Melodee Coda

Name: No given name known, but real last name is Coda.
Nickname/Alias: Melodee Coda, or just Mel. It was a nickname given to her by the counselors at the facility, due to both having relations to music.

Age: Appears to be around 16. Hormonal imbalances that she has been observed to have may indicate she is older than she appears, and is actually 18.

Gender: Female

Species: Human

Affiliation: Wastelander. Her affiliation is currently to Karl.

Relations: One adoptive mother, Penelope Murphy, known to be deceased. Any other family relations are unknown, as her biological parents disappeared shortly after her birth, the information of them recorded is their last name 'Coda'. She is currently travelling with Karl Shanks, the badass cowboy.

Height: Stands fairly short a 5'4".

Weight: 115lbs.

Appearance: Melodee has long and dark chestnut brown that ends at around her waist, tied back in a single pigtail. She has deep and dark eyes coloured similarly to her hair, and has the appearance of being perpetually wide-eyed, which constantly stares at people and rarely seems like they are actually blinking. Her body is small and seemingly underdeveloped, due to the lack of curves, and almost seems frail if one were to ignore her constant output of energy. But that appearance is deceptive and non-indicative of her actual strength, rather, it being a side-effect of hormonal imbalance. Her body is surprisingly muscular upon closer inspection, something which many think does not correlate with her normal appearance. She is also heavily scarred around her torso and arms, with some down at hers legs, and only one large scar on her forehead, most of which are hidden fairly well by her clothing. Her presence is also something which creeps people out when paying attention, due to her face being locked into that of a childish smile and her lack of blinking, which many counselors have noted 'her eyes looks like a dead fish, despite her usual cheerfulness, as if she's just a soulless husk'.

As far as clothing goes, simplicity and ease of movement is all she cares about. She generally wears a brown and baggy button t-shirt, with two font breast pockets, tucked into dark brown trousers with a belt, which was normally meant to be casual and light clothing. The most noticeable thing about her clothing is how it is way too large for her stature, and she deals with this by tucking her shirt way into the trousers, and rolling up her sleeves and pants. She wears worn brown leather boots that she was surprised to actually find in her size. She stole all of these from some dead guy.



Weapons: Melodee's main weapon is a red fire axe which has had half of its handle sawn off for ease of use, and to make it lighter to carry around. Melodee is fairly proficient with most small melee weapons, and makes extensive use of her near acrobatic agility. But due to experimentation is methods of killing people, she also carries around a sawn-off double barreled shotgun -- mainly due to the absolutely devastating effect it has upon close range, but she is less than adept at using it, much preferring to just use it in emergencies. She keeps both of these tucked into her trousers.

Personality: The most basic way to label Melodee would be to call her sadistic and psychotic, with several psychopathic tendencies and an almost disturbing disposition for being childishly cheerful no matter what the situation be. However, while she does take great pleasure in torturing and killing people in horrendous ways, even having been seen singing upbeat songs and nursery rhymes right in the middle of a battle with a giant grin plastered on her face, it goes much deeper than just being a wanton and indiscriminate murderer. Melodee abides by a bizarre and almost alien system of principles and morality, which dictates who she wishes to harm and who she wishes to protect and abide by. Anybody that Melodee dictates upon first impression as being 'boring', then she sets herself to kill that person, at least eventually. Similarly, if she meets someone who she deems the opposite of that, as being 'interesting' or 'fun', then the very concept of harming a single hair on that person's body is the most horrendous act one can perpetrate, and will be fiercely loyal in protecting that person to best of her ability. There is no middle ground in her labeling a person, they are either one of the two, with varying degrees of interest and hatred.

From this, comes the 'contract' system. When Melodee finds a person which she feels to be especially 'interesting', then she 'signs' a mental 'contract' with that person. She'll do whatever that person asks her to, she'll fight for them, protect them, almost whatever they ask she'll do without a hint of hesitation. To her, it is considered as a form of expressing some bizarre type of 'love', but to anyone else it is considered to be deranged and outright emotionally co-dependent. It should be noted that she more or less has no concept of 'normal' morality, ideas like what is 'good' or 'evil' are completely foreign to her, she has no idea that what she does is considered horrendous. When she holds a 'contract' with a person, then their morality, is her morality.

