Stranger 3

 

Bubbly, hard-working, and strong-hearted Stranger 3, who sometimes goes by the names Ami, Trini, and Sally, is one of Ishinomori’s most promising students. She embodies the strength, adaptability, and self-discipline that makes an Ishinomori heroine. As a “Stranger Virable,” a genetic superweapon developed by the Belriel Star Empire to defeat their aeons-old enemies–the Lifemen of NGC 7674, she is able to transform into some of the Lifemen’s greatest enemies and more through the use of a genetic database containing the DNA sequences of countless giant monsters. No longer a weapon of the BSE, she trains under the first Lifeman while dating the newest Lifeman, Lifeman Escher. Her genetic database has expanded greatly from the limited library of the BSE and now contains information on anything from Vovin Dragons to Erlkings.

 

In her own words, she is “all monsters.” In the words of the Lifemen, she is “all heart.”

 

Belriel Weapon

 

Stranger Virables were shapeshifting organisms composed of variable viruses, essentially strands of thinking, “living” protein able to assemble themselves into whatever tissue or organ needed at the time. Their base forms were modeled after humans, as Earth with its many Lifemen protectors was to be their testing ground. Their trial mission was to infiltrate the human population, acquire information on the newest Lifeman, Lifeman Escher, and then use this information to destroy him. 

 

They had a system. Stranger 1 was to acquire information, Stranger 2 was to kill any humans directly associated with Lifeman Escher, because the Belriel knew from previous reports that Lifemen drew psychological strength from their human contacts, and Stranger 3 was to kill Lifeman Escher.

 

Stranger 1 was the lead investigator, and his base form was modeled off an adult male for its tendency to be viewed as an authority figure. With an air like that of a policeman, he was able to get information just by asking for it. When that wasn’t enough, he could change his face and costume to that of an appropriate authority figure–even into that of a Lifeman. 

 

Stranger 2 was the assassin with a base form modeled off an adult female for its tendency to be viewed as harmless. Cute and vulnerable, people wanted to protect her–which meant they let their guards down.

 

Stranger 3 was designed to directly fight with and destroy Lifemen. While all Stranger Virables were able to transform into giant monsters, Stranger 3 had an edge on the other two as she was modeled on an adolescent female to encourage creative thinking. She would be able to surprise Lifeman in ways the other two wouldn’t be able to, and her adolescent form would keep her in check as it gave her an inclination to defer to Stranger 1 and 2.

 

The project was a complete failure. As the Strangers learned about human culture from Lifeman Escher’s friends, they gradually became corrupted by it. The Strangers began to not only care for each other as members of a unit but as individuals. The mission became secondary to their survival and wellbeing. 

 

The Belriel were first tipped off to things going wrong when Stranger 3 violated a direct order from 1 and 2 to remain hidden while they fought Lifeman Escher who had located them when they tried to infiltrate the Earth State’s federation parliament meeting. They knew that Earth State liked to develop “countermeasures” to various superhumans and that if they infiltrated it they could find one for the Lifemen.

 

Lifeman Escher didn’t know about Stranger 3. She was their ace in the hole. But she was worried about the other two, and so she engaged Lifeman Escher to give them time to escape.

 

Belriel command was angered, but they chalked the incident up to poor tactical planning. It wasn’t betrayal, it was an unconventional decision made by an unconventional unit. They told 1 and 2 to keep a tighter grip on 3 and that was that. 

But then a month went by without development. The Strangers held their disguised posts around Lifeman Escher and his circle of friends. Stranger 1 was the friendly neighborhood policeman who spent most of his time reading manga inside his police box. Stranger 2 was the owner of Lucky Dragon Ramen, a restaurant where a friend of Lifeman Escher worked and where he often ate. And Stranger 3 was an obsessive Lifeman fan and reporter for a self-published magazine called Mucho Monsters.

 

But they never never acted. It was almost as if they enjoyed their false lives and fake friendship with Lifeman and his allies.

 

It was another tactical error, surely nothing more. They urged Stranger 1 to get on with things and threatened “further action” if he didn’t.

When Stranger 1 fought Stranger 2, they knew things had gotten out of hand.

Stranger 2, fearful that they would be punished by the BSE for their hesitancy, decided to take it upon herself to make some of Lifeman’s friends disappear. She kidnapped several of his friends, but couldn’t bring herself to kill them now that she knew them personally. However, she thought if she kept them hidden away that she could fool the BSE into thinking they were dead, and was attacked by Stranger 1 who feared she had placed them all in danger of being killed by Lifeman Escher in retaliation for his friends. Their fight was broken up by Stranger 3, who revealed their identities to Lifeman Escher to prevent him from destroying them.

