Aya Brea

Aya Brea is a player character and main protagonist in the Parasite Eve series of science fiction horror video games by Square and Square Enix. She was first introduced in the 1998 action role-playing game Parasite Eve, later returning in Parasite Eve II in 2000, and The 3rd Birthday in 2010. The character was well received by critics.

In the Parasite Eve series
Aya Brea was born in Boston, Massachusetts on November 20, 1972. She is of mixed ethnicity, as her father was of European descent and her mother, Mariko, was Japanese. Due to this, she has Asian facial features, such as the shape of her face and eyes, while possessing typically Nordic blue eyes and fair blonde hair. Aya had a sister named Maya who, along with her mother, died in an car accident in December 1977. At a very young age, she and Maya were subjects of the evil experiments of Dr. Hans Klamp. 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, who was also an experimental subject of Klamp, and Maya's malevolent mitochondria began changing Aya and Melissa's genetic structures. 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 NYPD's 17th Precinct., forming a sort of father/daughter relationship with her partner and mentor, a veteran NYPD detective Daniel "Bo" Dollis.

Within the first six months of working at the precinct, Aya becomes deeply involved in a catastrophic event later known as the New York Blockade Incident. It begins on December 24, 1997, when she goes on a date to an opera performance at Carnegie Hall, which stars Melissa Pearce as the lead. During the performance, Maya's advanced mitochondria, which had lain dormant in Melissa for 11 years, awaken and transform her into Mitochondria Eve. As her first act against humankind, Eve kills everyone in Carnegie Hall via spontaneous human combustion, except for Aya who is immune to the effect. Over the next six days, Aya battles Eve and the creatures she spawned, known as Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures (NMCs), all across Manhattan, greatly assisted by the strange powers that she starts to exhibit. Aya later discovers that she also possesses Maya's mitochondria, transferred to her body during the corneal transplantation, but it is unable to take control of her as it did of Melissa because of Aya's evolved cell nuclei. Aya joins forces with the U.S. Navy to destroy a strain of rapidly evolving mitochondria that threatens to enslave all humanity. Eventually, she engages and defeats Eve in a showdown on Liberty Island, and, with help from Daniel and Kunihiko Maeda, a Japanese scientist assisting them with advice in these matters, also manages to destroy the Ultimate Being that Eve gave birth to, becoming a hero among the government ranks. During the game's ending, Aya and her friends try to make up for a lost Christmas by going to the opera at Carnegie Hall once again. There, Aya communicates with the entire audience's mitochondria and their eyes begin to glow red. However, if the player goes 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.

A few months after Eve's rampage in New York, Aya leaves the force and joins a newly-formed branch of the FBI known as MIST (Mitochondrion Investigation and Suppression Team), based out of Los Angeles with a purpose to hunt down and destroy any remaining NMCs. During her time as a MIST agent, Aya always works 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 because of her awakened mitochondria that find a young, healthy host advantageous. These psychological factors have acted as a mental block on her abilities, rendering them much weaker as compared to the first game. In early September 2000, Aya is following a lead to a tiny town of Dryfield in the Mojave Desert, where she meets and forms a partnership with Kyle Madigan, a private investigator from Texas. With Kyle's co-operation, Aya soon discovers a shadow government facility called Neo-Ark, where scientists are using her DNA to breed Artificial Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures (ANMCs). To control the ANMCs, the Neo-Ark brainwashes a young girl named Eve, a clone of Aya. After discovering that Eve and the ANMCs were all made from her, Aya feels obligated to once again save humanity from an ominous fate which was ultimately the cause of her own physical existence. Following the destruction of the Neo-Ark facility, she leaves MIST and takes the young Eve in, forming a motherly/sisterly bond with her while her friend and the new director of MIST (the former boss, Eric Baldwin, was discovered to be a mole for the shadow government and arrested for treason), Rupert Broderick, pulls some strings and creates a profile for Eve, saying that she is Aya's sister. Kyle Madigan, who disappeared after the Neo Ark events, meets with Aya and Eve in New York.

During The 3rd Birthday, despite being in her late thirties, Aya still appears to be much younger, due to the awakened mitochondria in her cells. Because of this, she is also the only applicable candidate viable for the Overdive System. Aya 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 fights for unknown reasons. With the ability to travel through time via the Overdive System, and also having gained the new ability to body swap, Aya is the secret weapon for the human race in the fight against the new life forms called Twisted. Using a machine built by the Counter Twisted Investigation (CTI) team, Aya returns to two years in the past, when the Twisted first appeared. At the end of the game, it is revealed that the real Aya was destroyed by her own sister Eve at Time Zero, which took place during Aya's wedding to Kyle Madigan in 2010. It transpired that Eve had tried to save her but accidentally developed Overdive into Aya's body, causing Aya's soul to create the Twisted. The game's ending shows Eve in Aya's body.

Other appearances
Aya makes a cameo appearance in the racing game 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 outfits from The 3rd Birthday serves as an alternate outfit for Lightning in the fighting game Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, who is also portrayed by Aya's Japanese voice actress Maaya Sakamoto (in turn, one of Aya's own alternate costumes in The 3rd Birthday is Lightning's).

Action figures of Aya and Melissa from the original Parasite Eve game were released together in one set by Takara. An Aya wallscroll from The 3rd Birthday was released by Square Enix. Aya has also a big enough fan following to be a popular subject of cosplay.

Reception
The character of was critically well received for a variety of reasons. In 2001, Omar Ali of Gaming Target included Aya among his favourite "leading ladies in video games" for having "the right combination of looks and intelligence." In 2007, UGO listed her among the top 11 New York "cops" in all entertainment, while her guest appearance in Chocobo Racing was included in GamesRadar's 2008 list of 55 best video game cameos. In 2009, GamesRadar also ranked her sixth on the list of the most "tasteful game heroines", adding 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." In 2011, Rely on Horror listed her as one of top ten out-of-luck horror game protagonists "for experiencing several tragedies and losses at a young and impressionable age, ultimately being used as a weapon and a source of fanservice, only to die and spawn a race of terrible monsters from her body that do the very thing she was trying to stop."

Aya was also often noted for just her sex appeal. PlayStation Universe wrote: "Slender, blonde and generally easy on the eyes, it’s no wonder Parasite Eve protagonist Aya Brea has resonated so profoundly with gamers since fluttering her eyelashes for the first time on PlayStation back in 1998." In 2010, she was ranked as 32nd in the Complex Magazine's list of "hottest" women in video games, being also featured in GamesRadar's female editor's list of "ladies worth scissoring". In 2011, UGO ranked her as third on the list of "hot girls we wish were real", also ranking her shower scene in 3rd Birthday as the seventh best in all media, while Japanator included her on the list of top ten "hottest girls" of Japanese gaming. Aya won the title of "Miss of Video Games 2012" from the Polish console magazine PSX Extreme.