Derek Gallagher // wip

[Angelness]

((His background will be updated to reflect his daemon... Storm right now, and I don't want to lose it.))

Character

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Name: Derek Gallagher

Age: 17

Gender: n/a

Pokemorph:

Appearance:

Unfortunately for his ego, he's a tad on the short side, measuring up to barely five feet, five inches. (1.65 meters for the non-American readers.) That's with his shoes on. His name is very Irish, but he doesn't look like it. His skin is lightly tanned all throughout the year, and his hair is a dark brown. It never gets to the point that it's heavy enough to hang down, as he makes a point of shaving it all off every few weeks for simplicity's sake. He rarely combs it, as he's not a fan of the "frat boy" look, so he had a constant bed head. He's usually seen in jeans and a dirty t-shirt. Unless it's unreasonably hot, he wears a hoodie. Hygiene is not his top priority. It barely even makes the list. He enjoys swimming and such, but using soap is a rare thing for him.

He is very much a night owl and has an inconsistent sleep schedule, as shown by the dark bags under his brown eyes. His eyes are roughly the same color as his hair, and are decently sized in proportion to his face. His baby fat is gone, but he is anything other than muscular thanks to his serious asthma. Other than comfort and warmth, his main motives for wearing a hoodie are the large pockets and hiding the large burn that scales his elbow to his wrist in a sort of jagged path.

He quit smoking several years ago, but the aftereffects are still visible. His skin has an odd, grayish tinge to it, and there are small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. In natural lighting, where his off-color skin isn't as noticeable, they almost look like smile lines. He has high cheekbones and a well-angled jawbone. He's one of those guys that seems attractive at first glance, but that facade deteriorates if you keep looking at him for very long.

The only thing that remotely approaches jewelry is the inhaler that he always wears around his neck on a black string. It's usually tucked into his hoodie. He has no piercings, tattoos, make-up - none of the things that typically exemplify a member of the Hoenn blackmarket. Those things require effort, and he doesn't like expending much of that. Baggy clothes fall down, and create awkward situations a lot, so he avoids those as well.

Personality:

Sarcastic and apathetic, Derek is very much the typical teenager that society hates by attitude, even if he doesn't look like it at first glance. His mother was rarely around and his father lived in a different city, so he grew accustomed to not having a figure of authority around, and he loved it. Now that he has a solid authority figure (his father) forcing him to become a trainer, he isn't too thrilled. Spending the next six months of his life traversing a deserted wasteland with a hundred ten-year-olds with the IQ of drier lint doesn't appeal to him. Not that he's biased.

Despite his dislike of authority, he is capable of turning on the charm. He's a fairly intelligent person - not a genius by any standard, but he's quite knowledgeable of the world. He blames Pokémon heavily for making him endure the trauma of almost being killed as a small child; other than that, emotions are rare with him. He understand emotions. He is capable of sympathy, but not empathy. From his mother, he learned the basics of manipulation, and from the people he associated himself with, he put it down to an art. Whether or not he's a true psychopath is impossible to tell, as he would never get himself tested for it and no one would make him go through the testing, but he's closer to that condition than a lot of people.

He rarely forms close relationships with people, as he doesn't see a point to socializing. By not getting close to people, there aren't any people he particularly likes, but there aren't any people he dislikes, either. From his perspective, not having to be closely intertwined with the politics of the social chain of command makes life much easier. For years, he's contented himself with sitting on the sidelines and doing whatever the hell he wanted. He's good at making people think they're his close friends, but he rarely has anyone that he even considers a friend - much less a close friend.

He was born medically dead, and has gone into respiratory arrest many times thanks to his asthma and weak lungs, and has faced his mortality many other times from robberies, drug busts and plain stupidity. He's been jaded by such instances, but unlike a lot of would-be traumatized people, he doesn't care all that much about it - further pointing to something being wrong in his head, whether it's full-blown psychopathy or not.

History:

Sarah and Michael, natives of Rustboro, were childhood friends. Sarah was very much the dominant partner in their relationship, but they always got along. Their story is not particularly important - just know that they were married two weeks after they graduated college; Sarah with a Bachelor's in art, Michael with a doctorate in aeronautical engineering. They moved to Mossdeep City where Michael began working at the Space Center. With her husband's paycheck, Sarah didn't need to bring in any money, so she spent her days practicing art and sketching other people for fun. They had always planned on having a small family - one son, one daughter. When she got pregnant and the doctor declared that they were having twins, both were ecstatic.

