申 美 昀 (M ě i Y ú n S h ē n )
⟁ 22 ⟁ Female ⟁ 157 cm/ 5'1" ⟁ Blood Type: B-
Mei Yun is of a normal, average height, weight, and build for a resident of the GFEZ. Also average: her face, eye colour (black), hair (straight, brownish-black), and skin tone. She has made up for this lack of distinction in her personality, which directly translates to her hair and eye augmentation detailed later. She also tends to wear an odd assortment of colourful clothing, much like a colourblind magpie. Bright neons, pastels, and primaries, in an assortment of scarves, flowing sleeves, and light gossamer clothing, though when she's working or trying to hide she'll switch to optic-mimicry textiles and dark coats. She also has a tendency to wear overly large combat boots at all times, with no laces. ("They're better for stomping puddles!") Typical adornments include LED jewelry, bright plastic bangles, and blacklight reactive face paint. (More details on her jewelry can be found in the equipment entry)
B A C K G R O U N D
The Shen family did not celebrate having a girl very much. A simple little party, and then it was back to work. They were just prosperous to afford a nanny, so little Mei Yun was brought up, along with her three older siblings, under the care of a kindly if inefficient older woman who was told in uncomplicated terms that the two older boys were of far more importance than the two girls. This environment led to Mei Yun and her sister fending for themselves by the time they could walk and talk. As soon as Mei Yun could attend daycare, the nanny's contract was terminated, and life began in earnest.
The Shen's both worked corporate jobs, in a corporate high rise, and most of their lives were taken up by work, leaving little time to socialise with their children. Priority was given to the boys, as carriers of the family name in a clan of traditionalists, and the girls were essentially written off as either future corporate drones or wives of executives if they could manage to land the contract. Mei Yun's sister took to this well, but by the time she hit grade six Mei Yun was tired of being background noise to everyone who knew her.
Knowing that poor grades would lead to doom in Hong Kong, and high grades were almost worse, given the choices of careers, she decided to ride the middle ground, putting just enough work into her school so as to stay perfectly average. In this way she could remain undisturbed while she explored the thing that fascinated her the most: The Net. Through the high rise's internal network, she discovered the troublemakers who populated the lower levels, using their corporate jobs to cover their more illicit (and therefore fun) lifestyles. She gravitated to them immediately, showing no shame at all in trying to get their attention though posts on the Net and graffiti in surprising places. By now she had learned that when she was invisible to society, she could pass almost without trace into places others might be caught in, though she caused her parents no small amount of discomfort when security brought her in for being found yet again in clearance only sections of the building.
Her boundless curiosity and inclusion as a sort of cute mascot for the hackers inside the building led her to learn as much as she could about the place and the Net at the same time. Soon she was learning how to hardline jack, installing taps for her friends in hard to reach places by squeezing through ductwork and maintenance shafts. In payment, they taught her their craft. By grade ten she was already a sort of prodigy, moving from mascot to member in a smooth transition. That year, however, an accident in one of the maintenance shafts of the building removed two fingers of her left hand, necessitating her parents paying for replacements and a full year of being locked in the family home. After that, she vowed she would make her own money, and delved into the world of the Net with renewed fervor.
Several jobs later, she officially dropped out of high school and became a full-time student of the hackers. This new schedule gave her far more time to study the ins and outs of computers, and she learned not only programming, but how to build and mod her own computers and devices. After her seventeenth birthday, she began to go on 'jobs' with her crew, who she later found were at least half Triad members. It was during one failed job that they found that, no matter how much she might be urged, she would never be a combatant, but at the very least she could reduce risk to the rest of her team.
