Mai WenCode-Name: HopperPosition: X-Men (Field Medic), Entrepreneur (Eastern Medicine Center)Ethnicity: Chinese
Sex: Female
Age: 23
Appearance:
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Skin: Pale golden skin tone
Weight: 108
Height: 5’4
Other:
Date Of Birth: June 20
Place Of Birth: Hunan Province, China
Education: Combination of home-schooled education and apprenticeship under her mother.
Mother:
Name: Mai Zi
Age: 46, Deceased
Race: Mutant
Father:
Name: Mai Han
Age: 63
Race: Human
Other Relatives: Twin sister Mai Kai, human.
Powers: Energy drain: Mai Wen can siphon the energy from another person.. The first source of the drain is their powers, which weaken first, then she would go on to their body’s energy to weaken them physically. She can also drain the life energy of non-powered living things. The energy drain can restore Mai Wen’s own reserves, or be directed into her healing abilities.
Healing: Mai Wen can transmit her own energy, or energy stolen from others, into healing energy. She can close wounds, knit bones together, and strengthen the body against disease. If she’s conscious she can use this ability to heal herself as well. She can sense the extent of a person’s injury or illness by touching them.
Power Limitations: She has to be in physical contact with another person in order to drain them. She can drain the person into unconsciousness, but no further, and at worst they’ll wake up with a headache. She can knock out a human pretty quickly in this way, but with the extra buffer of their mutant powers, with mutants the most she can usually get away with is weakening or even temporarily taking away their powers. Once contact is broken the person’s powers will return in seconds.
Healing: Mai Wen must also be in physical contact to heal a person. In addition, she will have to straighten bones before she knits them together, and sometimes hold the wound closed – the body won’t put itself back together, she has to get her hands dirty. She can’t cure disease outright, but she can give the body the strength to fight back. She can use her own strength to heal another person, but without drawing more energy from another source, she will run out of power quickly.
Hobbies and Interests: Mai Wen apprenticed under her mother as a midwife, healer, and acupuncturist. She doesn’t have any Western medical training, but has knowledge of how the body works. Once her mother learned of her powers, she decided that this was the only path for her daughter.
Mai Wen likes to create art out of found objects and leave it in public places for people to find and enjoy, creating beauty and surprises out of the ordinary. A lot of her art is meant to be funny or shocking, though, meant to jar people out of their normal way of thinking.
Background: Mai Wen grew up in rural China, always on the move with her mother. Her father was a high-ranking official in the government, who had the courage to let his mutant wife and daughter disappear when the regime turned fully against mutants. Mai learned her trade from her mother, who disguised herself as a much older woman to travel from poor village to poor village, dispensing medicine and staying beneath the government’s notice. Mai Wen was her mother’s apprentice in name only until her powers came to light,then her mother forced her to really work at learning the trade to help cover up Mai’s healing abilities.
Mai chafed at having hide all of the time; she was sheltered enough that she didn’t feel the danger she was in. Only her mother’s discipline and the distant memory of a strict, almost feared father, kept her in line until she was in her mid-teens. Then she began to sneak out, to find the gatherings and parties of teenagers in her area, and try to act like a normal girl.
When she was nearing eighteen, her mother decided that Mai Wen was old enough to take care of herself, and went to join the underground resistance in China. Mai Wen was left to face the world alone, and suddenly it felt much colder and scarier. Her mother sent the occasional email to let Mai Wen know she was OK, but then the emails stopped coming, and Mai Wen knew she was gone.
She knew her father’s name, and saw him in the paper with a twin sister Mai Wen didn’t even know, she’d been so young when they were separated. He was a proponent of moderation when it came to mutants, but he was in the minority. She still didn’t trust him, not someone who could abandon her and her mother to keep his comfortable job. Instead, she found her father’s home and sneaked in one day. Everyone who saw her mistook her for her twin sister, so she found her way to her sister’s room with no trouble.
Their reunion was strange and disappointing – there were no tears or fountains of happiness, as Mai Wen had imagined, just the surreal feeling of looking at a stranger with her face . Her sister offered shelter and a place to hide, but Mai Wen felt resentful of her sister’s easy living and her father forgetting about her. She only accepted her twin’s passport and all the cash she had, then used it to leave China before it became impossible to escape.
She took the first flight out, which brought her to Canada. She sought out Alpha Flight and a chance to help defend her new home, but was soon drawn south. She thought she was needed more where the fighting was hardest, and so she asked to go to the X-Men. She ended up with the Atlanta team, and was just starting to get comfortable when the base was taken down. She was woken in the middle of the night by Owen Red Cloud, who got her out safely, and brought her to the New Orleans team with him.
Personality: Mai Wen has an independent streak a mile wide, and will dare anything once. She prides herself on never backing down from a challenge. With other people, she likes to socialize, joke around, and banter – she likes to lighten up a room once she’s in it, and make people laugh along with her. In her mind, there’s no other way to face the darkness of their world but to try and bring some light into it. Under her flighty exterior is a sharp mind and a deep well of kindness that isn’t always obvious.
Special Notes: Model: Zhang Ziyi