History Characters / MonsterPulse

* MakeSomeNoise: Comes with a variety of sound-based powers, such as the ability to manipulate the apparent source of people's voices (allowing for a variant of ThrowingTheDistraction), in addition to the ability to [[MakeMeWannaShout mangify sound to harmful levels]]. Also comes with the RequiredSecondaryPowers of being able to control who hears what effects (somehow).

* AmbiguousDisorder: Frequently spoke to himself, expressed violent thoughts, and was a social recluse even before his post-transformation appearance forced him to retreat entirely from society. Maugras says that his transformation changed very little about him, and suspects that his skin's "voice" is actually just a new manifestation of whatever mental problems he already had.

* AdultFear: Her daughter Bina suddenly starts behaving erratically, and she fears that Bina resents her and believes herself unwanted due to being scolded in class and overhearing her talk about how she didn't want Bina in her class.
** Later upgraded when she witnesses Ray attack her daughter right in front of her.

* AdultFear: Notices his daughter and wife behaving strangely, and they don't give him straight answers about what's going on. When he does learn what's going on, it comes right on the tail of someone attacking his daughter right in front of him, followed by the {{Masquerade}} he's just been introduced to almost being blown open (which would mean his daughter being in even more danger).

* Balloonacy: The pink goo has this ability, being able to lift Guuzy and West using bubblegum-like balloons [[ArtisticLicensePhysics not much larger than they are]].

* BaldWomen: She passes it off as being "punk rock."

* StraightGay: Eventually starts dateing Raffi.

* MinionWithAnFInEvil: She hates the situation she's in and would rather just go home if not for the fact that SHELL will only restore her to normal if she helps them. Her "attack" on the Greathouse home mostly consists of breaking in, then having a breakdown and hiding in the bathtub while her monster Luna did the heavy lifting. However, this makes her even more dangerous than the others, not less- the fear, anxiety, and rejection she feels toward her monster causes it to behave extradinarily violently.

* SacrificialLamb: Set up as a major supporting antagonist in a ThoseTwoBadGuys arrangement with Lulenski, but ends up being killed in the 4th chapter (of a planned 40). His death does continue to drive the plot afterward, though.

A young near-toddler, Enid was kidnapped along with the three teenagers for SHELL's attack plan. Her monster manifested as her head, which gained a disturbingly-large toothy mouth, the ability to grow in size, detach from her head, and [[had supplanted her personality with a much more violent one- when she was cured by the Chakra machine's first successful test she reverted back to a normal toddler's personality with very little memory of what occurred while monsterfied]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Unnamed Mouth Monster Girl]]

A young girl whose monster (also unnamed) appears to have manifested from her mouth. She appears as a background character and a test subject for the [[spoiler: half-repaired Chakra machine.]]

!!Flores

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Freaks out when he realizes that Abel spent a significant part of his life living on the streets due to him believing that he was dead.

!!Osbourne "Ozzy"

* Determinator: Her force of personality is sufficent to completely terrify Violet, preventing her from attempting to influence her mind. She ends up violently wrecking Violet's MentalWorld apparently through sheer will.

!Family Members
[[folder: Bina's Mom]]
!!Deborah Blum
Bina's mother, also her English teacher at school. She has a somewhat strained and distant relationship with her daughter as a result of this, but becomes one of the first parents to learn about the organ monsters.

* AdultFear: Her daughter Bina suddenly starts behaving erratically, and she fears that Bina resents her and believes herself unwanted due to being scolded in class and overhearing her talk about how she didn't want Bina in her class.
** Later upgraded when she witnesses Ray attack her daughter right in front of her.
* BavarianFireDrill: Follows her husband in pretending to be a government agent to get Ayo away from a crowd of people.

[[folder: Bina's Dad]]
!!Mr. Blum
Bina's dad, a record-store owner. He's LockedOutOfTheLoop for a large part of the story but eventually gets made aware of Ayo and what's going on with SHELL.

* AdultFear: Notices his daughter and wife behaving strangely, and they don't give him straight answers about what's going on. When he does learn what's going on, it comes right on the tail of someone attacking his daughter right in front of him, followed by the {{Masquerade}} he's just been introduced to almost being blown open (which would mean his daughter being in even more danger).
* BavarianFireDrill: Pretends to be a government agent to get Ayo away from a crowd of people.
* NoodleIncident: After the above-mentioned fire drill, he says that "This has been the trippiest day. It's like I'm in college again." It's never explained what exactly he did in college that would be similar to [[ItMakesSenseInContext impersonating a government agent in order to save a monster psychically linked to his daughter from a crowd of people.]]

[[folder: Julie's Mom]]
!!Mrs. Greathouse
Julie's mother, a nurse and single mother who tries to be a good parent for her multiple daughters but is often away due to the demands of her job.

* DomesticAbuse: Her (presumably [[StrugglingSingleMother former]]) husband is [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-1-chapter-11 seen]] verbally abusing her due to her weight (which she reminds him is due to medication she is taking), then shouting that he'd rather kill himself than move to Antler Pine so she can work at her new nursing job (which she only needs to get because he refuses to work himself). After this, he lies to Julie that she was the one saying hurtful things in their conversation (though Julie had already heard everything).
* SecretSecretKeeper: She knew about Kera for some unspecified period of time before the story begins, though she never knew about SHELL or the threat they posed to her daughter because she figured out Kera's nature as a monster on her own.
* OpenMindedParent: Goes along with Julie's 'cover story' for the loss of her hair (that she cut it off intentionally), and also doesn't seem too disturbed that her daughter has a monster for a friend. She asks Kera to keep Julie safe, and waits for Julie to tell her about Kera when she's ready.

[[folder: Marni]]
!!Marni Greathouse
Julie's older sister, something of a substitute parent due to their mom's long hours as a nurse.

* CoolBigSister: A substitute parental figure to Julie, and who either was entrusted with knowledge of Kera or figured it out on her own.
* SecretKeeper: Knew about Kera, and in fact was the one who suggested that name to Julie.

[[folder: Mr. [=LeBlanc=]]]
!![=LeBlanc=]
Violet's father, who had his memories of her erased and operated for some time under the illusion that he had never had a daughter. Violet later comes clean with him and

* AmnesiaMissedASpot: He suffers cognitive dissonance when trying to relate details of his life when his altered memories and actual life differ (such as being confused when he offhandedly mentions his daughter when he thinks he never had one). It's this that lets him quickly accept Violet as his daughter even though he still can't properly remember her.
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Violet erased all his memories of her in an attempt to make his life easier.
* OpenMindedParent: Is able to tell that Violet is telling the truth about being his daughter, forgives her for erasing his memory, and allows the other monster-afflicted kids and their families to use his home as a safehouse when SHELL amps up efforts to attack them. The sight of the monsters [[HeroesGoneFishing hanging out and eating chips]] in his living room still freaks him out a little, though.

