Scorch

"You bend someone long enough and they break! Poor little Chan Ho Yin may have believed your lies, but not Scorch!" "Who?" "Oh, crap. They gave him a name."

- Chan Ho Yin, Melinda May, Phil Coulson

Chan Ho Yin, also known as Scorch, was a Hong Kong street magician who developed pyrokinetic powers.

Early Life
"His file didn't say anything about him being psychotic, did it?" "No. It just said he was kind of a tool."

- Melinda May and Phil Coulson

Chan Ho Yin was a native of Hong Kong. Taking after his idol, Harry Houdini, Chan made his living performing street magic for locals and tourists.

Chan realized that he had developed pyrokinetic abilities when a dish towel burst into flames in his hands. The origin of Chan's abilities is still under investigation, but he was a nearby resident when the decommissioned Wan Tai nuclear power plant caught fire. There are no other cases of powers developing near Wan Tai. Chan came to the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. when informants saw him using his abilities in his street show, lighting a torch with his pinkie. S.H.I.E.L.D. listed him on The Index, and assigned him a case worker, Hong Kong based agent Kwan Chen, who recommended that Chan not use his abilities in public. Chan violated this arrangement on at least three different occasions.

"Scorch"
"You need a simpler name. A more powerful name. A name like Scorch." "Scorch? Are you joking?" "Have you ever heard of Steve Rogers? No? But Captain America-- now he's on the news, on a lunch box, on a poster on the wall."

- Raina and Chan Ho Yin

In 2013, Chan was approached by a woman named Raina, who offered to increase his power and give him the fame that he craved. She suggested that he take the alias of "Scorch" to further his fame. However, Raina was just using him to further her own ends and the ends of her mysterious employers.

After being captured by Raina, Chan was taken to a nearby lab, where he was injected with the Centipede Serum by the doctor known only as "Debbie". The serum increased Chan's powers, and due to special platelets in his blood, he did not detonate like other users of the process. Having gotten what they needed from Chan, Debbie ordered that Chan's blood be completely drained from his body. Before this could be accomplished however, a S.H.I.E.L.D. extraction team led by Kwan and agent Phil Coulson came to rescue Chan.

Chan was growing more mentally unstable by the minute (possibly a side-effect of the serum as the same thing happened to Michael Peterson) and attacked the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, killing Kwan. Coulson attempted to shoot tranquilizer darts at Chan, but he vaporized them on approach.

Chan then escaped from the lab, and upon confronting Debbie, incinerated her, reducing her to ashes within seconds.

Seeing no other option to subdue Chan nonlethally, Coulson ordered agent Melinda May to inject him with a larger dose of Centipede, which caused him to overload and detonate, killing him.

Trivia

 * In Marvel Comics, there are many characters that use the "Scorch" codename. Among theme is Tommy Ng, a pyrokinetic mutant; Ross Jonas, former Air Force Major mutated by adrenalin taken from Prime Skrull; and a former member of A.R.E.S.
 * Scorch may be a subtle reference to the Marvel character Sunfire, an Asian mutant who was also pyrokinetic.