Tower of Animus application

[arise_within_you]

Player Information

Name: Joh
Personal Journal: volition
Age: 27
Contact Info: love.a.riddle@gmail.com
Other Characters Played: Link (to the Past), Eriko Kirishima (Persona 1), Maya Amano (Persona 2)

Character Information

Character Name: Aya Brea
Character Series: Parasite Eve
Character Age: 28
Character Gender: Female
Original Universe
Canon Point: A few months after the events of Parasite Eve 2, before any of the events in The 3rd Birthday.
Background Link: Parasite Eve Wikia
Parasite Eve is a weird series.

First, there's a science fiction novel by Hideaki Sena. Some lady in Japan has like super-advanced mitochondria, and apparently mitochondria evolved humans into what they are today because mitochondria are a parasite that provides the energy cells need to mutate into higher life forms. Or something. And this lady, Kiyomi, gets into a car accident. Her kidney goes to a young girl named Mariko who Eve (the consciousness of the mitochondria) decides to choose to become pregnant with the Ultimate Life Form.

Meanwhile, Kiyomi's husband goes insane and tries to resurrect Kiyomi by harvesting and culturing her liver cells. Eve uses the liver cells to manifest into a new being so she can take care of her Ultimate Life Form inside of Mariko. Stuff happens, and eventually Eve burns down to a crisp and the mitochondria lose. It's all very, very confusing.

Then Squaresoft decided to make a video game based off of this premise starring the totally kickass Aya Brea. Eve makes a reappearance years later in New York. Aya's twin sister, Maya, had highly advanced mitochondria as well - when they were young, the family got into a car accident. Maya's cornea went into Aya, and her kidney went into Melissa Pearce, who later became an opera singer. One fateful night, Aya went to the opera with an unnamed loser, and guess who was performing? It's at that moment that Eve decided to take over Melissa's consciousness and burn everybody in the theater into a crisp, except for Aya who happened to be immune since Aya had the exact same mitochondria in her eye (even though she and Maya were twins, apparently that wasn't enough despite the fact that mitochondrial DNA is only passed through the mother. Whatever). Aya's mitochondria also awakened, leading her to use MAGIC through the power of SCIENCE such as shooting fireballs and healing and stuff (Squaresoft, that is not how science works).

Oh, and Aya's a cop. So while New York is panicking at the outbreak of Neo Mitochondrial Creatures at the beck and call of Eve, Aya's kicking ass and taking names across New York City while she's hunting down Eve and figuring out what exactly she's doing. Apparently Eve was in the process of making another Ultimate Life Form, and Aya manages to kill her and it. Sort of. Depending on which ending you get. The weird thing about Parasite Eve games is that they tend to have more than one ending, and the sequels make no sense if you choose just one ending. The best idea we have on what's canon in the first game is that Aya beat up Eve, skipped going to the opera a second time (in which Eve's warning that Aya is the same at her manifests and Aya's eyes glow all creepy), and went straight to the Chrysler Building to deal with Eve's abomination of an offspring. And instead of her powers being completely sealed as a result of defeating the Ultimate Being, they lay somewhat dormant as Aya is seen using Parasite Energies in the sequel. Oh, and it's canon that Aya pretty much punches a T-Rex in the face, thus killing it.

Oh, right. The sequel. In Parasite Eve 2, Aya is now part of the FBI, in a super secret division known as MIST, or Mitochondrion Investigation and Suppression Team. Squaresoft also decided to rip off Resident Evil, but whatever. What happens is that the FBI is incompetent and can't send backup, like, ever and Aya comes across a super-secret government laboratory deep underground in Nevada that houses a plethora of Articial Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures, the most notable of all being a clone of her dead twin sister (and of herself?) who comes to be known as "Eve". Yeah, the games never explicitly state what Eve is. It's one of the gaping plot points that never gets resolved even though Parsite Eve is a series full of amazing.

And there's the infamous shower scene.

