Marissa Faireborn
This article is a featured article, and considered to be one of the most informative on this wiki.
- Marissa is a human from the Generation 1 continuity family.
Captain Marissa Faireborn is an officer in the Earth Defense Command. Tough and headstrong, she performs her duties with strict military professionalism. She may be small and squishy, but she sure knows how to use a knife. Even the Decepticons respect her as a proper adversary.
Also, she's great at surfboarding.
- Japanese name: Melissa Faireborn
Fiction
Cartoon continuity
Kiss Players
- Voice actor: Lyrian (Japanese)
As a child in the 1990s, Marissa lived in New York, where she met and became friends with Shao-Shao Li, who developed an extremely strong attachment to her. The young Marissa resented her military father, so when one of his missions went awry and she and her father had to be rescued by Optimus Prime, she quickly came to view the Autobot leader as a surrogate father figure... and perhaps a little bit more. Shao-Shao didn't take Marissa's friendship with Prime very well, resenting the Autobot for, in her eyes, stealing Marissa away from her, and Shao-Shao was forced to move back to Japan with her family before reaching an understanding with her friend.
Shortly after Optimus Prime's death in 2005, the body of the new Decepticon leader Galvatron crash-landed on Earth, decimating Tokyo and utterly shattering Transformer-Human relations. A governmental organization known as the Earth Defense Command, headed up by the rabid anti-Transformer fanatic Hitoshizuku Amaō, was quickly established to force the Transformers off Earth, but support for the movement was not universal, and Marissa was amongst its opponents. Alas, these voices went unheard, and by 2006, Earth was Transformer-free, and the embittered Marissa decided that rather than try to fight the EDC with peaceful protests, she'd have a go at fighting them with big, pointy knives, as part of a female commando resistance group.
Marissa and her commandos struck when the Earth Defense Command were in the midst of transporting Optimus Prime's corpse through Japan. The group attempted to steal the Autobot leader's body, only to discover that the cadaver was a decoy concealing an EDC Autrooper that slaughtered them all, save for Marissa herself. Recognizing an unassuming trailer in the convoy, Marissa sliced it open with her knife, revealing that it contained the real Optimus Prime. The exposure of Prime's body, however, had a bizarre effect on the Autrooper, which ejected its Kiss Player partner and begin to fuse with the Autobot's corpse. As if to bid farewell to her friend, Marissa kissed Prime, but with this action, she discovered that she was a "Kiss Player"—a human being who had been infused with the scattered cells of Galvatron, giving them the ability to fuse with other beings. Her Kiss Player powers unleashed, Marissa fused with Prime, triggering a transformation that restored him to life and converted his body into a new Dodge SRT-10 form. The pair promptly made themselves scarce.
Marissa and Prime proceeded to travel together, battling Legion creatures while eluding both the EDC and Hot Rod, who had recently come to Earth and believed Prime to be an impostor. While a fugitive, Marissa wore various skull-themed accessories. As part of their tendency to rename one other's possessions, Optimus Prime dubbed the triple-skull design on her shirt "The Three Skull Brothers". Marissa considered Prime to be her boyfriend, and would regularly fuse with Prime to share her knife-wielding skills with him. He had little use for her surfing skills, though he did tick her off considerably by turning her surfboard into a blade for himself.
In the course of their adventures, Prime and Marissa befriend EDC operative Atari Hitotonari, and were ultimaately able to settle their differences with Hot Rod and Shao-Shao. The three girls and their Transformer partners teamed up to uncover the sinister secret behind the EDC, discovering that the whole scheme was part of a twisted plot by Commander Amaō to resurrect her daughter, who had died in Galvatron's impact. Thanks to the efforts of Marissa and her friends, the plan was foiled and Galvatron's body was reconstitued and fired off into space. As a consequence, however, Marissa lost her Kiss Player partners, and Prime died once more.