 

That was when the BSE and Lifeman Escher knew that the Stranger Virables were not a unit with a spy, assassin, and warrior. They were a family with a dad, a mom, and a daughter.

 

Stranger 1 knew their fates had been sealed. They had to ally with Lifeman and Earth. There was no coming back to the BSE. But he and his family came to like being allies of Lifeman and regretted not joining him sooner.

 

It was pleasant being his ally. It was pleasant being a helpful police officer, a kindly restaurant owner, or a nosey reporter. And Lifeman and his friends forgave them. They acted like they had always been a cop, a restaurateur, and a reporter.

 

Earth offered them friendship and forgiveness, two things the BSE couldn’t give them.

 

The Strangers, together with the rest of Earth’s Lifemen, would launch a cripping attack on the BSE and destroy their leader, Emperor Bel, an ancient supercomputer designed for a war that no longer existed. Emperor Bel never anticipated the Strangers becoming a family because he was a cold and calculating machine without feelings or emotions. Familiar bonds were beyond his ability to comprehend. Even at the end when the Stranger family fought back his army of Lifeman robot clones while the Lifemen combined their powers to destroy him with LIFEFORCE SUNRISER, he couldn’t understand where he had gone wrong in his plans.

 

Following the destruction of Emperor Bel, Stranger 3’s “parents” enrolled her in Ishinomori high where she could train to become a superhero just like Lifeman Escher, who she had developed a crush on. They are currently dating. She receives the personal tutelage of Ishinomori’s principal, the first Lifeman. It’s a position that makes many students jealous, but none can deny that she is benefitting from training under a man who fought many of the monsters she can transform into. Her built-in database may tell her the strengths of her monster transformations, but Lifeman teaches her the weaknesses.

 

Monster Transformations

 

Virable particles are a miracle of bioengineering. It took a war computer almost as old as the Form Masters to create them and for all of mankind’s resources they remain imperfectly understood. While artificial virable particles have been created, it is only through a labor intensive and time consuming process. It is much easier to simply ask the Stranger family to share.

 

The most obvious ability of the virable particles is that it allows the Strangers to transform into giant monsters. Originally, Stranger 3 was limited to the genetic data stored in her database (a tiny lobe located where the pineal gland is in humans) which included a library of the deadliest Lifemen foes, but as she trains at Ishinomori she has added data. Now she can change between countless forms, some for battle and some for utility.

 

Stranger 3 can perfectly copy monsters down to the DNA, but she can also “tweak” her copies. She can make them smaller or bigger compared to the actual versions, or give them extra hands or heads. With enough tweaking, she can alter the fundamental abilities of a monster to suit the situation, but she finds it much easier to switch to a completely different monster than to tweak one until it works.

 

Stranger 3 can add to her number of transformations by examining a monster’s DNA, and her studies at Ishinomori have allowed her to examine quite a few monsters, but she’s limited strictly to “monsters” as defined by her database. Emperor Bel built her and her parents with a “failsafe” of sorts. They can only turn into beings that either were or could potentially be threats to the Lifemen. Stranger 3 can only turn into monsters, sometimes anti-heroes, but never heroes. There must be some sort of potential, uncontrollable element of chaos to what she transforms into.

 

Sample Forms

 

God King—

 

The god king of monsters himself. This mighty mutant dinosaur has sometimes been an enemy of mankind and other times a protector, but he has always been a titan. God King first appeared in 1942 when scientists excavated the frozen remains of a Hyperborean dragon, in scientific terms, of the clade dracohors, family herrerasauridae, genus rhedosaurus, and species rhedosaurus fleisher, and attempted to revive it. The Worlds War was in full motion, high demand was placed on the discovery of medical technology to keep troops fighting, such things weren’t uncommon in those times. But rhedosaurus fleisher awoke in a frenzy, and it took the power of no less than Gold Star to capture him. Transported to the natural archaic fauna preserve Maple White Land. 

