Registry of the Evolved Database
File #24 Feb 2009 02:46
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![]() Reika Hashimoto |
Mu-Qian is the bastard child of a whore. The circumstances of her conception defined those of her birth — in the back room of her mother's workplace — as well as those of her infancy and childhood, spent playing with the few children that were kept through their final trimester while their mothers undertook to entertain in various styles. There was an unmistakable stigma that followed all of the children, of course, but there were enough of them that there was protocol established and understood. Public schooling was available, food, clothing, warmth. On average, it wasn't an impossible time.
Mu-Qian had the particular misfortune of being unusually pretty, differentiated by Caucasian heritage, and having a hysterical mother who was still in love with her father. That cost her.
Perhaps not more than it earned her in the long run, maybe, but she had a staggered start to begin with, beset by accusations of uselessness, vanity, her Confucian debt to her mother no end emphasized, underlined, circled, and rubbed in her face along with the occasional blunt object. With some help from the other girls and observation of her own, she imagined, constructed expectations to retroactively legitimize behavior that didn't seem too legitimate. She would start a family, get married, have children, and succeed in a respectable career.
She met Zhang Wu-Long when he was in his twenties — and eight years older than her, only pubescent. He was a handsome man, a soldier in the People's Liberation Army, and trying to get married to the wrong person. With a few intriguing words, she cleared him up. Told him to wait, committed herself to becoming the perfect wife. Fortunately, he took instruction well. Fortunately also, she kept her word.
Eight years later, they embarked on a terrific romance. Mostly, she prefers to pretend that those eight intervening years did not occur or went on unremarkably. In truth, they were fraught with greater problems even than hair in odd places and sore flesh. There was something wrong with her. It started with her mind, or so she believed; a masochistic obsession with injury and sickness in others. She found herself strangely compelled to seek out such unfortunates, and then beset by secondhand agony — not to be mistaken for sympathy — and the sheer ugliness of every injury, whether of spilled blood and surprised flesh or severed limbs. Such afflictions or occupational hazards were neither common nor rare in the demographic she lived in, but enough to be seen to. Driven by this painful compulsion, she learned first about basic first aid.
Second, of how to replace flesh of others with her own.
There was more to it than that, but the basic idea served as adequate explanation for her intents and purposes, and she learned to conceal her ability with a few misappropriated tricks of traditional medicine and sleight of hand. Though most of the prostitutes kept her secret, rumors abounded, and her mother proved a spiteful and gossipy drunk. Mu-Qian slipped onto the PRC government's radar at the age of seventeen, one name ranked among a massive backlog of moderate-priority preternatural curiosities and part of an investigation that covered the entirety of the country.
A year later, Wu-Long came for her. Fortunately, with political strife and economic crises abounding, the backlog took the government operatives longer than that to make their way through, and by the time they got around to showing up in uniforms for intimidation and interviews, Mu-Qian had a handsome sociopath to stand between her and them and smile, lie, and plea ignorance on her behalf. Her husband didn't ask a lot of questions, partly because he made enough deductions to sate his minimal curiosity, and partly because his curiosity was minimal. They were young and in love. Young and in love enough to believe that most other things didn't matter.
And not long after their first child was born, they fled to America, where Wu-Long switched career tracks from government-sanctioned butcher to private hire. Mu-Qian herself pursued a higher education in medicine. They owned their own house in California, got pregnant twice, and discreetly — discreetly — lied, cheated, seduced, maimed, swindled, and frequently enough merited their way up their career tracks together. Mu-Qian commodified her ability and her body as readily as she did her baking. Domestic bliss suited them.
Mu-Qian's life did not depart significantly from her husband's until her husband departed to Iraq for his last tour because he did not come home.
