Black Lotus

Black Lotus, Martial Artist

Before Xuàn Hú changed sides from Evil to Good, his finest student in the arts of assassination and combat was Black Lotus. Now, she is always looking for a way to prove she has become better than her former teacher.

Biography
Black Lotus doesn't know the identities of her parents and claims (quite believably) to not care. From her earliest memories, she was a street urchin, begging and stealing for food to survive. Lotus has always been smart and a quick learner, knowing that if she wasn't she would be dead. She quickly figured out what happened on the streets to the older girls (especially pretty ones) who began to mature physically and got noticed by men. Lotus was one of the youngest in the groups in which she ran. She saw some of her older gang-sisters simply "disappear" once their bodies began developing curves and men began eyeing them. Lotus knew that she must find a way to have a different fate before she, too, reached adolescence.

Old Man Xo gave her her chance. He was Master of the Beggar's Guild. He recognized the spark of a particular kind of genius in Lotus's eyes. One day, when Black Lotus was twelve, Old Man Xo approached her and gave her a mission. She must steal the suitcase of a travelling businessman who stayed in one of the finest hotels in the city. Lotus was dirty, unkempt,and smelly, but she accepted Xo's mission. Being resourceful and skilled at acting, Lotus found a way to get clean, get into the hotel, and steal the suitcase before the man left for the airport early the following day.

In return, Old Man Xo inducted twelve-year-old Black Lotus into the Beggar's Guild and placed her under its protection. Lotus would no longer have to worry about what would happen if she were caught sleeping alone outside on the streets by some two-legged predator.

The Beggar's Guild was an arm of a very large and ancient organized crime network. Old Man Xo began grooming Lotus for something far greater than a position with the Beggar's Guild. When the time was right, he recommended her for initiation into a secret school of elite assassins. The headmaster of the school was none other than the legendary Xuàn Hú.

http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww210/jonklement/forsmerdiversewiki/BlackLotusCollagecopy.jpg

Black Lotus quickly became the school's star pupil, absorbing as much as she could about poisons, combat, torture, and assassination from her teachers. Eventually, Lotus knew more than each of her instructors in each area: herbology, acupuncture, disguise, sharpshooting, hand-to-hand combat, etc. Only Xuàn Hú himself remained her superior. One day, she knew, she would surpass him as well.

Then, suddenly, her world turned upside down. Xuàn Hú had gone into the field on a mission for the government (even governments need assassins) to root out house churches...and converted!

Everything Black Lotus had been working toward, her whole life, was now in question. She left the assassin school, which was forbidden. After she slew several agents who were sent to punish her for leaving, the school gave up pursuing her.

Today, Black Lotus is a free agent. She has taken Mattieu Tyler as her personal assistant. He functions as secretary, butler, valet, and booking agent.

She is exhilarated by the freedom of working for herself and has already accumulated several million dollars, more than enough to retire comfortably when old age finally steals her reflexes and strength. One of the goals she still has is to defeat Xuàn Hú in combat, proving once and for all that she has surpassed him.

She has encountered him on several occassions, usually when he is protecting one of her assassination targets. Much to her frustration, she has never been able to bring a fight with Hú to a close with one of them dead, which is the only acceptable outcome for her.

She has even uncovered his new identity as Lee Chen. She will never betray this, because to do so would bring Xuàn Hú's other old enemies upon him and Black Lotus believes that she must be the one to kill him, no one else. She will also never try an assassination on Hú while he is in his "civilian" Lee Chen identity. Only victory in a straight no-holds-barred combat between herself and Xuàn Hú in all his glory could ever satisfy her craving to believe in her own perfection.

http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww210/jonklement/forsmerdiversewiki/greyfoxvsblacklotus.jpg

Persona
Black Lotus has a sadistic quirk. She tries to gain a victim's trust before killing them, often playing the part of a friendly and helpful passerby or Good Samaritan before striking. In the Velocity Girl 1 novel, Black Lotus helps a Whitmore High School substitute teacher de-ice her car before knifing the poor woman and taking the substitute's place at school that day to kidnap Alex Hirshkov.

Powers and skills
Mastery of martial arts, herbology, poisons, assasination, gymnastics, acrobatics, torture, firearms, and explosives.

Highly skilled at disguise and acting.

Very streetwise.

Appearances
Velocity Girl 1: Velocity Girl and Xuàn Hú (novel)

Velocity Girl 4: First Contact (novel)

Smerd the P'ckit Dragon: Small Press Idol 2007 Entry (archived at http://www.smerdiverse.com)

Smerd's Big Book of Shapes and Colors (children's book)