Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #11: Tigra and the Daughter of the Dragon
"Miyuki Kobayakawa and Natsumi Tsujimoto, while being best friends, roommates, and partners on the force of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Bokuto Precinct in Sumida Ward, could not have been more different from one another.
Whereas Miyuki is: thoughtful, polite, punctual, shy, diligent, and a technical genius...
Natsumi is: tardy, bold, lazy yet outgoing, a bit of a glutton, highly into motorcycle racing, and skilled at judo and kendo.
In spite of those differences, the two of them were loyal to each other and dedicated to their friends and co-workers at the precinct, taking their jobs seriously when needed, be it small-time criminal activity or ensuring orderly evacuations during attacks by the otherworldly entities codenamed Angels. Their jobs became slightly more complicated as mysterious superwomen began appearing throughout the city during the course of NERV's battles with the Angels, but they were overall grateful for the extra, super-powered help in certain types of crises.
One day, Miyuki and Natsumi were called in to deal with a small terrorist group with a bomb that, unfortunately, proved too difficult for Miyuki to diffuse. Desperately, Miyuki tried to get rid of the bomb quickly, only for it to explode and take her right arm with it. Natsumi quickly worked to dress her partner's wounds and got her to a hospital, where she stayed by her bedside. Miyuki eventually recovered and was discharged, though due to the loss of her limb she was taken off active duty and reassigned to a desk job. The armored superwoman Iron Maiden (secretly engineering wunderkind Mana Kirishima), who had been unable to respond to that same bomb threat in time, used her resources to create and secretly gift Miyuki with a bionic arm that resembled the real one. Iron Maiden also did this as Miyuki was one of the officers who had attempted to figure out the circumstances behind the death of her father, Dr. Hiro Kirishima.
Proving to be restless in her new desk job, Miyuki admitted that she couldn't settle for it and opted to quit the Tokyo Metropolitan PD instead; Natsumi, in solidarity, joined her, as she herself found that she couldn't work with another partner. The two decided to start up a private investigation firm together, though were undecided on the name, relying on a few placeholders for the time being. Around this time, Miyuki learned that, through her mother's side of her family, she was descended from a line of samurai and daimyĆs; her late maternal grandfather, a history professor, taught her the ways of the samurai, partly as a means of helping her overcome any lingering doubts over her effectiveness with her bionic arm. With additional help from Natsumi, she became a very skilled swordswoman, and Miyuki was dubbed by her grandfather 'Daughter of the Dragon'.
Miyuki and Natsumi's first case as private investigators brought them to a visiting American physics professor, Dr. Joanne Tumulo, who hired them to find out the identity of whoever was trying to steal the secrets behind her human enhancement methods she'd been researching. Their detective work eventually uncovered the identity of the man behind the thieves who'd made multiple attempts on Tumulo: Makio Daibuku, Tumulo's own financial backer and secretly a member of the terrorist organization HYDRA. Daibuku and his men soon went after Tumulo again, this time in an attempt to take from her the components of what could also be used to recreate the Black Death plague. Miyuki and Natsumi helped drive them off, but in the fight, Natsumi was mortally injured by one of Daibuku's exotic weapons, an 'alpha radiation pistol'.
Wanting to save her friend, Miyuki followed Dr. Tumulo's instructions as the two drove the injured Natsumi to a hidden cave in the outskirts of the city. On entering the cave, the two found themselves surrounded by gathering of strange people, all with noticeably feline features. It was here that Dr. Tumulo revealed herself to be a member of a hidden race known as the Cat People, who had been living a secret existence since their creation during the Feudal Era of Japan. A society of skilled sorcerers and scientists, they'd been working to refine their own biology to make integration into the normal human population easier and peaceful. At one point, they had created a process combining science, magic, and focused mental power that could transform a human female into a 'Tigra', a guardian with powers and abilities surpassing both humans and Cat People. Tumulo stated that only this could possibly save Natsumi, and she and Miyuki (in spite of the latter's aversion to anything unexplainable by science) desperately consented. The ritual that followed succeeded, and soon Natsumi was revived and transformed by the ceremony, now sporting striped fur all over her body, razor-sharp retractable claws on her fingers and toes, a prehensile tail, long and pointy fangs in her teeth, and distinctly feline eyes, in addition to enhanced strength, speed, and senses, along with the drives and instincts of a cat. With Tumulo's additional help, over the next few weeks, Natsumi was able to fully integrate the human and feline sides of her personality together. She was also given a mystical cat-headed amulet that allowed her to change back and forth into her normal, pre-transformed self, though she rarely used it. (Which led to her occasionally being mistaken for a 'furry', much to her mild annoyance.) It was then that Natsumi hit upon an idea that became the name for hers and Miyuki's firm: Dragon Claw Restorations, Ltd.
