A23: MARNIE CROSS

#1

Name: Marnie Ronnette Cross
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Hobbies and Interests: Coding, CyberTag, beat’em up games, roller skating, dancing

Appearance: In real life, Marnie stands at 5’ 6” and weighs 105 lbs. She is on the thinner side, notably underweight, with a rectangular body type and espresso brown skin due to her African American heritage. Her face is diamond shaped, with high cheekbones, full lips, a medium refined nose, and almond shaped dark brown eyes. While she has naturally curly black hair matched with thin, low arched eyebrows, her chemotherapy treatments have caused her hair to fall out, leaving her to use head wrap scarves and hats to cover her bald head. Additionally, she has a few noticeable scars, including a inch long horizontal scar under her left eye, a half inch long one cutting into and going above her right eyebrow vertically, and a four inch vertical surgical scar down her right leg.

Marnie’s CR avatar is recognizable, but thoroughly different from her real body, in part from her experience working with CR coding and teachings from her father. The most obvious change is her hair, which is thick, full, long, and a pale blonde, regularly styled into different looks depending on her outfit. While her right eye is still brown, the left one is an ocean blue. She has more weight, both musculature and general fat, weighing 139 lbs, and has an air of bubbly cheer and energy about her that she doesn’t show in real life. She has left her scars as they are, however.

Marnie’s style differs quite a bit from real life to CR life. To make things easier on her body, she tends towards looser, more flowy clothing, with skirts and oversized shirts being regulars. Her avatar, meanwhile, usually has more form fitting clothes that compliment her body, almost always wearing pants or jumpsuits if she wants to spice things up. On the day of the attack, Marnie went for a fashion forward, internet influencer inspired look, wearing a black spaghetti strap tank top under a long sleeved puffy sky blue sheer fabric shirt with a pattern of white clouds and a yellow sun on her left shoulder, form fitting light blue bell bottom jeans with a large patch of a black vinyl record and white music notes down the right thigh, and opaque light blue glass slippers with a slight heel and iridescent heart decoration on the toes. Her hair was styled in something she was more used to, some pulled into a ponytail that reaches her waist, some left alone to be parted to the left that reaches an inch or two above her chin, and a few strands on the right put into a small braid that reaches an inch below her chin.

Due to her coding practice, Marnie regularly has mods attached to her avatar, though she keeps them to a minimum for when she’s at school. On the day of the attack she had three. When the record patch on her jeans is touched by an avatar, herself or others, it plays music from her playlist, and the music notes move in place. These effects only stop when the patch is touched again by an avatar. The second mod is on her shirts and shoes, which makes their color and pattern change depending on the time of day, as in day time it stays as described, but during night hours her tank top is white, and the sheer fabric shirt is black with a pattern of pale yellow stars and moons, while her slippers turn a dark blue with the hearts replaced by stars. The final mod is also on her shoes, making it so that when Marnie presses the decoration four times in rapid succession, the heel disappears and wheels pop out of the sides, turning the slippers into roller skates.

Background: Marnie was born on April 24th, 2004, to Kendrick and Shawndra Cross, a programmer that would go on to work at Interface and pharmacist respectively, in San Jose, California. The two met at a party through mutual friends and dated for three years before getting married. Marnie is the youngest of their three children, having a sister named Kendra, who is twenty five, and a brother named Leon, who is twenty three.

While initially believed to simply be a fussy baby, Marnie was diagnosed with sickle cell anemia within the first year of her life. Because of this, her parents have a tendency to fret over her and how she feels when it comes to her health. This was often necessary due to her frequency to get sick with bacterial infections, anemia, and acute chest syndrome. Unfortunately, Marnie has found their behavior stifling for as long as she can remember, because despite how needed it is, it’s kept her at home or in hospitals for most of her life. Additionally, Kendrick and Shawndra’s inexperience with major health issues such as genetic conditions or diseases made them more cautious than necessary, bordering on paranoia, as they always kept her under a watchful eye, and never let her play any physical games with other kids, fearing she would get injured. She was initially homeschooled for a year, and it was only once she was seven, when schools in CR became available, that she was able to meet and really get to know other kids her own age.

