This is the placeholder post for an upcoming practice RP between user Rhyme and Mentor Kurokiku. Character posts will follow, and then the IC as well.

Name: Melissa Sellers
Age: 18
Height: 5’6
Weight: 121

Appearance:
Melissa is average height, very slender, with medium breasts and hips that aren’t wide enough to balance with her chest. She has short black hair, cut boyishly in choppy spikes, dyed black, from a natural mousy brown color. She’s rather pale, accentuating her chocolate eyes and mostly dark clothing. Thin arms, but muscular legs from her daily jogging. A red nose stud on the right side, three hoops in her left earlobe, and a lip piercing, a silver diamond. She has neon green bracelets and neon purple arm bands, as well as a bright pink cinch she wears around her right thigh, just above the knee. Usually dresses in torn jeans, combat boots, a shirt with the logo of some enigmatic music group, and an unzipped faux leather jacket.

Personality:
Melissa is a girl who really doesn’t play by the rules. Any set of rules, except possibly her own. She lives for thrills, whether legal or not, and loves every second of it. One could consider her a person who is hungry for attention, and enjoys acting out solely for the looks of shock or disbelief. She also enjoys taunting boys with her body, but never letting anyone get what he wants. However, she does have a temper, and can go too far when expressing her anger, usually leading to legal issues and hospitals.

History:
Melissa was born into a family that appeared perfect on the outside, but wasn’t so if one looked deeply into the dynamics. Her father worked in the field of commerce, and was often absent; claiming needs to go to different areas for his job. On the rare occasions that he did appear home, he was too exhausted to do anything with his wife or daughter or son, Melissa’s elder brother by four years. The mother was pressured into marrying the man, and became depressed when he wouldn’t allow her to file for a divorce. Once she had children, she became more hopeless, but tried to stay out of duty for her progeny, to nurture and have a reliable income, on behalf of her spouse. When Melissa was roughly six years old, her mother would become an alcoholic, and her brain wasted away over the years. Melissa and her brother were left to defend for themselves.

Her brother took after the father, and became distant and uncaring towards females in general. So Melissa would purposely get in his way while he was playing (hanging out) with his school friends, in a plea for his attention. It worked, but negatively, and he yelled at her. Despite this, Melissa thrived on living like this. She would extend her attitude to her class, deliberately goading her teacher by acting out, or becoming ‘one of the guys’, making the other girls brand her as a slut.

Which is what she almost became, but Melissa knew how to make the boys beg, but never receive, and still hang on to hope anyways, a manipulative temptress. But that wasn’t enough, so she would steal wine from her mother, steal cigarettes from her brother, and sell them to the boys. Academically, Melissa would sail the borderline, only doing the minimum amount of work to pass, and she hardly graduated from High School. Without a job, however, her financial issue was getting worse, especially once she moved out; she lost access to her goods. So, with her closest confidante, bought guns from the local thugs, and robbed a bank.

Equipment:
Cell phone and charger.
Switchblade
Spare clothes
Desert Eagle and ammo
A few bags of money, totaling roughly $2 million
Food and water to last a week
Pack of cigarettes
Hair pin

Name: Ian Shepherd
Age: 18
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 160

Appearance: Ian is a gaunt, gangly figure with hollows in his cheeks and permanent dark purplish bruising under his eyes. Though his mother was Native American, Cherokee to be exact, the healthy tan this should have given him has been washed out by poor nutrition and stress, and his once-lustrous black hair is now dry and shaggy, clearly in need of some maintenance, just like most of the rest of him. He's clearly too thin, all sharp angles and too-long limbs, as though he had a growth spurt (or several) that his diet was not quite able to support. Behind a pair of plastic-framed black square glasses, his eyes are just as black, iris indistinguishable from pupil, his sclera slightly bloodshot.

He walks with a noticeable stoop, though should he start running, his form improves drastically, but his poor condition means he tires more easily than he used to. His clothing is generally a bit on the worn side, clearly purchased from thrift shops, and most of it fits him too loosely lately, but all the same he can blend just fine with most crowds, and will probably go unnoticed if he wants to. He favors workmanlike jeans, secondhand combat boots with frayed laces and duct-tape repair jobs, and a dark grey canvas jacket. The rest of his wardrobe varies, though plaid shirts are fairly normal. Despite appearing shabby, he's usually clean at the very least, though for whatever reason he tends to smell like more feminine types of soap and shampoo.

