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Orphaned at a young age and sold into slavery in Vietnam, Chen suffered mistreatment in her brutal work, until she decided to kill her employer in her early adolescence. As she had enjoyed the moment, she decided to become a professional assassin, and she took to the habit of keeping pieces of the people she killed as if it was jewelry. Receiving ninja training, she worked for various criminal guilds, alternating with work as a prostitute, until arriving in the U.S., where she served crimelord Foreigner in his 1400 Club. A group of several women, including Chen, splintered from the 1400, and Chen attempted to assassinate the Foreigner as she had done with her former employers, but failed.

Chen abandoned his life of crime and began working for the Wild Pack, a group of mercenaries, especially because their leader Silver Sable wanted to give a chance to people who, like Chen, deserved it but would hardly have it otherwise. Chen, who had possibly been the lover of her previous female leader, was infatuated with Sable, whom she called "M'lady", and went the extra mile for her, demonstrating extraordinary loyalty. Sable included Chen in her personal elite team, where she performed with honors although she had run-ins with her teammates Doug Powell, whose unwanted romantic advances and racism she could not appreciate, and the Crippler, whose humor she disliked – however, she was accepted as a member of the Pack, and she accepted the others, forming an unlikely friendship. Chen worked on multiple missions with the Pack, initially hiding from Sable that she had worked for the Foreigner because Sable also had a history with him. When her missions pitted her against the women of her former Guild, Chen pretended to defect from the Pack to infiltrate, but she would have been killed if not for the help of Sable and the Pack; she allowed Sable to claim the bounty on her former partners. Sable kept Chen in her ranks, and she rewarded her by trying to help her when Sable was framed.

After Sable dissolved and left the Pack, Symkaria kept the Pack active and Chen continued to be active in the group as an assassin and ninja, returning to her previous methods of assassination which had been forfeited when she had worked with Sable. Chen was an agent of an operation by Ionella Novotny against the neighboring country of Latveria, but Latverian monarch Doctor Doom found her and killed her before Sable's eyes.

History

Amy Chen was born in Vietnam into an environment rich in poverty and death. Her parents were executed before she could meet them. Chen was sold as a slave on the black market and, at the age of ten, she was forced to work in agriculture, receiving daily beatings with the excuse of discipline; she possibly suffered other types of abuse too. Still ten, she decided to cause pain rather than suffer it, and she murdered her foreman with a piece of bamboo that she prepared as a weapon. She found that killing was easy and pleasant for her, and she took a piece of the corpse as a souvenir. She decided to keep a piece of every person she killed.[4]

Over the next five years, Chen went from assassin to prostitute, first working in Vietnam,[7] and then becoming a high-priced prostitute in a bar in Bangkok. She murdered more people, keeping parts of their bodies that she kept on a necklace, although there were only rumors that she had killed one. A client wearing a pretty ring proposed Chen a career change as an assassin working for an unnamed Guild for life, but Chen would have to "buy her freedom" by earning a lot of money or by murdering the man who managed her job at the time. She chose the second option, and over the next few years she grew into one of the best assassins in Southeast Asia. Other employers offered Chen membership in their groups, but the Guild in which Chen was a member punished desertion with death. Eventually, Chen killed the man who had gotten her into the Guild, taking his ring finger for herself.[4] Throughout her career, Chen murdered almost all of her former employers.[3]

The Guild expanded its activities to the United States of America, where Chen worked for them.[4] In America, the Guild became part of the 1400 Club, a criminal organization controlled by the Foreigner.[3] Chen felt that in America she had more opportunities and she was no longer property of other people.[4] She collaborated in the Guild with at least four other women: Roberta, Sheila, Sophia, and Maria, the latter being head of the organization and apparently Chen's lover, whom Chen called "M'lady". Chen remained a top-tier assassin working for the Foreigner. However, the Guild decided to cut ties with the 1400 Club and create their own independent organization of female assassins. Chen attempted to assassinate the Foreigner several times but failed.[3]

After this, Chen abandoned her life of crime, cutting her ties with her Guild "sisters" much to their disappointment (who only let Chen live out of respect for their great friendship),[3] and ended up joining the Wild Pack, a group of mercenaries from Symkaria that operated within the law.[7] Chen's criminal past was not a secret,[27] but Chen managed to hide her work for the Foreigner.[3] The leader of the Wild Pack, Silver Sable, wanted to give one last chance at legitimacy to many very well-prepared people who had made bad decisions in the past,[10] but she would not have accepted Chen if she had known all the details.[3] As a former assassin, Chen was very grateful to Sable[15] for such an opportunity for redemption[10] and even addressed Sable as "M'lady ", just as he had done with his previous leader and lover.[3]

Silver Sable and the Wild Pack[]

After an attack by the terrorist organization Hydra on Cranewood School for Girls,[8] Long Island,[28] Sable decided to gather a team of elite agents to personally accompany her on her missions. Among the first agents he chose were Chen, along with former bodyguard for the Ku Klux Klan Doug Powell, expert technologist Raul Quentino,[8] violent bounty hunter Carl "Crippler" Striklan and superpowered ex-villain Sandman. The group used the Symkarian Embassy of New York City as their base of operations for missions on American soil,[2] and Castle Sable, in Symkaria, for the rest of operations.[9] Chen quickly learned about her companions, including the capabilities and limitations of each of them, as well as details of their pasts.[10] Chen and the others often trained in the well-equipped gyms of both buildings.[12]

