Marianna Jameson

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Karl the Mad
 

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Marianna Jameson

Post by Karl the Mad »

Name: Marianna Jameson
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Species: Augmented Human

Strengths:
Nearly all of Mary's outstanding skills and abilities stem from her training and experience with the Supernatural Criminal Response Team (SCRT), a division of the Special Duties Unit (SDU) of the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF). She is highly trained in various counter-supernatural tactics and gear, including a wide variety of firearms and weaponry, martial arts, traversal gear and protective elements, and the handling or piloting of many vehicle types including speedboats, helicopters, motorcycles, and right- and left-hand cars or trucks. Given her preference for freerunning and parkour these are not skills that see regular use, but the training is still there.

She also possesses a variety of clandestine skills useful for when a covert or questionably legal approach is called for. Picking locks and hotwiring cars see the most use, but she is also knowledgeable in the placement and usage of various bugs and hidden cameras, how to tail others and spot tails in turn, various minor forms of financial fraud and their countermeasures, "jailbreaking" most common devices and electronics, and bypassing many common security and surveillance systems. Exotic systems are beyond her ken, but she has connections for that sort of shit.

From a very young age she has taken Japanese swordsmanship classes, and due to Hong Kong's strict laws regarding guns and similar destructive tech (not to mention HKPF's own paranoia about guns!) she is just as deadly with a blade as anything else, if not more so. Since coming to America she has acquired a black market Paradise sword, Karthian alloys with atoms-wide nanotubes fused to the very edge; flicking a switch activates an electron pulse, aligning the tubes into a cutting edge mere atoms wide. This state will only hold barely a second, but in skilled hands a second is all you need to mess shit up royally; on the other hand it is not in the best state of repair, and the hyper-sharp state often fails to activate. Even without it, the blade is still wickedly sharp and very sturdy, thanks to its alien origins.

She also favors the crossbow, oddly enough. Sleek and black, stealthy and silent, cunningly designed and built specifically for her, it is about three feet long when fully deployed, and the two bows are about one and a half feet wide; it can be disassembled for ease of transport, and she can put it back together in under a minute. It uses a compound bow setup, with pulleys arranged at the ends of the arms and the strings passing through all of them; the bows are much stiffer than usual, possible due to the eccentrics of the compound setup. A drum-like mechanism holds up to twenty bolts, designed to load themselves into the slot once the strings are cocked back, and a precision scope lets her aim each shot carefully; depending on the conditions and the quality of the bolts, it can be accurate up to a hundred yards, though it has a maximum effective range easily five times that. Like her sword, the bow is a complex machine and needs regular maintenance, and while she can keep it in working order it still must be brought to an expert every few months.

For a mortal she is physically near-perfect and generally very healthy and fit, a combined result of brutal police conditioning and the most advanced augmentation work available. Spinal and skeletal reinforcements and neural boost units help her react faster and deal with falls and damage better; adrenaline reservoirs can provide needed jolts to her performance with the proper voice commands, however these are very risky to use, and "hangover" doesn't even begin to describe the after effects. In her forearms and lower legs are a number of small ports, into which a set of climbing gloves and jump boots plug and interface with her systems; the gloves fit over her hands, then shrink to fit like a second skin, serving both to increase grip strength and extrude thousands of tiny barbs from the fingertips which cling to any surface, allowing for Spider-man-like climbing and freerunning. The boots contain powerful magnets, serving to soften falls and allow for much more impressive jumping. Both sets of gear have to be recharged after about two hours of heavy use, and the charging period can take up to four hours.

Last but not least, Mary displays an unusual fluency when it comes to languages, although since she was born and raised in Hong Kong this isn't so special. She is perfectly fluent in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, and serviceable in Japanese; she is learning Spanish as well, now that she is in North America. Her accent is always vaguely British, no matter what language she speaks.

Weaknesses:
All that skill and training comes with a steep price, of course. She is socially somewhat awkward, automatically mistrusting strangers and slow to truly open up, although she's learned to put a smile on the surface over the years (if only to put the civilians at ease). She is paranoid and somewhat neurotic, frequently pausing to run a hand over her belongings and always turning her head side to side in constant watch, never quite relaxing unless she's alone at home.

More importantly, all that training to target and hunt down the supernatural frequently manifests as open distrust and antagonism toward anyone with even a whiff of the inhuman, particularly vampires. Which is ironic, as she herself isn't totally human anymore and is starting to feel distanced from the rest of the mortal world; she has forced herself to acknowledge this dissociation, but otherwise has done little to truly alleviate it.