For a clinical psychopath, Melodee is surprisingly affable. Whilst in the facility, she was described once as being akin to a "cheerful, yet astonishingly polite, child -- who just happens to be absolutely insane". However, how sincere that cheerfulness varies on whether or not she likes that person. When around a person she likes, she will be genuinely considerate and friendly, remaining consistently polite. When around one she doesn't like, then she'll appear to be very similar, but only superficially, as she'll be planning hundreds of different ways for her to brutally murder them. Apart from this, Melodee rarely thinks through many of her decisions and seems completely unable to see the consequences of her actions, and to many can seem nigh suicidal in her sheer disregard for her physical well-being, despite her agility.

Sexuality: Asexual (at least currently), due to hormonal imbalance. Sexuality is almost an unknown concept to her. As far as romantic relationships and the idea of 'love' go, that is not a foreign idea to her, but is still one that can confuse her greatly.

Preferences: Not applicable, due to asexuality. However, when it comes to determining who she classes as 'interesting' or 'boring', it is a rather superficial affair. She bases people solely on emotional first impressions, from people that have some kind of strikingly 'different' feature, or due to having an aspect of which she feels she can relate (which is rare, due to her lack of empathy). This can mean anything from wearing a piece of clothing that she considers 'cool', to just behaving in a manner which surprises her.

Likes: - Cake!
- Soda!
- Hats!
- Cute fluffy creatures!
- Bloody mass murder! Yay!

Dislikes: - Boring people!
- Boring people talking!
- Boring people walking!
- Boring people being boring!
- Boring people not splattered all over the wall!

History/Biography: If it were not for her sociopathic adoptive mother, Melodee's life may have actually played out fairly normally. For unknown reasons, her parents gave her up for adoption instantly after having been born -- no information about them are known apart from having told the adoption center that they were too young to be parents, and that they hoped she would have a happy life, and that they wished whoever adopted her would be the one to name her. The little girl, who caretakers just referred to as the parents last name, Coda, and stayed at the adoption center for little under than a few months before being adopted by a young couple, both in their late twenties. Both seemed normal enough, even if the man was a bit nervous, and was given Coda with very little opposition.

The man was found dead two months later, and the woman, ay as well have disappeared off the face of the planet with the child. In actuality, the woman went into hiding several states across, and enacted upon her deranged obsession with creating a 'perfect modern-day warrior'. Being years in the making, the woman had planned and put into action an underground fighting arena, building up a secret base, having contacted several people to help, and made sure to only tell people who were, within a reasonable doubt, trustworthy to not contact the authorities. At first, several years prior, the fighting arena was a simple, particularly violent fight between two consenting adults, but Penelope wanted to expand into something larger.

More people became aware of it, and bets began to take place. The arena expanded out into allowing the use of melee weapons that were accepted as being ‘fair’. When someone was finally killed in the arena, which was when Penelope adopted the small girl, putting her plans into motion to expand into more ‘interesting’ avenues. Penelope and her associates began kidnapping people and forcing them into fighting until they were killed, all the while ‘preparing’ little Coda. At the ridiculous age of four, she began physical training, although Penelope still recognised her age and the limitations of that, the amount of exercise the child had was still pushing it way too far, and for a child, it was hellish.

Coda killed her first person in the arena at the age of six. It was a seven year old boy that Penelope had kidnapped, forcing him into the arena with the girl and telling him that freedom was simply ‘killing the girl’. The boy, instead, broke down crying, refusing to do so. But Coda, having been indoctrinated by Penelope from since she was adopted, viewed killing the boy as being something of a rite of passage – something normal.

This went on normally for quite a while, Melodee fighting more and more people, and the arena growing in members. It soon became impossible for the existence of such as place to go unnoticed, that the police and those associated had to be heavily bribed for them to 'ignore' it. But after another eight years of fights, Coda turning 14 and still having never seen the outside of the arena and the cage she was kept in, the arena was finally exposed to a part of the police that wouldn't be bought, and was subsequently raided by them. Many people were arrested, but some people, including Penelope, fought back and were killed in self-defense.