Personality: Ian's always been a play-by-the-rules kind of guy, not that it's gotten him much of anywhere. He prefers to keep his head down and fly under the radar, so to speak, as he's much more comfortable that way than as the center of any kind of attention, positive or negative. He's gone out of his way not to do anything too extraordinary in school, though he applied to and was accepted by a pretty selective private college in his state, mostly for his skills in computer science and his status as a solid track athlete. He was never the star of the team or anything- he'd never wanted to be, but he was a notable cross-country and long-distance runner in his high school years.

What time he didn't spend at practice or diligently studying, he spent at the local hospital, but that was something he never really talked about, so most people assumed he was one of those losers with no life. He probably would have been if he had the choice, so he doesn't bother correcting anyone about it. Recently, though, the increased stress he's under has begun to show noticeably: he's dropped a significant amount of weight and clearly isn't eating or sleeping very well. Never one for extended conversations, he's become even more absent, and will sometimes zone out in the middle of a conversation without intending to.

At his core, Ian's a compassionate sort who does care a great deal about people, especially his family, and though it isn't obvious, he's the sort of person who gets along really well with children and animals and volunteers to clean up litter on the weekends. He's not the kind to say something vicious for the sake of hurting someone, and in fact he actively tries to be as inoffensive as possible. He's absolutely brilliant with technology, and has aspirations to one day work as a programmer for Google.

History: There's not much to say about his childhood, really; Ian's mother and father divorced while he was still young, but he still has positive relationships with both of them, though he occasionally feels pressured by his father to succeed. He's grown to fear failure above pretty much everything else, despite his mother's protests that it's okay to make a mistake every once in a while. He spent many of his early days in the care of his grandfather on a reservation, though he and his mother lived in the city. She worked full-time as a secretary for a law firm, though, so she didn't always have time to look after him or money for a sitter. He never really fit in on the reservation, but he didn't mind so much, and continued to visit frequently until his grandfather's death.

From then on, he essentially took care of himself, learning to cook, do laundry, and otherwise run a household. Without many friends, he amused himself by learning to take things apart and put them back together again, and occasionally by going outside and exploring the city. Through extensive trial and error and a whole lot of bruising, he eventually picked up some bits of parkour, and this along with running in general became his other hobby.

When he turned 14, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to quit her job. The chemo treatments were expensive, and they'd gone through their savings within a year or so. Ian's father, a high-school teacher, helped where and how he could, but his means weren't nearly enough either. Ian, who was left to care for the family's budget, began to eat less in order to make ends meet, but it wasn't until he hit about 17 that it really started to show. By that time, his mother was much worse than she'd been before, and her cancer was back with a vengeance. The stress lost him more sleep and food than he really remembers, and he put his college plans on hold to try and increase his work hours.

It wasn't until the two were evicted from their apartment that he got desperate enough to rob a bank. He was contacted by an old acquaintance from school, Melissa, and though her plan sounded crazy, he figured it was just crazy enough to work. He never counted on being forced onto the run.

Equipment:
-Cell phone (second-hand)
-Glock (from Melissa; he really doesn't like it)
-Spare clothes
-About $5000 in cash, just in case
-His van, a horribly-old thing that he assembled from junkyard parts and a vehicle he purchased for a couple hundred bucks off a family friend.

March Third, 2011
Of course. Just like the old days, Melissa knew that Ian would be the best choice for help. He was reliable, of course, dependable, and, with the bags of money as proof, Ian got results. Although it’s been months since they had contact, Melissa had chosen him. It would be nice to have some muscle, like Mathew or Patrick, but they were dumb, and she’d have to split the spoils evenly. The intelligent and almost impossibly thin Ian Shepard would be the one she texted for help. OF course, she also counted on his compassionate nature, and she offered a sixty-forty split of the five million that had stolen. Although it wasn’t finalized yet, Melissa had a feeling Ian would agree to the split.

