Melissa Jamison

From Toosigma

The Basics

Name	Melissa Jamison, Ph.D.
Handle	Digital Ghost (often just "DG")
Alignment	Unprincipled (Selfish)
Age	15
Gender	Female
Origin	Carlisle, MA
Height	4'10”
Weight	92lbs

Description: Slight build with waist-length brown hair and brown eyes adorned with stylish academic glasses. Thanks to games like Dance Dance Revolution, Melissa has managed to stay in decent shape, but her pale, “florescent tan” skin is a give-away to her time spent in front of the computer rather than outside with the rest of the kids her age.

Melissa has multiple technology and electricity-related powers (flexible to meet the needs of a campaign).

Behavior and Motivations: Melissa, while being a highly educated and extremely intelligent 15 year old girl, is still a girl. She is very mature, but she also still enjoys some of the most basic things about being young such as video games, roller blading, and cotton candy. She can be at home in a group of kids her age, but she can only do so as an occasion rather than as a rule. She enjoys the company of adults who are similarly educated, though ageism is her biggest enemy in this area because nobody wants to take such a young girl seriously, and few believe her credentials.

A constant challenge for Melissa is overcoming her fairly recent drug addiction. She is still prone to fits of depression, and waking up every morning and remembering where she was last night is a triumph for her. However, that joy only lasts so long as she remembers to take her prescription. Without it, her life literally hangs in the balance as she quickly devolves into depression and then seizures, finally losing all control of her own mind and body.

One thing that she does harbor is a long-running crush on Max however, she recognizes it as a crush and doesn't say anything (at least while sober). Also, she realizes that she is just a little girl on the outside, so he would never look at her as anything more than a friend. Besides, he probably has a veritable harem of beautiful ladies lined up, so she just loosely embraces the fantasy. In spite of the circumstances, he has come to embody all that is “a man” to her, and she has yet to meet anyone else who measures up.

Bio

Born to a wealthy Massachusetts family, Melissa was an “accident” that spent most of her life having every demand answered with the best that money could afford. Her continuously distant family, including a much older brother and sister (twins), never noticed the genius in their own home, and instead busied themselves with the chores of the idle rich. The fact that she needed so little watching at such a young age was merely a convenience as the rest of the family flew off to far distant corners of the world. The young girl, who could already speak two languages before most children learn to write their own name, had no interest in the pursuits of her family. Instead, she allowed herself to be left behind at any time the family went elsewhere, busying herself with the endless stream of tutors and computer programs that made themselves her constant companions.

At age 11, Melissa forged her parents' signatures and gained permission to take the SATs. She took the full time on each portion of the test and the test administrators thought it was a joke, but the resulting score of 1600 was beyond reproach. Schools from around the nation sent her application packages, and even a few sent representatives to her home. The ones that were met by her parents were turned away as some sort of mistake since her parents had no knowledge of her academic progress, only that she was “doing well” and “was perfectly behaved”. Finally, after some stealthy interference by her closest tutor, Melissa was able to secure attendance at the University of Washington; a school that was willing to meet her halfway, and that her parents would never visit because it was outside of the “elite circle” that her siblings attended. Her tutors and the school helped her file the proper emancipation paperwork, actually signed without question by her parents that were probably as glad to be rid of her as ever. That same night, she packed her bags and boarded the plane with the academic dean for the school, and never looked back...

College life was not what she had hoped however, as her young age made her the target of every freshman prank that anyone could make up. Jocks, geeks, goths, punks, and every other group shunned her as the “brainy little brat”, among other less polite monikers. She was determined not to go home, however, so she stuck it out as best she could. She couldn't help it that the material was so easy for her, but those who were having a tough time with the coursework seemed to resent her more than most. Her laptop and the video arcade became her friends, but mostly the latter where she could blend into the other kids and disappear into an electronic world that always seemed to welcome her. She only returned to the dorm well after everyone else seemed to be in bed and the halls were quiet, and she never returned after her last class on Friday, until early Monday morning.

A cold and rainy Saturday night in December, just two days after her 12th birthday and not even a card from her family, Melissa was taking out her frustrations on one of the video games near the open storefront. Since she left home, these games seemed to become easier and easier, so even the arcade owners began to make her feel less welcome than in the past. This night, however, there were few others in the place, and the owner was too busy with other things to hassle her about being “too good” and costing him money. Lost in the flood of light and colors as she blasted her way through her grief, she didn't even hear the door open almost right behind her.