On their first mission together, they protected Reverend Donald Smithfield from assassins during his speech at Madison Square Garden. The far-right group Watchdogs attacked the convention but were defeated. When the armored assassin Gattling appeared with his high-tech equipment, Quentino botched his attack and Chen shot him a tracing bolt from her crossbow; but, although Chen went after Gattling, he managed to remove the tracer and flee. Sable had Chen commission Gattling to develop a hypodermic tracer, but she was also very displeased with the group.[2] The Watchdogs attacked the Embassy to try to free their companions, but Chen and the rest of the group stood up to them, and the mission ended up being a success thanks to the new member of their team, the African-American superhuman Battlestar.[12]

Sable attended a diplomatic dinner with Doctor Doom at Castle Doom, Latveria, but communications were cut with both her and her chauffeur, and at the same time, due to Infinity War, news was being received about many American superhumans being attacked by evil duplicates. Sable's uncle and manager Morty authorized a mission to Latveria to confirm that Sable was okay; and the Wild Pack prepared a Stealthcraft, piloted by Quentino and crewed by Battlestar, Chen, the Crippler, Powell, and the duplicate of Sandman, who had secretly replaced the original[9] En route, and after Powell tried in vain to woo Chen, the fake Sandman attacked Quentino to try to crash the vehicle. When Powell confronted Sandman's double, the Sandman absorbed Powell into his body using his powers. Chen and Crippler tried to help Powell while Battlestar helped Quentino. The Sandman duplicate was defeated and turned into a strange mass; Chen, who had studied Sandman's abilities and limits, told the rest that Sandman's powers did not operate like this, and correctly deduced that they had faced an imposter.[10]

As the Stealthcraft approached Castle Doom, the Castle's defenses shot it down, but Quentino crash-landed into the castle courtyard. The castle defense robots attempted to take the wreck, but the Wild Pack emerged, relatively unscathed. Chen used her crossbow as her weapon of choice; Powell dismissed its ability to attack, but then Chen used an electrified, diamond-tipped bolt to destroy one or more Servo-Guards, impressing Powell. The group was of help to Sable and allowed her to prevail against the duplicate of Doctor Doom.[10]

After Sable humiliated Battlestar, Chen, and Powell together in a CTF exercise, she went with the entire unit on an operation to find and recover the Statue of Liberty, recently stolen. As Sandman was on leave, Sable hired cyborg Deathlok for the operation and they went to pick him up at Coney Island in a Stealthcraft, while Powell once again tried to flirt with a displeased Chen. Deathlok found the Statue hidden in Grand Canyon, and accompanied the group in an infiltration of the villainess Cathode's base in a grotto in the Canyon.[22] Cathode used her technology to shrink all the intruders except Deathlok and Sable, and teleport them to a transparent container. While Battlestar and Quentino looked for a way to escape, Chen scolded the Crippler for trying to smoke there; Powell then praised Chen's spunk, and she responded to his advances with a knee to Powell's crotch. Powell did not improve things by suggesting then that Chen was of Chinese origin. The Crippler wanted to tell Powell to stop trying to romance Chen by explaining why her preferences would never go toward a man like Powell, but she interrupted him to specify that, in Powell's case, her problem was really personal. Deathlok rescued the group, returning them to their original size, and Cathode was defeated, but activated the base's self-destruct. Sable ordered the Pack to evacuate, with Powell piggybacking Cathode and making a joke about Cathode's attractiveness and Japanese origin, which did not sit well with Chen. The mission ended successfully, and Sable agreed to be in Deathlok's debt.[21]

Sable took the Wild Pack, with the help of the mercenary Paladin, to South America to find and destroy the base of the criminal organization Genesis Coalition, which employed war criminal Franz Lubischt (Sable's primary target in the mission), and Sable's personal enemy Dmitri Petrovich. In the South American jungles, the Pack encountered Coalition agents patrolling in Skycycles. Chen fired a cable bolt from his crossbow at a cycle, so that the Coalition man literally carried Chen behind him; the man, too confident to take action, did not notice until Chen approached his bike and damaged it with a disrupter. The Pack captured several Coalition agents, but they refused to reveal the location of their base and some used cyanide-filled teeth to commit suicide; the Crippler disarmed these devices and then, at Sable's request and with Chen's help, tortured a Coalition agent to discover where the enemy base was. The Wild Pack entered the base using zipline and found human-animal hybrids created through inhuman experiments. Sable ordered the Pack to free them and then prepare to blow up the base, while she and Paladin searched for Lubischt. Chen participated in the former task, and also fought off the Coalition thugs who tried to stop them. The Pack succeeded in their operation, freeing several prisoners and agreeing to take some hybrids to a med lab in Symkaria, in addition to preparing the bombs to destroy the base; and meanwhile, Sable killed Lubischt, but Petrovich escaped after telling Sable that Sable's father, whom she thought had been dead for years, was a Coalition prisoner.[29] The emotional shock was so intense for Sable that, shortly after, in a workout against Chen in Symkaria, Sable disarmed Chen and brutally beat her, accusing her of not being good enough. Sable was so brutal that first Battlestar, and then Powell and Quentino, had to restrain her. Sable apologized to Chen for the outburst, and Chen brushed it off, but Sable realized she had a problem.[5]

Shortly after, Battlestar, Chen, and Powell heard Morty inform them that the Wild Pack was withdrawing from an ambassador murder case after the Pack's Team Delta lost two men; Powell regretted that it had not been the "Team A" he was in that was dealing with that case, and also mentioned that he had not seen Crippler or Quentino despite the fact that they had a workout scheduled; Morty explained that Quentino reported feeling unwell. Team Delta, led by Henson, stormed in to protest the dropping of the case, and Morty redirected them to Kleinfeldt; Henson left, hinting that Sable would also get tired of her Team A members and reassign them sooner rather than later.[30]

