Old bastard with a permanent physical deformity of organic armour, as in his skin having turned into plates of bone, chitin, etc. Backed up by regeneration. One of the core themes of the character being, that he is a brooding, cynical asshole, who has suffered greatly because he cannot hide well...but still continues to help others. Also, he's poor as hell, and in no way could ever afford some kind of holographic/cloaking disguise.

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Melissa Locke



Whiplash



30, January 27th



Female



Photo-journalist / Videographer

• Dynamic Camouflage: Able to conceal herself + her clothing to match a background she touches.
• Wall Crawling: Ability to climb most surfaces with ease, even upside down.
• Enhanced Strength: Slightly above peak human ability (~ 1500lbs over her head for short periods of time)
• Enhanced Vision and Spatial Awareness: Xray and night vision, improved daytime vision, faster reflexes.
• Highly Trained in Krav Maga: Trained from childhood in the ways of Krav Maga. Combined with her enhanced strength, she is truly a foe to be reckoned with.

Camouflage requires a lot of energy, therefore she can only hold it for a minute or two at best. No more durable than an average person and will succumb to most things that would kill a normal human being. Her heightened senses are also more susceptible to damage given their extra sensitivity (ex. Bright light will daze her for longer than someone with regular vision.)

• Professional-Grade DSLR (ED): Her main photography and videography camera. Mel never leaves home without it. She also carries a variety of lenses to suit her needs in the field.
• Laptop (ED): Mainly for sending her photos and footage to large news corporations, main asset in her source of income.
• Black tactical backpack (ED): Something sturdy that will stay put, no matter her orientation, even upside down. Carries all her work gear.
• Hard knuckle gloves (H): Standard duty gloves with a hard carbon fibre inlay around the knuckles. Gives that extra ‘oomf’ to her unarmed combat strikes.
• Twin Batons (H): Two batons made from titanium and carbon fibre. Can be combined into a single, longer blunt weapon. Used on the uncommon occasions where she doesn’t fight unarmed.
• Combat Knife (ED/H): Military-esque combat knife, carried no matter where she is.

A product of an experiment gone wrong.

Or maybe an experiment gone right…

Melissa’s life has been one of perspective. In her early life, all she knew were the four concrete walls of what was essentially a glorified prison cell. Created from the genetic modification of an embryo, then grown in a lab until she was ready to “be born”, Melissa was purpose built to be the first in what was meant to be the next generation of soldiers. Mind you, there was one issue. She was originally intended to be male. A slip-up by one of the engineers caused an unintended, unnoticed change in her chromosomes, so they were quite surprised when the fetus started showing female traits.

Because of this, her portion of the project was scrapped and restarted from the beginning. Melissa was born in critical condition, barely breathing or showing any vital signs at all. She was kept in I.C.U for the first two years of her life until she stabilized, before being transferred to a regular cell when she turned three. Throughout her childhood she was taught a relatively standard school curriculum from age five to fourteen, all the while being trained to fight alongside what was essentially her one year younger brother.

Up until this point, both Mel and her younger counterpart had been considered complete successes. They had both shown themselves able to use their abilities very competently and were both extremely proficient in hand to hand combat. But Mel was exhibiting something that the male wasn’t, something that the top brass of the facility thought was very intriguing and that would be very profitable. Enhanced strength. At age fourteen, she was able to lift almost 500 lbs above her head with no issue, able to slow a moving vehicle significantly and able to beat almost every single combat instructor in one on one combat.

Eventually her “brother” was all but forgotten and Mel took the spotlight, the centerpiece of their super-soldier program. No longer residing in a prison cell-- she had made it clear that she hated the cell by putting a whole through five feet of concrete-- Mel lived a fairly decent life. Now sixteen years old, she trained, ate and slept with the rest of the team while her counterpart sat on the sidelines, jealousy and hatred building inside of him.

And then one night, he snapped. Mel awoke to sirens going off all around. She stepped outside of her room only to see the corpses of the entire research team, the closest thing she had to family, strewn about the lab. In the center of them, her counterpart stood, bruised and bloodied. She couldn’t believe it. It felt surreal, seeing them all dead. The anger began to rise inside of her and she couldn’t help but think about killing the young man that stood in front of her. But part of her held back. He had been through enough.

Time flew by for the next fourteen years. In this time, Mel had been in and out of both orphanages and schools. She didn’t last more than a month in one place before she no longer felt safe around the other students. Eventually, after living on the street for a year, she managed to get a job at a fast food restaurant and found a cheap apartment to stay in. Mel worked hard to save money for college and applied for a two-year journalism course.

Now? Mel earned her diploma in journalism and through persuasion, managed to land a job at a small, independent newspaper company as a photojournalist. Though infrequent, a story that requires her specific skill set will occasionally come through. Her boss doesn’t know how she manages the pictures she does, but in Mel’s mind all that matters is the final product.



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