Without warning, she felt her face crushed into the console and something about blowing the test curve...and runt...and lesson... Two, three more times, until her feet could no longer hold her and she crumpled to the ground. There, she was met by kicking feet that did not seem to have a particular part of her body as a target. Suddenly, almost as quickly as it began, her assailants stopped. Melissa could not see what was going on through her swelling eyes, but she heard glass shattering around her. Then she felt a pair of massive arms pick her up from the floor. She was scared, terrified in fact, but she surrendered to the dark before she could voice a protest through her shattered mouth.

It was the following morning and two surgeries later when she finally awoke at the hospital. Her whole body ached, but she was happy to be able to feel it at all. A small groan escaped her lips, bringing her benefactor from the edge of sleep on the other side of the room, right to her side. His name was Max Olsen, and he was a huge man, even for a division one college athlete. His size make little Melissa appear every bit as a bandaged toy that had been played with too roughly by this giant. As the police knew well, he overpowered her assailants with what seemed to be negligible effort on his part and carried Melissa's tiny body the four blocks to the emergency room at Northwest Hospital. Max had already answered questions for the police and hospital staff, some of which he had no answer for, and he also expected to be put on probation for missing a practice prior to the upcoming tournament. His conscience, however, kept him glued to her side through the night and hearing her stir brought him a measure of relief after such a stressful night.

“Are you alright?” he asked her with obvious relief.

“No,” she replied through her wired-shut mouth, “I gotsh my butt kickedsh.” She then asked who he was, having no memory of him at all.

With a shyness that one would never expect to find within his mighty frame, he said, “Max...Max Olson.”

“I'm Melissha,” she obliged. “Where am I?”

“A pleasure to meet you,” he said as he grasped her diminutive hand as if it might break under a feather. “You are at Northwest Hospital. You've been out for hours, but the docs say you will be okay.”

Clarifying the obvious, “I guessh you broughts me here?”

“Yeah,” sheepishly, “I just couldn't leave you there...so...uhm...”

“Thanksh.”

He grinned, “Anytime.”

After a moment, Melissa realized that she was thirsty and asked for some water. Max sped from the room as if her will had control of his body. He paced quickly to the nurse's station where he filled a glass with water and quickly returned it to her bedside. Only as he passed through the door did he recall that the doctors had told him she would be eating and drinking through a straw for a couple of months. Finally, with everything assembled, he held the glass for her as if for a humming bird so that she could sip it without moving. The process was obviously uncomfortable for her, but she managed to down half of the glass without a whimper.

No sooner had he set the glass down than a nurse came to ask him outside. She held in her hand the young girl's school ID card, but was convinced that it was some sort of mistake or joke. Max assured her that there was no such thing to his knowledge, and that she was some sort of “whiz-kid” that was actually attending courses there. She was unconvinced that everything was on the up-and-up, so she told him that she was going to make some phone calls to verify everything since he was not her family. The nurse also directed his attention to the head coach seated in the lobby.

Contrite, Max immediately apologized for missing the early morning practice. Coach, on the other hand, seemed quite relaxed about the whole thing saying only that everything had been taken care of legally and that there would be no charges pressed in any case. He warned Max that the fraternity boys that assaulted the young girl would likely have it out for him as well now, and that she had certainly not seen the last of them since she was being blamed for a couple of them receiving failing scores on their CS450 mid-term exam. Finally, he thanked the star athlete for being a stand-up guy and looking after the youngest student in the history of the university.

The doctor and a nurse entered Melissa's room as the two parted, and Max was met by Melissa's slurred greeting and the doctor questioning his right to be there.

“Uh, sir...” the doctor began.

“Maxsh!” Melissa exclaimed, “I shought you lesht.”

“Oh,” the doctor realized, “you can stay then.”

The nurse, who had been fishing through Melissa's backpack for something, called the doctor over to look at some sort of envelope. Between the young girl and the doctor, Max was informed that Melissa had been emancipated by her parents. It took some time for this to settle into the medical personnel, but Max seemed accepting of it right away.

“What's the big deal?” he asked the doctor. “ If she's smart enough to go to college, and smart enough to beat people twice her age on tests, she's gotta be smart enough to take care of herself, right?”