On a more physical level, her various implants require irregular servicing and maintenance, sometimes outright replacement, she needs pills to sleep soundly at night, and is starting down the slippery slope of alcoholism to boot.

Appearance:
Despite everything, Mary still stands tall and carries herself proudly, with the grace and poise of a true warrior. Her body is toned, athletic and curvy, voluptuous without being excessive. She has glossy black hair typically tied back in a haphazard knot or bun, deep green eyes set in a pale, freckled, angular face, although the otherwise delicate beauty of her features is marred by scar tissue behind her ears and across her jaw.

She was never entirely comfortable in the proper uniforms, and perhaps as a form of rebellion she tries to get away with as little clothing as is practical. This tends to translate into a lot of leather and silk with some armor-y bits tacked on for good measure, like hardened forearm, shoulder and leg plates, but really there's too much skin on display for it to be proper armor (and the way she fights doesn't really rely on armor anyway!).

The sum of her surface does not add up to classical beauty, however. Her pale skin is covered in all manner of scars, gruesome and not; some are from combat, some are from the operations, some are simply a result of trying to stay off the ground and defy gravity as much as possible. In particular her arms and legs, behind her ears, and across her upper chest are marred, and she does little to conceal any of it; this is in spite of the availability of scar-reducing gels and ointments, although she is not so careless about any internal scarring or damage.

Behavior:
One can summarize Marianna by saying she is in love with life. Her life, mind you; other peoples' lives, not so much now that she's off The Force. Years of taking orders and abiding by (often stupid but always well-meaning!) regulations have left her feeling rather rebellious, and she takes every opportunity to indulge herself above others. Not necessarily at their expense, of course, but not for their benefit either.

As mentioned above she is slow to open up and slower to trust others, although she can cut loose and feign openness long enough to accomplish one- or two-night stands. She's not partial about who she sleeps with either, be they man or woman, old or young; always at their house, however, never hers. Ever. Her basement Willowdale condo is her sanctum, her fortress, her workshop and her stash of questionably-legal weapons and tech; anyone walking in would think she was a vigilante, and they wouldn't be totally wrong.

Above all, her greatest joy is herself, her own body and the amazing things she can make it do, aided or unaided. This is why she takes to trans-humanism with such ardor, and such caution; it can elevate human limits, true, but she's seen first-hand what it does to the human outlook, how a person can crave more and more tech, less and less flesh, until they aren't even human anymore and they need to be put down like just another supernatural abomination. Her one true desire is to avoid such a fate for herself, without sacrificing the rush and the joy of life.

Goals:
Although she mostly just wants to have fun and live her life her way, she was trained as a slayer elite and some habits never die. As such, the occasional unexplained vampire slaying in the slums is met with a satisfied smirk when she hears of it on the news. She also wants to avoid falling into the pit trap of augmentation addiction, at least any farther than she already has.

On a more long-term level Mary has her family business and its associated connections to deal with as well. H&J doesn't represent any particular Triad clan or Yakuza family, although it is known that the company does not deal well with the supernatural. Mary's own net worth rounds off to roughly fifteen million dollars, but only a single million is immediately available at any one time; the rest is tied up in the company, in various untraceable funds and accounts that aren't easily accessible, in investments and donations to augmentation clinics and ethical biomedical research labs. She's not quite the philanthropist her parents were, but she manages to put a nice face on when necessary.

History:

Marcus and Heather Jameson, fourth-generation owners of Hardy & Jameson's Exotic Import/Exports, had tried twice to have a child and failed both times; the third time they didn't take any chances and went to a reputable gene therapy clinic, and very early in the morning on June 15 1991 Heather gave birth to a healthy baby girl they named Marianna. During the birth something broke inside Heather; little Mary would be their only child, the sole recipient of their love and success.

As the only child of wealthy parents Mary was somewhat coddled, and she spent a lot of time in the family's library once she knew how to read. Up until she was five she'd had a tutor; after that she was sent to a prestigious private academy, and enrolled into martial arts classes (Japanese swordsmanship, primarily, but also kung fu, and muay thai and silat as she got older). As she grew older, matured and acquired a sense of the world she slowly grew aware that the family business wasn't entirely above-board; she began to see the tattooed men with knives who showed up for meetings with her father, the accountants in the too-expensive suits, the occasional older gentleman whom everyone treated with utmost respect. She had occasion to wonder why she was being taught to fight so hard, but overall was too busy with school and all to really question things for quite some time.

