Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #22: Harbinger
"The young woman named Lalah Sune was born in a small village in India, specifically in a universe within the multiverse where mankind had finally managed to colonize outer space. In the year 0079 of the Universal Century, conflict broke out between Earth's ruling government, the Earth Federation, and the Principality of Zeon, made up of a number of space colonies who chafed under the Federation's supervision. The conflict, later known as the "One-Year War", spanned not only the entire Earth but also across the many space colonies, with all battles involving some manner of a new type of war machine known as a mobile suit. Lalah was quite different from other people due to exhibiting abilities that marked her as what scientists would dub a 'Newtype', which she found herself forced to use while working under a local mobster to 'fix' all the gambling he engaged in to be more in his favor, with whatever money she earned being sent back to her parents. When a rival mobster caught on to the scheme, Lalah was saved from being killed at their hands, thanks to Zeon's greatest mobile suit pilot, the mysterious and masked Char Aznable (in reality Casval Rem Deikun, the son of the founder of Zeon back when it was a republic who'd been assassinated by an agent of his own deputy Degwin Sodo Zabi). Extremely grateful for his actions, Lalah became the loyal aide to Char, who helped her hone her Newtype abilities as a pilot under his command in the Zeon forces, where she held the rank of ensign. She primarily piloted the mobile armor codenamed "Elmeth", and would find herself bonding with a fellow Newtype both on and off the battlefield in Amuro Ray, the reluctant pilot of the Earth Federation's most powerful mobile suit, codenamed "Gundam".
During what turned out to be their last battle together, both Lalah and Amuro realized they were soulmates due to the "Newtype bonding" they shared, a sort of telepathic link. It was at that moment that Char, in his own custom "Gelgoog" suit, arrived on the scene, where he chastised her for 'consorting with the enemy' and proceeded to go after Amuro's wingman Sayla Mass (in reality Char's own sister Artesia). Lalah's Newtype abilities alerted her to Char and Sayla's connection, causing her to stop him from attacking, giving Amuro an opening to sever the Gelgoog's weapon arm in the process. Just when Amuro was going for the killing blow, Lalah knocked Char away and took the fatal hit instead, seemingly disappearing in the ensuing explosion of the Elmeth, and leading to the feud between Amuro and Char growing even more bitter. What neither realized, however, that this was not the end of Lalah Sune...
In reality, at the moment of her supposed death, Lalah was rescued and transported outside of her native universe to the satellite base of a cosmic being named Mar Novu, also known as the Monitor. He informed her that her Newtype abilities only barely scratched the surface of her very being, as they were just the earliest stage of her overall metahuman powers. The Monitor offered Lalah his help in further mastering her abilities, which she accepted, grateful for the second chance in life he'd given her. After much training, Lalah fully mastered her powers, which in addition to her aforementioned psionic abilities, also included flight, energy materialization, self-duplication and reintegration, and superhuman-level strength. Lalah by then had also become the Monitor's aide, under the moniker of Harbinger, as she assisted him in not only cataloguing the many worlds within the multiverse, but also maintaining vigilance in the Monitor's 'cold war' with his malevolent Antimatter Universe counterpart, the Anti-Monitor.
In studying the heroes of the multiverse, Lalah and the Monitor 'tested' them by secretly providing strange weapons and super-powered henchmen for various supervillains; when these were bested by the heroes, the Monitor and Lalah determined that they had found their ideal champions in the impending final battle to come with the Anti-Monitor. When the Anti-Monitor and his forces finally struck, Harbinger and her self-created duplicates journeyed to many Earths in the multiverse to recruit the heroes they had studied. Among those heroes she brought were the Justice League, a team of heroes from one Earth who were made up of certain women and teen girls directly or peripherally involved with the since-defunct U.N. special agency NERV; one of Harbinger's doubles also recruited the League's counterparts from an Earth very similar to theirs, a team known as the Avengers. One of Lalah's duplicates even managed to venture to her home universe and recruit not only Amuro and Char (both shocked by her sudden appearance, to say the least), but also other well-known Gundam pilots from the times during and following the end of the One-Year War, including Shiro Amada, Kou Uraki, Kamille Bidan, and Judau Ashta. It was while recruiting Judau Ashta that one of the Anti-Monitor's Shadow Demons merged with Lalah's duplicate, and once all the doubles merged back together, the Anti-Monitor was able to take control of Lalah at an opportune moment. Said moment came when the Anti-Monitor used Lalah to kill the Monitor, who in anticipating his enemy's plan arranged it so that his own life-force, with his dying breath, would power up the vibrational towers that had been planted on those worlds in the multiverse that hadn't been destroyed yet. The shock of this purged the Anti-Monitor's influence from Lalah, and as Harbinger she assisted the large gathering of heroes in taking the fight straight to the Anti-Monitor, where they-in stark contrast to other omniverses where a similar battle occurred-defeated him once and for all.
Following that climactic battle, Harbinger assumed Mar Novu's role as the chief archivist of the multiverse, as well as a pro-bono 'information broker' to the superhero community, while occasionally assisting time-and-space-hopping teams such as the Linear Watch and the Exiles, even forming strong friendships with a member of each respective team in Waverider and Blink."
*Author's Note(s)*
The theme for this 'wave' of allies and antiheroes is 'cosmic-level', and for the DC half, what with the animated adaptations of Crisis on Infinite Earths coming out this year, I decided to see how I'd do with a take on one of that legendary story's key players in Harbinger. I also saw her as a way to further connect both of my 'tangents' of the DC and Marvel-based Superwomen of EVA narrative environments, which could never be possible with the real-life DC and Marvel Universes for many, many reasons (sadly).
For the anime character to take the Harbinger role, I wound up turning my focus on Lalah from the long-storied, super-influential Mobile Suit Gundam, the progenitor of the 'real robot' subgenre of mecha anime. Lalah's powers gave me the idea to put her in the role usually filled by Lyla Michaels, and given how Lalah's occasionally spoken with Amuro and Char from beyond the grave in subsequent Universal Century installments of the Gundam franchise, in the narrative I've presented those appearances could be radically re-contextualized. For the visual side of things (seen on my DeviantArt profile), I turned to the talented Inspector97, who did a truly fantastic job at both honoring while also reinterpreting one of the more unique designs by the late, great George Pérez.