Helena, or Artemis, is the elder twin sister of Apollo and one of the Mythos Cyborg members present in Cyborg 009 BGOOParts Delete. She is a continuation, in a sense, of the Helena from the manga but can also be seen as an alternate universe "what if" take on such a character with many settings original to this work.
Appearance[]
Helena resembles her classic appearance very well, with a white cloak and gown, as well as golden arm and wristbands. One of the differences is that her tiara appears to be made up of pearls lined in gold, along with her earrings being pearls. Her hair is also depicted as a pure white, as opposed to the blonde of before, and she has unusually sparkly, deep blue eyes.
When utilizing her "Artemis Neural Network", Helena/Artemis' eyes turn pitch black and her clothing turns transparent in order to better show off her cybernetic ribs about to extend out from her body.
Personality[]
As before, Helena is mostly a supportive character and still loyal to the Mythos team. She believes Zeus having brought them back out has a great meaning, and that now they can truly conquer the world. However, she then becomes troubled by the aim for them to be fighting the 00 Numbers all over again in a deadly battle, and wishes there could be a stop to it.
She retains her feelings for 009 from before, though now she is more willing to use her abilities to assist her team or to take matters into her own hands.
Relationships[]
009/Joe Shimamura[]
Helena continues her love for Joe, yet knows it is unrequited and she cannot bear to bring herself to tell it to him so she has to settle upon an indirect way of conveying her message through the one he loves.
003/Françoise Arnoul[]
Helena is at odds with Françoise, who is more driven to see the Mythos vs. 00 number battle through in order to complete their mission on this parallel world. Helena pleads for her help, citing how the other 00 cyborgs treated her well when she had brought them the injured 009 back during the original battle. While Françoise would have usually agreed to find a way to stop the fighting, she tells Helena that the assignment is to wipe them out. In their clash, Helena opts to take the Dolphin hostage.
While both want an end to the fighting, Helena envies that Françoise is the one Joe seems to want. She ultimately gets the courage to head out into battle, but before leaving, kisses Françoise so that she may pass her kiss and message on to Joe the next time they're intimate.
"Before I say goodbye here...would you please close your eyes for just a little while? Please...thank you, 003. Next time when you're kissing 009, at that time, just once, I hope you'll remember my precious lips on yours."
Riko Brown[]
Helena regards the unconscious Riko fondly due to her being the granddaughter of Dr. Uranus, but regrets not being able to speak to her in person before her own impending demise. She affirms that Riko's grandfather was a great man.
Abilities[]
"As you may have noticed by now, Helena, who has been resurrected with me, is my...she is Apollo's real sister! And when she wields the ultimate power hidden within her, her true name is...ARTEMIS! Ah yes...Apollo is of the sun and the sun's twin...is Artemis of the moon! 009, back when I was about to finish you off that day, no matter how you feel, you're not a Mythos Cyborg. Do you think your weak body could have contained Apollo's mighty power? No, needless to say, that's not true! At that time, Helena used the power of Artemis to protect you! Artemis has two powers. One of them is the amplifier ability, which boosts the abilities of allies to their limits. That is the strongest support ability of the Mythos, but if she feels like it, she also has an ability that can instantly overload one and cause them to stop functioning. In other words, at that time Helena was only there to help you. She used her Artemis power to overload me and subdue me." - Apollo, about his sister
Helena/Artemis has at least three different abilities witnessed or spoken of within this series. As her brother relates, one such power is for her to amplify the others' abilities, acting as battle support and strengthening them. But her secondary ability is to be able to stop another's function in overpowering them, which she had used against her own brother before.
Another ability witnessed and the most prominent is her "Artemis Neural Network"; these cybernetic ribs extend out from her body into a set of demonic-looking wings that can stretch and attach to machinery, giving her the ability to control it to her desire. She does this when taking over the Dolphin, and later on uses this ability to pilot Atlas' discarded body.
History[]
During the Greek civil war coup of 1967, Helena and many other citizens of the country were left impoverished. Black Ghost sought an opportunity in taking advantage of the lower classes of citizens, seeing them as the perfect materials for their cyborg project. They happened upon a particular group in the country who had already lost so many to a past war, with Dr. Uranus promising the people that they could use God's power to conquer those who had oppressed them. Helena and her brother would be among these people that accepted the offer, believing they truly could become like the Greek gods, and became the Mythos Cyborgs.
A year later, they fought against the 00 Cyborgs but the battle ended in Magma sinking. Hera, under Dr. Gaia's direction, would use her powers in the last minute to teleport the other dead and wounded Mythos team members to his secret underwater laboratory in hopes they could be revived to full health again one day.
Around 50 years since the sinking of Magma, Helena and the other Mythos Cyborgs' bodies remained in stasis, waiting until the opportune time when they could wake again to fight. This, however, was believed to be an unnatural event and twist that the 00 Cyborgs had learned of happening on this particular world, and they traveled there in hopes to stop it. As Helena lay in her tube, she was eventually called upon by Hera to wake up and use her amplification abilities to heal the others to their full power.
Helena was grateful to be revived by the "Zeus System", yet grew upset by the continued battles and the memories of how things had gone before. At realizing the 00 Cyborgs intended to fight and destroy them no matter what, she took the Dolphin hostage and saw it as an opportunity to use it to an advantage for her team's side in the battle (though Apollo urged her to not interfere). Later, during a spatial interruption in the battle, Helena's connection to the Dolphin was severed, greatly injuring her body. With this and the Mythos team opting to destroy Gaia's pods so that they could no longer be healed or resurrected, the stakes in the final battle were set.
Helena, feeling troubled she came to the battle so late, would utilize her Artemis Neural Network to attach to Atlas' body and attempt to take on Gaia's killer guard robots Athena and Ares, her resolve being strengthened after they killed her brother. Unfortunately for Helena, Gaia's ultimate form of Zeus was finally awakened at full power and used the abilities of his lightning rod to split her in half and explode her and Atlas, finishing them both off.
After Zeus was eventually defeated, the 00 Cyborgs went to depart from the parallel world. Françoise, remembering the rule that they could carry nothing back from other worlds, ordered the rest of the team to close their eyes so they wouldn't see she was about to kiss Joe. The two kissed, with Françoise musing "Helena, I've left your kiss behind in this world."
Trivia[]
- While Okazaki could lightly touch upon WWII and Nazi Germany, as well as referencing the Greek civil war, he was forbidden by his editor from referencing exactly what group of people Helena and the rest of the Mythos team (save for Hera) had been as well as what sort of exact tragedies they had faced. He would revealed in a set of tweets after the release of volume 5 that he had envisioned Helena, Apollo, and other Mythos members as having been part of the surviving Jewish population of Greece, and that Helena and Apollo were put through demeaning situations with implied selling of their bodies to get by in the city. This would be why although the two of them would look like ordinary attractive young humans, Helena would be especially touched at Joe's kindness towards her as others had dehumanized her before.
- This would seem to be Okazaki's attempt of reconciling the fact that there was no Helen/Helena that was a twin of Apollo in mythology, rather being representative of "Helen of Troy" in her original incarnation, while also paying nod to the fact this character had been replaced and re-invented as the correct "Artemis" before in Ishinomori concept art for the Sunrise series as well as for the 2001 anime.