[[folder: Mr. Flores]]
!!Flores
Abel's uncle and godfather who works as a freelance reporter in New York. He originally believed that Abel and his sister were both dead due to the fact that Abel had gone into hiding from SHELL, but notices that he's alive after seeing him in news coverage of Antler Pines' ghost problem and sets off to find him.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Freaks out when he realizes that Abel spent a significant part of his life living on the streets due to him believing that he was dead.
* IntrepidReporter: While his intrepid-ness and reporting are technically separate, he uses his press pass in order to skirt the quarantine on Antler Pine while trying to find Abel.

!Other Adults
[[folder:Nate]]
!!Nate
The only non-SHELL adult monster host, Nate is foul-mouthed with a temper to match (at least, initially). His monster, Lampwick, is his pituitary gland and can control his age.

* DressingAsTheEnemy: Disguises himself as a SHELL agent by stealing [[ButtMonkey Agent Dolan's]] goggles and coat. He's able to fit into the clothes despite Dolan being smaller than him by using his age-shifting ability.
* SirSwearsALot: In fact, he's the only character who swears regularly at all! Most of it is rendered as SymbolSwearing just to keep the comic family-friendly.
* {{Sizeshifter}}: Uses his monster's age control ability to do this. He changes his age to the same as Abel in an attempt to fool a SuperHearing opponent, shrinking himself to a small child to fit through a window, and becoming a young adult to fit into Dolan's stolen uniform.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: First introduced after being de-aged into a small child, and the first thing he does upon being freed is curse at his rescuers and try to smoke cigarettes.

!Other Kids
[[folder: Nancy]]
!!Nancy [[spoiler: de Witte]]
A hostile, paranoid teenager who was one of the first victims of SHELL. She started believing that the main kids were actually SHELL agents, and as a result tries to attack them multiple times before eventually forming an uneasy alliance.

* DidntThinkThisThrough: Her plan was to get SHELL shut down by breaking into their lab and releasing the ghosts, but she never considered that this was leading to more people suffering from monster infections- the same thing she originally wanted revenge for in the first place.
* {{Jerkass}}: She acts rudely and tries to attack the other kids for extremely flimsy reasons, and she releases ghosts from SHELL without ever considering that they would cause other people to experience monster infections and thus be kidnapped for SHELL experimentation.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Her break-ins at SHELL were intended to hamper the organization and lead to it getting shut down, but she never considered the harmful effects of releasing ghosts into the town, and it's arguably only due to her intervention that SHELL even had so many monster hosts to experiment on to begin with.
* TheParanoiac: Sees the kids using a beached, defunct SHELL laboratory boat as a hideout and immediately comes to the conclusion that they (a bunch of schoolchildren) are SHELL agents out to kill her. When confronted about her behavior she displays NeverMyFault tendencies that are clearly masking insecurity.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Almost every monster host is the result of her break-ins releasing ghosts. It's this sheer number of non-SHELL-affiliated hosts that leads to the kidnappings and experiments that come to define the organization.
* TheWoobie: As a couterpoint to her terrible behavior, she's clearly suffered from severe ParentalNeglect and [[spoiler: had convinced herself that]] her own mother had turned her over as a test subject for SHELL experimentation. She spent so much time being examined by SHELL that they eventually just let her go- she never escaped the facility on her own.

[[folder: Violet]]
!!Violet [=LeBlanc=]

* ComesGreatResponsibility: Refuses to ever use her memory-blanking and more powerful mental manipulation abilities again after seeing and accepting the consequences of using them the first time.
* OmniscientMoralityLicense: Subverted. She originally believed that her increased intelligence gave her this, but after realizing the immorality of her actions realizes that she's just as [[ComesGreatResponsibility vulnerable to missteps as anyone else]] (especially as she is still fundamentally a traumatized young girl).
* TheWoobie: Her monster's manifestation split her consciousness in two and forced her to repress her emotions to not suffer constant outbursts, she deleted her father's memories of her under the belief that he would be better off not knowing she existed in her current state, tried to trap the main kids in a Lotus-Eater Machine and then spend a long time constantly half-awake to project a mental field to keep her house hidden from SHELL.

[[folder: Unnamed Mouth Monster Girl]]
!!
A young girl whose monster (also unnamed) appears to have manifested from her mouth. She appears as a background character and a test subject for the [[spoiler: half-repaired Chakra machine.]]

* ChekhovsGun: Used to set up the manner in which [[spoiler: the semi-fixed Chakra machine will fuse the monster and host together, which later happens to Bina and Ayo]].
* FacialHorror: We don't get to see what her mouth looks like due to her wearing a surgical mask to cover it, but the first demonstration of the [[spoiler: still-broken Chakra Machine]] results in her monster's teeth growing in to replace hers, with the monster's grey skin spreading over her face as well. Fortunately it is immediately reversed when the test is aborted.

!Shell Personnel

[[folder: Dr. Lulenski]]
!!Dr. Wanda Lulenski
A field agent and scientist working for SHELL. Kills her partner, Roger, when he manifests an organ monster and as a result is blackmailed into working as a mole for the kids. However, she also continues to work for SHELL as a researcher and develops a close working relationship with Dr. Rjinder.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: Appears to be drinking wine from the bottle after killing Roger.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Gradually becomes more and more of a MadScientist, failing to consider the moral ramifications of her actions and growing increasingly desperate as SHELL's fortunes deteriorate.
* {{Kaiju}}: [[spoiler: Lulenski becomes one when she merges with Roger and Rjinder's remains, towering many meters above the surrounding forest.]] The author had Suzanne Geary (author of the webcomic Brainchild) design the creature so that it would look appropriately monstrous and unlike the familiar monsters who accompany the kids.
* MadScientist: Her work with Rjinder is described by Maugras as built while 'operating on some higher frequency', but she shows this beforehand when she stops in the middle of a fight between the kid's monsters and a ghost to [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-3-chapter-4 gush]] about how they're infused with [[GreenRocks arma]], and thus are [[JustThinkofThePotential exceptionally powerful weapons]].
* TheMole: The kids blackmail her into becoming one, giving them updates as to what SHELL is doing in addition to forcing her to report them all dead.
* OneWingedAngel: [[spoiler: Some time after her escape from SHELL, she's cornered by a horde of ghosts on a ship that's about to run out of power, and believes she can't return to normal society. Her response is to grant Rjinder's request to mix his remains with Roger's ghost and infect herself, which turns her into a gigantic monster.]]
* ToxicFriendInfluence: Roger and Rjinder both contribute to her JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: the former by telling her that their [[WouldHurtAChild actions]] were justified due to the children with monsters being doomed from the start, and the latter by encouraging her MadScientist tendencies and her (ultimately doomed) attempts to reanimate Roger. [[spoiler: The latter gives her an especially good push down the slope when he tells her to absorb the remnant Roger-ghost and his skin's arma essence after he dies, resulting in her transforming into a gigantic, rampaging monster.]]