By the end of the game, Aya adopts Eve as her little sister and gets a stupid love interest, but we forgive him because he's voiced by that hot Supernatural guy. Eventually. Basically, the second game raises more questions than it answers. And it's skewed since it doesn't answer any questions, and only raises them. And none of these are addressed in The 3rd Birthday.

Right, The 3rd Birthday never happened. NEVER HAPPENED. IT IS NOT CANON. Seriously.

Personality:
The compound word that describes Aya in a nutshell is "bad-ass". There really exists no more a concise or succinct explanation of the sheer amazing that is Aya Brea. She wields guns, she uses MAGIC through the power of SCIENCE, she's the main heroine who doesn't need saving, has an amazing dead-pan sense of humor, and she kills T-Rexes like it's nothing. I mean, there's absolutely nothing about her that isn't ten kinds of awesome.

The first time we see Aya, she's in a black evening gown and attending an opera with an unnamed man (who later proves to be an absolute loser). She's stylish, she's educated, she's refined, sophisticated, and formal - and once all goes to Hell and Eve incinerates pretty much everybody inside of the Carnegie Hall, Aya pulls out a gun, knocks her date aside, and goes after Eve to find out what the Hell's going on. Aya has a sense of social responsibility, and became a cop in order to protect the peace. One may assume that this sense of responsibility came from her past, as her twin sister and mother died in a car accident when she was young.

As the protagonist of a horror-survival series of video games, Aya fills the role fairly well - she encounters all sorts of crazy creatures from mutant rats and tyrannosaurus rexes to mutant horses, dogs, giant fat slobs that breathe fire, and organic power generators - all without batting an eyelash. Aya is pretty much fearless in the face of monstrosities, which may be explained that she views herself as a monstrosity as well; after the events in New York with Mitochondrial Eve, Aya prefers to work alone since she doesn't like the way people look at her, like she's some sort of abomination.

Even before that, however, Aya is a lone wolf. She rarely gets close to anybody, as evidenced by the fact that even the people she works with had no idea that she had a twin sister when she was younger. It's actually pretty much a miracle she went out on a date in the beginning of the first game, though we could probably assume that it was a set-up between friends since we never heard of Aya having a significant other until The 3rd Birthday. Aya is a serious woman, and is married to her job - her responsibilities come first, and although she has a bit of a sardonic sense of humor, she gets the job done before anything else.

Despite this, it's obvious to see that Aya gets along well with children. Children have a difficult time being insincere, so Aya never has to wrack her brain with wondering what they really want - with adults, there's so much to do with politics and passive-aggression that Aya tends to not deal with them. It doesn’t help that the majority of the people she encounters on the job turn out to be incompetent idiots, either. In the first game, her unnamed date simply freaks out once most of the audience explodes into flames, to the point that Aya bumps him out of the way with her hips and goes after Eve herself. In the second game, Pierce Carradine is an idiot, the weapons supplier Jodie is an idiot, her boss Baldwin is an idiot who can never send backup, Kyle Madigan FRICKIN' SHOOTS HER and somehow ends up to be her canon love interest, really. If you had to work with the people that Aya had to work with, it'd be a lot easier to dismiss people and just take it upon yourself to kick ass rather than build a reliance on anybody else.

Jaded as Aya tends to think she is and pretends to be, she's still capable of being surprised at how disgusting humanity is capable of becoming. In the second game, when the government was making Artificial Neo-Mitochondrial Creatures of all types and sizes, she's easily shocked when confronted with the idea that the government has been using her DNA to make these monstrosities. It's a bit difficult for Aya to believe in the good of mankind when she's been confronted with some of the worst of it.

As infamous and fan-servicey as the shower scene in Parasite Eve 2 was, it was also a fairly powerful tool for character development. In both of the early games, Aya works nonstop at what she does. The first game takes place over a few days, playing them back to back with little time for any rest whatsoever (and the lockdown on new York doesn't help much, either). In the second game, it also takes place in the span of a few days, and Aya's busy working during most of it. The shower scene shows that she's exhausted, works without respite, and even when she's trying to relax with a shower, a big giant blob with a flamethrwower lodged within its mouth decides to attack the hotel she's staying at! No rest for the weary, indeed. The shower scene in the third game, though more graphically appealing, does not carry any of this connotation and is just there for fantasy and objectification fodder. It also says a lot that the first two games don't let Aya dress up in different costumes or have many minigames - she's very focused and doesn't stop until the immediate threat is taken care of.