Deathlok collected his debt from Sable by asking her for help in an operation in Paris that pitted him against Deathlok's enemies, former members of Cybertek turned into developers of mindless cyborgs called Cyberwarriors, to sell to the highest bidder. With the help of the Wild Pack, Deathlok found a warehouse belonging to the terrorist organization ULTIMATUM, which had purchased Cyberwarriors, and attacked it with the help of Sable and the Wild Pack, including Chen. They discovered the location of the secret underground laboratory where the Cyberwarriors and their enemies were (thou Sable explicitly forbid Chen from cutting off a prisoner's ear during the questioning), and attacked it afterwards.[31] The enemies decided to abandon their base, flooding it, to flee with their Cyberwarriors, and the Wild Pack retreated. Additionally, Sable discovered that the Genesis Coalition had purchased Cyberwarriors, and decided to abandon that mission to track down the Genesis Coalition.[32]

Once the Wild Pack discovered that the Coalition was in a stolen Hydra Mobile Base in the Mediterranean Sea, Sable organized an operation in which the group went there in a Stealthcraft. Sable's plan included infiltration: Coalition cannons destroyed the Stealthcraft, but the Pack abandoned it in time, submerging and reuniting with their ally, superhero oceanographer Stingray, who brought them closer to the base in a cloaked submarine. Powell and the rest of the Pack fought off the underwater troops the Coalition sent against them, and then they fought the Coalition's surface guards. Sable ordered Powell to collaborate with Quentino to breach the Base's hull to enter, while the rest of the team took care of the guards; Powell noticed how well Chen and Sable could defend themselves, and Quentino remarked how these two were anything but damsels needing to be rescued. Once inside, the Wild Pack met the band of superhuman mercenaries Next Wave, also infiltrating the base. Next Wave, less careful, had set off alarms, and the Genesis Coalition attempted to submerge the Base to drown the intruders while sending Cyberwarriors to kill them.[16] The Wild Pack and Next Wave made a common front. After escaping the Base, the Pack boarded another Stealthcraft, and tracked the Genesis Coalition leaders to Mount Wundagore, Transia, where the Cyberwarriors were locked in combat against the Knights of Wundagore. Chen collaborated with the Pack, the Knights, and the cyborg Siege (a cyberwarrior controlled by the consciousness of Colonel John Kelly) to destroy all the Cyberwarriors. Next Wave arrived too late to even help, and Next Wave's Turk even aimed at Siege, taking him for an enemy; Chen disarmed Turk with a quick kick and threatened him with a sword on his face. Sable then reprimanded Next Wave for their clumsy performance.[33]

A few months later, the Wild Pack tracked down the anarchist Viper in the United States. The raid was successful, but Viper was not there, instead having used a Pit-Viper impersonator. Upon returning to the Symkaria Embassy, the Pack was told that Powell's sister, Sam, had been hired as the Wild Pack's public relations manager. Shortly after, tracking down Viper again in Bronx, Sable apprehended what appeared to be the real Viper, but then the superhero Captain America appeared to ask Sable to not to hand Viper over to his employer, because he had discovered that this employer was an even worse villain, the Red Skull.[34] Powell and Chen found this surprising, thou Chen was attentive enough to knock down one of the Pit-Viper's minions while listening. Sable agreed to work with Captain America against Skull, and she ordered the Pack to hand the Viper's hitmen to the proper authorities. Meanwhile, Captain America and Sable stopped Viper's plan and thwarted the Red Skull.[35]

Sable was hired to protect shipments of food and medicine that were supposed to reach victims of the war in Somalia. The Wild Pack and the Intruders went there. Quentino coughed at her illness, worrying Chen, but he claimed that he had simply been unwell by the change in weather and continued her work. A nearby U.S. Marine outpost was attacked by the Somalian mutant team Bio-Genes, and several of the soldiers in the area refused to fight because of the Infinity Crusade's goodwill wave. Chen participated in the fight against the Bio-Genes, see that Battlestar was too gentlemanly to simply attack Bio-Genes' young Mali, and warning Battlestar that he should still be in his guard. With a blowpipe, Mali poisoned both Battlestar and Chen, then used a strength-based attack to stun them both; but even in that situation, Chen immediately told Battlestar how to extract the toxin. The battle became complicated when Hydra attempted to conquer Somalia,[17] but the Wild Pack prevailed.[36]

Shortly after, J. Jonah Jameson of the newspaper Daily Bugle hired the Wild Pack to capture the superhero Human Torch, at that point a fugitive after causing a wrecking fire. Chen and the rest of Pack[37] stocked up on specialized weapons; Powell had a gun that fired a net, and rode in a helicopter piloted by Quentino, while Battlestar, Chen, and Crippler had individual jetpacks. They harassed the Torch, although the Torch dodged their attacks. They were humiliatingly defeated when the Torch destroyed the helicopter, with Battlestar, Chen and Crippler injured. While Quentino bandaged Chen's wounds in the harbor, Powell informed Sable of the failure, explaining how they had barely survived, but Sable was especially unhappy.[38]

