As promised, Myrtle’s origin story, or: How Colress Bullied Faba Into Adopting a Faller Child.

The meta origin story for Myrtle came after I made my fankid Ginger, and my friend @pkmnomegaverse commented that now there was a Ghetsis/Chili fankid to go along with her Ghetsis/Cress one, so all we needed to complete the trio was a Ghetsis/Cilan kid. Being myself, I sort of jokingly made Myrtle in order to fulfill that, with the idea being she existed in an AU where Ghetsis won, but ended up getting attached to her enough I wanted to use her in the main L&L verse and story as well. Obviously she couldn’t exist naturally in that world, so I got the idea of her being a Faller. And then as I was playing through the Rainbow Rocket storyline in Ultra Moon… it all came together.

Myrtle comes from the same world as the Ghetsis from the RR story, though after he’s forcibly returned from whence he came by Colress. Ghetsis decides he wants a new generation of competent ninja bodyguards so… Myrtle, Ginger, and another new kid called Perilla serve that purpose. Perilla’s not super important though. Rather than be interested in the job she was meant to be raised for, Myrtle ends up being more inclined to the sciences instead, often following around her world’s Colress and watching his experiments. Due to Ghetsis’s little adventure in another world, he assigns Colress the task of studying ways to get to other universes to expand Plasma’s reign. Colress finds the topic interesting so goes along with it. Ultimately however, something goes wrong and young Myrtle, only a small child of 6-7 at this point, ends up falling through a wormhole, landing in the L&L world’s Alola as a Faller. The Colress of this world ends up finding her and is terribly intrigued by this chance to study a Faller firsthand, especially when he finds out where she came from and who she’s related to – it must be “fate” as much as he doesn’t believe in such things.

Colress takes in Myrtle since he finds her interesting, but does develop some fondness for the clever and rather caustic girl, enjoying her company. Perhaps adopting her would be a good route. Make things easier since she seems eager to help him with his work. The only thing standing in his little father-daughter scientist family team plan is his partner, Faba (they’re not married and don’t really label their relationship… but it is a thing.) Faba’s not a fan of kids and probably wouldn’t be too thrilled with Myrtle being around all the time, but Colress is going to prioritize her this time, so Faba really just ends up sucking it up and dealing, since he wants to keep things going with Colress. Over time, he might even start to see Myrtle somewhat fondly himself. Even if she is an annoying brat, she’s smart and has the makings of a good scientist, so not a total loss he guesses, just from a logical standpoint. No affection though. He still hates kids. Myrtle’s just… the exception.

The trio make a rather odd family, but they’re all unconventional people so it suits them just fine. Myrtle continues to work with Colress, and later on her own projects with Aether as she grows up, and while she continues to be rather antisocial and scathing, she’s respected for her skilled work in the field of interdimensional research and serves as an important secondary character in my (tenuous and in development as always) Alola plotline.