Due to Kendrick’s job at the company creating it, Marnie’s life has been influenced by CR for as long as she can remember. While not always able to interact directly due to her parents’ fears of a health scare coming up while using the device, said interactions were frequent enough that Marnie quickly became familiar with the tech, as well as growing an interest in it. Kendrick actively encouraged this interest, wanting to bond with his daughter over his job as well as finding it safe enough for her everyday life. As time would go on, Marnie would only become more skilled and more fond of both programming and CR itself, though this would have some issues unforeseen by her parents.

Because of her health conditions not being present within Cyber Reality, Marnie slowly became more and more frustrated with her offline life. Rarely getting to see others her age, being limited in what she can do physically, and faced with her siblings' own anger at getting more of their parents' attention, she preferred to slip into the digital world more often than not. While able to keep these feelings to herself at first, they would only grow as time went on.

Another hobby Marnie quickly became interested in was video games, beat’em ups in particular. Starting when she was ten, video games in general appealed to her due to how little strenuous activity was involved in them, but she took a liking to beat’em ups specifically because of how physical the characters got in their fights. Even losses felt like accomplishments just because she got to fight in the first place. And once she got access to fighting games in the world of CR, she only dived deeper into them, loving that everyone started with the same skill level, and all it really took was practice to get better. While not especially talented with any specific game, Marnie is proud to note she is still a formidable opponent for any CR beat’em up game, having more wins than losses by a good margin.

At age fourteen, though, another complication would be added to Marnie’s life. When coming to the doctor with regular nosebleeds, small red spots on her skin, excessive weight loss and easy bruising, she was diagnosed with chronic leukemia. Negative feelings within the family only doubled, as Kendrick and Shawndra became more protective, Kendra and Leon felt even more pushed to the side as their parents focused on Marnie, and Marnie herself became even more frustrated with her real life. She now had more symptoms and treatments complicating her daily life, including losing her hair from chemotherapy. Additionally, while grief counseling attempted to help, it only served to further sour her feelings toward real life, as it meant more time there, having to come to terms with her potentially early demise, rather than focusing on activities she generally enjoyed. Marnie would turn to CR to cope even more than before, desperate to feel not only stronger than she did in real life, but also more normal.

The same year as her diagnosis, Marnie was introduced to CyberTag. While it wouldn’t reach the same levels of enjoyment she got from beat’em ups, it became a quick and close second. Running, shooting, fighting and more, it’s another game that makes her feel more capable than she is in real life, and she participates in it regularly. While not as successful with them as she is with fighting games, she doesn’t mind it, just enjoying the chance to participate in these games.

It didn’t take long for misfortune to strike once again, though, as at age sixteen Marnie was involved in a car accident. Due to both parents being occupied with work and Kendra having a class at the time, Leon had been tasked with driving her to a doctor’s appointment. With his anger towards his sister at an all time high, Leon had chosen to drink before getting behind the wheel, with rather unfortunate but predictable results. While no one was killed in the accident, Leon’s car was totaled, he broke one of his arms, and Marnie suffered a broken leg, among more superficial injuries. Leon would go on to spend six months in prison for a DUI charge, and due to the accident happening around finals time for school, Marnie would be held back a grade. The relationship between brother and sister would never recover, and it’s been at least a year since Marnie has last spoken with Leon. Similarly, the rest of the family has cut ties with Leon, unable to forgive him for his recklessness.

