Mercy / Sam Niemi

[Sam [Mercy] Niemi]

NAME --

Mercy / Sam Niemi

GENDER --

Male

AGE --

Nineteen

AFFILIATION --

Neutral

CLASS --

Breeder

APPEARANCE -- 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 - Kaito [Vocaloid]

Mercy stands at around 5'0" tall, slightly shorter than average - although he tends to wear insoles and heels to make himself look slightly taller. He has a pretty average build, having no real muscle to show off and carrying a slight amount of weight - he has been described as looking quite soft because of this in the past. When it comes to complexion, Mercy is very pale and burns easily in direct sunlight - he tends to keep himself covered up to prevent this.

Mercy's hair is naturally a black hair, which he bleaches and dyes a bright blue by himself. It's extremely common to see him with a slightly different shade of blue after a long period of time, just because he's not that great at keeping the colour consistent each time. His eyes are also a bright blue, usually the same shade as his dyed hair. Mercy tends to keep his hair relatively short, not quite reaching his shoulders. Even if he tries to style it properly, Mercy's hair is almost always messy and out of control. Sometimes he uses clips to hold it back, and it's just long enough to put up in a very messy ponytail if he really needs it out of the way.

When it comes to clothing, Mercy isn't really into fashion - sticking with mainly casual and comfy clothes that feel good rather than look good. He wears a lot of hoodies and baggy t-shirts, only occasionally wearing something different or more fancy. He prefers blue or white clothing, and has an obvious preference for softer fabrics. One thing to note is Mercy's scarf, one of the only things that stays constant in most of his outfits. He doesn't really wear it for warmth most of the time, having it loose rather than wrapped around his neck. The colours of this scarf have dulled over time, and the fabric looks slightly worn away in places - but Mercy refuses to get rid of it.

Mercy has a lot of old scars in various areas across his body, and almost always has a new bandage or plaster whenever someone meets him. The newer injuries are mainly due to his clumsiness and tendency to rush into things without really thinking, but some of the older and larger scars are from when he was younger.

PERSONALITY --

Mercy comes across as a very friendly and trustworthy person, the kind of person who can light up a room just by being there. He usually finds making friends to be a easy task, especially if they're able to deal with his teasing and maybe even dish some out themselves. Mercy also has a tendency to make jokes, sometimes even at the expense of himself. He gives off the impression of someone who doesn't take things seriously, and while this is partly true it is also just a front he puts on.

Mercy is actually a lot more serious than he lets on, something he only really shows when he's alone and no one can see him. He tends to overthink things, and joking is part of a coping mechanism to help himself stop worrying so much. when he was a younger teen, Mercy found things a lot harder and even withdrew from most social situations for over a year - something he doesn't really want to happen again. He hides this part of himself so people like him more, and so he doesn't have to think or talk about things.

Despite his name actually being Sam Niemi, Mercy doesn't tell anyone this as a way to hide his family connections to Team Genetic and distance himself from them as much as possible. He really doesn't want to be noticed by anyone who may know his parents, and has a strong dislike for Team Genetic in general - especially how blinded his own parents were by their ideals. He just wants to take care of Pokemon, partly because he feels like he owes them some kind of apology or needs to make it up to them because of his family.

Mercy has a slight fear of fire, but not to the extent of a full phobia. He would have no issues fighting a fire-type Pokemon or even having one on his own team, but would prefer not to if he could help it. His main fear, and one he would pretend to not have if asked, is of poison-type Pokemon. Due to an incident in his mid teens, Mercy freezes up if a poison-type seems to be aggressive around him and struggles to keep up his appearance of no worries. Even if a poison-type Pokemon wasn't aggressive, the rise in anxiety is enough to make Mercy stumble through his words and make mistakes. He also has a phobia of getting or being ill in any way, and tends to remove himself from any situation where someone else may be ill.

HISTORY --

Mercy's birth was unplanned, not quite an accident although his parents might describe it this way at times. His parents were more interested in work than raising a child, so he was often looked after by well-payed carers instead. Mercy had no older siblings, and no one around his age that he could actually spend time with for the early years of his life. He also rarely saw his actual parents, their work for Team Genetic taking priority. When they were home they often ignored their only child, leaving whichever carer was there that time to deal with him. It wasn't unlikely for them to spend days away for work, if not weeks sometimes.

When Mercy was old enough to leave the house by himself, which in his parents eyes was around eight or nine years old, he finally started to see other children his own age. He found socialising difficult to begin with, but learnt what to do through mimicry and making jokes. While he didn't have that many friends, he was liked by at least a few of them enough to be invited when he was actually around near them.

