Name: Ying-mei Liu ("Ying-mei" translates roughly to "silver sister")

False ID Name: Sylvia Wang

Nationality: Chinese

Age: 28

Height: 5 feet and 3 inches


Weight: 105 pounds (BMI: 18.6)

Appearance:


Ying-mei is short and slim, with relatively light skin and chocolate brown eyes. She has thick, straight black hair which she usually wears in a bun. Her hair goes halfway down her back, but she is considering cutting it to shoulder length because it can be a pain to keep long hair out of her face. Ying-mei has long, slender fingers characteristic of a piano player, although she has never touched a piano in her life (she did, however, play violin for a couple of years as a child). Ying-mei has a heart-shaped face and eyes that are rather thin. She has a small, flat-ish nose and average sized lips which are a pale pink color. Ying-mei's feet are small in comparison to the rest of her body, and she has a delicate, bird-like look to her, which is only enhanced by her diminutive stature.

Other Appearance: N/A-Ying-mei's ability ensures that she has no scars, and it would be utterly improper for her to get a tattoo of any sort (at least, in her opinion)

Superpower(s): Ying-mei is able to heal others with her hands; the silver sparks that shoot out from her fingertips can close wounds and erase bruises and put bones back together. However, when it comes to diseases, Ying-mei's power is virtually useless, and she is not capable of "regenerating" a body part-if somebody's finger was cut off, Ying-mei could possibly re-attach the finger to their hand if she had the finger (which would be a process that required a great deal of energy), but if the severed finger is gone for good, then the most Ying-mei can do is close the wound. As with all physical activities, Ying-Mei's power can be very draining and overuse could lead to bouts of dizziness and fainting.

Skills: Ying-mei is fluent in both Mandarin Chinese and the Shanghai dialect of Mandarin Chinese (sometimes referred to as "Shanghainese"). She is also fluent in American English, having studied in America for many years, and she knows a decent amount of French (as much as somebody who took four years of French in college would know, anyway). Ying-mei is an adept nurse and knows her way around bandages and splints and the like.

Personality: Ying-mei has always been demure to the point of meekness. She is ferociously loyal to her friends and family and a go-with-the-flow kind of person. She's mellow and calm, and keeps a cool head under stressful situations and does not panic very easily. Ying-mei is always up for chatting with others, but she tends to keep to herself when she is around people that she is unfamiliar with. Full of soft smiles and gentle words, she can be a pushover at times, with a dislike of hurting others. She is not easily provoked and doesn't like getting into fights, and can easily sense how people are feeling. However, if someone or something is threatening people she is close to, Ying-mei will do whatever it takes to get them out of danger. Ying-mei is used to obeying others and will readily follow orders without question; China's long-standing tradition of filial piety and respect for authority has not been lost on her. Her sense of duty and responsibility and propriety may seem rather old-fashioned at times.

Ying-mei does not wish harm upon others unless they're the ones causing harm in the first place. She likes to appreciate the simple things in life-stopping to smell the flowers, so to speak-and adapting to new situations is not her strongest area of expertise. She genuinely cares for people, perhaps even too much at times. However, she can take charge under pressure if she knows what she has to do and how she has to do it. During those times, Ying-mei can transform from a shy, reserved woman to a focused, confident leader in a matter of seconds. This is an extremely rare occurrence, and usually only happens when she is the only person with any sort of medical experience in the room.

History: Ying-mei was born to a wealthy family in Shanghai right after the Chinese Revolution of 1911-1912. Her father had various connections with Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Nationalists (the two had gone to school together), which afforded Ying-mei's family various privileges and gave her father an important government position. She is the oldest of three children (she has a younger sister and a younger brother) and grew up in a spacious modern house in the wealthier parts of Shanghai. She was taught by private tutors while she was young, and attended an all-girls secondary school in her teen years. Her father, who had gone to school in the United States, arranged to have Ying-mei and her sister attend a college in the country when Ying-mei was seventeen and her sister was fifteen.

Ying-mei was taught English alongside Chinese in her youth, and as a result, she is very fluent in both languages. In college, Ying-mei originally decided to major in classical literature. She was about halfway through her first year when she discovered her ability.

One night, Ying-mei accidentally spilled a pot of boiling water on her arm. Nobody was around, and Ying-mei began frantically searching for cold water when she felt a tingling sensation in her hands. To her surprise, there were silver sparks streaming out of her fingertips and towards her left forearm. When the silver sparks made contact with the affected area, they somehow, in some way, healed the burn. Ying-mei was convinced that she was hallucinating, until she saw the sparks erase faint scars from mosquito bites that Ying-mei acquired while living in Shanghai.

Ying-mei told nobody about her newfound abilities. There was no place in the new world order for supernatural powers, especially not in her social circle of modern, educated, and rational thinkers. She could only imagine the scandal if the daughter of one of the President of the Republic of China's top officials announced that she could magically heal people! Not only would it ruin her reputation (and quite possibly her father's) for the rest of their lives, but it could also tarnish the new image that Sun Yat-sen was working to create for China. It would do no good for her to reinforce the world's stereotypes that all Chinese people were superstitious.

Nevertheless, Ying-mei experimented with her ability in her free time. She learned to "activate" it on will and how to control the flow of sparks, and the more that she learned, the more she wanted to use her ability to actually help others. After her second year of college and studying classical literature, she made the decision to transfer to the Yale Nursing School. Her father was originally against this idea, but Ying-mei managed to convince him to allow her to transfer. It was probably the first time that she had ever challenged her parents' authority.

While she was attending nursing school, Ying-mei gained some experience in actual hospitals, and although it was not what she had imagined herself doing five years earlier, Ying-mei found it to be extremely fulfilling. Whenever she was left alone with patients, Ying-mei would send a few sparks their way-not enough to arouse suspicion due to a miraculous recovery, but enough to alleviate some of the pain or speed up the healing process. Ying-mei knew that she would eventually have to return to Shanghai and most likely marry some rich politician or the other, but she knew that she had been most happy at nursing school and that she would not have traded the experience for the world.

After graduating, Ying-mei remained in America because her younger brother had just started his education in the country. Ying-mei worked at a local hospital and kept her brother company in the United States. Ying-mei found that she was quite fond of her quiet existence.

In 1941, right after her brother graduated, Ying-mei's uncle (who was living in Great Britain) invited the two to visit him in London. Ying-mei accompanied her brother across the Atlantic and arrived that spring. Although everybody was nice enough, Ying-mei did not like life in London very much. There was too much going on and everyone was always going somewhere and doing something.

One night, Ying-mei's younger brother convinced her to take a short cut through one of the poorer parts of the city. As they were walking, the pair was set upon by armed thieves who demanded that they hand over all their valuables. Ying-mei's brother, a stubborn young man with an easily hurt pride, bluntly refused. Ying-mei could do nothing but watch in horror as one of the thieves shot her brother in the chest and took all their valuables by force before melting away into the night. Distraught, Ying-mei did the only thing that she could think to do-she began to heal him with her abilities. The police, who had been alerted by the gunshot, soon arrived at the scene to see Ying-mei's silver sparks closing up a gunshot wound.

After that, Ying-mei was taken away and shuttled through various offices, holding facilities, and headquarters before ending up with the OSS and the Westminster League of Extraordinary Individuals.

Equipment: Standard British field agent gear and a basic (though more extensive than what a typical field agent would carry) first aid kit.