But wait! There's more.

Name: Marcellus “Mazer” Pratten.
Species: Greninja.
Gender: Male.
Age: Thirty-four.
Team: Prankster Platoon.
Description: A well-muscled, tall Greninja of 5’4”, Mazer can appear a bit intimidating at first. However, his constant smiles, genial attitude, and habits of wearing things like glow-sticks, ridiculous fake tattoos, and copious body dye tend to put others at ease. He has several scars from head to toe, everywhere except on his tongue, though none of them are particularly hideous. His skin has a slight iridescent tint, a side-effect of his Blaze Jewel usage. He often wears obnoxiously-colored light jackets.

Personality: At first glance, Mazer doesn’t really seem like a leader of anyone, let alone a faction so powerful and large that it’s proven to be a significant annoyance to the Black Lotus Empire itself. That’s by and large because he isn’t - Mazer doesn’t give eloquent speeches, make rules, host forums, or lead team-building exercises. The Prankster Platoon is a difficult faction to lead, due to their members’ natural tendency toward anarchy, and the fact that they, as a whole, resist harsh laws and strong, explicit leadership. Instead, the Greninja leads by example, relying on his natural charisma and force of will to get others to back him up. Being naturally rebellious himself, he understands others’ misgivings about laws and rulers, and instead has found it much easier to appear as someone that people want to follow, rather than trying to drag them along with him.

That’s not to say that Mazer is out of place among his faction, however; far from it. He's a genuinely goofy guy; he loves to make people laugh and he can turn any situation into a joke - even if the jokes are a bit tasteless, though he always tries to punch up. He has a genuine distaste for oppressive leadership and fights so that others can make their own decisions. He's surprisingly insightful; he's a good long-term planner, and there's more going on behind his froggy eyes than most can see. Generally, he’s good at making people feel welcome and at ease, and he has a knack for allocating people where their talents will be most useful.

Mazer does have his fair share of flaws. He is a vengeful being, and he won’t hesitate to satisfy his hunger for “justice” with escalatory and sadistic retribution. He also comes off as a bit sociopathic, capable of going from cutting off heads with Water Shuriken to laughing at his own jokes within a matter of minutes. While he does have a sense of empathy, time has dulled it somewhat, and he prefers to put up a joking facade to mask the mingled guilt and enjoyment he feels at causing pain. He also has difficulty with taking orders, and chafes against any sort of authority. Furthermore, while he recognizes that he has this trait and tries to correct for it, he has a natural sense of superiority over others, being from a family who took too much pride in their species and genes.

Background: Some kids have parents who force them into band classes or onto the track team when they're little. Mazer’s parents, on the other hand, came from a long line of Tempest Festival competitors (three generations, not counting Mazer, is actually pretty long given the nature of the competition) and made it clear that Mazer was going to follow in their webbed footsteps. He didn’t really mind this for the first few years of his life; the training was intense, but it was all he knew, so he accepted it as part of life. He had been lucky when he was born - fit, healthy, inheriting the Protean ability from his parents, and naturally talented in battle - and he happened to enjoy the dangerous sports his parents threw him into, so why complain?

Disillusionment didn’t take long to set in, though. It started with the death of his grandmother; a match of Devil’s Tide took her away when Mazer was seven years old. It was far, far from the first death he’d ever seen, but it was the first one he witnessed that really impacted him. He hadn’t expected a member of his family - Protean Greninjas, one of the most powerful species of Pokemon in Xia! - to be taken away from him by the Tempest Festival. Mazer’s brother Tyrell, his junior by a couple of years, cried openly when he watched Nanna Belline die - and something about the way their parents rebuked Ty for shedding tears during the Tempest Festival left a sour taste in Mazer’s mouth.

Mazer took part in Tempest Festivals himself for several years, as both a Frogadier and Greninja. He was renowned for his skill at Devil’s Tide, notorious for his abuse of Protean to win Deathwish Endurance, and lauded for his victories in Blood Pit Arena and Field of Screams. He began to see why his parents would enjoy these sports, grisly as they were, and while he sometimes felt bad for the carnage he caused he didn’t really stop to consider why he was doing this until a bad match of Deadly Force left Ty paralyzed in both legs. When Mazer tried to care for his younger brother, their parents shunned both of them - in their minds, Ty had brought shame to the family when he failed so badly in the competition without having the good graces to die in battle. Mazer tried to take care of Ty, but it didn’t take long for the city of Crackwood to claim Ty, in the form of a lung infection resulting from the inaction of his legs. Emboldened by his grief, Mazer decided to take place in one last Tempest Festival. He bribed an official to make sure that he was pitted against his parents in the Blood Pit Arena and attacked them, slicing his father’s arm so badly as to render it unusable, and breaking his mother’s leg while shouting that these were the games that had killed Ty, and that he hoped that they would have fun living with their guilt and their own grievous wounds.

After that, he wasn't really sure what to do with himself. He spent a few years playing bodyguard, and though he had lost his love for the Tempest Festival, he still tuned in whenever it rolled around. One year, he turned it on to find a Sawsbuck positively destroying the Field of Screams. After her victory, the Sawsbuck cheerfully announced that her name was Bella and that running was her favorite activity and also that every single member of the Black Lotus Empire's cruel, oppressive hierarchy could choke to death on their own intestines before filling the air with a Petal Dance and running off under its cover. As Mazer's TV beeped and displayed a "technical difficulties" message, the Greninja felt himself in awe. He had to meet this Sawsbuck; she had amazed him. Fortunately, she came to him - after that televised stunt, even her resourceful, unpredictable self needed protecting. However, just because she wanted to cover her back didn't mean that she wanted to stop her attacks on the Black Lotus. One thing led to another as she took her potshots, and before anyone knew it she had attracted a following that came to be known as the Prankster Platoon. Since then, the Platoon's leadership has changed hooves, paws, hands, and claws several times - the Platoon keeps no elected leader, but rather collectively decides to follow whoever they think will lead them the most successfully. While Bella is still active and bears Mazer and the other leaders that have succeeded her no ill will, she is no longer the leader and Mazer is presently the Pokemon who people believe is worth following into the flames - both metaphorical and literal.

Starting Blaze Jewel: Fairy. He sometimes keeps it in his jacket pockets but will usually just hide it under his tongue. That’s gross, Mazer.

Other:
- Mazer’s Tempest Festival career ended about seven years ago, but he was rather famous during that time and his grand finale left quite the impression. Some people might still recognize him!
- While Mazer is confident in his combat skills, he knows that he's not invincible. The jackets he's fond of are as functional as they are loud - the material isn’t bulletproof, but it provides light protection against many types of attacks. He carries a fancy-looking knife (an old favorite of his brother’s) for close-quarters combat, and often totes various firearms, usually disguised as paintball or squirt guns.
- It took a lot of willpower to not give him the surname “Rackham”. A lot of willpower.