Jameson later hired the Wild Pack again to track down the vigilante Venom, in a new attempt to get the scoop of the year. Chen and many others in the Pack used sonic weapons, since they knew that Venom was especially vulnerable to sonic attacks (Crippler kept his flamethrower). They found Venom in Brooklyn, arguing with Spider-Man; when the Pack revealed their presence, Venom believed that Spider-Man had betrayed him by bringing people to apprehend him. Unstable, Venom started a fight. Spider-Man struggled with Chen to find out who the Pack were and what they were doing there, and Chen told him the truth as it was not confidential. In an attempt to help Chen, Powell fired to get Spider-Man to release her, but his shot hit Chen's gun, and Spider-Man reacted by knocking out Powell. As Spider-Man was interfering, Chen used two swords at once to attack him, but he defeated her easily with a kick to her face. Eventually, the Wild Pack was defeated again, and Venom and Spider-Man reached an agreement not to pursue each other.[11]

Back at the Embassy, Sable reviewed the mistakes made by the Wild Pack in the Human Torch and Venom operations, especially because they had damaged her group's reputation and encouraged clients to seek alternatives from competitors. Battlestar had been in command, but did not coordinate teamwork, allowing for solo, emotion-driven actions. Reminding the group that the Torch was no longer a target as he had cleared his name, Sable prepared a new mission to capture Venom in San Francisco but, should they failed, she would kick them off the elite team. Chen and others were given jetpacks and sonic weapons to attack Venom, but suddenly both the Pack and Venom were surrounded by magical smog,[13] and then attacked by monsters; Chen and the Crippler were the first to confront them, with Chen noticing how they multiplied. Venom offered to help them to show them that he acted heroically without expecting payment, unlike the Wild Pack mercenaries did, and made a deal with Sable so that she and the Pack would stop harassing him, in exchange for an alliance. Quentino planned to climb over the Golden Gate Bridge to summon the Stealthcraft with a remote control; and Powell was assigned to cover him. Chen joined Battlestar and the Crippler keeping monsters at bay, never giving up any terrain, and in the heat of the moment, Chen even joked about it. Venom took Quentino and Powell to the top of the bridge, and then Sandman grabbed Battlestar, Chen, the Crippler and Sable to follow. The plan worked, and the smog disappeared thanks to other superheroes, after which Sable agreed to let Venom go, and not punish the Pack for the outcome of that mission.[14] Instead, she gave them a night off.[20]

Chen and her allies dressed to go out, with Chen wearing tight-fitting leggings, a low-cut top with a vest, and pendants.[20] By then, Sable had hired Lightbright,[14] one of the superhumans who had fought against the Pack in Somalia.[36] Seeing Lightbright elegantly groomed, Powell tried to get her company, but she already had a date with Battlestar, much to Powell's disappointment. After a brief mockery of his new failure, Chen, Crippler, and Quentino took Powell with them, to get drunk at the Naked Soul, a seedy joint in Greenwich Village. Chen did admit that Lightbright was an attractive woman. Under the influence of alcohol, Powell acknowledged that he liked Chen and Quentino at times, and that he did not like to be racist. A gang of petty criminals tried to rob the Naked Soul, but failed to intimidate Powell even when they hit him; and as soon as the Crippler and Chen saw the situation, they were eager to join - Chen was even choosing the trophies she wanted, fancying one of the criminals' three gold teeth. During the fight, Chen rammed one of her enemies against a Captain America arcade machine. Once they were all defeated, and to cheers from the other patrons, the Wild Pack left when Chen suggested that someone might want to collect damages from the fight, and they returned to the Embassy[20]

A group of more than one hundred teenage gangs from South central Los Angeles attacked the city and took over the Beverly Hills Police Precinct, overpowering the LAPD. The heist had been secretly organized by crimelord Justin Hammer, with Latisha Arnold managing the attack. Rich people who saw their properties affected, hired Sable to eliminate this threat. She sent the Wild Pack to rescue the precinct, with Battlestar, Chen, Crippler and Powell storming the building covered by Quentino. Powell reacted brutally against his enemies, who were mostly young black and Hispanic men, choosing to beat them unarmed while insulting their race, much to Chen's chagrin.[4] Although the Pack recovered the precinct, Hammer reacted by sending a team of supervillains in battle armor as reinforcements. One of them, Boomerang, recognized Chen as a former criminal, and told her to go back to her former ways.[27]

The Pack managed to defeat these enemies, but Quentino suffered serious injuries and had to abandon field work. At Quentino's own suggestion, Sable hired Larry Arnold, a short African American man, as a replacement.[27] Arnold joined the Pack as a member on trial and, as soon as he interacted with the rest of the team in the gym at the Embassy, Powell (who was a recovering racist) became angry. Arnold knocked down Powell easily in front of their teammates.[39]

Shortly after, during a spike of terrorist attacks in New York City, the Empire State Building was captured by Hydra agents. Sable and the Pack went to rescue the hostages and free the building, going up the elevator shaft. The Pack managed to save the civilians while Daredevil dealt with their leader; Hydra did not consider this heist particularly strategic and did not send reinforcements.[40]

