Huan Pai (Baba Changa)

## Early Life

Born Huan Pai in Ningpo, China, she lived in a very respected family. Her first marriage began well enough, but Li was frankly an asshole, and beat her regularly. Not because she wasn't the perfect wife (which she was), but simply because he was an asshole. At least, that's all Baba ever decided on the matter.

One day, while she was in the markets purchasing fish for dinner, she stopped in an alley and cried. It had been months, and they had been trying but she could not make a child. She cried often, only able to do so out of sight and mind of others, but this day was different. The ghost of a raped and murdered prostitute had hung in the alley, anchored to her hidden and long since decayed remains. Longing to aid Baba in her sorrow, she reached out to her. Baba had always been spiritual, and accepted the love and sympathy from even a supernatural creature.

Over the next few months, Baba found the whispers in her ear at night were not done from long distance, the ghost had found its way to Baba's home. Things began to go bad. Accidents started to happen, almost completely at Li's expense. A moved piece of furniture to stub his toe, Baba's food spoiled right before her eyes as Li ate it, dishes would fall from their place in shelves to strike him in the head. Li, being what he was, took it out on Baba. The ghost could take it no more. Needless to say, Li died.

Baba's explanation was weak, and no one would believe her. Charged with murder, she had shamed her family, so much so that her parents would not look at her, and her sisters whom she had loved so much and helped raise were not permitted to speak to her, though the pleading in their eyes told Baba she had some connection to the family still, if tenuous.

Baba had never run from commitments during her life, she had always taken what came, the good and the bad. But this? No- she ran. She ran to the West. Already dead to her parents, she felt no shame in what she began to do: Prostitution. That, and thievery. At first she had reached out to any and all as the poor beggar in the streets, but watching the other women of the streets strut around with money in their pockets, stomachs full? She knew she had to, and Li had already shown her how to perform such a task.

For the first time, she began to feel free. She had never known how stifling her old life had been, the oppression, her need to satisfy the men in her life. Li her husband, Wang her father. It was always about their needs, but here, she could begin to sate hers.

## Second Husband

Her travel to India was fraught with dangers from the police, from cruel men and from the general populace, but in all her life, she still remembers it fondly.

Then she met Imad Wasem, 'Sheik' of a 'palace' in India. She fell in love, more with the title than with the man. Imad was generous enough, and had enough money to give a woman with no place in the world a seat in a mansion. The next five years were wonderful, though Baba found herself back in the position of a wife. Their first boy was born almost immediately, and though Imad did not notice, Baba saw how little Indian the boy had in him. Thank God the American hadn't had blonde hair or blue eyes, or Imad would have known immediately. Baba passed the initial shock of her ability to have babies, and pressed Imad as often as she could into the bedroom. She would give him enough children that if even one was not his, he could not say she had given him nothing. She bore seven more children to him, 4 boys and 3 girls. One of the girls and one of the boys was from a set of triplets, and neither of the two survived. Still, she had given him 6 children, even if one was not his. Five years was enough for her to give birth to them all, but also enough for him to learn of his first son's illegitimacy, and long enough for Baba to learn Imad was indeed no Sheik, but a drug lord running the Opium trade from China and India.

Both cross with one another, Baba demanded a divorce. Imad would do no such thing- at least, not in the way she wanted. Her five year old son was put to death, and Baba was to be slain as well. The look on her children's faces as she ran from the home was just as her siblings' had been when she had left China. She knew she would never see them again, her children or her family.

## Third Husband

It was now clear to her, she could not become attached to the men she met. It could only mean pain and suffering. As she ran toward the Pakistani border, she met a white man. He was nothing like the American who she had slept with during her life as a prostitute, he was kind, and had a gentle voice, and a gentle look. Even though the man was at least twenty years her senior, Baba fell in love.

The man was not well-liked in the community, though he had stayed there past the end of British Colonization to help in the aftermath of the Partition. The constant harassment from this, and the stress of her previous marriages sent Baba into a depression, from which the four children she attempted to have with Luke all suffered as well. Not a single baby survived child birth. Though she loved Luke deeply, she could not look in his eyes without seeing pity and shame. Luke told her it was not her fault, that her life had thus far been arduous, and they could try later. It was this thought, that they would try again, and that again and again her babies would die that drove her away from him.

