Art by Zair-dacorus, 'lettering' by Author0fntent.
Mari Illustrious Makinami felt that piloting EVA was a pretty exciting gig. However, she had no idea that a freak accident would open the door to another extraordinary role that was even more of a rush.
Superwomen of Eva 2: The Ultimate Rush
by Mike313 is a Superwomen of Eva story that casts Mari Illustrious Makinami in the role of the latest Flash. Yes, that's right, latest. A good portion of the Flash mythos is still intact, especially the Jay Garrick and Barry Allen eras.
During an experiment to "correct" Mari's synch score using a chemical cocktail inserted into the LCL, a freak electrical surge shocks the entry plug, and Mari herself, with thousands of volts. Against all odds, Mari survives, but on the same night, she is involved in a car crash that would have killed her and her guardian, had time not stopped and allowed her to rescue everyone. Soon after, Mari's best friend, Denise Myles, reveals to her that she might have the powers of the Flash and, after a trip to the Flash Museum, convinces her to don the crimson costume and become the new Vizier of Velocity to save both Keystone City, and the world. With the Angels running around and supervillains returning, this isn't as easy a prospect as it sounds.
Tropes:
- Ascended Fanboy: Denise. She's a big student of Flash history (more so than normal, because her uncle Dexter is the curator of the Flash Museum), and getting to help Mari become the new Flash is practically a dream come true.
- The Atoner: Subverted with Zoom. He clearly thinks he's one, but its obvious that he's even more delusional than ever.
- Author Appeal: The Flash is stated to be the author's second favorite DC hero. The fic contains a ton of references to, and characters and items from, the Flash mythos. Coincidence?
- Badass Boast: Zoom delivers a rather impressive one and lives up to it.Zoom: "Do you believe you can stop me, hero? What people say about Barry Allen is wrong. I am the Fastest Man Who Ever Lived.''
- Big Eater: After gaining her Flash powers, Mari can really pack away the pounds, and pack them away, and pack them away, and pack them away, and pack them away...
- Blind Without 'Em: Mari can't see very well without her glasses, so the goggles on her Flash suit are prescription.
- Blood Knight: Mari. She might be a superheroine now, but she's still just as violence-prone as ever.Mari: *when asked why she pilots* "Mostly because I enjoy wanton violence and destruction!"
- Cat Up a Tree: Specifically cited as something Mari does as the Flash.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: The Flash just won't just save you; she'll save your bike, your house, and your stuffed toy too. note
- City of Adventure: In addition to Tokyo-3, there's also the twin cities of Keystone City, Kansas, and Central City, Missouri, the respective hometowns of the first two Flashes, and our heroine Mari.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Mari can seem like this at times...OK, most of the time.
- Darker and Edgier: While normally Lighter and Softer, when Zoom arrives, his no-nonsense attack brings to the story a jarring level of darkness, and shows he himself is capable of putting a damper on even Mari's boundless optimism.
- Destructive Savior: Mari, whenever she's in her EVA. When she's the Flash, though, there's not a lot of collateral damage.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- When Gendo hands the weapons of the Flash's Rogues' gallery to a bunch of young guns and orders them to attack Mari, the old Rogues get back in the saddle because they don't like the idea of those weapons being on the hands of Spree Killer-types. They even compliment Mari for being just like the old Flashes!
- In a pen example that is borderline comedic, Hunter Zolomon, a very big believer in Misery Builds Character to the point he has molded his Practically Joker persona around it, becomes NERV's Psycho Psychologist, and decides to leave the pilots (except Mari) alone because they have too much tragedy already.
- Freak Lab Accident: In true Flash fashion, this is what gives Mari her Super-Speed.
- Fun Personified: We could give this trope to Mari. Perhaps we should, but we won't. We're giving it to the whole story instead.
- Genki Girl: Mari again. This time as the most perky, upbeat, and hyper member of the cast.
- Heroic RRoD: Mari's first time running at full power makes her body develop rather fast, forcing her to conceal her...assets for a short period of time afterwards, so as to not give anybody a clue that she's The Flash. During the battle with Zeruel, she runs fast enough to give him a Megaton Drop-Kick that kills it dead...but she smashes (and has to reset) several of her bones as a result.
- Hero Insurance: Oddly inverted. Mari, as the Flash, often leaves places better than when she found them, but Mari, as an EVA pilot, often destroys large swaths of city. No one seems to comment on the latter, other than Mari giving the excuse that she's giving the local economy a boost thanks to all the construction jobs created.
- Idiot Hero: Mari sometimes plays with this, and most of the time, it's just a joke...most of the time, because somehow Mari is such a Captain Oblivious that she actually lived nearly her entire life in Keystone City without knowing who The Flash is. Her best friend is appropriately shocked and appalled by this.
- Irony: Hunter Zolomon aka the Reverse Flash, aka Zoom, is a psychologist, but he has even more mental disorders than the people he's supposed to be helping; he even comes off as more insane than the EVA cast.
