Helba (ヘルバ Heruba) from .hack is a professional hacker of extraordinary skills both in and out of The World.
Photo by Yenra
She uses an edited Wavemaster with a white dress with purple triangular designs and hides her eyes behind a red visor trimmed with gold. She provides help and information to some of the main characters in the storylines, though she usually works in the background. Helba's name comes from the long lost net-distributed text, the Epitaph of Twilight. She finds files of an unused town and creates a patchwork area which she names Net Slum. It is a sanctuary for Vagrant AI, trash data, and other illegal items. It is suspected that she made a brief real-life appearance in Liminality as Kaoru Asaba, a strange woman who helped Yukichin in the second episode. The info book .hack//analysis, which compiles various information regarding characters and The World, mentions that she is a working single mother of a little girl.
Voiced by: Yumi Tōma (Japanese), Mary Elizabeth McGlynn (English)