The distance between them increased when Luke began to go away for long periods at a time, sometimes entire months. Then one day, he never returned home. Word spread of his quartered corpse in a market place in Pakistan. Baba did not even think of the people of the nation, but instead of the ghost from China, and what had happened to Li.

She ran once more. Always running, always escaping. The burden of a baby growing within her, Luke's daughter, kept her from running as she had before. Lucy poured out from her finally in a dirty alley in Afghanistan. Baba, expecting her to die, cut the umbilical cord herself and prepared to leave the carcass there for someone else to find. Lucy wailed. Tears in her eyes, she wrapped her daughter up and kept her close. She had lost her children in India to Imad, and she couldn't help but blame him and Li both for her still births with Luke. Lucy would never leave Baba's arms.

But Lucy was not to be alone- Baba had nothing to turn to to make money but her old profession. She found herself pregnant as they were making their way through Turkey. It was difficult food-wise for just the two of them. Baba would not let anything happen to Lucy, and rid herself of the unwanted baby with a coat hanger. The scars made her job more difficult, but Baba settled for Lucy's happiness- as long as her daughter survived this, Baba would take all of her scars upon herself, and let her daughter live a life without burden.

## Fourth Husband

When they reached Greece, she met Matt. He was visiting family in Greece, and he was from America. He reminded Baba of Luke, but only in his kindness. He was young, possibly younger than Baba herself. She never asked, neither did he. Matt had children from a previous marriage, Baba claimed Lucy as the same. If nothing else, Matt could be a good father. Matt loved her, Baba pretended the same. He helped her fix her paperwork, and before long, Matt's extended stay in Greece ended and the two of them flew back to America. Baba locked her heart away, and feigned happiness for the marriage, so Lucy could grow up in a real home. Years passed. Lucy was heading to college, Matt's children were working on their PhD's. John and Gerald blessed Baba's tired and scarred womb.

Somewhere along the line, Baba became aware of Matt's increasing dissappearances. He kept secrets from her, and she accepted it as none of her business. Afterall, she kept an entire other life from him. But it all began to seem similar. Luke had kept books on shelves she could not read, he had spoken to friends of things she did not understand. Matt did all the same. He also had a gun collection, something Baba knew nothing about, and kept away from. Guns scared her- Her life had been tremulous and horrid as it was, never once had she met someone who had been shot, or worse, been shot at herself. The trauma of her life's events seemed summed up in one of those bullets.

She needed no other reason to not inquire of Matt's whereabouts when he went out with one of the guns. But when he returned one night, weary and drenched by rain and blood, she found need to grab up the gun from his near death hand, to fire upon the beast pulling her husbands legs from his torso. Matt died there, half of him in the house, the rest strewn in the yard. With the children in bed, and the down pour and thunder clammering outside, Baba pulled the two corpses inside and cleaned up in solitude. The gun did not frighten her any longer, what it did to the beast who had ripped her husband in half was nothing in comparison to what it did to him. Baba set her husband's body in a chair after cleaning it up to the best of her ability, and buried the creature in the backyard, smoothing it out so none would find it. She called the police and left a note, leaving her sorrys for her two boys, and thanking Matt's family for the care they were about to provide for the two.

Baba was a stranger in America, even more so than she had been in India, in Greece, in Turkey, Pakistan, or any of the places she had been. John and Gerald were her sons, but Baba always felt they were more Matt's than hers. Lucy had been her gem, she had taken the best care she could of her, and now Lucy was off to finish her education. She would one day lead an independent life, she would never know of her mother's suffering. Baba took only what money she needed for the travel to Japan, and left the rest to her daughter.

