#*linda

LINDA DRAKE

AGE: Twenty-five. BIRTHDAY: November 11th. HOMETOWN: Konikoni City, Alola. OCCUPATION: Officer. STARTER: Hoothoot, female, Hardy. FACECLAIM: Katherine Barrell. STATUS: Open.  

BEGINNINGS IN KONIKONI CITY…

Harry Drake was an officer for the Konikoni City Police Department for 25 years. Most of the crimes committed in the city were small thefts of incense and hair barrettes, which were easily solved verbally and put in the past. The city’s low crime rate allowed Officer Drake to spend plenty of time with his daughter, Linda, who often rode along with him and his Hoothoot in the back of his squad car and sent out fake radio calls to amuse his co-workers. Sometimes they would stop at the local Pokemon Center Cafe for a glass of Moomoo Milk and a Castelia Cone during his shift and a Pokebean for their owl Pokemon. One day while Linda was at school, her father responded to a robbery in progress at a local restaurant and was fatally shot. When ten-year-old Linda found out about her father’s death, she was inconsolable. She had never known her mother and she felt like she was all alone, even if technically she had other extended family. Linda moved in with her aunt, Michelle, a local herbalist who was kind of a crunchy granola type. While her aunt always meant well, she often suggested Linda might find the answer to her teenage social problems by meditating or by coming to her nightly Gentle Yoga practice. The only comfort that Linda found in her new life was her companion, her father’s old Hoothoot. She could talk for hours about how the other girls at school mocked the way she dressed or how she hated her French teacher and the bird would listen kindly, offering her a steady supply of comforting nuzzles in response. The little owl was also particularly useful for feeding her aunt’s Quinoa Loaves during dinner and then setting off out Linda’s bedroom window to retrieve a burger later on. It was because of her help that Linda survived high school instead of running away to join a circus somewhere off in Nimbasa City. 

And when it came time to go to college, she left for Heahea City to study Criminal Justice just like her father had. Michelle had a lot of qualms about Linda following in the footsteps that had ultimately gotten her brother shot, but she had kind of figured it was inevitable given the way Linda was brought up. In Heahea, it felt like Linda’s life really began again. At home, she had always been forced to live in the aftermath of her tragedy. But in the city, she was free to be whoever she wanted to be.No-one worried about Linda becoming a cop, simply wondered why she’d chosen to bring a Hoothoot with her instead of adopting a Meowth from the local shelters. And her clothes weren’t a sign of her inability to shop, but simply a statement that she preferred a more masculine style of dress. Linda thrived under her new independence, particularly loving her ability to eat meat regularly for the firs time in eight years. She also loved her schoolwork, she had plenty of scenarios to apply her criminal justice classes from her all her ride-alongs and she easily memorized the information that would be necessary for her later civil service exams. When she graduated four years later, she was surprised to find her first job offer came from the Konikoni City. While Linda was sure she’d find other employment, something had been niggling in the back of her mind for a while. In her childhood, she’d never really felt her mother’s absence since her father was always around and later in high school, her aunt had filled the void of annoying parent that any normal teenager would have. But as she got older, Linda became more and more curious about the woman who was only in a single picture at the hospital holding her daughter. She decided to go back and see if she could find enough evidence to track down her mother. 

Her aunt was little help, simply stating that the elder Drake had gone out for diapers a week after her birth and never came back. When she was pressed, she revealed that Harry had never wanted to track her down and that she planned on respecting his wishes. While Linda wanted to respect his dying memory, she couldn’t help her own curiosity. She began spending all her time off-duty looking into her mother’s former acquaintances and building a timeline of young Martha Drake’s disappearance. It seemed the last person to see her mother in all of Akala Island was a former co-worker of hers at the salon, he said Martha had left for Viridian City to discuss a legendary Pokemon discovery with a colleague there. And that’s where the trail went dry, Martha didn’t have the resources financially to track down people who might have come in contact with her mother in Kanto. She felt so frustrated and spent a lot of the next year coming up with various conspiracy theories about why her mother had left and binging on doughnuts like a bad cop stereotype. One day while Linda was going through the motions at her work, she overheard her boss telling a co-worker that Kanto Police was looking for volunteer transfers thanks to a recent crime rise due to a gang of street thugs called Team Rocket. Linda immediately jumped at the idea, putting in for a transfer. Her chief tried to object but eventually the woman saw how determined her officer was and agreed to let her go as long as she returned to Alola within a year.