I Can Only Keep Getting Better!

((Happy New Years everyone, hope you all enjoyed yourselves. I was with family and at parties, enjoying the holidays, hence my silence for the past days, but I should have a reply out by tonight/tomorrow. Gonna post a quick thread tracker under the cut since I haven’t done one in a bit and I forgot my login to that tracker site. If there’s a mistake or you don’t see your name there/want to rp, please lmk. Ty.))

((As Christmas and Christmas Eve tend to be holidays that are more romantic and focused on friends in regions like Johto, Will is scarcely seen hanging around Johto at this time! Instead, you can find him either at the Plateau, should it be open that day, or in Kalos, celebrating Christmas there. Why Kalos? Well...

As a child, while Will’s mother was very into the romantic aspect of Christmas that Johtonians focused on, Will’s father, being Kalosian, was much more into the more traditional Western idea of Christmas. His father would do several more Kalosian-inspired traditions with him, such as burning a cherry yule log with wine on it. Will’s favorite tradition his father did with him, though, was the feast of 13 desserts. He always preferred the fruit based desserts the most.

Plenty of Christmas parties and festivities were common in Johto for children too though, with lots of games and food and parades. Christmas Eve tended to be more exciting than Christmas Day for Will for this reason.

There was one year, though, where Will’s father took them all to Kalos for a Christmas vacation. Though young, Will remembers this year well, and it was arguably the best Christmas he ever had. For him, Kalos at Christmas time felt much more lively than Johto. It surprised him how different it was, but in a good way. He was not fluent in Kalosian at all save for a few important phrases his father taught him (eg ‘I’m lost, can you help me/I can’t speak Kalosian well/Where is the bathroom/I’m sorry’), so he couldn’t really understand what all was happening around him. But, it felt fun. It was an event that piqued his curiosity about the world, which would stay with him even up to now.

Will’s mother would often try to push his father into having a romantic evening out on Christmas Eve, just the two of them, which didn’t ever fully sit right with Will’s father. Given his Kalosian understanding of Christmas, he much preferred the whole family be together Christmas Eve. There were a few years where Will’s mother would maybe act a little colder since his father was hesitant about leaving Will alone on Christmas Eve.

This unfortunately became a moot point as Will got older though, because Will’s extracurricular activities often wound up having him shanghaied into holiday social gatherings he didn’t even want to be part of a lot of the time. So, with an excuse that Will was so busy with all his own activities, his parents going out to have a romantic evening on Christmas Eve alone became all the more common.

Less effort was put into Christmas time every year as a family in Will’s household until Christmas at home became a bit of a shadow of the magical image it once held for Will when he was younger. He often asked his father if they could go back to Kalos for vacation, so he could have another amazing Christmas like that one year, but Will’s mother never wanted to go again. She found Christmas in Johto much more enjoyable, so the discussion often reached a stalemate.

In the end, even though Will’s mother did take him to many fun children’s parties and made him her own Christmas cake, etc. when he was little, Will ultimately prefers his father’s traditions he passed down onto him. The way countries like Kalos and Unova celebrate Christmas seem way more festive and fun and nostalgic for him than the way Johto does things. Besides, Christmas Eve is what he views as couples night in Johto. So, even if he decides to just stay at home on Christmas Day, he always at least spends Christmas Eve in Kalos, and maybe another day too.

((Hmmmmmm, let’s see...

People trying to rip off his mask/get him to take it off (he doesn’t get upset if it’s a Pokemon but it still makes him uncomfortable)

People trying to change how he dresses in general

People talking as if he’s not there when he is clearly present

People who try to reduce him to some kind of spectacle

People picking on children

People who use their illusory skills to con people out of their money/assets etc.

People who fake having powers/supernatural abilities of any kind

Xenophobes/ethnocentrists

Thinking or being led to believe he has truly achieved something when he has not

On the flip side of the above, DENYING him his achievements he rightfully earned

Patronizing/talking down to him (more lenient on the latter when it’s coming from Lance/Karen/Koga/Bruno since they ARE his superiors who all are legitimately way more experienced than him, but he still has his limits)

((So, as I discuss in his bio, Will first intended the whole phantom thief thing as a one time event. Initially, he only meant to expose the corruption in his circus group to ensure his coworkers got what was rightfully theirs and to stop the slander on his own name that the higher-ups were trying to push on him.

For a while afterwards, as he began traveling, Will did not use his alter ego. He never even thought to revive it--until he arrived in Kalos. Lumiose City’s corruption was particularly bad when Will visited, and the more he traveled and acquainted himself with people in the region, the more disgusted he felt with the level of corruption going on. It was, naturally, on a much higher level than what his little circus group was involved in, which gave him pause. Could he could do something? Should he do something?

A part of him still insisted that, unlike the circus, this was not his business, so he should stay away, and he agreed with it for a bit. Despite this, though, it didn’t stop Will’s curiosity from getting the better of him, and he did a large amount of research to understand the level of corruption he was seeing hints of sprouting up around him from below. Xatu, with her selective omniscience and illusionary skills, was extremely helpful. One could say, though, he dug too much, that his curiosity dragged him too far down, for he eventually stumbled upon an active plot that some of the corrupt elements of the people he’d been looking into were planning. It was a white collar level scheme, and some parts of the plan seemed like the same kind of stuff he encountered with his corrupt managers in the circus, but a fair deal larger in scale. Still, as disturbing as this information he stumbled upon was, he still didn’t want to get involved himself, so he turned over what info he had to the Lumiose police as an anonymous tipster...

...and then they promptly disposed of it.

