| History | - History:
Colress was born in Lacunosa Town in Unova to an older couple who were surprised to see that they still could have children. Even though he was unexpected, his parents were excited to finally have a child to raise as their own. Both of them used to be scientists who worked for a large company in Castelia until they decided to settle down and work on some of their own projects. They especially had an interest in inorganic Pokemon. As a child, Colress had a curiosity about the world that could not be quenched, and he often spent his time reading once his parents could no longer answer his questions. Unfortunately, when he tried talking to his peers about the new things he was learning, they mocked him and called him names. They also grew frustrated at how he always had a question for the teacher, and how he would show off his knowledge. This killed the child's desire to talk to others, and he retreated into himself. His parents worried for the young boy, and decided to try giving him a Pokemon. He had a certain fascination with the Klink line, so they found one for him. The child perked up almost instantaneously when he saw the pokemon, and when his parents told him that he could keep it, he had a smile that wouldn't leave for hours. He decided to name the Gear Pokemon C3PO after a character from one of his favorite movies.
When he reached the age of ten, his family gave him the option to go on a Pokemon journey or to continue with school. Colress was far too interested in his studies to want to go on a journey, however. Given how most children went on a journey at this point, he found himself mostly alone, this time due to his own decisions. He was extremely smart, and this meant that he ended up skipping grades. His parents supported him as much as they could, and he was happy because of all the things he was learning. He also helped his parents with the Pokemon that they studied, however they told him to be careful not to give any of them special treatment. He took this with the traditional childish enthusiasm and took the words to heart.
One day, his parents went to visit Mistralton City, and he decided to explore the nearby area while they conducted some business. His eyes were immediately drawn to the Celestial Tower, and he remembered learning about the various ghosts that could be found there. There was also the strange bell that was found at the top, and he wondered if the rumors about it were true. In order to test it though, he'd have to find someone else to ring the bell. He thought there would probably be someone else around that he could ask when he got there. He kept C3PO outside of his Pokeball for convenience and safety. Unfortunately, he didn't know that most of the ghosts there were Litwik which had a type advantage over his Klink.
While heading up the tower, a boy with grey hair and wearing white crashed into Colress. He was carrying an unconcious Klink, and there were several Litwik following him. C3 tried to protect the two boys, but he was soon knocked out. The group of Litwik seemed overly interested in the pair, but then a loud beeping sound caught their attentions, and a strange alien-like Pokemon shooed the ghosts away. After this, a boy in black who looked just like the one who crashed into Colress came up and started yelling at his brother for climbing the tower with only a Klink. The boy in black then noticed Colress, saw him in a similar predicament as the brother, and grabbed his brother by the ear and Colress by the arm as he dragged them out. The Elgyem escorted the trio back to the door, and a Litwik followed after them.The litwik was soon caught by the boy in black. After making sure the boys were safely out of the tower, the Elgyem was going to leave them, but he felt bad leaving the three children by themselves with only two pokemon to protect them. The Elgyem was curious about the child, and he wanted to know how Colress made it so far with only one Pokemon. When he later figured out that the child wasn't even a trainer, the Pokemon was confused. Usually, the children that made it to the tower were trainers. The Cerebral Pokemon wondered what human children did if they didn't chose to be trainers. So he decided to follow the kid, just to see what he did.
The boy in black eventually introduced himself as Ingo Gainsboro and called the one in white Emmet as he dragged the two back to the twins' house in Mistralton. Mrs. Gainsboro was originally ecstatic at the twins bringing a new "friend' home, but she quickly changed her tune when Ingo made them tell her what they were doing. She proceeded to fuss out both of the offenders and made Colress call his parents to tell them what had happened. Afterwards, she took the boys and the unconcious Klinks to the Pokemon center to be healed. She had been baking cookies when the boys and Pokemon came in, and when she heard what the little Elgyem had done, she gave him some of the cookies. This made the alien pokemon make beeping noises, and Colress immediately named him R2D2. The name gave Emmet much confusion since he hadn't watched the movies that Colress was referencing. Colress demanded to remedy it, and made him and Ingo watch the first movie while they were waiting for Colress's parents to show up. The only reason that Colress wasn't punished immediately was that his parents were so proud to see that their child had made friends. The three were practically inseparable until Colress had to leave, but they made promises to keep in contact with each other. The three children called each other a lot, and when the twins finally decided to go on their own Pokemon journey, they went to Colress's home in Lacunosa to visit.
