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"Perhapse now it is best to look forward to the future..."

Childhood - [0 - 10]

The room was practically beaming with pride when Dwire was born. Despite her mother expecting a son, she was every bit as happy about her new born daughter as she would of been otherwise, though, they kept the more masculine name none the less. From the very beginning there were high expectations for the young Litten, though the pressure of those expectations were yet to weight on her. If her mother could, Dwire's training would of began the first week of her being born, but alas, babies need time to grow. That said, she was to be the next head of the boot camp her mother, Biyu, ran in Strident. It was a discipline camp, meant for unruly and weak children to learn, grow and train to be strong, respectful, working members of Strident.

Said camp wasn't any walk in the park, as you might expect from really anything that resides in Strident. Hard battles, endurance training, hunting, battling feral's, scaling Mt. Thunder, and so on, if said camp had been ran in any place other than Stident, health and safety concerns from parents likely would of popped up. It also didn't help that Biyu, and the other 'teachers' working at the boot camp wen't exactly the friendly type. Students were often treated to verbal abuse and hard punishments for stepping out of line. Most students learned to stay in line, often turning a blind eye to those who speak against their authority figures, as it'd often lead to punishment of the lot of them.

On the flip side, Irwin, Dwire's father didn't actually know the extent of what happened at the camp. He was a large lumber jack and spent most of his week chopping would and hauling it all the way back up to Strident. When he was home it was often late and the hard working man was too exhausted and sore from his strenuous job to really do much on his days off. The longest break he'd taken since he and Biyu had wed was the first couple months that Dwire was born. While Biyu continued to work at the camp, Irwin took care of his daughter back home. He was a good man, fairly deadpan and not exactly the most knowledgeable when it came to infants, but he did his best.

As the months turned into years, Dwire began attending daycare, daycare eventually turned into kindergarten and her introduction to training- or, at least that was when she was suppose to start her introduction to training. Dwire's mother was pregnant again when Dwire was only five, those months of her mothers pregnancy was the longest she'd actually spent around her mother.. and honestly, the best memories she has with her. Everything went smoothly and soon a shiny baby girl Litten was born, her name being Millicent. Being a big sister was magical to Dwire, though.. it was also strange. The first words Dwire's mother spoke to her after her baby sister was born were "It looks like you have a competitor now, huh?". Although those words didn't exactly make sense to the toddler at the time, in the years to come they'd slowly become more clear.

The day training began everything changed. Dwire's mother had a much harder tone in her voice, even if it wasn't necessarily mean (yet). Although training was light at the beginning, it was still... rough, for a now six year old, though nothing Dwire couldn't handle. Both elementary school and training trucked on, both becoming harder as she got older, Dwire's mom being much harsher with her training exercises and school just being... difficult in general. Dwire enjoyed school, but the work wasn't exactly her cup of tea- her short attention span made it difficult to sit still and do the small assignments she was given, but aside from that she got along well with the children in her classes. On the flip side, going home was slowly becoming dreaded for her. On one hand, she was always excited to see her little sister after getting home, but on the other hand, it wasn't like she ever got to play with her. Rather, she was expected to do small warm up exercises outside until Biyu got home, then training would begin with her.

Teenage - [11 - 17]

Verbally Biyu began getting more and more intense with Dwire, and the moment elementary school ended, things really took a turn for the worst. School ended here and the full time Boot Camp began. The 11 year old cat was a mixture of excitement and dread, this was a big change for her and the fact that she'd been training well and hard enough in her mothers eyes was... rewarding! Even if her admiration for her mother was slowly turning into fear. Along with her first day, Dwire was also gifted with a Hidden Power TM (that turned out to be electric!) from her father, both a sign of how proud of her he was and how sorry he was for not being around as much has he wished he could be.

