Lance Blackthorn

History
Epic long in-depth history.

The pokémon universe Lance is from differs from the usual canon gameverse in terms of genre. The original games are specifically aimed at younger kids and so have young kids as their protagonists, performing feats that would be rather impossible in a realistic setting (eg, single-handedly taking down a mafia group). Lance’s world has taken a genre-shift into live-action, which means that many of the events taken care of by the child protagonists in the original canon are here dealt with by the authorities, of which Lance is one. Additionally, the relationship between the pokémon regions and ‘the real world’ is rather one-sided—due to a quirk of physics and psychic power there’s something of a barrier hiding the pokémon regions from the rest of the world. That said, there are minorities spread across the world who do know of the regions’ existence and are essentially colonies—including all-pokémon colonies.

Lance was raised by his single father in the Johto region, on the outskirts of Blackthorn County. When Lance was only ten his father and his father’s pokémon team were murdered by the local mafia group, known as Team Rocket; he was the only witness. Lance went to live with his uncle and cousin at the Blackthorn City Gym, but his passionate nature led to a volatile emotional state—driven by revenge, Lance ran away at thirteen. A year of travelling and committing misdemeanours in the name of ‘justice’ led to something worse: the manslaughter of a trainer who had beaten and in the process killed one of his own pokémon.

This act snapped Lance out of his downward spiral into crime. Horrified and with no one he dared to turn to, Lance fled up to Silver Mountain, where the most powerful pokémon dwelled. He expected to die—instead his dragons protected him despite his setting them free, and there they remained for almost three years. When he came down again and returned home a repentant man, he was of Elite-level power, a fact he only realised when helping to stop a raid by the Rockets—who, in the void left by Lance’s father and later his uncle, who had died of lung cancer while Lance was gone, had become a serious threat to the local government. Still wanting to find his father’s killer, and now understanding too well the nature of the abuse of power, Lance chose to join the League and at only seventeen took his father’s vacant position as the leader of the Elite Four.

The three years that followed turned Lance into the League’s golden boy, his methods and leadership helping to stop the Rockets’ rise to power in their tracks. It wasn’t enough: the Rockets still managed to secure enough of the League’s power base to execute their final plans with the intention of taking over the government. They began with numerous distracting missions, but led up to framing Lance for the theft of Silph’s equipment and the taking of hostages in the Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town. Their endgame began when they took over Saffron City to cover their takeover of Silph Co; doing so enabled them to steal the equipment needed to catch the transient Mewtwo for use as a weapon. Ultimately their plan failed when, in the process of executing it, their leader tipped his hand to reveal his identity: Giovanni, one of their own and supposedly the best friend of Lance’s father. Lance was cleared and he led a raid on Giovanni’s gym, in time to save three trainers from Pallet Town whom Giovanni had been using to test Mewtwo’s power. Giovanni was arrested, but the breaking of the Rockets’ power base also destabilised the League and the public’s faith in the League members had been shaken; despite this, Lance and those League members who were still trusted managed to hold the government together, and Lance was instated as Champion.

The state of the government was still fragile when Giovanni escaped less than a year after his arrest, and what remained of the Rockets was elevated to the level of an outright terrorist group as they attempted to regain their power, pressing the government’s stability through assassinations, frequent attacks and covert attempts to develop super-powered pokémon. The event with probably the most effect on Lance personally was an attempted assassination by an acquaintance of his, a policewoman. She invited him out for dinner and when they returned to her apartment things took a more intimate turn; he had her against the wall when she tried to stab him in the back with a knife. Luckily for him the blade flashed off a streetlight outside, attracting his attention, although his reflexes weren’t good enough to keep him from being slashed across his lower back. She was killed; he wound up in the hospital with spinal shock.

Also in this time came the breach of security regarding the outside world, in which it was discovered that the regions and their recent events were being cast as children’s games. At the time none of the regions with enough power to stop the security leak were stable enough to interfere, the combined landmass of Tohjo still recovering from Giovanni’s betrayal and Hoenn recovering from the devastation wreaked by the two Legendary pokémon Groudon and Kyogre. Instead Lance tabled the suggestion to use the occurrence as a plausible deniability stunt; considering the circumstances, it seemed the best recourse, even though later years proved the franchise to be far more popular than the League had initially hoped.