[[folder: Dr. Rjinder]]
!!Dr. Micheal Rjinder
The head scientist of SHELL. Initially something of a mysterious figure, he is revealed to be one of the few adult monster hosts. While he is undoubtedly a genius, his social and moral orientation, as well as his sanity, are... questionable, to say the least.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Frequently spoke to himself, expressed violent thoughts, and was a social recluse even before his post-transformation appearance forced him to retreat entirely from society. Maugras says that his transformation changed very little about him, and suspects that his skin's "voice" is actually just a new manifestation of whatever mental problems he already had.
* BigBad: While Maugras nominally runs SHELL, Rjinder appears to have more actual authority with the field agents and is the one who causes the most problems for the kids by sending goons after them.
* BodyHorror: His monster manifests as his entire skin. Since it's no longer one continuous piece, one can see giant red seams all over his face and body where his skin can split into strips and move independently of the rest of him. Doing so also exposes him to the outside air, which both painful and somewhat dangerous [[spoiler: and it doing so extensively in order to attack people when he is knocked unconscious is implied to be the reason he wastes away and dies after escaping SHELL with Lulenski).]]
* HearingVoices: His skin acts semi-independently of him and definitely makes ''noise'', but Rjinder responds to it as if it's actually speaking to him. It's never properly established whether this was actually occurring or if his mental illness had worsened post-transformation, especially since he contradicts himself about what it's actually doing.
* MadScientist: In addition to the MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate traits listed below, it's hinted that the [[HearingVoices voice he hears]] that he thinks is his skin talking to him might actually just be a manifestation of a preexisting mental illness. Maugras later tries to examine the work he and Lulenski did on the [[spoiler: Chakra machine]] and describes them as [[TheSparkOfGenius 'operating on some higher frequency'.]]
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Though he did not originally intend for his ghost specimens to escape and start infecting children, he definitely doesn't have any moral qualms with kidnapping and experimenting on them. Also provides some extremely questionable deathbed requests to [[spoiler: Lulenski]] that result in her [[spoiler: JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope]].
* SelfDisposingVillain: [[spoiler: He dies in bed alone with Lulenski 3 weeks after escaping SHELL HQ, heavily implied to the the result of his skin exposing him to the environment when it attacked the kids.]]

[[folder: Director Maugras]]
!!Roger Maugras Sr.
The "unusually optimistic" Director of SHELL, he founded the organization and is the boss on paper but in reality is left mostly out of the loop with Rjinder's activities and his direction of the field agents. [[spoiler: Was the first person to gain an organ monster- early experiments with Arma resulted in a ghost manifesting inside his foot. In the present, he uses a prosthetic in its place.]]

* AntiVillain: Encourages his subordinates to keep deaths to an absolute minimum, not just for [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic reasons]] but also because (as Rjinder says), "the Director is an unusually optimistic man." After [[spoiler: his HeelFaceTurn, he tries to do as much as possible to limit further harm and help the victims of SHELL.]]
* BoxedCrook: [[spoiler: Ned alludes to him avoiding a jail sentence by working to undo the damage caused by SHELL as part of a plea bargain.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Though [[AntiVillain how evil he actually is]] is somewhat questionable, he does [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-7-chapter-2 state]] that he wishes SHELL's goals could be accomplished without use of the Arma chemical, due to how unpredictable and prone to collateral damage it is.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: After SHELL is discovered and shut down, he starts working as a supervisor for the kids who volunteered to work on taking out the ghosts plaguing the island, in addition to attempting to fix the Chakra machine so that the kids can be returned to normal.]]

[[folder: Ned]]
!!Field Agent Ned [=McNulty=]
A former police officer and one of the most dangerous SHELL henchmen as a result of possessing an arm monster. While he doesn't take any special pride in the work he does, he's still loyal to SHELL.

* BodyHorror: His monster is uglier and more clthulu-like than most others. It's implied to be the result of him being an adult host, meaning his lack of continuing physical development hampered the formation of the monster.
* TheDogBitesBack: After Lulenski subtly threatens his daughter, he starts recording his conversations at work and one of the first things he does after [[spoiler: SHELL's activites go public is to try to secure a plea deal using the evidence he collected. This results in him becoming the Director of the reformed ghost-fighting version of SHELL, supervising the kids as well as Maugras' work on the Chakra Machine.]]
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Loves his daughter and treats his arm-monster with respect and care. Also described as an "old friend" of Lulenski, and is shown going out drinking with her.
* PunchClockVillain: Best summed up by his cast page entry:
-> Easy-going and friendly, he nonetheless does lots of dark, violent work for SHELL.

[[folder:Agent de Witte]]
!!Ms. de Witte
A government agent serving as a liason between SHELL and their main backer, [[spoiler: DARPA]]. She is unimpressed by SHELL's long string of apparent failures and security breaches, and eventually delivers the news that [[spoiler: DARPA is withdrawing funding and shutting down SHELL.]]

* AmbiguousSituation: It's not known what exactly motivated her to behave towards her daughter like she did- it's implied she was simply unable to cope with her daughter's outburst and took Nancy's request to "never see her again" at face value, but her years-long neglect, aloof behavior, and especially her role as an important member of an organization that experiments on children also point to her being TheSociopath.
* ParentalNeglect: After Nancy was accidentally exposed to a ghost and gained Red, she accused her mother of engineering the entire situation to turn her into a test subject. Ms. de Witte's response was to abandon her to testing by SHELL before eventually arranging for Nancy to be granted a dingy apartment on the other side of town and left totally alone and unsupervised for years. When Nancy meets up with her again, she acts very cold and aloof and has almost no reaction to Nancy screaming in rage at how she was treated.
* TheScapegoat: Takes the fall for nearly all of SHELL's actions due to the fact that she was the one signing off on all their funding despite knowing about the kidnapping and experiments on children.
* TheSociopath: Maybe. She is incredibly emotionally distant towards her daughter and her neglect of her was outright criminal (Nancy, a minor, was left to her own devices and never made to go to school), but it's ambiguous if this is the result of sociopathy or being unable to deal with Nancy's rage and accusations. Ned implies to Nancy that her mother might not be capable of giving her what she needs, but it's ambiguous what exactly he meant.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Roger]]
!!Roger Maugras Jr.
The son of the Director of SHELL, a hotshot field agent with an attraction to Dr. Lulenski. Dies early on after a ghost manifests in his face. [[spoiler: Lulenski and Rjinder attempt to bring him back to life, but fail, and his "ghost" is used by Lulenski to go OneWingedAngel]].
----

* BodyHorror: We never see exactly what his face-monster looked like, but its process of manifesting was apparently so horrifying that Lulenski beats him to death with a rock to stop it.
* WeHardlyKnewYe: He dies in the 4th chapter, after three appearances.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: How he attempts to justify his job kidnapping scared kids, due to the fact that they were "already doomed" when they were infected by the ghosts. He then goes further and tries to justify his attempts to (apparently) [[WouldHurtAChild kill several of those kids]] when they prove more threatening than anticipated.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Attacks the kids' monsters with a clearly painful arma laser weapon, and his response to Bina begging him to stop is to try to [[KickTheDog kill her more directly.]] He is infected by a ghost and beaten to death shortly after. Appropriately, he saw his attempt to kill Bina as a MercyKill, as did Lulenski when she killed him.
* SacrificialLamb: Set up as a major supporting antagonist in a ThoseTwoBadGuys arrangement with Lulenski, but ends up being killed in the 4th chapter (of a planned 40). His death does continue to drive the plot afterward, though.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: Though he dies in Chapter 4, the consequences of his death and several characters [[spoiler:attempting to bring him back to life, and then the prescence of his failed "ghost"]] continue to influence the plot until the very end in ''Chapter 40'', 3 in-story years and [[WebcomicTime 9 real years]] later.

