Val is a first-year Ph.D at Orange Islands University student studying biochemistry. Before leaving for her summer study abroad in San Isidore, she was doing research with her doctoral advisor, Dr. Philena Ivy, on the protein expression in regional Pokémon variants. One day, Dr. Ivy brought back a Totodile named Kyle to the lab in the Orange Islands, who quickly took to Val, and is often seen hiding stolen snacks or being chased around the lab by Val for running off with a PCR tray as a prank.
As she lives on a graduate stipend, she is constantly broke and can often be found circling the campus for seminars with free food. Though quite resourceful, Val is a chronic procrastinator, to the point where she originally sought a study abroad to exploit a loophole in her university's policies that would let her postpone her Ph.D qualifying exams. Dr. Ivy entrusted Val with Kyle, who she took to San Isidore to give the rest of the lab members a period of peace, and Kyle was practically more Val's Pokémon than Dr. Ivy's anyway.
Val is a character I made for a tabletop RPG set in the Pokémon universe that was being run by a friend of mine, that abruptly ended in the middle. The RPG was set in San Isidore, a city in the Sotona region, which was made for the RPG.
She is often seen with an orange OIU hoodie, light blue jeans, and red sneakers. She is quite fond of her lab coat, and often "forgets" to take it off when not in the lab. The lapel of her lab coat sports a Coral-Eye Badge, received for Kyle's superior accuracy at the Mikan Gym's water gun challenge, a performance Val has struggled to get out of Kyle since.
When out and about, she carries a messenger bag full of Pokéblocks, N95 masks, spare gloves, a notebook, leftover food from on-campus seminars, an Up Ramen™, and a corporate-branded Premier Ball given out at a career fair. Since the start of her study abroad, she carries a first-generation Pokédex with the label "PROPERTY OF OIU BIOCHEMISTRY," which was provided by Dr. Ivy, but is quite old and glitches out often.
She can be excited by new clothes, especially if they're kind of weird, such as Australian cork hats or skirts with lots of digits of pi printed on them, but she usually ends up going back to a lab coat, hoodie, and jeans ensemble eventually.
