Yoshi Minawara
Human Male

Place of Origin: Earth

Tall and slender were words often used to describe Yoshi Minawara. For a man of asian descent, he is fairly tall and fairly thin, having put on a bit of muscle in his middle years. His face is angular and helps give him a look of constant focus, a looked aided by the piercing blue eyes.

The elephant in the room of his appearance is always his arm. For years, Yoshi has opted to keep from synthetic skin being applied, keeping it as a bare duranium exterior. When questioned, he always responds with “it is not a disability or a feature of shame, but a medal of honour.” The arm completely replaced his left arm, from the shoulder (including the blade) down. Over the years he’s made improvements to it himself. On his left jaw is a scar from where he injured himself with a laser spanner in his cadet years during an accident with a dummy relay.

Yoshi was always regarded as reserved, and quiet. His demeanour has always been proper and firm, and, unlike his sister, he has always held himself in high regard for appearances. That being said, over the years, he has “warmed up” as people say. He is more willing to joke now, and has made a few, long lasting friendships. Alice, his wife of ten years, claims most of the credit for that.

Born on a quiet day on Earth, Yoshi was the first child to Toshio and Caroline Minawara, on May 16th, 2348. From a young age, he was shown to have an aptitude for finicking with things.His father, a firm believer in the structured education, tried to force Yoshi to focus on his schooling; however, his mother insisted on encouraging his habits. When his sister was born, his mother took the opportunity to instil a more of her own learning style, encouraging Yoshi and later Victoria to follow their passions respectfully.

Born on a quiet day on Earth, Yoshi was the first child to Toshio and Caroline Minawara, on May 16th, 2348. From a young age, he was shown to have an aptitude for finicking with things.His father, a firm believer in the structured education, tried to force Yoshi to focus on his schooling; however, his mother insisted on encouraging his habits. When his sister was born, his mother took the opportunity to instil a more of her own learning style, encouraging Yoshi and later Victoria to follow their passions respectfully.

In the later years of his life with his youth, Yoshi found himself more and more aboard starships following his mothers career as a Helm officer, and later as an Executive Officer. This lead to him having an opportunity to spend a great deal of time lodged into various ship systems, and poking around components. The boy learned to love examining things, seeing how they work, but more importantly, figuring them out for himself. This skill would stick with him his whole life, an almost innate ability to understand a systems putting together and function. Engineering would eventually consume his life, when he applied and received Commission to Starfleet Academy, Corps of Engineers, in 2366. From there, his life seemed to change.

Yoshi spent the formative years studying Xenotechnology and Warp Theory, ending his time at the Academy with a doubled up specialty, something very few Engineers would do. Although the would affect his career in later life, it was actually his friends he made who truly changed him. While originally quiet and reserved, his roommate in his first year, and future life friend, Aeron Klans, lead him into adventures he would rather not have been in. From using the transporter and Aeron’s uncanny affinity with ship systems to transport into the ladies dormitories, to disassembling and mostly reassembling the Commandant’s shuttle on the roof of the academy, Yoshi would find himself in trouble time and time again. He would also grow, and become a more well rounded individual because of it.

Upon leaving the Academy, he received a rather uninteresting assignment to the USS Kittyhawk a Normandy class carrier with a Captain who thought it was a fighter itself. As the Warp Propulsion Specialist on the vessel, he spent the majority of his days maintaining the aged Warp Core, and finding new and creative ways to get the vessel to move faster and streamline the warp field in ways that stretched the known laws of warp dynamics. While Minawara would not recognize it at the time, the Captain, one Captain Lucas Brandt, excelled in pushing his crew to work harder and find new and interesting solutions. This would be why, when the Kittyhawk was critically damaged and originally left adrift during the later years of the Dominion War, it would hit every member of the crew hard when the Captain failed to make it off the vessel.

Following the evacuation of the Kittyhawk Yoshi would find himself thrust onto the USS Andromeda, a Galaxy-class, and back from his position as Assistant Chief Engineer to Head of War Propulsion. Much like the Captain of his previous ship, the Andromeda’s Captain always desired a faster response time, and Yoshi would regularly find out just how far one could push the Galaxy class. It later earned him a step up into the full position of Assistant Chief Engineer again, where he would remain following the war, up until he was given his own vessel. The USS Ticonderoga, another carrier, with a more humanitarian side. This suited the still young engineer greatly, who looked to the experience as a chance to grow who he was, on a Vikrant class, which had yet to have much of a service history.

The first mission was doomed to fail however, and the vessel was attacked by an unknown assailant. Many of the crew were lost, the Captain among them, however it was noted by official records that many more would have been lost, had Yoshi not stayed behind to keep the warp systems manually regulated during a building breach. Due to a detonation on the Engineering deck, the new Chief Engineer was badly injured, pinned to a wall by a beam. Waking up, he found he now lacked an arm.

From here his demeanour took a dive. Yoshi Minawara dove into depression, and asked to be removed from Engineering, with plans to retire from Starfleet, and go into private research. Intelligence however, had different plans, and offered him the chance to move into Xenotechnogy aboard the newly minted USS Fort Worth, which would later be used for deep space planning of dead or yet undiscovered alien races. Fort Worth would return to space dock four years later, and with his knowledge of odd technologies, he would be recruited out of regular service, and into the special world of Starfleet Special Projects. First, Minawara would find himself assigned to Project OLYMPIA, which was in itself a weird few years.

The project itself, which relied heavily upon the knowledge gained through Fort Worth’s travels, would return to locations of marked derelict ships and study them. For the next two years, from 2385 to 2387, Yoshi Minawara would be off the radar, studying everything from abandoned Romulan vessels, to the yet undiscovered species remains of ships. Even dead civilizations were not ignored, as all tech that could be discovered and engineered was grabbed up and tried to be understood. Unremarkably, Yoshi’s heavy involvement on the project as its Field Lead, resulted in him being scooped by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers again, but this time for a massive development project.

The USS Vesta.

From the get-go, the man was dragged into the Arrow Drive development project, otherwise known as Quantum Slipstream. While the initial tests were ultimately deemed a failure, Yoshi and his team would be allowed to continue the project until they finally developed a stable, reliable and usable Quantum Slipstream Drive. When the project was brought back around, with several of the Vesta-class already out and about and in service while not containing the drive, the original frame and hull were towed into Drydock, and the Arrow Project team allowed to to make their tests. After a long series of tests and ultimate reengineering of the current frame, Yoshi saw the first Vesta-class to be installed with a functional QSD prepped for missions status. The moment of pride and joy would be overshadowed by the next phase in his life, when he would be given the last pip on his collar, and recommended for the position of Commanding Officer of this new vessel. Upon accepting it, he was officially transferred command, and moved into his new home, where he currently resides.