An interesting thing they found was a large group of children, each contained in cages that were big enough for them to at least sit up in, one of which was several meters away from any other cage, as if it were dangerous to them. There they found Coda, a perpetually smiling young girl wearing rags and covered in scars. As she regarded the first officer to open the cage rather politely, he didn't really expect anything from her, but as the second officer at the scene describes "as the cage opened, the girl leapt at me like she was a cat who saw a ball of thread!" and bit him directly on the neck. They managed to subdue her, the man surviving, albeit severely injured, and she was quickly deemed heavily mentally unstable, being sent to a high-security part of a psychiatric facility for evaluation.

Results, to say the least, were interesting. While labeling her as psychotic and psychopathic would be accurate, they found it was disingenuous to just leave it at that. If anything, they found her behavior differed greatly depending simply on who she was with. When one psychologist was sent to talk with her - under proper safety restraints, of course -, he recorded actually having a rather friendly conversation with her -- if with somewhat childish topics brought up by her. When a different one was sent, she was quieter, yet seemingly polite, and then brought up the question of whether or not the would kill himself so she "wouldn't have to somehow break out to do it herself", and expressed interest in seeing what he would look like with his skin inside out.

When asked by the former psychologist of why she wanted to kill the other one specifically, the following conversation happened, as recorded:

"Why? Welp, uh... A-ain't is obvious? I mean, he's pretty boring."
"No, I'm afraid I still don't quite understand. You seem fairly nice to me, yet you wish to kill Dr. [NAME OMMITTED]. Do you know why this is?"
"You ask some pretty interestin' questions, Sir. I-I mean... When there's say, somethin' that annoys you, like... I dunno, a bug that keeps flyin' round ya', ain't it normal to try an' get rid of it? That... that seems pretty normal to me."
"Considering this is a human being's life we're talking about and not that of a bugs, so no."
"... The difference bein'?"
"..."
"He's like a borin' little fly, while you're... like a butterfly. Do ya' kill butterflies?"
"No."
"Do ya' kill flies?"
"When I can."
"See?"

Four more years passed without much progress in her psychosis, although she still had constant sessions with her psychiatrist, and was allowed to exercise in a secure area. While nothing dangerous happened, there were other issues Melodee was shown to have had. There would be occasions in which her mood would swing heavily for seemingly no apparent reason, usually when on her own. She would range from cheerfully attempting to converse with the guard outside the door, to prolonged and subdued depression, to random and violent outbursts of rage, usually expressed in the form of self-harm and attacking the door, often with a sheer disregard for the well-being of her knuckles and feet. She also seemed to suffer from chronic insomnia, with recorded restlessness while attempting to sleep, and reported nightmares upon the moments she actually managed to, leading to bed-wetting and emotional outbursts in the middle of the night upon waking up. She was in fact nicknamed Melodee by the night guards, due to her tendency to sing out nursery rhymes in the middle of the night, which they found correlated with her also music related last name.

While the facility did manage to somewhat mitigate her problems sleeping with that of medication and therapy, it became apparent that there really wasn't any progress to be made with Melodee. She was too far submerged in the beliefs she was brought up with, and not smart enough to actually think about them too hard. She seemed like a tragic lost cause.

And then the bombs fell. The building shook and she heard shouts and gunshots from outside the door, and couldn't quite make out what was happening from the small peek hole. The doors all opened about thirty minutes after that, her stepping out into the corridor without guards for the first time. But the other doors were opening too, seemingly all at once from some control area. She wasn't quite sure what to do. Could she actually walk around? Apprehensive about the whole thing, she stood there thinking for about ten minutes, as other patients escaped, some attacking each other for seemingly no reason. Coming to the conclusion that this was actually the most amazing thing to ever happen, she shouted joyfully into the air at the top of her lungs: "COOL! THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!" Apparently, this brought attention to her, from that of a small group of inmates who banded together, the one's being a large cause of the discourse that was happening, and simultaneously attacking her.

Melodee, being a person who's fight or flight response seemed constantly locked on 'fight', instantly jumped into battle with the four people, two men and two women. Pretty much instantly getting her ass handed to her, and for a second, seemed as if she'd be dead before actually being able to do anything, if it weren't for the gunshots ringing out, and everyone falling in spurts of blood.

'Twas but a modern day cowboy who had come to save the day. Taking one look at the man, she concluded he was the most fascinating person she was seen for quite a while. Perhaps it was because he saved her life, or because of his prowess with guns, but really?

It was the hat.

After that, she just followed the man. Seemed like the best course of action.