When Colress was in high school, his parents finally finished their study on inorganic Pokemon, and they had three Pokemon that had grown attached to the small family. This group consisted of two Magnemite and a Beldum. One of the Magnemite had grown attached to Colress, so he took them as one of his Pokemon, while his parents kept the other two. They allowed him to choose the nicknames of all three pokemon, He decided to name his own Magnemite Ebon Hawk, after a fictional spaceship. The other Magnemite was named Magneto for a character that had magnetism powers, and the Beldum was dubbed Spock after a character on a show that he and his father enjoyed watching together. His parents, for old time's sake, decided to train their Pokemon and encouraged their son to watch. He found battling fascinating, especially how it encouraged people and Pokemon to form powerful friendships. He and his three Pokemon trained for a little bit, but he eventually fell out of doing it when school demanded more and more attention. When Colress graduated, he wanted to follow in his parents's footsteps and become a Pokemon researcher. He loved Unova since it was his home, but he wanted to go to another region so he could see different Pokemon and ways of life. Since he gave up being a trainer, he wanted to at least travel a little. He eventually decided on a college in Lumiose City of the Kalos region. That was a region where there was talk of some kind of evolution that could only be achieved by bonding with one's Pokemon.
Though Colress was sad to leave his parents and friends behind, he was excited to finally go out on his own. Unfortunately, even when he made it to the university, the fact that he was younger than most of the other students made it difficult for him to even talk to them. He was intimidated by the extremely large age gap, and most of them seemed to ignore him since he was a kid in their eyes. In order to counteract the loneliness, he threw himself into his studies. He made it through his Bachelor's degree relatively easy, and he decided to work all the way towards a doctorate, like his parents. His parents kept sending support and love event though they were so far away, and his pokemon often kept him company. His two friends also made a point to call whenever possible, and that also helped to stave off his loneliness.
He had one year left in his doctorate program when he encountered a pair of local policemen standing at his dorm room door. They seemed shocked at his youthful appearance, and asked if he was Colress Gannon. He answered in the affirmative, and they informed him that his parents had been in a car accident. They didn't survive. The news floored him, but he sent the policemen on their way before he broke down crying in his bed. C3PO, R2D2, and Ebon tried to comfort the twenty-one year old, but he cried until the wee hours of the morning. The two people he loved most were gone, and he didn't even get to say goodbye.
As soon as the Gainsboro family heard about what happened, Ingo, Emmet and their parents did their best to get into contact with Colress and comforted him. Since he was coming straight to Unova, they waited for him at the airport. Mr. and Mrs. Gainsboro helped Colress get the funeral arranged and settle all the affairs, and Ingo and Emmet were his emotional rocks at this point. Colress also received Magneto and Spock, and the two Pokemon were almost as dismayed. During the funeral, the twins stood with him to make sure other people there didn't bother or distress him too much. As part of settling the affairs, Colress had to decide what to do with his old childhood home. The brothers pushed him to sell it since he only seemed to be saddened when he went there, but he didn't want to. The debate kept going until Colress finally lied and said that we would. After everything had been settled, he had to head back to Kalos to finish his doctorate. To help him through that last year, the Gainsboros kept in contact with him as much as possible and sent him various packages to let him know that they still cared. When he graduated, they made a point to visit him and celebrate with him.
