Lancer: In Golden Flame: Gremlin:Scrapbook
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While "WHO GAVE THAT GREMLIN A MECH!?" would brand her with a call-sign, Yao Mei got a rep slapped across her face years before she was allowed to sit in a cockpit. A shipborn pirate brat; birthed into a den of thieves, and sent scurrying to earn her keep soon as she could walk and talk. It wasn't a loveless childhood, but it didn't really have the right kind of love, either. It also wasn't an unfun one - even if the fun she got to have was often times exceedingly illegal. Handy with a wrench and handy with a gun, she's like this cardboard cutout of an unsavory character. Which is only a bit unfair. Because Yao Mei isn't a really bad person (though you couldn't describe her as a good one either)...she's just kinda feral. And by all rights, should've died a hundred times over already. But she's very much alive, and will sometimes talk about the things she's had to do to stay that way.
Freed from her life of unavoidable crime by means that will currently go unmentioned to preserve narrative suspsense and future possibilites, she has been allowed to serve with the SRT via a combination of her scarily good piloting skills, and a very leniant suspended sentence. Something she has taken to like a street mutt finally finding a warm and pleasant home. Don't get me wrong, she'll still bite, but these days Yao Mei more often bites out than in.
Bonus (and pointless) aspects!
Concept: Shipborn Pirate Brat Trouble: don't know no better Drive: get that glory, get that gold Talent: handy with a box of scraps Free: Devil's own luck
Going to solidify some things: Yao Mei was a member of the Hell Hounds. I'm pretty sure she killed her first person when she was ten, and things sorta escalated from there. In spite of Calliope's treatment of names, Yao Mei is a Brook, because "You're a Brook, don't let them take that from you" - a warped sense of in-group family identity politics. Which, you know, band of pirates, so...
I think the Hell Hounds still regard Yao Mei, unfairly, as a child. This is not exactly unfounded. They didn't instil in her a grand amount of emotional maturity and aren't exactly the most mature bunch themselves(?). So her getting caught/turned isn't looked down upon...more a wink and a shrug: it happens, you know? Don't forget where you came from. To that end, there's no real resentment between her and her old band. She still has a lot of contacts there (they're family, after all)! At the same time, I think broader society also treats her as a child: an unfair victim of circumstances that shouldn't really be blamed for her actions because she wasn't fully responsible for them.
This is an un-nuanced cop-out. Yao Mei is a product of her environment, yes, and her environment was definitely terrible (absolutely) but she's not an emotionally stunted wreck. She's actually quite well put together, thank you, even if her innate values are unfortunately warped. She knowingly made a great many of her choices, and wouldn't necessarily think twice about making them again. Which I think is something that kinda raises her hackles: if she thinks she knows what she's talking about do not dismiss her. It's not like she doesn't have years of experience to that effect.
