A 25-year-old police officer whose life changes when a date At The Opera Tonight (Tonight being Christmas Eve 1997) goes horribly wrong. As the only person to not not-so-spontaneously combust upon the awakening of Mitochondria Eve, she struggles to understand and rein in her own bizarre powers while racing to stop Eve from giving birth to the Ultimate Being and destroying and/or forcibly evolving humanity in the process. She's immune to Eve because they share donor organs from her twin, Maya. More on that further down.
But Not Too Foreign: Half-Japanese, mostly to tie her to the events of the novel directly. Specifically, her mother, Mariko, was the girl in the novel who gave birth to the original Ultimate Being.
Dead Little Sister: Her twin, Maya. The deaths of Aya's mother and Maya was Aya's motivation to become a detective.
Eye Remember: Maya's cornea (which possessed Eve's mitochondrial power) was transplanted into Aya's right eye, and Aya's visions are actually Maya's last memories.
Hyperspace Arsenal: Said gun is always a pistol in cutscenes, but may range up to and including a rocket launcher during gameplay with no encumbrance penalty.
Aya: "Maya. I was always waiting...waiting for you to come home with mom. And I've always been looking for the other "me". But you were always right there with me Maya...ALWAYS, all this time."
Small Girl, Big Gun: She can equip large rifles and finds a rocket launcher about 3/4 into the game. In the sequel one of her unlockable weapons is a portable railgun that sends her back a few feet whenever she fires it!
Mitochondria Eve
A mysterious, ancient evil that takes over the body of opera singer Melissa Pearce and sets about her master plan to reverse humanity's symbiotic relationship between the nucleus (banks of genetic information that dictate what cells grow where and when) and the mitochondria (organic powerplants that fuel cellular activity). To this end, she dissolves a solo performance crowd at Central Park into raw genetic material and allies with Melissa's former doctor, Hans Klamp, to procure sperm for her Enfant Terrible, the Ultimate Being. Was carried by mitochondria in donor organs from Maya Brea that Melissa received, and allowed to awaken after Melissa pushed her body to its absolute limit via excessive doses of transplant-preserving immunosuppressants. Her "original" form is in the body of Maya, which is the final encounter at the top of the Chrysler Building.
Barbie Doll Anatomy: Several of her later forms feature breasts that lack nipples, along with creative obfuscation of the pubic area.
Bishonen Line: She hits this plateau in her evolution fairly quickly and to an extent repeatedly, and for a freakish mutation, she looks disturbingly Fetish Fuel-worthy.
Hannibal Lecture: Loves giving these during her We Can Rule Together speeches to Aya, rambling about how the nucleus is long overdue for a subversion of its smug superiority over the mitochondria.
Hoist By Her Own Petard: Never did expect that the evolution she so fervently sought would produce her own superior on the food chain...
Aya's partner and Black Best Friend; combined, the manual refers to them as the "Father and Daughter Team" of the NYPD's 17th Precinct. His introduction is a Dynamic Entry that sets the tone for his take-no-nonsense approach to the Eve case, along with his determination to thwart any mundane threat that sets its eyes on Aya or his son Ben.
Amicably Divorced: Despite apperances, Daniel and Lorraine remain close. He takes her death as hard as any loving spouse would. It turns out that Lorraine was considering patching their family back together.
Heroic Sacrifice: Leaps from a helicopter and burns up in Eve's wake, all to deliver some Depleted Phlebotinum Shells to assist Aya in the battle. Subverted when he survives his wounds.
Lethal Chef: According to Aya in the sequel, he is a terrible cook.
Married to the Job: The reason why Lorraine left him in the first place.
Sink or Swim Fatherhood: Lorraine divorced him a year before the game starts, leaving him sole custody of their son Ben.
Benjamin Dollis
Daniel's son, in the custody of his ex-wife Lorraine due to his long hours on the force. Initially planned to reunite the family at Melissa Pearce's Central Park solo concert, but Eve's awakening changed all that. Along with Lorraine, into part of the mito-mass that became the Ultimate Being's uterus. Likes dogs, and is quickly introduced to the K-9 unit's Sheeva, which goes about as well as you'd expect for a game reveling in its high levels of Transformation Trauma.
Chief of the NYPD 17th. Joined the force at about the same time as Daniel, and still maintains casual terms with him despite their difference in rank. Takes care of Ben while Daniel and Aya are on the scene in Central Park, only to get himself injured protecting him from the mutated Sheeva.
Da Chief: Despite not having any Cowboy Cops to his name, he's still pretty gruff - evident when Aya lets a little too much slip during a press conference on the Carnegie Hall fire investigation.
