(http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b267/geekdaddy665/marissa-tron2.jpg)<br/><br/><strong>Name:</strong>Marissa "Issa" Ristovska<br/><br/><strong>Character Type:</strong>Programmer<br/><br/><strong>Age:</strong>25<br/><br/><strong>Appearance:</strong>Marissa stands approximately 5'7" and wears her black hair in a short 'pixie' cut to keep it out of her eyes and off of her shoulders while working.  She has a toned build from her lifetime of motorsports, but tends to hide this fact by means of wearing baggy clothing.  She is Caucasian and her skin is fair, due largely to her primarily Russian heritage.  In the world of the users, thanks to an accident, she is permanently disabled and confined to a wheelchair with the limited use of her right arm.  It is a neural injury from damage to the spine and her mind and speech remain intact.  In the Computer World, error-correction within the digitizing process has restored her physical ability but, when reconstituted in the Real World, she remains just as crippled as before.<br/><br/><strong>Powers and Talents:</strong><br/>LightCycle Riding<br/>Reflexes<br/>Repair<br/>Commender<br/>User Immunity<br/><br/><strong>Personality:</strong>Marissa bears the cynical sarcasm of someone trying to make light of (and to forget) her own shortcomings.  She is fairly even tempered, but tends to rise to challenges with an almost taunting competitive edge.  She does not like to fail.<br/><br/><strong>History:</strong>Marissa was born and raised as what she likes to call 'a girlish tomboy'  Machines were her life, albeit chrome and pink often both finding homes on the same gadgets, her primary loves being motorcycles and computers.  She began sport cycling on the BMX circuits with standard bicycles until moving up into the Motocross and full stunt cycles and racing venues.  When not racing, she spent time on her computer, chat windows opened on one monitor with talk of bands, styles, and other 'light' topics, while the other monitor was often alive with CAD designs and simulations as she worked to perfect her custom bike designs in a virtual environment.<br/><br/>One day, while looking for a sponsor for her budding racing career, she gained the attention of ENCOM and was offered a post within their CAD and design department for what, she assumed, were racing games.  While not a corporate sponsorship, the pay was nice enough to fund her thrill -seeking hobby and life, she thought, could not get any better.<br/><br/>Until the crash.<br/><br/>Two months before receiving Alan's memo, Marissa skidded out of control on the third turn of a track that she felt that she could have mastered in her childhood.  Before she could compensate, another participant's motorcycle came bearing down upon her with the full weight of both bike and rider, smashing her down onto the machine that had already seemed to be an extension of her own body.  Her life had changed in an instant.<br/><br/>The next two months were spent fighting two separate battles - one against her own body as she fought to recover as much function as she could, and the other against ENCOM, fighting to retain her job via telecommuting and numerous demo programs from her personal projects to show that while her body may have been broken, her mind was still as sharp as it ever was.