Sable was decorated at the Royal Palace of Symkaria in a ceremony which the Wild Pack attended as additional security. The event was attacked by Sable's old enemy Petrovich aboard a Hydra Issue Fighter, but the Pack downed it and took care of the crew. Captured, Petrovich revealed to Sable where the Genesis Coalition's secret lair was, and she traveled there with the Pack. Once at the Coalition base, Sable divided the Pack into groups of two, pairing Powell with Chen, to explore the area.[23] Sable encountered her missing uncle Fritz Sablinova, infiltrated the Coalition; Sablinova killed Petrovich and explained his plan to destroy Hydra and the Coalition, but demanded that the Pack allow themselves to be captured. While they were mostly unhappy, they knew that Sable always had several tricks up her sleeve - in this case, including another team, the Intruders, heading towards a war zone in Bosnia, which was a strategic battlefield in the Coalition's plan, as Sable had sent encoded commands to Chen so that Chen could contact the Intruders appropriately. Chen and the rest of the Pack were locked in a submarine under the Black Sea, and the leader of the Coalition, Ivan Trefkov, reveled in their capture, vowing to kill Sable later. Shortly after, when Trefkov left for the war zone, Sable's enemy/ally/lover Foreigner rescued the group, taking them to where Sable's father was locked up for them rescue him, and then Sable and the Pack attacked Trefkov in a battlecruiser that was participating in the attack on Bosnia. Sable killed Trefkov, but then Fritz Sablinova attempted to kill Sable, only to die at the hands of the Foreigner. Before the eyes of the Pack, Sable beat up the Foreigner for that murder, but spared his life.[18]

Sable tracked down a group of political assassins and, with Chen's help, they found a ninja from that group in Grand Central Station. Chen confronted the murderer and discovered that she was Sophia, her former partner; still, Sophia tried to kill Chen, and she would have succeeded if Sable hadn't shot Sophia dead. Chen admitted to Sable her former membership in the Guild, and expressed concern that the assassins would now go after Sable; Sable, however, was not intimidated. Following an assassination attempt on Sable using a car bomb,[3] Chen decided to officially leave the Wild Pack to infiltrate the Guild[3][8] in an apartment in Manhattan; but she actually kept in contact with Sandman to ask for help. As a test of loyalty, the Guild sent Chen to assassinate a Maggioso on Long Island, without telling her that Maria would keep a close eye on her to confirm that Chen was really willing to murder for money. Sandman impersonated the mobster and pretended to die at Chen's hands; but Sable, ignoring this, tracked down Chen and confronted her onboard the Maggioso's yacht; Chen escaped from Sable without attempting to kill her, much to the Guild's satisfaction; and then Sandman explained to Sable that he was helping Chen to do things her way, because he completely trusted Chen. Sable however did something else to keep tabs on Chen: she contacted the Foreigner and asked him for information, knowing that the Guild could not plan an assassination in New York without the Foreigner knowing. In exchange for that information, the Foreigner asked Sable on a date in Paris,[3] which ended in a romantic encounter that Sable accepted so she could protect Chen.[8]

Maria discovered that Chen had not killed the assigned target, but she kept it a secret. She pretended that the Guild was satisfied and told Chen that she would soon be sent to assassinate Sable, but first they had a job that required the entire group: The assassination of another Maggioso, Don Alfredo Magnano and his associates at his estate on Long Island, which was the hit that Sable learned about thanks to the Foreigner. Once there, after Roberta killed a gunman, Chen was ordered to kill the others, but Chen hesitated. Maria explained that they had discovered Chen's imposture, so the new plan was to murder those present, and then kill Chen, pretending that she had died while she went to murder Magnano's family upstairs. That way, they could blame Chen for the crime, and the scandal would spill over to Sable, putting her in the crosshairs of bounty hunters. Chen attempted to flee through Magnano's labyrinth in the garden, with her three treacherous allies behind her.[3] Sable appeared as Chen's reinforcement, defeating first Sheila, and then Roberta.[3][8] Maria was left behind. disadvantage, and was especially humiliated to discover that Chen called Sable "M'lady." Maria asked Chen to kill her, but Chen just knocked her out. Sable reconciled with Chen, saying that Chen was a great investment for her, but not just financial.[3]

In a later mission, the Wild Pack entered Mayan Pyramids, Mexico, to protect them from damage caused by graverobbers. Entering the labyrinthine, dark interior, they were attacked by the graverobbers. As Sable demanded live prisoners for questioning, Powell attacked them with his fists. However, a trap was activated that transported the Pack and the robbers, apparently, to pre-Columbian times when the Mayans forced the Pack to face the robbers in a brutal ceremonial game. Chen obeyed Sable's instructions and participated in the game. Sandman intimidated the Mayans by pretending to be their deity, and thus covered them while the Pack escaped with the captured robbers, back to their time.[25]

However, when they returned to the Embassy, Sable was arrested for conspiracy and various crimes,[25] and sent to Ryker's Island Maximum Security Prison. The Pack tried to mobilize her contacts and find a way to free her, but the people who had framed Sable, had prepared a very efficient case. Sable ordered the Pack to be taken to Symkaria before they too were arrested; Sandman objected out of loyalty, but Powell and Crippler were willing to obey, both to protect themselves from her and because Sable had had daring plans before that required her team to obey. Battlestar accused Powell of betraying her, and Powell replied that Battlestar, unlike Powell and the others, had no compromising past, and that perhaps Battlestar had even betrayed the Pack to the authorities. Chen stopped the argument, demonstrating her loyalty to Sable by deciding to stay and help Sable, even if Chen was the one most likely to end up in jail. Chen went to Club Apocalypse, apparently a locale she had frequented, to discover from her contact Izzy and Jake that the Federal authorities were putting too much pressure on her allies, paying too well to those who could be bought, and harassing or even killing those who not; another contact, Bolo recommended Chen to forget about this and simply leave the States, and in any case never return to the Club, a threat that Chen disliked. It was thanks to Morty that Sable was freed. She was no longer welcome in the United States, so she decided to move to Symkaria, but the rest of her team could still conduct operations on American soil, with Battlestar leading those activities. Chen and the others spent quite a bit of time between the New York Embassy[15] and Castle Sable, where Chen trained against the Crippler.[41]

