caught a ship to Lilycove. There she got clean and enrolled in the police academy. It was rigorous, difficult, and it kept her from going back to a lifestyle she never wanted to live again. Her graduation was one of the proudest moments of her life. Shortly after she reunited with her family.
Through a twist of fate she ran into the girl from Slateport not long after she began to actively serve as an officer. She too had chosen to better herself and was trying to become a nurse. Now that their lives were more stable they once more attempted a relationship and this time they were successful. Aidan married her when she was 22 and after finding an adequate donor, her wife gave birth to a son that they named Ethan, after her brother.
Aidan loved her job and threw herself full force into it. She proved herself to be an aggressive, street smart officer who was more than capable of thinking on her feet. These qualities made her an excellent candidate when she applied for an opening in the R-K9 unit at age 32. She was accepted and she began working with her first partner, an Arcanine called Buzzer. This was her true calling in life, she realized. Though it required her to work long hours and many nights and weekends, Ebony was supportive of her. She and Buzzer were a great team and made many busts over the course of his lifetime. When he was killed in the line of duty he received a full police funeral. Her next partner was Rogue, another Arcanine that she never quite bonded to like Buzzer.
Her son Ethan went off on a gym challenge when he was eighteen. Though she was loathe to see him leave home, Aidan was proud of him for challenging himself in that way and she gave him one of her own partners that she used when she occasionally battled. Last she heard, he was in Mossdeep.
When the strange reports came from Slateport Aidan dismissed them as superstitious nonsense. As the news of reanimating corpses hit the news she thought it had to be a hoax. Only when widespread panic gripped Hoenn did she realize that things were as bad as they seemed. As people were gripped by the mob mentality she was given the task of preventing looting at Lilycove Department Store. It was difficult, but having a hulking Arcanine at her side had the intended effect of scaring people off without actual confrontation. Masses fled the continent in planes an ships, her brother and his family, and her mother and Val included. Whether their vessels landed safely or not, she has no idea, as communication was cut off shortly after they departed. The infection spread to Lilycove and it didn't take long before most of the population had turned. In a fit of desperation Aidan abandoned her post and fought her way home to find Ebony barricaded inside the house, holding her arm and sobbing with pain and fear as she bled out through a bite mark. At this time Aidan wasn't sure how the virus was spread, so she reassured her that she would stay with her and protect her until she was strong enough to travel. Then they would find a safe place to wait until things got quiet and figure out what to do next.
Ebony was feverish by that night. She shivered and her teeth chattered even as her skin burned up. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she moaned with the pain of the horrible headache and nausea. Still Aidan did what she could, never leaving her side, wiping her face with a cool wet cloth and giving her water. Her efforts were not enough to save her. After hours of vigilance Aidan fell asleep at Ebony's side. When she woke, Ebony's breaths were coming out in wet rattles. Her eyes were open yet unseeing and her hands stretched toward Aidan, fingers curved into claws. Aidan had seen enough of the monsters to recognize this for what it was. Though her heart ached deeply with the pain of it, she bid her wife of twenty one years a final goodbye and put a bullet in her head. The sound attracted the dead to her door and the crude attempts at a barricade wouldn't hold forever, so Aidan shoved anything she thought she could use in a backpack and paused to slip the ring from the monster that had once been Ebony and string a chain through it so she could put it around her neck. The fight from the house back to the department store was exhausting but she barely made it. She managed to use Rogue to rip the service desk from the floor and barricade the door with it. After that she went from floor to floor, killing the dead by hand until the area was secure and blocking each floor's stairwell with shelves that a person could squeeze through, but one of the dead wouldn't have the presence of mind to try, instead slamming against it and making enough noise that she could get to them before they got to her. When things in the store went quiet she began to find other survivors who had hidden in the chaos. She recognized that there was safety in numbers and they elected to stay together until they could figure out what to do. There was more than enough to sustain everyone's needs at the Department Store, and for now the barricades were holding true.
For a few weeks Aidan allowed herself to mourn in silence. Her dreams were haunted by the horrible thing she'd had to do when she was able to sleep, but most of the time she was not. She had always been plagued by insomnia but now it was worse than ever. Finally when the pain subsided enough for her to think straight she began to try and think of a plan. She still comes up empty, but every day the dead flock away from the Department Store in herds as travelers unwittingly get their attention and distract them. Soon she'll have to act, to move, and she'd do well to figure out where to soon.
Pokemon:
-Name: Rogue
-Species: Arcanine
-Gender: Male
-Appearance: Bred for strength, Rogue is broad chested and thick with muscle. Intelligence was also a factor in matching his parents, which contributes to the way he seems to understand things that other Pokemon, particularly those kept as pets, may not. He wears a bulletproof vest designed specifically for the Pokemon of the R-K9 unit. On the front his very own badge is sewn into it.
-Personality: Like his handler, Rogue is tenacious. He is single minded in his determination to do the task set in front of him. He craves attention and praise and would do anything Aidan asked for a scratch behind the ears or squeaky toy.
-Brief History: Rogue was bred for the sole purpose of being an R-K9 dog. He was united with Aidan at three years old shortly after Buzzer's death and has served her faithfully ever since. Treated as a member of the family when off duty, he too misses Ebony dearly and often whines for her at night. He always slept on the floor at the foot of their bed and went with Ebony to the kitchen in the morning when she cooked breakfast, hoping for pets or scraps, both of which he usually received.
-Name: Mittens
-Species: Meowstic
-Gender: Female
-Appearance: Mittens was kept as a house pet, and that certainly shows. Her coat is shiny and white, soft and perfectly groomed. Around her neck is a black velvet collar with rhinestones. It used to have a little bell on it, but Aidan cut it off as it made her too easy for the monsters to track when she was out.
-Personality: Mittens has not adjusted well to her new lifestyle. She liked being a beloved pet and has no idea how to be anything else. She was very much a one-person cat and coveted Ebony the most. Her absence has left Mittens moody and more unfriendly than she ever used to be.
-Brief History: Aidan and Ebony's first Meowstic was a shy, friendly, fat male named Muggins. When he appeared to grow lonely Aidan got the idea to get Mittens. She presented the Espurr kitten to Ebony as a birthday present roughly six years before the end of the world. In that time Mittens bonded heavily to her mistress. She was never used for fighting and she lacks the disposition for it.
-Name: Artemis
-Species: Sableye
-Gender: Male
-Appearance: Artemis always has the most frustrating grin on his face. He constantly looks snide and sarcastic, which in truth is an excellent assessment of his personality.
-Personality: As previously mentioned, Artemis is quite sarcastic. He is full of himself, finicky, and always believes he deserves the best of everything. This includes pretty gold and jewels that people might happen to possess. It's only through respect and years of training that he keeps his sticky hands off of Aidan's things.
-History: Aidan caught Artemis while on a manhunt in an abandoned warehouse. It was the positively irritating look on his little face that drew her to him. Though he's been a challenge to train and keep, she adores him. He's her go-to battler when using Rogue wouldn't be the best idea.