Things got easier as Mercy entered double digits. Making friends was starting to feel simple, and he had more freedom than he'd ever had before. He would often run off with other children or get himself into dangerous situations - even if it meant he was coming home with new injuries each time. The main issue he had was when these friends of his started to move away. Some of them stayed for longer, but a large number of them left home between the ages of ten and thirteen - leaving Mercy almost alone again. He made up for this loss by taking on a role of mentor, or more likely bad role model, for the kids who were just a little bit younger than him. He also found a few friends and bad role models of his own in some of the older teens who had returned.

When Mercy was around fifteen years old, spending more and more time with his older friends as the younger teens left for their own journeys, he left home for a few days with them. Initially it was meant to just be some kind of camping trip, and maybe a few unsanctioned but harmless Pokemon battles. It was a fun experience, even if Mercy didn't have a Pokemon of his own to join in with. During the trip, Mercy found himself trying to catch a wild Pokemon of his own - a kind of dare set by the older boys that they hadn't expected to go wrong. Unfortunately it did, when Mercy stumbled across group of aggressive Seviper - there were other Pokemon there at the same time as a few of them were fighting amongst themselves.

Mercy was unprepared and unskilled, and when he'd been missing from the group for longer than expected some of the group went after him with worry. Mercy returned home that day with a large slash coming down from his shoulder and what looked like bite marks or poison sting wounds on various areas of his body. His parents still weren't home at this point, and the carer who had been fine to sit and wait for Mercy to return and still get paid was panicking. For the first couple of days he was kept at home, resting in bed and slowly feeling worse and worse. Eventually he was taken to a hospital to be treated, but he was there recovering for almost three months in total. Some of his friends moved away, just glad he was recovering, and those that stayed tended to keep their distance to stay out of trouble.

When he was finally well enough to go home, Mercy stayed away from everyone and locked himself in his own room. He didn't want to leave the house, didn't want to go through anything like that again. It was at this point in his life, when he was already at his lowest, that Mercy's parents decided it was time to show interest in their son. He was around sixteen, nearly seventeen, when his parents decided to make him work with them for Team Genetic. He hated it of course, but there was no way to safely bring that fact up. Mercy felt himself withdrawing again, especially when he personally witnessed some of the work his parents were doing, and it eventually got too much for him.

Mercy eventually decided to run away in the middle of the night, dying his hair a bright blue and changing some of his controlled wardrobe in order to look at least slightly different. He took on the name Mercy, partially because he wanted to show Mercy to the Pokemon and people being hurt by what his family was involved in. He didn't really want to be a trainer, and being a coordinator felt almost too public for him to hide. He just wanted to leave and look after Pokemon that needed someone to care for them, just like he had needed someone too.

RP SAMPLE --

There was a mist in the air around the Torrenta Pokemon Lab, evidence of a rainfall that had ended not that long ago. Along with a slightly warm wind that gently swayed the surrounding flora, all signs pointed to the arrival of spring. If you stopped to listen for a while, the soft rustling of leaves gave away the location of some of the nearby Pokemon.

Mercy hadn't planned to come to the Lab at first, it felt like somewhere for trainers mainly - and he didn't really want to class himself as just a regular trainer. Obviously that wasn't the case, he knew plenty of his old friends that had come here and eventually gone on to be coordinators. He also knew people that got a starter and then never really did anything else with their journey. But something had made him hesitate, and he'd spent the last few days debating if he should actually enter the building or not.

Today was the day he made his decision though, he was finally getting a Pokemon from the Lab and he was finally taking his journey as Mercy - even if it wasn't the regular trainer or coordinator route of most of the people he knew.

So here he was, stood outside in the after rain mists of Spring, staring at the closed doors of the Torrenta Pokemon Lab. He just had to take a few more steps for them to open up for him, but he was second guessing himself again.

You got this Mercy, just keep smiling." Mercy took a deep breath, composing himself before putting on his usual smile. He was going to start this journey right and he was going to make things right. Even if each step he took made his legs feel like lead, he was determined to not show it in his expression.

The doors opened automatically, which honestly helped because he didn't think he could face actually having to open them as well, and Mercy finally stepped inside the Lab he'd heard so much about in his youth.

"Hi, I heard I could get a starter here?" He smiled through every word, keeping his voice light and cheerful - hiding any sense of worry still bubbling up inside of him.