Mei IgarashiMaystorm

Teenager Mei Igarashi is a regular girl who discovers her unusual abilities to control the weather and uses them to help and protect people as Maystorm.

A Maystorm Brewing

A diabolical genius, Reed Richards, AKA the Maker, uses time travel to create his ideal Earth on Earth-6160 by preventing Super Heroes from ever existing, and establishing a secret council of Super Villains to rule the world from the shadows. But the Maker gets trapped in a place called the City and the Maker’s Council endeavors to expand their influence on the world, including Sunfire, Viper and Silver Samurai, who oversee Japan, the Eastern territory of Hi No Kuni, “The Land of the Sun.” There, Mei Igarashi is about to go through drastic changes in her life.

In the Hi No Kuni territory, Mei lives with her parents in Kirisaki City. One morning, Mei’s mother asks her to stop by the neighbor’s house to introduce herself as they were new to the neighborhood. So following school, Mei goes to the neighbor’s to find an orange cat with paint on them. The neighbor peeks out their front door and Mei returns the cat to them but the cat scratches Mei’s arm in the process. She gets home and immediately falls asleep only to wake up to her mom calling her down for dinner and yelling at her dad who doesn’t answer her. When Mei suggests she leave him, her mother scolds her and her father slaps her across the face. Mei screams and summons a storm and rain to their dining room. Mei’s hair transforms from brown to white, and her father calls her a punk and tells her to leave. Mei stays with her grandparents since she feels unwelcome in her own home.

Weather Manipulation

Mei’s mutant ability grants her the ability to control and manipulate weather patterns. She can summon wind, rain, and even lightning bolts.

Storm Clouds

Mei faces off with the Children of the Atom cult’s pawns, mostly teenagers who have been experimented upon and seemingly given their mutant powers, such as Noriko Ashida, AKA Surge, and Shinobu Kageyama, AKA Shadow King.

Sunny Skies

Mei’s closest friend is Hisako Ichiki, AKA Armor, who’s a mutant like herself. They bond over having powers and investigate Hisako’s shadow stalker. Mei also becomes friends with Nico Minoru, a fledgling psychic, and her friends Mori and Natsu Tsukishima, who are unwilling members of the Children of the Atom. 

Weathering the Storm

While out and about, Mei recognized a girl on a curb as the one associated with a recent car crash, Hisako Ishiki. She attempted to befriend her and Hisako invited her to an abandoned school to solve a mystery of the Shadow that’s been haunting her. Mei joined and while at the school, they were discovered by a police officer, who told them they shouldn’t be there, but the Shadow soon appeared and Hisako called it a killer. The officer immediately transformed into a bunch of worms and moved to attack them. The pair ran but Mei protected them by summoning gusts of wind, dispelling the bugs. The Shadow attacked but Hisako’s armor appeared and took it down, allowing the girls to escape.

At the high school entrance ceremony, Mei spotted her new friend Hisako and they embarked on an adventure to learn who was behind the creepy Shadow. While at school one day, the pair noticed Nico Minoru who soon called them mutants too, surprising them both. Later, Mei saw a commotion and realized that Hisako was part of it and the Shadow was too, and a group of people gathered and filmed it. She immediately intervened, summing electricity to fry all the phones. But the video went viral the next day. Nico witnessed it as well and confirmed that they were indeed mutants and started helping them investigate the Shadow. 

At school, Nico shared that the Shadow could be connected to a mysterious cult of super-powered “mutants” that her grandmother once researched: The Children of the Atom. Nico brought her grandmother’s book that detailed all her findings, which included a symbol that also appeared on the omamori, a charm that Hisako carried around. Nico’s friends, Natsu and Mori, revealed that they were members of the cult and they recognized the Shadow, who had appeared nearby, as their fellow cult member Shinobu Kageyama!