Her original plan was to go behind enemy lines and bring him back. That, by itself, required a miracle's worth of social finesse, sacrifice of dignity, and strength as it was. Getting through Iraq's illegal immigration and bullet-Swissed cities was a paranoid and claustraphobic nightmare. When she left the density of civilization, the sun and sand then bled into her eyes and the drone of wind and human misery around her was continuous torment and distraction against her unerring awareness of Wu-Long's location and failing health. Over the months, the call of her inherent gift proved weaker to the strength of the one part of her life she had chosen for herself, which was either an edifying victory of spirit over flesh, or some mundane and desperate weakness of sentiment, it didn't matter. Mu-Qian wiped her eyes and went.
By the time she reached the remote warren of yellow stone buildings, she was psychologically and physically exhausted. Her original plan was forcefully derailed when she saw what was left of him. Torture and deprivation had left him more broken than she had skill or power could repair, and she knew this all instantly. Clotted with blood, faeces, and pus, Wu-Long bore little resemblence to the man she had fallen in love with. He could neither speak nor sit up. Fortunately, he had lost enough water and muscle weight that her men had little trouble maneuvering him into the sling.
Inconveniently, word got to her at the airport — that the Company was closing in on them, too. Of course, if life were to suddenly become easy, it probably wouldn't be during the second trimester of Mu-Qian's third pregnancy.
She didn't despair. Or, at least, she did not despair right away. A woman of considerable resources and networking skills, she had already left her children and affairs in extraordinarily — some might have said supernaturally — capable hands. What remaining claim to her children and affairs she possessed, she now signed away with the straightforward realization that there was, indeed, only so many things she could handle at once. Thus, Mu-Qian delivered herself out of her old life and into the new. She undertook a new identity, put her husband into a wheelchair and her hands on the handles, fled to Europe and did not look back. Tried not to, anyway.
The years that followed belonged to Wu-Long. Not that he was conscious enough to appreciate that fact. She cried a lot and, slowly but very diligently, learned to hate him—
Right up until the minute he woke enough to cast a Berlin city block in shadow. Not even she knows what compelled her to come back to him in that particular moment, whether she was simply stricken with terror or obscurely charmed, but she did — and almost destroyed herself to return Wu-Long's health to him. Slumped across his lap, her body wilted and hair a desiccated mess in her husband's hands, the last thing she remembered was the click of a cane approaching through brightening light.
She awoke four years later in Sweden to find a nurse holding a loose grip around her wrist, sliding an IV from the large vein in her arm, in the process of euthanizing her. Mu-Qian objected — or, at least, adrenaline and her ability objected on her behalf. Violently.
The back of Nurse Teresia's head shattered on the edge of a table with a crack that resounded through the stainless metal, and Mu-Qian struggled back to her feet in unexpectedly good health, and found a strange white carapace hardening over and within her skin. It took her only a moment to recognize the dermal armor as a newfound facet of her own ability that she had never confronted before and recognized it as a good thing, primarily because she was under attack. She would find out why, soon enough, but first—
Mu-Qian wanted her family back.

Mu-Qian was a woman with a very particular dream. In the simplest and most unprepossessing terms, it was the American dream: picket fence, two-point-five kids (round up to three), her own home, husband, and fancy shoes — all the things her mother had not provided for her. Unfortunately, being six out of seven shades of sociopath and compelled by psychological addictions linked to her Evolved ability, that dream was only accessible to her through defection, manipulation, and sometimes even murder. Perhaps worse, people then got between herself and that dream.
Where her husband held some form of honor in his amoral dedication to physical violence and all the mad glory thereof, Mu-Qian's most visible redeeming trait is her compulsion to repay her debts, another trait that hearkens back to the debt and inadequacy that her mother held over her head.
One of the vast and most frequent components of her personal drive is based on her Ability— that is, its 'side-effect,' that driving compulsion to seak out people with physical ailments and correct them, simply because the presence of such physiological flaws make her feel sick to the stomach and disgusted as a vain person might be by deformity. As a function of this, she is generally unwilling to cause physical harm to others. Her initial attraction to and relationship with Wu-Long can partially be attributed to this, though he attracted to her — and continues to appeal to her — on multiple essential levels.
Notably, pain or emotional injury are a thing apart from physical injury. Seeing others experience those generally bothers her little, if at all.
