For many years, it seemed that the life Yi-Min was destined to live was a charmed one. Her father, a former officer in the Republic of China Armed Forces whose own father had participated in the Chinese Civil War, married prosperously after retirement and became the head of a wealthy, healthy household in Taipei filled with many cherished children. Of these, Yi-Min and her twin brother Yi-Shan were but two. Though she had many siblings of varying ages, she naturally grew up closest to her twin: the two were inseparable, often personally competing with each other in a friendly sense to see who could do everything better, even if (or precisely because) the issue was silly and trivial. Their parents were both extremely strict, but no moreso than was the common cultural norm, and overall Yi-Min led a fulfilling if busy childhood.
A jarring set of circumstances when Yi-Min was twelve served as a forewarning, however, against the notion that she would ever enjoy a normal life. One sweltering summer night, as Yi-Min and Yi-Shan slept in the bedroom they shared in their family's spacious high-rise apartment, her Evolved ability decided to manifest in the form of an insidious and highly concentrated haze of carbon monoxide that issued from her mouth in every sleeping breath. As sunlight crept into the windows in the morning, Yi-Min awoke to see her twin slumped in an unconscious pile on the floor. At first jokingly chiding her brother for being such a useless lump, she slowly became panicked the longer he did not wake up to give her a groggy repartee. Try as she might, she found she could not rouse him at all; her mother arrived in the doorway to find her daughter sobbing over the comatose body of her son.
Yi-Shan was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He never awoke.
The death was blamed on a carbon monoxide leak (which, technically, it had indeed been), and the broken household haltingly struggled to return to a normal state. Not a single member of her family faulted her— indeed, they never really knew it was her fault to begin with, not having knowledge of Evolved abilities or what they could do— but Yi-Min knew, and she never forgave herself. In an era where the existence of the Evolved was not yet widely known, she believed herself to be singularly cursed, a child saddled with an evil power. She became withdrawn and isolated from the rest of her family, unable to escape the unbearable pain of losing her twin, and the pain of appreciating that she was responsible.
An even more detached and dour teen than one would normally find, Yi-Min focused even more on her studies from this point forth so as to avoid have to think about much else. But whenever the opportunity arose, she would bike to a spot safely outside the crowded confines of the city where she could privately retreat and experiment with her own powers, her express intent being to figure out how to suppress her curse once and for all. This is a goal that she never achieved, unsurprisingly. In the struggle-filled process she did at least learn, with a quickness driven by necessity as well as self-resentment, how to reliably harness her ability so that she could hurt no one else by accident— an intention that still haunts her life up to this point.
When she was seventeen years old, she was accepted into the National Taiwan University: a prestigious honor. The sheer size and vivacity of the school meant that her naturally outgoing nature was once more gradually coaxed out after many years of living in a sullen sadness, and she excelled there as a student. After NTU, she went on to enroll in a PhD program at Xiamen University's College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering across the strait. Once finished there, Yi-Min shocked her parents by announcing to them that she intended to sign up for the military instead of taking advantage of her new degrees— a decision both of them questioned, for good reason. Both of them disapproved greatly at first, as they wanted her to continue down a path of pursuing scholarly success. However, her father at least eventually relented when she revealed that she was doing this because she wished to follow in his footsteps, but it was a disclosure that was only half-truthful. She wanted physical experience, in addition to academic, for reasons of her own.
Thus began her years serving with the Taiwanese Armed Forces. Thanks to several ill-kept secrets among her unit, it was here that she first learned about the existence of other Evolved beings for the first time, and her reaction was one of first shock — and then abject dismay. The world was apparently filled with an unknown number of those just like her, capable of causing grievous harm to others with minimal effort and thought. An old and barely soothed-over hatred flared up within her, this time centered on not only herself, but these newly ascertained others as well. Though daily training was rigorous and both physically and mentally consuming, these dark thoughts never strayed far from her side.
In good time she became quite well-known among her compatriots for bearing this attitude, as well as for one more incident: a containment failure in a military facility in Penghu caused a leak of CS gas in storage, injuring the three workers on site. Though she had also been there, she was the only one who stayed miraculously unharmed — thus comprising the second public episode in her life where she emerged totally unscathed from a chemical accident where she by all rights should not have done so. The Vanguard, with their eyes and ears spanning the mainland and far beyond, did not take long to catch wind of this, put two and two together, and approach her. When they came to her and explained themselves, she was curtly informed that she would either join their cause or be taking a trip straight down to hell. However, no such threat turned out to be necessary: with but a few more questions, Yi-Min was successfully convinced of the candor of their mission to serve the greater good, and even better, eradicate those just as cursed as she was.