 

There it lived in peace, unable to age or die due to the experiment that revived it, until 1953 when it was chosen by Earth State to be used in the experiment Operation: Fortress. Scientists wanted to see what effect a spacetime bomb would have on a creature with ageless flesh from the Hyperborean age. The result was a radioactive monster who breathed fire and shed mutant bacteria. Operation:Fortress sent God King through a worldtunnel that flung it out off the shore of New York City. It quickly entered the city, and Gold Star was forced to do battle with it at Coney Island.The threat from its bacteria was too great for it to remain alive and Gold Star destroyed it down to the atoms and then purged the oceans of its bacteria before it could create marine life like God King.

 

A second spacetime bomb experiment conducted a year later created a temporally irregular worldtunnel that pulled God King through the timestream from just before it attacked New York into the heart of Tokyo. The result was pure chaos. God King was empowered by its trip through time. It could absorb energy and project it through its mouth in the form of an intense flame. It was physically unstoppable. It was as if having been pulled from the jaws of death, its body now rejected the very concept of death. Nothing harmed it. Even molecular disintegration was no longer enough. It just kept coming back, time reversing its body to pristine fighting condition again and again. Japan didn’t have near the superhero population it would develop in later decades, and it took all the Rocket Family to keep God King at bay long enough for a brilliant physicist named Dr. Eiji Harada to use his latest invention, the time shredder, to destroy God King. The time shredder was a terrible weapon that worked by collapsing parallel timelines into a single point. The result was a funneling of mass into an ultra-strong black hole. Fearing the power of his weapon (and history has shown he was right to do so, as an experimental time shredder led to the creation of the very powerful and very destructive Time Ghost in 1995), Dr. Harada activated his time shredder by hand, destroying himself and God King.

 

Unfortunately, Dr. Harada’s sacrifice would be in vain. God King was truly unkillable and reformed in 1955. This time it’s mutated bacteria gained the ability to transform animals into creatures like God King, giant engines of destruction whose bodies rewound time to recover from wounds. But this would prove to be Japan’s salvation. It was observed that when God King fought the first of these “God monsters,” a giant heikei crab who used Mt. Daisen as a shell (even though normal sized heikei crabs never engage in such behavior), the wounds inflicted on both monsters took time to heal. They didn’t instantly regenerate. It seemed as if their temporally unstable bodies mutually canceled their regeneration. 

 

It was then that Japan decided that its policy toward God King and the God monsters would not be one of extermination. That had proven to be more than useless. Instead, it would be one of containment and coexistence. God King would be manipulated by lures and food into encountering and defeating various God monsters throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Gradually, what was Japan’s number one threat became something like a pet, an attack dog called upon to defeat other monsters..

 

In 1966, God King mutated and grew frills that could fire a cone of energy around his head. The frills didn’t last long, as God King would be mind controlled by the alien hive mind MiriMiriBikiBiki in 1968. Lifeman, Japan’s strongest superhero in the late sixties, engaged God King and knocked it unconscious with a full-force Lifebeam that blew its frills off. When God King regenerated, it’s frill had mutated into retractable skin flaps.

 

Stranger 3 often uses God King as a trump card and finishing move. His raw power can’t be beat. She also takes advantage of God King’s impressive regenerative abilities by switching to it from a weakened and damaged monster to heal. She can afford to make risky plays as other monsters knowing she has the God King of monsters to fall back on in case she gets wounded.

 

Demigod Kings—

 

Stranger 3 can also transform into the various “offspring” of God King, commonly referred to as “Demigod Kings.” These Demigod Kings form from a bizarre type of parthenogenesis. Whenever God King sheds enough blood at one time, the blood congeals into an egg-like sack which in time hatches into a rapidly-maturing “child” of God King. These Demigod Kings are not, as is often assumed, clones of God King. Their DNA is widely different from that of God King, and many have abilities vastly different from its own, but there are certain elements that hold constant. All Demigod Kings are giant reptilians with physiological similarities to dragons, whales, and apes. They are amphibious and just as comfortable in the water as they are on land. They can absorb energy, especially electromagnetic energy, and more often than not can project this energy from their mouths often in the form of a flame or beam, and this feature is so common that it nearly got the Demigod King of 1998, the “American Demigod King,” stricken from the list when it was found to shoot no more than hot air from its mouth. They possess remarkable regenerative abilities. Though somewhat territorial, they are not aggressive, and it takes some sort of outside stimulus to spur them into action. And above all, they are very, very, very hard to kill.