A chance meeting with a man who said that he was part of a Pokemon advocacy group would forever alter his fate. Ghetsis hired the fresh out of doctorate program Colress to run experiments and the like for Team Plamsa. Ingo had told Colress that Ghetsis and the group gave him a bad feeling, but Emmet and Colress were rather convinced that Ingo was just imagining things. Ghetsis gave Colress free reign to research what he liked; however he gave special funding to studying the bonds between humans and Pokemon. Since this was something that he was already interested in given his time in Kalos, he saw no problem in giving extra time and effort in the research. Since the front of Team Plasma was a Pokemon's rights group, he thought he was researching things for the benefit of Pokemon and humans. Ghetsis encouraged Colress's workaholic nature, and never bothered to assign other people to work with him.
After Colress had been working with Team Plasma for a while, he got a call from Emmet, and Emmet couldn't even speak properly. Colress heard someone else take the phone, and Ingo's voice was shaky. That alone scared Colress, for Ingo was usually the rock of their group. Eventually, Ingo finally got his news out; their parents were dead. They had been killed when a powerful Pokemon had started rampaging and used Earthquake. The building they were in crumbled, and they had not survived. Colress dropped everything immediately to go see Ingo and Emmet, and he didn't particularly care if his boss was peeved or not. He stayed with them for the funeral and a while afterwards until he knew he had to go back to work.
When Ghetsis started speaking publically, both of the twins wanted to speak with Colress about something serious. They believed that Ghetsis was trying to get all Pokemon seperated from humans, and Colress was adamant that Ghetsis only meant the abused Pokemon. This escalated into an argument that was never really resolved, and the twins and he parted on bad terms. The argument put a massive strain on their relationship until they suddenly stopped speaking to him after another one of Ghetsis's speeches. There were no parting words or explanations, and even though he tried contacting them, they never responded. Some of his doubts of the twins finally giving up on him came to a head, and he felt his heart shatter again. First he lost his biological parents, then he lost the people who were like second parents to him, and now he lost his two closest friends for no apparent reason. The emotional pain he was going through was so great that the thought entered his head that maybe he might be better off not caring anymore. These thoughts were heavily reinforced by Ghetsis, and Colress started working on killing his emotions. He was sadly able to do so.
Ghetsis also pushed the young scientist to do some things that were morally ambiguous in his studies, with the excuse that it was for learning purposes. He had no idea what Ghetsis was planning to do with his research, and only after the assault on the Pokemon league did he fully understand that Ghetsis was attempting to seize power. The research in Pokemon bonds? Ghetsis only cared about trying to ensure that one of the dragons of legend bonded with his son. Also, some of his other pieces of research that Ghetsis encouraged all pointed toward Ghetsis manipulating his son to be the perfect pawn that could also control the dragon. Seeing his research being applied in such a way was disturbing, and he started to fear and resent the sage. However, the scientist was still interested in seeing the results involving his research come to fruition. Fortunately, the plan didn't work in Ghetsis's favor.
After the fiasco, Ghetsis came back with his earlier facade completely gone. Ghetsis now demanded that Colress stop all research projects, and only focus on researching utilizing Pokemon as weapons. Ghetsis's reasoning? All of the "touchy feely" stuff that Colress had been looking into was too hard to control, and it didn't have any effects on a Pokemon's power. Colress had evidence that appeared to directly oppose this, but Ghetsis shot him down with vague reasoning. This grated on Colress severely since Ghetsis was ignoring the purpose of science to only further his own power. It also didn't help that Ghetsis shut down various other projects for no reason other than he didn't want to fund them anymore.
At this point, Colress did consider leaving Team Plasma, but Ghetsis surprised him by making Colress the new "leader." He knew that his position was essentially a figurehead, and that Ghetsis would be the one pulling the strings. If he agreed to this, he would be stuck as Ghetsis's pawn, but he would have the ability to potentially stop him if his theory was correct. He just had to find the right trainer. Colress stepped in as the head of the new Team Plasma, and he did Ghetsis's bidding as he searched. In order to appear more "professional" for Team Plasma, Colress decided to cut his hair. However, before he cut it completely, he wanted to do something kind of silly. It had been a while since he did anything with his hair, so he decided to cut his hair short, but he left his blue streak at its original length. With some hair cement and wires, he put the hair in a spiral that almost went around his head. Unfortunately, he didn't count on how difficult it was to remove the product, so he had to face Team Plasma with a really strange hair piece. He walked around as if he did it on purpose, and Ghetsis seemed to be aggravated with it. Colress was rather angry with Ghetsis in general, but he didn't want to push the man into anger quickly. He decided to leave his hair as is as a sign of defiance to the man with a huge ego.
