Min Huáng

**Huáng Min** is a Chinese woman, often portrayed as a criminal. In the earlier comics, she was portrayed as a villain known as the Dragon Lady and a supporter for communism, but in the reboot, she is renamed as the Lady of Red and worked as a mercenary with her brother, Huáng Fu. Her first appearance was in *The White Knight and His Lotus Blossom #3.* She was later showed in the new comic series, *The Knight #*1.

## **History**

### **Origins:**

Huáng Min remembered having a loving childhood in Shanghai, China, until her father, Huáng Tao, lost his job, and her mother disappeared when she was five. Her father spiraled into depression and alcoholism and spent most of the day on the couch. Huáng Min and Huáng Fu learned how to pickpocket in order to pay bills and buy food, but when they got caught, they would get beaten and have everything they had stolen from them. It forced Huáng Min and Huáng Fu to become more discrete and better themselves. This worsened when their dad died as they dove further into theft, stealing from different stores and reselling the items, but from time to time, the buyer would bring stronger and bigger people to take it by force. It made her bitter towards the world and their situation, vowing to never let anyone mistreat them again.

In the earlier comics, it was shown that Huáng Min and Huáng Fu stumbled into the communist regime, the Red Empire, after a string of bad luck. They were not being able to scrounge up enough money to keep the apartment. The regime offered them housing and a hot meal. Huáng Min and her brother slowly climbed the ranks, eventually reaching the protege position due to their disregard for humans. During their training, they were gifted powers to aid them when they became the leaders. Huáng Min received the gift to manipulate fire and create poison from her blood, which she used to lace the daggers she hid in the qipao.

In the newest version, Huáng Min and Huáng Fu had been born with these powers, and their father would call them freaks and monsters, blaming them for their mother's disappearance. After their father died, they began to find other ways to make money, ending up doing tasks for anyone who paid. It started small like stealing items from stores for people or beat up a person who wronged their client, but it escalated into kidnapping, finding information, and smuggling. They turned in full-fledged mercenaries, having no loyalties and only followed the coin.

### **The White Knight Infiltrates the Empire**

Upon hearing that her brother had been captured, Huáng Min stayed under the radar and followed the adventures of the White Knight. She noticed how he became a symbol of hope She had ordered an air strike against the camp that the hero was staying at to gauge his abilities, noting that he could fly and had super strength, but he was not invulnerable to physical harm.

She put on a disguise and snuck into the prison, charming the guards to free her brother escaping without any trouble. They went back to the Red Empire and plotted for a way to take out the hero, setting up traps that would alert them of the hero's location. Huáng Min laid out a trail of clues that would hint to their location in the Taishan mountains. It took a month before Robert's arrival, and he quickly activated one of their traps, but only that one. Luckily, he found his way to her bedroom, and upon spotting him, she began to brush her silky hair and fluttered her eyelashes at him. She wanted him to get close, so she could end him, but he refused her for his wife. Annoyed, she tried a different method and collapsed onto the floor, pretending to look helpless. She gripped the handle of her poisoned dagger and waited him to come close enough before striking. She kissed him on the cheek, marking him off in her head as dead, and went to start the next phase.

The plan felt that it was going smoothly, but her brother called for her in the throne room, and she appeared. She saw that the wife had accompanied him and was initially trapped in a cage, but Robert had saved her. While Huáng Fu fought Robert, Huáng Min went to take care of the wife, throwing fireball after fireball, but she kept disappearing into a lotus floor and popping up in another location. She was distracted with Mi Young and failed to notice that Fu had lost his battle. She was caught and locked up, but it brought her closer to their targets.

### **The Corruption**

When Huáng Min entered her cell, she observed the guards, wanting to find the most vulnerable and insecure one: those were the types that would especially listen to whatever she said. She picked out Ben to be that one and began to flirt with the man, focusing solely on him before slowly turning the conversations into ways that he could help him. Once he was willing to do anything, she convinced him to make a powder that when consumed, it allowed the power of suggestion to take root. She took him the ingredients were ginseng, hibiscus seeds, salt, and a special kind of fruit. She had Ben be her voice when giving the ones in charge their drinks, telling what him to say to make the army base convert to and weaken their defenses against communism. She requested that they stopped using the White Knight and his wife for missions and that they focused on the army base rather than worry themselves with outside forces. She suggested that they cut the funding for training and recruitment. Through the concerned mumbles of passing guards, Huáng Min knew that her plan was working, and soon she would be able to request her and her brother's release. Then, Ben stopped showing his face around.

Not long after that, her plan began to fall apart as everything reverted back to before. She noticed that the guards walked quickly past her, pretending she wasn't even there, and they always stayed a good distance away. It seemed that her plan had been found out, and they knew it was her. Huáng Min lost any influence that she garnered in prison, and it seemed that she lost to the overwhelming force of democracy.

