Post by grimsnarl on Mar 3, 2023 11:22:45 GMT 11
Name: Arata Takao (or... Takao Arata?)
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Trainer Type: Office Worker
Hometown: Silver Town, Kanto
Appearance: To wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and think, “Now that’s a businessman!” - this is Takao’s purpose, his raison d’etre, his life. He has always been the type to earn an approving jerk of the head from general managers and obasan he passes in the street; a quiet “Mister” inserted before his name by the younger. Mr. Takao! Does it put a buzz in his chest to hear that. It’s all in the dress, really, serving “Cool Biz” in the warm seasons, rolled-up poplin sleeves and well-ironed trousers, though Takao couldn’t imagine not wearing at least a casual blazer. He wears a nice watch on his non-dominating righthand side: with that, there’s no reason to fish for attention with flashy colors or patterns. Takao’s wardrobe is all dark blues, grays and blacks.
He’s an average man, but Takao has one natural advantage, he thinks, and is proud of: a winning smile. If a firm handshake leaves a good impression, a good smile does half of the convincing, and Mr. Takao has a smile so good, so convincing, it shows in his eyes even when he’s on the precipice of losing his patience and feels seconds from crushing someone’s windpipe with his hands. But he’s just under 5’ 8” with a symmetrical, nondescript face, a jet-black quiff with almost brutalistically-cut sides and the occasional reading glasses. Nothing intimidating about that. It’s been difficult to internalize advice about humility, though: his manners are topnotch, of course, but even after a bow he squares his shoulders and holds his head high. His posture makes him look taller than he is, he has to physically stop himself from over-gesturing when he monologues, and he flashes that winning smile very often. There’s just something about him.
Takao’s one dirty secret is he can be forgetful unless things are written on paper, so he sometimes keeps little notes in marker on the palm of his hand. Also, he always keeps copies of his business card. Nowadays he’s a bit embarrassed to hand them out, but it’s habit.
Personality: One lesson the business world nails into you is the difference between nice and kind: sometimes good work comes at the expense of doing good. And Takao’s never bought into that. Ever since he was a kid getting the dreams crushed out of him Takao has stood by being a good samaritan, the gold-sticker, eager-class-president type of guy. The straight-edge: a social* drinker, a non-smoker, the last of his colleagues and friends to get hitched and settle down. He bought into the work culture commitment for so many years that his friend circle is entirely made up of former coworkers, and everyone at his job knew him and his sunny, eager temperament, whether they appreciated it or not. He’s very social: not a social climber, but having a genuine gregariousness with strong awareness and empathy. Takao helps his neighbors carry their groceries. He sits politely through his parents’ nagging and will even call them first, sometimes. If there is a pet Meowth up a tree, and the police aren’t available, then Takao will climb that tree and rescue that Meowth. But, god, “Arceus”-damn - whatever your beliefs - sometimes enough is enough. And it’s been “enough” for almost a year now.
Takao has a sort of vigilante energy to him. Yes, he will help you, but he will usually do so in a way that could be described by onlookers as “irrational,” often with the potential to deal harm to himself or the surrounding property. Something about ne'er-do-wells nowadays brings him to blood-boiling extents of ferality. It’s also worth noting that while Takao has a plethora of practical experience to draw from, most of it is inapplicable to elements of a Trainer’s lifestyle, mainly commiserating with other Trainers, or even walking for a significant amount of time on dirt roads. Still, he’s at his most creative under pressure, when backed into a corner. Takao has something of an attraction to danger he will relentlessly deny.
Risky as he is though, Takao’s interactions with Pokemon have mostly been as pets and the occasional suspiciously-contracted workplace “helper”: he treats them with kiddie gloves, and wouldn’t put them in danger unless the harm was extremely inobvious. His practical inclinations makes him dismissive of the supernatural, or otherwise really weird, aspects of the Pokemon world, an Agent Scully. He can be a bit patronizing too, part of that being bad at “Trainer etiquette,” since seeing a youngster ready to battle just makes him want to muss up their hair.
