Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #10: Hawk and Dove
Narrator: "They willingly risk their lives for justice!"
Miu: "Risk our what?"
Mika: "Our lives!"
Narrator: "Granted extraordinary powers and abilities by the mystical Lords of Order and Chaos!"
Mika: "Well, it's something not done that often..."
Narrator: "Fighting against those who would disrupt the tenuous balance of the universe!"
Miu: "*YAWN* Well, if we feel like it..."
Narrator: "If the Hawk and the Dove don't do it-who else will?"
Mika: "And what's holding the other superwomen back?"
Narrator: "Uh, uh, *AHEM!* Well, it's not like they're bereft of evildoers to battle..."
Mika: "Oh, buzz off!" [Snaps her fingers, and a flash of light transitions the scene to a title card with the Hawk and Dove logo.]
You give it all, if you are bold enough to earn the name!
Hawk and Dove...
You hear the call, they need two warriors to win the game!
Hawk and Dove...
Yes, in love or in war, there's a cause to fight for!
If you're strong to the core, you'll prevail...
Chaos and order, they're the Hawk and Dove!
Faster, stronger, they're the Hawk and Dove!
You're courageous and wise...
Facing all foes, saving our lives!
Taking flight-Hawk and Dove!
Cautious yet fearless, they're the Hawk and Dove!
Almost peerless, they're the Hawk and Dove!
Show them balance is the way...
Take up the fight, making things right,
Win the day-Hawk and Dove!
"Every few hundred years, Terataya (a Lord of Order) and T'Charr (a Lord of Chaos) would choose two people on Earth to be imbued mystically with special powers and abilities as their avatars; the reason for this stems from Terataya and T'Charr's mutual desire to prove to their fellow Lords of Order and Chaos that the two forces could work together. (Terataya and T'Charr were also in love, in spite of the Lords of Order and the Lords of Chaos being eternal rivals.) T'Charr's champion would take on the mantle of the Hawk, while Terataya's became the Dove. In the 20th century, their champions came in the form of two sets of siblings: brothers Hank and Don Hall, and sisters Holly and Dawn Granger, each respectively empowered as the Hawk (Hank and Holly) and the Dove (Don and Dawn), all tasked with fighting against those who threatened to tip the universal balance of good and evil. The two pairs of siblings proved to be capable champions for Terataya and T'Charr, until they gave their lives protecting innocent people in the upheaval brought about by one of the worst events to befall planet Earth: Second Impact.
In the aftermath of the disaster and its fallout, the surviving Lords of Order and Chaos gathered to discuss the consequences and how they would be affected. It was one Lord of Order, Nabu (who empowered the magic-based Earth hero known as Doctor Fate) who declared to his fellow lords that with Second Impact, the Ninth Age of Magic was now over, and they did not belong in the forthcoming Tenth Age, for they were dying out-a fact that many among their number (including the malevolent Mordru) were at first unwilling to accept. In spite of the inevitability of this outcome, a small number of the lords found ways to keep some aspect of their legacy alive on the Earthly plane. Nabu left an eternal echo of his power in the Helmet of Fate, which would later be bequeathed to human scientist Yui Ikari from its previous wearer, Kent Nelson; another Lord of Order, Kismet,bound herself to another scientist, Yui's colleague Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu, who would later become the superhero Strange Visitor; and the Lord of Chaos known as Kestrel would bind his essence to the still-dormant Adamite creature that would be later code-named Arael, the Fifteenth Angel.
Terataya and T'Charr followed their fellow lords' example and decided to fuse their own essences with two mortals, guaranteeing that the Hawk and the Dove would live again, even if they themselves would not have a lot of influence on their hosts. In their case, they chose two newborn baby girls in Japan, redheaded Mika Minazuki and brunette Miu Fumizuki, whose parents had been longtime friends. The two lords lay dormant within the girls as they grew into teenagers. It was then that in 2015, during the battle against the Adamites (codenamed 'Angels') by the U.N. special agency NERV (based in the fortress-city of Tokyo-3), Yui Ikari appeared as the new Doctor Fate, while Kyoko Zeppelin Sohryu appeared as Strange Visitor, both helping NERV and the other superwomen who emerged in Tokyo-3 to both stop the Angels and thwart the conspiracy by SEELE to initiate a Third Impact (a goal also sought by Yui's embittered and cold husband, NERV supreme commander Gendo Ikari). Some time following the Final Battle of Tokyo-3, Mika and Miu, who lived in Tokyo-3's neighboring sibling city Tokyo-2, started to come into their own powers derived from the Lords of Order and Chaos.