Her new calling as an operative for the Chinese Vanguard took her to the mainland, her first time spending any significant span of time far away from home. This is also where she met her to-be cellmates. During her tenure there, she never did grow too close to any of them in large part due to deeply ingrained differences in political opinion which she refused to ever relent on— along with a light but unfortunately innate distaste for mainlanders in general. Still, she worked efficiently and well enough with them in the field, even if the relationship off of it was somewhat cool. Her unofficial selection as a liaison to Vanguard teams in other areas of the world whenever one was needed was a surprising vote of confidence on their part, as it meant they were assured of her abilities, but it probably also doubled as their way of getting rid of her, she would think drily to herself. Whatever the case may have been she always quite enjoyed these long-distance trips, as it not only gave her the unprecedented opportunity to travel but also to meet the most surprising of people. In this manner, she made some fast friends with members of the Vanguard in scattered locations across the globe. She would often be more than a little sad whenever the time came for her to leave America once more, and return to her main mission in Shanghai.
Yi-Min's ability was developed and weaponized by the Vanguard during this period, and she was utilized in the assassination of several high-profile targets with the aid of her poisonous gifts. This was a relatively lonely time for her, as the people she cared most about were a strait and an ocean away, respectively. In spite of herself, too, she could not help but grieve slightly for the lost souls who would meet their deaths at Vanguard hands, and for those who had done so already. Whatever she may have believed herself to be due to her ability, she was no monster, but still very human in an emotional and mental sense. Still— her devotion to the Vanguard's cause was not something to be underestimated; it was a cool balm that she clung to in the face of doubt. These were noble and necessary deaths. A new, better world loomed over the horizon of all their planning, and in due time, everything would work out as it had been ordained.
…But of course, this is not what happened. She was not present when the rest of the Chinese cell finally tore itself apart through infighting, and thus managed to escape its destruction. The chaos that had consumed it turned out to be only a harbinger for the bigger picture: the collapse of the mainframe of the entire Vanguard was to follow, and she was forced to slip away into hiding so as to avoid capture by the US Army or Chinese authorities, all her plans in tatters. Mercifully, due to the care that had been taken, the exact nature of her ability had never been uncovered by the wrong souls— and so she was not in danger of being hounded by the Chinese government on the basis of that specific front. However, she figured it was still safest for herself were she to clean up after her own traces. She spent several long months living as far undercover as possible, keeping quietly hidden, until she was able to knit together enough evidence to convincingly stage her own "death." All the while, she tried to figure out what it was she would do next.
The Vanguard had served as a grounding point for her. More than just a focus, it had turned into her everything in that short but sharp span of time in which she had become a part of its heinous dream; it had been the culmination of her life's desires until that point. Now that it had crumbled, she was suddenly forced into the odd and unwelcome position of not knowing where to turn next. She did have one very good possibility in mind, however— and that was to join the banner of Shengjiao Wu, a fellow scientist who had also served Kazimir Volken and shared much of her same ideals. Unsure of where else to look first, she reached out to him as an old familiar face when the Vanguard fell, and he was only too glad to accept her in turn, setting her up with a position within Praxis Heavy Industries's genetic research division in Shanghai and ensuring that anybody who retained any interest in her past with the Vanguard would be duly silenced. A respite and a victory for her on two fronts, ensuring that she was fully free to enter the next phase of her career.
For close to the next decade, Yi-Min poured her mind and soul into the work she conducted for Praxis, the new challenge of her days filling the void of purpose that had been left behind when her old life dissolved. Not all of the projects she worked on for Wu's behalf were strictly legal or even anywhere near ethical, though this is a pretense she had long ceased to be concerned about; she had found a new way to serve humanity. Kazimir's vision had been a start, but scientific advancement was the proper way to continue the spirit of his work. This was a new agenda that she could fully back, at least for now.
When Yi-Min was sent to the United States under covert assignment, she embraced the opportunity as one for a bright new beginning. It would serve, of course, as not only fertile grounds to further the tasks she had been given, but also a chance to once again meet beloved faces whom she had not met for years. Family, in so far as ex-members of the Vanguard could ever be called one.
Her days in the Land of Opportunity promise to be fruitful ones.
