| Aya Brea | |
|---|---|
| Series | Parasite Eve |
| First game | Parasite Eve (1998) |
| Voiced by (English) | Kathy Sokol (Parasite Eve II)[1] Yvonne Strahovski (The 3rd Birthday)[2][3] |
| Voiced by (Japanese) | Yumiko Shaku (Parasite Eve II)[1] Maaya Sakamoto (The 3rd Birthday)[4] |
Aya Brea is a player character in the Parasite Eve video games by Square.
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Aya Brea was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 20, 1972. She is of mixed ethnicity: her father (name unrevealed), who is a journalist, was of European descent, her mother (Mariko) was Japanese. This gives her a unique appearance as she boasts many Asian facial features, such as the shape of her face and eyes, while possessing typically Nordic blue eyes and fair blonde hair. She had a sister named Maya who, along with her mother, died in an car accident in or around December 1977.
After Maya's death, her organs were preserved, which allowed for one of her corneas to be transplanted into Aya, in 1986. At the same time, one of Maya's kidneys was transplanted into a young girl named Melissa Pearce. Unknown to any of the doctors, Maya's malevolent mitochondria began changing Aya and Melissa's genetic structure. As a young woman Aya studied criminology at the University of Virginia and was involved in their ROTC program. She later became a detective with the fictional NYPD's 17th precinct. Within the first six months of working at the precinct, Aya became involved in an event known as the New York Blockade Incident. As an officer, she held a sort of father/daughter relationship with her partner, Daniel "Bo" Dollis, a veteran cop who is protective of her.
On December 24, 1997, Aya went on a date to an opera performance at Carnegie Hall, which starred Melissa Pearce as the lead. During the performance, Maya's advanced mitochondria, which had lain dormant in Melissa for eleven years, awakened and transformed her into Mitochondria Eve. As her first act against humankind, Eve killed everyone in Carnegie Hall via spontaneous human combustion, except for Aya who was immune to the effect. During the next six days, Aya fought Eve and the creatures she spawned, known as Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures or NMCs, all across Manhattan, greatly assisted by the incredible powers she started to exhibit. Aya would later discover that she was granted great power due to the fact that she possessed Maya's mitochondria (transferred to her body during the corneal transplant), but it was unable to take control of her as it did Melissa because of Aya's evolved cell nuclei. Aya fought and destroyed a strain of rapidly evolving mitochondria that threatened to enslave all humanity. Eventually, Aya engaged Eve in a showdown on Liberty Island, in which Eve was killed. After this however, she had to destroy The Ultimate Being that Eve gave birth to. After an ongoing battle between her humanity and evolution, Aya successfully managed to destroy the creature with a little help from Daniel and Kunihiko Maeda (a Japanese scientist assisting them with advice in these matters). She soon became a hero among the government ranks for her courageous acts while few civilians are aware of the details of the event. After the events in the game transpire, she, along with her friends try to make up for a lost Christmas by going to the opera at Carnegie Hall once again. During this time, Aya communicates with the entire audience's mitochondria and their eyes begin to glow a pinkish red. This leads up to this ending possibly being non-canonical, where if the player plays through the Chrysler Building and defeats the Purebred Eve, Aya will lose her mitochondrial powers (albeit gaining newer, less superior ones leading up to the sequel) thus, saving the audience as well as all of mankind once again.
A few months after Eve's rampage in New York, Aya left the force and joined a newly-formed branch of the FBI known as the Mitochondrion Investigation and Suppression Team or MIST. The purpose of MIST, based out of Los Angeles, is to hunt down and destroy any remaining NMCs. During her time as a MIST Agent, Aya had always worked alone due to the abnormality of her powers. However, though she chooses not to use them, she cannot truly hide them; she is never sick and appears younger than her biological age, as her "awakened" mitochondria find a young, healthy host advantageous and actively maintain her body in its early twenties. These psychological factors have acted as a mental block on her abilities, rendering them amazingly weak compared to her capabilities in the first game.
In early September 2000, Aya was following a lead to a tiny town of Dryfield in the Mojave Desert where she met and formed a partnership with a private investigator from Texas called Kyle Madigan. With Kyle's co-operation, Aya soon discovered a strange shadow government facility called Neo-Ark where scientists were using Aya's DNA to breed a race of Artificial Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures. To control the ANMCs, the Neo-Ark directors brainwashed a young girl named Eve, a clone of Aya. After discovering that Eve, as well as the ANMCs were all made from her, she felt obligated to "finish what she started" and once again, save humanity from an ominous fate which was ultimately the cause of her own physical existence. After the destruction of the Neo-Ark facility, as well as her "struggle" having finally ended, Aya left MIST, any documents containing information regarding the NMCs were disposed of by the US Government, she took the young Eve in, forming a motherly/sisterly bond with her, and thanks to one of her friends in MIST, Rupert Broderick, pulled some strings and created a profile for Eve saying that she's Aya's sister, no questions asked. Aya's boss, Eric Baldwin was discovered to be a mole for the shadow government and was ultimately locked behind bars for treason, courtesy of Aya learning so from another one of her friends, Pierce D. Carradine. Baldwin's place leading MIST was taken by Rupert Broderick following the inside investigation. Kyle Madigan (who disappeared after the Neo Ark events) meets with Aya and Eve in New York.
Despite being in her late thirties, Aya appears to be the age of 25 due to her advanced mitochondria. Because of this, she is also the only applicable candidate viable for the Overdive System. She has lost her memories as a result of unknown circumstances, which has led to a drastic change in personality since the first two Parasite Eve games: She is shown to be more vulnerable and fighting for unknown reasons. She has the ability to travel through time via the Overdive system, and also gained the new ability to body swap. She is the secret weapon for the human race in the fight against the Twisted. Using a machine built by the CTI, Aya returns 2 years in the past, where the Twisted first appeared. At the end of the game, it's revealed that the real Aya was destroyed by her own sister Eve Brea at Time Zero. Eve had tried to save her but accidentally developed Overdive into Aya's body, causing Aya's soul to create the Twisted and Eve's body to create the High Ones.
In the secret ending, a blond woman wishes Eve a happy birthday before disappearing into thin air as Eve searches around. Its most likely that this is the Real Aya Brea, making a final appearance by taking over someone's body (or in Eve's imagination).
Aya makes a cameo appearance in Chocobo Racing as a hidden character, using a police car as her vehicle, and has a promotional card in the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game. One of her costumes from The 3rd Birthday also serves as an alternate outfit for Lightning in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy (also voiced by Maaya Sakamoto).[5]
Critical reception of the character was positive. In 2007, Aya was included on UGO's the list of "Top 11 NYPD Cops in Entertainment".[6] In 2009, GamesRadar ranked her #6 on the list of the most "tasteful game heroines" (with a comment that "her blond hair and penchant for finding supernatural trouble" has made them "wonder if J. J. Abrams had Aya in mind when casting Fringe’s Olivia Dunham, this generation’s Dana Scully").[7] In 2010, she was ranked #32 in the Complex Magazine's list of "The 50 Hottest Women In Video Games" and was featured in the GamesRadar's list of "ladies worth scissoring".[8][9] In 2011, UGO also ranked her #3 on the list of 50 "Hot Girls We Wish Were Real".[10]
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