Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #13: Sunfire

"Akane Tendo was the youngest of three daughters of martial artist Soun Tendo, master of the Tendo half of the 'Anything-Goes School of Martial Arts'. Whereas her oldest sister, Kasumi, acted as the kindhearted matriarch of the household, the middle sister, Nabiki, is the most self-interested, money-grubbing of the three. Akane, while clumsy in a lot of areas (especially cooking), was a very capable martial artist herself; this proved to be quite a necessity to fend off any would-be suitors at her school, especially kendo team captain Tatewaki Kuno. Her life turned a bit upside-down when her father's old friend Genma Saotome (master of the Saotome half of the 'Anything-Goes School of Martial Arts), along with his son Ranma, arrived at the Tendo dojo to fulfill a promise the two fathers made years before: the betrothment of Ranma and one of the three daughters, which wound up being Akane, in order for them to carry on the Tendo dojo. What followed was a seemingly-endless series of martial arts-flavored misunderstandings, hijinks, and property damage (usually spurred on by conflict between Ranma, his various rivals, and three other girls claiming to be his fiancée), thankfully mostly confined to the Nerima prefecture of Tokyo-2, Japan. (Further adding to the weirdness of such happenings was a 'condition' shared between Ranma, Genma, and a few others in the form of the magical 'Jusenkyo curse', which caused them to turn into other forms when doused with cold water while hot water changed them back.)

One day, during a particularly chaotic free-for-all between Ranma and his longtime rival Ryoga Hibiki, Akane became enraged to the point where she unleashed powerful bursts of fire from her hands that completely burned both boys' clothes to ashes-a development that shocked all three on the spot, as none of them had heard of any martial arts technique involving fire of that scale. After fleeing the scene (both to avoid any questions from onlookers and so Ranma and Ryoga could get a change of clothes), the trio reconvened at the dojo, where Akane pressed her father for answers, briefly demonstrating her new abilities to him and her sisters. With a weariness not seen in him till now, Soun, Kasumi, and Nabiki explained to Akane that the reasoning behind her newly-emerged fire powers is something she inherited from her mother's side of the family: that she, along with Kasumi and Nabiki, were mutants, people born with a gene that grants them extraordinary powers. Akane (along with Ranma) was skeptical at first, until her sisters corroborated Soun's explanation. Kasumi, as it turned out, was an empath, albeit a passive one, having taught herself to control her power around other people; while successful to a degree, her little 'slips' were why longtime family friend Dr. Tofu Ono (who has feelings for Kasumi) tended to act so goofy whenever he was in her presence. Nabiki, on the other hand, has the ability to assess risks and partially estimate their consequences instantly (which she's mostly used for her own financial benefit and ambitions). On Akane asking where their 'x-genes' came from, Soun revealed they were from her mother's side of the family, as she was a cousin to one Shiro Yoshida, the legendary blazing superhero of Japan known as Sunfire, who disappeared following the global disaster that was Second Impact.

Awed by this new side of her heritage and wanting to better use her new powers for things aside from fending off the wannabe suitors at her school more easily, Akane decided to enter the other 'family business' as the new Sunfire. Crafting a makeshift costume for herself, her first few attempts at crimefighting in Nerima were clumsy affairs. She nearly became disheartened by her lack of success, until she was approached by one of her frequent rivals as Ranma's fiancée (and the only one she was on semi-friendly terms with), Ukyo Kuonji, a teenage okonomiyaki chef and childhood friend of Ranma. Ukyo offered to help Akane fine-tune her mastery of her fire powers; it was then she revealed that she, too, moonlighted as a masked crimefighter, as the newest bearer of the mantle of the culinary samurai Wasabi-No-Ginger, whose previous bearer was her uncle; as it turned out, he and the original Sunfire sometimes worked together. Akane took Ukyo up on her offer, and in the days that followed, under Ukyo's guidance Akane became more adept with her flames and the flight it granted her. As a bonus, Ukyo even taught her how to control the intensity of her flames through proper cooking instruction, which proved to really boost Akane's confidence in the kitchen and vastly improve her dishes (with even Ranma calling them delicious). Finally, Ukyo introduced her to the person behind her own outfit, and revealed that she'd commissioned a new and improved costume for Akane. With all this, Akane boldly took to the skies, declaring that Sunfire was now truly reborn.

Throughout all this, Akane wound up improving her relationship with Ranma, to the point where they became friendlier and closer around each other. It also inspired Ukyo to drop her engagement to Ranma as she continued to work alongside Akane. Their partnership even had the effect of actually ending hostilities with another would-be fiancée of Ranma's in the 'Chinese Amazon' Shanpū; when Akane explained her status as a mutant, the champion of the Chinese Amazons empathized, revealing herself to be a mutant (much to Akane and Ukyo's astonishment) as well by instantly splitting herself into five identical copies, a power she inherited from her late father, the Chinese superhero Collective Man. (It was also decided between Akane and Shanpū to put the question of their rivalry on hold.) Akane's burgeoning 'side job' as Sunfire also had the unintentional effect of ending Ryoga Hibiki's pursuit of Akane's feelings; his Jusenkyo curse caused him to turn into a little black piglet she'd dubbed 'P-Chan', a guise he'd use to pose as her pet, but if she ever gave him a warm bath (with her using her powers to warm the water), he'd be literally fried-which led to him concocting a story about P-Chan finding a new home with Akari, a pig farmer who he wound up becoming the boyfriend of.

