Spark's Character

Spark's father left on the day she was born, so from her very first day she was off to a rocky start. When she was young she asked about him a few times, never really getting an answer. The subject became awkward for her, so she resolved to find him herself someday. Growing up she only met one or two real friends in school. She had a certain unconscious "standard" of person, and while she knew a good many friendly people she wouldn't consider herself friends with many of them. As a result she felt very alone, finding relief only in the precious few friends she had.
Spark was always very likable. She had a good sense of humor and she was very fun to be around once you got to know her; it's just that a lot of people didn't try to get that far and she could never quite understand why.
In seventh grade, Spark met her Charmander. She was sitting down by the ocean alone on a cloudy summer's day when she saw something wash up onshore down the beach. She got up to inspect it more closely, and when she was about 10 feet away she realized it was a Pokemon. She ran up to it, but just as she got there she saw a strange flash of gold in the water nearby. Unimportant, she decided. The Charmander was laying on its back, its tail underneath it. She had read about Charmander in a school textbook last year, and remembered about the flame on its tail being connected to its life energy.
When Spark flipped over the Charmander she thought it was dead. The tail looked like it just ended in a flat stump of flesh. After a moment though, she realized there was a tiny flicker coming from the end of it.
"Little Charmander, wake up!" she shouted uselessly. The Charmander continued to lay motionlessly on the ground. She grunted, struggling at first to pick the Pokemon up, but when she had it she ran home as quickly as she could.
"Mami!" she called, her Hispanic mother nowhere to be seen. She found the woman out back, pulling weeds from her garden.
"Mami, I found this Pokemon at the beach. We have to drive it to the Pokemon Center!" she exclaimed. Her mother dropped her trowel and stood up without a word, expression serious. Having been a Pokemon nurse for 27 years she knew what to do. She took the Charmander's lifeless body and turned it over to see its tail.
"I'm sorry, Mija, but it doesn't look like there's anything we can do," she said, turning the Charmander over again to look at its face. She slid back one of its closed eyelids to look at the blank pupil staring straight ahead underneath, then pressed its chest to her ear.
Spark had been somewhat expecting that answer, but she was beginning to cry for the Pokemon's lost life.
"I don't care, I'm going to try anyway!" she shouted, running back into the house.
"Poor thing, it was just a baby," Spark heard her mother say to herself behind her. She laid the Charmander on her bed, tears dripping rather loosely down her nose as she sat with it. Her mom knocked on her door and came in with a few bottles and a needle. Spark wondered why they had them or where they came from; neither she nor her mother had any Pokemon.
"You're right, there's nothing to stop us from trying, is there?" said Spark's mom with a little smile as she began unwrapping a Super Potion.
The Charmander's tail continued to flicker bravely on through the night, its entire body wrapped in blankets and the heater turned up all the way. Despite the blistering heat in the room where they kept it, Spark sat with it the whole night, whispering strength to it.
"Stay with us, little Charmander."
"Be strong, little Charmander."
"Don't give up, little Charmander."
In the morning, the flame seemed almost imperceptibly bigger. That was one of the last things she noticed before her exhaustion took her over and she fell asleep. When Spark woke up in the afternoon it seemed noticeably larger, and that evening before she fell asleep again she could tell it was definitely a stronger flame.
All throughout the Charmander's recovery and even some time after, Spark's mother could be seen shaking her head and whispering about the miracle occurring right before her eyes. The Charmander remained unconscious for a total of six days, only beginning to move occasionally on the fourth.
Spark stayed with it the entire time.
When it finally woke up there was much celebration in the house. Spark's mother was able to determine that it was a female. She was still too weak to get out of the bed they had made for her out of blankets for another three days. Over those three days she and Spark got to know each other, and they became close friends. When she could finally move around on her own, Spark's mother celebrated by presenting Spark with a shiny red Poke Ball for it, and Charmander happily tethered herself to it.
As Spark grew, Charmander didn't. There wasn't much for her to battle around Spark's house except for the Pokemon living in the water, and Charmander understandably felt a strong distaste for water. Thus, Charmander only made it to level eight fighting the rare traveling trainer in the two years until Spark was fifteen.
In the years leading up to her departure, Spark's relationship with her mother had grown increasingly tense. They began fighting more and more often, and Spark's mom one day came home with a new boyfriend.
The boyfriend didn't seem so bad to Spark at first, but after a while he became irritable and rude around her. Of course, he was always perfectly sweet whenever her mom was around. Whenever she expressed her feelings to her mom, her mom would say something like "Just give him a bit more time, you'll grow to like him!"
But it never happened that way. One night the boyfriend came home just as Spark and her mother began to get into another argument. Naturally he took her mother's side. The argument grew and grew, and suddenly out of nowhere he hit her.
Spark was stunned. She had never really liked him, but he'd never acted violently toward her. Her mom seemed similarly shocked, the argument forgotten. The anger on his face began to trade places with the surprise on Spark's mother's, and as Spark turned to walk to her room a new brand of yelling began.
For the first time since the day she'd found Charmander, Spark cried. The tears moved silently down her face. She felt a sense of confusion and overwhelming sadness as she sat on her bed holding Charmander close and crying. Charmander didn't quite understand what was wrong exactly, but she knew Spark needed her. The two just sat on Spark's bed listening to one raised voice being joined by another, and Spark packed her things into a bag. As she left out the back door with Charmander behind her, they heard the front door slam shut and the boyfriend's car start. At the same time, Spark's mother called out to her from inside the house, but her calls wouldn't be answered. The last contact she received from her daughter was a note on Spark's bed.
Meanwhile, Spark was returning Charmander to her Poke Ball; Charmander didn't like water, and the late-night ferry they were getting on was surrounded by it. They were going where Charmander had come from: The unknown.