Name: Raisa Eumelia
Meaning: Raisa, taken in the Russian form, means “more relaxed”. Eumelia is Ancient Greek for “melody”. So she's a “relaxed melody”.
Age: 25
Date of Birth: July 20
Gender: Female
Affiliation: Arachnos/Harbinger

Eyes: They're a brownish-yellow, though not yellow enough to be considered “golden”. All her emotions are channeled through her eyes and the positioning of her eyebrows (it's not as if she can be a stone-face forever, you know). Emotions tend to take hold in her eyes; they don't spark or flare up—one moment, she'll be calm and then the emotion is just there, you know?
Hair: She's a blonde, with a penchant of decorating it with ribbons and bows. She keeps it short so it doesn't get in the way, and she makes sure to keep the bows sensible during missions.
Skin: Her skin is pale, though somewhat tanned. However much she may explore, she dislikes being sunburned, so she carries a parasol with her.
Clothes: She usually wears black, just to blend in. Though she's a fan of frilly things, it's rather hard to do much in yards and yards of the stuff, so she wears as little of it as possible. She prefers dresses or skirts, which she keeps short for easy maneuverability. Boots are best for any mission, as long as they're sturdy and she can keep quiet in them.
Physique: She's tall, but thick enough around to look healthy instead of anorexic. She isn't very muscular, though she makes up for it in speed.
Height: 5 feet, 10 inches.
Weight 142 pounds
Other: She tends to go around with her hands behind her back and takes her time as she strolls along. Sometimes, she skips.

Personality: Raisa smiles all the time; it is so common to her features that it has become a blank slate of a smile, with no warmth behind it. Well, most of the time. She can get really excited, especially when coming upon a new area—the smile will turn into a grin, and her eyes will widen to take everything in. This is truly her element—exploration and observation. She is prone to notice small details and note it for future use; it is regretful, however, that she doesn't possess photographic memory.

If anything, Raisa acts childishly most of the time. Between teammates, toward those above her... it makes no difference. When she's in a good mood, she'll act childish. Of course, she'll curb this behavior when one missions or sneaking around, but it often resurfaces at the worst of times (like when she's eavesdropping and she giggles at a comment). However childish she may act, she hardly ever throws a tantrum and is rarely inflexible. The key word to the whole thing is “act”—it's nothing but a façade, something left over from her childhood.

Raisa can be very bitter when she doesn't feel like acting, and is very domineering when she feels as if her status is being challenged. She very much likes being in control, and only listens to the orders of the higher-ups because it's necessary. She is bitter because she knows that there will always be somebody that will give her orders, be it the Arachnos Overseer or fate itself. (She does believe in fate, to an extent. She thinks that while she can usually twist fate to her favor, there are times when it can get “out of hand” and defy her.)

Her Pokémon know straight off how strict she is and know never to disobey her—ever. Raisa cares little as to how much she hurts somebody when she gets angry, and she has often had to come up with wild excuses when bringing to her Pokémon to the Poké Centers. However, she makes sure to treat her Pokémon well enough that they will be loyal to her and have no reason to disobey.

As a side note, she does like to study and read. She is very careful about how much she believes, however; she goes by the creed that there are thee types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. Fiction or non-fiction, she has a habit of taking notes on what she reads, in case she needs the information later.

Talents/Flaws: Raisa is good at exploring and taking note of things and taking notes in general. She can listen well and has sharp eyes. She's overall speedy, though not as strong as she'd like to be. Her writing is neat and precise; she can write in straight lines across a blank piece of paper. She's good at keeping her office space clean and making sure that everything about her is tidy. This is almost carried on to the point of OCD—she might, as she walks through ruins, fix a tile so that it lies straight or dust off a rotting wall with her skirt or even arrange the rubble so that the chunks go from largest to smallest.

However, her personality can often get in the way of things. She may act childish and try to keep this childishness away from what she considers as her “true self”, but the two tend to mix with each other, leading to the worst of both worlds surfacing at once. She also has a tendency to shy away from blood, though she may faint at the sight of her own.

Likes: Raisa loves nothing better than to explore new areas and take notes on them. The fresh air, the sunshine, the wind in her hair—she loves them all, almost as much as she likes to explore cities and caves. She enjoys spending time with her Pokémon and, oddly enough, bathing them. Cleaning, for her, is a bit of a hobby; the procedure itself is like a puzzle to her, and one she loves to complete.

Dislikes: She hates insubordination above all things. That, and messy rooms and scrawling handwriting. Going a day without a shower is an annoyance as well as being unable to wear clean clothes. She also dislikes blood and the way it smells and stains clothing. She finds it especially freaky when the blood is coming from her. Though killing isn't the most pleasant thing in the world, she'll do it when its necessary.

Known Family:
Anise Eumelia (Mother)
Yomgen Eumelia (Father)

Dream: To reach the head of Arachnos and act as an Overseer to all. It's a dream, though; she knows that some things will always be out-of-reach.

Fighting Style: Speed is her greatest asset, so she uses it as often as possible. Though she can't always go in and muscle her way through an enemy, she may try to make them weary and go in for the kill once they're weak or drop their guard. She isn't always up front and in the enemy's face, either; she prefers to sneak around and stab them in the back. It is, after all, easier to go around the spine to reach one's heart than it is to try and stab between one's ribs. She has no concept of “playing fair” or “playing dirty”—if it will allow her to win, she'll use it.

If all else fails, she can always lob her trusty Electrode at whatever may be attacking her.