Having made enough money from this work to afford to move out, she did so immediately upon becoming an adult, listing herself as a programmer-for-hire and systems security consultant. This work alone consumed much of her time, but she made a decent name for herself in legitimate circles as well, specialising in physical security set-ups and general use programs as well as specialty software, though she made sure to never design any software for security, in case she was responsible for one of her friends getting caught. She herself has had to, in several instances, brutally erase records of her own activities from official records, though none of these investigations had ever found out her true identity, only one of her various handles. She might suspect that some corporation or another might be keeping closer (and more secure) tabs on her, but she neither knows for sure nor really cares. As it is, she has fun and keeps herself fed, and until that changes, she'll take whatever jobs might interest her.
In her criminal enterprises, she has developed a name for herself as 咆哮的老鼠, the Roaring Mouse, with a reputation for daring and flamboyant hacking and leaving calling cards stating exactly what she took and how she did it (though never a complete retelling, she's not stupid), laughing in the faces of authority. On the physical side, she has been the infiltrator for several high profile burglaries, though none on her own. The Triad love her, though she's too flashy to go unnoticed by the police and thus they won't fully take her in. Corporations hate being hit by her, but she's done two jobs now where one corporation paid her large sums of money to blacken the eye of a competitor. She's been careful to always backtrace and erase herself from their records afterwards. It wouldn't do to have them know how to get in contact with her any more than she would like, and traces can be run with minimal amounts of information.
At twenty-two, Mei Yun is an up-and-coming star in the hacker circles of Hong Kong. Though she still has lots to learn, she is arrogant in her online persona, and refuses most help. She has made plenty of enemies, and has had to, at several points this last year, fend off attacks from those who would like to take her down a peg or six. Between that and the corporations, she is beginning to feel the pressure, and time has yet to tell whether she will stay bright or wither and retire like so many aspiring 'rockstars' before her.
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Mei Yun likes flash, colour, and attention-grabbing things in all forms. This is due to her bland and boring upbringing, leaving an indelible desire to be noticed amongst her siblings, her schoolmates, and society at large. She is loud, vivacious, and always going at full tilt. Even her sleeping style is flamboyant, muttering to herself about program diagnostics and calculations while tossing and turning constantly. To the wrong sort of people (read: most of them), she can be very annoying, especially when they learn she is an adult and not, as most assume, a fourteen year old.
Despite her flaws, she likes people, and tends to pick one person out of any group to 'attach' to, much to their normal chagrin. Aside from that person, she teases in good nature, and, especially if they don't speak her language, cracks jokes at people's expense in a light-hearted sort of way. She speaks rapid-fire, but likes poetic wordings, and tends to break into flowery speech, more so than normal if she's describing computer systems.
Deep down, Mei Yun wants to be liked and loved. She wants her ideal of a family, and if she can't get it from her flesh and blood one, she'll make her own. This also manifests itself in a depressive state if she goes too long without company, or if she's made someone angry at her, and she will overcompensate quite a bit to try and make things right. And she's also very fussy about her systems, refusing help or advise unless she respects the one giving it as a fellow "jīngyīng hēikè".
In combat, she is a coward, and fights like one. She will run away if threatened in close range, and spray rounds wildly from an automatic rather than try and aim at all, if she even remembers to fire. Mostly she hides until the hubbub dies down, or flee completely. She won't run if someone she has 'adopted' is in danger, unless they specifically tell her to.
S K I L L S
- Master Hacker: Mei Yun can break into routine systems with a minimum effort. Only government and high-level corporate systems give her real pause, and she enjoys the challenge, and relishes defeat, as it means she still has room to improve.
- Expert Programmer: This is almost a subset of her hacking, but most of Mei Yun's actual money comes from custom built programs for various things and of various complexity. She'll even write for corporations if the pay is good enough, though she is careful to not leave any indication of her more illicit background.
- Expert Lockpick and B&E: Mei Yun shows a proclivity and expertise as a cat burglar. She can pick manual locks, disarm security systems, and slip past security obstacles relatively quickly. She doesn't enjoy doing this as much, as if she is caught and forced to fight she knows she is doomed.
- Engineering: Mei Yun has developed a knack for building custom computer and electronic devices, and can generally figure out how to bypass, assemble, or take apart delicate electrical equipment and chip. This obviously is harder on the job than in a shop, but she travels with some basic tools.