In the early days of 2007, as the Transformers were welcomed back to Earth, Ultra Magnus came up with the idea of a Transformer-human singing group to try and repair relations and spread goodwill between the two races. Marissa joined with Shao-Shao, Atari and cassette Transformers Glit, Sundor and Rosanna to form this group, the "Kiss Players". As the Kiss Players performed at the Brave Maximus Fortress stop of their world tour in Scramble City, the Sparkbots Star Dust, Angela and Zangetsu suddenly appeared and instructed the three humans to kiss them. Complying, they were teleported to Sherman Dam in the year 1985, just in time to witness Optimus Prime's historic battle with Megatron there. At Angela's behest, Marissa kissed the Sparkbot to transform her and rode the flying lion to Prime's side, where, unseened by the combatants, she was instructed to kiss the Autobot leader, leading to the emergence a fragment of the Allspark from his chest. This, the Sparkbots explained, was the Kiss Players' mission—to recover all the fragments of the Allspark, scattered throughout space and time. Marissa regretted that she could not stay and try to avert Prime's deadly fate-to-come, but continued voyaging through the timestream with the rest of her friends to accomplish this task.
The Kiss Players traveled from past to future, collecting Allspark fragments along the way. Their adventures eventually led them to the planet Quintessa, where even the power of Moe, despite transforming Marissa into a sailor-suited bunny girl, was not enough to spare them from the Quintesson judge's verdict of "not guilty." Fortunately, Optimus Prime and Goldbug came to their accidental rescue, and the Kiss Players' voyage continued. Marriss obtained another fragment of the Allspark from Ginrai, but it was when the girls started targeting Beast Warriors that things got troublesome. At the point of the Allspark fragments' emergence, a giant golden hand would appear and steal the fragments away, eventually forcing the Kiss Players to pursue the disembodied digits back through time. It transpired that this was the hand of Primus, god of the Transformers, and that the Sparkbots were in fact, servants of his nemesis, Unicron. The "Allspark" that the Kiss Players had been gathering was, in fact, Unicron's shattered lifeforce, and the Sparkbots were attempting to resurrect their deceased master. Thankfully, Primus was able to trap Unicron's lifeforce within the Earth, and returned the Kiss Players to the present day, where Marissa chose to enlist in the reconstructed EDC. Kiss Players
Generation 1 cartoon
- Voice actor: Susan Blu (English), Kazue Komiya (Japanese)
After the destruction of Unicron in 2005, the peace that followed in the next year was soon interrupted by the return of Galvatron. In the midst of this Decepticon uprising, Blurr and Wheelie were stranded on Jupiter's moon Io while safeguarding Metroplex's transformation cog. Marissa Faireborn was sent to retrieve the two and their cargo, but alien lipoles native to Io destroyed her spacecraft, stranding her as well. Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4 Sky Lynx eventually arrived to rescue them and fend off an attack by the monstrous combiner Predaking. Five Faces of Darkness, Part 5
Tricked by a holographic representation of her father, Marissa was kidnapped by a spacefaring Quintesson scientist. Also captured were Ultra Magnus, Cyclonus, and Wreck-Gar. She and the other prisoners rebelled, but not before their vessel hurtled through a black hole and into another universe. This made them all different colors, but despite this setback, they were able to return home unharmed. The Killing Jar
Another Quintesson experiment, one intended to alter the past to benefit themselves, sent unstable chronal energy across the universe. This caused Marissa to temporarily age-regress into an infant.
Marissa had a short affair with smuggler Dirk Manus, who was attempting to transport a highly-experimental molecular recreator to the Quintessons. Though their feelings were mutual, he was merely using her trust to help pull off a heist. Marissa discovered his scheme, and with the Technobots' help (and some double-crossing by Manus) foiled the Quintessons' plans. Though Manus got away from the authorities, she had switched his booty with mimic dust. Despite losing a fortune, Dirk was amused and impressed at Marissa's doublecross. Money Is Everything
Later, Marissa attempted to console a depressed Rodimus Prime during a visit to Japan, when they were suddenly attacked by Dead End and Wildrider. Rodimus was run off the road, and before Marissa could come to his aid, the Decepticons had escaped with the Matrix of Leadership. The Burden Hardest to Bear
The Headmasters cartoon
Marissa was briefly mentioned by Daniel Witwicky as a human candidate for the mission to stop Metamorpho, but he was informed by Wheelie that the Earth Defense Command couldn't get involved in the situation. Approach of the Demon Meteorite
Dreamwave comics continuity
As Bumper and Warpath attempted to haul the deactivated bodies of Jazz, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Windcharger, and Wheeljack out of an Oregon lake, they were arrested by Commander Marissa Faireborn and a legion of EDC troops. The Omega Effect After taking them into custody, Faireborn recruited Jazz, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, and Bumper to accompany her and the EDC Night Force to San Desto.