Melissa led them into an alley, carefully hidden away from view. It was dark, and the faint moonlight was blocked off by the tall, foreboding buildings of the downtown area. Her revolver had jammed earlier, in a terrifying moment, but the Glock she had given to Ian did the job. She faintly saw the old gangster she bought the guns from, a few blocks away from the hiding place. Ian’s apartment wasn’t too far, although Melissa wasn’t sure if he still lived there or not.
Melissa embarrassingly realized that she didn’t have much of a plan past this point. She didn’t care too much, busy being elated by the thrill of being hunted by authorities. Although her monetary position was admittedly terrible, Melissa didn’t care so much about the money. Rather, the excitement, the fear and terror, was the true appeal. She felt super aware of everything, the faintest movement, and Melissa loved every second of it. She gave a crooked grin and turned to Ian, who was watching the road carefully.

“The plan didn’t really go this far…” She told him, almost teasing him. “What would you like to do now? Your place is about fifteen minutes away. Could we go there?”

The rhythmic pounding of his feet on the sidewalk almost made it possible for him to forget why he was running in the first place. Truly, it was a horrid idea, and he never should have agreed to it, but... so many things seemed more reasonable when you were desperate, and people didn't often get more desperate than Ian Shepherd had been on the day Melissa had contacted him. The police sirens sounded in the distance, cutting through the too-stagnant air with all the authority of a spear in his chest. He'd thought... he didn't know what he'd thought. Maybe that the cause could justify the act, or the end the means, but now that it was all said and done, he wished he'd never agreed to it at all.

Melissa stopped ahead of him, seemingly unfazed by the fact that they'd just robbed a bank, broken the law, and put innocent people in danger. He'd sooner be arrested than actually shoot anyone, but he wasn't so sure about her. She wasn't like him; she was wilder, more reckless, different in all the ways that mattered, at least the way he saw it. Even so, they were stuck in this now, unable to change the past, and they had a better chance of getting through this if they tried together. Not yet winded, he pulled to a halt himself, casting his eyes behind them to make sure they weren't being followed. His left hand tightened on the duffel he was carrying, the right running anxiously through his coarse, dull black hair.

He didn't really think it was the right kind of situation for her tone of voice, jocular as it was, and he had the overwhelming urge to say so, to force her to realize how serious this was, but he quashed it. It was pointless now, and he'd missed his chance to change anything. He might as well accept that. Shaking his head, he turned to face her. "I don't know if those cameras caught anything, but I don't want to take the chance that we were identified. If we were, my apartment's the first place they'd look. We have to get out of here." What exactly he meant by that, he wasn't sure. How far was far enough? The next town? The next state? Canada? He realized with a sinking feeling there was little chance he'd see his mother again unless he was in chains and prison. He'd said goodbye of course; so many times over the past few years he'd said it. He'd had to make each of them count, for any one of them could have been his last. The reason just wasn't what he'd thought it would be. Would his mother understand, Ian wondered? Probably not. She'd taught him to always do the right thing, to follow the law and respect it.

There was no way she'd condone a bank robbery.

"My van's around the corner; come on." His words were short, clipped, but somehow he managed to avoid sounding either angry or panicked. His brain was kicking into overdrive, and there was little room for panic attacks in his planning, so he shoved the burgeoning dread aside and led his partner in crime another block before they came upon an old van, a nondescript gray color and rather dilapidated-looking. That was an illusion, though; the motor was in excellent working order thanks to more than a few trips to the junkyard and a little bit of ingenuity. Opening the back, Ian tossed his duffel bag inside and the gun, safety on, with it. He didn't want to touch that damn thing any more than he absolutely had to.

Hopping into the driver's seat, he fumbled with the key before it finally found the ignition and caused the engine to roar to life. Realizing that the reason for this delay was in fact his shaking, he forced his hands to steady, though his grip on the wheel remained white-knuckled. He waited for Melissa to enter the vehicle before he pulled out of his parallel park. Realizing he had absolutely no idea what he wanted to do, other than the obvious, he cast her a sideways glance. "Anywhere you've ever particularly wanted to live? Preferably somewhere really far away?"