Hazel the Human

Hazel's earliest memories consist of her older brother teaching her basic skills and playing with her. Everything from how to tie her shoes, the alphabet, and how to walk quietly through the house and the best hiding spots. Mother was a kind but unfortunately distant figure due to her failing health, so she relied on her brother to answer questions and help her.

Father was an entity she tried to not think about if he wasn't there. She could always tell if Father was home just by the way Daniel moved. If his steps turned light and quick, then she needed to stay out of the main living room at all costs. She only had to make the mistake a few times before she finally just stayed in her or her mother's room if Father's beat up car was in the driveway.

Anytime she made a mistake that angered Father, Daniel would do something even worse immediately afterwards. She didn't understand why at first, but it finally clicked one day that he did it so that Father's attention would be drawn away from her. It worked frighteningly well since it seemed like he disliked Daniel even more than her.

Granted, Father also didn't like that she got sick often, and had to be taken to the doctor's office several times. Mother was too frail to be doing it constantly, and Daniel was too young to be her guardian, so Father had to take her himself. Generally, he only bothered if she had a bad fever, and anything less was ignored. Daniel spent many nights trying to comfort her through the pain, and he would read or tell her stories to help her sleep. Daniel was the one who would put cold cloths on her head and would clean up any mess she made before their father could get mad about it.

For a while, all she knew Father would do to Daniel for punishment would be backhands for percieved slights, or occasionally, Daniel would be locked in the basement for a few hours. There had been a few times where Father either forgot or intended to leave him in there, but she knew how to work the lock and would let him out when it felt safe enough.

She truly valued the time when Father wasn't home and was extremely happy when he would spend weeks away without any contact. This was when she and Daniel could act more like the kids they were instead of unwanted housepets. She got to meet and interact with the Pokemon hiding in and around the house too, and she truly loved the creatures. Unfortunately, Father didn't like them at all and had banned them from the house, so they couldn't properly bring them in. That didn't stop the smaller ones from finding a way, though.

Things came to a head when she couldn't stay quiet anymore. Their mother finally passed in her sleep, and in his anger, their father blamed his children for her death. They didn't know the true depths of his anger on the matter until he came back from a drinking binge after her passing. Even though Daniel had arranged everything needed for a funeral, and had organized the papers, Father didn't care. When the car drove up, Daniel hid Hazel in her room, and he waited for Father to come in.

The man basically came into the house swinging, and once he found Daniel, he knocked the teenager to the ground. The sound made Hazel peek out, and it looked like Father intended for Daniel to join Mother in the afterlife. Hazel panicked and ran at Father while yelling at him to stop. Not even sweating, Father backhanded her, which knocked her off her feet. She could see his leg draw back for a kick, but before the blow landed, Daniel jumped on Father with an intensity she had never seen before.

She had to beg for Daniel to stop once Father stopped moving. She wasn't sure if he was alive or dead, but she knew that Daniel would get in trouble for daring to strike back. When Daniel told her to pack, she tried, but her shaking hands and high emotions overcame her. Daniel's frantic packing came to a halt as he tried to comfort her, but he was getting desperate for time. He called for the Pokemon they had befriended to help calm her, and he finished grabbing necessities and a few sentimental items.

Then, they ran. She wasn't sure when they finally left Galar, but she felt a little more at ease once the people who would hurt them for defending themselves were far away. Unfortunately, they ran into issues with money not long after getting to Unova. Daniel borrowed and trained her Pokemon along with his and would battle other trainers for money. He was decent at it, but with her hospital costs adding up, they were always teetering on the brink.

They got lucky when an archaelogist that was passing through developed an interest in Daniel's knowledge of history and curious nature. Originally, Daniel wasn't sure if he trusted the man, but their need for money overrode his concerns. Hazel also knew that Daniel had really wanted to go into archaelogy, so she pushed him towards it. She believed he deserved something nice for once.

Daniel ended up loving it. Even if they were still a little tight on money, the extra income supplemented with her taking over battling when she could put them back on track. She couldn't go out on his adventures, but she still loved hearing about them when he came back. In the meantime, she focused on her studies as well, trying to enjoy her life.

Of course, all good things come to an end, and when a massive Epidemic came out, she had been placed in a quarantine zone when she exhibited signs of sickness. The humans who developed the disease all showed flu-like symptoms, and it was impossible to tell which was which early on. The part that devastated the world was that Pokemon who got sick from it would come back from the dead.

Her hospital was full of sick people, health workers, and all of their Pokemon. As people died in beds around her, she couldn't even get her own Pokemon because of the quarantine. She couldn't contact Daniel, either, and it felt as if the world was truly ending. When she started to recover from whatever illness she had contracted, no one was willing to let her out because of the confusion of what was happening.

Evacuations came and claimed the non-sick people and workers, but the quarantined people were all but left to die. There were a few workers who stayed and did the best they could, but they were massively understaffed by this point. The final straw was when a few undead came in and ravaged what was left of the humans. Hazel had heard the screaming and basically barricaded herself into her room and waited for the sounds to stop.

A few hours later, she heard something knocking on the door, and she originally refused to open it once she saw that there was a Pokemon on the other side. It wasn't until it held up some Pokeballs with stickers that she recognized that she panicked. She had to choose whether she trusted the Zoroark or not. Her loneliness and desperate want for her Pokemon won out, and she finally let the Zoroark in.

It also held a device that she vaguely recognized as a universal communicator. After cleaning it off with a little bleach, she put it on and spoke with the Zoroark. She was apparently the last human left in the hospital, and the Zoroark had been one of the worker's Pokemon. The last one left alive. They had a long conversation about what to do next, but the need for food dictated that they had to leave.

Now Hazel wanders the Epidemic world trying to find her brother. She can't travel for long periods of time, and when Winter seeps in, she has to stop somewhere for the cold months or otherwise risk getting sick again, but without the antibiotics or caretakers she once had.