Name: Maxine “Max” Janowski
Age: 23
Appearance: Max’s body is almost entirely made up of angles. She’s sharp and skinny, with scant muscle or body fat. Basically, the definition of “bony.” Her face is often sour-looking, her sharp eyes in an almost permanent glare. She wears heavy eyeliner that really accentuates the bags under her eyes. Max dresses in mostly black and other dark colors; usually distressed jeans and simple shirts and jackets. The dark image is topped off by her hair, dark brown and shaved on the left side. The bottom line of it is that she looks like an unfriendly emo kid.
Personality: Max is almost as unfriendly as she looks. Around others, she acts cold and distant, seeming to hate everyone around her. She keeps her distance from people, both emotionally and physically. Max absolutely hates being touched. You would have to be very close to her to be able to touch her without being pushed away or yelled at. She is secretive to the point of paranoia. She rarely goes outside, preferring to conduct her work from the comfort of her home. Many of the people she works with never even see her face.
Considering the traits she shows, you could easily label Max a misanthrope, but that’s not exactly the case. Her unwelcoming and antisocial behavior doesn’t come from a place of malice; rather it stems from intense anxiety. People scare her, and her aloof facade is her attempt at hiding that. Underneath the prickly surface, she’s just introverted and socially awkward. Befriending Max is a hard thing to do, but it’s worth it, as you’ll find yourself with a loyal ally. If you don’t believe there’s positivity in her, all you have to do is see how she acts around her cat.
History: For most of her life, Max was a typical introverted, nerdy kid. She had an intense interest in programming, greatly preferring computers to people. She excelled in her school’s computer science classes, but school was the only place she was able to openly practice her passion. There was only one computer in her household and she wasn’t allowed to use it. She still would, though, staying up long into the night on her mother’s laptop.
Max’s mother was... troubled, to say the least. She was a hoarder, a narcissist, and a serial monogamist with bad taste in men. She wasn’t able to keep any job for a long time, so she and Max mostly lived on child support payments from her birth father (who she only met once and didn’t like at all). Max dealt with a long line of asshole stepdads who she more or less ignored.
In high school, Max excelled in most of her classes, but remained socially isolated. One night when Max was seventeen, the man her mother was dating stayed over. Even better, he had brought his laptop. Seeing an opportunity to test her skills, Max managed to get access to his files. What she found on his hard drive... Well, she would never tell you. Needless to say, she sent an anonymous tip to the police and had him arrested.
Max’s mother wasn’t happy about this. She thought that this man could be “the one” and was angry about his arrest. Her mood became much more volatile and she and Max would often get in arguments over trivial matters. Fed up with the fighting, Max moved out as soon as she finished high school.
Once she got a job (computer repair, naturally) and had enough disposable income, the first thing she did was buy her own computer. Max gained a new hobby in this time: browsing the deep web for illicit communities and exposing the identities of their members. This brought her plenty of satisfaction; she felt like a vigilante hero.
Max made a big step out of her shell when she started dating someone; a girl who worked at the cafe next door to the repair shop. The relationship isn’t something that Max will go into detail about, but suffice to say, it was a prolonged train wreck that lasted four years when it should have been over before a month. Things weren’t completely awful during that time, though. For one, Max adopted a cat. That was actually it, really. That was the one good thing.
After a long-overdue breakup, Max changed. Her introversion grew into borderline agoraphobia. She had her work, food, and cat supplies delivered to her apartment to avoid interacting with anybody, and she became even less friendly to the people she had to see. At this point, she was a bona fide shut-in. She still continued her “purges,” as she called them, and apparently made a bit of a name for herself, as she received a message from some shady organization she hadn’t heard of asking to recruit her. Interested, she responded.
A month later, she works for the UAA, digging up information on targets to help assassins more easily kill them.
Max spends her free time playing with her cat, watching anime, and listening to music. She's kind of a loser.
Her cat is a black shorthair named Bruise Violet.
Theme Songs: Aha by Imogen Heap I Know Where You Sleep by Emilie AutumnGirl Anachronism by The Dresden DollsTravis wears a red leather jacket