The situation between the League and the Rockets began to heat up once again when Lance was captured. With a combination of drugs, physical torture and psychic tampering the Rockets managed to brainwash him into believing he was one of them, effectively using both his skills and his presence to destabilise the League again. Although in their hands for nine months, seven of which he was an active Rocket agent, the brainwashing ultimately proved unsuccessful before he was rescued by League members, psychologically broken. Therapy was undertaken, but only proved effective when his memories of his time as a Rocket agent were psychically blocked until a time he is capable of handling them.

Giovanni, of course, took advantage of his time of weakness by stepping up the rest of his plans, beginning with breaking his people out of jail—though Lance, while still technically off-duty, responded. Following a successful—if interrupted, by Lance himself in the rescue of two children trainers—experiment on forced evolution at the Lake of Rage, Giovanni had his people take over the Goldenrod Radio Tower. Using the tower in combination with the newly tested evolution-coercion device and supplemental broadcast equipment on Silver Mountain, Giovanni intended to take the region—and the Indigo Plateau—hostage by causing the pokémon region-wide to both evolve and turn against their trainers. League reps managed to find Giovanni on the Mountain, rescuing the four children from New Bark Town—including Giovanni's own son—who had been present, and Lance was finally able to kill him.

Having succeeded in his lifelong goal, hailed as a hero, and still undergoing therapy for his previous trauma, at twenty-three, in 1997, Lance had very little left to do with himself. Still with severe PTSD and changed by his time as a Rocket—repressed though the memories were—he began abusing opiates. Unaware of his growing addiction, his family and friends encouraged him to do something he’d enjoy; in an effort to make them happy and to get away from the unceasing eyes on him, both public and private, he chose to take a vacation on the outside, spending months hitch-hiking across Asia. He was coming off a train in Russia when he realised the city he was in wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

Personality
If one could describe Lance in one word that word would be ‘driven’. After his father’s murder he had only one goal in mind: to bring the Rockets down. Being extremely volatile as a teen, this obviously led to actions he later regretted, the most relevant of which would be the count of manslaughter. Since then Lance has learned a control of his temper which has, in fact, earned him a reputation for being exceptionally cool under pressure—although his passion for his work is still quite obvious. The fear that he might lose control again has never left him, however, and the idea that he was capable of being as bad as those he wanted to bring down is an idea that haunts him still; it is his biggest incentive for not giving into his darker side. He’s been there, and he didn’t like it.

Having been betrayed several times in the past—first and foremost by Giovanni, but later by his policewoman friend—Lance doesn’t take trust or betrayal lightly. Trusting someone he’s only just met is nearly impossible for him, let alone someone he hasn’t met at all; as far as strangers are concerned he acts humourless and overly practical, serious, or focussed on work. He’s rarely ever intentionally condescending or arrogant, but his experience, confidence and independence can make him seem so to others. In addition, having been the target of numerous hitmen has left him—well, an uncharitable person would call him paranoid, but better word would be hyper-vigilant. It makes him restless and high-strung, as well as being an insomniac. All this, of course, makes it exceedingly difficult for him to strike up new friendships, let alone romantic relationships.

That said, he’s a very tactile, even affectionate and playful, person and he very much enjoys the company of people in his confidence—to the point of sleeping more comfortably if someone he knows is in the same room or sleeping with him. However, he has had a tendency to be intensely close-mouthed even to those he is closest to, mostly due to his desire to live up to peoples’ expectations. Of course, he doesn’t quite realise that the one with the highest expectations of all is him, and so the habit tends to burn him out at regular intervals. He will talk to certain people about his problems if pushed, but will generally not seek out someone to chat to about his problems of his own accord; for the most part he, and the people around him, tend to take the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ route and simply provide/accept support or comfort without highlighting the fact.

However, since his capture by the Rockets Lance has been in a rather dissociative state. Although the relevant memories were forcibly repressed, it’s as if his body remembers the trauma it has endured and simply can’t imagine anything being any worse—so he has trouble taking some things, especially danger and pain, or even his own trauma, seriously. The latter case is especially problematic, because although he appears more receptive to people probing his mood and will even answer honestly—which is a step up from his reflexive evasion of past years—he seems unable to grasp the motivation to do much about it. In addition he’s sometimes uncharacteristically flippant or calm and seems more dispassionate than he used to be—although the latter can also be chalked up to the fact that, since the Rockets have been permanently dissolved, he has absolutely nothing to drive him. He’s also developed a habit of speaking a thought aloud without meaning to or remembering having done so.