That's where the good parts end though, now the pressure was on. Training went from Monday to Friday, kids lived at the camp and would be allowed to go home on the weekends if their families lived in Strident. Aside from that, the training was constant, everyone was up at 5am and from then to 6pm they'd battle, train, hike, and so on, only taking short breaks during the day to stretch and have lunch. Being the daughter of the head of the facility didn't do Dwire any favors either, in fact, it made things harder for her as her mother often expected her to be a role model for the other kids attending. This only tacked on more stress to the young Litten, thanks to never knowing when she'd be called up to example for the rest of her age group, or knowing if she made even a slight mistake, her mother was always watching. Not only that but the pressure was on for her to evolve as well- she needed to be bigger, stronger, she needed to stay ahead of the rest of the class.

When Dwire still didn't manage to evolve when the rest of her class began to, her mother would verbally barraid her in front of the class, shaming her for her lack of progress in some sick attempt to push her to work harder. And it worked, Dwire began training after training hours were over, pushing herself to the point that some nights she'd throw up. Anxiety and stress were constantly festering inside her, causing her to often avoid her classmates whenever she could, embarrassed, only seeing mockery and belittlement in their expressions, be it a figure of her imagination or not. She was merely 14 years old when all of this was going on as well, the fact that her little sister would also be joining the camp soon as well didn't help her anxiety either.

But soon enough, she did it, she evolved. It was while she was alone training after hours, sure she was 15, a little late, but god it felt so good. It was like in that moment everything that was weighing on her slid off her shoulders- she didn't even bother to look at herself before racing to present her new self to her mother. Her new form was met with at first surprise, then a quiet stare. It was.. uneasy, unexpected.. She wanted praise not... this. Dwire could feel her chest welling up with anxiety again as her mother looked her up and down and an unreadable expression. What did she look like? What does she see? Finally the Luxray spoke, her eyebrows furrowing "What, do you really think you have something to be proud of?". Dread hit the newly evolved Torracat like a buss, making her sick to her stomach. Her mother continued, pointing out how punty she was, look how small her hands are, shes short- what did she only grow an inch? It was embarrassing, so, so embarrassing, Dwire wanted to sink into the floor, hide. God she hated this she just wanted some kind of positive reinforcement.

This shame both drove and held Dwire back- as she'd often train harder, but at the cost of her personal health. It was up to her younger sister, who'd only recently started at the camp, to calm her down and get her to rest, despite her protest. Biyus abusive language got progressively worse, often taking out her frustrations not only on Dwire, but other students in her class. Luckily, none of them connected it to being because of Dwire, but rather just... Biyu being a bitch, luckily keeping the Torracat free of any further neglect or abuse from her peers too.

Years dragged on and the only thing that slowly improved was Dwire's health, thanks to her younger sister being around. Millicent played a very positive role in Dwire's life, especially in the camp- having a family member praise and appreciate her and look up to her was refreshing. Outside of training hours, the two often hang around each other, training and just... talking. A much nicer change of pace for Dwire.

Adulthood - [18 - 23]

However, things took a turn for the worst again in a much different way this time. It was april, one of the worst times of years for lightning storms and ground strikes, and a newly 18 Dwire was being taken up the mountain to practice lightning control. Now, it's very obvious with the Torracat not being an electric type, she would never be able to redirect lightning without seriously hurting herself, thus she was just brought along for the training part of it.

Training was simple, just all grounding yourself and how to move your arms and use electric moves to draw in the lightning to you and release it elsewhere. Dwire often sat out when actual training with lighting came into play, always watching closely, curious of how her peers make it work. There was about two weeks of this training before "finals" came up, where the students would scale the mountain again and redirect real lighting. Although Dwire wasn't participating in the finals, her and some younger classes were brought up to come and watch their peers, though they had to sit rather far from the testing grounds. -- Things were going quite smoothly, most students performing successfully, but it wasn't until around the end that something caught Dwire's eye- her sisters wrist weights sparking. They were metal. Before she could say anything though, she realized Why they were sparking- the student up next clearly didn't have enough juice in their electric move to draw in the bolt, so it was being drawn to the next target, Millicents weights.