Meanwhile, unrest in Hi No Kuni exploded after images of a human body found in a suitcase went viral on social media. At school, Mei pulled up some images of the body while around Hisako and Nico. Hisako zoomed in and spotted a symbol carved on the body–the same one that was on her omamori. Suspicious, Hisako started to connect the dots between Tsubasa’s omamori but Mei adamantly believed that the charm was protecting Hisako. 

Soon, Nico realized that since the news broke about the Children of the Atom being involved somehow with the body in the suitcase, that their friends Natsu and Mori weren’t coming to school. The girls were soon verbally harassed by another student, who was in the midst of decorating the halls and who called them “muties.” Hisako lost it and started destroying the decor. Hisako was given a serious talk by one of the school’s staff. Hisako expressed to Mei that she could lose control and hurt others, but Mei dismissed it and called her a hero. 

Later, Mei spotted her dad with a young girl with blue hair on the street and ran after him. Though he walked away and the young girl grabbed Mei’s arm, stopping her. The girl knew her name and knew about her wind powers. Calling herself Surge, she prompted a fight with Mei using her own electrifying powers. During the fight, Mei noticed a set of numbers on Surge’s skin that indicated she was part of the Children of the Atom. She stopped to question Surge who revealed that the cult had experimented on her, giving her abilities. Mei wondered if that’s what the dead bodies were for in the suitcases, but Surge made it clear that she cared little for the failures. Mei insisted she use her powers to help others rather than prey on people’s fathers, and Surge let her powers loose but something prevented her from blasting Mei, allowing Mei time to call upon a lightning bolt and hit Surge with it, causing her to fall to the ground. Mei realized she overdid it and offered to call an ambulance but Surge insisted she call her mom instead, afraid someone would come after her.

When Mei heard her fellow classmate Natsu went missing, and considering the body in the suitcase, an incident dubbed #MeatCase, she resolved to do something about it, while Nico and Mori went searching for Natsu on their own. Mei gathered former cult members who cared about #MeatCase, but everyone wore masks to protect their identities. Mei expressed a desire to save the lost Children of the Atom. The group dubbed Mei their leader and she claimed no such title, but inspired by the rebel freedom fighter known as Storm in Wakanda, Africa, she tells them to call her Maystorm. The group was then interrupted by the Shadow. While Mei explained to the others that he had harassed her and her friends for months, she ultimately defended him, saying that he was a victim of the Children of the Atom as well. The Shadow called himself Mei’s neighbor and asked about Hisako’s location, but Mei didn’t know what he was talking about. 

The Shadow then followed her home, calling her weak for wanting to help the Children of the Atom, and said that Hisako was his soulmate. Mei blew the Shadow back with her wind powers and went on her way. Curious about what the Shadow had said, she stopped at her neighbor’s house where the cat had scratched her and a woman invited her in, thinking she was a friend of her son’s and said that he’d be back soon. Mei looked around the house and found the son’s bedroom and saw pictures of Hisako on his wall. His mother found Mei and assumed that she was with Hisako, and complained about how obsessed her son, Shinobu, had become over Hisako. Mei thought the woman was crazy.

Masked, Mei went on to lead her rebellion of former cult members and encouraged them to find new Atom kids to help. When she ended their meeting, a few of them stayed behind, Nico, Mori, and an older student, Kanon Sainouchi. Nico called Mei out, sensing it was her behind the mask. Taking her mask off, she told Mei more about her grandmother’s notebook, specifically how there was something called an Astral Plane and she surmised that the Shadow, Kageyama, had likely taken Hisako there.

Mei was soon contacted by Kanon and Mori, the latter of whom suddenly experienced terrible pain, feeling as if she was being ripped apart, and saw a strange vision of someone named Akihiro, the symbol of the Children of the Atom, and Hisako. Mei resolved that if they could find Akihiro, then maybe they would know where Hisako was. Mori reminded Mei of Natsu, who was still missing as well. But Kanon felt it was too big of a task without Nico.