Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #14: Black Orchid
"While Tokyo-3 proved to be the epicenter of humanity's conflict with the otherworldly creatures codenamed 'Angels', as well as the growing presence of superpowered individuals, its sibling city Tokyo-2 was not without its own strange phenomenon. In this city lived one Shōko Komi,a quiet, smart, kind, beautiful and popular high school girl held back by a case of extreme social anxiety, causing her to come off as cold and standoffish to others; this in turn left her without friends throughout her elementary and middle school years. On entering high school, she met and became close with her classmate Hitohito Tadano, due to his being the first person outside her family to recognize her communication issues; together, they sought to help Shōko overcome her disorder by making 100 friends before graduating from high school. His help allowed her to get a great jump on this goal in their first year, but at one point, Hitohito would learn a greatly astonishing secret about his crush...
While walking home one evening, Hitohito overheard a commotion in an alleyway. On peering around the edge, he witnessed a woman being surrounded by gang members. Before any of them could make a move on the woman, one of the members, dressed unassumingly and with their face covered by a bandana, swiftly took out a lieutenant, knocking them to the ground; the action was repeated on the rest of the gang until only the leader was left, at which point the 'goon' shed their disguise, revealing themselves to be a young woman dressed in a form-fitting cloaked costume colored a certain shade of purple with black highlights. The gang leader, in his mix of rage-fueled panic, tried to get at the young woman, only for her to expertly trounce him and toss him into the pile of his fallen underlings. When the older woman the gang had been harassing earlier looked away for a brief second, on wanting to thank her costumed savior, she was shocked to find that she'd vanished, leaving only a calling card with her name atop her abandoned disguise. Making out the card from his vantage point, Hitohito saw that the kanji read: Black Orchid.
Growing more curious about the vigilante, Hitohito began following and searching up any piece of news on them, learning that the Black Orchid's activities went as far back as to when he was on the cusp of starting high school. According to the information he'd gathered, her MO usually involved her posing as an insignificant bystander, only to strike when a criminal least expected it, the police only discovering her involvement upon finding the person she'd impersonated bound and gagged nearby, and whatever abandoned disguise she'd left with her calling card. Some of these reports described her methodology as being akin to the older 'urban legend' of Hakone known as the Black Canary, who'd long since vanished from the public eye. Hitohito soon made it a point to search for the Black Orchid every evening he could, with her proving to be elusive each time. Just when he'd thought of giving up on his 'chase', he was able to spot the subject of his search leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and followed her desperately. His pursuit eventually brought him to an apartment block he'd visited a number of times, where he carefully went up the back way to where he'd seen the Black Orchid land. He somehow managed to arrive just as the Black Orchid entered through the window of a room he knew all too well. When the Black Orchid turned on a lamp inside, Hitohito was able to get a good look, and became shocked on seeing that the Black Orchid...was Shōko. His accidental uttering of her name out loud got her attention, surprising Shōko and causing her to pull him (with a strength he never knew she had) into her room. On getting her to calm down (as quietly as he could), Hitohito asked Shōko the whys and hows behind her being a costumed vigilante. On swearing him to secrecy, Shōko explained her story.
Before she was born, her mother, Shūko, studied botany in college under a visiting American professor by the name of Philip Sylvain, who was colleagues with other notables in the field such as Pamela Isley, Jason Woodrue, and Alec and Linda Holland. Sylvain had been working on a project to synthesize plant/human hybrids, after being inspired legends from various world cultures surrounding a mythological realm called the Green. Shūko worked as one of his assistants in the research projects he spearheaded, until the facility they worked in was attacked by Woodrue, who had turned himself into a chlorokinetic super-criminal calling himself the Floronic Man. He'd sought out Sylvain believing his research would enable him to contact the Green, but before he could get his hands on any of it, Sylvain bought Shūko time so she could flee with one vial of a formula they were working on. While trying to put as much distance between herself and Woodrue, she desperately ingested the formula to keep it out of his hands; strangely, she felt no effects from it, contrary to her expectations. It wasn't until Shōko was born that Shūko began realizing her daughter was developing abilities that, among other things, connected her to plant life. She and her husband (a former member of Blackhawk Security Solutions, a modern-day successor to the World War II-era team of fighter pilots) worked to both help Shōko understand her abilities while also keeping themselves hidden from Woodrue's pursuit. Shōko, wanting to help others using her abilities, crafted the identity of the Black Orchid to remain incognito (her quiet nature bolstering her stealthy attributes), inspired by both the old stories of the Black Canary and her own family's longstanding symbol of an orchid.
Awed by her words, Hitohito reaffirmed his vow to keep Shōko's 'extracurricular activities' a secret, becoming her confidant from that moment on. In the process, the two fell in love while he continued to help her overcome her communication disorder, their group of friends growing larger as their high school years wore on.
Shōko would first encounter the superwomen of Tokyo-3 (all of whom involved in some way or another with the since-disbanded special agency NERV) a year following both their defeat of the Angels and their thwarting of the SEELE conspiracy, when the Floronic Man at last made his return by taking over the gardens of the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The superwomen, having banded together as the Justice League, tried their best to respond to the threat without harming the trees of the Ninomaru Garden, which was made all the more difficult when they had to deal with both Woodrue's humanoid plant 'drones' and his trump card: the mind-controlled Swamp Thing, a powerful plant elemental who possessed the memories of the late Alec Holland. Seeing this all play out on the news forced Shōko's hand, as she subsequently headed off to deal with Woodrue. On arriving at the scene, the Black Orchid proved crucial to the League's efforts to beat back Floronic Man's forces, and when it came to Swamp Thing, Black Orchid was able to use her own minor connection to the Green to help free the creature from Woodrue's control. Together, the League, Swamp Thing, and Black Orchid were able to take Floronic Man down and return the gardens of the Imperial Palace to normal. Reconvening at a place far from the gathering crowds, the League was able to get properly acquainted with both plant elementals, with one of their more magical members, Zatanna (former NERV computer tech Maya Ibuki) giving an abridged explanation of the various primal forces, specifically the Green. In thanking Black Orchid for her help, the League affirmed that they'd be 'in touch' at a later date to discuss her potential membership, something Shōko vocally indicated she'd look forward to.
Shōko, as the Black Orchid, would later join a League-adjacent team of magic-wielding heroes known as the Shadowpact (with Swamp Thing being a part-time member as well). In her adult years, Shōko (who'd been married to Hitohito by then), because of her incredible stealth and infiltration skills, would act as an occasional operative for the U.S.-based black ops unit Task Force X, also known as the Suicide Squad."
*Author's Note(s)*
With this wave of ally characters, the theme is (to borrow a term I rarely use out of preference) 'current fan-favorite waifus', being that both characters I've given four-color makeovers to have been deemed as such by the fandom at large (from what online chatter I've seen). For the first of these, here we see one of modern manga/anime's most quietest characters in the title character of Komi Can't Communicatebecome one of DC Comics's equally-most quietest characters in the cult-favorite Black Orchid. I knew it was a perfect matchup once the idea came to me, while it took a bit of effort to keep her (modified) backstory more simple, compared to the multiple takes that have emerged over the years (including the lauded miniseries by Neil Gaiman). For a visual representation (on DeviantArt), again I called upon the great Zair-dacorus for assistance (as with the piece to follow this one), and may I say they did a beautiful job with this beautiful wallflower.