Two years later, while Team Plasma was in the Castelia Sewers, he saw a young trainer battling with an unexpected prowess for someone at their age. He saw this as a chance to truly test his theory involving Pokemon bonds. If a trainer and Pokemon shared a strong bond, would that be able to stop a Pokemon whose power was brought out through other methods. Specifically, Ghetsis's methods. He decided to battle the trainer himself, so that he could see the trainer and their pokemon in action. Since most of his Pokemon hadn't had serious training, he didn't expect to win, but he knew that he found the person he was looking for just in time.
The trainer inspired him to finally attempt battling others, and he found that he enjoyed it. With a majority of his Pokemon being steel type, he also had a strong advantage over most younger trainers. His Pokemon liked getting to come out and train since he usually kept them in their Pokeballs and also approved of the decision to start battling since this was the happiest they'd seen him in a long time. Colress didn't notice, but working for Ghetsis had drained the scientist emotionally and mentally. He had been withdrawing more and more into himself, and battling seemed to bring a spark back into his eyes. It inspired him to have even more enthusiasm for his experiement. As he traveled around, he unexpectedly picked up a Rotom. He didn't plan on keeping it, so he chose not to name it at first. However, they had a mind of their own, and would often insist on staying outside of their Pokeball. Colress found this somewhat irritating, but he put up with the excitable electric/ghost. As he battled and traveled with the Rotom, he grew to care for the prankster, and he decided to name them Agent Smith.
Since Ghetsis was really close to obtaining Kyurem, he didn't keep as close an eye on Colress as he normally would have, and Colress took advantage of this to encourage the young trainer to oppose Ghetsis as they met across Unova. He also gave the trainer hints whenever he thought that the trainer might be stuck. One day, Ghetsis finally obtained Kyurem, and some of the weapons and technology that Colress had tested and made finally saw some use. To make completely sure that the trainer would come fight Ghetsis, he encouraged Zinzolin to freeze the City of Opelucid. The team had to go there anyway to obtain the Gene Splicers, but it was Colress's idea to freeze the town. The ice weapon worked so much better than expected, and the sheer magnitude of the damage stirred something even in Colress's frozen heart. He decided that Ghetsis needed to be stopped, and later hunted down the trainer to give them a hint on where to find the Plasma Frigate and a device to remove the Pokemon that was blocking the entrance.
When the trainer found him in the frigate, he was ecstatic. His plan worked, but for one final test, he challenged the trainer to a battle. He gave them a run for their money, but they were able to beat his team. He decided not to use Agent Smith for that fight since he was weaker than the rest of his team, and he didn't want to put the small Pokemon into a fight where they would get needlessly hurt. Soon after Ghetsis left the frigate to go to the Giant Chasm with the trainer on his tail, Colress waited until he saw Kyurem leave the chasm, and he took the ship and left. He didn't really care if Ghetsis wanted to do anything more with the team, and he disbanded Team Plasma. Some of the grunts didn't know what to do now that the team was gone, so he anchored the ship near the old P2 laboratory and let them figure out what they needed. As he waited for each of them to leave, he trained his Pokemon even more. After about a year, he was finally able to leave the ship, and he went back to Lacunosa Town. For about two years, he continued to train his Pokemon while he looked for a new job.
