Hero Bio: Detective Trinh Be

Known Aliases:  Bunny

Height: 6’0”
Weight: 650 lbs
Hair: Metallic, black
Eyes:  Glowing blue
Ethnicity: Vietnamese American

Appearance:

Trinh Be is tall and slender, with a metallic skin that closely resembles steel but is, in fact, much more durable. Her lips, fingernails, and hair are composed of a similar material, but dyed black. Her eyes, protected by an energy field, appear to glow with blue light. Because of the strength and durability of her frame, it was decided that Trinh does not actually require additional armor; as a result, her uniform consists of a pink bikini with a badge stitched into the top. Outside of work, Trinh likes to dress, as much as possible, like a normal woman, favoring either loose, casual clothes or tight and sexy outfits, depending on her company and her mood.

Personal Quote:

Don’t look now, but I’m about to pull a Bunny out of your ass!

Background/History:

Although positive relations with Vietnam had been growing ever since President Clinton’s announcement that the US was reopening trade with them, most of the effect of this more relaxed stance was felt in the cities, with little, initially, making its way into the more rural parts of the country. Trinh Hanh worked in the Sa Pa Terrace rice fields, where she was noticed by a Chinese-American diplomat named Saul Cho.

Cho wooed the woman, took her out and seduced her. Trinh was no match for Cho’s status, intelligence, and flair, and she quickly fell under his spell. They had an intense relationship, ending only when Cho was recalled to the United States. Shortly after Cho’s departure, Hanh learned that she was pregnant with his child.

Although Hanh had no political pull of her own, her face was sufficiently well-known that an ambassador in the American embassy pulled strings to have her admitted into a program to reunite Vietnamese mothers with their foreign husbands. The process was made somewhat more difficult by the discovery that Cho was, in fact, married in the United States and had been before he took on his post in Ho Chi Minh City. Claiming that she was also married to Cho and that her bastard son could suffer hardship because of his American father, Hanh managed to claim asylum and followed her erstwhile lover.

Hanh approached Cho outside his home and was, initially, turned back by his bodyguards. Persistance paid off, however, and she eventually managed to secure an interview with the diplomat. Cho was sympathetic to her plight, but refused to give up his American wife. Hanh sought a confrontation with Cho’s wife, hoping to force them to separate, but was ultimately disappointed, as Cho’s wife proved to be both stronger and more resilient than Hanh anticipated.

The Chos sought family counseling and included Hanh in the meetings; Hanh, for her part, got a job doing part-time custodial work for RWD and went to night school to get an associate’s degree. Hanh’s daughter, Be, meanwhile, turned five and began attending public school. Because the Trinhs lived in one of the poorer sections of the city, where the public schools had suffered extensively from teacher shortages and lack of funding, and because they could not afford private school, Be was forced to become largely self-educated.

Be’s mother, meanwhile, worked her way up and, eventually, became the executive assistant of one of the Vice Presidents in charge of research and development. Hanh’s skill and dedication allowed her to purchase better amenities for herself and her daughter, but never really put them over the line into the middle class.

Be excelled in her academic studies. In particular, she was truly gifted, even a savant, when it came to programming and electronics, and she quickly lost herself in the shadowy world of hackers and counter-hackers. She became so good, in fact, that a number of people started noticing her and, from there, it was a very small step before various figures enlisted her aid through the deep web.

While most of Be’s job offers were legal or, at worst, on the gray side of legal, she also got several offers that were clearly nefarious. Be, still young, headstrong, and overconfident, accepted some and refused others with barely a qualm. When some of the shadier jobs she’d accepted turned out to be bait for much shadier operations, Be anonymously contacted the FBI and proceeded to trash her contact’s network.

Unfortunately for Be, her contact was under the protection of the local Triad who took offense. They spent money freely, interrogated everyone they could get their hands on, torturing and killing several of Be’s network contacts and, within the space of six months, learned Be’s true identity. Rather than attempting to go to war with Be through the internet, the Triad hired a trio of assassins who proceeded to attack Be and her mother in her home, beating them severely and tying them up in their living room before setting fire to the house.

Hanh and Be were both awake as their house became an inferno around them; because they were tied and the assassins had secured the doors, neither Hanh nor Be were able to effect an escape, either from the flames or from the smoke rapidly filling the house. Unable to free herself from her bonds, Hanh did the only thing she could: she rolled her body against her daughter’s, pushing Be into a corner, and lay there, shielding the girl from the worst of the heat and smoke as best she could.

It wasn’t enough. Hanh died when the roof collapsed, but Be lay trapped in the ruins of her home for another eight hours before rescuers finally put out the fire and cleared enough of the debris away to find her shattered and, miraculously, still breathing body.