### **The Brave and Bold: The 2020s Reboot**

Once becoming adults, she and her brother decided to go into mercenary work, officially and professionally. Both of them found that the money was too good to resist, and it was also the only thing they were good at. They spent several years, taking the most dangerous jobs to build their reputation as the ones that people needed to hire if they wanted to get something done. Being the most sought after mercenaries, they had the privilege to pick and choose their clients, and the employers had to follow the rules. Huáng Min and Huáng Fu refused to harm children or pregnant women in any way, and if the request was a hit, they had to pay extra for their services. No one was able to catch them until they had a request to kidnap a French diplomat to scare the other French government figures; the ransom was their bonus pay.

It took two weeks to plan and enact the plot. Min snuck into the home of diplomat's assistant and switched places, keeping her locked up in her bedroom's closet. She made sure to feed and hydrate her twice a day and gave her a bucket to do her business in. With her disguise, she was able to gain access to the bodyguards' schedule and discovered that there was a pause where all of the guards were away from their posts. All she had to do was distract long enough for Huáng Fu to break into the diplomat's office and take him. Then, when he sent the signal, she led the guards back to their post and walked through the office door. She screamed and pointed at the broken window before pushing the guards to call the police, and in the chaos, Huáng Min disappeared and joined her brother in the getaway car. It was an easy job, but then they got the word too late that the White Knight and the Harvester were investigating the case.

Scrambling, Huáng Min had them change locations again, worried about getting caught for the first time. They arrived at an abandoned warehouse and tied the diplomat again to get ready for the ransom video. Huáng Min heard footsteps and quickly dragged Huáng Fu out of the view. They saw the two heroes entered the building and used the chance to ambush them. She attacked Mi Young with pillars of fire. It scorched the woman, but Mi Young dodged, shooting several arrows that she burnt to a crisp. They were at a standstill, and it irritated Huáng Min. She knew they got caught because of her brother's writing style never changed. It became a pattern, and she shouted at him for it. He yelled back that she should have changed the license plate of the assistant's car. Then, Mi Young interrupted, telling them that they were amateurs and petty criminals. It set Huáng Min off. She felt that it was all Huáng Fu's fault of causing their first failure and sent a fire blast at him for it. She hated failure; it reminded her of their deadbeat father. She took her eyes off the heroes for a few seconds, and Robert immediately wrapped them with an iron pipe, trapping her arms to her side. She was unable to use fire without injuring her lower half. They were taken to prison for the first time.

### **The Knighthood**

Huáng Min and Huáng Fu had long forgiven each other. Begrudgingly, they agreed that they both were at fault. Once released from prison, Huáng Min kept tabs on the hero duo turned couple, making sure to be several countries away from them at all times as they continued on their mercenary work, teetering on the edge of legality. Huáng Min focused on information gathering and selling, and her brother

One day, they received two letters at one of their temporary bases from an organization called ASCEND. Huáng Min had heard from through grapevine that it was formed in response to hero league, the Knighthood, and that they were rapidly recruiting members to join them. The note talked about employing the siblings and being rewarded with a spot in the natural order. It freaked both of them out, so they ignored it. The second one was a wedding invite for the White Knight and the Harvester's wedding. It was alarming that they knew where they lived, and it felt like a trap, but Huáng Min made sure to cover their tracks when they crossed the line of legality. Neither of them wanted to go to prison. While she always got annoyed with Huáng Fu, she hated being separated from her only family for so long. They decided to go. Huáng Min contacted a fellow mercenary and somewhat friend to be her date. It was a strange affair. For the first time, she was around a large group of people without them wanting to kill each other or trading a large sum of money. She also learned way too much about the heroes there, and she feared that she revealed too much about herself. She remembered talking about her father, her love of cats, and how she named her weaponry of her favorite characters in the fantasy books she read. She decided to stop drinking then.

After the wedding, she kept tabs on the Knighthood and ASCEND, not to avoid either them, but to observe. Robert once showed up at another one of the temporary bases to ask if they created ASCEND. They couldn't help but laugh in his face and close the door.

### **The Alliance**

Still keeping an eye on ASCEND, Huáng Min discovered that organized several successful heists in different nuclear energy plants, secret labs, military bases, and etc. They were approached by Robert and Mi Young to find information about ASCEND, and Huáng Min revealed that the organization had sent them another letter, wanting their services and offering more money than the heroes. It was meant to tease the heroes, but they looked genuinely distressed, so Huáng Min dropped the facade. Huáng Fu told them that they would do it, forming a truce of sorts.

