Melisma Sonata
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Mekton Zeta - Powersuit City [v.1.0.1]
Name: MELISMA SONATA
Age: 16
INT 8 COOL 5 EMP 8
TECH 6 REF 8 ATT 10
MA 4 LUCK 5 BOD 6
Skills:
(Language: Japlish) +8
Performance +8 Play Guitar +4
Mecha Piloting +6 Hand to Hand +4
Mecha Gunnery +5 Blade +4
Composition +4 Leadership (EMP based) +4
Wardrobe & Style +4 Mecha Design +5
Mecha Tech +4 Seduction +3
Background:
People will recognize her as: The concert choir's star soprano, fledgeling rock singer, the star of the jazz ensemble.
Melisma Sonata, the daughter of an influential businessman, has spent her early life wanting for nothing. She has had plenty of comfort, friends, good grades, and love, yet she wants more. Her songs are mostly haunting, yet some of them are happy, and some just can't quite be placed. "I've got to go on, I've got to break free/from this existence of misery and hate/I'm ready for life, I'm ready for *me*... I can't wait!" - Ready for Life, (P) 2144 M. Sonata (© 1997 Mark Berger).
Physically, Melisma is tall, slender and gorgeous, with gold-colored eyes which match the blonde hair that reaches to her slim waist, long, shapely legs and very nice <thwack> ... Right. I'm rambling lustfully over a fictional character. Sorry.
Best Subjects: Choir, Mecha Technologies
Worst Subjects: Math (especially Ms. Knight's class), English
Favorite Food: Pizza
Least Favorite Food: Natto (fermented soybean curd)
Melisma has a *VERY* difficult time in math - she averages a C or a B- in
math (bear in mind that the top 50% of *my* graduating class had 3.0 or
better GPAs), which drags down her GPA. She doesn't struggle as much in
English (she can pull off an A- in English with much effort), but she
doesn't apply herself fully in it (she could get an A if she really tried -
English and Music are really quite closely related). She also eats *A LOT*
- her lunch bag every day holds enough food to feed at least two people
with normal appetites. She does have sufficient discipline, though, to
keep her hands out of her lunch bag until lunchtime. It doesn't hurt that
around the time she gets hungry, third hour gets out and she can run down
to the candy machine and buy a quick munchie to tide herself over. When
Melisma has sleepovers with her friends, they tend to ask her to buy her
own pizza, since she eats so much of it (she prefers Domino's to
okonomiyaki, too). She is also sometimes mistaken for her twin sister.
Musica wears her own hair long during the winter and summer, since
Cross-Country and Track run during fall and spring, respectively. Near the
end of both winter and summer, people start mistaking Musica for Melisma
and vice-versa.
Melisma has four siblings: her older brother, Freddie, has short, curly red hair and green eyes. He doesn't really care one way or another about his twin younger sisters (Melsima and Musica), who look out for each other constantly. Musica has a bit less talent in mecha design, and she wears her blonde hair short rather than Melisma's golden cascade, but the two are otherwise identical.
Their younger sister, Serena, is a bit annoying at times. She hero-worships the older girls (much to their dismay), and often gets in their way. Her hair is long, curly, and pink, and she has ruby-red eyes.
The youngest of the family, the two-year-old Billy Holliday Sonata, is a terrible Terrible Two. Yet, he calms down around his big sisters. Billy has blue hair and shares Serena's red eyes.
Melisma's friends:
Ryu Fuhrimoto:
Ryu is one of Melisma's oldest friends. He's an older boy, upon whom her first crush was directed, and has been like an older brother to her since they met ten years ago. Ryu is eighteen and in college.
Mr. Neil Holland (Holland-sensei)
Age: 43 Height: 5'10" Weight: 165 lb.
Mr. Holland (Holland-sensei most of the time, his Concert Choir students refer to him as "Mr. H.") is a career teacher. He began teaching choir after earning his teaching certificate, and has been with Powersuit City High since 2130. He has seniority over every teacher in the district (with the exception of Ms. Knight, who from all appearances has been around forever), and his choir program is one of the twenty best in Japan, and in the top 100 in the world. Two years ago, PSCHS's Concert Choir was the featured choir at the Dorian Choral Festival at Luther College (Decorah, Iowa). Holland has written two pieces of choral music, one short and one
long (which he co-wrote with his instrumental-music colleagues), earning him some recognition as a writer/arranger of choral music.
Two of Mr. H's favorite students, Melisma Sonata and Karen Sapphire, are at constant odds with each other, which distresses him no end. It didn't help one bit that Melisma's voice is slightly better, which means she gets most of the soprano solos and got to be the PSCHS Concert Choir's soprano delegate to the Dorian Festival this year (the featured choir this year was the Rosemount (Minnesota) Concert Choir).
Mr. H will often cover for his students if they need to slip out of class to defeat yet another alien menace. He strongly dislikes dealing with Ms. Knight, but will do so if necessary.