The doctor explained that they had called her parents, but that those who should be most worried about their young daughter were remarkably unconcerned. Also, the situation left the hospital in a bit of a quandary about what to do for an outside point of contact for Melissa. She would be in an inpatient status for another couple of weeks, but she would have to come back and there would be at least one more orthodontic surgery. Max agrees to be a point of contact for the girl, and the hospital adjusts the paperwork to have him listed as “family” to make it easier for him to get in.

It was only when the staff left and Max handed Melissa her laptop that he witnessed something truly amazing. She was smart, that was obvious in that she was in the school, but that was not the whole of it. After enduring a stream of slurred techno-babble while her computer started up and she verified that it was working, Max watched as the broken and bandaged little girl accessed his grades and changed one of them as easily and casually as he would send an email. Even then, when he questioned it, she changed it back just as simply and then accessed his instructor's personal files to see the quiz itself. When he asked her how she was doing that, she replied with the honesty of a child.

“Computersh likes me,” she said, “and I likesh them. I'ff nefver been hit by a computersh...unless shomeone wash helping...”

Max had found a tutor for his computer courses, and Melissa had found someone to talk to that didn't seem to hate her for being smart and young...

Max fulfilled more than his obligation to her. He made sure she had everything she needed while she was in the hospital, and he stayed to talk to her even when the tutoring and such was done. Just listening to the girl speak, even through the wires, was something wonderfully strange to him. Max learned that she was a “cool kid”, but that was not a good thing, and that him being a “diesel” was. After a few months and a few ceramic teeth, Melissa was speaking again though her “Boston English” was fading noticeably.

The end of the term came and Max prepared to go home for the summer, but he promised to be in touch while he was gone. Melissa, on the other hand, was going to stay and finish another semester of a double workload. By the end of the summer, she would be a senior and would be likewise on her way toward graduate studies. She did not want to harp on it because she was not even sure she would still be in the school when he returned, but having her friend back for another year made it more likely even if she knew he probably would not write or call.

At the end of the summer, when she expected to see him strolling back onto campus with his Southern California tan and a refreshed outlook toward school, she was shocked to instead receive a postcard from San Quentin State Prison stating that he would not be seeing her again. The card did not say why, but a simple Internet search revealed the horrors of what happened. He had been convicted of manslaughter for killing his abusive father and was sentenced to seven years behind bars. Seven years! To a girl not yet thirteen, such a sentence might have been life. She wrote, but got letters returned unopened; rejected by the prison mail system. She even took a holiday break to try to visit, but they would never let a thirteen year old girl through the gates alone, regardless of the reason. No, she had lost contact with the only person to pay her any regard since she left home.

Through the spring and summer, her body changed as all girls' do, but hers also realized some something amazing. One evening, her computer began to type what she was thinking, as fast as she could think it. She experimented and toyed with it, soon figuring out how to execute everything the complex system could do with just a thought. Then, before she could stop it, her computer seemed to overload and it physically burst into flames in her room. The lights went out and the fire department was called. Once outside, she found that the lights had gone out across the whole campus. Investigators said that it was some sort of circuit overload, but they could not understand how it had started. Melissa knew, however, and began to experiment again as soon as she got a new system and had everything restored. She used her mind to hack the prison computer system, where she found an email account for Max. Finding it was easy, but getting a message to him that didn't go through the security system would be more challenging.

Her first attempts failed, and one was even traced back to the campus. Fortunately, she was able to break the connection by frying some of the switching equipment serving the different dorms. Almost caught and without a connection, she was set back for a few more months while she considered what to do next and practiced on systems with fewer legal ramifications should she fail again. All Max saw of her efforts were emails that looked like massive hex dumps and a corrupted inbox. It would be another twenty months before he heard from Melissa.

Max cracked his knuckles angrily in the darkeness. This was only his second time in solitary since being transferred to Gramercy four months ago. For some reason, the denizens of the supers prison just weren't as pugnacious as those in San Quentin. Or perhaps he'd been moved beyond the long arm of whoever it was that was sending these thugs after him.

