Fanfic / Superwomen of Eva 2: Blue Defiance

aka: SOE 2 Blue Defiance

Art by OrionPax09.

Even when she realized that her relationship with Gendo wasn't all she once thought it was, Ritsuko felt powerless to change anything. When she happens to find a certain insect-shaped artifact, however, the equation changes. Drastically.

Superwomen of Eva 2: Blue Defiance by Mike313 is a Superwomen of Eva story starring Dr. Ritsuko Akagi as the Blue Beetle.

Following the battle with Sahaquiel the Tenth Angel, Dr. Ritsuko Akagi realizes her life has reached a dead end. While driving home, she gets hit with a series of minor inconveniences—including a flat tire, a missing jack, and a malfunctioning lighter—and finds a damaged alien superweapon that bonds itself with her overnight. After some thought, and growing to appreciate the power it gives her (among other benefits), Ritsuko resolves to stop Third Impact as the Blue Beetle.

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Tropes:

• Alternate Self: The Scarlet Scarab, an Alternate Universe version of Ritsuko who received the same powers, and was summoned by Leiliel to protect itself when Ritsuko charges into the Dirac Sea to kill it. This version of Ritsuko had overall worse luck than our Ritsuko when it came to keeping her identity secret, and was lobotomized by Gendo into becoming his personal superhuman weapon (even killing her world's Misato/Green Lantern when she was ordered to fight her). Ritsuko manages to undo the lobotomy just enough for the Scarlet Scarab to regain her senses and decide to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to atone for her actions, and the Blue Beetle takes even further steps to try to prevent this from happening to her in her world.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Ritsuko uses surviving Angelic stem cells from Ireul to repair the Scarab.
• BFG: The Scarab claims it always has a bigger gun, including one stated to be so powerful that it would destroy at least 80% of Japan as collateral damage. (And implies that it keeps going up from there.)
• Bittersweet Ending: The Reach are driven off of Earth, and Gendo and SEELE's respective plans for Third Impact are thwarted. However, Ritsuko is forced to leave the planet and become a wanderer, because she has become a wanted woman due to her involvement in the Instrumentality Plan and Gendo leaking her identity as the Blue Beetle.
• Chekhov's Gun: The annihilator beam, first mentioned when Blue Beetle deals with some Yakuza.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Blue Beetle teleports Zeruel to Mercury, but is unable to finish the Fourteenth Angel off. Word of God confirmed at the end of that very chapter that we'll be seeing it again. Triggered during the final battle.
• City of Adventure: Tokyo-3, of course, complete with a part of town on the Wrong Side of the Tracks.
• Cyberspace: How Ritsuko deals with Ireul, with the Scarab's help.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Ritsuko finds out that the Scarlet Scarab killed her world's Green Lantern/Misato Katsuragi (not that she had any other choice, being a lobotomized weapon for Gendo Ikari), and the Scarlet Scarab kills herself in a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy Leiliel when Ritsuko manages to undo some of the lobotomy.

