Takigami (her last name, which she goes by unless you are a friend) was born in 2028, with odd metallic gold iris'd eyes. At the time, her parents, very traditional Japanese humans, considered this an ill omen, and put her up for adoption. In the intervening years, it has become obvious that she was a Spike SURGE baby, just as there were spike babies in advance of the return of magic, there were isolated incidents of SURGE (Changling) babies prior the full onset of the SURGE. However, other than her unusual irises, she's not had any other unusual physical anomalies over the years.
Takigami grew up in the system, and worked her way through school. She showed exceptional reaction scores, and above average IQ. She eventually was accepted into a corporate sponsored school by Toyota. She excelled at her studies, and by the age of 16 was working as a junior test driver. Here she made friends with Uno Mihoshi, one of Toyota's premier vehicular designers. Uno became her mentor, and her sponsor. The elf designer had no issue with her unusual eyes, and under her tutelage Takigami bloomed into a hard driving, and happy young woman.
When Takigami was 24, Uno was moved to Seattle to head Toyota's UCAS research division. Uno was the target of a hostile extraction attempt within hours of landing, sponsored by Renraku. Takigami, using her brand new VCR 2 weeks before she was supposed to, took over half the security drones assigned to their protection when their security rigger was dumped and slotted by a hacker using lethal feedback software.
Takigami managed to fight off both the hacker, and the extraction team, killing several. Uno was able to escape, but the Runner's managed to get into the secure area and put two rounds into Takigami. Unable to get Uno, they settled for taking the secondary target, her wounded and unconscious protege.
Takigami was then given a choice by Renraku to work for them, or have her headware scrambled and memory wiped, ensuring she'd never rig again. Playing the part of the scared young protege, she agreed, and went to work for Renraku. She feigned ignorance of Uno's design specs (other than some of her older work that Uno had deemed unfit for use).
While at Renraku, Takigami made the friendship of Saiko Ichi, a dwarf occupying a similar lofty perch as Uno, one of Renraku's top 5 weapons engineers. Saiko found that Takigami's insights into his weapons (as applied to being mounted in drones and vehicles) were usually spot on, and he insisted she be assigned to his team.
For 10 years, Takigami kept her nose down and worked like a good little wage slave. She was very patient, and bided her time. Finally, a running team broke into the facility she was working in. They were being decimated by the automatic defenses. Jacking into her rigger deck, sporting a state of the art VCR-3 now, Takigami rained destruction down on the Renraku security forces, and extracted the runner's from their botched run. The explosives she left behind in her work area ensured that Renraku thought she was dead (and her SIN retired) as she led the Runner's out, with Saiko running watch over them from his command area. Ironically, the leader of the extraction team had been a Junior member of the extraction team that shot her 10 years earlier. Sammy retired after that run, trying his hand at being a fixer in his now golden years.
For the last 5 years, Takigami has been slowly building up a name as a runner. She's still not well known to anyone major, which is how she likes it. Mostly she did runs to pay the rent and that was it. Slowly she's accumulated a nice lifestyle, and plenty of toys she's gotten at deep discounts from her friends at Toyota and Renraku. She has no ill will towards Renraku anymore, at least not the rank and file. But anything to cause the management headaches brings a smile to her face. She's done runs for them since then, and has often wondered if they realize the rigger they've hired used to be a corp slave.