The brawl had been short and one-sided, though Max still winced at the cut on his forearm – the guards weren't being terribly vigilant about shivs lately, so it wasn't a huge surprise, but his attacker was certainly surprised when Max took the slash in order to grab his wrist and plunge the blade into his thigh. He chuckled lightly at the memory of the man's agonized screams, and imagined the limp he'd have for weeks – longer if it didn't heal properly.

Stretching out on the spartan cot, he wondered again why he had been transferred to this facility. When he first heard of the transfer, he'd immediately assumed that someone had learned of his abilities, and that he was being moved to the ultra-secure supers wing. When he'd been transferred to the medium security “normals” wing, it had been a real shock.

“Max” a synthesized voice called from the darkness, breaking his reverie. The voice came from the speakerbox at the door, but the guards normally only used it during meals and to let him out for his hour of daily exercise. He would've sworn it was the middle of the night, so it must be some sadistic guard playing some sick joke. He rolled over, turning his back to the door, nearly falling asleep.

“MAX!” the speaker crackled more insistently. “Max, it's me,” the voice continued as if he was supposed to know who “me” was.

“Max...” the voice and noise faded away again, leaving him alone in his cell once more.

The following day, when Max returned to his cell from the yard, he noticed right away that maintenance had been working on the speaker box. The smell of solder flux and a couple of metal filings outside of the door were a dead giveaway, but at least he now knew that he had not imagined the voice. The relief was immeasurable as he had started to wonder if this place was finally getting to him.

“Max...” he heard the whisper again, but it was much clearer than the previous evening. “Wake up sleepy...” he thought for a moment that he recognized the voice, but she must have forgotten about him by now. As if to prove him right, the speaker fell silent again for several long moments and he decided it best to ignore it again as he had the previous evening. He turned to the wall and tried to go back to sleep, but the voice shrieked from the speaker again. “Goddamnit Max! Don't you pretend you don't hear me!”

A moment of silence passed as the smell of burned wiring started to rise from the speaker. The voice came back again, but broken and distant as the night before. It conveyed just one clear word that made no sense at the time, “...tomorrow...”

At dawn, Max understood that something truly strange was happening as the guards came to get him. He was being released, and all of his paperwork showed that he had reached the end of his sentence of thirty six months. They processed him out as any other prisoner, giving him a new set of clothes and a bus ticket back home.

He walked down the street with a small pack with everything he owned. He looked around the old neighborhood, marveling at how little it had changed in the years. He walked up to the door, the same door he had walked up to a million times before, but this was his first visit since that night. Images of that evening flashed before his eyes, threatening to overwhelm him, and he took a few deep breaths to steady himself before knocking on the door.

A moment later, the door opened, revealing a small weaselly man who Max didn't recognize.

“Yeah?” the man asked, slurring even that single word through his stupor.

“Who is it?” a voice he recognized called from within. She walked out of the shadows, and her appearance said everything. Her hair was a tangled rats' nest, her eyes bloodshot and unfocused, and her breath wreaked of alcohol. “Oh. It's you.” she said, disdain dripping with each word.

“So whaddya want?” she asked, impatient, blocking the entrance to the house.

“I...” Max started, a total loss for words as a lump of anger at this stranger woman rising in his throat.

“Well come in. But you can't stay long! I've got important people coming soon.” she turned, leaving the door open and returning to the living room. The house shows signs of severe neglect, and obviously hadn't been cleaned in months. He dropped his bag from his shoulder, appalled at how much things had changed. As he walked across the kitchen, he saw the holes in the wall, untouched since that night. He could almost see the bloodstains that had been hastily but incompletely washed away. He looked down at his hands, knowing that they too were indelibly stained.

He walked into the living room to find his mother and her new man sitting on the couch, drinking vodka straight from the bottle as they watched television. Trash was piled everywhere, and the whole place reeked of urine. He looked around, obviously expecting to see something or someone, before he cleared his throat to speak.

“Where is Sarah?” he asked, struggling to keep his revulsion in check.

“That slut? She ran off with some boy years ago! Just after you went away,” his mother replied nonchalantly. Max stomped in front of the television, eliciting howls of protest, as he reached down and picked up his mother by her shirt front. Her boyfriend tried to stop him, but a single hand to his throat kept him effortlessly at arm's length.

“Do you know where she is?” he asked icily. His withering glare almost seemed to burn her as she writhed in his grasp, struggling to escape. It took several moments before she accepted the futility and answered.