[[folder: Dolan]]
!!Agent Dolan
A newbie field agent for SHELL who's a huge fan of Lulenski. Makes occassional appearances, seemingly whenever a relatively unimportant SHELL member is needed.

Julie's hair monster. Has the ability to grow and retract at high speed, and is mostly impervious to attacks due to the fact that she has no

Bina's mother, also English teacher at her school. She has a somewhat strained and distant relationship with her daughter as a result of this, but becomes one of the first parents to [[spoiler]]

* NoodleIncident: After the above-mentioned fire drill, he says that "This has been the trippiest day. It's like I'm in college again." It's never explained what exactly he did in college that would be similar to [[ItMakesSenseInContext impersonating a government agent in order to save a monster pyschically linked to his daughter from a crowd of people.]]

[[folder: Mr. Flores]]
!!Flores
Abel's uncle and godfather who works as a freelance reporter in New York. He originally believed that Abel and his sister were both dead due to the fact that Abel had gone into hiding from SHELL, but notices that he's alive after seeing him in news coverage of Antler Pines' ghost problem and sets off to find him.

* IntrepidReporter: While his intrepid-ness and reporting are technically separate, he uses his press pass in order to skirt the quarantine on Antler Pine while trying to find Abel.

!Other Adults
[[folder:Nate]]
!!Nate
The only non-SHELL adult monster host, Nate is foul-mouthed with a temper to match (at least, initially). His monster, Lampwick, is his pituitary gland and can control his age.

* DressingAsTheEnemy: Disguises himself as a SHELL agent by stealing [[ButtMonkey Agent Dolan's]] goggles and coat. He's able to fit into the clothes despite Dolan being smaller than him by using his age-shifting ability.
* SirSwearsALot: In fact, he's the only character who swears regularly at all! Most of it is rendered as SymbolSwearing just to keep the comic family-friendly.
* {{Sizeshifter}}: Uses his monster's age control ability to do this. He changes his age to the same as Abel in an attempt to fool a SuperHearing opponent, shrinking himself to a small child to fit through a window, and becoming a young adult to fit into Dolan's stolen uniform.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: First introduced after being de-aged into a small child, and the first thing he does upon being freed is curse at his rescuers and try to smoke cigarettes.

!Other Kids
[[folder: Nancy]]
!!Nancy [[spoiler: de Witte]]
A hostile, paranoid teenager who was one of the first victims of SHELL. She started believing that the main kids were actually SHELL agents, and as a result tries to attack them multiple times before eventually forming an uneasy alliance.

* Didn'tThinkThisThrough: Her plan was to get SHELL shut down by breaking into their lab and releasing the ghosts, but she never considered that this was leading to more people suffering from monster infections- the same thing she originally wanted revenge for in the first place.
* Jerkass: She acts rudely and tries to attack the other kids for extremely flimsy reasons, and she releases ghosts from SHELL without ever considering that they would cause other people to experience monster infections and SHELL experiments.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Her break-ins at SHELL were intended to hamper the organization and lead to it getting shut down, but she never considered the harmful effects of releasing ghosts into the town, and it's arguably only due to her intervention that SHELL even had so many monster hosts to experiment on to begin with.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Almost every monster host is the result of her break-ins releasing ghosts. It's this sheer number of non-SHELL-affiliated hosts that leads to the kidnappings and experiments that come to define the organization.
* TheWoobie: As a couterpoint to her terrible behavior, she's clearly suffered from severe ParentalNeglect and [[spoiler: had convinced herself that]] her own mother had turned her over as a test subject for SHELL experimentation. She spent so much time being examined by SHELL that they eventually just let her go- she never escaped the facility on her own.

!Shell Personnel

[[folder: Dr. Lulenski]]
!!Dr. Wanda Lulenski
A field agent and scientist working for SHELL. Kills her partner, Roger, and is blackmailed into working as a mole for the kids, but also continues to work for SHELL as a researcher alongside Dr. Rjinder.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: Appears to be drinking wine from the bottle after killing Roger.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Gradually becomes more and more of a MadScientist, failing to consider the moral ramifications of her actions and growing increasingly desperate as SHELL's fortunes deteriorate.
* {{Kaiju}}: [[spoiler: Lulenski becomes one when she merges with Roger and Rjinder's remains, towering many meters above the surrounding forest.]] The author had Suzanne Geary (author of the webcomic Brainchild) design the creature so that it would look appropriately monstrous and unlike the familiar monsters who accompany the kids.
* MadScientist: Her work with Rjinder is described by Maugras as built while 'operating on some higher frequency', but she shows this beforehand when she stops in the middle of a fight between the kid's monsters and a ghost to [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-3-chapter-4 gush]] about how they're infused with [[GreenRocks arma]], and thus are [[JustThinkofThePotential exceptionally powerful weapons]].
* TheMole: The kids blackmail her into becoming one, giving them updates as to what SHELL is doing in addition to forcing her to report them all dead.
* OneWingedAngel: [[spoiler: Some time after her escape from SHELL, she's cornered by a horde of ghosts on a ship that's about to run out of power, and believes she can't return to normal society. Her response is to grant Rjinder's request to mix his remains with Roger's ghost and infect herself, which turns her into a gigantic monster.]]
* ToxicFriendInfluence: Roger and Rjinder both contribute to her JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: the former by telling her that their [[WouldHurtAChild actions]] were justified due to the children with monsters being doomed from the start, and the latter by encouraging her MadScientist tendencies and her (ultimately doomed) attempts to reanimate Roger. [[spoiler: The latter gives her an especially good push down the slope when he tells her to absorb the remnant Roger-ghost and his skin's arma essence after he dies, resulting in her transforming into a gigantic, rampaging monster.]]