When Takao isn’t trying to figure out how a Pokedex works, he likes to croquet for stress-relief, and he has an informational book for everything including “I Threw My Back Out At the Safari Zone: A Guide to Navigating Your Mid-Life Crisis as an New Adult Trainer!” He also tends to turn everything into spreadsheets, whether tax forms or grocery lists.
History: Every kid wants to be a Pokemon master. So what? Centuries ago people were chasing the little bastards out of their villages with kama and torches. Then, in what we’ll call “19XX,” kids were staging Pokemon battles on their Gameboys, fantasizing what it’d be like to conquer the Indigo League. It is between those wedges of times, that antiquity and the Pika-crazed present, that Arata Takao’s parents were born, that his father spent his own childhood skinning Magikarp as the son of poor fishermen, and that his wife and him founded Arata/Takao Construction Limited off of years of sweat and savings. And it is in her late 30’s when Takao’s mother has him. Their only son, it was Takao’s responsibility to his parents by the time he could fit in a schoolboy’s uniform to carry on the family name (whichever one was the family name) and that would require a “real job.” For most of Takao’s generation, putting on their baseball caps and hitting the road was only really feasible when they were teenagers anyway. Still, Takao was in cram school by junior high. He stuck his foil Gyarados trading card in a binder pocket out of sight and hit the books.
As a young adult, Takao graduated from a solid business university in Celadon at a solid class percentile. Then, he moved back to his hometown between Lavender and business-capital Saffron. He was hired pretty much right out of school, taking a general position in some little office’s finances department. It was 70% desk work, 30% office politics, but there was joy in it, he thought. He connected better with other young salarymen than his college class, anyway. Sometimes after work he and the gang would get sloshed, then bet like it was horse racing at the local contest hall. Life was good, and it got better: that “some little office” was a subsidiary of Silph, Co., not just the biggest corporation in Kanto but a worldwide name! His manager took note of bright-eyed Takao and he saw potential. Before he knew it, Takao was being relocated to Silph’s main location to work as a cost analyst.
His friends were celebratory; his parents seemed sufficiently proud of him for once; Takao was sharing company meeting space with the biggest names in Kanto business. It was around this time he got engaged to his wife and they would later adopt a Squirtle hatchling, so it wasn’t as if he was completely disconnected by the Training boom that kept his company’s business booming. At this point in time, Takao thought he might even have made general manager before sixty! That optimism was punished.
Team Rocket had their roots in white-collar crime: the Siph Co. takeover was subtle at first. And one of the disadvantages of holding your head high in the sea of the subtle, humble business sphere was that grunts who knew who to target. One moment you’re reading news of a factory getting ransacked by strange people in all-black clothing, then you’ve looked up to see men of the same description in your office. Takao was bullied into manipulating Silph’s public financial data for Team Rocket, making the full takeover of HQ that much easier. Team Rocket would be disbanded by a lone hero, but in the aftermath it looked like there had been bad actors that had let the whole thing happen - the media painted it like he’d been “compensated.” Sure, by a Rattata’s fangs bared at his neck! Silph Co. could believe Takao hadn’t been money-laundering for the bad guys, or in the face of public outcry, higher management could, and did, quietly ask Takao to leave. And it was all over.
Though he wasn’t found guilty, expulsion was a subtle stain on Takao’s record. Afterwards, he started working for his parents’ construction company, moving with his wife back to Silver Town, again. By now, the coordination circuit was also booming: Takao was witness to Trainers and their well-preened partners traveling in and out of the city. For some reason, he couldn’t just tune it all out. It was like an itch, a deep, building discomfort, and after a while, Takao identified the feeling. RAGE. He had to get out from behind that stupid desk.
That night, he got Pochi the pet Squirtle into a Pokeball, left a memo on the fridge for his wife, and fled to Johto.
Goals: To defeat the Pokemon League Challenge and kick some Team Rocket grunts in the teeth along the way.
Other Info / Wish List:
- Cool rares for him: Shiny Gyarados, Porygon, Pancham, Fomantis, Palafin
- Dislikes Poison-types, malicious Dark- and Ghost-types, and humanoid Pokemon
Please place Kei Sykes on hold!
TM182: Misty Terrain X1