The worse thing is that in many ways he knows he’s not stable and that his emotions aren’t where they’re supposed to be; he knows he should be worried, but the fact that he isn’t is the most worrying part of all. Inwardly he craves regained control over his emotions, and this in combination with his complete lack of purpose is what contributed to his use of heroin—they help him feel things again, for a little while, whether positive or negative. However, at his core Lance is the kind of person who thrives most in adversity—it helps define him and scour away everything extraneous about who he is. If he had a purpose he’d probably have more luck coping with his PTSD.

Abilities
Lance's only 'supernatural' ability would be his training in mind-closure to protect from psychic attacks, though said ability is unstable at the moment due to his being psychically raped in the relatively recent past. Otherwise, apart from being genetically sturdy, he is a normal human with martial arts and heavy response training.

His equipment includes:

Harnesses

Headgear—rebreather mask/night-vision goggle combination.

Custom sidearm plus backup (both currently in Sam Tyler's custody) and a second backup bought in Bete Noire prior to his leaving the force.

Three blades; one on belt, one in boot, one spare (two are currently in Sam Tyler's custody).

Aerodactyl
Aerodactyl, or Ptera, is Lance's heavy hitter while in Bete Noire. She has a hide made of rock, enabling him to use her as a moving shield against bullets and the like, and thanks to her Ancient Power technique can manipulate stone. Her main special attack techniques are through fire, though she can also create biting attacks with ice and lightning. Her best senses are hearing and smell, though her eyesight is nothing to laugh at, and she is very attuned to wind-changes and vibrations in stone-like materials. She's also exceptionally fast while in the air, if somewhat more gangly on the ground, and the nature of Bete Noire's cityspace makes it relatively easy for her to hide among buildings.

In a lot of ways, Aerodactyl acts like a cat, being playful, contrary and possessive. She's also extremely loyal to Lance and could even be described as 'tunnel-visioned' when it comes to his health and safety, and is both easily insulted and quick to anger. Of the two, Aerodactyl is more likely to fly into a rage.

Dragonair
Dragonair, or Hakuryu, is who Lance uses when he needs to be versatile. Dragonair can fly despite being limbless and has an affinity for most basic elements--fire, lightning, ice, water, even wind--which he usually summons or breathes from a distance, making he and Aerodactyl a good complementary team. His serpentine form means he can get into narrow corridors that Aerodactyl simply can't manage, but at the same time his looks make him rather more conspicuous, a fact which is less of a problem now that Lance's team are known to the general population. He can manipulate weather, but doesn't do it often both because it can screw up the weather patterns and the city's atmosphere tends to make him feel sick.

Dragonair is far more reserved than Aerodactyl, preferring to remain out of view. He is helpful and gentle even to strangers, and perfectly willing to make or keep physical contact, but lacks initiative and is more inclined to accept orders or facts at face value.

In Bete Noire
Lance arrived in Bete Noire by train on 11 April, 2010, according to the city's calender, though by his reckoning it was the year 1998. Although initially told it was difficult to leave the city, Lance chose to test this assertion several ways: by attempting to attack the psychic barrier he believed to be around the city boundary, by trying to fly over it, and trying to dig under it, with the last option leading to a dragon-made underground tunnel encircling the city beneath the sewers. After a month of living on the fly and paying his way by offering his services as a handyman, Lance finally bowed to necessity and moved into the hostel. Soon after that he applied to the police force, offering his services to establish a heavy response division in response to the alien invasion he had helped counteract in his month of homelessness.

After that Lance spent a great deal of time investigating the city and its authorities, notably by searching the ruins beneath the city with the help of Daniel Jackson and going to the Magistrate for more information regarding the city and its inhabitants. Though distrustful of the Hierarchy, he did eventually help them by rounding up those affected by the Icon of Illyria, if only to ensure the people involved were treated well. He, along with Rachel Conway, was one of the people asked to retrieve the Magistrate's daughter, though he advised in favour of Rachel leaving so he could remain in the city to help defend against the anticipated zombie attack. He was present at the opening of one of the seven portals, and later collapsed the building in order to temporarily plug the hole.

During the invasion Lance and his small force of heavy response members were focussed on protecting the city's safehouses and escorting the citizens when movements was necessary. Lance himself airlifted people and supplies, and was the messenger between safehouses. When three of his father's zombified dragons came into the city, Lance (with Tony Stark's unwanted help) took down two of them and chose to kill his father himself rather than watch someone else do it again. This event heightened his previous disassociation and his drug use, essentially putting him on a mental precipice.

