Allies of the Superwomen of EVA #23: Nova
"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. Near an airbase in this city lived sixteen-year-old Mikaze Honjou, whocame from a family with aviation in its blood, due to a long history of her relatives being aircraft and in some cases spacecraft pilots. Both of her parents, veterans of the Japanese Air Force, were commercial airline pilots, while her aloof older sister was a hotshot stunt pilot who was a candidate for Japan's space program. Mikaze herself dreamed of going into space, though her status as a mildly-ditzy underachieving slacker tended to hold her back, much to the chagrin (and sometimes amusement) of her three close friends Shizuha Doi, Ayamo Nakamura, and Karin Kikuhara, as well as their homeroom teacher Sayaka Kisaragi and former pilot-turned-chef Rin Mikuriya, the owner of the Kouchin Restaurant where all four girls worked part-time.
Mikaze's life changed forever when on one day, 800,000 miles from Earth, the renegade alien warlord known as Zorr the Conqueror was being pursued by Rhomann Dey, a Centurion of the intergalactic peacekeeping force known as the Nova Corps. Suffering from a fatal injury given to him by Zorr, Dey realizes that his time is much too short and decides to send his power to someone on Earth, along with the knowledge necessary to continue his fight for him and take Zorr down. Dey sends a beam streaking towards Earth, where it eventually makes contact with Mikaze just as she and her friends had finished their shift for the day at Kouchin; Mikaze collapses into a comatose state, where she is then rushed to the hospital accompanied by her concerned friends. While in this state, her bed surrounded by her friends and family, Mikaze sees images of Dey and his damaged spacecraft; Dey, with his dying breath, imparts as much of his knowledge unto her as possible, telling her that with her newfound Nova-Prime powers, she must stop Zorr where he could not. When their conversation ends, in the real world, Mikaze rises from her bed and briefly bursts into a series of spasms, before streaks of power fire from her eyes; while her friends and family are happy to see her awake, the doctor overseeing her care is left utterly confounded by what just happened.
A couple of days following the incident, at school Mikaze chalks all she'd seen of Dey to being a dream, only to be proven wrong when Ms. Kisaragi calls on her to answer a difficult question (partly to snap her out of what she'd thought was daydreaming). Mikaze stumbles at first on trying to say she doesn't know the answer, only for her to suddenly answer the question correctly and automatically-which leaves her (and the rest of the class) stunned and confused. Later that day, at home, Mikaze shrugs off her behavior as a one-time thing, that it didn't have anything to do with her strange dream...only for her to be struck by another beam from Dey's spacecraft, one that garbs her in a Nova Corps uniform and fully activates her new powers. Instinctively, Mikaze leaps into the air and begins to rocket through the sky, before testing whatever other capabilities she has, including invulnerability while in-flight. Remembering Dey's words about using her newfound powers for good, her helmet's communications system suddenly tunes in to a police radio band, informing her of a situation taking place downtown. Mikaze zooms over there, only to discover Zorr running amok. Mikaze attempts to intervene, only to find that she doesn't know how to use her powers properly, just barely managing to dodge Zorr's attacks by a hair. She does manage to rescue a number of civilians from the damage wrought by Zorr, and just when she is about to renew her assault on Zorr, the warrior vanishes before her eyes. Mikaze would later learn that Zorr had been beamed aboard Dey's ship, where Dey then channeled the full strength of the ship's internal defenses into Zorr, disintegrating the warrior; this was Dey's final act before perishing, leaving his ship to drift around Earth's orbit.
