T-049: Saintalia Rosario

Name: Saintalia Rosario
Gender: Female
Age: 28
Height: 5'6/168cm
System: Stable

Nera-
    Infused: Shiny Scolipede
    Perm fuse: N/A
    Additional: N/A

Residence: Brookfell
Partner Pokemon: Cirino (Pedigree Crobat)

History:

Saintalia was born in a cheap hospital in urban Brookfell, bringing her imediate family up to six members: her father, her mother, two older brothers, one older sister, and her abuelo. Brookfell was a city of stone, dust, and crystal, with rickety bridges and buildings alike growing only more hazardous as one approached the collapsed quarry. Though not dirt poor, the Rosarios were pressed for money most months, and all of Saintalia's siblings had been forced to forgo upper-level education in order to take jobs to help pay rent and buy food; if being added to Reignsrest's Virtual Network wasn't required of and given to all citizens, they probably wouldn't have gotten it.

Saintalia went to school for 9 years, stopping just before highschool to join the rest of her family in working. She was instroduced to a friend of her abuelo's, a chemist at a local pharmacy, and took a job just doing... whatever she was told really: running deliveries, stocking shelves, dealing with customers, the standard untrained worker stuff. About a year into her job, during a delivery that took her through Brookfell's old tunnels, Saintalia met Cirino when the Zubat was spooked by the sounds of her steps echoing through the tunnels and flew into her. She was able to shoo the bat off then, but each time she had to travel through the tunnels, he was waiting for her. After a few paychecks worth of savings, Saintalia was able to bring him home with her in a shiny new Pokeball.

Things were fine for Saintalia for a while - between everyone in her family working steady jobs, they were able to live month to month with more comfort and confidence; but this didn't mean things were perfect. Her parents had been asking her about finding a "nice boy" to settle down with, bring into the family, help support everyone, and Saintalia never took to those comments well; as a teenager, she never knew why being asked about men bothered her so much, but understanding came as a young adult when she found women to be much more attractive to her. Still, if dodging questions about finding a husband and admiring ladies from afar was the worst life would bring her, Saintalia figured it couldn't be all bad.

Life got significantly worse in 2002, when a factory near Brookfell's mountains exploded. At first, Saintalia thought she'd only be affected by working overtime at the pharmacy, preparing more prescriptions and medicines for those injured by the accident, but this quickly proved not to be the case. A few days after the explosion, Saintalia felt... strange; there was something in the air, and she could swear it wanted to be with her, like become an actual part of her. Ridiculous as it was, she allowed it in, and the next thing she knew, she had horns.

"Nera" is what it was being called, she learned from checking the news once she felt well again. She wasn't a science-y type, and only really understood that it had something to do with the DNA of Pokemon, and that it was now affecting both wild Pokemon and humans alike - resulting in... whatever she'd become. Out of caution, she kept Cirino in his Pokeball for a while, hoping to keep him safe from the Nera in the air, and tried to reclaim some sense of normality. She received a number of looks back at the pharmacy, even from people who'd known her for what felt like forever, but as the Nera spread, things got better - "infused" humans like her became more commonplace, and it was no longer a real talking point.

Next new talking point was the Nothing, and it sucked. A thick, terrible fog that crept in by night and darkness and swallowed anything that wasn't protected by the light, leading to accidents, disappears, and death. As protective beacons were developed for Reignsrest's cities, Brookfell was slower on the recovering end due to its illegal activities; what's more, they couldn't get many beacons into the old quarry or tunnels, leading to the Nothing taking a firm hold in the darkness there; this only lead to more cave ins, more land loss, more displaced people, more povetry, and more crime. The pharmacy she worked at was robbed several times, and eventually, the store's owner was pressed into accepting a local gang's offer of "protection" in exchange for a monthly fee.

Brookfell wasn't the only city suffering because of the Nothing, but Saintalia couldn't help but think that it and its people were suffering disproportionately to that of the other cities: Rivertide could still put on festivals throughout the year, Wintervale had moved into the skies, and Grovehart still had much of its city usable. Envy and greedy were dangerous things, Saintalia's mother had always told her that, but with everything that had happened in the last two years, Saintalia couldn't help but become more sympathic to those who "acted out" against Reignsrest's society, order, and enforcement of the former two.

...but, well, what was she to do about it?