After the invasion Lance spent a great deal of time in clean-up, but something had to give, and did, when Dani Reese discovered his drug use and confronted him. When she refused to give it back, Lance snapped and beat her into a coma, an action which snapped him out of his disassociation and threw him back to unresolved trauma as a teenager. Lance went into essential hiding barring a few open network posts, his guilt causing him to quit cold turkey before turning himself in. Having lost any chance of further work with the force, Lance spent several weeks locked up, until wishes started coming true and he wished his memories away and then himself out of his cell. Although his memory began coming back, beginning with the memories most recent or most important to him, Reese had already opted for rehab and he didn't go back to jail, instead finding a home at Le Gode Hotel.

Still under parole, subject to regular medical checks to ensure he was still clean, and wrestling with cravings and depression and a very unhelpful therapist, Lance spent most of his time wandering the city in attempts to keep himself distracted. It was on one of these walks that he found an injured wolf, whom he took back to his apartment and patched up, aware that she was more intelligent than the average wolf but without knowing quite why. Although later discovering this wolf was Dani Reese, who he had known and then forgotten was a werewolf, the event sparked in him the idea of creating an animal shelter/vet clinic, a goal he has since been working toward while keeping an eye on the city strays.

Currently, Lance is vacillating between instinctively involving himself in political and law enforcement matters and trying not to on the basis that he can't be trusted. With the most recent event, he has relapsed into abusing opiates.

Significant people
Ava Lockhart: Lance first met Ava ostensibly by chance near the Sanctuary, and quickly figured out that she was psychic in some form. They next met in person at a party at the Sanctuary in which the patrons were drugged, and the two wound up having sex. That, perhaps, was what cemented Lance's trust in her despite their short acquaintence, since Lance's previous experience in sleeping with an acquaintence had ended up being nearly fatal. It was cemented further when she came to help him in his withdrawal, and later offered him comfort despite finding out that he had assaulted Reese. In Lance's head, comfort equals Ava.

Sefton Lowell: Lance first met Sefton at a party at Ba'al's, because Sefton, though in attendence, was withdrawn. His attitude made Lance's protective instincts kick in even to the point of getting his aerodactyl to watch the kid, and although Sefton often appeared reticent to have anything to do with him, he did in time confess his abilities (though his name Lance had to find out by accident). When Lance was in withdrawal and then jailed, Sefton talked to him to help with distractions, hid the fact he had assaulted someone, and even asked him for help. The fact that Sefton has acknowledged Lance's help and made him feel needed is one of the things that has helped Lance the most through his withdrawal.

Aimery le Gode: Lance and Aimery first met by accident at the old hostel, though Aimery had apparently already heard of him due to his dragons. Since Aimery was new, Lance offered his help to try and get him acclimatised. Unfortunately a sexual, drugged-up encounter after the zombie invasion meant that in Lance's head Aimery became inextricably tied with his drug use, and the man became a reminder for everything Lance had done wrong--further complicated when Lance discovered his pulling away had contributed to Aimery's suicidal thoughts. Despite everything, Aimery offered Lance a place to stay, though their friendship remains complicated and unstable.

Dani Reese: Reese and Lance served together on the force, with Lance often serving as backup for potentially explosive situations. It wasn't until after Reese confronted him regarding his drug use and he snapped and assaulted her that they became anything other than colleagues. On one hand, Lance knows that if it weren't for Dani he would never have realised or accepted that he was an addict, and that now he can at least try to help himself; he's grateful that she gave him that chance rather than throwing him in jail. On the other, despite his helping her when she was in wolf form, he is still very much holding onto his guilt and it will likely remain unresolved unless the issue is confronted.

Bruce Wayne: Bruce was actually one of the first people Lance met in Bete Noire, and at that point, although realising Bruce had some kind of training, there was little distrust there. It wasn't until Lance was on the force and ran into him independently investigating one of the Joker's crime scenes, leading to the realisation that Bruce was the crime lord LaRue, that the distrust arose. It was compounded when Lance realised a few days later that his report was missing any mention of the perpetrator being the Joker; he drew the conclusion that Bruce had doctored his report, and thereafter viewed Bruce with utmost suspicion and dislike. (In truth the mistake was Lance's, due to the combination of sleeplessness and his drug use.)