[[folder: Dr. Rjinder]]
!!Dr. Micheal Rjinder
The head scientist of SHELL. Initially something of a mysterious figure, he is revealed to be one of the few adult monster hosts. While he is undoubtedly a genius, his social and moral orientation, as well as his sanity, are... questionable, to say the least.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Frequently spoke to himself, expressed violent thoughts, and was a social recluse even before his post-transformation appearance forced him to retreat entirely from society. Maugras says that his transformation changed very little about him, and suspects that his skin's "voice" is actually just a new manifestation of whatever mental problems he already had.
* BigBad: While Maugras nominally runs SHELL, Rjinder appears to have more actual authority with the field agents and is the one who causes the most problems for the kids by sending goons after them.
* BodyHorror: His monster manifests as his entire skin. Since it's no longer one continuous piece, one can see giant red seams all over his face and body where his skin can split into strips and move independently of the rest of him. Doing so also exposes him to the outside air, which both painful and somewhat dangerous [[spoiler: and it doing so extensively in order to attack people when he is knocked unconscious is implied to be the reason he wastes away and dies after escaping SHELL with Lulenski).]]
* HearingVoices: His skin acts semi-independently of him and definitely makes ''noise'', but Rjinder responds to it as if it's actually speaking to him. It's never properly established whether this was actually occurring or if his mental illness had worsened post-transformation, especially since he contradicts himself about what it's actually doing.
* MadScientist: In addition to the MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate traits listed below, it's hinted that the [[HearingVoices voice he hears]] that he thinks is his skin talking to him might actually just be a manifestation of a preexisting mental illness. Maugras later tries to examine the work he did on the [[spoiler: Chakra machine]] and describes him (and Lulenski) as [[TheSparkOfGenius 'operating on some higher frequency'.]]
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Though he did not originally intend for his ghost specimens to escape and start infecting children, he definitely doesn't have any moral qualms with kidnapping and experimenting on them. Also provides some extremely questionable deathbed requests to [[spoiler: Lulenski]] that result in her [[spoiler: JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope]].
* SelfDisposingVillain: [[spoiler: He dies in bed alone with Lulenski 3 weeks after escaping SHELL HQ, heavily implied to the the result of his skin exposing him to the environment when it attacked the kids.]]

[[folder: Director Maugras]]
!!Roger Maugras Sr.
The "unusually optimistic" Director of SHELL, he runs the organization on paper but in reality is left mostly out of the loop with Rjinder's activities and his direction of the field agents. [[spoiler: Was the first person to gain an organ monster- early experiments with Arma resulted in a ghost manifesting inside his foot. In the present, he uses a prosthetic in its place.]]

* AntiVillain: Encourages his subordinates to keep deaths to an absolute minimum, not just for [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic reasons]] but also because (as Rjinder says), "the Director is an unusually optimistic man." After [[spoiler: his HeelFaceTurn, he tries to do as much as possible to limit further harm and help the victims of SHELL.]]
* BoxedCrook: [[spoiler: Ned alludes to him avoiding a jail sentence by working to undo the damage caused by SHELL as part of a plea bargain.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Though [[AntiVillain how evil he actually is]] is somewhat questionable, he does [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-7-chapter-2 state]] that he wishes SHELL's goals could be accomplished without use of the Arma chemical, due to how unpredictable and prone to collateral damage it is.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: After SHELL is discovered and shut down, he starts working as a supervisor for the kids who volunteered to work on taking out the ghosts plauging the island, in addition to attempting to fix the Chakra machine so that the kids can be returned to normal.]]

[[folder: Ned]]
!!Agent Ned [=McNulty=]
A former police officer and one of the most dangerous SHELL henchmen as a result of possessing an arm monster. While he doesn't take any special pride in the work he does, he's still loyal to SHELL.

* BodyHorror: His monster is uglier and more clthulu-like than most others. It's implied to be the result of him being an adult host, meaning his lack of continuing physical development hampered the formation of the monster.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Loves his daughter and treats his arm-monster with respect and care. Also described as an "old friend" of Lulenski, and is shown going out drinking with her.
* PunchClockVillain: Best summed up by his cast page entry:
-> Easy-going and friendly, he nonetheless does lots of dark, violent work for SHELL.

[[folder:Agent de Witte]]
!!Ms. de Witte
A government agent serving as a liason between SHELL and their main backer, [[spoiler: DARPA]]. She is unimpressed by SHELL's long string of apparent failures and security breaches, and eventually delivers the news that [[spoiler: DARPA is withdrawing funding and shutting down SHELL.]]

* AmbiguousSituation: It's not known what exactly motivated her to behave towards her daughter like she did- it's implied she was simply unable to cope with her daughter's outburst and took Nancy's request to "never see her again" at face value, but her years-long neglect, aloof behavior, and especially her role as an important member of an organization that experiments on children also point to her being TheSociopath.
* ParentalNeglect: After Nancy was accidentally exposed to a ghost and gained Red, she accused her mother of engineering the entire situation to turn her into a test subject. Ms. de Witte's response was to arrange for Nancy to be granted a dingy apartment on the other side of town and left totally alone and unsupervised for years. When Nancy meets up with her again, she acts very cold and aloof and has almost no reaction to Nancy screaming in rage at how she was treated.
* TheScapegoat: Takes the fall for nearly all of SHELL's actions due to the fact that she was the one signing off on all their funding despite knowing about the kidnapping and experiments on children.
* TheSociopath: Maybe. She is incredibly emotionally distant towards her daughter and her neglect of her was outright criminal (Nancy, a minor, was left to her own devices and never made to go to school), but it's ambiguous if this is the result of sociopathy or being unable to deal with Nancy's rage and accusations. Ned implies to Nancy that her mother might not be capable of giving her what she needs, but it's ambiguous what exactly he meant.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Roger]]
!!Roger Maugras Jr.
The son of the Director of SHELL, a hotshot field agent with an attraction to Dr. Lulenski. Dies early on after a ghost manifests in his face. [[spoiler: Lulenski and Rjinder attempt to bring him back to life, but fail, and his "ghost" is used by Lulenski to go OneWingedAngel]].
----

* BodyHorror: We never see exactly what his face-monster looked like, but its process of manifesting was apparently so horrifying that Lulenski beats him to death with a rock to stop it.
* WeHardlyKnewYe: He dies in the 4th chapter, after three appearances.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: How he attempts to justify his job kidnapping scared kids, due to the fact that they were "already doomed" when they were infected by the ghosts. He then goes further and tries to justify his attempts to (apparently) [[WouldHurtAChild kill several of those kids]] when they prove more threatening than anticipated.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Attacks the kids' monsters with a clearly painful arma laser weapon, and his response to Bina begging him to stop is to try to [[KickTheDog kill her more directly.]] He is infected by a ghost and beaten to death shortly after. Appropriately, he saw his attempt to kill Bina as a MercyKill, as did Lulenski when she killed him.
* SacrificialLamb: Set up as a major supporting antagonist in a ThoseTwoBadGuys arrangement with Lulenski, but ends up being killed in the 4th chapter (of a planned 40). His death does continue to drive the plot afterward, though.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: Though he dies in Chapter 4, the consequences of his death and several characters [[spoiler:attempting to bring him back to life]] continue to influence the plot until Chapter ''38'', 3 in-story years and [[WebcomicTime 8 real years]] later.

