Foes of the Superwomen of EVA #18: Mystique
"The woman known as Mystique is a long-lived mutant whose shapeshifting powers are one of the prime factors in said longevity, with her having been around as early as the 19th century; the powers are a double-edged sword, as due to the multiple identities she has assumed over the years, not even she herself can recall her exact origins or even her real name. At the turn of the century, the woman sometimes known by the name Raven Darkhölme adopted a male guise as a consulting detective, whose exploits are implied to have inspired writer Arthur Conan Doyle in his creation of the famous literary detective Sherlock Holmes. It was while in this guise that Raven met the real-life Irene Adler, a blind mutant with precognitive powers, who came to her to help her figure out the visions that she had been having, which she recorded in a series of diaries. Together, the two worked to prevent the worst of the events depicted in those visions from coming to pass; it was during this time that the two became romantically involved. When it became clear that shaping the future on their own would be 'next-to-impossible', the couple took the approach of using 'social engineering' to do it, which involved them working covertly and sometimes separately. At one point, the two would come upon an early version of the so-called Infinity Formula that granted future S.H.I.E.L.D. leader Nick Fury and his right-hand Timothy 'Dum-Dum' Dugan their particular longevity; Mystique would use this to give Irene (who would sometimes use the alias 'Destiny') her own greatly-extended life, allowing her to look as young as a woman in her mid-20s despite being over a century old.
Over the course of their decades-long mission, Mystique would occasionally utilize alternate identities. During the Cold War, one such identity she took on was that of German special agent Leni Zauber, who along with wetworks operative (and fellow long-lived mutant) Victor Creed would take out a scientist in East Berlin. The two became lovers while hiding out after the mission's success, only for Raven to fake her death to get away from him; she would end up giving birth to a non-mutant son, Graydon Creed, who would grow up to become a prominent anti-mutant politician in the United States after becoming resentful and hateful of the mutant parents who essentially abandoned him. A short while afterwards, while posing as the wife of affluent German noble Christian Eric Wagner, only to face marital troubles due to his infertility, which led her to engaging in a liaison with an immortal mutant by the name of Azazel; the result of their tryst would be a son, dubbed Kurt Wagner, who she would abandon after they were chased out of town by the citizens; Kurt would be raised by a Roma sorceress named Margali Szardos.
By the turn of the new millennium, Mystique and Destiny were able to decipher one of the major prophecies the latter foresaw, that being the world that would follow the global disaster known as Second Impact. It was at this point that Raven used her powers to secretly infiltrate the clandestine organization that had, unknown to the public at large, facilitated the conditions for Second Impact to occur: SEELE. Assuming a variety of guises, she came to witness the various stages of SEELE's plans as they progressed, from the formation of GEHIRN and the development of the biomechanical giants called the Evangelions to GEHIRN's reorganization as NERV in order to combat the forthcoming otherworldly menaces codenamed 'Angels'. At a point during the early days of NERV, Mystique would be hired by a third party to steal secrets from the Japanese branch of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., only to square off with the recently-superpowered Hitomi Kaga, a research assistant at the facility; Kaga would go on to become the superhero Ms. Marvel.
In 2015, the year the war with the Angels began, her path would eventually cross with that of a Japanese covert agent by the name of Ryoji Kaji, who had been sent by the Japanese intelligence agency to be a mole within both NERV and SEELE's public face, the U.N. Human Instrumentality Committee. Unaware of her true identity, Kaji invited Raven to join him at NERV's central headquarters in the fortress-city of Tokyo-3 in Japan. At one point during her time at NERV HQ, Raven had a brief run-in with fellow master of disguise Dmitri Smerdyakov, known by his prominent alias of the Chameleon, who was on a job for SEELE following the emergence of the Tokyo-3-based superheroes Spider-Woman (secretly NERV chief scientist Ritsuko Akagi) and Ms. Fantastic (secretly NERV computer tech and Ritsuko's assistant Maya Ibuki). While there, Raven was able to gather more information thanks to her being able to pose as a number of the more prominent staff in NERV's central command, which combined with what she and Destiny were able to put together from the prophecies she recorded, enabled them to learn the true extent of SEELE's goal of a controlled Third Impact, along with NERV supreme commander Gendo Ikari's plans for one of his own. Following NERV's battle with Zeruel the 14th Angel, when Ryoji Kaji was declared as a target of termination by SEELE's leadership following his retrieval of NERV vice-commander Kozo Fuyutsuki from their clutches, Raven facilitated his faking of his death by eliminating and taking the place of the assassin sent to kill him, as well as providing him with a portion of the information she had gathered to incriminate the SEELE council. Kaji would put this to good use in the wake of the prevention of SEELE's and Gendo Ikari's plans for Third Impact from coming to pass, when both were defeated by the emerging 'superwomen' of Tokyo-3. Of all of the SEELE council's members, the organization's leader, Lorenz Kihl, would be the only one who wouldn't make it to trial after Mystique personally tracked him down and put a bullet through his head.
A year after the defeat of the Angels, SEELE, and Gendo Ikari, Mystique and Destiny would encounter some of the Tokyo-3 superwomen after they went on a search for some of Destiny's diaries, which had gone missing. Their search would put them in the sights of Spider-Woman and Ms. Fantastic (both of whom had earlier helped found the team known as the Avengers) after the two discovered the couple breaking into a specific room of the National Library in Tokyo-2, leading to a lengthy chase until Destiny was able to convince the two of their innocence. The two superwomen reluctantly aided the couple in finding the volume they'd been looking for, learning that it fell into the hands of Spanish crimelord Salvador Vargas, who turned out to be a non-mutant superhuman. After subduing Vargas and retrieving the diary, the two duos parted ways, with Raven and Irene offering some romantic advice to Ritsuko and Maya as a 'parting gift, having figured out the two Avengers were in a relationship."
*Author's Note(s)*
At last, we have a new wave of foes...both of whom happen to be redheads (I swear this isn't intentional), and with names that begin with an 'M'. For the Marvel half of this wave, I decided to see how a version of one of the most prominent X-Men foes (and sometime ally) would fare in Evangelion's world, and given the conspiracy thriller elements of the overall story (exemplified by Ryoji Kaji's exploits), Mystique would fit right in and at the same time present a real wild card element when tossed in. As for the anime character to base her on visually, inspiration came once again from another OVA subject put under the spotlight of "Kyoto Video" by Kaiserbeamz. The OVA in question was the cult-favorite Read or Die, or R.O.D. for short, and the supporting character Nancy Makuhari (aka 'Ms. Deep'), with the right recoloring, was just about the perfect choice as a basis-given how *spoiler alert* Nancy is revealed to be a clone of the legendary real-life spy Mata Hari, she worked terrifically for the mutant Mata Hari. After stumbling upon an uncolored character model for her, I proceeded to, what else, color it in with Raven's usual palette, along with the addition of her trademark forehead skull. I did my best to incorporate much of Raven's comics history as possible, with some tweaks and nods here and there. Vargas originates from the early-2000s X-Treme X-Men comic book series, and I gave him the same first name as one of his co-creators, artist Salvador Larroca. Given how my take on Mystique is based on Ms. Deep, I can confirm that for narrative intents and purposes, Destiny would be visually based on the main character of R.O.D., Yomiko Readman; this was based on how a lot of fanfic writers have, no doubt, probably seen some romantic undertones between Yomiko and Nancy and took it from there.