Having become longtime friends like their parents were, the two girls, while both somewhat apathetic and undependable, couldn't have been any different, with Mika being more outgoing, reactionary and assertive, and Miu being more quiet, laid back, and reasoned. One day, while the two were out and about with their friends and fellow classmates Hideo Akai and Shouko Aida, they overheard a group of criminals planning a hit on both Mika's father (a prosecutor) and Miu's mother (a judge) in retaliation for putting their boss in prison. For once wanting to act on something, the two girls were unsure of what to do, until they heard the voices of Terataya and T'Charr in their minds, telling them they possessed the power to stop the criminals. After being given brief instruction on how to invoke this power, Mika called out "Hawk!" while Miu called out "Dove!", causing the two to transform in a flash of light into two costumed superhumans with heightened strength, speed, healing, and agility, with abilities specific to each avatar as well. Newly-empowered, Mika and Miu took down the would-be assailants and brought them to the police, with Hideo and Shouko offering eyewitness testimony. From that point forward, Mika and Miu, as the new Hawk and Dove, would fight crime throughout Tokyo-2, though usually being prodded to do so by Hideo and Shouko; given their lackadaisical attitudes, Mika and Miu's battles with criminals and supervillains sometimes resulted in a lot of collateral damage (though thankfully without injuring any people).
Their first encounter with the superwomen of Tokyo-3 would occur after Shouko consulted her cousin in Tokyo-3, one Kensuke Aida, on how to deal with two almost-lazy superheroes as friends. Kensuke brought this up with his friend Shinji Ikari (a former NERV Evangelion pilot, as well as Yui and Gendo's son), who in turn brought this to the attention of his mother. Yui and Kyoko, thanks to their particular connections to the respective Lords of Order powering them, realized the Hawk and the Dove making headlines in Tokyo-2 were also empowered by those same forces, and as Doctor Fate and Strange Visitor (in their new roles as 'agents of balance'), sought the two girls out to help them change their ways slightly; they also brought along their respective daughters, Rei and Asuka (both also former Evangelion pilots and currently the superheroes Wonder Girl and Supergirl, respectively) as backup. After a brief misunderstanding, Yui and Kyoko 'laid down the law' for Mika and Miu, with some input from communing with Terataya and T'Charr. The two girls resolved to make a long-needed attitude adjustment and agreed to be mentored by Yui and Kyoko; they were also made reserve members of the team the two women and their daughters helped found, the Justice League. Mika and Miu, as Hawk and Dove, would come in very handy for the League when they went up against a powerful supervillain named Equinox, who was revealed to have been an earlier attempt by Terataya and T'Charr at creating an ideal agent of balance, only for his powers to overwhelm him and cause him to try and impose his own sense of balance upon the world."
*Author's Note(s)*
As we near the end of the year, I thought I'd bring out a couple of new additions to the heroic side of the tribute series, with both entries, like Enchantress and Nightmaster and Lady Suzaku and Iron Fist, having a theme of 'duos'. For the DC half of the wave, I went with a cult-favorite concept created by none other than the co-creator of Marvel's Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, Steve Ditko (along with writer Steve Skeates). The trick was finding an anime duo who'd work for my purposes as a Hawk and Dove within the confines of the Superwomen of EVA 'mythos'. To that end, I found myself stumbling upon a rather obscure mid-90's anime and manga franchise: Shinpei Itoh's Hyper Doll. One look at Mica and Mew gave me enough inspiration to deck them out in the familiar colors of Hawk and Dove (though with some significant tweaks to their backstories in the process). (I'm pretty proud of how I tweaked the theme song.) Plus, it just seemed a bit funny to me to have both a Hawk and a Dove with Mica and Miu's usual apathy and nonchalance (though toned down significantly compared to their anime and manga counterparts), and bridging their mythos with EVA's was further helped by the fact that one of their supporting characters in Shouko happens to share the same last name as EVA supporting character Kensuke. And of course, with Hawk and Dove being later tied to the Lords of Order and Chaos, it was only natural to connect this (in a way) to Mike313's Superwomen of EVA two-shots "Hand of Fate" and "Electric Return". I then sweetened the deal by throwing in a fitting villain with Equinox, who while having originated from the cartoon series Batman: The Brave and the Bold, was based on an established DC villain named Libra. All in all, I hit upon a real winning combo here, not to toot my own horn.