Though Aya tends to come off as detached to most other characters she meets, you also have to keep in mind that 90% of the people Aya meets are absolute morons. The other ten percent, like Rupert (and to an extent, Maeda from the first game - but he's also creepy, as are most Japanese mad scientists) Aya holds respect for, though she continues to have her snarky monologues. Then again, Kyle Madigan is her canon love interest, and there's really no real in-character reason for her to fall for the guy (okay, sure, he made the grand sacrifice at the end to become a wanted man to help Aya and Eve, but he was a dick for the entirety of the story beforehand). If anything, Aya does have feelings and finds guys hot (and I'm assuming her mitochondria want her to have progeny as well in order to further the evolution of the species), but she's by no means boy crazy, either.

Long story short, Aya encompasses a kickass female protagonist who doesn't need to rely on a man. She is confident, self-assured, and gets things done without wasting time on things like high school drama or love triangles. She has her wits about her, and when she's short on sorts she relies on magic SCIENCE to power through her opponents. She's amazing and awesome.

Abilities:
Aya's mitochondria are "awakened", meaning that she's able to do things that normal humans cannot. For one, ever since her mitochondria awoke, Aya's body has ceased aging ever since she was 25. It's because it's what her "mitochondria want, as they want a fit host". So it can be assumed that she's somewhat close to immortal in that regard unless she takes a lot of damage or has her head lopped off. And she still worries about eating fattening ice cream even though her mitochondria would probably still make her fit. Oh, and apparently having awakened mitochondria means that Aya gets SUPER SPECIAL ABILITIES that border on supernatural. Given that her abilities from the first game are more or less sealed off after the ending in the Chrysler Building route, Aya has a completely different set of Parasite Energies in the second game, which is what I'll consider her abilities to be for game play purposes.

Because it's Squaresoft, Aya's Parasite Energies are divided into four elemental categories: fire, wind, water, and earth. Fire specializes in raw damage, as apparently in the series mitochondria's special ability is spontaneous combustion. Wind (or rather, lightning) does damage as well, but concentrates more on status effects or other effects than raw damage. For instance, a lightning spell can blast anything within a radius of Aya's being upon initiation and stun an enemy group with minimal effort. Water is the regenerative ability tree, used for healing. Earth is used for defense and status buffs.

Shamelessly ripped from here. This is also a handy guide as to what Aya is capable of aside from fire arms.

Fire Parasite Energy
Pyrokinesis - Shoots a heat ball towards an enemy target through her hands.
Combustion - Activates mitochondria in the enemy's skin, causing its combustion. Causes burns and difficulty of cutaneous breathing. Burns body fat, melting an enemy like a candle. Aya sweeps a cone like area in front of here with immense heat for a moment that catch and causes burns on any enemies whether behind an object or not.
Inferno - Great conflagration. Uses radioactive isotopes to cause nuclear fission. Destroys the target at molecular level. Aya engulfs every enemy in the room with ash-leaving heat.

Wind Parasite Energy
Necrosis - Electric discharge. Aya fires of a blast of electricity directly affecting some vital point on the target's body depending on its current stage. Inflicts "Poison".
Plasma - Aya casts a large blast of air that knocks down and/or stuns almost any enemy within the designated area. Generates ions that cause a powerful detonation. The waves of the explosion cut down the enemy. THE MOST USEFUL THING LIKE EVER.
Apobiosis - Aya targets enemies nervous systems with electric discharges.

Water Parasite Energy
Metabolism - Instantly cures status ailments. Increases corporal metabolism. Locates, neutralizes and eliminates bacilli instantly.
Healing - Turns mitochondria into energy, causing fast regeneration. Instantly heals a portion of Aya's health.
Lifedrain - Fully controls mitochondria of nearby enemies, forcing them to produce energy that Aya's mitohondria uses to heal her wounds.

