Pokemon Trainer Cress

Life was not a happy thing for Cress; Edward and Belladonna Maize were many things, but to call them decent or even passable parents would be a blatant lie. The boy grew up alongside his triplet brothers in a household that was ruled by the adults with an iron fist, his parents treating their children the way they felt children ought to be treated: things that are owned by their parents, that exist to bring honor to the family name and to make life as perfect as possible for the parents, whatever the cost may be to themselves. Firmly of the belief that children should behave as mini-adults, that to be adult is to be collected, calm, and professional at all times, and that children are naturally disobedient things that must be punished when they slip up to teach them right from wrong, the triplets' lives were as a result full of fear and stress from the very beginning. Their distinct personalities were early in emerging; Cilan, the most obedient, was a bright child talented at school, easy to cow and eager to please. He became the Maize's golden boy, their best chance at getting ahead in the world, and so the slightest misstep on Cilan's part would cause them to panic and punish him horrifically, the punishments usually beatings or the loss of a meal or two.  

At the opposite end of that scale was Cress, who was so incapable of earning his parents' praise that he gave up all together and became rebellious, constructing the façade of a confident, arrogant boy to protect himself from further damage even as he suffered the same horrific punishments at home that Cilan did for his rebellion. And rebel Cress did, often sticking his neck out to try to make his brothers' lives more bearable, taking the fall for things that they did or constructing entirely new problems to draw attention away from Chili and Cilan.

The differences between Cilan and Cress largely differed in the way they were spoken to and the rewards they received; rewards were rare and typically consisted of praise (albeit backhanded praise) and were never given to Cress. Insults towards Cilan tended to be passed off as jokes to which Cilan was being too sensitive over, to Cress they were blunt, and to Chili it was like an afterthought.

With Cilan as the 'favorite' and Cress as the delinquent, the two took up a lot of the Maize parents' time, leaving Chili as the invisible child. They did notice him sometimes-- the only category they considered Cress to not be the lowest of the low in was intelligence, that honor being Chili's, and they targeted him relentlessly for his poor performance in school up until they stopped attending in order to start their trip. This trip took them to many places, but ultimately did not rescue them, the triplets being too afraid to simply leave their parents. When their masterful skill at their specific typings caught the eye of some of the gym leaders, they were approached with the opportunity to become gym leaders themselves; the first ones new trainers would face. Beyond excited, the triplets drew up a proposal for their gym; to combine it with a restaurant, as their passion was cooking, and for their gym pokemon to be the diminutive versions of their beloved monkeys, along with lillipups. This was accepted and the restaurant came into being.  

Unfortunately this only further trapped them. Their fear of their parents led them to setting up the restaurant in their hometown; though the money they brought in allowed them to move out, the apartment they got wasn't very far from the restaurant, which in turn wasn't far from their old home. Their parents dropped in uninvited on their home and their restaurant often, keeping the triplets under their thumb and in a constant state of fear not much better than what they'd experienced when living at home. The one day they decided to take a break from their stressful lives, they missed out on stopping terrorists from destroying the country. Three of those same terrorists later approached them for battle, the Shadow Triad utterly destroying their teams- even implying they had picked the triplets specifically because they knew the boys could not beat them and thus, they'd provide easy stress relief.

It was this that made them realize they needed to quit being gym leaders and focus on raising their individual power and perfecting their culinary skills via the restaurant. Though a mature decision, their parents reacted violently, the abuse growing worse and worse.

And then the epidemic.

Their parents fled without a word to the brothers, leaving them to fend for themselves as they evacuated most of the city along with law enforcement. Their own escape was hampered by the waves of incoming undead, and the boys ended up fleeing into the forests, alone and afraid. As reality fully dawned on them, tensions rose higher and higher until one night, Cress snapped, accusing his brothers of harboring feelings of superiority over him and hatred for him. Chili fired back, the two ending up in a screaming match that Cilan was powerless to stop; it ended when Chili stomped away to collect more firewood.

He never returned.

Cilan left a short time later to retrieve their brother. He, too, never returned.

Now anxious, Cress went looking for them. He found a horrible scene of death and gore, but only bodies of the undead were there. His brothers were missing. There was one another thing he found there, however; Chili's apron, caught on some brambles. He did not find any other sign of his brothers.  Convinced he'd killed them with his cruel and stupid words, Cress had a horrific breakdown, upon which by the end he decided the best way to continue on would be to just... be someone else.

Recalling the old aliases he and his brothers gave sometimes when they wanted to conceal their identity while out traveling, he adopted that alias as his permanent name, ditching his beloved oven mitt to force himself to let go of his old life and move on with his new one.