The pair soon found themselves running into, and befriending, the other superwomen of Tokyo-3 whenever their cases crossed their paths. The two first found themselves helping Spider-Woman (secretly NERV head scientist Ritsuko Akagi) while she was being stalked by the mercenary known as Kraven the Hunter, and later assisted Ms. Fantastic (secretly NERV tech Maya Ibuki) when she was outnumbered by the criminal scientist the Wizard and his team the Frightful Four; the two would help fellow street-level superwoman Maki Oze (the so-called 'Hero for Hire') expose and disrupt a deal between the Yakuza and an international crimelord named John Bushmaster, and later assist Spirit (secretly Hikari Horaki, a friend to NERV's Evangelion pilots), Storm (Hikari's friend and classmate Mayumi Yamagishi), and the new Sunfire (secretly martial artist Akane Tendo) with stopping a plot by superhuman arms dealer Moses Magnum.
A year after the war against the Angels and the foiling of the SEELE conspiracy, during an incident where the time-traveling despot known as Kang the Conqueror temporarily trapped the Avengers (a group formed by a number of Tokyo-3's superwomen) in a temporal void, both Tigra and the Daughter of the Dragon were among a number of superpowered allies of the team brought together via their 'New Avengers' protocols to defeat Kang and bring the team out of the void. Miyuki and Natsumi, along with the others, were then given reserve Avenger status by the team's leaders for their efforts; Natsumi would later help found the first expansion team of the group, known as the West Coast Avengers. Meanwhile, their friends back at Bokuto Precinct would be recruited to help form a new type of SWAT team specially-trained and equipped to deal with superhuman criminals, which was named Code: Blue."
*Author's Note(s)*
For the Marvel half of this wave of heroic duos, I decided to once again take to the streets with a relatively down-to-earth pair, one that would involve the lead characters from one of my new favorite 'old' anime series: You're Under Arrest!. For Miyuki, like I did with 'Maki Oze: Hero for Hire', I made her a composite stand-in for two fan-favorite Marvel heroines, in this case Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, aka the Daughters of the Dragon. To me, it's an interesting alternate angle to present Miyuki in, and who wouldn't like the idea of a bionic-armed female samurai kicking all sorts of butt? As for her partner, making Natsumi the SWOE version of Tigra was something of a no-brainer. Both she and Greer Nelson are brunette police officers, and given the fascination in Japanese pop culture with catgirls, I'm surprised Tigra isn't a more popular Marvel character on that side of the world. Once settled on the ideas, I set about blending their usual backgrounds with enough Marvel elements for this to work. Makio Daibuku is a 'Nippon-ized' version of Malcolm Donalbain, the first major criminal Greer Nelson went up against when she originally donned the costumed guise of The Cat; his being a member of HYDRA was based on the story that saw Greer put on the path to becoming Tigra. The name for the pair's firm is inspired by Misty and Colleen's 'Knightwing Restorations Ltd.'.
As for an artistic rendering of the pair (found on DeviantArt), for the fourth time now I turned to Zair-dacorus, and once again he really delivered on it. I asked him to put Natsumi in an outfit combining elements of both Tigra's classic 'bikini' look and her current costume, and Miyuki in a mix of Colleen and Misty's late 80s/early 90s outfits (plus the addition of the bionic arm and katana at her hip).
