Mella Quinn

Early Life:

Mella is the twin sister of Carra. Her parents already had four sons when she and her sister were born, and wound up with four more after. The family lived on Fiddler's Green and ran a small shipping company before the war. Mella's parents had a small fleet of ships that he used for short range transport, and they often took their children along with him on journeys, when it did not interfere with their schooling. The journeys were mostly short range, in the Georgia and Murphy systems, and were some of the highlights of Mella's childhood. She loved to see new places.

Schools were rare on the border planets, so by the time Mella was ten, she spent more time working on the ships with her parents then she did in a classroom. Mella enjoyed learning, so she started keeping journals of what her parents taught her about ships, and what she learned on her journeys. She called them her Guidebooks, and eventually developed quite a collection of them. She was more interested in the mechanical aspects of flying, than actually piloting ships, so she often worked as mechanic for her parents and siblings. She knew the basics of how to fly the boats, but preferred to leave that part to the rest of her family.

The War:

Mella was seventeen when the war broke out, and the events it brought on changed her life forever. When the Alliance attacked Shadow, Mella's four older brothers immediately joined The Browncoats but Mella stayed behind with her parents, sister and younger brothers. The family used their business to help smuggle soldiers stranded or separated from their battalions. She learned the basics of fighting and healing from the soldiers that she encountered, and she made new Guidebooks to hold the new information. Unfortunately, the family's life of assisting the Browncoats could not last. The Alliance discovered what was going on, and the family was forced to flee with whatever they could carry on their ships. There were only four ships left of the family's fleet, and Mella fled in a small Peregrine, with her Guidebooks, and little else. Her sister Carra, her mother and brothers, and her father each also took a ship. The plan was to meet up on Summerhome in a year's time, but when Mella arrived, only Carra was there.

Once the family business was destroyed, Mella joined the Browncoats fully. Her vast experience as a mechanic and minor skills as a pilot were welcomed, and she spent the majority of her time working on Browncoat ships. As the war progressed, and the Alliance's weaponry was giving them the edge, Mella began to go on missions to cripple or destroy ships and guns used against the Browncoats. She eventually became so adept at these missions, that the Browncoats gave her a nickname: The Red Wolf. Mella was a fan of the nickname, and started to leave behind paw prints on her missions as a symbol that she'd been there.

After the War:

When the Browncoats lost the Battle of Serenity Valley, and then the war, Mella took her ship with a fellow solider and they tried to restart up the shipping business that Mella's family had done before the war. However, living back on Fiddler's Green was very difficult for her. At least two of her brothers were dead, her father, mother, and the rest of her brothers were missing. Carra was running her own smuggling operation, so their paths did not cross as often as Mella would have liked. Trying to live in her childhood home without the people she loved proved too much for Mella, and she traded the Peregrine for a Kepler and took to the black, searching for work, and her missing family members.