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xxxxxBorn May 1st, 1999 Year of the Hare, her name means beautiful pearl. She was born in Erisi China, a very small village just outside of a Buddhist temple in rural western China. This small farm community was still effectively in the third world when Mei was born and even today has little more than a rough dirt road leading up the valley to the temple, with small farms raising live stock and crops along the road leading up to the mostly forgotten temple there. %r%rHer mother died in child birth, and so although she was a girl and likely would have been either turned over to the temple or 'disposed of' under most conditions she was allowed to live as there was no chance that her mother would have boy and the father figured a girl was better than no child at all. Life was hard in the small village, and Mei grew up working the farm from as young as she can remember, working with the animals, working with the crops, tending the household as best as she could at her father's side.
Each day, when she was old enough, after morning chores were done she was sent to the temple with the other village children to attend classes, as the temple was the only sanctioned government center of any kind in the area, and served as the communal hub and administrative center as much as it did temple under the communist rule of China. In classes at the temple Mei learned to read and write and learned her numbers as well as basic Chinese history and the like. Classes were often short as the children were all expected to return in the afternoons to their homes to help the families. Still, Mei was a quick study and did very well in the classes she could attend. She particularly excelled with numbers, math coming to her easily and she quickly passed most of her classmates in her math skills.
Life was hard but good life. Her father loved her, and despite being a girl or perhaps because of it, she was valued in a town where most of the children were boys. Life in the village was hard and the day in and out work wore her father down prematurely. She watched as time weathered her father and the poor air quality and constant work in the fields and with the livestock eventually caused her father to become ill. About the same time those from the central authority came through the small village testing the children for any special skills. It was at this point, at the age of 9, that after testing she was identified as a potential math prodigy. Promising that her father would be taken care of if she went along, she went. With a tearful good bye and assured that her father would receive proper medical care in exchange for her full cooperation, she left, with promises to write as often as she could to her beloved father.
Beijing was overwhelming to a girl raised in a small farm village of no more than 600 people to a city of over 20 million that lay more than 1500 miles away from her small home. Still, she was in a sheltered boarding school and not overly exposed to the city itself. Here she thrived, quickly brought up to speed with the rest of the students and surpassing many of them her own age, even in the gifted institution. She sadly quickly gained the nick name Rui from the other students, meaning Gnat, as she was small for her size and often annoyed the other students with her quick answers to the teacher's questions. They found her annoying even more so for her willingness to offer answers without showing what they considered proper respect for the males or older students. Every month she managed to send and receive letters back and forth with her father. The state made good on their word and provided her father with proper medical care and purchased his farm and moved him to a larger town near the village in a retirement community, giving him a chance to rest at last and enjoy life, all due to the state's desires to keep their latest prodigy happy. It was a small cost after all, a few small medicines, and a small apartment effectively provided to an old man to keep Mei happy.
When Mei was 12, her father's health started to decline, despite the medical aid being provided by the state. The man's body was just too worn out, and while he might have done better in a larger city with better care, the care he had access to simply wasn't enough to prolong his life much further. Still she kept writing to him every week that year, wishing she could some how do more to aid him. If only she had something more could help her father, then she could pay to move him to the larger city, and get better care. She had seen the wonders of Beijing medicine and their advanced hospitals, only for the wealthy really, despite the supposed communist state. During a chemistry class that year, while thinking about how if she only had real wealth, like gold, how she could help her father, she caused an incident in the chemistry lab. She was performing a simple experiment as part of a lesson. Simple high school level chemistry material, but during the experiment where the end result was supposed to be to show how you could dissolve metals with some acids then make them precipitate back into a solid by adding a base, instead of the expected iron, she some how managed to end up with what appeared to be gold as the end result. The shiny metal certainly was not the same result the other students achieved and the result was quickly whisked away while Mei was quickly isolated to be questioned about what happened.
When word came that it was gold the school was unsure how she had achieved this feat. It was quickly assumed that she must be a mutant and just as the state tried to take advantage of mental prodigies they now would do the same with their mutants. Arrangements were quickly made to have a specialist who could determine if she was in fact a mutant come and test her, and after that test, which came back positive, she was scheduled to be shipped to a new school, one where her powers would be explored and she would be trained to be useful to the state. After all, someone who could create gold from iron was certainly someone who might be very useful indeed! These changes threw Mei into isolation and she was now unable to contact her father. In addition, not only did the state learn of her powers but through corrupt government officials so did several less savory people, in particular the news reached the ears of several well placed members of the Triad, the Chinese Mafia. When she was scheduled to be transported, a few well placed bribes and instead of the new school her van took her to a warehouse where she was confined and put through a series of tests to see what they could squeeze out of her, trying to get her to replicate the feat from the chemistry lab. After some strong 'encouragement' from some rather unfriendly Triad members, the feat was repeated several times, with Mei able to transform small objects to gold, just through touch and concentration.
