She was originally trained as a botanist, and she grew up among gardens and fields. She was, and is, fascinated by plants and cultivars, and possesses a rather prodigious ability to actually cultivate them, but she struggled with the more academic aspects of the discipline. As she grew, she became the small town's notorious, if mostly tolerated, rapscallion - the prankster, the flirt, the schemer, the occasional perpetrator criminal mischief and/or public intoxication. Her mothers understood - she had the adventurers drive, and she was gnawing on the figurative bars of their small town.
When she was a teenager, it also became obvious that, whatever her biological origins, she had borderline supernatural physical capabilities. Barely into adulthood, still gangly and awkward, and she could lift more than 4 farmhands, outrun a chocobo, or climb a 100ft vertical cliff-side without getting winded. Baja learned fighting from a retired pirate bosun who'd settled in their community, Papa Achtfrusk, and became the sort of de-facto village protector, a role of no small significance for a provincial town in the wake of the Calamity.