He did not realize Parasol, his Simipour, had tucked the apron away in one of the backpack's compartments.

As time wore on he became a bandit, robbing those he met for their supplies and slowly becoming a skilled fighter. Though he had degenerated far from the person he had used to be, not all of Cress was gone-- he never killed anyone unless they attacked him first, and tried not to get too rough with anyone who he robbed. Something about the idea of a dead person's blood on his hands made his stomach turn even though he repeatedly told himself that his number one priority had to be himself and his team only.

A few years later he saved a small eevee from some aggressive survivors and patched him up, unable to leave the small creature to his fate even though he had long since given up getting involved in other scuffles that he was not the agressor of or the victim of. Hamilton wanted to leave after a while but Cress captured him in a ball and refused to let him go; his old Pokemon were part of his old life, a fact he was never able to fully forget; they were a reminder of what he lost. Hamilton, however, was no such reminder, and Cress was desperate for a loved one who would not remind him of his brother's deaths. Since he'd saved the Eevee, he reasoned he would come to love him eventually if he continued to treat him kindly, and would even forgive him for keeping him against his will-- after all, it's a dangerous world out there for someone as little as him.

Hamilton feared leaving without having the ball destroyed, since he thought that might otherwise come back to haunt him and has little idea of how pokeballs work. After a week of Hamilton making it clear he can't love someone who wants to force him to stay and Cress doing his best to ignore the fact (and having his mood improve drastically without the inconvenient truth getting in his way) Froaklie, believing Hamilton is the key to reviving Cress's old self, promised the Eevee he would bring him back should he run away.

And so they travel. Though sympathetic to Cress's story, Hamilton's patience wears thinner every day. The young man is now quite skilled at survival, hand-to-hand combat, and stealth, but with tension brewing right there within his own, it's only a matter of time before things go sour...

♈ Cilan and Chili: His relationship with his brothers is complicated; though he loved them dearly, he also held a deep seeded root of bitterness. Suffering from an inferiority complex, Cress firmly believed both of his brothers looked down on him, yet couldn't bring himself to actively hate them even if he tried claiming he did during their argument. He spent many years distracting his parents for them, scrounging up ways to get Halloween and Christmas candy for them, taking punishments for them, and generally making their lives less miserable in any way he could.  This was partly because he felt they didn't deserve to suffer and partly because he felt he did. Most of his resentment was aimed at Cilan, having been the golden child, but he was more than willing to smack down with Chili when Chili's temper flared on the fateful day his brothers went missing. He regretted what happened so deeply that the trauma of losing them made him change his entire persona and ignore his whole past life in order to cope.  

He doesn't know his brothers all that well, thanks to their parents pitting them against one another as children in order to isolate them. That being said, he's still familiar with some of their habits, likes, and dislikes.

♈ Alder: The region's champion who he met at his and his brothers' restaurant; Alder came by to try the restaurant on an afternoon when the place was empty, and through his kindness in forgiving Cilan's mistake when the triplet tripped on his way to deliver his order, the Champion captured their awe and gratitude. Unfortunately he never picked up that there was something wrong, and so he did not rescue the triplets from their situation.

♈ Diantha: Visited the restaurant once and struck up a friendship with the triplets; though they quickly came to adore her, her visit to Unova was over all too soon and she had to return home. Too afraid to do something that may violate one of their parents' rules, the triplets did not maintain contact with her.

♈ Elesa: Cress met Elesa when he and his brothers travelled the region in their bid to get gym badges. Sweet and friendly, full of spark and life, Elesa's attitude towards the world was a welcoming change to the atmosphere of terror that Cress grew up in. She was loud, she was strong, she was not sorry for taking up space and showing off. She was everything his parents hated and it delighted him.  Elesa coaxed Cress's more fun loving side out, but like with Chili and Cilan, she could not break through his walls; though to the casual bystander he seemed decent friends with Elesa, Cress kept his family life a carefully guarded secret, never admitting either that or the effects such a horrid life had on his psyche.  He no longer considers her, having left her behind with his old life when taking on his Colin persona.

♈ Ingo, Emmet, and Colress: Cress met the twins only once, when they were walking around outside the World Tournament, asking passerby if they'd seen Colress. Chili seemed heartbroken by their story and promised to keep an eye out for their missing friend, but Cress, embittered, was not moved, though he had the decency and the good sense to say nothing to the twins about it.

♈ Shadow Triad: The one thing of his past life that he would acknowledge with instantaneous violence.

-given that their history was the same up until when they split off, Chili and Cress's histories are basically verbatim until that point.