Mei was imprisoned for some time in the warehouse under constant guard, and encouraged to attempt greater and greater transmutations. Eventually she could change larger objects through effort into gold. The greater the object the more effort it took from her but it was like a muscle, and the more she did it, the easier it got, until she was at the point where a small object like a coin took very little effort but larger objects seemed to take quite a bit more effort. She lost track of time during this period, as she was not shown a window, or clock and seemed to be fed at irregular intervals from what she could tell. Still the Triads were not about to kill the goose that was laying the golden egg, figuratively speaking. The sudden appearance of odd objects made of gold caught the attention of several groups and as the pressure increased in attempts to find the source the Triads needed to move her. It was decided they needed to get her out of China completely, some where new where she wouldn't be found, and most importantly some where gold could be easily exchanged for hard currency without raising so many eyebrows.
So with little warning, Mei found herself drugged after one meal, knocked out cold, restrained and dumped in a shipping crate, destined for New York, to be picked up by the Triads there. Greased palms at customs and forged papers, and her crate being designated as 'test animal' to be sent to 30 day quarantine, which her crate would never reach due to some additional greased palms at the airport and the next thing Mei knew she was being transported in the back of some truck in a crate, bouncing around. All of this would have been fine if not for random chance which resulted in a five car pile up involving the truck on the turnpike from the airport to down town, killing the driver of the truck and breaking the back of the truck wide open, along with Mei's crate. Scared and unsure where she was or what was going on, she knew she wanted to be free of the Triads and so she fled, right into the city of New York, alone and with minimal English skills, what little she had provided by one of her linguistics classes at her special school.
Now 13, almost 14, Mei has just arrived in New York. Her powers are actually far greater in scope than just making gold, although she doesn't know it yet. Her arrival is likely not to go unnoticed as several groups would like to get their hands on her although only the Triads really know who she is and what she looks like, several other groups with their spies in the Triads know some special 'cargo' was arriving and that the Triads would do almost anything to get their hands on this 'cargo'. She also stands out psychically so anyone scanning the area that way is liable to stumble across her even if they aren't looking for her in particular.
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xxxxxMei has three powers effectively, one rather obvious to her and one not so obvious to her, and one completely undeveloped at this point, latent.
Enhanced Intelligence: Mei believes this is just natural to her, but in fact her mind is able to pick up concepts, learn new things and process math in particular at incredible rates. This is in fact a mutation, although one that is effectively always on, as it is built into the very structure of her brain. She is unaware of it but this also makes her stand out to psychics quite a bit for some reason. She is, in effect, far easier to track by psychics due to this mutation, standing out like a sore thumb in a crowd. But other than this, there is no physical sign of her mutation in this area.
Matter Conversion: Mei can transform any material into any element or compound that she has learned. Learning an element or compound involves studying it, the more complex the compound or material the more study it takes to make it learned. Pure elements are the easiest and quickest for Mei to learn. At this point she believes her power is limited to conversion from an existing solid to gold. In fact her power is not so limited, but can convert any matter into any compound that she is aware of and familiar with. Her experience with gold involved touching it and examining a piece of it during one of her earth science classes. With practice and experience she could convert almost any material into any other material, limited by her knowledge and by the quantity. The larger the quantity or more complex the resulting material the more effort it takes. At this point she can convert a few ounces without much effort, but the larger the weight the more effort and energy it takes. Converting something even a few pounds at this point would greatly weaken her and converting something man sized would knock her out cold in the process. In addition this power is limited to touch only. However it can be used on the air she is touching to apparently create matter out of thin air. If used this way the object would be sort of irregular in shape and lumpish. This power is limited to non-living material only. This power can be used on once living but now dead material such as a wooden table, but not on a tree. Finally, the more complex the material the harder it is to transform, and transforming something into mythical materials such as Adamantium would require not only access to such material in the first place for extensive study but an extraordinary effort such that creating even a small quantity would be almost but not completely impossible.
Matter Molding: This is a facet of Mei's powers she is completely unaware of at this point, but she can in fact mold matter into shapes. Similar to her power to transform matter, the larger the object to be molded the greater effort required on her part, in addition the harder or more resistant the object the harder to mold. For example gold would be very easy to mold, while steel would be harder and Adamantium would be nearly impossible. When combined with her matter conversion ability she has a truly impressive potential to create almost any simple object. Like her matter conversion power, this power does not work on living matter but does work on once living matter, so it would work on a wooden table but not a living tree. Under no circumstances will this power work on a person. Mei must know the shape she is trying to create and creating a mechanical object with moving parts is not really possible, but creating a knife or even something like cloth would be. Again, like Mei's matter conversion power, this power is limited to touch range only.
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