Sable wasn't sure what to do next, especially after her doctor told her she was pregnant. Sable decided that the only possible father was the Foreigner, because of that one night she had spent with him to protect Chen.[42] Shortly after, however, Sable discovered that the diagnosis had been wrong and that she had not been pregnant. Sable then gathered the entire team to tell them in person that she was withdrawing from active missions to participate only in business activities.[41] Battlestar was not able to lead as efficient a teamwork as Sable had done even though got somewhat satisfactory results, as demonstrated in a mission against arms smugglers in New Orleans and in sixteen other missions; Chen openly recognized that Battlestar was an efficient leader.[43]

The Pack was hired by CIA agent Bogart Jeffries to recover stolen experimental weapons and eliminate those responsible. Despite Jeffries' insistence, Sable refused to participate in that operation, and her father decided to be in charge of the tactics.[43] After getting clues in Chile, the group found the weapons at a base in the Pacific Ocean, but Sablinova's tactics were inadequate and put the Pack at risk unnecessarily. Sable spied on this operation, and decided to rejoin, participating in the mission, much to Chen's satisfaction. With Sable's leadership, the enemies were captured, the weapons were destroyed, and she convinced the CIA that this mission had been successful, after which she admitted that the Wild Pack was family to her.[19]

After the Onslaught crisis, Doctor Doom was missing and given for dead, and several pretenders tried to take over Latveria. One of them was the Dreadknight, with secret illegal backing from American company Roxxon. Doom's Zefiro Clan hired the Wild Pack to stop Dreadknight from conquering their lands, and Sable hoped to uncover the people who were funding the Dreadknight. With support from Spider-Man, whom Sable hired, the Pack traveled to Latveria and met with the Zefiro to plan strategy. Sable knew that the enemy and his enemies used high electronic technology that depended on a central generator behind Castle Doom. While Sable and Spider-Man went to sabotage the generator and render it unusable for at least three minutes, the Wild Pack would attack the Castle with conventional weapons to distract the troops. Chen, along with Battlestar, Powell, and perhaps others, went to the Castle in a vehicle that was detected and shot down, but by then the Pack had already parachuted down to attack Dreadknight's well-trained guards, using mercy bullets. When the high-tech weapons stopped responding, the Dreadknight forces were intimidated and many surrendered. After three minutes passed, the enemies received reinforcements, but even those surrendered when their leader was defeated.[44]

Sandman left the Wild Pack and returned to his previous activities as a supervillain. Sable was hired to protect an object at Davis Gallery that Sandman tried to steal; Sable had Battlestar, Chen, Crippler, and Powell hide in the area. When Sandman appeared, Sable confronted him and asked for an explanation, without telling him that the Wild Pack had surrounded him. When Sandman insisted on fighting, the Wild Pack revealed his presence and attacked him with weapons that apparently destroyed him, but Sandman actually escaped.[45]

Some time later, Chen and her Wild Pack partners were on guard protecting Castle Sable from its many terraces. Around this time, Sandman attacked the castle to get revenge on Sable, catching Chen by surprise when she was talking to Crippler and knocking them unconscious, then defeating several other Pack members. Sandman was stopped by the Thunderbolts, who tracked him there, before he could continue his attack.[6]

Wild Pack, post-Silver Sable[]

Eventually, Sable decided to dissolve the Wild Pack. It was reformed by Andreas Vadas, who was defeated soon afterward,[8] but the Wild Pack continued operating in Symkaria[46] as an organization with access to sizeable resources,[1] and counting with some of the previous Pack members such as Chen among its members.[46] Powell has not been seen since, and his later activities are unknown.

Chen became involved in a Symkaria conspiracy against Latveria[47] led by Ionela Novotny.[47] As part of this plan, the conspirators[48] launched a terrorist attack against the international program Antlion Project on the moon, pretending that Latveria was behind the attack.[49] The ruler of Latveria, Doctor Doom, surrendered to the authorities and was ordered to be taken on a Quinjet to New York City, where the United Nations was to judge him. Chen, along with Silver Sable and several superhuman agents such as the wizard Dr. Strange, escorted him. Chen was under orders to kill Doom at any sign of trouble, but her responsibilities also included piloting the Quinjet. En route, Chen heard Sable and Strange explain that the situation between Latveria and Symkaria was tense and that the Symkarian government might see the changing situation in neighboring Latveria as a weakness; Chen foresaw that this situation would lead to war,[46] which was Novotny's plan.[47] However, en route, the jet's rear coils detonated, sending the jet on a freefall while Doom escaped. Chen asked Dr. Strange for help, but by then Strange was already unconscious. Chen managed to make a crash landing that wrecked the vehicle, but allowed the people to survive, and then helped Sable recover.[46]

With Doom a fugitive, the conspiracy sent Chen to assassinate the regent of Latveria, Victorious (Zora Vukovic).[1] Dressed as a ninja and armed with a katana, Chen attacked Victorious in her chambers, but was repelled thanks to Victorious's superior fighting skills and cosmic energy powers.[50] Chen met with her co-conspirators and was ordered to track down Victorious, who had teamed up with Sable to find to Doom, so that they could also find Doom to kill him. Chen used the resources of Wild Pack[1] and found Sable, Victorious, and Doom on North Brother Island, along with the superhuman Blue Marvel and the robot H.E.R.B.I.E.. Chen remained hidden until Blue Marvel and H.E.R.B.I.E. were defeated, and she then attempted to attack Doom with her katana. Doom stopped Chen's attack with her gauntlet, defeated Chen, and unmasked her. Recognizing Chen as an agent of Symkaria, Doom realized that the Symkaria government was behind the conspiracy, although Sable denied any personal involvement. Doom then broke Chen's neck before Sable's horrified eyes,[26] and then stopped the plot.[48]

