Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #25: Domino and Dazzler
"Yoko Littner, a German-Japanese-born mutant, was the result of a top secret breeding program called "Project: Armageddon", run by a subdivision of the Artificial Evolution Laboratory (the predecessor to the U.N. special agency NERV) intent on developing the perfect human weapon. Yoko, out of all the test subjects, survived, but her power to manipulate 'luck' deemed her a failure for the goals of the program's leadership. Her biological mother helped smuggle her out of the program's grasp, and she was left with the pastor of a small church in the rural village of Giha. After living under their care for years, as a young adult Yoko left the church and the village to make her way in the world as a mercenary, at one point learning the trade under retired adventurer and soldier-for-hire Dominic Fortune, who gave her the nickname "Domino" over how her luck powers caused things to fall into place for her. On one of her first jobs as a mercenary, she was hired to shut down "Operation: Jericho", an unethical off-the-books remote-control warbot project. While she succeeded in destroying the robot prototype, in the process she accidentally fried the mind of the soldier controlling it.
Her next job saw her hired on behalf of Japan's intelligence agency to guard hardworking, innovative inventor Kamina Konishi, whose analytical abilities, in their view, made him too dangerous to roam around freely. Over time, Yoko and Kamina fell in love, with Kamina giving her the pet name 'Yomako'. The two made plans to marry, which went unfulfilled after the facility Kamina was being held in was raided by a cell of the science-focused criminal organization Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.); Yoko was believed to have been killed in the fracas. Yoko, in reality, had been told by Kamina to flee, with her promising to return for him. After taking time to prepare herself, Yoko tracked down the A.I.M. cell to their hidden base in Yokohama-2, where she found the Scientist Supreme for the cell, Dr. Lyle Getz, preparing to upload the captured Kamina's mind as the key component of a powerful supercomputer of A.I.M.'s own design. Yoko stopped the process and sent the A.I.M. cell either fleeing or to their own graves, but it cost Kamina his own life. With his dying breath, Kamina told Yoko that he loved her, and asked her to look out for his adoptive younger brother, Simon. Yoko agreed to this as Kamina passed on in her arms.
Some time following this incident, Yoko continued on with her mercenary work, with part of her pay from each job going into a trust fund for Simon. The job that would really inject something surreal into her life came when she was hired by a traveling guitarist by the name of Haruko Haruhara, who used the stage name "Dazzler" due to her own mutant ability to transform sound into varying forms and intensities of light, which she used supplement her performances with built-in 'special effects'. Haruko hired Yoko to protect her from the forces of Medical Mechanica, a division of the extradimensional Beyond Corporation (formerly a terrorist cell called S.I.L.E.N.T.). Having been hired to perform at a corporate event some time ago, Haruko accidentally stumbled upon, and eavesdropped on, a meeting between the head of Medical Mechanica and Beyond Corporation's board of directors, where she learned the sinister purpose of both organizations. The true motives behind the Beyond Corporation were the location, activation, distribution, and testing of various (what they termed) Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction at various points throughout the planet, with the latest they were hunting for in the form of an energy being dubbed "Atomsk", which purportedly had a teleportation ability powerful enough for them to steal entire star systems. Haruko, deciding it'd be better for the world if they didn't succeed, made off with a bracelet developed by Medical Mechanica to detect Atomsk (due to its link to a strange nose ring worn by the entity) and quickly made herself scarce; she'd been on the run from both Medical Mechanica and the Beyond Corporation ever since, trying to find Atomsk before either of them do and either send it away or destroy it. On the basis of 'two heads being better than one', Yoko agreed to take the job, and the two became partners as they traveled the world, taking various mercenary and musical gigs as they searched for Atomsk. (One job, in particular, saw Yoko and Haruko face off with Ekaterina Gryaznova, the operator of the warbot prototype from Operation: Jericho who Yoko had injured; Gryaznova had turned herself into a cyborg in order to get revenge on Yoko.)