One day, he happened to turn on the TV, and there was news involving a sickness infecting Pokemon in Johto. Curiosity piqued, he paid close attention to the report. It didn't have a lot of information, unfortunately, and he didn't think much on it until sometime later. Then there were reports of Pokemon coming back from the dead to kill anything that was still alive. This caught his attention, and he wanted to know more about this supposed "zombie virus." There was a call in Lacunosa town for people to release their Pokemon, but Colress couldn't bear the thought of leaving his friends like that. Since there was a military presence trying to enforce this rule, Colress had to take his Pokemon and run. He wasn't able to grab a lot of things other than some basic supplies, and he regretted not grabbing the chain with his parents’ rings. He spent most of the Epidemic hiding and observing the undead, and hoping that he can learn more about this strange virus that woke the dead.
One day during their travels, R2D2 sensed something strange on the outskirts of Cherrygrove City, and he warned Colress about it. The scientist was curious, however, and he wanted to see what could have caused this feeling of dread. He found the Harbinger Ariados, who then slaughtered three of the Pokemon he had out. C3PO, Ebon Hawk, and Agent Smith were killed in front of him, and he couldn't stop it. She would have killed him too if it wasn't for the fact that Agent Smith had distracted her long enough for Spock to drag him away. The understanding that it was his fault that his Pokemon had died and that they died for his foolish curiosity broke the man. He realized how frozen he had allowed his heart to become, and that he had hurt so many because of this.
After spending a few days recovering in New Bark Town, Black, the original person to foil Ghetsis's plans, found Colress. After reading out Colress's charges, Black was going to shoot the scientist, and Colress would have let himself die that day. However, Spock, R2D2, and Magneto had other plans, and they took Colress and ran. Thanks to Spock's agility and limited ability to float, they escaped over water and eventually found their way to the area around HQ. A scout found them and directed them towards HQ proper, and, despite Colress's fears of being kicked out for his previous crimes, they were able to stay. It was likely that there was no one from Unova who had power that recognized him, and that was probably the reason he was allowed in.
For the first week of his stay there, he was put on janitorial duty while a new influx of refugees were being processed. The mindless work and an abusive supervisor didn't help with his declining mental and physical health. Once they finally processed him, it was revealed that Colress was a scientist, and he volunteered to work on cure research or anything else that might be needed. He was accepted to work on cure research, and despite having more stimulating work, his health was still declining. He would often work himself into the ground looking for a cure because he didn't want others to have to experience the pain he suffered. It was an added bonus that he wouldn't sleep much because of it since he didn't want to deal with his nightmares. He would forget to eat on multiple occasions, and he often wouldn't bother trying to fix it either. These habits worried R2 since it seemed like the man was still set on trying to kill himself, but this time he found a slower way to do it.
After about two months, R2 started trying to make Colress see other parts of HQ since he mostly spent his time working or in his room. After a late night of working, again, R2 pushed the scientist towards the library to read something light. Colress used to enjoy reading fiction a lot, and R2 thought it would be good for Colress to find something else to do in his free time. There he found a kid reading one of his old favorite comics aloud, and, in a moment of whimsy, he started quoting the next lines. After a moment of awkwardness, the kid continued reading aloud and waited expectantly for Colress to continue, and he decided to keep going until they finished the book. The boy introduced himself as Wally, and the two started talking about the story and other things long into the night. Eventually, Wally's Gardevoir, Orion, and R2 realized that the two humans needed to go to sleep, and the two humans parted on friendly terms and with promises to meet up again later. Just this one encounter brought a smile to Colress's face that R2 hadn't seen in a long time, and R2 made sure that Colress continued to meet up with Wally. After a few meetings, however, Colress realized that Wally had no idea who he was, and the thought bothered him a lot. Colress felt that the kid needed to know if they were to continue being friendly, and if Wally were to find out from someone else, he'd definitely get angry with him. At the start of the next meeting, Colress told Wally about his past and the terrible things he had done. He gave himself no slack, and he didn't mention several factors that showed a larger story. Wally understandably stormed out, and Colress couldn't help but feel that that was what he deserved. R2 realized what happened, and chased after Wally and told him details that Colress had ommitted since he refused to give himself any slack. After this, Wally came back and chose to give the scientist a chance, and that gave the man some desperately needed hope.
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