The rescuers transported her body to the nearest trauma-equipped hospital, but the outlook was bleak. The trauma team estimated that almost her entire body would be crippled, with extensive damage to her entire peripheral nervous system that would leave her in agonizing pain for the almost certainly brief time she had left. Her bones and joints had been almost entirely destroyed, first by the assassin’s initial attack, and then by the process of burning in the fire and being crushed by the collapsing building. Her flesh was in not much better shape, having been heavily abraded even before she was burned alive.

In short, the hospital was prepared to write Be off as a lost cause, but was prevented at the last moment by the efforts of Saul Cho, who petitioned Hanh’s former employer to intercede on her daughter’s behalf. RWD’s VP in charge of Research and Development, Hollis Faran Granger, rammed through an adoption order, then proceeded to have what remained of her body transferred to the medical/experimental facilities in RWD.

Once Be was in his care, he tasked his best team to transfer that which could be salvaged from her body— specifically, her brain and most of her spinal cord— into the newest frame of RWD’s life-model decoy android bodies, planning on giving her the option to appropriately disguise her new body once she was sufficiently familiar with it. To his surprise, Be chose not to disguise her body, preferring the clean, sleek lines to the reminder of the frailty of the flesh she once wore.

Once her body was fully functional, Be applied to the West End police department and, with her physical abilities and mental acumen, was quickly granted a position. She moved through the department, setting her sites on becoming a member of the prestigious MRT, hoping to use the team’s status to help her wage her own war against the Triads and other elements of organized crime; while she has been only modestly successful, thus far— organized crime is not actually the MRT’s primary focus— she has been enough of an asset to the team that both Zed and her squad leader have been willing to go out on a limb for her even when she’s off in left field.

Personality:

Be mostly appears to be pretty well-adjusted to her new body; she claims it’s because she never socialized much before her first body died. She gets along well with her teammates, enjoys computer games and movies, and still spends a great deal of time working the deep net. She also accompanies teammates to various social events and tends to get along well with people, provided they aren’t frightened away by her obviously mechanical presence. The truth, of course, is a bit deeper; Be nurses a core of smoldering rage that cannot be entirely denied. She is angry at the Triads, at the criminal element in the city, at the emergency workers who could not save her mother and left her nearly ruined, at the surgeons who could not repair the extensive damage to her body, and at pretty much the entire world for simply not caring. Fortunately, that fury is focused and channeled against mostly acceptable targets, and her psychologists have determined that, provided she continues to have an outlet for her frustration, she should be fine. For now.

Be has a deep-seated hatred of organized crime in all of its forms, but especially loathes the Triad. Be is mortally afraid of fire and open flames, and refuses to use incendiary weapons of any kind.

Powers/Abilities:

Be is the next generation of combat android developed by RWD, and she has all the trimmings; she’s strong, fast, and close to invulnerable. Unlike the other droids, though, Be is controlled by the brain and nervous system of a twenty-year-old girl with a major chip on her shoulder.

Be is fluent in Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and English.

Be is extremely fluent in programming languages and is rated as being in the top ten hackers in the world by those who would know. She is also a skilled electronics technician, capable of building high-end devices and modifying them on the fly as needed.

Be’s strength is such that she can lift up to eighty tons, provided she can find the balance and purchase to do so. By a similar token, Be is also durable enough that the pressure from such a lift would not damage her. This, incidentally, means that she’s also sufficiently tough that most weapons fire short of an anti-tank missile is pretty ineffectual against her. Be’s body is capable of speeds of up to 1,000 mph on land, but Be’s reaction time, while very good, is still human. As a result, Be almost never moves faster than 30 mph.

Be normally carries her squad’s heavy weapons as well as an assortment of small arms, usually magnetically locked to her body. She also has a built in taser, keeps golfball grenades in a storage compartment in her body, and can project a dazzling flash from her eyes or fire beams of intense heat, depending on how she adjusts the refractive field that protects the lenses of her eyes.

Be’s sensor suite is extremely sensitive, capable of extending both far above and below normal human senses. The exception is her olfactory apparatus; while she can detect and identify scents with concentrations as low as 0.005 ppm, she cannot actually experience what the smell is like. She may identify chocolate, for example, but she is not stimulated by the odor.

Be can activate a limited countergrav system that can greatly enhance her ability to lift- the exact limits are not yet documented- or can allow her to fly at speeds of up to sixty mph for up to eight hours before recharging.

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When I wrote this, I was a little concerned that the details about Be's ordeal-by-fire might be too graphic for young readers. I did, in fact, tone it back some... which, I suppose, should give you an idea about what my first draft of this looked like. Then I sought advice. I was told that this was okay by someone who has kids... and that the fact that it was going to give me horrible nightmares (because I'd dreamed it up and had a really graphic scene playing out in the movie theater in my head) didn't actually make it likely that small children (without the life experience to know just how terrifying being slowly roasted alive actually is) would share my horror.

Anyway, Be is the resident hacker/forensics expert in the 's Meta Response Team. She and the rest of her squad get their marching orders from 's MRT and Zed.

All of the characters on this page belong to and may only be used with permission, as dictated under the MRT usage rules (once they're released).