Their search eventually bore fruit as they managed to locate Atomsk, as did the international peacekeeping agency S.H.I.E.L.D....along with both Medical Mechanica and the Beyond Corporation. Yoko and Haruko teamed with S.H.I.E.L.D. to both send Atomsk packing and also deal with Medical Mechanica and the Beyond Corporation; S.H.I.E.L.D., as it turned out, bore a grudge against the latter due to the Beyond Corporation funding a splinter group called H.A.T.E., led by a rogue former agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. named Dirk Anger.
Once the Atomsk business had been dealt with (especially after Haruko and Yoko destroyed both the bracelet and the nose ring), S.H.I.E.L.D. deputy commander "Dum-Dum" Dugan decided to put the two on retainer for the organization, an offer the two accepted after seeing the figures for their pay. The two were then sent on many missions that required more of a superpowered touch, usually with Dazzler and her music serving as a distraction while Domino took down or apprehended the target in question. One such assignment led them to encounter the superwomen of Tokyo-3, one year after the defeat of both the otherworldly entities codenamed 'Angels' and the world-ending conspiracies of SEELE and Gendo Ikari. S.H.I.E.L.D. was on-hand to assist the superwomen when the galaxy-traversing devourer of worlds, Galactus, arrived on Earth, accompanied by his four Heralds. Domino and Dazzler were loaned out to the superwomen coalition, and each wound up on one of the teams sent to defeat one of the Heralds-Domino with the group that fought Firelord, and Dazzler with the group that faced Stardust. Once those Heralds were beaten, Domino and Dazzler would rejoin the others back in Tokyo-3 to face Galactus himself; once Galactus departed Earth, the two mutant mercenaries would be invited by the superwomen and their allies to join them for a 'victory picnic' to celebrate.
A decade later, both Domino and Dazzler would 'retire' from the mercenary life, and take up positions on the faculty of the Kyoto-2 campus of the Xavier International Institute of Higher Learning, one branch of a multinational school system for mutants. Yoko would act as both a homeroom teacher and head of campus security, while Haruko worked as a music teacher."
*Author's Note(s)*
For the Marvel half of this wave of heroic duos, I decided to bring visuals (as seen on my DeviantArt profile) to two of the non-EVA-but-still-Gainax 'guest-stars' featured in my "Superwomen of EVA: Earth's Mightiest, United" story, especially with the help of artist Zair-dacorus. (Again, I must compliment them on especially giving Yoko/Domino a rifle that's just Liefeldian enough in design without being in line with that comic creator's usual unintended(?) obnoxiousness.) I blended two of Gainax's iconic female characters with a couple of fan-favorite X-Men characters for a small number of reasons.
With giving Gurren Lagaan's Yoko the powers and alias usually associated with the lucky leading lady of X-Force, it was mainly due to the fact that Yoko's well-known for carrying around a powerful piece of hardware that would make even Neena Thurman envious-plus, there were enough avenues for me to blend in some other Gurren Lagaan elements with Domino's own backstory, such as giving Kamina (who I gave the last name of his Japanese seiyuu) the role of Milo Thurman in this telling that still included his sacrifice; funnily enough, both Kamina and the A.I.M. scientist, Lyle Getz, share the same English VA in Kyle Hebert. (And of course, there's the tidbit with Yoko's teaching career.)
In the case of giving FLCL's Haruko the powers and handle normally belonging to mutantdom's original disco diva, it mainly came about from how Haruko is almost never seen or thought about without an electric guitar (which, in the piece on DeviantArt, I know isn't a blue Rickenbacker 4001, call it artistic license). While I did retain a few elements from FLCL proper, for my narrative purposes I altered Haruko's role and background to make her a protagonist instead of an antagonist. Given FLCL's surrealistic nature, it afforded me a good angle to incorporate an equally surreal element of the Marvel Universe with the Beyond Corporation (which originated from the Warren Ellis-penned cult favorite Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E.), who no doubt would pursue something like FLCL's Atomsk as per their normal M.O.
Anyway, once again a big thanks to Zair-dacorus for bringing their artistic talent to bear for my Superwomen of EVA "D&D session"!