In his free time, Mr. H fishes, does various other things, and listens to jazz music. He directs the school's Jazz Ensemble, as well as doing musical direction for school plays. In addition to choir direction, Mr. H. teaches Music Theory and Sight-Singing. He is married and has two daughters, the younger of whom is a senior at PSCHS (and sings first Alto) and the elder is a student at Powersuit City University, and a member of the PSCU Dragons Combat Cheerleading Team. His wife is a private piano teacher, and the choir's accompanist.
A Quote: "Let's try that again... only this time, sing pianissimo dynamics with fortissimo energy."
Anne Magami (Magami-sensei, many of the other teachers call her "Annie.")
Anne Magami is the school's Advanced Mecha Technologies teacher. She appears no older than twenty-five (her real age is thirty). Magami-sensei is a classical redhead, with cat-green eyes and very, very pale skin. She is most commonly seen wearing a lab coat over a black jumpsuit, and has a mad-scientist complex: she is ALWAYS tinkering.
A quote: "Waitasec... <ZAP!!!> ouch! That won't work... Now how did I have it originally?"
Keiko Akagi (Kei-chan)
Melisma and Musica's best friend since preschool. Melisma doesn't hang around
with Kei-chan as much as Musica does, because she's really, really busy.
Sara Kurijima
A rival from Advanced MechaTech. Their rivalry in-class soon blossomed into a friendship outside the classroom, and the two constantly egg each other on to greater and greater achievements in their designs. They have also formed a band together and are beginning to try to make a name for themselves.
(Author's note: The inspirations for these characters are as follows: Ryu - Motoki Fuhrimoto (Andrew) from Sailor Moon, Holland-sensei: Glen Holland, Richard Dreyfuss's character from Mr. Holland's Opus, Magami-sensei is a combination of Ayumi-sensei of Project A-ko, Haruna-sensei of Sailor Moon, and a few teachers I've had along the way, Kei-chan is Osaka Naru (Molly Baker), once again of Sailor Moon fame, and Sara-chan is a much friendlier version of Daitokuji B-ko, from Project A-ko).
Kevin Baker
Melisma's boyfriend, Kevin has dark purple (nearly black - think Hino Rei), short and well-kept hair and ice-blue eyes. Kevin isn't on really great terms with Sara, but she can tolerate his presence and vice versa.
Kevin is in the school's drama club and band, and he and Melisma come to each other's concerts. They also know Freddy Tachys, and Kevin is part of the Lunch Hour Comedy Troupe. Melisma isn't a part of the LHCT, the volume of food she consumes for lunch precludes that - she eats as much food as fast as Sailor Moon!
Freddy Tachys
See Drogn's posts on Freddy. Melisma knows him primarily through Kevin (see above)
Melisma's enemies
Karen Sapphire
The daughter of the richest man in Powersuit City. Karen was a classmate in Advanced Mecha Technologies, whose stability had been greatly in doubt for a long time. The two girls hadn't been in class one day when Karen started talking about how she could design a powersuit better than that of anybody else in the class. A war began, with Melisma, Musica and Sara on one side and Karen, alone, on the other. It worsened when the semester ended and Melisma's powersuit got an 'A,' especially since Karen only got a 'B' on her powersuit. When they meet face-to-face, Karen is most likely to try to kill Melisma, which makes choir rehearsals interesting to say the least. The only thing that keeps the choir room from becoming a bloodbath is the fact that a pissed-off choir teacher is the scariest thing in the Known Universe. . .
Brunhilde, the lunch lady
All I can say as to Brunhilde's appearance is, YUCK. She's the Fat Lady from
opera, and old, too. She wears a hideously deformed gold powersuit, and is the primary reason that 90% of the student body (and all of the faculty) brings bag lunches. Brunhilde is not a "black-hat" bad guy, mostly comic relief (to parallel Bugs Bunny: Karen is Yosimite Sam, Brunhilde is Elmer Fudd).
Ms. Knight
A dried up old prune of a math teacher, Knight is the bane of Melisma's academic life, totally without humor, and seemingly without compassion. Known to give tests the day after an alien invasion her students spent the previous day and part of the night foiling, or even during the invasion itself. Also prone to be in the hallway when someone (or multiple someones) is trying to sneak off and save the world. ("Don't give me any of your excuses! Why, I never skipped classes just to save the world! Kids today just don't... etc. etc. etc.) Fond of black pants and a maroon jacket, with black mid-heeled shoes. Not fond of fine arts oriented students anyway, and thinks the Jazz Ensemble is a waste of school money and time. However, since Holland-sensei is one of the few teachers with the guts to stand up to Ms. Knight, there's not a whole lot she can do about them. Compounding this is the fact that not even the other staff members like her, her "Everyone is entitled to my own opinion!" attitude grates on them as much as it does on the students. Still, nobody dares fire her, she's one scary old battleaxe. Not that they aren't looking for an excuse, mind you...
[ Part 4: "Attached Text" ]
--
Mark Berger
Defender of the Terran Empire and Knight of the Crystal Millennium
Champion of Light and all things Mekton Zeta
Creator of the Terran Sector of The Shared Universe Project:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6661/su_mark.html
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