Washio Miya Name: Miya Washio
AKA: Miyae Washio (Gatchaman) Melody ["Mel"] (BotP) Angel Goodheart (G-Force) Scarlet Harris (Eagle Riders)
Nationality: Japanese
Age: 20
Birthdate: August 4
Blood Type: O Negative
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 130 lb.
Occupation: Bartender and piano player at the Snack Jun. Former Galactor assassin (of the "Flower Girls"). Lives in a loft apartment several blocks from the Snack Jun.
Miya with the teamInfo: Ken Washio was Kentaro Washio's only son...but contrary to popular belief, he was not Kentaro's only child. Kentaro's wife, Sayuri, was pregnant with Ken when her twenty-month-old daughter Miyae was snatched from her arms at a crowded train station by a tall woman wearing a slouch hat and trenchcoat. The trauma of the abduction sent Sayuri into premature labor; her second child, Ken, was born healthy, but due to the physical and psychological stress Sayuri never really recovered her health. Kentaro Washio became obsessed with locating his kidnapped daughter. Convinced she was kidnapped by Galactor, he eventually accepted a deep cover assignment in Huntwall to try and glean information about the Syndicate, effectively abandoning his ailing wife and young son.
PoppyKentaro was partially right, but he was looking in the wrong place. The mysterious woman was a Galactor official named Anastasia, who was gathering female children for an intense training program which would produce a cadre of highly-trained super-assassins which would put the Devil Stars to shame. When she could not fill her quota with Galactor-born children, she began quietly abducting children from other sources which might yield promising results. She secreted her brood on a tiny Pacific island and put them through intense training--so intense that, eighteen years later, 100 subjects had been reduced to 25. All of the "Flower Girls" were given costumes, masks and code names, and the best of the lot was the tall, coltish redhead code-named "Poppy".
For their graduation exercise, the Flower Girls were to kill the Science Ninja Team. While they were attempting to do so, Anastasia was murdered by Berg Katze, who feared her ambitions to succeed hir, and the Flower Girls rebelled and had to be destroyed by Katze's own men. "Poppy" confronted Katze when s/he tried to escape, and was nearly killed by hir. Only the arrival of the Science Ninja on the scene prevented this. The team returned home with their prisoner. A routine identity check revealed that "Poppy" was in fact the long-missing Miyae Washio...the sister Ken had never known he had.
UnmaskedMiyae, who prefers to be called by her childhood nickname of "Miya", never forgot the horror of being torn from her mother's arms. She quickly learned to hide her true feelings, learning everything she could from her captors in the hopes of one day using those skills against them. She failed in her attempt to kill Berg Katze, but her life was saved by the legendary Gatchaman...who, ironically, was her only surviving blood relative.
Miya may seem cold and standoffish at first, but what she really suffers from is a severe lack of social skills, coupled with the hereditary Washio difficulty in expressing tender emotions. Her speech and mannerisms are unnervingly masculine, with a long and lean build coupled with an amazingly girlish face. The only time she truly expresses her feelings is when she's playing her music, when she seems to escape into her own universe.
Ken accepts Miya with a whole heart, and the two manage to help each other deal with their feelings and learn to express them better as their relationship progresses. Trying to help his socially-challenged sister adapt to something resembling a normal life teaches Ken a thing or two about expressing himself as well. Jun likes Miya as well, even letting her stay at the Snack Jun for a time and giving her a job there, but Jinpei doesn't seem to have much use for this red-haired interloper, and Ryu is put off by her habitual aloofness.
Joe and MiyaJoe is, of course, another story (or two). Miya finds herself falling hard for the Condor, and she is close to being perfect for him--she's beautiful, she's an ex-Galactor, and her past is in its own way as tragic as his own. After his initial mistrustfulness, Joe warms quickly to Miya, who has the distinction of being the only woman who doesn't die on him. In truth, she never gets the chance to; ironically, Joe dies on her instead.
Miya has no place in Gatchaman II or Gatchaman Fighter. After Joe's death, Miya disappeared to a small house in the mountains and made no attempt to contact her brother or her friends on the Science Ninja Team. Even after Joe's return, she was conspicuously absent...until--well, you'll just have to read the fics and find out. ^.~

If you wish to hear what Miya sounds like, click here. It's fractured, I'm sure, but it's the thought that counts, ne? Please, if you speak the language, don't be offended. ^^;;;

Finally, I got a wild hair and inspiration from the Beta Readers Page and calculated Miya's horoscope at Astrology.com. It's surprisingly spot-on with her character, and I even learned a few things about the redhead I didn't know. Check it out here.


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