• Disintegrator Ray: The aptly-named annihilator beam "breaks normal organics down into their component atoms".
• Drunk with Power: Ritsuko's first flight, and having the Yakuza afraid of her, pushes Ritsuko a little into this territory.
• Evil Laugh Turned Coughing Fit: Referenced in one omake. Ritsuko breaks into Mad Scientist laughter while figuring out a Crazy Enough to Work scheme and says that because of her smoking habit, she used to break into a coughing fit whenever she tried before, but now that the Blue Beetle scarab has fixed her body, she is able to do it at will.
• For Want Of A Nail: There are strong hints that this story diverges from Superwomen Of Eva 2: Emerald Courage on the simple fact that Misato is not going pedophiliac for Shinji. In the other story, Misato shows an attraction to Shinji early on and is more fed up with Kaji than in canon, so she ends up using her power ring to slam the elevator doors in his face shortly before the Big Blackout that coincided with Matarael's attack, and she takes that opportunity to defeat Matarael. After proving that her ring can take the fight to the Angels, she resigns from her position as Tactical Operations Director. In Blue Defiance, she did not use her ring to slam the doors in Kaji's face, and was then trapped in the elevator with Kaji, preventing her from facing Matarael, and because she didn't get the chance to face an Angel, she kept her position as Tactical Operations Director. In that story, Kaji replaced Misato and ordered an evacuation when Sahaquiel arrived, rather than having the EV As try to catch it; here, Misato used the same plan as in canon, which directly resulted in the Scarab being where it was for Ritsuko to pick it up. However, Blue Defiance has never specifically mentioned Power Girl, Supergirl, or Wonder Girl.
• Fugitive Arc: After the Wham Episode. And, interestingly, it never truly gets resolved in the story proper—Ritsuko saves the world, sure, but has to remain on the run in the epilogue.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Blue Beetle apparently has determined her situation has crossed this after the Wham Episode, as she then proceeds to attack SEELE and destroy the Mass Production EV As directly.
  • The Annihilator Beam is labeled as only to be used in this fashion by Ritsuko, after hearing how much destruction it would cause as collateral damage. She even refuses to use it against Zeruel in their first encounter, because of said potential devastation. It finally gets used by her to kill Zeruel in the final chapter, because they are in orbit and there will be no collateral damage. The blast can be seen from the ground with the naked eye.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: The Scarab is a Psychopathic Manchild Blood Knight that firmly believes There Is No Kill Like Overkill and doesn't understand why Ritsuko doesn't want to use a Disintegrator Ray against some Yakuza enforcers.

• Let's You and Him Fight: The Scarab and Misato's Green Lantern ring retain their comic book counterparts' animosity toward each other, leading to this trope. Ritsuko also ends up having to fight an alternate version of herself called the "Scarlet Scarab" after Leiliel summons her to defend itself.

• Mirror Match: Blue Beetle versus the Scarlet Scarab, within Leiliel's Dirac Sea.

• Mythology Gag: It's rather appropriate that a major plot of the Blue Beetle story is a PR war.
• Oh, Crap!: Very, very much justified when Ritsuko realizes she has to face down Bardiel, in control of both Unit-03 and Misato's Green Lantern ring, without hurting either Toji or Misato and without any Evangelion support whatsoever.

• Professional Killer: At SEELE's urging, Gendo hires Slade Wilson to dispose of Blue Beetle.
  • Deathstroke brings his crew with him, which in this story is composed of three well-known Teen Titans traitors: Terra, Bombshell, and Slade's own daughter, Ravager.
• Projected Man: Ritsuko uses one built with Scarab technology to help maintain her Secret Identity.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Zig-zagged. Initially averted when Ritsuko signs up with the JSSDF (as Blue Beetle) to be their anti-Angel weapon, and shares technology with them derived from the Scarab; the aversion is then subverted when Deathstroke's attack and the events of the Wham Episode result in the destruction or grounding of most of the vehicles outfitted with Scarab technology.
• Room Full of Crazy: Ritsuko only manages to fill up the whiteboard before Misato interrupts her.
• Running Gag: The Scarab's repeated suggestions that they kill Gendo.
• Screw Destiny: Specifically, the alternate future Ritsuko saw in the memories of her Alternate Universe counterpart, the Scarlet Scarab. Barely.
• Secret Identity: Ritsuko has a much better grasp of why she needs one than most of the Superwomen of Eva.

• Villain with Good Publicity: Gendo and NERV, in a particularly notable example, as Ritsuko deliberately attempts to subvert this.

• Wham Episode:
  • When Gendo discovers Blue Beetle's Secret Identity and reverses all the PR manipulation she's been working on in one fell swoop.
  • The arrival of the Reach.
  • Deathstroke and his crew capturing the Blue Beetle and planning to deliver her to Gendo.

• Yakuza: The Blue Beetle debuts by fighting against Yakuza who are set to make an example of someone who ignored their warning that it would be a Shame If Something Happened to him.

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