We Used To Be Friends: His imperious ways rub Daniel raw. They used to be partners before Kenneth was promoted.
Kunihiko Maeda
Japanese biologist and walking Infodump for the events of the novel, who hopped the first plane to New York when he heard of the fire at Carnegie Hall. After rescuing Aya following her clash with Eve at Central Park, he relates the tale of the original Eve's attempt to birth an Ultimate Being and discovers the reason behind Aya's immunity to the current Eve. Afterwards, his main role is dispensor of inventory space-wasting good luck charms, including one literal Chekhov's Gun.
Chekhov's Gun: Gives you a weak handgun late in the game. Combined with the bullets mentioned below, it becomes a lethal weapon against the final boss. Appears in the sequel as the Mongoose.
Stop Helping Me!: The trinkets are actually Square's hamfisted way of making sure you have a space reserved for the Maeda Bullets at the very end. You can leave old ones in storage as you acquire new ones and the Narita just magically turns into the Maeda Crate when it's time.
Torres Owens and Wayne Garcia
Caretakers of the 17th's weapons storage area. Torres is hell-bent on making sure guns are used responsibly, having sworn off using them since his daughter died in a mishap with a loaded one. This tends to make him clash loudly with apprentice Wayne, an adherent to the More Dakka school of gun control. Both provide Aya with the facilities to modify weapons and armor to increase their bonus slots, and space to store unneeded items.Wayne, not being allowed to handle the guns without supervision, takes to collecting gun trading cards instead. Feed his hobby following Torres's death during the raid on the precinct and you'll eventually be rewarded with the Infinity Plus and/orMinus One Toolkits.
Shout Out: They return (sort of) as proprietors of the Lindblum Synthesis Shop in Final Fantasy IX, and reprise their argument when you first walk in: Wayne believes the key to victory is superior weaponry, where Torres puts his faith in superior armor.
Anthropologist at the Museum of Natural History, who is mysteriously at work despite both the Christmas holiday and an evacuation of Manhattan following Eve's audience liquification event at Central Park. Oversaw the operations that transplanted Maya Brea's organs into Aya and Melissa, supplied Melissa with enough immunosuppressants to let the mitochondria in Maya's kidney take her over as Eve, and removed the mitochondria from his sperm to make it prime material for fertilizing the Ultimate Being. Apparently has been pulling a Long Con and considered a variety of potential organ recipients for creating the UB, as Lorraine Dollis is listed on the same HLA list that he pilfered from St. Francis Hospital.
Is dead. Aya keeps having visions and flashbacks of her as she pursues Eve, though. Is also the Bonus Boss. Aya's visions are due to having received a transplant from Maya. Aya had a defect in her right eye since birth, and received Maya's cornea as a transplant. Which is how Aya will later in life acquire her mitochondrial powers.
Ace operative of the FBI's anti-mitochondrial mutant task force, MIST (Mitochondrion Investigation and Suppression Team), formed following reports of Eve's mutated animal minions spreading out from Manhattan. Three years since what has become known as the "N.Y. Blockade" incident, Aya's journey to destroy the newly-monikered "Neo-Mitochondrion Creatures" (NMCs) and put a seal on her own unpredictable powers has led her to Los Angeles. However, an investigation into an NMC outbreak near the ghost town of Dryfield, Nevada will hit closer to home than she ever imagined...See most above tropes listed for Aya, plus:
The new Daniel. Still black, still badass, and about the same aptitude at dealing with NMCs and twisted humans alike.See Daniel's tropes above. Yes, even Dynamic Entry.
Dead Little Sister: He lost his family during the N.Y. Blockade incident. Now he dedicates his life to exterminating neo-mitochondrion creatures.
Revolvers Are Just Better: He wields the Mongoose at the start of the game, which he gives to you only if you're on the Sad Ending route.
Pierce Carradine
Somewhere between "The new Wayne" and "The new Maeda" falls MIST's resident computer whiz. Though he just plain Doesn't Like Guns, that's about the only hindrance to his assistance to Aya via Hollywood Hacking or item delivery.
Treacherous Advisor: Is in on the Neo-Ark Project, and may have helped procure Aya's cellular samples to assist them in cloning this newest breed of NMCs.
Jodie Bouquet
Runs MIST's BP shop (Bounty Points, not British Petroleum). Depending on how well you play the game, this may be all you remember her for.
Arms Dealer: She's your armory/item shop at the start.