Akane's first encounter with the superwomen of Tokyo-3 occurred while the U.N. special agency NERV was battling the otherworldly menaces codenamed 'Angels'. On seeing the new Sunfire in action on the news, Shiro's sister Leyu Yoshida (who sometimes acted as Shiro's partner Sunpyre) approached Akane with a plea for help. Leyu had been in hiding since her brother's disappearance, which turns out was actually an abduction following his exhaustive rescue efforts in the wake of Second Impact. The one behind the abduction was her grandfather (and therefore Akane's great-granduncle) Tomo Yoshida, an industrialist with a scientific bent who harbored both ultra-nationalistic ideals and a grudge against the United States for its actions in the final days of World War II. In the midst of the world's concerns with the Angels, Tomo saw an opportunity to put his own plan to not only get revenge against the U.S., but also to bring about a return of an imperial Japan to the world stage. According to what she was able to gather, his plan involved unleashing a powerful fire monster upon Tokyo-3 that would cripple the fortress-city, allowing his paramilitary forces to seize control of NERV and its Evangelions. Akane, having read and followed stories about the superwomen of that city, set out for Tokyo-3 in an attempt to find any one of them who'd listen. Her efforts bore fruit when she caught the attention of Spirit (secretly Hikari Horaki, friend and classmate to NERV's Evangelion pilots), Storm (secretly another of Hikari's classmates, Mayumi Yamagishi), the Silver Surfer (secretly Evangelion pilot Rei Ayanami), and Thunderstrike (secretly American Evangelion pilot Maria Vincennes). Her warning nearly came too late, as soon the fire monster appeared in downtown Tokyo-3, forcing Akane and her new allies to work to stop it. While the superwomen kept the fire monster distracted, Akane confronted Tomo himself, who was riding into the city in an armored carrier with a detachment of his personal guard. In trying to extract the means to shut the monster down, Akane learned from Tomo, to her great shock, that the monster was powered by a living battery: Shiro himself, imprisoned in a capsule located where the creature's 'heart' would be. Disgusted with Tomo's actions, Akane melted the carrier in place, along with the weapons of all the guards, and trapped them, along with Tomo, inside the vehicle. She then rejoined the superwomen in their efforts, and with their help, was able to separate the capsule holding Shiro from the monster, causing the creature to dissipate, leaving only a mechanical frame behind.

While law enforcement took Tomo and his followers into custody, Akane freed Shiro from the capsule and he awakened, meeting his young cousin for the first time and reuniting him with his sister. Tests conducted by a couple of scientifically-minded superwomen, Spider-Woman (secretly NERV head scientist Ritsuko Akagi) and Ms. Fantastic (secretly NERV tech and Akagi's assistant Maya Ibuki), revealed that being the living battery of the fire monster for so long had effectively burned out a large percentage of Shiro's powers; while he could still generate flames, they were now at the level of a Bunsen burner. Seeing this as something of a sign, Shiro decided to retire and gave Akane his blessing to fully take on the Sunfire mantle, which she wholeheartedly accepted.

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, Sunfire was one of 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. Akane, along with the others, was then given reserve Avenger status by the team's leaders for her efforts. Akane, in her adult years, at one point recommended Spirit and Storm for teaching positions at the Kyoto-2 campus of the Xavier International Institute for Higher Learning, where Leyu Yoshida served as headmaster. Akane would also go on to join a couple of other superhero teams; she acted as Japan's representative in the Avengers International (formed by the Black Panther, secretly Princess Shuri of the African nation of Wakanda), and together with Ukyo was recruited by teenage robotics genius Hiro Takachiho for another Japan-based group, Big Hero Six. Along the way, even after marrying Ranma, she'd still have to contend with the lone remaining woman among Ranma's would-be fiancées: Tatewaki Kuno's younger sister, Kodachi, an unstable, obsessive former 'martial arts rhythmic gymnastics' champion known as the 'Black Rose' who, after undergoing an intense series of procedures, reemerged as the deadly cybernetic assassin Lady Deathstrike."

*Author's Note(s)*

Starting off the allies side of my tribute series for the year, the theme of this 'wave' is 'legacy', with both characters following in the footsteps of a famous predecessor. For the OrionPax09/Marvel Comics side of the Superwomen of EVA fence, I decided to lean a bit into the aforementioned little 'crossovers' with (semi-)venerable manga/anime franchise Ranma 1/2. But how to do so? By turning central female lead Akane Tendo into a version of one of the more well-known Japanese heroes of the Marvel universe: the on-and-off X-Men member Sunfire! Making Akane a mutant was an obvious start, and by extension, making her sisters mutants as well was my little way of explaining a couple of minor running gags from Ranma proper; plus, it provided a means to help fix the personal dynamics between the characters in a way that (hopefully) made narrative sense. I'd figure that taking on such a responsibility as stepping into a heroic legacy would soften some of Akane's edges. (Her learning to control her powers through cooking, and Nabiki's abilities, were inspired by, believe it or not, a different sort of fusion-fic in 'The Tick vs... My Hero Academia!'.) Among other elements of Sunfire's history as a character, the plot with Tomo Yoshida and his fire monster was inspired by both Sunfire's comics debut in 1970's X-Men #64 and his self-titled episode from the 1981 Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends animated show.

And then of course, the visuals (seen in the Deviation). For an artistic rendition, again I turned to Zair-dacorus, who's no stranger to Ranma/Evangelion/DC and Marvel mashups, if what pieces of his found in the galleries of both marcoazalazarm and Nescaro are any indicators. For this, I had him put Akane in a getup that combined the colors of Shiro's traditional costume with the outfit he wore in the 2005 video game X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse. All I can say of his efforts for this piece is MAN, he was on fire!