Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #15: Ultragirl

"While Tokyo-3 proved to be the epicenter of humanity's conflict with the otherworldly creatures codenamed 'Angels', as well as the growing presence of superpowered individuals, its sibling city Tokyo-2 was not without its own strange phenomenon. In this city lived one Tomo Aizawa, a tomboy of a high school girl highly-skilled in martial arts and other combat-based sports, thanks in part to the guidance of her karate instructor father Goro and her teasing mother Akemi. In addition to her athletics, Tomo enjoyed hanging out with her friends Misuzu Gundou (a cunning and mildly sadistic brunette) and Carol Olston (a blonde seeming-airhead), as well as her childhood friend Junichiro Kubota; complicating things is the fact that Tomo has been in love with Junichiro for a long time, and is constantly frustrated by his obliviousness to it due to him having long seen Tomo as 'one of the guys' (as well as having briefly dated Misuzu in their middle school years). Because of this, Tomo became self-conscious about her 'masculine' personality and made an ongoing attempt to act a bit more feminine, sometimes with Misuzu and Carol's help.

As her high school years progressed, Tomo began to notice some odd things happening to her. While taller and more athletic-looking than the other girls, she began to develop extra weight and muscle at an unusually rapid pace, causing some of her fellow members in the school's karate club to get nervous around her. During a practice one afternoon, Tomo suddenly found herself attacked by a Kree Sentry robot, which revealed Tomo to be a 'mutant' Kree (specifically, she was temporarily classified as a 'V-Factor Mutant'). Tomo instinctively fought back and managed to reduce the normally-highly-durable robot to spare parts, much to her own shock. Tomo fled the scene before it was swarmed with reporters and headed home, where she was joined by her friends, figuring that she would head there. Her parents, having seen the news, decided it was time then and there to tell Tomo the truth of how she was able to defeat the robot.

Akemi revealed that she herself was a member of the Kree, one of the three major galactic empires (the others being the Kree's longtime rivals the Skrull and the usual 'mediator' between the two, the Shi'ar). Years ago, when she was in her late teens, Akemi was a cadet in the Kree military, and faced prejudice due to her being part of the pink-skinned minority (compared to the blue-skinned majority). Having grown highly disillusioned with the lengthy, seemingly all-consuming Kree-Skrull War, Akemi and four of her fellow cadets opted to fake their deaths and effectively become deserters from the Kree military; from there, they fled to Earth and went their separate ways, with Akemi taking up residence as a Japanese high school student, where she met and fell in love with Goro Aizawa; thus, Tomo is half-Kree. (One other cadet would take up the alias of Kenzaki Kyouya, a member of the intelligence division of NERV, the U.N. special agency tasked with fighting the Angels. He in turn wound up playing a part in the origin of one of Tokyo-3's so-called 'superwomen', Ms. Marvel (secretly NERV scientist Hitomi Kaga).)

Awestruck by these revelations, Tomo at first asked to be left alone so she could take this all in, only for Junichiro to comfort her while she processed everything. It was in this instance that Tomo wound up confessing her feelings to him, which to her surprise he returned; his seeming obliviousness all this time was his way of fumbling with his own growing feelings for Tomo. Both Misuzu and Carol offered their own sympathies to Tomo as well, at which point both revealed their own powers, much to Tomo and Junichiro's shock. Misuzu, as it turned out, had the power to manipulate Darkforce energy, which among other things let her phase through and merge with shadows; it was thanks to this that Tomo realized Misuzu was the rumored "Shadow Woman" the local tabloids had been talking about for a while. Carol, on the other hand, was able to generate variably-sized yellow orbs of pure energy that explode with equally-varying levels of concussive or destructive force; this also made the others realize Carol was a lot brighter than she let on.

Inspired by all of this, and by the news coming out of Tokyo-3 of the superwomen's exploits, Tomo decided to get in on the action and adopt a costumed identity of her own. A reluctant Akemi and Misuzu agreed to help her, and along with Carol, trained Tomo in the use of her new powers, and later helped modify Akemi's old military uniform for Tomo to wear. On the day of her 'debut', Tomo was accompanied by Misuzu (as Shadow Woman) and Carol (going by the alias 'Boom-Boom') as they went up against a former film special effects engineer-turned-serial arsonist named Effex, narrowly avoiding getting badly burned in the process. Upon defeating him, the trio were approached by news crews who questioned them about their presence and their fight with Effex. Tomo, in particular, found herself a bit camera-shy when asked about her own codename, only for one reporter to dub her 'Ultragirl' based on how she used the word 'ultra' so many times in describing the fight. From that point on, Tomo, along with Misuzu and Carol, gained a level of fame as their hometown's local team of superheroes, dubbed the 'New Warriors' by the press.

The trio's activities wound up getting the attention of Ms. Marvel and Kyouya, who decided to pay Tomo a visit; this in turn reunited Kyouya with Akemi, the two having not seen each other in years. With some persuasion on their part, Tomo and the others agreed to be mentored by the more experienced Hitomi and Kyouya. This proved to be beneficial in the long run, as the New Warriors would later help the Avengers (a team of Tokyo-3's superwomen that Hitomi helped found) in beating back an invasion of Earth by the alien Badoon."

*Author's Note(s)*

Again, with this wave of ally characters, the theme is (to borrow a term I rarely use out of preference) 'current fan-favorite waifus', being that both characters I've given four-color makeovers to have been deemed as such by the fandom at large (from what online chatter I've seen). For the second of these, the spotlight falls on the title character of the recent hit Tomo-chan Is a Girl!. Giving her this particular Marvel mantle was inspired by the simple idea of wondering how a tomboy like Tomo would fare after learning of their alien heritage instead of a 'Valley Girl' like Tsu-Zana/Suzy Sherman. (Plus, the riffed-on title practically wrote itself.) Giving her two female friends familiar Marvel mantles was a means for Tomo to have a couple of shoulders to lean on, given her just coming into her powers. For the visuals (on DeviantArt), Zair-dacorus once again delivered, with a very ultra-cool take on what I'd envisioned.