The last living resident of Dryfield (excepting his dog, Flint, and the hordes of NMCs Aya's come to clean out). A Vietnam vet with a gun collection big enough to claim the title of "The new Wayne", he helps Aya resupply during the investigation despite being compensated in some newfangled RPG currency rather than cold hard cash. After Aya's car is totaled by a herd of NMCs, he also volunteers his truck to get her and Kyle (below) to an old nuclear shelter that may be the source of the infestation.
A so-called private detective Aya encounters in Dryfield, claiming to be looking into strange shipments going into a nearby nuclear shelter once owned by a doomsday cult. Since he's one of the few Escort Mission escortees in the business who doesn't suck for some reason or another, Aya teams up with him to discover the shelter's connection to the new NMCs. Is a Double Agent for what's left of the Neo-Ark group, hired to bring Aya so that she could open the pathway to a runaway test subject. In turn, he was planted in Neo-Ark by the U.S. government, to pinpoint their Ultimate Being analogue for destruction via orbital railgun.
A Taste of Power: When teaming up with Aya for combat sequences, usually wields a cool weapon from the next shopping tier or two up.
Shoot the Dog: Was going to kill Eve but Aya stops him, as she saw that Eve was just a scared little girl who didn't want to be used as a power/control source anymore.
We Cannot Go On Without You: Game Over for Aya if Kyle loses all 100 of his non-healable Hit Points. (Thankfully, he's not as screwed as he looks during the first major battle of Disc 2.)
Number 9
As the main series page calls him, "a Gunblade-slinging rooftop-hopping ape-like zombie cyborg supersoldier" who masterminds an NMC outbreak at the Akropolis shopping center and is apparently the last sentient resident of the Neo-Ark shelter - his colleagues having either become NMCs themselves in some half-assed transhuman orgy or been killed by said voluntary converts. Hired Kyle, whether of his own will or at Baldwin's request, to escort Aya to Neo-Ark so she would eventually disable various barriers that his "queen" had erected around herself.
BFS: Though his use of a Gunblade is more memorable, he DID pack a mean randomly-on-fire machete during his first showdown with Aya.
Elite Mook: Not all that evident, with anything resembling a Big Bad proper already dead.
You Are Number Six: Though practically revelling in the inhumanity that this trope entails.
Eve
Wondered when she'd show up, eh? Don't expect the Nietzsche Wannabe of the last game, however - the new Eve's a Mysterious Waifcloned from Aya herself and raised in isolation with the shittiest children's toys known to man - all to heighten her sense of fear and self-preservation as the eventual living engine for Neo-Ark's not-quite-an-Ultimate-Being. At least her teddy bear's halfway normal. She gets absorbed into the final boss, but Aya manages to save her. With Rupert's help, Aya adopts the girl as a sister. Eve also apparently lost most of her power, but overall she's quite well-adjusted and is going to school in the end.
Powered by a Forsaken Child: She was created to be used as a living power source for Neo Ark's Ultimate ANMC.
We Cannot Go On Without You: There's one sequence where Aya must escort her out of a room that is slowly being filled with poison gas. Eve cannot defend herself at all, and if her HP hits 0, the game is over.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Her "play room" was deliberately designed to frustrate her, and those loudspeakers in the walls that keep Aya from using her powers? They were meant for Eve.
Younger than They Look: She has the appearance of a 10 year old girl, but was presumably "grown" in a much shorter amount of time.
from The 3rd Birthday
Aya Brea
The 30-something year old protagonist of the game, a former police officer who looks much younger than she is because older women apparently can't be cool. Three years before the start of the game she woke up outside a church bloodstained wedding dress without any memories except that her name was "Aya". She was found by Hyde Bohr, and joins his effort to combat the Twisted by using her "Overdive" ability to mentally travel into the past. Aya Brea is actually 'Eve' Brea, having hijacked her sister's body accidentally during Aya's wedding. Eve's well-intentioned act has unintended consequences as Aya's soul is shattered—creating the Twisted—and her abandoned body mutates five of the wedding guests into the High Ones.
Limit Break: Liberation mode, in which Aya's powers break free of their limitations, letting her dual-wield, dance circles around enemies and fire very powerful energy blasts. Can come with a Dangerous Forbidden Technique (Inferno, which is Cast from Hit Points) if the player is inclined.
Stripperific: Although she always wears her default outfit in cutscenes, some of the other outfits that she can wear are quite revealing, and that's before taking damage.
Aya's clone turned adopted little sister. Also the character you're really playing as.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: To try to save her during the assault at her wedding, Eve Overdrives into the badly wounded Aya, but that ends up confusing her own memories and shattering Aya's psyche into time/space, which somehow creates the NMC-like Twisted, the Aya-like High-Ones, and a stable timeloop.