In retrospect, standing over her parents' graves on a rainy afternoon when she was only fifteen, things were much clearer. Almost painfully so: the Jameson success was largely due to Triad affiliations, illegal imports and strong-arm tactics regarding competitors. Her parents, she later learned, had been slain by vampires, members of a Triad clan who affiliated more openly with immortals; it was all just business, part of the never-ending cold war for criminal supremacy in Hong Kong. She said very little, merely crying or smiling when appropriate and nodding along to the counselors at school; inside she kept her anger in check, filed away what pieces of information she would eventually require for avenging her parents, and made a deal with the family lawyer: let the Triads run the business until she was ready and make sure most of the family money went into a trust fund for her own benefit, and she'd leave him alone for now.

Upon her graduation from academy she continued with her martial training, taking evening classes in Criminal Psychology at the nearest university in preparation for joining the HKPF. Some of her family friends objected to her chosen career, but she brushed their concerns off and explained she wanted to avenge not only her own parents, but others who had been affected by the bloodsuckers, or any hopped-up immortal with a superiority complex; reluctantly they backed off, understanding vendetta only too well, but they warned her that cops who went in for revenge did not stay cops for long. She thanked them for their advice and promised to minimize the effects her efforts would have on their criminal operations, and expected in turn to be left alone herself; if it got out that she associated with Triads it would impact her future career, after all.

2011 saw her acceptance into police training, which she aced easily thanks to her overall health, intelligence and physical ability. Some concerns were raised regarding the death of her parents and whether she could remain objective and adhere to the law, and she admitted that while she was still angry and resentful over their deaths, she would do her utmost to fulfill the duties of an officer; they accepted this, and she graduated into active service toward the end of the year , serving in the PTU due to her high qualifications.

She quickly learned that most of a cop's duties were rather boring; foot patrols, traffic duty, domestic disturbances and petty theft. In order to move ahead and stave off boredom she volunteered for additional training like parkour and advanced driving, as well as melee training and the proper use of firearms and other deadly weapons. She did particularly well with motorcycles, well enough to infiltrate and bring down an underground cycle racing circuit, but aside from the occasional armed robbery (where she thankfully avoided killing anyone), being a cop wasn't as exciting as the cinema played it off as. Well, except for the infrequent foreign delegate in need of an escort, or the not-so-infrequent anti-Triad op. She managed to keep in contact with her family's friends, mostly under the guise of confidential informants or off-camera "interrogations" back at holding.

In 2013 she qualified for the elite Special Duties Unit, and volunteered as soon as she could; she had her eye on the Supernatural Criminal Response Team (SCRT), with its tightly regulated gear and nigh-inhuman training requirements. The training was brutal and she nearly washed out a few times, but she persevered and made the cut, assuming her new duties at the height of summer; she had to undergo further training in weapons and gear, of course, plus helicopter and speedboat piloting, and most importantly the coveted exosuit that allowed mundane humans to stand up to immortals and vampires.

In the following years she learned that despite the open nature of supernaturals, there were still hidden layers and secret circles of power that held mortal lives in disdain; she volunteered for mechanical augmentation several times, although each successive implant and upgrade brought more pressure and scrutiny on her performance, to ensure she didn't become the very monster SCRT was dedicated to bringing down. Every officer on the team faced similar scrutiny during every operation, and members were forced to rotate back into mundane duties after stressful ops, particularly ones that demanded heavy use of exosuits or implants. Mary was determined not to succumb or wash out, and maintained a nearly pristine record of arrests and operational success.

Late in 2021 a series of vampire slayings came to light; SCRT was called in, and they determined that other vampires were responsible. Further examination determined the victims were Triads, enemies of the clan responsible for murdering Mary's parents. She knew that demanding to lead the investigation would draw suspicion, so she let herself take a support role and leaned on her "contacts" to light the trail. According to them a war was brewing; outside money was coming in and local interests weren't taking kindly to it, but the odds of civilian casualties were low. She passed it on anyway, knowing she wasn't the only one who'd feel the way she felt.

Indeed she wasn't. Acting against typical protocol the SCRT began planning one of their largest operations ever, a massive multi-pronged raid on the vampire Triads that had haunted Hong Kong for too long, and February 2022 it went down; airports and ferry docks were locked down to prevent any Triads from escaping, immortal or not, and regular cops set up road blocks all over the islands to catch known criminals ahead of time, each with a SCRT hit squad waiting in the wings just in case. Mary herself was on one of the airborne teams, piloting the helicopter while the others got ready; she wasn't supposed to get down to street level herself, but everyone knew the best-laid plans never survived first contact.