 

Notable Demigod Kings include the gentle Demigod King of 1967, still known to this day as “Mini God King,” even if he is far from being mini these days, the heroic Demigod King of 1978 who was known to assist the Fishermen when summoned by sonic waves, the violent and unpredictable Demigod King of 1984 who destroyed any that crossed its path, the “champion of the natural order” Demigod King of 2014 who was driven to shut down any and all worldtunnels, an obsession which would bring it into conflict against McQuarrie Science Base again and again, and the bizarre Demigod King of 2016, who, despite being the tallest Demigod King to date (taller than even God King), was unable to endure freezing temperatures and was easily subdued by middle school aged Snow Maiden.

 

Mecha-oni—

 

A powerful “mechonster” used by the Ganzok Empire during the 1970’s. The Ganzok Empire were masters of proxy wars. They kept their people safe and satisfied while sending cyborg monsters to raid planets for tribute. Such a scheme served them well for generations until prince Rath decided to test his Empire’s army against a worthy foe and found that foe in the planet Earth. Prince Rath pitted his mechonsters against guardian giants such as Grailizer and Beyondion X and came up short. He however welcomed his defeat. In his view, if the Ganzok Empire wasn’t strong enough to win, it deserved to be conquered. He was, however, shocked that Earth showed his empire mercy and didn’t raze and pillage his homeworld after destroying his mechonster fleet. Instead, they installed his exiled sister as ruler, a radical pacifist Rath sent to Earth in the hopes that her teachings would weaken Earth’s fighting spirit. Mechonsters are now used by the Ganzok Republic as living space probes. They explore the furthest dimensions of our universe on missions of goodwill and exploration, and what is more they disguise the identity of their creators if they happen to stumble upon a belligerent danger.

 

Mecha-oni was a simple but effective mechonster–a four armed creature with metal skin wielding spike-studded hammers in each hand. These hammers concentrated kinetic energy into the spikes to deliver blows that could get through even the most durable guardian giant armor. Mecha-oni didn’t have any special abilities, no laser eyes or tornado breath, but it didn’t really need them. It got close and hit things, and this simple strategy almost defeated Beyondion X. Stranger 3 switches to Mecha-oni whenever she needs to quickly rush-down and overwhelm an opponent. She often uses it in bursts, transforming it to deliver a quick flurry of strikes to unbalance her opponent before switching to a different monster.

 

Mechonsters are cyborgs. They’re created by subjecting the natural fauna of Planet Ganzok to intense cybernetic conversion and genetic modification. But they aren’t pure robots. The metal in mecha-oni is maintained by a circulating system of blood just like human teeth. Mechonsters are biological enough to register in Stranger 3’s database.

 

Ufola—

 

A bizarre monster that formed when a rare strain of space bacteria infected a Fox probe in 1967. The bacteria had essentially grown a body around the probe with it serving as its head. When Ufola attempted to materialize in our universe, it was pulled to Kinnison Star Castle and neutralized with its weaponry. It was later stolen by agents of the Chromian Empire who wanted to get their hands on an intact Fox probe. The Chromians found that the Fox probe couldn’t be extracted from Ufola’s body (it simply grew another body) and decided to turn Ufola into a functional multiverse probe. Fox probes, by strict ARGO rule, are not armed with weapons, so the Chromians installed several energy projectors in Ufola’s “head” to increase its offensive capabilities. They would regret doing so, as Ufola broke free and began wandering the universe seeking novel information. It was once a probe and it still thought like a probe. Unfortunately for the universe “seeking novel information” includes tearing things apart to see how they’re constructed. 

 

As it journeyed to the furthest dimensions of our universe, Ufola encountered other living probes in the form of Ganzok Mechonsters. These Mechonsters were no match for Ufola, who disassembled them to learn how to improve its own body, and the Queen was forced to turn to her old ally Earth for help. Beyondion X arrived and defeated Ufola, and ever since then it has been obsessed with analyzing Beyondion X (and Beyondion Tri, Beyondion Noah, Shin Beyondion…) and its home planet Earth. It has continued to attack it again and again without success.

 

Ufola would prove to be as unkillable and persistent as God King, who defeated it in 1970. Whenever it became too damaged, it would activate the fox harmonic in its “head” and teleport away to recover. It has sometimes been contained, but never for long, and it has menanced generations of superheroes with Ishinomori High and Shin Beyondion being the latest to defeat it.

 

Stranger 3 uses Ufola for two primary purposes–the first is to use its built-in fox harmonic for rapid teleportation, and the second is to use its scanners to assess unknown foes. When bringing Ufola into a fight, Stranger 3 likes to use its claws to pin enemies before firing all its energy projectors right into the opponent’s face. She usually “tweaks” Ufola to have a few more energy projectors, because if it’s one thing better than a powerful attack it’s a very powerful attack.