Mikaze, taking Dey's sacrifice to heart, decides to become a superhero, operating under the Nova name. Initially keeping her dual-identity a secret, she eventually revealed it to her friends and family. Her learning curve with her new powers found her facing off with a variety of foes, including Diamondhead and the Condor, as well as teaming up with a couple of Tokyo-3's superwomen in Spider-Woman (NERV head scientist Ritsuko Akagi) and Thunderstrike (NERV Evangelion pilot Maria Vincennes). Meeting the superwomen would prove handy to Mikaze when, as Nova, she went up against the Sphinx, an ancient Egyptian sorcerer empowered by the mysterious Ka Stone. The Sphinx manages to take control of Mikaze and some other Tokyo-3 superwomen, namely Ms. Marvel (NERV scientist Hitomi Kaga), Ms. Fantastic (NERV tech Maya Ibuki), and the Silver Surfer (NERV Evangelion pilot Rei Ayanami), along with Diamondhead, and upon learning the location of Rhomann Dey's ship, the Sphinx brings his captives to it and use it to travel to the home world of the Nova Corps: the planet Xandar. On arriving there, they find it under attack by an army of shape-shifting aliens called the Dire Wraiths (an evolutionary offshoot of the Skrulls), at which point they aid the Xandarians in repelling them. The Dire Wraiths are ultimately sent packing thanks to their efforts, bolstered by the timely arrival of a contingent of Spaceknights from Galador, led by their greatest warrior in Rom. It is thanks to one of Rom's devices that the Sphinx's mental hold on Nova, the superwomen, and Diamondhead is broken, and all work to neutralize the wizard, allowing him to be taken into Nova Corps custody. While the Sphinx is being processed, Mikaze is brought before the central command of the Nova Corps, where she relates the circumstances of Rhomann Dey's death. Acknowledging her vow to use her powers justly, the leaders of the Corps assign two Centurions to accompany her and the superwomen back to Earth, where they will assist Mikaze in helping her master the powers and understand the responsibilities that come with her uniform. Once back on Earth, the two centurions adopt the aliases of, respectively, Mihoshi Kuramitsu and Kiyone Makibi, while working as officers with the Tokyo-2 Police Department.
A year following the superwomen's defeat of the so-called 'Angels' and the dueling conspiracies of SEELE and Gendo Ikari, Mikaze faced one of her greatest challenges when she and the Tokyo-3 superwomen (who had banded together as a team called the Avengers) found themselves coming to the aid of the crew of the orbital space station Starcore, having been alerted to trouble aboard the station by crew leader Peter Corbeau. The trouble in question was his second-in-command, Miharu Ōzora (an old friend of Mikaze's family), and a large contingent of the crew having been taken over by a sentient alien bacteria calling itself "Sublime", forcing Nova and the Avengers to tread carefully as they fought back against Sublime's enthralled forces (while avoiding seriously injuring the crewmembers in the process). They ultimately learned of Sublime's goal of using the station to direct a series of comets at Earth, each containing more of Sublime's collective, which would allow it to gain control over the entire planet. Mikaze's Nova Force abilities proved key to driving Sublime out of Miharu and the crewmembers' systems, allowing it to be contained in a specially-designed capsule created by Avengers members Yellowjacket (former NERV tech Aoi Mogami) and the Wasp (former NERV tech Kaede Agano). As thanks for her efforts, Mikaze was given reserve Avenger status by the rest of the team.
Several years later, Mikaze's friends would be granted powers and abilities of their own as they and Mikaze herself would become a new specialized unit within the Nova Corps, dubbed the Champions of Xandar. Ayamo would be given superhuman-level flying and electrical abilities, which she used to take up the mantle of the Comet, a forgotten Earth hero from the 1950s; Shizuha, after discovering a familial connection to another older hero, refurbished and enhanced said hero's equipment to become the new Crimebuster; and Karin, after nearly becoming a thrall to Sublime's 'sibling' Arkea, is bequeathed the superhuman strength and energy-siphoning abilities of Xandarian soldier Rieg Davan, transforming her into a new Powerhouse."
*Author's Note(s)*
For the Marvel half of this 'wave', I decided to launch a take on the House of Ideas' human rocket (as well as answer to their 'Distinguished Competition's' Green Lantern mythos), the fan-favorite Nova. (No relation to the Herald of Galactus.) Doing this allowed me to incorporate other parts of the cosmic side of Marvel's universe, including elements as obscure as the battle between the Spaceknights and the Dire Wraiths (both of which haven't appeared much in Marvel's comics of late because of certain reasons, legal or otherwise).
For the anime character under the helmet, I chose the heroine of a somewhat-obscure anime from the mid-2000s by the name of Stratos 4, which is about as mildly fan-service-y as you can get, despite being (according to one scholar) "one of the main JSDF collaborative anime works". (The dub could've used a lot of work, on the other hand.) Mikaze, given her character, seemed like a prime fit to fill Rich Rider's boots, more so than my original plan for her (which was making her a version of DC's Golden Eagle). Throwing in her friends as the Champions of Xandar was a neat little bonus, and using X-Men foe Sublime as one of her villains allowed me to make a significant nod to the very plot of Stratos 4's back half. Handling the visual side of things again (seen on my DeviantArt profile) is Kitt-Fishy (the artist behind my Raven entry), who per my direction paid homage to the cover of Rich Rider's 1976 debut issue by Rich Buckler, Joe Sinnott, and Danny Crespi, and did a very far-out job if I do say so.