[[folder: Dolan]]
!!Agent Dolan
A newbie field agent for SHELL who's a huge fan of Lulenski. Makes occassional appearances, seemingly whenever a relatively unimportant SHELL member is needed.

* AscendedExtra: Has a throwaway appearance in Chapter 10, followed by getting MuggedForDisguise in Chapter 26, then shows up again in Chapter 34 and on as one of the only remaining SHELL exployees after [[spoiler: SHELL reforms into a ghost-fighting organization]].
* ButtMonkey: First shown as an AscendedFanboy to Lulenski, who isn't particularly thrilled to have a follower. During the infiltration of SHELL, Nate steals her coat and goggles and Red shoves her in a closet and locks her in stasis, after which Nate impersonates her (including giving her name as his own) to both Lulenski and the ''Director of SHELL'' without rasising suspicion.

* FunnyAfro: Though he's more straight-laced than the trope might imply. [[spoiler: He loses the afro in chapter 31, and currently has not regained it.]]

* StreetUrchin: Grew up on the streets of Antler Pine after his parents and sister all died and he had to hide from SHELL (and his surviving relative) to survive.

* BigFriendlyDog: What Kera acts like most of the time.
* HidingInPlainSight: Does this a few times, such as serving as Julie's [[ForHalloweenIAmGoingasMyself Halloween costume]] and pretending to be a blanket inside the Greathouse home (though it turns out Julie's mom already knew about her).
* KillItWithFire: [[spoiler: Monster-Enid tries to kill Kera by setting her on fire with a match. Julie manages to save Kera's head, but the experience causes her to becomes withdrawn and terrified of losing Kera]].
* MeaningfulName: Kera, as in "Keratin", the material that hair is made out of. Julie says that her older sister came up with it.

* EyeBeams: They're made out of condensed light (and arma energy, given their ability to harm ghosts) and his ability to fire them is limited by his access to light.

* AllBalloonsHaveHelium: His balloon goo's balloons have bouyancy despite having no obvious source of helium.
* Balloonacy: The pink goo has this ability, being able to lift Guuzy and West using balloons [[ArtisticLicensePhysics not much larger than they are]].
* CartoonCreature: Applies to most of the monsters, but Guuzy is specifically noted for making no physical sense, with functional limbs and eyes despite the fact that, as a stomach, he has no bones or (skeletal) muscle.
* HealingShiv: Guuzy can produce healing goop that instantly restores injuries. Since he's a stomach monster, he applies it by vomiting onto his target.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Pretended to be a useless blob during SHELL's experiments, causing them to pay almost no attention to him or Nancy after they left their lab.

* RapidAging: He defends Nate from [[spoiler: one of monster-Lulenski's skin minions]] by aging it to death, at the cost of incredibly Nate's age slightly.

A English teacher at Bina's school

* BavarianFireDrill: Follows her husband in pretending to be a goverment agent to get Ayo away from a crowd of people.

!Other Adults
[[folder:Nate]]
!!Nate
The only non-SHELL adult monster host, Nate is foul-mouthed with a temper to match (at least, initially). His monster, Lampwick, is his pituitary gland and can control his age.

* DressingAsTheEnemy: Disguises himself as a SHELL agent by stealing [[ButtMonkey Agent Dolan's]] goggles and coat. He makes use of his
* SirSwearsALot: In fact, he's the only character who swears regularly at all! Most of it is rendered as SymbolSwearing just to keep the comic family-friendly.
* {{Sizeshifter}}: Uses his monster's age control ability to do this: changing his age to the same as Abel in an attempt to fool a SuperHearing opponent, shrinking himself to a small child to fit through a window, and becoming a young adult to fit into Dolan's stolen uniform.
* TroublingUnchildlikeBehavior: First introduced after being de-aged into a small child, and the first thing he does upon being freed is curse at his rescuers and try to smoke a cigarette.

!Other Kids
[[folder: Nancy]]
!!Nancy de Witte

!Shell Personnel

[[folder: Dr. Lulenski]]
!!Dr. Wanda Lulenski
A field agent and scientist working for SHELL. Kills her partner, Roger, and is blackmailed into working as a mole for the kids, but also continues to work for SHELL as a researcher alongside Dr. Rjinder.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: Appears to be drinking wine from the bottle after killing Roger.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Gradually becomes more and more of a MadScientist, failing to consider the moral ramifications of her actions and growing increasingly desperate as SHELL's fortunes deteriorate.
* {{Kaiju}}: [[spoiler: Lulenski becomes one when she merges with Roger and Rjinder's remains, towering many meters above the surrounding forest.]] The author had a friend design the creature so that it would look appropriately monstrous and alien from the familiar monsters who accompany the kids.
* MadScientist: Her work with Rjinder is described by Maugras as built while 'operating on some higher frequency', but she shows this beforehand when she stops in the middle of a fight between the kid's monsters and a ghost to [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-3-chapter-4 gush]] about how they're infused with [[GreenRocks arma]], and thus are [[JustThinkofThePotential exceptionally powerful weapons]].
* TheMole: The kids blackmail her into becoming one, giving them updates as to what SHELL is doing in addition to forcing her to report them all dead.
* OneWingedAngel: [[spoiler: Some time after her escape from SHELL, she's cornered by a horde of ghosts on a ship that's about to run out of power, and believes she can't return to normal society. Her response is to grant Rjinder's request to mix his remains with Roger's ghost and infect herself, which turns her into a gigantic monster.]]
* ToxicFriendInfluence: Roger and Rjinder both contribute to her JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: the former by telling her that their [[WouldHurtAChild actions]] were justified due to the children with monsters being doomed from the start, and the latter by encouraging her MadScientist tendencies and her (ultimately doomed) attempts to reanimate Roger. [[spoiler: The latter gives her an especially good push down the slope when he tells her to absorb the remnant Roger-ghost and his skin's arma essence after he dies, resulting in her transforming into a gigantic, rampaging monster.]]