Unfortunately, with endless time, money to burn and art to perfect, she got involved in some less-than-legal activity. Their twins, identical boys, were born in September of 1992. Their mother's body had been severely compromised due to alcohol and drug abuse (among other things). Both sons were born without proper lung function. They had already picked out names for their sons. The firstborn was Nathan, the second, Derek. Nathan came out of the womb seeming healthy. Derek came out not breathing. At some point while the doctors were getting Derek breathing again, Nathan's breathing went out as well. By the time the doctors could get to him, his brain had been without oxygen for too long. Only Derek survived.

The doctors were able to link the problems to Sarah's drug problems with a simple drug test. Needless to say, Michael was not thrilled. They had known each other since they were five years old, and yet he felt as though he barely knew her. He blamed himself for the long hours he spent at the space center, but did nothing to rectify the situation. Sarah suggested that they "take a break," and as he always had, he backed down. He stayed in Mossdeep and she went to Lilycove with their son. Year after year, she said she'd come back, but she never did. After an eight year long "split," Sarah gave up on their marriage. They didn't get divorced, as Sarah enjoyed the benefits of the money he brought in, but she began having an affair with the director of the art museum.

Lilycove came off as a bright, clean place to most visitors, but it was anything but; lots of people were brought in by the museum, the master rank contest hall, the shopping mall and the S. S. Tidal, most of whom were quite wealthy. It made the town prosperous, and where there was prosperity, there were criminals, and Lilycove was no exception.

Thievery was common and the tiny police force was barely any help. More times than he could count, burglars would run into their house and steal their valuables. Their third day in town, when he was barely eight years old, two men came in with a Machamp and an Arcanine and grabbed whatever they and their Machamp's four arms could carry. The massive fire dog unleashed a warning breath of fire to keep Sarah and Derek from moving, leading to the burn on his left arm. Nathan rarely saw his father, so most of his morals and beliefs came from his mother. (It was clearly not a reliable source, but he didn't realize that and it was the only one available to him.) His father had always been a pushover, and Derek began learning how to manipulate Michael just as Sarah had been doing for so long.

With his father's blind permission, Derek became the trust of an offshore account with large sums of money. (Intelligence and common sense rarely came in the same package, after all.) At the tender age of fourteen, he was an amateur drug dealer. By offering much cheaper prices than his competitors, most thieves left his home alone. With new friends in high places, anyone who was stupid enough to bother him or his mother was quickly "disciplined". It was hardly a charmed life, being a street thug, but it was better than having a Magmortar glaring you in the face while your second XBox 360 was taken by a man in a ski mask. Such instances led to a deepseated hatred of Pokémon in general. Michael remained oblivious to his wife and son's problems; his head was still in the stars as his bank account was slowly drained.

His lungs were still not functioning normally, and the constant smoke from cigarettes, secondhand smoke and fire type Pokémon didn't help the situation. Asthma attacks became more and more common and more and more serious as the years went by. When Michael received a call from the Lilycove hospital, informing him that his son had almost died, he finally got his act together. He went to Lilycove, divorced Sarah, and gained partial custody of his son over the course of the next two months. Michael took Derek to the airport and sat in a plane for more than half a day as they made their way to Cianwood City in the Johto region. There was a well known pharmacist there, which Michael liked, and it got Derek away from his mother, which Michael loved.

He had an unorthodox approach. Instead of recommending that Derek take preventative action and minimize his exercise, he suggested increasing his lung capacity - getting more exercise, and simply carrying around an inhaler. Michael was a scientist and therefore skeptical of that philosophy, but the only viable alternative was sending him back to Lilycove (back to breaking the law, back to drugs and back to his mother) or taking him to Mossdeep. Michael cared his family, but he was a terrible father. He recognized that. That just wasn't an option.

Besides, Michael had gone on a short journey as a teenager, and loved Pokemon; he shared none of his son's hatred of the creatures. Sending him on a journey would get him away from Sarah, give him a chance to develop as a person, and follow the doctor's orders. Win, win, win. So without his son's consent, he signed Derek up to attend a month-long, basic Pokémon training class back in Rustboro. Derek wasn't excited about it, but dealt with it. His father had found about the drug dealing, after all. Being blackmailed by your own father sucked, but the threat of ending up in jail at seventeen years old was more than enough to make him tolerate it.

When the class ended, they began receiving fliers from various laboratories advertising new regions. His father forced him to choose one, so he laid down several of the ads face-down on the counter. He picked up one that was for 'Enera'. He would have preferred having his teeth pulled out without anesthesia than go on a journey with the creatures he so hated, but he had no choice.

They signed a contract saying he would spend at least half a year there, and that was that. Within a week, he had boarded a plane for the third long flight of the year - this time, not to or from Johto, but to hell incarnate. Oh joy.

Career: Trainer

The Daemon

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