Huáng Fu copied and remade the ASCEND's costume in order for them to infiltrate one of the bases. They died their hair and wore contacts. Huáng Min added hidden platforms to the inside of the shoes to seem taller while Huáng Fu thinned the platforms on his and height the shoe to create an illusion that he was shorter. They had observed the low-ranked henchman and followed their behavior. It allowed them to wander throughout the facility and absorb the information. Huáng Fu relayed to the Knighthood that the members of ASCEND greatly outweighed their members. All of the conversations they overheard mentioned at least once of the amount of people each one recruited. The members also spoke of the Day of Beginnings; it turned out that the ASCEND wanted to use the stolen goods to create a machine that would send the entire world into the dark ages, allowing the organization to take over. They would establish the hierarchy where ASCEND stood above everyone while those below them would be a labor force. Huáng Min and Huáng Fu helped the Knighthood recruit more members, using old contacts and clients to gather people; some of which though had joined ASCEND and attempted to get the siblings to switch sides, and it weirded them out.

During the planning. Robert questioned why the siblings choose to work with them. her brother answered that they could tell something was up with ASCEND when the recruiter kept talking about a natural order to things. They decided to not elaborate further, figuring that the alliance would end once ASCEND was defeated. Everyone continued to work on a strategy to combat ASCEND.

### **The End of Red, White, and Blue**

Huáng Min, Huáng Fu, and The Knighthood discovered ASCEND's base of operations. The siblings refused to use the items that Robert got from the US government. While they had a civil relationship with the heroes now, they trusted their own items. Robert had planned for the army to do a full-frontal attack to attract the attention of ASCEND's members while the members from the first version of the Knighthood and the Huáng siblings infiltrated to dismantle the contraption and get a sneak attack on whoever the founder was. Huáng Min had tried to find any hint of who the leader was, but it had been completely wiped. None of the lower-ranked members knew, and the upper-ones were incredibly tight-lipped and creepy.

Walking through, Huáng Min noted from any escape points if they ran into trouble and kept an eye on her brother, so they could do a quick get-away. She sided with the Knighthood now, but she prioritized her brother and herself over them. They surprisingly discovered the room where the machine was held, but when Robert approached it, a shield popped out of nowhere. She noticed that the heroes went stiff and did a rigid turn. She and her brother followed, confused. They saw the leader of ASCEND, a man called Dr. Charles. Apparently, he had given the White Knight his powers to begin with and gave a spiel of his master plan to rule over the world as the only one with powers. He also boasted that he planned the whole thing, even being the one who designed the suits that the Knighthood and its army. He had a remote that sent signals to a hidden chip in the suit that would allow him to control their brains, feelings, and thoughts. He also made one more attempt to get have Huáng Min and Huáng Fu join his side, citing their swaying loyalties and promising grand rewards.

Huáng Min figured that it was bullshit, but she and Fu pretended to switch sides, walking over to the doctor with their hands open and free of weapons. The doctor cackled, but Huáng Fu pulled out a knife from his boot and held it to his throat as Huáng Min snatched the controlled and turned off the signal before breaking it under her foot. The tide turned back to their favor as the now freed Knighthood broke the shield's emitters while Mi Young and Starlight arrested the doctor. The Knights offered them a spot, and for a strange reason, Huáng Min found no reason to refuse and laughed with her brother.

## Personality

In her earlier showings, Huáng Min had a seductress streak, often using her looks to lure men into doing her bidding. She was incredibly conniving, often tricking people into lowering their guard before slicing them with her daggers laced with her poisonous blood. She took great pride in her appearance, and if someone rejected her, it would deeply offend her. She was cruel and tyrannical, flaunting her power over others. She was willing to do anything in order to maintain power.

In the latest incarnations, Huáng Min's past had turned her to be mistrustful and distant. It leaned in paranoia as she never wanted to fall like how she saw her father did or to feel weak ever again. She ensured that all of her relationships (except for her brother) were transactional too. She also had a temper when things didn't go as planned, especially if she planned everything so meticulously. She had a softer side to her when alone or with her brother, making sure they were fed and never let injuries go untreated after a mission. She took care of stray cats when they stayed in area, but she refused to bring them with her due to not wanting any attachments. She also secretly collected fantasy novels as a form of escapism and has done so since she was a child. She followed a strict moral code for herself and Huáng Fu: never hurt children or pregnant women, do not steal from the elderly (unless they were a rich businessman) or the poor, and try not to kill more than needed.

## Skills and Abilities

* Fire Manipulation: Depending on the version, she was born or gifted with the ability to control fire at will. She uses it deliver either a flurry of fire or a large single blast.
* Fog/Smoke Manipulation: She can create smokescreens to hide herself and blind her opponent. It is unknown if she can still do this in the newest comic
* Poisoned Blood: Her blood is filled with deadly toxins that can kill a man in a few minutes. This has been removed in the newer versions
* Weapon Proficiency: Due to her time as a mercenary, she is able to use most weapons with deadly precision though it is rarely shown as she prefers to use her flames
* Acting: She is able to slip on any emotion to manipulate whoever she is talking to. She often uses this ability to either gather information, infiltration, and to get others to underestimate her