A sweep of the town uncovered no sign of its inhabitants. Marissa established a good rapport with Jazz, and instructed her troops to follow his orders as they would hers. Soon enough, they were attacked by an army of Insecticon clones, who decimated the EDC troops and captured Bumper. Jazz and Marissa managed to escape to a garage, where they found a veritable abattoir of human and bovine remains. The Insecticons tracked them down, forcing them to flee into a subterranean egg chamber, which Jazz promptly torched. This prompted an attack from an enraged Shrapnel, but Sideswipe and Sunstreaker managed to cover Jazz and Marissa's escape back to the surface. Once there, they were confronted with more Insecticon clones and the cerebro-shell-controlled human citizens of San Desto. While the Autobots were unwilling to risk killing the helpless thralls, Marissa waded into the army with fists flying. Further bloodshed was prevented, however, when Bumper took out Bombshell, neutralizing both clones and slaves. Infestation Extermination Back at EDC headquarters, Marissa saw Jazz and the rest of the Autobots off. Lost and Found
As a result of Marissa and Jazz's shared battle experience, their strong mutual respect may have blossomed into a romantic attraction. This was outwardly obvious enough to inspire Sideswipe to refer to Marissa as Jazz's girlfriend.
Sometime later, Faireborne was chewed out by her superior over the loss of Night Force. Despite her objections, he ordered her to reactivate Project: Centurion. The Route of All Evil
Toys
Kiss Players
- Convoy x Melissa (Kiss Players, 2006)
- Available only as part of the headliner Kiss Players set, Marissa's first-ever toy is a soft-plastic PVC figurine with a permanent pucker, designed mainly to sit demurely on the robot-mode shoulder of her partner Convoy. Unlike the previous human-partner PVCs from the Binaltech Asterisk line, Marissa is pre-posed in a sitting position, and while she can be used to ride inside Convoy's vehicle-mode driver/passenger compartment, her hands cannot go on the steering wheel. An optional lower body piece, stand and arms give her a leaning pose, but she cannot stand up straight. She comes with a surfboard (that she really can't use) that becomes a sword for Convoy or can separate into a pair of long serrated knives. The set also comes with a CD containing the first 5 episodes of the Kiss Players radio drama and a new 10-minute audio story directed by series designer Yūki Ōshima.
- This set was originally intended for release in the Binaltech Asterisk line as "Black Convoy meets Marissa", but was cancelled due to low sales of the previous toys before it was even officially solicited. How much difference there is between the planned Asterisk version of Marissa and the final Kiss Players version is currently unknown. (Although it could be assumed she was likely originally wearing some pants.)
Trivia
- Although Marissa's father has long been accepted to be the G.I. Joe member Flint (aka Dashiell Faireborn), there were no statements as to the identity of her mother until recently. In an interview on the Sony BMG re-release of The Transformers: The Movie, former Transformers writer and story editor Flint Dille confirmed fellow G.I. Joe member Lady Jaye as Marissa's mother.
- In the Dreamwave comics continuity, Marissa was the grand-daughter of the heretofore unseen Nathaniel Faireborn, who was the founder of the EDC in that timeline.
- Kiss Players designer/illustrator Yūki Ōshima based Marissa's black leather battle outfit on that of the Baroness. He originally wanted her to infiltrate Cobra, but had her join an anti-government resistance team when the idea was shot down.
- Early previews of Kiss Players implied Marissa to be a current or former EDC member. However, the actual development of the story has not indicated this, and the EDC logo on her shirt in early images has been replaced with the set of three eyepatch-wearing skulls referenced above.