[[folder: Dr. Rjinder]]
!!Dr. Micheal Rjinder
The head scientist of SHELL. Initially something of a mysterious figure, he is revealed to be one of the few adult monster hosts. While he is undoubtedly a genius, his social and moral orientation, as well as his sanity, are... questionable, to say the least.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Frequently spoke to himself, expressed violent thoughts, and was a social recluse even before his post-transformation appearance forced him to retreat entirely from society. Maugras says that his transformation changed very little about him, and suspects that his skin's "voice" is actually just a new manifestation of whatever mental problems he already had.
* BigBad: While Maugras nominally runs SHELL, Rjinder appears to have more actual authority with the field agents and is the one who causes the most problems for the kids by sending goons after them.
* BodyHorror: His monster manifests as his entire skin. Since it's no longer one continuous piece, one can see giant red seams all over his face and body where his skin can split into strips and move independently of the rest of him. Doing so also exposes him to the outside air, which both painful and dangerous [[spoiler: and it doing so extensively in order to attack people when he is knocked unconscious is implied to be the reason he wastes away and dies after escaping SHELL with Lulenski).]]
* HearingVoices: His skin acts semi-independently of him and definitely makes ''noise'', but Rjinder responds to it as if it's actually speaking to him. It's never properly established whether this was actually occurring or if his mental illness had worsened post-transformation.
* MadScientist: In addition to the MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate traits listed below, it's hinted that the [[HearingVoices voice he hears]] that he thinks is his skin talking to him might actually just be a manifestation of a preexisting mental illness. Maugras later tries to examine the work he did on the [[spoiler: Chakra machine]] and describes him (and Lulenski) as [[TheSparkOfGenius 'operating on some higher frequency'.]]
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Though he did not originally intend for his ghost specimens to escape and start infecting children, he definitely doesn't have any moral qualms with kidnapping and experimenting on them. Also provides some extremely questionable deathbed requests to [[spoiler: Lulenski]] that result in her [[spoiler: JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope]].
* SelfDisposingVillain: [[spoiler: He dies in bed alone with Lulenski 3 weeks after escaping SHELL HQ, heavily implied to the the result of his skin exposing him to the environment when it attacked the kids.]]

[[folder: Director Maugras]]
!!Roger Maugras Sr.
The "unusually optimistic" Director of SHELL, he runs the organization on paper but in reality is left mostly out of the loop with Rjinder's activities and his direction of the field agents. [[spoiler: Was the first person to gain an organ monster- early experiments with Arma resulted in a ghost manifesting inside his foot. In the present, he uses a prosthetic in its place.]]

* AntiVillain: Encourages his subordinates to keep deaths to an absolute minimum, not just for [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic reasons]] but also because (as Rjinder says), "the Director is an unusually optimistic man." After [[spoiler: his HeelFaceTurn, he tries to do as much as possible to limit further harm and help the victims of SHELL.]]
* BoxedCrook: [[spoiler: Ned alludes to him avoiding a jail sentence by working to undo the damage caused by SHELL as part of a plea bargain.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Though [[AntiVillain how evil he actually is]] is somewhat questionable, he does [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-7-chapter-2 state]] that he wishes SHELL's goals could be accomplished without use of the Arma chemical, due to how unpredictable and prone to collateral damage it is.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: After SHELL is discovered and shut down, he starts working as a supervisor for the kids who volunteered to work on taking out the ghosts plauging the island, in addition to attempting to fix the Chakra machine so that the kids can be returned to normal.]]

[[folder: Ned]]
!!Agent Ned [=McNulty=]
A former police officer and one of the most dangerous SHELL henchmen as a result of possessing an arm monster. While he doesn't take any special pride in the work he does, he's still loyal to SHELL.

* BodyHorror: His monster is uglier and more clthulu-like than most others. It's implied to be the result of him being an adult host, meaning his lack of continuing physical development hampered the formation of the arm.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Loves his daughter and treats his arm-monster with respect and care. Also described as an "old friend" of Lulenski, and is shown going out drinking with her.
* PunchClockVillain: Best summed up by his cast page entry:
-> Easy-going and friendly, he nonetheless does lots of dark, violent work for SHELL.

[[folder:Agent de Witte]]
!!Ms. de Witte
A government agent serving as a liason between SHELL and their main backer, DARPA. She is unimpressed by SHELL's long string of apparent failures and security breaches, and eventually delivers the news that [[spoiler: DARPA is withdrawing funding and shutting down SHELL.]]

* ParentalNeglect: After Nancy was exposed to a ghost and gained Red, she accussed her mother of engineering the entire situation to turn her into a test subject. Ms. de Witte's response was to arrange for her to be granted a dingy apartment on the other side of town and left alone and unsupervised for years. When Nancy meets up with her for the first time in years, she acts very cold and aloof and has almost no reaction to Nancy screaming in rage.
* TheScapegoat: Takes the fall for nearly all of SHELL's actions due to the fact that she was the one signing off on all their goverment funding despite knowing about the kidnapping and experiments on children.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Roger]]
!!Roger Maugras Jr.
The son of the Director of SHELL, a hotshot field agent with an attraction to Dr. Lulenski. Dies early on after a ghost manifests in his face. [[spoiler: Lulenski and Rjinder attempt to bring him back to life, but fail, and his "ghost" is used by Lulenski to go OneWingedAngel]].
----

* BodyHorror: We never see exactly what his face-monster looked like, but its process of manifesting was apparently so horrifying that Lulenski beats him to death with a rock to stop it.
* WeHardlyKnewYe: He dies in the 4th chapter, after three appearances.
* IDidWhatIHadToDo: How he attempts to justify his job kidnapping scared kids, due to the fact that they were "already doomed" when they were infected by the ghosts. He then goes further and tries to justify his attempts to (apparently) [[WouldHurtAChild kill several of those kids]] when they prove more threatening than anticipated.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Attacks the kids' monsters with a clearly painful arma laser weapon, and his response to Bina begging him to stop is to try to [[KickTheDog kill her more directly.]] He is infected by a ghost and beaten to death shortly after. Appropriately, he saw his attempt to kill Bina as a MercyKill, as did Lulenski when she killed him.
* SacrificialLamb: Set up as a major supporting antagonist in a ThoseTwoBadGuys arrangement with Lulenski, but ends up being killed in the 4th chapter (of a planned 40). His death does continue to drive the plot afterward, though.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: Though he dies in Chapter 4, the consequences of his death and several characters [[spoiler:attempting to bring him back to life]] continue to influence the plot until Chapter ''38'', 3 in-story years and [[WebcomicTime 8 real years]] later.

[[folder: Dolan]]
!!Agent Dolan
A newbie field agent for SHELL who's a huge fan of Lulenski. Makes occassional appearances, seemingly whenever a relatively unimportant SHELL member is needed.

!Kids

** The first day we see her: She is scolded by her teacher (who is also her mother) for drifting off and drawing dinosaurs during class, then comes to the conclusion that her mother resents her when she overhears her tell others teachers how she wishes Bina wasn't assigned as her student. Then, she encounters a ghost and experiences it tearing her heart from her body and tranforming it into a monster. While she survives this relatively unharmed, she is then immediately kidnapped by SHELL, who inject her with dangerous chemicals to "stabilize" her and attempt to experiment on her heart, and after being broken out of captivity she is forced to remain silent to her parents and the authorities for fear of being attacked by SHELL agents again.

