Merida Island Base

Melissa Mao was born May 11, 1974 in New York City, and is of Chinese American descent. She is fluent in English, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and some dialects of Vietnamese. She is something of a heavy drinker and smoker when off duty.

Her father was a former bomber pilot in the United States Air Force, turned entrepeneur.  He tried to force her into an arranged marriage, and, angered by this, Melissa ran from the chapel still in her wedding dress to the US Marines recruiting office to enlist. It is unclear if Melissa and her parents are simply estranged, or if this act prompted her father to disown her, but Melissa still harbors ill feelings toward him for his urge to control her life. She has a master's degree in engineering.

Melissa worked her way through her Marine service, and was dishonorably discharged, resulting in her leaving to stay with her mother’s relatives in Hong Kong. She lived with them for an unspecified amount of time before being scouted by Mithril, passing their training and joining the West Pacific Fleet, stationed on the Tuatha De Danaan and Merida Island Base. She eventually moved up in the ranks to the position of Sergeant Major and Uruz 2, and was later sent back to the Mithril training fields when a training accident left two vacancies within the Uruz squad.

Initially, Melissa had decided on the two candidates of her choice from viewing the results of the field practices, until she noticed that someone had defeated an M6 using an older model RK92 Arm Slave. Intent on investigating the occurrence, she met Sousuke Sagara, who dismissed the event by saying the other recruit must have either gotten lucky, or made some mistakes. It was also at the same training fields that she met another surprisingly gifted candidate, Kurz Weber, who showed mediocre scores in shooting, but had then been rumored to have pulled off an impossible shot on a bet from the other men.

Due to an incident outside the training fields, a few of the recruits were asked to assist in rescuing a high value hostage from political radicals. While trying to come up with a plan of attack, Melissa overheard Sousuke and Kurz talking, and blew their cover. The three of them managed to take hold of the situation while being outnumbered and outgunned, and once everything had calmed down, Melissa had made her decision, listing the two as her choices for replacing Uruz 6 and Uruz 7.

Melissa pilots a modified M9D Gernsback Arm Slave within Mithril, which has an amplified radio transmitter so she can intercept and block opposing radio frequencies. The artificial intelligence program loaded into her unit is named Friday, which she has been commented on by others as programming it in a humorous and/or strange way. An example of this can be seen during the battle with Behemoth, when she gave Friday an order, and when he questioned what he would get if he complied, she told him she would give him candy. Friday then obeyed the order.