While another blow to her real life, the accident would actually help the family improve their relationships, at least somewhat. Kendra would realize how her and Leon’s anger could develop lethal consequences, and began trying to improve herself and mend her relationship with her sister, as well as talking with their parents about her feelings. Hearing this as well as Marnie’s frustrations about how her real life was nothing but misfortune, Kendrick and Shawndra realized how their parenting had caused problems with their children, and also began trying to fix things, most notably giving Marnie more time for herself rather than their usual hovering. While initially hesitant to believe it would last more than a week, Marnie eventually warmed up to the new freedom, choosing to use it somewhat responsibly, practicing more with coding while also dipping into more activities in CR.

One of those activities was at the recommendation of Kendra, as she chose to try fixing things between them by joining Marnie in some CR games, as well as teaching about some of her own interests. Kendra happened to be a regular in the R34L D34L 20N3 of 5K4T1NG P4R4D153, specializing in roller skating. While not as intense as her usual CR activities, the pure level of realism and difficulty in the server more than satisfied her. From half pipes to competitive skating, and even more relaxed stuff like dance skating, the activity proved more entertaining to her than she had initially expected. Dance skating especially, as the challenge of trying to pull off already complex moves on roller skates was something Marnie found extremely satisfying. Even while Kendra has had pull back, focusing on her studies going into law, Marnie has kept up the activity, skating off of ramps and around rinks alike.

Despite the difficulties she’s had to face, Marnie has kept her grades positive throughout most of her life. At worst she had Bs and Cs coming back from the accident, but had recovered by the time of the next school year, receiving As regularly, and due to her illnesses getting her excused from participating in physical education, her grade point average remains relatively high. Marnie has hopes of working alongside her father at Interface, having applied for several computer science scholarships. She is only waiting for a response from those she’s contacted, and once she graduates, she plans to apply for a job at the company.

Personality: Generally there are two sides to Marnie, how she’s like on CR and how she’s like in real life. In real life, she is generally closed off towards others, usually speaking as little as possible and occasionally showing some bitterness. She has developed a fear of being a constant victim of misfortune, and can’t help but show that fear through anger, and while she can keep it tempered mostly, at times it can boil over, or manifest in less than helpful ways, such as her obsession with CR or a distrust towards fate. While her family has helped her work to improve her attitude, it’s still a struggle for her to smile at times, or do the bare minimum to not be seen as rude. In CR, conversely, it is much rarer for her to frown, let alone get angry. She is more happy-go-lucky and energetic than in real life, ready for most any physical challenge that could get thrown in her way. She doesn’t care if she’s never seen as the best at anything, so long as people see her as being just as capable as anyone else. When they do doubt as much, though, it is much easier for her temper to flare, with her aura alone seeming to get more threatening when she is angry.

Reputation: Marnie is well liked with most, if not everyone in school. Her cheerful attitude and high spirits have caused most people to think positively of her, and her lack of judgment towards differing opinions on CR and other things have made her avoid a number of arguments. Despite rarely, if ever, attending games in person, Marnie has wormed her way into the sporty, somewhat popular social circle, preferring the company of those who are similarly high energy, but preferring to avoid groups like the Omega Squad, finding the attitudes of some members to obnoxious to be around regularly. A few people have learned that she has a temper, however, and while no one has figured out how bad it might be, most have heard that they should avoid upsetting her.

Additionally, due to her desire to not be seen as weak and fragile, she has attempted to keep most of her real life ailments a secret to the majority of people. While she could not hide her being involved in a car accident, she’s actively avoided disclosing her leukemia and sickle cell anemia diagnosis, at most lying about having asthma to explain why she doesn’t participate in P.E. Those who have seen her in real life have heard a story or two about the discrepancies to her avatar and real body, and while no one has gotten the truth from her directly, a few people have their suspicions.

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Designated Number: A23

Designated Weapon: W-25 — Smith and Wesson Model 29 [.44 Remington Magnum / 10.9x33mmR]
Designated Utility: U-30 — Wii Remote with Nunchucks

Evaluation: "You've got brains, you've got brawn, and you've got something to fight for? Well, now, aren't you going to be the belle of the ball once we open up the betting pool? Earn me some money, A23." — [TYLER], Game Monitor