Personality

Chen grew up in an abusive environment until she decided to cause pain instead of receiving it, and redirected her career from a prostitute to a professional assassin, working for other interests.[4] She eventually vowed never to be controlled again and began working[3] for Silver Sable's Wild Pack, a team of elite mercenaries.[2] Chen took her job very seriously, with a no-nonsense attitude[10] and, although she berated her colleagues for what he perceived as unprofessionalism,[10] she also counted on them to cover each other in combat situations.[11] Chen's authoritarian, domineering behavior,[9] considering that she was not the commanding officer of her unit,[12][13] was compared to Sable's cold and stern behavior.[9] Chen was well informed of what was happening in her group, both with her companions and with potential enemies.[10] Like Sable, Chen made jokes in combat much more infrequently than the rest of her companions.[14]

It is true that Chen had great respect and loyalty for Sable, and possibly felt a romantic attraction towards her;[5][3][15] Chen addressed Sable as "M'lady"[5][16][17][18][3][19] and only occasionally called her Silver;[5][3] Chen's previous boss in the assassins guild, Maria, had been the only person Chen called "M'lady" before, and Maria speculated that Chen "fell for her (Sable) too", suggesting that Chen had had a romantic relationship with Maria before and was interested in having another one with Sable.[3] Sable cared for Chen and was willing to do things she didn't like to protect Chen,[3][8] but only described Chen as an investment (although she admitted she wasn't just a financial investment).[3] Chen also expressed admiration for the physical appearance of another female companion, Lightbright.[20]

The Crippler, Chen's teammate, concluded that Chen was homosexual and would never be romantically interested in a man;[21] her other teammate Doug Powell, unable to take the hint, tried to seduce Chen several times, only to be flatly (and aggressively) rejected.[10][22][21] When the Crippler tried to explain to Powell that Chen was not rejecting him for personal reasons, Chen corrected him by explaining that, in that case, and even if she was homosexual, she rejected Powell for personal reasons,[21] especially because Powell displayed a racist attitude[21][4] that offended the Vietnamese Chen.[21] However, Chen impressed Powell with her combat capabilities[16] and the two were able to work together efficiently.[11][23] As for the Crippler, Chen had quickly understood that he was a sadomasochist,[10] and she reproached him for behaviors that endangered others[9][10] and for his childish humor.[24][25] Another teammate was Quentino, whom Chen watched cough in Somalia and was on top of him to make sure he could do his job.[17]

In recent times, Chen worked with other Symkaria groups without Sable's direct collaboration.[1] When Chen was murdered before Sable's eyes, Sable screamed in horror,[26] although if they ever had a romantic relationship, it has never been revealed.

Attributes

Abilities

Amy Chen was a trained ninja,[3][50] skilled in stealth movement[3] and camouflage,[43] comparable to a cat.[3]

Chen was an expert hand-to-hand fighter[21][29] always alert to threats in her surroundings so she could react against ambush attempts,[35] while at the same time being able to surprise trained enemies (e.g. when she kneed Powell because he was trying to court her against her will).[21] Although she was not as good a fighter as Silver Sable, even if Chen was carrying weapons and Sable was not,[5] she could surprise Sable to stun her and flee.[3] Chen's weapons of choice were the two-handed crossbow, equipped with tracer arrows[2] and other technological advances;[10] and the katana,[5] but she also knew how to handle knives[10] and rifles.[11][19]

Chen was an acrobatic fighter[51] with strong muscles. On one occasion, she fired a bolt with a cable at a skycycle so that, when the pilot tried to flee, he dragged Chen through the air; and she, far from being intimidated by the tension, moved closer and closer to the cycle to disable it while she thought that the pilot was much worse prepared than her.[29]

In addition to knowing in perfect detail the secret codes of the people with whom he worked,[18] Chen was especially informed of the protocols and peculiarities of his colleagues, which allowed him, for example, to identify an imposter more easily than his colleagues.[10]

Other skills Chen has demonstrated include:

  • Climbing in natural mountains.[22]
  • First aid.[46]
  • Operation of various types of jetpacks,[38][29] including the use of sonic weapons in flight.[13]
  • Parachuting.[44]
  • Piloting Quinjets[46] and crewing sensors in Stealthcraft.[19]
  • Poison extraction, even from herself.[17]
  • Torture to extract information from prisoners, coordinating with her companion the Crippler,[29] although in general this task fell to the Crippler alone.[29]
  • Ziplining.[29]

Paraphernalia

Equipment

As a member of the Wild Pack, Chen occasionally used a head-mounted communicator.[2] When the situation called for it, she was prepared to don night goggles.[25] She also carried Disrupters, small gadgets that could quickly damage technological items when attached to them and activated.[29]

Chen had a habit of cutting off pieces of corpses of people she personally killed, as fingers,[4] which she then kept on necklaces she wore over her uniform.[34] After she stopped being a professional assassin, she began to consider cutting off pieces of living prisoners[31] or people he defeated,[20] but Silver Sable forbade her to do so.[31]