## Fifth Husband

At the age of 53, Baba met Ito Iwashima. She gave him three sons, and then twin girls, one of whom died. Ito demanded his first son be named Makoto, and Baba let him. On one condition: their first daughter would be called Ming. Ming filled the void in Baba's heart Lucy had left. Ito appreciated Baba's company- she was a model wife and put even the Geisha to shame with her poise and grace, but most of all her beauty. Baba knew that what Ito saw as poise and grace was but her coldness and distance toward others, and her beauty to him was nothing but a ragged shell to her. Ito never knew it, but he had been duped. Baba was tired and old, she could not perform her old tasks of thievery and prostitution, a husband meant security to a woman who had no profession. Baba seeked him out, a man of stature, with money, and without her knowledge, a hunter.

Ito was not as secretive as Luke or Matt had been, and within the first year, he told her as much. Baba said nothing of her past, her children, her husbands, her shame. 18 years is a long time, and before Baba knew it, Ming was 18. In being a long time, it gives more and more chances for old acquaintances to find you, and find Baba Imad did.

In all the years they were together, Ito hunted, Baba helped, and neither were ever harmed beyond what simple care could fix. Baba learned the art of acupuncture, and became the home's doctor. No amount of needles could repair, however, what Imad had done to Ito and their two infant sons. When Baba returned from the market with Makoto and Ming, what they returned home to sent Baba into a deep depression. Her babies were missing, and Ito's body was spread throughout the home, his head set upon a note on the entry-table that read, "Baba, I heard how much you have traveled, so we have done the same to your husband."

## To America, Again

In Baba's wild state, Ming fled to her aunt's home out of fear. Makoto stayed with his mother to calm her, but nothing would. Over the next week, Baba sent word to her old home in China to see if her siblings still lived- No response. China had not been home to Baba for a long time regardless, and Japan was too close to Imad. Baba had worked hard to pick up her Hindi and Japanese, but these were to be forsaken for her English. America was the only place far enough from Imad, but Baba knew from her time with Ito, and from Matt's grizzly fate, that nowhere was safe.

So she went, her son Makoto came with her. They set up shop in Chicago. Knowing Imad would find her if he only worked after it, Baba changed her name. Makoto helped her find a contact for such a task before they opened the shop in her new name. No one would ever call her Huan Pai again. She would be Baba Changa, the hag. After a few more years, Makoto married off and left her. Baba had always been distant to him, and only from his great love and respect of her had he remained with her that long.

She’s compassionate inside, but she’s been hardened to no longer show sympathy. Whenever she grows attached to someone, they are lost to her. Any reminder of her old life makes her think of the trials she went through. She hopes that if other women feel shame, they may turn from their lives and better themselves. Yet, when others are free, it reminds her of her early years on the way to India, before Imad and everything else. The years where she had no children, where she bore no burden, and slid from city to city, running from the police and having passionate sex with strangers. The decrepit shell that is left of Huan Pai, now Baba Changa, hunts for the people who had been like her. Matt and Ito had not meant as much to her as Luke, but she felt a sorrow after their deaths. It is truly Luke, who now she believes to have been killed by the supernatural, who this hunting is for. At the age of 78, Baba knew she could not destroy these monsters alone. She accepted any and all help, if only so she could lessen the burden that weighs heavy on her heart.

## The Events of SOUP

During SOUP, Baba Changa met the hunters and made her way with them. While fighting the Weep, she showed no fear, allowing the others to lower her into its cave and lure it out with a run of insults and the loud playing of a banjo she had bought from a nearby store.

She also took part in a fight against the Bedazzler, when she went rogue. She was waiting in the car when the others went to fight her, and on the Bedazzler's escape route, she took Baba Changa hostage, and drove the car as a getaway car. Baba Changa unbuckled the Bedazzler, and stabbed her with her knitting needles, causing them to crash. Baba Changa was unhurt, but the Bedazzler was not so lucky. Getting out of the car to chase her down with her needles, the Bedazzler fled.

## The Events of SOUP vs Slashers

In the events of SOUP vs Slashers, Baba Changa ran into Bones, and helped to stop him. She drove her knitting needles into him, and stabbed him repeatedly. When Bones resurrected, he came back for SOUP. Though Baba Changa tried her best to kill Bones, as she felt she had done before, she failed, and he turned her into dust.