* GenkiGirl: She routinely breaks out of shady laboratories, isn't fazed by the idea of organs as monsters walking around (she actually seems thrilled by it) and only panics for a second when threatened by a creepy arm monster before deciding to fight it.
* JumpedAtTheCall: Is rather gleeful when taking part in adventures related to fightin SHELL and its ghosts. She initially expressed skepticism of West's idea to form a ghost-hunting team, but decides to go along with it because she's his friend.
* TenMinuteRetirement: Julie withdraws entirely from both her duties [[spoiler: as a member of the official ghost-fighting organization]] and her friends because she was terrified of seeing Kera almost burned to death as well as confused about changes within herself. She comes back just in time to [[spoiler: save West and Rafi from Rafi's new liver monster.]]

!!Abel

* HarmfulToMinors: Abel has apparently been living on the run from SHELL for a long time, and it shows. He has trouble showing emotion and becomes nearly hysterical at the prospect of being found by SHELL. This extends to the point that he is willing to threaten the lives of others to stay hidden from SHELL. In addition, when he witnesses Roger's murder by Lulenski, he immediately breaks down crying due to having seen this before [[spoiler: when he accidentally killed his sister]].

!Shell Personnel
[[folder: Dr. Lulenski]]
!!Dr. Wanda Lulenski
A field agent and scientist working for SHELL. Kills her partner, Roger, and is blackmailed into working as a mole for the kids, but also continues to work for SHELL as a researcher alongside Dr. Rjinder.

* INeedAFreakingDrink: Appears to be drinking wine from the bottle after killing Roger.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Gradually becomes more and more of a MadScientist, failing to consider the moral ramifications of her actions and growing increasingly desperate as SHELL's fortunes deteriorate.
* {{Kaiju}}: [[spoiler: Lulenski becomes one when she merges with Roger and Rjinder's remains, towering many meters above the surrounding forest.]] The author had a friend design the creature so that it would look appropriately monstrous and alien from the familiar monsters who accompany the kids.
* MadScientist: Her work with Rjinder is described by Maugras as built while 'operating on some higher frequency', but she shows this beforehand when she stops in the middle of a fight between the kid's monsters and a ghost to [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-3-chapter-4 gush]] about how they're infused with [[GreenRocks arma]], and thus are [[JustThinkofThePotential exceptionally powerful weapons]].
* TheMole: The kids blackmail her into becoming one, giving them updates as to what SHELL is doing in addition to forcing her to report them all dead.
* ToxicFriendInfluence: Roger and Rjinder both contribute to her JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: the former by telling her that their [[WouldHurtAChild actions]] were justified due to the children with monsters being doomed from the start, and the latter by encouraging her MadScientist tendencies and her (ultimately doomed) attempts to reanimate Roger. [[spoiler: The latter gives her an especially good push down the slope when he tells her to absorb the remnant Roger-ghost and his skin's arma essence after he dies, resulting in her transforming into a gigantic, rampaging monster.]]

[[folder: Dr. Rjinder]]
!!Dr. Micheal Rjinder
The head scientist of SHELL. Initially something of a mysterious figure, he is revealed to be one of the few adult monster hosts. While he is undoubtedly a genius, his social and moral orientation, as well as his sanity, are... questionable, to say the least.

* BigBad: While Maugras nominally runs SHELL, Rjinder appears to have more actual authority with the field agents and is the one who causes the most problems for the kids by sending goons after them.
* BodyHorror: His monster manifests as his entire skin. Since it's no longer one continuous piece, one can see giant red seams all over his face and body where his skin can split into strips and move independently of the rest of him. Doing so also exposes him to the outside air, which both painful and dangerous [[spoiler: and it doing so extensively in order to attack people when he is knocked unconscious is implied to be the reason he wastes away and dies after escaping SHELL with Lulenski).]]
* HearingVoices: His skin acts semi-independently of him and definitely makes ''noise'', but Rjinder responds to it as if it's actually speaking to him. It's never properly etablished whether this was actually occurring or if his mental illness had worsened post-transformation.
* MadScientist: In addition to the MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate traits listed below, it's hinted that the [[HearingVoices voice he hears]] that he thinks is his skin talking to him might actually just be a manifestation of a preexisting mental illness. Maugras later tries to examine the work he did on the [[spoiler: Chakra machine]] and describes him (and Lulenski) as [[TheSparkOfGenius 'operating on some higher frequency'.]]
* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Though he did not originally intend for his ghost specimens to escape and start infecting children, he definitely doesn't have any moral qualms with kidnapping and experimenting on them. Also provides some extremely questionable deathbed requests to [[spoiler: Lulenski]] that result in her [[spoiler: JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope]].
* SelfDisposingVillain: [[spoiler: He dies in bed alone with Lulenski 3 weeks after escaping SHELL HQ, heavily implied to the the result of his skin exposing him to the environment when it attacked the kids.]]

[[folder: Director Maugras]]
!!Director Maugras
The "unusually optimistic" Director of SHELL, he runs the organization on paper but in reality is left mostly out of the loop with Rjinder's activities and his direction of the field agents. [[spoiler: Was the first person to gain an organ monster- early experiments with Arma resulted in a ghost manifesting inside his foot. In the present, he uses a prosthetic in its place.]]

* AntiVillain: Encourages his subordinates to keep deaths to an absolute minimum, not just for [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic reasons]] but also because (as Rjinder says), "the Director is an unusually optimistic man." After [[spoiler: his HeelFaceTurn, he tries to do as much as possible to limit further harm and help the victims of SHELL.]]
* BoxedCrook: [[spoiler: Ned alludes to him avoiding a jail sentence by working to undo the damage caused by SHELL as part of a plea bargain.]]
* EvenEvilHasStandards: Though [[AntiVillain how evil he actually is]] is somewhat questionable, he does [[https://www.monster-pulse.com/comic/page-7-chapter-2 state]] that he wishes SHELL's goals could be accomplished without use of the Arma chemical, due to how unpredictable and prone to collateral damage it is.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: After SHELL is discovered and shut down, he starts working as a supervisor for the kids who volunteered to work on taking out the ghosts plauging the island, in addition to attempting to fix the Chakra machine so that the kids can be returned to normal.]]

[[folder: Ned]]
!!Ned [=McNulty=]
A former police officer and one of the most dangerous SHELL henchmen as a result of possessing an arm monster. While he doesn't take any special pride in the work he does, he's still loyal to SHELL.

* BodyHorror: His monster is uglier and more clthulu-like than most others. It's implied to be the result of him being an adult host, meaning his lack of continuing physical development hampered the formation of the arm.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Loves his daughter and treats his arm-monster with respect and care. Also described as an "old friend" of Lulenski, and is shown going out drinking with her.
* PunchClockVillain: Best summed up by his cast page entry:
-> Easy-going and friendly, he nonetheless does lots of dark, violent work for SHELL.

[[folder: Roger]]
!!Roger Maugras
The son of the Director of SHELL, a hotshot field agent with an attraction to Dr. Lulenski. Dies early on after a ghost manifests in his face.