The final stage of the hero's journey. It is complicated and confusing because in 3rd Birthday we learn that we have not played as Aya Brea but as her sister Eve in her body. I want to include this as part of the monomyth and so it should be noted that the Ultimate Boon from the second part of the Hero's journey resulted in Aya's death. This section of the monomyth focuses on Eve's journey while she is in Aya's body. Additionally, I wanted to include it because Eve is Aya's physical clone.
Return
The refusal to return is the opposite of the one of the first steps, the refusal to the call (Kemp 2011). Believing that she is Aya, Eve continues through her journey to find out the truth behind Eve's death and Kyle. She struggles to find out why she killed her sister and decides to head to ground zero, the creating of the twisted. Once there, she realizes that she is in fact Eve and that she had killed Aya. She refuses to return, at first unsure of how to atone for her mistakes. But she does so to see Aya again, if only to apologize (Toriyama 2010). She hopes that returning to ground zero she will be able to save both Aya and Kyle as well as the CTI agents who gave their lives to help her while she was fighting the twisted.
The magical flight is usually a flight from the journey back into the natural world. Usually this also encompasses the rescue from without in which the hero needs assistance returning to the normal world (Kemp 2011). Eve's magical flight comes from her ability to overdrive. She becomes determined to venture into ground zero to stop her sister's death from happening. She overdrives back into the past to stop Hyde and the Twisted. She reappears in the church in her own body to see the military break in. She cannot do this alone however, and she must overcome Hyde to get back there. With the help of Clay, Gabrielle, Blank, and Kyle, she is afforded the power to stop Hyde and venture back to the moment that she wants (Toriyama 2010). This is her rescue from without.
The return threshold is the last step the hero must take to return to the natural world (Kemp 2011). Eve returns to the threshold when she overdrives back into her own body. She lies on the floor and hears the gunshots, she watches her sister stand up and kill Hyde (Toriyama 2010). She is back at the beginning where her own journey started with the desire to save Aya from dying at the altar.
As one of the only people who can overdrive Eve becomes the the master of two worlds – the past and the present. Aya overdrives into Eve and requests that the younger sister shoot her. This will prevent the twisted from being created. In tears, Eve does as she is asked as Aya mentions her only regret is that she cannot finish her vows (Toriyama 2010).
The last two steps of the journey are sharing the knowledge and the freedom to live (Kemp 2011). Eve does not share the knowledge as much as Aya does. Aya allows Eve to know the full truth of what is going on, that when Eve tried to save her she created the overdrive ability and in doing so shattered Aya's soul. Aya holds no hatred or anything towards her little sister and instead insists that she live (Toriyama 2010). With Aya's death the twisted are defeated and peace had returned, there is no longer the worry of New York being overrun by monsters. With the older sister's death, the younger wishes to do the one thing her sister couldn't. In Aya's body she tries to finish the vows her sister started but Kyle asks her what she's doing, addressing her specifically as Eve. He then tells her to live her life and that he will go search for Aya. Eve is free to live exactly as she wishes now with no regrets (Toriyama 2010).
Although the journey spans both sisters, I would argue that because Eve is Aya's physical clone it might be an acceptable stretch to include it. 3rd Birthday deals with the idea that Aya has amnesia and is much more timid and unsure of herself than in Parasite Eve I and II, we find out near the end of the game this is because we have been playing as Eve. She merely thought she was Aya. It is for that reason that I used Eve in the last step of the monomyth comparison.
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