In a swift movement, Dwire jumped to her feet in an attempt to block the bolt, she has 3 seconds to get ready- stance, hands, Hidden Power, and BAM. She successfully redirected the lighting- though, "successfully" was questionable. This wasn't an attack, it was real lighting straight from the sky, it wouldn't just paralyze her or knock her out- it practically roasted her arms. Her fire typing prevented her from taking any real crippling damage, but she wasn't exactly unscaved. She blacked out.

It wasn't until the next day she woke up in the hospital, arms bandaged and feeling as if she was being stung repeatedly under her skin. While bedridden, her father, despite not being at the incident, explained what happened, and it wasn't' until the next day she seen Millicent again, looking guilty as all hell. Dwire had bad nerve damage in both her hands, leaving them scarred up her forearm with small trailing tendrils that looked like mini lightning bolts themselves. She'd be stuck with bad tremors in both hands for the rest of her life, and any serious strain on her hands would only make them worse over time.

Thus, she wasn't attending camp for awhile, spending more time at home either with dad or alone. She couldn't do much for a month or so, she was stuck doing small exercises to keep her legs in shape, but her arms were suffering serious muscle loss from the lack of use. Eventually, her arms and hands were healed enough to use again, but it was slow going- she couldn't exactly just jump into her regular training again.

As soon as Biyu took the time to realize this, she began to snap at Dwire once again- shaming her for not just letting her careless sister take the blow, as she was going to have to be moved down into a younger age group to re-train herself and build her muscle again (though, it wasn't exactly that simple). It was humiliating, sitting in on the younger classes. Although the younger students showed great interest and admiration in Dwire, she couldn't help but take a serious blow to her pride. This went on and on for years yet again- she didn't get to graduate with her age group- although not like she'd be leaving the bootcamp after anyways, and she was trapped in the same abusive cycle as before.

Disaster - [23]

Until one day- the world seemed to fall apart. It was the biggest storm Strident- and what Dwire would later find out, the world, had ever seen, it was a disaster. Lighting struck at an alarming rate, rock slides took out parts of the city, everything was a mess. Dwire was at camp a the time, which turned out lucky for her as she was surrounded by rather strong camp mates who'd help protect her and their other peers. At this point, she was strong enough to help in the struggle, and managed to make it into a shelter safely with minimal injuries from collapsing buildings and falling rocks. Her mother and little sister were also ok despite the severity of the storm, but their father, who was out working at the time of the disaster was out at work and wasn't so lucky. They found out three days later that he'd died from a rockslide coming up the mountain along with the majority of his co-workers.

Post Disaster - [23]

Strange as it felt, Dwire had a hard time being emotional over the death of her father- she'd seen him so little growing up that she didn't really have a connection with him. It didn't help either that Biyu was quick to try to push it to the back of her head, it was time to WORK, there was so much to do! Most of the bootcamp was TRASHED and she needed to help clean it up! Like it or not! And, like she always had, she followed her mother's orders

The next three months dragged on, a lot was changing... the world was changing- Guilds were popping up? She never left the city much, but she heard though word of mouth that the land was beginning to twist into deep mazes that were easy to get trapped in, thus the Guilds were forming to combat them and rescue those who've been lost. The more she heard of these establishments, the more thoughts began to raise in her mind, she could leave. Everstone wasn't too far from Strident... sure, it wasn't exactly the safest trip given recent events but it was DOABLE- no to mention the treatment from her mother was getting more and more grating as the days went by, it was insufferable, and even though she hadn't been able to feel much for her fathers death, the fact that her mother BLATANTLY disregarded it caused more and more loathing to well up inside of her. And so, that was that.

After having a talk with Millicent, she packed her bags and left one night- she was an adult after all WHAT WAS HER MOTHER GOING TO DO. What was her mother going to do.... The thought weighed heavy on her mind but she couldn't just... not leave at this point.... she NEEDED freedom... something new something better something worth living an training for. Leaving Millicent behind wasn't easy, but she had to, and so, the trek to Everstone began.