In hindsight, it was obvious that there was a good chance part of the police force was compromised, but it had honestly slipped his mind, one that was already so wrapped up in just gathering the information of the scheme itself. But now all of that information was gone. He could regather it with Xatu’s help, but to what end? The police had rats in it, and he didn’t have the time to sort them out to find a safe person to give the info to so that they could properly investigate and stop the crime before it went full steam ahead. And what about himself? With all this investigating he had been doing, he was bound to start looking familiar to people. He also certainly couldn’t count on his identity staying ‘anonymous’ for long now, either.

So, again he took up his alter ego and planned a theft of the evidence himself. He sent a note to the corrupt police, his first calling card, really, urging them to reconsider and properly investigate the corrupt heads of this scheme. Then, when there was no response, Will went and exposed it himself by stealing the appropriate evidence.

The evidence reveal itself was not quite enough to completely stir action, given the depth of the corruption, but it did give several surviving witnesses the strength to come forward, setting a snowball of events that halted the scheme and led to the corrupt group scattering.

Given the larger scale of this whole thing, Will’s ‘name’ as Itsuki became cemented, partially because of the corrupt police who were still hanging onto power in the city at the time. They wanted this guy’s head, so they blasted him on the news and so on, trying to paint him as a dangerous anarchist so that normal people would be on the lookout too. Eventually, the manhunt did fade somewhat, but his reputation lingered. Thanks to the bad press by the police, he had his fair share of detractors, but it also gave him a small group of fans. People were grateful for his exposure of this corruption, though his methods as a phantom thief were questionable.

Will, however, chose to focus on the positives his alter ego brought out of this, and they were enough that it convinced him to continue to be a phantom thief.

Out of these two incidents, moreso the second than the first, Will began to create his MO and assemble a team.

For his behavior, he tends to not actively seek out criminals to expose, believe it or not. Usually, with his curiosity and constant traveling, they come to him. He tends to pick up all sorts of interesting stories and leads to pursue. Xatu and Delphox always help fill in the details and point him in the right direction when he shows interest in a lead. When he has a lead, he feverishly investigates it, again abusing Xatu and Delphox’s powers to help him search efficiently. He will sneak into places, listen in on people, disguise himself with illusions, and so on to get the information he seeks. Oftentimes this is done at night just for ease, but he will adjust if need be. Then, when he’s gathered enough and settled on his target, he will send a calling card. Originally, in another hc, I said his cards just say ‘Look forward to my arrival on xxx’, but now I think his card would say just a bit more than that. In addition to that bit, he would also probably first preface with asking the target to voluntarily give themselves up to law enforcement and publicly admit their crimes.

And just to be clear, yes I mean CRIMES. He does not go after people for petty shit--nothing short of egregious violations of law. For Will, his only targets are those ‘whose corrupt power has transcended that of the law’. Admittedly, these targets are rare and hard to find, and when he does find one, they take quite a bit of research and planning for Will to infiltrate. Now that he is an Elite, it’s even harder to find the time to do this stuff, but he still makes do. The rarity of his targets helps for sure.

Back to his behavior, Will tries not to wound people severely or use brute force when doing his heists. He practiced with his powers to specifically learn how to use them in nonlethal ways to assist his thievery. Eg using his Psyshock attack, which is meant to be a wild flurry of defense-piercing psychic shrapnel, as simple, single dagger-like attacks. Now, while he may not rely on brute force or anything, that doesn’t exclude other forms of attack, such as illusion, trickery, hypnosis, etc. He’s also quite fine with using other people’s attacks against them, too, like using his illusions to trick some bad guys into attacking each other and cause mass confusion for a time. Pokemon, also, are completely fair game.

And that is why he assembled a specific, small team of Pokemon to assist with his heists. He’d already encountered his Delphox and Reuniclus before he made his second heist in Lumiose, but now he mad them proper parts of his team. Eventually, he would add Malamar before his travels in Kalos were done. I’ve covered in a previous hc how all their powers help Will, what they can do, etc., so I won’t get into that here. In total, though, the most he ever uses in a heist is 5 Pokemon: Delphox, Malamar, Reuniclus, Xatu, and Gardevoir. Will dislikes using more than the first 3 for the sake of easy management and fear of associating his League team with his thief team, but if things get down to the wire he will.

Lastly, I’ll talk briefly about his outfit as a phantom thief. Unfortunately, I suck at costume and clothing design, so Will’s thief outfit has never been concrete. The most I can say with certainty is that his outfit would use dark colors, a different kind of mask, and gloves. Adding to that, his outfit would be symbolic in its design. That is, this all started because of that one incident at the circus. Now, I don’t think I mentioned it before, but another part of the circus incident was that Will was very possibly going to be made the new ringleader soon. His performances were one of the few that consistently attracted a large crowd, and plenty of his coworkers supported the choice. So, when all that mess with the circus cheating him and his coworkers out of money and slandering him, he felt a little more than miffed. So, he reflected his spite in his costume he chose: one that looked similar to a ringleader, though perhaps a little more exaggerated or ‘elegant’. So if I had to sum up his thief outfit, it would be ‘dark, masked ringleader’.

“...Security wouldn’t let any stray Ghosts sneak into the Plateau, right?”

Cue creepy, cheerful cries echoing melodically down the hall.

((Wowie, I just came home now and can properly read everything and, talk about a fuggin snowball effect. I will wait to see how this plays out at this point, and if I need to make a post about this whole Tumblr purge mess again (which will only be if I get the feeling there’s gonna be issues keeping my content unflagged), then I will do so, BUT I will tag all such matters with ‘tumblrpurge2k18′. Minus the quotes. That way, y’all that don’t wanna see that stuff don’t have to, k? In the meantime, if Tumblr straight implodes, I will post my Discord below under a readmore so that anybody who wants to may still contact me. I do rp on Discord for anybody who wants to.))