[attr="class","rostername"]@callie

[attr="class","rostersub"]a [twenty-three] year old [beach bum] from [hea hea city]

[attr="class","rostercat"]California 'Callie' Maile Leyendecker

[attr="class","rostercat"]twenty-three

[attr="class","rostercat"]FEMALE

[attr="class","rostercat"]PANSEXUAL

[attr="class","rostercat"]coordinator

[attr="class","rostercat"]water type

[attr="class","rostercat2"]Callie is the very definition of a free spirit, and has never slightly pretended to be held down by concepts of ‘responsibility’ or ‘commitments’. She seems to live in a world where time does not exist, as she cannot be expected to show up at an agreed hour or day, and this has earned her a (duly deserved) reputation as a seriously flighty broad. The people who know her best understand she can never be counted on in an emergency, and never be relied upon to do even the most simple of tasks, but they love her, anyway. As can be imagined, it is difficult to find and keep a job when one refuses to adhere to a schedule, but Callie doesn’t mind. She is cushioned by the large sum of money her mother left her and her father, and makes a pretty penny from her Instagram account, on the side.

Opinions are another thing Callie cannot be expected to stick too, and she frequently oscillates between all sides in arguments, where she tends to act as the expert mediator. She hates confrontation and firmly believes— with very few exceptions— that all views are valid, and everyone deserves to have their voice heard. One can never know what her own beliefs are because she seems to change her viewpoint so rapidly. This can be frustrating to the more staunch, linear minded believers, who quickly get fed up in Callie’s vapid inability (or refusal) to speak out, or stand up, for what she might believe in, but to her, all of that is just water off a Swanna’s back.

Her perpetually relaxed demeanor combined with the slow, airy way she speaks can give off a strong vibe of lacking intelligence (or, as most people immediately assume, constantly being inebriated) and as such spending time with her can sometimes be a task to those who value practical smarts over an endearing personality. Callie does not mind, though; she likes all people, regardless of their varying opinions of herself. It cannot easily be said whether or not she’s very bright at all, truth be told, as she’s never felt the desire to apply herself to any subject where ‘intelligence’ could be quantifiable, like math, or reading, or, probably most importantly, common sense. It goes without saying she sometimes does… questionable things with obvious answers to most people (reaching for something that fell in a bonfire, for example) and being surprised with the result (getting burned), but whether or not she really did not put the concepts of fire and injury together, or if she just failed to think it through completely, is unknown. She is spiritualistic and believes deeply in omens and signs, and is a strong purveyor of following one’s heart. She carries a firm belief that her grandmother, and maybe even her mother, is looking out for her from some other field of existence. 

Easygoing and polite, Callie definitely embodies the spirit of Heahea, always greeting tourists and visitors with open arms and a beautiful smile. She loves nothing more than inviting a stranger to walk the tidal line with her and listen to their story. She has a strong affinity for the open sea and can almost always be found at the beach, even during the night or in inclement weather. A lifetime of being outside has given her a seemingly permanent tan, with her mixed parentage responsible for the sometimes orange hue of her skin; sometimes those who meet her assume it is fake or spray on, but no, one-hundred percent natural, friend. She speaks with a combination of the dialect of the Alolan islands and your stereotypical ‘surfer chick’ jargon, and has her father’s habit for giving (annoying) nicknames to… well, to everything. She genuinely enjoys people and making friends, and will not shy away from a party or other gathering, and seems to bring a bit of light wherever she goes; but she has no issues being by herself, either.

Callie has a genetic degenerative eye disorder, a trait from her mother’s side of the family, which gives her eyes a sickly pale white or green appearance. Ironically, the condition is exacerbated by being in the sun without protection, but, as with most things, Callie never cared. At the start of her adventure she can still see decently, though everything has a bit of a fuzzy outline to it, and over the course of her journey it will deteriorate rapidly, eventually causing total blindness.

[attr="class","rostercatsub2"]PERSONALITY

[attr="class","rostercat2"]Callie comes from a large family of dreamers who can all trace their lineages back to the distant islands of Alola. Her maternal grandmother was born on Poni island; she fell in love with a sailor and ended up following him all the way back to the Hoenn region, where she had Callie’s mother and uncle. From Slateport to Fourtree to Snowpoint they moved, where they eventually settled down and started a business breeding and raising Swinub for truffle-hunting. Callie’s mother dreamed of the warm, sunny islands of her own mother’s birth, but though the business was steady, they were by no means rich; add to that the fact that her father was an incorrigible gambler, and they constantly struggled to make ends mean, let alone have money for travel or relocation.