“She said she was going to Vegas,” she wimpered. Max released his grip, letting her slink back to the couch, as the weasel curled around her protectively. “What better place for a whore?” she snapped spitefully.

Max walked purposefully back to his old room, quickly finding that everything of any value had been removed, undoubtedly sold for liquor and drugs. He gathered a few odds and ends, dropping them into his backpack, before walking back to the living room. The two addicts still cowered on the floor, flinching at his approach.

“Hey... you aren't supposed to get out for another seven years...” his mother started, some semblance of her former self burning through the foggy haze of intoxication. “You didn't break out did you?” she asked accusingly.

“No mother. I didn't break out. I'm leaving now.” He strode back to the front door, turning just once to look over his shoulder, finding his mother and her new boyfriend already contentedly returning to their television program.

The door slammed so hard that it was torn from it's hinges.

Max found that keeping an honest job was very difficult. The places that would hire a guy with a rap sheet also felt that they could take advantage of him whenever they wanted. Pay was slow, and more than one employer narrowly avoided his temper by running out of the office. Still, he needed the money, so he suffered the minor indignities as a necessary evil.

It was a late night in March that finally broke the routine. He was working at a greasy spoon in the valley, emptying the trash in the small hours of the morning after closing, when a dark figure leaped at him from the shadows. The glint of light on metal was sufficient to ignite his prison reflexes, and the unknown assailant was quickly buried in a mountain of garbage.

Three more figures separated from the shadows, but Max hardly saw them as he reacted instinctively. A blast of black energy took him by surprise, though, taking seconds off his reaction time as he looked down at the burned hole in his uniform and charred flesh beneath. With a growl of anger, he redoubled his attacks, picking up foes and slinging them across the alley, hearing the cracking of their broken bones as sweet assurance that they would not renew their assault.

When the melee ended, Max counted twelve enemies as he quickly brought his breathing back under control. It took him several moments before he realized that he was towering over them – literally, as he had grown over ten feet during the brawl.

Searching the bodies, he found information linking them to a local gang, and he decided to pay them a little visit. Hours later, he walked out of the gang's hideout with a wad of cash and a brand new motorcycle, heading for Vegas.

On a bustling Saturday evening in late June, Max found himself skulking around the shops just a few blocks from The Strip. These places got hit every so often, but they likewise traded in the crimes that hit their competitors. Also, on the good side, the place he was looking at was not owned by the mafia, so getting away would be much easier. He did not enjoy that he had to steal to get by, but he knew it was the only way someone like him could survive.

Walking around the front of the building one more time, pulling his mask out of his pocket, he looked around for anyone or anything that could identify him. Seeing nothing, he began to pull the hood over his head when a startlingly familiar voice queried him.

“How are you supposed to protect a girl if you wind up back inside tonight?” she asked.

He spun around, hood falling off of his head to see who was playing with him. At first, he looked right over the top of her head, but movement caught his attention and he glanced down to find a face he could never forget; it was Melissa. Not the same pudgy little child he left in college, but a nubile girl whose body was clearly catching up with her mind. Still quite short, it seemed that most of her baby fat was gone, an that she had been doing something to change her previously sedentary life in the three years since he had seen her. She wore a white Bruins hat with her long hair pulled through the back, and a pink babydoll shirt with the term “Jailbait” scrawled across her developing chest. Her button nose held stylish glasses that, combined with her pale skin, spoke of long hours in front of the computer. She still had the same backpack from college, and he imagined that her whole life was inside of the well worn bag as it had always been.

“Well,” she began, “Are you going to hug me? Or are you going to wait until the cop on the corner decides one of us is soliciting?”

Max picked up the tiny girl and again felt as though he was holding a toy that he might break. She whispered that she missed him, and that she had been keeping track of him since he was released. He knew better than to ask how because he was sure he would not understand the answer. When he put her back on the sidewalk she explained that the cop had been there for a few minutes, that the store owner had a camera just inside the door, and that she was not going to let him go to jail again if she could help it.

“Let's grab a coffee and talk,” she suggested, leading him away from a desperate mistake, her tiny hand just barely able to grasp two of his massive fingers.

Brandon added to the original story quite a bit with his return home from jail, and we've roleplayed a lot of what's happened to these two. Never know what's going to happen next, but these are a pair of very fun and very interesting characters.