Weapons

  • Crossbow: Amy Chen's weapon of choice was a two-handed crossbow[2] (although she could occasionally carry it one-handed,[35][27] she used two hands for more precise aiming).[10] The bolts of this ballet, called "arrows", had advanced special capabilities, including:
    • Arrows with cable,[29][43] that Chen has used on a Skycycle to avoid missing the target and getting closer and closer; apparently the crossbow allowed for automatic cable take-up.[29]
    • Diamond-tipped arrows with 30,000 megavolts, to cause an electrifying attack on a target. Servo-Guards have been shown to succumb to this attack.[10]
    • Tracker arrows, which allow Chen to follow the trail of the person injured by the arrow. If the person removes the arrow entirely, she clearly cannot be traced back. Sable proposed to Chen that she ask the techno-wizard Quentino to develop a hypodermic tracking device to be injected with the arrow;[2] whether this was achieved has not been revealed.
  • Katana: Chen's melee weapon was a steel katana[5] that she knew how to handle[25] due to her training as a ninja.[50] Although efficient against common enemies,[25] Chen's katana was not enough for her to defeat the superhumans Spider-Man[11] or Victorious,[50] nor Silver Sable in a training exercise; none of these three enemies used offensive weapons against the katana.[5]
  • Knife: Chen has used small knives with precision, which she occasionally balances on the tip of her finger as a test of her skill.[10] Possibly it is what she used to extract pieces from corpses of the people she killed[4] (She was explicitly forbidden to use knives to cut off prisoners' ears for that purpose).[31]
  • Other weapons: Chen has occasionally used special weapons depending on the occasion, including two-handed sonic weapons against Venom,[11] acid-shooting rifles against the ]Human Torch,[24] and rifles with mercy bullets against soldiers.[19]

Notes

  • Chen's origin is related to the last days of the Vietnam War (1955-1975),[28] which is a case of Sliding Timescale. When the comic was published (1994), this suggested that Chen was born in the early 1970s and was thus in her early 20s. The story mentions that Chen's parents had died as "suspected sympathizers" and that American soldiers had sold young Chen as a slave in the black market.
  • Considering Chen's romantic interest in Sable, it is surprising that she never interacted with Sable's lover at the time, Jacques Girard (who she could have approached in Somalia, like Powell did,[17] or when Girard picked up Sable for a date in the Embassy);[20] nor with the porn magazine that supposedly showed Sable (which her teammates did find).[34] Chen did mention how she'd have liked to slash Sable's sometimes-lover the Foreigner after Sable beat him but allowed to live,[18] but admittedly Chen had a different score to settle with the Foreigner as Chen's only living ex-employer.[3]
  • Both Chen and Sable refer to the Chen's crossbow's projectiles as "arrows",[2] while the typical words for them are bolts or quarrels.

Trivia

  • While Chen was strongly hinted to be homosexual and interested in Silver Sable (as described in her "Personality" section in this same article), the word "homosexual" and its synonyms were avoided in all of her appearances - e.g. in Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #7, the Crippler was made to shut up before he could say Chen was homosexual.
  • Chen was said to have killed every one of her ex-employers, except for one: the Foreigner, whom she tried to kill thrice, and failed. Details of all these murders and attempts, are unrevealed.[3]
  • Chen was apparently a frequent customer of Club Apocalypse, where she dealt with Bolo, Izzy, Jake and possibly Frenchie; but she was only seen visiting the place once.[15]
  • Chen was only heard cursing once.[46]

See Also

Links and References

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Doctor Doom #4
  2. 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #2
  3. 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25 3.26 3.27 3.28 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #28
  4. 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #21
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #9
  6. 6.0 6.1 Thunderbolts #41
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Marvel Atlas #1 ; Vietnam’s profile
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z #10 ; Silver Sable’s profile
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #4
  10. 10.00 10.01 10.02 10.03 10.04 10.05 10.06 10.07 10.08 10.09 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13 10.14 10.15 10.16 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #5
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 Amazing Spider-Man #375
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #3
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #18
  14. 14.0 14.1 14.2 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #19
  15. 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #30
  16. 16.0 16.1 16.2 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #11
  17. 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #16
  18. 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #25
  19. 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #35
  20. 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4 20.5 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #20
  21. 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5 21.6 21.7 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #7
  22. 22.0 22.1 22.2 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #6
  23. 23.0 23.1 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #24
  24. 24.0 24.1 Fantastic Four #375
  25. 25.0 25.1 25.2 25.3 25.4 25.5 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #29
  26. 26.0 26.1 Doctor Doom #5
  27. 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #22
  28. 28.0 28.1 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #1
  29. 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 29.4 29.5 29.6 29.7 29.8 29.9 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #8
  30. Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #10
  31. 31.0 31.1 31.2 31.3 Deathlok (Vol. 2) #18
  32. Deathlok (Vol. 2) #19
  33. Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #12
  34. 34.0 34.1 34.2 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #15
  35. 35.0 35.1 35.2 Captain America #419
  36. 36.0 36.1 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #17
  37. Fantastic Four #372
  38. 38.0 38.1 Fantastic Four #373
  39. Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #23
  40. Daredevil #328
  41. 41.0 41.1 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #33
  42. Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #31
  43. 43.0 43.1 43.2 43.3 Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #34
  44. 44.0 44.1 Spider-Man Unlimited #16
  45. Amazing Spider-Man 2000 #1
  46. 46.0 46.1 46.2 46.3 46.4 46.5 46.6 Doctor Doom #2
  47. 47.0 47.1 47.2 Doctor Doom #8
  48. 48.0 48.1 Doctor Doom #9
  49. Doctor Doom #1
  50. 50.0 50.1 50.2 50.3 Doctor Doom #3
  51. Silver Sable and the Wild Pack #26
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