The story of Callie’s father is much the opposite: he was born into a wealthy law family, but felt suffocated by all the rules and regulations which came with it. He traveled the world on his father’s dime, and fell in love with the Alola region during a visit. Eventually, he dropped out of his big, fancy law school and moved to the islands, where he worked hard taking odd jobs to build up a quaint little home on Akala island, and received a degree in agricultural science from a smaller, online school. He currently works as a sort of fish-and-game warden on Akala, making sure the native flora and fauna are not tampered or attacked by outside species, while also looking into ways to boost and grow the Alolan agriculture. He was on a business trip studying a disease in truffles, of all things, when he met Callie’s mom, and the pair fell in love.

After the death of her father, Callie’s mother worked double-time to operate the Swinub business and also put herself through school. After she graduated with a double major in economics and plant science, she accepted a position at a laboratory which studied seeds in the hopes of genetically modifying berries, apricorns, and assorted other crops to make them heartier and more fruitful. After months of long distance correspondence, Callie’s parents finally married, and they honeymooned on Alola, where Callie was conceived.

Enough wealth was soon accrued to move Callie’s maternal grandmother back to the islands, where she settled in with Callie’s father on Akala. Her busybody of a mother had to be forced to take maternal leave, and Callie was born in her father’s home, surrounded by a plethora of islanders her father had come to know as his adopted family, and her maternal grandmother’s distant relations. Though life was a veritable paradise, it did not last long: Callie’s mother was too much of a hands-on, Type-A person to work away from her company, despite how much she loved Alola. She tried to bring an offset of the company to Akala, but the kahuna refused, citing that outside tampering with the island’s native species would only lead to ruin. The kahuna was backed by all of the islanders, Callie’s father among them. Her parents would fight over this quite frequently for the first five or so years of her life— the arguing is, with all honesty, the only thing she remembers of her mother— before the duo separated just shy of her sixth birthday.

And so Callie was raised by her father and grandmother and a collection of other islanders, while her mother showed her love by funneling money into her trust-fund. She spent most of her formative years on the beach, basking in the sun and the rich culture of Alola, and doing much more to hone the skills of surfing, dancing, and taking it easy than anything her parents might deem ‘applicable’. The person she spent most of her time with, however, was her grandmother. See, Callie suffered from the same degenerative eye condition that plagued her grandmother and (to a lesser extent) her mother, and by the time Callie was born her grandma was almost completely blind; she imparted onto Callie the wisdom of seeing with your heart, not your eyes, and these were the lessons Callie clung to, for better or worse, for the rest of her life.

Callie graduated high school and lost her grandmother at almost the same time. It was also the first time she had seen her mother since she was six, and the tearful nostalgia and warm family bonding feelings wore off rather quickly when it was made apparent her mom wanted to whisk her away to some prestigious college in a far-away region. Callie refused, her mother said she had no right to refuse since she was the child and had to listen, there was a massive fight which grew physical and resulted with her mother’s forced expulsion from the island. Distraught and enraged, Callie’s mother filed for divorce from her husband and for sole custody of her daughter, but her father used what skills he retained from law school to hem and haw and fight the custody order until Callie turned eighteen.

Crisis averted, Callie was perfectly happy spending the rest of her life bumming around on the beach and wasting away every opportunity she had to ‘make something of hereself’, in her mother’s words.

It was a month after her twenty-third birthday when she received the news of her mother’s death: she had been fighting a terminal condition for a number of years, then, and in typical stubbornness had neglected to inform her family of the decision, first out of not wanting them to worry and then out of spite. Her mother, having no other remaining family and despite their terrible fight, left everything she owned to Callie, including a number of diaries and journals, through which Callie learned of her mother’s childhood dreams of traveling to the warm, sunny places of the world and eventually becoming an award-winning coordinator. Soon, however, such frivolous desires took second-fiddle to her demanding work schedule and desire to not see her family struggle as she had, as a child. The final journal ended with a letter, beseeching Callie to get out and see the world, just a little, to find what she might be missing out on, as her mother never had. It concluded with a heartfelt apology, complete with paper marred by apparent tear stains.

In what was perhaps the first and only dedicated, driven decision of her life, Callie packed up her belongings and struck out for the ferry station. Her original destination was to be the Hoenn region, but while waiting in line for her ticket, a flyer for a location called ‘Inset’ was unceremoniously blown into her face. She took it as a pretty powerful sign (feeling, somewhere deep down, her grandma probably had something to do with it) and purchased a ticket to the Inset Region.

[attr="class","rostercatsub2"]HISTORY