Once on a Distant Shore…
Carlita Castillo was a young woman from the mountain town of Montenevera, Paldea who struck out to be a Pokemon Trainer when she turned fifteen. After winning her first badge, Carlita (or Carly to her friends) met a handsome, older trainer from Sinnoh. The two traveled together and she fell head over heels for him right away. When she became pregnant, however, the man disappeared and Carly was left to figure it all out on her own.
She was forced to drop out of the gym circuit before earning her last badge. Carly returned home and while her parents were very upset, they supported her decisions. She would name her daughter Crystal.
A Chance For Something Better
The Great War continued to rage throughout Eurastos, and Paldea was among the main battlefronts. No actual fighting happened in Monenevera, but the threat was always there and the fighting was taking a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure and economic stability. To provide a better life for Crystal, Carly left Paldea and moved to Kanto. Her parents always intended to come with her, but after her father’s death during the war her mother would never end up leaving. She did do her best to support Carly, however, and in later years would visit at least once per year.
While she managed to find some housing thanks to a compassionate old woman who took pity on the teenage mother, Carly still desperately needed work. While she found it difficult at first, she eventually got a job as a waitress as a small Alolan restaurant that specialized in a unique variation of the malasada.
Her boss, Kurt Lear, was kind and treated her well. They let her bring Crystal in, and Mrs. Lear would help to keep an eye on the precocious toddler. The Lears absolutely adored Crystal and would sneak her a little malasada when her mother wasn’t looking. Crystal would also play with the family’s Alolan Meowth named Padre, who liked to lounge around the shop.
Over time, Carly became friends with the owner’s oldest son, a gentle giant of a man that people called Big Greg. He would often help Carly with anything she needed; moving furniture, household repairs, car maintenance. The Lears became like a second family to Carly, who spent many holidays with their family. After a few years, Big Greg confessed his feelings and the two would begin dating. By the time Crystal was eight years old, Carly and Big Greg married on a sunny summer day.
The Tomboy
Things were tight for a long time, in terms of money. In the wake of the war, everybody seemed to tighten their belts and life could be a struggle at times. Luckily, Crystal’s family lived in a decently safe neighborhood. The boys would ride around on bikes, wade down by the creek looking for bug Pokemon, and exploring the acres of tropical forest and wetland their neighborhood was built around.
Crystal was never particularly interested in playing with the other girls; she was precocious and energetic from a young age, and preferred to spend her time with the boys (who had more fun). She was scrawny, tall, and knobby-kneed; Crystal was something of a tomboy, and with her hair cut short and the way she dressed, many didn’t realize she was a girl when she was young.
Always competitive even from a young age, Crystal worked hard to prove that she belonged with them. They teased her and many of them were unsure what to do or how to treat her when they playe dgames, but Crystal always went as hard as she could. With time and
practice, Crystal showed up the boys in many different fields—soccer, baseball, rock climbing, swimming, running. As determined as she was, though, she was never really accepted by the boys; she was always just “the girl” and didn’t really took her seriously. On the same token, the girls never really accepted her, either.
The girls in her class bullied for her appearance, for being poor, and for being a tomboy. Her mother tried many times to teach her how to fit in with the other girls; buying her dolls, offering to take her dress shopping, things like that. She was never really interested in any of that, even if she sometimes went along with it to make her mom happy.
Big Greg, though, always just encouraged Crystal to be herself. He’d take her for walks, watch sports games with her, took her fishing, let her be his “assistant” when he fixed household problems or worked on the car. One afternoon that would stick with Crystal was when Big Greg was teaching Crystal how to change a tire. It was humid and one of the hottest days of the year, and even Big Greg’s Alolan Sandshrew wasn’t providing significant relief. Talk came around to Crystal’s frustrations; her feelings that everybody wanted her to change. Big Greg just chuckles and told Crystal not to worry about other people. It’s her life, in the end, so she should follow her own bliss, and emphasized that Crystal was perfect just the way she was.
“Other people’s little brains don’t change who you are, kiki. Don’t pay attention to them and just be you. Life’s better that way.”
As annoying as the other kids could be, her father was right. In the end, despite all of that stuff, Crystal’s childhood was largely a happy one. She often spent her free time exploring the neighborhood, helping out around the house with Big Greg, and going to the park to watch the Pokemon battles. She loved to watch the trainers fight and did so nearly every day. Crystal was highly intrigued and excited by the power and strategy that the trainers employed.
Way of the Ninja
She would imitate them at home, play-acting battles in her back yard with Bubba, Big Greg’s Alolan Grimer. She announced to her parents that she wanted to become a Pokemon trainer! Her mother was hesitant about that idea (perhaps understandably due to her own experiences) but Big Greg was very supportive. For her twelfth birthday, as a surprise, her parents arranged for her to visit the Soul Gym, where she could observe some of the matches and meet the gym leader, Koga.
Crystal watched Koga in starstruck awe. Koga wasn’t just a good trainer—-he was a master. Every bout she grew more and more excited, loudly cheering for the poisonous ninja master. There was something in the way he battled, graceful and impossibly fast, with movements that were both toxic and beautiful. It was on an entirely different level from what she was used to watching at the park.
Finally, Crystal was able to meet Koga. He was intimidating; stoic and serious. She spoke with respect, though the air of excited energy still bled through here and there. Koga humored her, answering her many questions with answers that were somehow direct and kind of vague—exactly how Crystal excepted a ninja to talk. Her last question to him was a simple one. How does she get to be as strong as Koga one day? Koga studied her a moment, then looked her dead in the eye and replied:
“You work hard. And when you think you cannot go on any longer, you work harder.”
Cue the Montage Music
Starting that night, Crystal was determined to become a trainer as strong as Koga. She started reading books on exercise; she started running and doing push-ups, and biking down to the beach to start swimming and doing Karate Kid stuff by the rocks. She also pestered her parents for martial arts lessons for weeks. Her mother outright refused, but when Crystal said that lessons would help with self-defense (you know, to keep her safe!) her parents relented and enrolled her in a basic self-defense class—though her mother also wanted her to do something involved with the arts, so Crystal compromised by taking a dance class, as well.
She also began to study famous Pokemon trainers, watching archived footage of League battles of the past; from Bill Fjord to Giovanni to Lance. She even studied aspects of Coordinating, Grooming, and more to broaded her pool of knowledge. Right after she turned thirteen, she convinced Big Greg to let her start a kickboxing class since she’d aged out of the self-defense course. She found that she excelled in it, and it was both empowering and fun.
Her dance classes were actually just as helpful, helping her to build body control, coordination, flexibility, and spatial awareness. Plus, it was also fun. She made a few friends in her dance classes, specifically a young girl named Tania. She grew up on a “farming collective” east of the city, and while Tania was…really weird, the two hit it off and even outside of class they remained friends.
As she grew older, she found that her interactions with others her age were changing. Boys were lest hostile and weird to her—and, in fact, many started to become weirdly nice to her in a way that seemed kind of fake. Not to say she didn’t notice them in return, but she didn’t really know how to process any of it, so she’d usually just end up being mean to them and running away.
Some of the first real “lessons” in girl stuff that she actually paid attention to were during this time; Carly taught Crystal how to do her hair, some basics about applying makeup, helped her pick out cute outfits, and the like. Crystal was no less serious about training or any of her hobbies, but she was still a kid and wanted to fit in.
From the time she was thirteen, Crystal helped out in the malasada restaurant, which Big Greg had inherited from his parents years before. She mostly just worked the cash register and helped with bringing food to people when they were busy.