That being said, she had and enjoyed a great deal more practice in pretending to be human than her husband did. She can contrive an extremely convincing show of sympathy or empathy, and the only daily manifestation of her internal simplicity is steadfast politeness.
Mu-Qian is a little more fashionable than she is vain, intelligent rather than curious, gregarious as well as charming, benevolent despite being a sociopath, cosmetically traditional, fiercely protective of her family, and somewhat deranged by grief. Very recently, she felt Wu-Long's death in a sympathetic bodily echo through her ability, and has little question of what that really means. She's going to be erratic in that way a sociopath might be when feeling sentimental and very, very sorry for herself.
Protean Flesh
Mu-Qian's Evolved ability allows her to convert parts of her normal biological mass to a sort of 'protean flesh,' a complex organic compound that functions like a prototypical biological building block for human anatomy and biochemicals. The proportion of her normal biology that she has replaced with this substance has gradually and automatically increased as she has aged, and currently falls at about 20% of her body weight, or about 25 pounds, which she can regenerate fully in roughly 48 hours. This compound is extremely mutable and psychically connected to Mu-Qian herself on multiple conscious and subconscious levels. There are multiple applications:
Powered Healing
Mu-Qian has the ability to heal others by donating an amount of the compound into her patients body roughly equal to how much damage needs to be regenerated. 'Getting the compound into her patient' can be done in any of a variety of ways: from feeding it to them orally or applying it to open wounds. Once it's in, the strange flesh will intuitively begin to move about and rebuild damaged tissue and catalyze natural healing processes. She can also fully recreate missing organs or limbs or, alternatively, rejuvenate and reattach the original parts if they were severed.
This can be a rather weird or profoundly painful kinesthetic sensation for the patient or go entirely unfelt, depending on the distance that the compound has to travel, the amount of nerves in the areas to be affected, and the amount of healing to be done. Due to Mu-Qian's intimate understanding of human physiology and the intuitive finesse of her ability, she can make smaller adjustments completely painless. After she has given the appropriate donation, the patient's body automatically treats it as part of itself and the material will gradually be replaced and continue grow as is natural.
A recent and closely guarded secret: Mu-Qian can even reverse death by injury if it the damage of accumulated fatal injuries in addition to all total damage from deterioration/refrigeration/etc. was limited to the mass she must replace in one sitting. This is more exhausting than healing by far, due to the chemical subtleties that have to be guided and restarted. Memory loss in the patient is probable if any restoration to the brain was necessary, as is extreme pain. She can do this, at most, once a week (and with plot contrivance or staff consent).
Mu-Qian's healing is inherently limited: she can not get foreign substances such as poisons, drugs, tumors, or even bacterial infections out of her patient's system unless the afflicted parts are summarily chopped off and rebuilt from scratch.
A practical example: a dude gets stabbed in the chest. Compelled to help, Mu-Qian comes over, drips some odd white fluid out of her hands and into his chest, and the injury heals over.
'Hardened Flesh' Armor
By converting approximately one inch's depth of her skin and surface muscle to protean flesh and selectively densifying it there, Mu-Qian can armor herself enough to absorb a good deal of physical damage. Moreover, any damage done to this armor automatically begins to regenerate as long as there are no embedded materials obstructing the reknitting process. It is extremely visible when she does so: her affected parts appear to bleach out pigmentless white. Non-armor-piercing bullets will stop half an inch deep, and knives less. Falling or blunt trauma can still affect her internal organs, however. She can then reconvert this armor back to normal flesh with minimal effort. This armor can not be used if she has used her powered healing extensively, that is if her available supply of conversion energy is already tanked.
Body Control
Mu-Qian can control the physical movements, sensations, and biochemical functions of any body part that she has granted healing to until the beneficiary's natural cellular/regenerative processes have replaced what she gave them. Replacing key parts of an injured brain can give her almost complete physical control over their person, whereas recreating an arm may give her control over an elbow and hand and all muscle strings from shoulder down. She has no effect on their emotional state or personality. Any orders must be delivered consciously and with concentration, and the greater the movement or larger the number of targets she is trying to cause is proportional with that concentration. Causing stinging pain in one person would require but a thought; walking five people over to come and defend her when they do not want to would require her to zone out defenselessly, and she'd probably have better luck screaming and covering her head.