Hardly were they in the air but word came in of a large gang of vamps pinned down by one of the squads; Mary's chopper was closest, so out they went, Mary pushing the bird to its limits to reach her comrades in time. The squad had the vamps held in an abandoned apartment complex, and the sharpshooters hadn't spotted hostages yet; Mary landed the bird on the roof just as a second ground squad roared up, exosuits green and everything good to go. Two of the original squad had already been killed, one shot point-blank in the face with an elephant gun and the second swarmed and torn to pieces; negotiation was no longer possible, it was time to go in weapons hot.

The new squad scaled the side of the building en mass, launching flashbang and concussion grenades through the windows before busting in themselves with riot shotguns at the ready; half of Mary group went down the stairwells, the other half froze the elevators on the ground floor and jumped right down the empty shafts, taking full advantage of the exosuits' capabilities to skip the use of ropes and catch the sills at their chosen floors. Mary herself waited a few minutes, nodded to her copilot and grabbed her sword and revolver; protocol could go to hell, her parents' murderers were down there and she wanted them to pay. She had to make them pay.

In the end it was over too soon, the vampires unable to hold out against three full-equipped squads of elite SCRT officers. The ringleaders were taken alive, Mary herself shot down one of those responsible for her parents and forcibly subdued the other in a tense duel of blades. Four cops died, including the first two, against over twenty Triads and four arrested leaders, senior Red Poles who wouldn't see daylight (or moonlight) for a long, long time. Across the islands, similar scenes played out as the raid went on, and by sunrise it was all said and done. Many were sickened at what they had done, either by use of the exosuits or some other enhancing agents, or by their own righteous anger; others were exhilarated, and privately wished for another chance to put the tech to such use; still others, mostly the senior or more experienced officers, managed to distance themselves from the carnage and view it as just another night on duty.

Mary was mostly in the second camp, although she was more scared than the others by her actions. She wondered if that was how the vampires and immortals felt, if killing and maiming came to them with the same contemptuous ease as it had come to her and the others that night. If it did she wasn't sure she could keep doing it, or else she'd end up just like them. Either way, something in her changed after that great raid, something that hadn't been there before, and she wasn't alone; SCRT had conducted large-scale ops before, true, but somehow this one was different. This one was permanent.

SCRT was faced with several resignations in the following months, not all of them voluntary. Mary was one of the last, turning in her papers the Spring of '23 following a series of psychiatric evaluations; they revealed increasing issues with authority, repressed augmentation addiction, battle fatigue and general dissociation. Taken alone each symptom would not have been cause for concern, but all together it did not mean any good for her career, and she managed to save face by admitting her issues and voluntarily resigning on good terms with her superiors. Her personal gear was decommissioned and destroyed, save for her crossbow, and she announced plans to leave Hong Kong entirely, perhaps move to America. Before leaving, though, she reclaimed ownership of H&J, turning around immediately to sell it back to the mortal Triads whom her parents had worked with before; she maintained controlling interest, of course, and remained president and owner on paper.

In the summer of 2023 she moved to the American city of Hope, Rhode Island, and H&J's corporate headquarters followed her there along with many senior Triads and underlings who had worked closely for the company before. Through Triad influence she acquired a new set of implants and augmentations, although they could not get her a new exosuit; that was alright, though, since in America guns and destructive hardware were far less regulated than in Hong Kong. She spent some money on a basement condo in Willowdale, some more money on an illegal Paradise katana, and more money yet on establishing contacts within Hope's underworld; no doubt her connections in Hong Kong would appreciate such a doorway for future expansion plans, although she had her own uses for criminal protection in Hope.

In two years she has adjusted well to the new city, learning Spanish and making use of the ridiculously lax gun laws to rearm herself. She has attempted to stay under the radar for the most part, although the odd vampire slaying has doubtless caught a few eyes, and some low-res pictures of her freerunning in next to nothing have shown up in trashy tabloids with a variety of Parkour Princess captions; her few friends consist of the night shift bartender and some of the shiftier barflies at the Harp & Blackthorn Inn, a few black market dealers throughout the city, and the odd butch girl at the health clubs and gyms. Eventually she'll find herself center stage once again, hopefully on a stage of her own choosing; when that time comes, who knows what will happen?
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