Earth Parasite Energy
Antibody - Aya creates a small protective shield around herself that will fade over time. Sucks up the Earth's magnetism, creating a covering which practically neutralizes the enemy's attack.
Energy Shot - Increases damage done by the weapon Aya is currently using. Effective, cuts down ammo waste, but wears off within a minute or two. Every shot fired carries a package of cancerous mitochondria increasing damage dramatically.
Energy Ball - Aya creates a small barrier that controls a small orb used for both attacks and defense. Creates three superconductors which rotate elliptically in a magnetic field, hitting the target.

However, as stated before, Aya tends to not use her Parasite Energies unless she's alone, as she doesn't like working with people because people give her "looks because she's different". That's why she gets amazing shotguns, grenade launchers, sniper rifles, and machine guns. So it's safe to say that she's proficient in the use of fire arms. She also gets a sweet-ass gun-blade from Final Fantasy VIII. Some sort of cross-series promotion, but it is amazing.

Really, though, Aya's true strength lies in her personality. She's not a damsel in distress - she kicks ass and takes names, even before her mitochondrial powers kicked in. The only real weakness there is that because she's a lone wolf and a solitary soldier, so she tends to not want to work with others. It's been theorized that it could be survivor's guilt - given that a lot of people have died during the course of her adventures, she's a bit more reckless as she doesn't feel the "right" to survive.

Because Aya's had a cornea transplant, I'm assuming she had to have immunosuppressants. But she's never stated to having to take them, and I'm too lazy to Google whether corneas are exempt from this or not (or if the whole twin thing had something to do with it or - you know. Mitochondria). In any case, Aya's not taking any medication, nor will she need to within the tower for this purpose.

Sample Entry:
It felt a bit weird having such a domestic lifestyle after everything that had happened. Before going to pick up Eve, Aya knew that she had to begin preparing the ingredients for dinner. Cooking was never one of the things she was well known for, but it was cheaper than eating out and it was easier to monitor Eve's nutrition this way as well. There was no telling how Eve's body was different from a normal girl's, and Aya hadn't really discussed with her the challenges of being "different"... but she seemed like any other girl, attending middle school and loving it. Aya almost hated to admit it, but Eve was even better at school work than she was.

That's right - school work. They had plans to go to the Museum of Natural History together so that Eve could write a report on it, didn't they? Aya recalled the last time she entered that museum - it was under vastly different circumstances, and Aya couldn't help but laugh at the very notion that she had to fight a T-Rex. It's like it was taken straight out of a bad science fiction novel!

Providing a stable home for Eve, when Aya wasn't able to have one after the deaths of her mother and Maya... Aya felt a pang of guilt, as she paused from chopping vegetables and taking a look outside of the apartment window. It was only a matter of time before they would find them. It wasn't a matter of "if", but "when" - Aya knew this, but she didn't want Eve to worry. Young girls shouldn't have such problems - they needed to worry about grades, where to hang out after school, and which boy to crush on. Aya never had any of that, being pushed from foster home to foster home.

A knock on the door shocked her out of her thought process, and instinctively she whipped out a pistol she kept hidden underneath the counter before approaching the door. Peering through the peep hole, Aya gave a sigh of relief as she locked her gun, placed behind her out of sight, and answered the door. "I gave you the rent money earlier this morning, Mr. Bergman. In cash."

"Oh, right," the elderly gentleman scratched his head. "Sorry about that."

Aya nodded farewell as she closed the door, and locked it. Several times with different locks. She knew they wouldn't do much against anybody serious, but at least it'd deter most things, giving her enough time to arm herself.

It was all for Eve. She wouldn't be nearly this worried if she was living alone by herself. She looked so much like her, Aya couldn't help but treating her as if Maya had come back to life.

Looking at the clock, it was time. Aya cleaned up in the kitchen, and got ready to pick Eve up from school.