Psychological Side-effect
All applications of Mu-Qian's ability is subject to the same built-in psychological 'brake.' She loathes physical injury in others, even as she is obsessively drawn to understand and repair it. Bodily harm is hideous and disturbing to her on a viscera-curdling level. Invariably, she is initially, morbidly drawn to at least investigate. Afterward, she may feel the urge to either repair it or, if she is incapable or otherwise externally motivated, to get away from it as soon as possible. Even her temper or psychopathic sadistic streak rarely override this compulsion. As such, she is limited in her willingness to put a 'mind-controlled' servant — or indeed, anybody — in harm's way, and tends to be discreet about employing her healing lest her patients counter her by undergoing surgery or personally hacking themselves up to get rid of the invading material.
Mu-Qian has an extra awareness of those she has given extensive donations to, which was the basis for her unerring compass of her husband's location and wellbeing for many years until prolonged separation eroded this link. Such bonds give her occasional sensation or pain by feedback when her patient is suffering. She doesn't like giving extensive donations to people because of it.
Other Limitations
To healers, degenerators, lifeforce manipulators, biomanipulators and similar Evolved, protean flesh will give the perceptual abilities an unfortunate 'reading' like a cancerous tumor; it is immediately obvious that something abnatural is involved here. Mu-Qian's healing will not work on those with cellular regeneration.
Appendices
It's well we cannot hear the screams Edward Gorey |
Skills
Mu-Qian is highly proficient in social networking, first aid, housekeeping, child-rearing, cooking, nursing and related hospital procedures, managing finances, sexual and conversational seduction, navigating the black market for a variety of purposes including finding false identification or purchasing illegal substances.
She speaks English, several dialects of Chinese, and German fluently, and a tourist's accented street-use smattering of other European languages.
Having studied to be a doctor for several years before switching to the somewhat less intensive medical career track, she has a strong academic background in biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics, as well as familiarity with anatomy, nutrition, and drugs both illegal and otherwise. She can perform rudimentary field surgery.
Over her years of globe-trotting, she has made a variety of older and powerful Evolved friends — unelaborated until plot or retroactively-established PC relationships call — and is very good at tracking favors and debts. Some of them helped with her kids.
Timeline
Hello! Good-bye.
Memorable Quotes
- "Ni jianguo wode xiansen, ma?"
Media
Theme Music
Daedelus feat. Bus Driver, "Quiet Now"
Her beauty is its own color, her curves reveal its every promise
I'm without shrive when light bends to complement her outline.
I am without shrive when light bends.
I'm just a man,
Built to break and filled with hate,
Others see beauty that cannot be put on the film and taped
Where the woman appear and light bended …
She developed a cult following with vulgar mammals who want to clip her wings
But I thought of her as a solar panel,
And I'm not alone, most men agree,
So I vented my feelings and I'll foster hope replace it but cope, act with testosterone,
But I never been good at hiding, and I've loved her since.
And angels hung from behind her is her seat belts.
I'd like to die with my head on a bosom in salt,
Trade my thought like I was on wooden pulp, sheets,
All I could do was stand there, sending her strands of hair,
Put them in my vault to keep, then,
She's like "We're not on the same waaavelength!"
And I was like "Oh, you're one of those primadonnas,"
"Reading bellevue drama from a teleprompter!"
She's like, "Come now, I know you,"
"Looking for rats who fornicate …"
That name? There is a partial truth,
But I'm an artful sleuth and I care to say,
You make Carmen look like a golf ball on a fairway
"And I may be captivated by the scent of your hairspray,"
"But I am not, I repeat, I am NOT—"
"HIM."
Trivia and Notes
- Inspirations include the depiction of Borte from Mongol and Reika Hashimoto's crazy lady character in Survive Style 5+. No kidding, right!