Lazarus Cain

Born into the world with unknown parentage, Lazarus Cain was adopted by a grizzled former samurai who once pledged his sword and service to the interests of the Dragnor Kingdom, having been abandoned and left to die out in the country on a silent, winter night. The rest of his infancy was uneventful beyond a point where it was discovered that he possessed an innate ability to make close bonds with Pokémon.

When he was a boy, Lazarus found a Magikarp that had inadvertently jumped out of the river it had lived in, which hugged a nearby waterfall leading upstream. Feeling sorry for the poor fish, he helped the Magikarp return to its home, and the two became close friends. When the time came for Magikarp to return to the spawning grounds it came from, Lazarus witnessed it climb the waterfall with fierce determination, which triggered its evolution into the fearsome and majestic serpent Pokémon, Gyarados.

This event made a lasting impression on the young Lazarus, and took Gyarados' physical transformation as a sign that he, too, could achieve perfection through persistence and hard work, which motivated him to appeal to his adoptive father for training in the art of swordsmanship; something the old man initially hesitated to provide him with, out of concern that he may attempt to follow in his footsteps and become a warrior. Nonetheless, he could see Lazarus' passion to learn, and succumbed to pressure.

It would later be learned that Lazarus was frighteningly quick to learn whatever was presented to him, and the impetus that fueled his training only served to inspire the former samurai into believing that his adopted son was a prodigy, one of a small handful innately skilled with handling a weapon as though it were an extension of their own body. His only counterbalancing flaw was that he approached his lessons with a kind of bloodthirstiness that only a Gyarados could project, as though he were far more concerned with the conquest itself than achieving a deeper understanding of his own body.

Ultimately, this violent behavior would come full circle during a sparring match between Lazarus and his father's strongest Pokémon, Gallade, after he was able to successfully deliver a near-fatal strike to the creature. Disgusted by his son's willingness to brutally carve his opponents down, the old man disowned Lazarus and cast him out, never to return until he could learn and practice the meaning of restraint.

Frustrated with the old man's lack of awareness for his obvious talents, Lazarus fled into a nearby forest, where he stumbled upon a secluded grove situated next to a stream of crystal clear water. Resting on a moss-covered rock was a sword so beautiful and perfectly crafted, that even calling it an immaculate work of art would do the weapon no justice. Merely taking the blade in his hands compelled Lazarus to sit before the stream and meditate, which he did for seven days and nights.

At the dawn of the eighth morning, Lazarus returned to his former samurai's house and quietly challenged him to combat. The duel ended as fast as it had begun, and in but a few, swift movements, Lazarus had carved his weapon into the body of the man he once saw as his father. In this moment, he reached an epiphany: results only come when one takes immediate action, and in doing that one is rewarded with power. This formed the basis behind his obsession for strength, as he truly believed that without it, one cannot bring about the changes that they wish to see transpire.

Driven to hone his skills and prove his newfound strength to the world, Lazarus took on the surname "Cain" to reflect the transformation of his entire world view before departing on a journey across the globe, facing off against the Pokémon of several skilled Trainers. Over time, his reputation for directly engaging Pokémon in battle earned him great deals of notoriety within the competitive scene, yet many still chose to step forward in the hopes of defeating this sword-wielding stranger from a foreign land.

Eventually, his journey would lead Lazarus to the Johto region's acclaimed Lake of Rage, where he encountered a Pokémon he describes as a relic from an earlier time, long forgotten after having entered a deep slumber at the lake's bottom: the Red Gyarados. A fierce duel with the serpentine Pokémon rewarded Lazarus with its subsequent capture, an act which defined his later search for the remnants of the Red Gyarados' creators — the criminal organization called Team Rocket, who were forced to scatter across the globe after the plans of its leader were thwarted by an unknown outside force.

Lazarus soon made contact with the boss of the Rocket gangsters in an effort to personally gauge whether or not he and his empire of thugs and miscreants were worthy of their status as the world's most dangerous criminal organization to plague the Pokémon world. As he did with his late adoptive father, Lazarus quickly took the life of Team Rocket's head of operations after determining his leadership was vastly inadequate to his own ambitions, and took the title of leader for his own.

Demanding nothing short of complete obedience and unbreakable commitment to his brand of leadership, Lazarus would move on to quickly consolidate Team Rocket's numerous splinter cells until his ranks had grown large enough to rise from the ashes as a force far more powerful than it ever had been before.

His obsessive quest for perfection slowly, but surely, became an ideal to strive for, to believe in, to devote one's entire being to making a reality. One must take action to bring about results, and in doing so, one is rewarded with power rightfully earned. Strength is the world's one, and only heavenly virtue. And now, the entire fold of Team Rocket bows to the whims of a man who yearns for nothing more than the transcendence of all of humanity and Pokémon alike, where only those with power are fit to carve their name into the sands of destiny.

Lazarus Cain would soon achieve his perfect Utopia.

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