Bad Guy Bonus Bio #2: Miss Sinister
*Disclaimer: The following may feature spoilers from Mike313's "Superwomen of Eva: Spirit" and my own story "Superwomen of EVA: Earth's Mightiest, United".*
"As the battles with the Angels began to draw to a close for NERV, thanks in no small part to the emerging number of costumed superwomen in Tokyo-3 (most of whom secretly certain women and teen girls directly or peripherally involved with NERV), both NERV's supreme commander, Gendo Ikari, and the organization's secret backers, SEELE, began readying themselves for their respective endgames: bringing about a controlled Third Impact, the culmination of the latter's Human Instrumentality Project. Wary of the superwomen, Gendo Ikari secretly activated the third clone in the Rei Ayanami series after infusing her with the soul of a stillborn infant, and then genetically augmented her in a way that gave her a powerset similar to that of one of the superwomen, Spirit (secretly Hikari Horaki, a middle school student and friend to NERV's Evangelion pilots). These included large, white-feathered birdlike wings on her back; energy whips akin to those of Shamshel the Fourth Angel; a powerful particle beam like that of Ramiel the Fifth Angel; the ability to spit acid like that of Matarael the Ninth Angel; and the ability to create a Dirac Sea portal like Leiliel the Twelfth Angel. She was also conditioned to totally obey Gendo Ikari's every order to ensure no one would stop him from completing his plan.
When SEELE finally struck by having their forces attack NERV's headquarters in the Tokyo-3 Geofront, whether through the manipulated Japanese Special Self-Defense Forces or their own trump cards in the nine Mass Production Evangelion units, their efforts ran into resistance from both NERV's own remaining Evangelions and the superwomen, some of whom had also learned of Gendo Ikari's plan and made the effort to stop him from carrying it out. Spirit was one of those who chased after Gendo when he made his way to NERV's top secret level Terminal Dogma, where she was met by the enhanced third Rei. The Rei clone managed to put up enough of a fight that stymied Spirit, who managed to match her in both power and combat ability. Eventually, Spirit won against the Rei clone by luring her into a trap, where by using the power of Iruel the Eleventh Angel, she was able to direct a pipe full of Bakelite to cover the clone with the quickly-hardening substance. Her newfound survival instincts overriding the conditioning Gendo had placed on her, the clone desperately used her Dirac Sea power to open a portal beneath herself before the Bakelite could suffocate her to death. She didn't know where she would end up, only that she wanted to avoid her own demise as much as possible. Spirit, on the other hand, believed she had succeeded in stopping the clone, not sensing her once the Bakelite flow ceased.
In reality, the clone had succeeded in escaping her fate, emerging from the other side of the portal she created and collapsing in total exhaustion from pushing her S2 organ to its limits. She would lie in a state of dormancy for the span of eight months, and upon awakening, would find herself face-to-face...with a female humanoid cow named Bova, as well as Bova's master, the armored reclusive scientist known as the High Evolutionary. After being informed that they had nursed her back to health, the clone learned from them that she had transported herself to just outside the High Evolutionary's hidden citadel on Wundagore Mountain, in the Eastern European country of Transia. When asked, the clone shared some of her story with them, with the High Evolutionary in turn revealing his own knowledge of her origins, including that her creator, Gendo Ikari, had studied cloning techniques from a former assistant of his named Miles Warren. The clone then learned, much to her dismay, that Gendo Ikari's plans had ultimately failed; because of that, she felt she no longer had any purpose. The High Evolutionary offered her the opportunity to find a new one (citing her considerable intelligence), and with some persuasion, as well as being given the first true choice in her life, the clone accepted, agreeing to be taken under his wing as an assistant. To help further distinguish herself from the other Rei still in existence in the world (who had become one of the superwomen of Tokyo-3, the Silver Surfer), the High Evolutionary gave her a new name: Claudine Renko, after an unknown woman who was one of the test subjects of Nathaniel Essex, a 19th-century geneticist whose work inspired the High Evolutionary in his pursuits.
Once fully-recovered, the newly-rechristened Claudine began working as the High Evolutionary's apprentice. Over time, Claudine began to exhibit a great interest and level of skill in genetics, and soon found herself engrossed in the papers of Essex that the High Evolutionary had in his archives. Her curiosity ever-growing, Claudine began to secretly engage in self-experimentation to further increase her own powers, her successes greatly increasing her ambition. She soon expanded her secret experimentation to whatever unlucky members of the High Evolutionary's New Men or inhabitants of the villages at the foot of Wundagore Mountain happened to fall under her gaze. She began to develop something of a sadistic side to her personality, as well as the obsessive idea that both SEELE and Gendo Ikari were wrong about humanity supposedly being at a genetic dead end-that the human race could, instead of being forcibly merged through Instrumentality, be genetically engineered into a perfect race of superhuman beings. Once the High Evolutionary finally caught wind of Claudine's secret experiments, he and his New Men tried to put a stop to her, only for her to flee the citadel and go underground. As she grew older, she continued her work all over the world in numerous guises, though in most underground circles, she was known by one name that drew chills up the spines of those who uttered it: Miss Sinister. At one point, she even discovered a means to convert her wings into a pair of organic metal ones, with razor-sharp feathers she could shoot like flechettes.
Her battles with the superwomen (who had by then formed a team called the Avengers) usually consisted of her manipulating things behind the scenes, thanks to the two teams of mutant agents she formed on the side to carry out whatever missions she had in pursuit of her scientific goals. One group, the Nasty Boys (made up of Gorgeous George, Hairbag, Slab, Ramrod, and Ruckus) were strictly muscle, the attention-getting malcontents who often engaged in public battles with the Avengers. The other group, the Marauders (consisting of Arclight, Blockbuster, Riptide, Scrambler, and Vertigo), were more lethal and handled missions that required killing. The Avengers would encounter the Marauders at one point when Miss Sinister sent them into Tokyo-3's sewer system to hunt down and eliminate the tunnel-dwelling mutant community known as the Morlocks; the Avengers' intervention helped prevent them from being fully massacred, though they learned not to take the Marauders lightly. On rare occasions, the Avengers would face Miss Sinister herself in battle, where she would prove to be as much a formidable opponent as she looked, especially when Spirit and the Silver Surfer were able to recognize her as the Rei clone they fought years ago.
Miss Sinister, at a certain point, would temporarily ally herself with probably one of the most powerful and dangerous mutants to ever walk the Earth: the ancient, long-lived powerhouse En Sabah Nur, also known by the fearful moniker of Apocalypse. Their alliance proved to be short-lived after Apocalypse demanded that she create a plague to do what Second Impact failed to do and wipe out the majority of humanity, leaving only the 'strong' to survive; Miss Sinister refused, arguing that purposeless cruelty was nothing more than sheer ignorance, the enemy of science. After the two parted ways, Miss Sinister soon began working on engineering a mutant who could kill Apocalypse for good..."