- Knight of Cerebus: Just like in the comics, Zoom darkens the plot in a way Bardiel, Zeruel, and Gendo can only dream of.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!":
- Denise upon finding out that Mari can become the new Flash.
- And Mari herself upon facing the new Rogues.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: While Mari normally goofs off, when a truly powerful or vicious antagonist like Zeruel or Zoom shows up, she stops joking and becomes much more no-nonsense.
- Lighter and Softer: The fic is much more humorous and lighthearted than other stories, with the author saying that he made a conscious attempt to make The Ultimate Rush "the fun story".
- Mama Bear: Jessie Quinn, Mari's guardian, will go to any length to protect her.
- Most Common Superpower: Again, Mari. Interestingly, she had a growth spurt as a side effect from going too fast on her first test run of her powers, and has to spend some time in-story using chest bindings and slowly "growing" to her full size, or else people will immediately deduce she's the Flash.
- Ms. Fanservice: Mari Illustrious Makinami, who already was a big example of this in NGE canon, running around in crimson spandex showing off both her Amazonian Beauty and a runner's/gymnast's build, courtesy of her Flash superpowers. Poor Shinji gets red-faced a lot.
- Museum of the Strange and Unusual: The Flash Museum has seen better days. Since Second Impact and the disappearance of the previous Flash, few people even care about it, let alone visit. So nobody will mind if a certain someone borrows a spare Flash costume that was lying around...
- Musical Chores: Mari sings while running, often while on her way to save the day.
- Mythology Gag: There's a few.
- Mari's first Angel sortie is against the Angel she fought in the second Rebuild movie. Happening in Keystone, she cannot pull the same stunt with Unit-05 she did in the movie to take it out. She saves it for the Zeruel battle instead.
- The military unit where Jessie and Misato served together was nicknamed "The Losers".
- The Nicknamer: Mari, our tropetastic protagonist. She dubs Shinji "Puppy-kun", for example.
- No-Respect Guy: Jay Garrick, the first Flash; he's only mentioned in one scene and was described as unimportant.
- Plot Hole: A minor one. Despite the dummy plug test being so sensitive that the pilots are required to strip naked and go through a very thorough decontamination process, Mari somehow was allowed to keep her Flash ring with her (though since she was able to take a picture with her civilian self and her Flash persona side-by-side, it's not too far-fetched that she hid it with her powers).
- The Pollyanna: Mari, who is one of the rare positive examples of this trope. There's just nothing that can get her down.
- Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: Gendo tells the Section Two chief to recruit a team of damaged people with neuroses of their own making to be the new Rogues. In other words, he doesn't want professionals to kill the Flash; he wants supervillains with attitude.
- Secret-Keeper: Denise Myles, who isn't just Mari's best friend, but also the person who convinced her to become the new Crimson Comet in the first place.
- Sensual Spandex: This plus Most Common Superpower is what makes Mari, as the Flash, very hot.
- Shout-Out: Loads and loads.
- Many of Mari's lines.
"Meep-meep!"
"Ruh-roh."- Some of the songs she sings are from the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
- Mari singing "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac, while rampaging through the city on her way to stop the 10th Angel, is a reference to a similar scene from the episode of The Simpsons titled "Brother's Little Helper", where Bart sings the same song while rampaging through downtown Springfield in a tank.
- When the Flash first arrives in Tokyo-3, she's called the Whizzer, a reference to the Flash Captain Ersatz from Marvel's Squadron Supreme.
- Funnily enough, in an omake for Superwomen of Eva: Earth's Mightiest, United, an alternate universe version of Mari appears as the Whizzer, with some other EVA ladies as the Squadron counterparts of their Superwomen of Eva 2 selves.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Mari's response to an Angel trying to give her a Hannibal Lecture is to laugh in its face and then reveal that she's been accelerating her brain functions to leave the Angel open to attack.
- She does the same to Zoom before throwing him into the Speed Force.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Mari loves using her Super-Speed to pull this off.
- Swiss-Army Superpower: As in The Flash comics, the Speed Force is more versatile than you'd think.
- Healing Factor: It comes very much in handy when her Entry Plug is crushed by the Dummy Plug-crazed Unit-01 during the Unit-03 disaster and when she breaks several of her bones.
- Intangibility and Invisibility by vibrating, which she uses to infiltrate NERV Central.
- Speed Lend/Steal: She can take speed from one thing and give it to another.
- As well as the Required Secondary Powers to prevent her from creating sonic booms, keep her clothes from disintegrating, etc. etc.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: The old Rogues have this code, and later, when they're about to kill the new Rogues, Mari steps in to save them. She gives them a similar line about never killing the villains, and their reaction is almost heartwarming.Mirror Master: "The lass is just like Allen all right!"
- Villainous Rescue: The old Rogues coming to save Mari from the new Rogues.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Bardiel's under the assumption that Mari is a gigantic pile of angst that he can break with the right words, just like the rest of the cast of Neon Genesis Evangelion. There is no way to describe how wrong the Angel is.
- Zoom, who is under the delusion that his Misery Builds Character philosophy will help the Flash.