 

King-In-The-Mountain (KIM)–

 

In 1955, God King reformed after being obliterated by Dr. Harada’s time shredder, stronger than ever. This time, the bacteria inside his body mutated with him, and gained the ability to transform animals into temporally unstable, invincible monsters like itself. The first of these God monsters was the King-in-the-mountain, a heikei crab who hollowed out Mr. Daisen and used it as a shell. Heikei crabs don’t normally behave like hermit crabs, but they also aren’t normally gigantic and invincible either. KIM is extremely territorial, but does not venture out from its mountain as long as it’s provided food. Japan uses this to their advantage. They herd more aggressive God monsters to Mt. Daisen in the hopes that KIM can defeat them.

 

Stranger 3 likes to switch to Kim because she thinks crabs are cool (look how they move!) and because KIM is great for quick escapes underground. KIM can burrow through virtually any type of terrain and burrow quickly. Stranger 3 vanishes underground as KIM and then emerges as a surprise.

 

Infection Power

 

In addition to transforming, Ami can also use her viral encode powers to infect others with viruses, benign or otherwise. This was intended to be the ultimate trump card of the Strangers. If they couldn’t win on the titanic level of the Lifemen, then they would win on the cellular level. What would it matter if the Lifemen couldn’t be defeated so long as the planets they pledged to protect died of plague? Beings like God King were already infectious biohazards, and they could become far more than God King.

 

The ability for Strangers to tweak transformations provided a little boost to their transformative ability. An extra claw or feeler helped in battle, but what tweaking was really for was to convert them into living bioweapon labs. They could tweak the viruses inside them again and again and again to defeat any kind of vaccination.

 

Ami can even create a zombie virus–and has under laboratory conditions. It’s a simple variation of the God King virus. God King is, in its own way, a zombie raised from the dead through its regenerative ability. Ami’s zombie virus just tweaks it so that it works on humans.

 

Her infectious ability is just as powerful as her transformation power, perhaps even more so, and due to the extreme threat represented by spreading viruses she is loath to infect others save in the most dire of circumstances even though she can create viruses that have beneficial effects on the body. She doesn’t want to get the reputation as a “virus girl.” It’s hard to put a positive spin on the faces of monsters historically known for stomping through cities like children through sand castles, but it’s even harder to put a positive spin on viruses. Stranger 3 can take on the form of a monster and use it to do very visible, very big acts of good. She can’t really do that with a virus. The positive benefits derived from her infectious powers amount to a new article in a scientific journal, a new patent filed for a vaccine. They don’t come in the form of a noosphere video of her punching a monster into the sun.

 

As frightening as her infection powers are, Lifeman reminds her that they’re just another extension of who she is. They’re frightening like all the monsters she has inside her, but they can be helpful, and Ami has indeed proven to be a boon to medical science with her viruses. Countless vaccines and gene therapies have been manufactured from her viruses. When she can be convinced to shed her viruses, she can empower an entire superteam, increasing their abilities several fold and unlocking new ones.

 

Stranger 3 The Student

 

When Stranger 3 first joined Ishinomori, she sent applications to every class and club available in a fit of exuberance. After a very exhausting first week, she cut her classes down to one–training with Principal Lifeman, which she threw her all into.

 

Stranger 3 is an open-hearted, headstrong young woman who takes things one step at a time and focuses 100 percent on each and every one of those steps. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and makes it well known that she’s the girlfriend of Lifeman Escher, once her prime target, now her prime crush. Lifeman Escher returns her feelings, though he feels Stranger 3 is at times too possessive and needy. He wishes he knew how to ask her to give him space without it sounding like rejection.

 

Most female students at Ishinomori are “magical girls” in the sense that they follow the fashions and characteristics pioneered by superheroines like Alice Freegift, who is now the head of Ishinomori’s multiverse studies, and Princess (now Queen) Windfall. The ideal magical girl is flashy, empathetic, pure-hearted, and dresses like a parade float. While Stranger 3 is certainly flashy, scales and mushroom heads aren’t anything like iridescent bubbles and makeup, and she’s known for being one of the “misfit girls” alongside Fairy Dreaming and Black Witch. She doesn’t mind being a social pariah. She doesn’t have time to care. She’s too busy trying to be the strongest monster she can be.