- Security: On the flip side, she is good at setting up jury-rigged and professional security systems, knowing how she would break into a place and planning around that. She has done several system breaking security checks for private entities before, much like a professional safe cracker.
- Fast-talk: While not adept at this as a "face" might be, she can talk her way out of trouble more often than not.
- Poor Fortitude: She doesn't really take care of her body, eating whatever junk keeps her body going and not getting a whole lot of exercise outside of occasional B&E jobs. One could say malnourished and be close to the mark, though she's not quite sickly yet.
- Abysmal Combat: Do not rely on Mei Yun in any sort of fight. The best she can manage is to kick someone in the groin and run away.
- Earrings: These are not only questionably fashionable, but also utilitarian! Her typical set up contains a signal cloaker and detection jamming hardware on the left, and a remote IF and wireless accessor subroutine to tap into any open devices or networks near her on the right.
- Bracelets: The set of three on her left wrist contain various levels of 'pricks'. These are tiny hardware devices she can slide into exposed cables to tap into them, giving her a display of the layout of whatever hard network they may be tied into, including power. The silver on on her right wrist is actually just jewelry.
- Necklace: A tightband emergency beacon is disguised as a large opal on a silver chain. The flashier set of beads contains a 'server' for close range, secure radio and VOIP transmissions, in case her team doesn't have any secure lines set up yet.
- Goggles: These interact with her eye augments and also contain a three-dee holoprojector, allowing her to display what she's is seeing to anyone near her in case they don't have the same augments she does.
- Laptop: For times when she doesn't want to risk exposure to possible feedback through her neural adapter, Mei Yun carries a Cao Foo Lung Industries Model IX mobile platform. She has heavily modified this system, making it virtually untraceable among other upgrades. It sports a hellishly fast 9.2 GHz quad-processor and an ultra-silent cooling system, making it fantastic for on the fly work in questionably safe areas.
- Weapon: Knowing that she might get into a gunfight whether she likes it or not, and knowing that she has no skill at all to help her hit anything, Mei Yun carries a Fei Wen 'Bloody Tiger' submachinegun. Made of lightweight carbon steel and fiberglass parts, it has a collapsible stock, bullpup design, and a slender build. It's chambered for 9mm, and she carries two spare clips just in case. I's also not very well kept, needing at the very least a good cleaning, which she doesn't know how to do.
- Neural adapter: This is a top of the line uplink to the net. Not only does it let her access the Net the fun way, but it has several built-in security subroutines constantly masking her location, identity, and activity in cycles, so that she appears more as a flickering assortment of random people than anything else to anyone trying to find her.
- Left hand, pinky and ring fingers: These are replaced due to a childhood accident she doesn't like to talk about. The pinky finger has a police-style 'autopick' for when she needs to get through a manual lock in a hurry.
- Hair implants: Alongside every hair on Mei Yun's head is an accompanying colour-changing filament. This is programmable, meaning she can change her hair colour to anything from natural hues to active camo, but she usually leaves it on the 'mood ring' setting, meaning that it fluctuates colours as her emotions change.
- Eyes: Her natural eyes have been implanted with a side-riding set of cameras, which have x-ray, overlay, telescopic, infrared, UV, spectroscopic, and light-amplification modes. She doesn't often turn these on, even though they make her eyes shine bright cyan, because they give her headaches if they're on for more than an hour. If hit with an EMP or otherwise electronically disabled, her biological eyes function normally, though the installation left her with major astigmatism.
- Enhanced Flexibility: To aid in her burglary work, Mei Yun has had extensive work on all of her joints, increasing stretch and tension tolerances in pretty much every part of her body, spine and ribs included. While on a more physical person this might translate to increased combat abilities, on Mei Yun this means she can fit into spaces that would normally be impossible, and also allow her to hide in surprising place no one might think to look.