Proficiency: Domineering

Biography: Raisa was born in a small cottage in the boondocks of the Johto region; her parents disliked life in industrial cities, and they were loath to live in tourist-trap towns. Their only option, therefore, was to build a small home somewhere near a small range of mountains. The house was poorly-built (Yomgen failed as a builder), but it stood for fifteen years before it collapsed and they had to move into the city.

Yomgen (Raisa's father) and Anise (her mother) were more than happy to welcome their new child into the world. More than anything else, they dreamed of raising her to be a sweet and loving little girl—surely an easy feat for those living outside the unruly cities. They shaped Raisa with care, making quite sure they set a lovely example for their soon-to-be angel. Her father gave up drinking and smoking, and her mother stopped up her dirty mouth.

Everything was going according to plan—by the age of seven, Raisa was a sickly-sweet little girl that was bound to give anybody diabetes just by entering the room. Her father saw this and began to falter in his resolutions; after all, did he really want a girl so sweet and perfect that he'd want to treat her like a porcelain doll? He shuddered at the thought—it would be a literary nightmare, and expensive, too. It was time to hammer a little manliness into his girl. He rolled up his sleeves and marched into Raisa's room.

“Hey,” he said as she looked up from her dolls, “have you ever run around before?”

Raisa blinked, startled. “No... Mommy says that wunning around inn't good fora little girwl like me. I might faw!”

Yomgen closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. How the hell had he ever agreed to making her like this in the first place? “Look,” he said, “first off, it's 'running', 'isn't', 'girl' and 'fall'. As much as your mother likes it when you speak like that, you're seven years old and I think you can handle speaking like a real human.”

Another blink from Raisa. She'd never heard her father speak like this before. It had always been things like, “yes, sweetie, that's it!” and “my little angel!” She looked blankly at her closet, trying to remember a time when Yomgen had said anything else. Looking back at her father, she asked, “Is wun... r-running just as boring as playing with dollies?”

Her father smiled. “No, not when you make a game of it. (Also, it's 'dolls'. Only sissies say 'dollies'.)”

And thus, her secret training as a “normal human” began. Father and daughter knew that Anise's heart would break if they should ever reveal that Raisa could now run and talk normally, that her father was working hard to build something solid behind the façade of sweetness that her mother strived for. As time went on and Raisa began to enjoy her “lessons” more and more, she began to slip slightly. A lazy stitch here, a misplaced fork there—all forgivable mistakes, and Anise hardly ever noticed.

This continued as Raisa grew and, over time, she learned how to shoot (a shotgun, and old relic belonging to her father), camp and swear. He constantly took her on camping trips, which she loved most of all. She kept a diary for each trip, detailing every moment in as much detail as she could manage. Though he never had time to teach her all the tactics of surviving in the wild, she knew enough to wander farther and farther from the camping spot on each subsequent trip.

Most important, however, was the fact that he taught Raisa to read. Yomgen was especially happy to find that she loved reading (even if it was, at first, just travel books), and he set about making sure that she read everything carefully, seeking every hidden truth between the words. He drilled the practice of questioning her reading into her head until she began to question his authority—once she had that trait in place, he felt that it would be best for her to continue her education elsewhere.

After talking things through with Anise, he decided to send her to a private school. She was ten years old by this time, and had a lot of catching up to do; her father knew she'd be alienated from her peers, so he bought her a Voltorb as a going-away present. In the few months before she went away to school, they managed to train him to be thrown between two people without exploding. With this done, Raisa packed her bags and walked into the nearest city by herself—a feat that impressed her father and scared her mother half to death.

Within four years of vigorous study, Raisa managed to enter her eighth year, a whole year behind the rest of the fourteen-year-olds. Though she managed to make absolutely no friends, her alienation proved to be useful—various kids and bullies were more than willing to battle with her, and it was through these multiple battles that Voltorb (now affectionately named “Projectile”) evolved. Now that she had a living ball of death, people started to back away and let her be. She felt a bit lonely now, with all the attention focused away from her, but she soon got over it.

Once she was done with private school, she wished to move on to college. So, she wrote a letter to her parents, asking if they'd help her pay for the education; she had a few scholarships in her arsenal and planned to get a job to pay the rest of it. Her mother wrote back wrote back, saying that she refused to help her daughter—apparently, battling Pokémon wasn't cute enough for her, and she refused to reward such behavior with money. Utterly disgusted, Raisa took a picture of herself holding her middle finger out at arm's length and sent it to her mother in reply. Within the month, Anise forgot she ever had a daughter.

Yomgen, however, was amused more than anything else. Though he couldn't help Raisa in the money department, he suggested that she join an organization of some sort—they usually had some sort of scholarship system set up for wanting students. Raisa decided to take her father's advice and looked for a nice place to join. Team Rocket caught her eye—not only would joining such a thing mortify her mother, but they offered rewards for successful missions. She could sell the rewards and save cash that way. And, after all, it had been the goal of her father to have her break away from the diabetes-inducing behavior that her mother had so loved. What better way to do that than join Team Rocket?

The first few months of training knocked some sense into her. Her grudge toward her mother faded, for one, as well as the belief that being a Team Rocket grunt was a quick way to lots of cash. At the age of twenty-one, she decided to just abandon the dream of going to college—being a Rocket member was more than enough of a job, and she couldn't imagine studying while on missions. Instead, she made it her goal to rise through the ranks of Team Rocket and become a Special Ops member at the very least. It took her another two years of hard work to get to Special Ops status, and she was pleasantly surprised to hear that she was to be appointed the position of “Harbringer” a few weeks before her twenty-fifth birthday. They were also sending her away to a new area of domination—Althea. What a lovely prospect—something new to explore.