open/close all folders
Main Kids
Bina
Bina Blum
The first of the kids we are introduced to, she starts as a normal 13 year old, before being attacked by a ghost, which rips her heart out of her body and transforms it into a hulking monster she calls "Ayo". She is then kidnapped by SHELL, the Government Conspiracy responsible for creating it, and after escaping their facility is gradually introduced to other similarly-afflicted kids and their monsters, with whom she eventually takes up a de-facto leadership position.Provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Starts out with no clue about SHELL's activities in her town, but mananges to escape their lab with Julie's help with relatively little difficulty.
- Blessed with Suck: Ayo is essentially a large Flying Brick, but since Ayo is Bina's heart, any injury Ayo sustains hurts Bina as if her heart had been attacked directly. Because of the level of power she has, SHELL also puts special priority on capturing or 'disposing' of her and her friends.
- After her transformation, she's become incredibly powerful, but the trauma she sustained up to this point, in addition to the fact that she died, result in her being stuck in a dissasociative fugue where days pass like hours, which later develops into Heroic Safe Mode. She also behaves tactlessly towards her allies even more than she already was.
- Cursed with Awesome: After her clinical death and fusion with Ayo, she is shown to possess powerful telekinesis, potential immortality, and the ability to borrow other monster's ablities when in contact with them. She also grows physically larger by at least a foot as a result of the transformation.
- 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 Mental World apparently through sheer will."There is a strength in you. A will. That strength makes it difficult to be near you. You are a kind person, but it is easy to feel that strength and become wary of you. It is, at times, blinding. It makes it more difficult to know the right things to say. Many sense that strength, without understanding what it is."
- Emergency Transformation: When Ayo is stabbed in the chest during a ghost attack, Bina passes out and is declared medically dead, but is revived by the Chakra machine being used to fuse her and a barely-still-alive Ayo back together. This combines their physical features and grants her Psychic Powers, as well as letting Ayo speak to her internally. In addition, Maugras theorizes that she's now biologically immortal.
- Heroic Safe Mode: After she is revived, she spends almost all of her time in this state. She loses several days' worth of time, and while she later starts acting on her own again, she is rude and tactless to her allies and tries to dismiss their importance in an attempt to protect them.
- Heroic Vow: Makes one
relatively early on to protect all of her friends. - The Leader: Her determination to figure out what is happening to her, what SHELL is up to, and to get the other Arma kids working together for their mutual benefit cements her status as the unofficial leader of their little group.
- Organ Autonomy: Her heart is a sentient monster named Ayo that exists separately from her body but maintains a synchronous connection to her. Ayo has Flying Brick powers and can generate arma at will, but Bina is incredibly vulnerable because her body will act as if her actual heart was damaged whenever Ayo is hurt.
- Talk to the Fist: Her first response to Abel threatening to kill Ayo is to calmly walk out of her house and punch him in the face.
- Trauma Conga Line: Happens to her repeatedly.
- 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 discovered by SHELL.
- Has another not long afterward: She gets attacked by SHELL again, freaks out when Ayo gets shot and drops into a lake, watches Ayo possibly kill Abel by throwing the boat he's on into a forest, then Roger tries to kill her, and then she has to witness Lulenski beat Roger to death with a rock when he starts manifesting a face-monster.
- Much later on in the story, she is killed when Luna's attack on a ghost is reflected back and mortally wounds Ayo. The broken Chakra device is used to fuse them together, tranforming her into an amalgamation of herself and Ayo. She repeatedly loses several days to disassociative fugues while recovering, and is interrupted in the middle of a heart-to-heart with Abel by Lulenski transforming into a giant monster. Then, when setting out to fight Lulenski, she learns that Abel was not honest with his intentions to move out of town, and then has trouble speaking to Ayo just before initiating the fight.
Julie
Julie Greathouse
Julie is an unflappable Plucky Girl who helps Bina escape from the SHELL lab. She boasts a great deal of experience dealing with SHELL, and is the host of Kera, a hair monster with stretching and regenerative abilities. She often treats the things the kids go through as an adventure, and is a constant fixture of the team until she ducked out briefly due to fear for Kera.Provides examples of:
- Delinquent Hair: She passes being bald off as being "punk rock."
- Genki Girl: She routinely breaks out of SHELL's lab, beats up their (adult) security offscreen, 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.
- Jumped at the Call: Is rather gleeful when taking part in adventures related to fighting SHELL and the 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 and quickly becomes more enthusiastic about it.
- 10-Minute Retirement: Julie withdraws entirely from both her duties as a member of the SHELL ghost-fighting team 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 save West and Rafi from Rafi's new liver monster.
West
Desmond West
An optimistic boy with a stomach monster named Guuzy.Provides examples of:
- Beware the Nice Ones: Quickly comes up with the idea to blackmail Dr. Lulenski by recording her while she beats Roger to death. He's also the one who disposes of Roger's corpse afterward, though he didn't do it entirely willingly.
- Blessed with Suck: Guuzy has a versatile set of abilities, but West can't eat normally anymore. Trying to eat makes him nauseous. This ends up having some very stifling effects on his relationships and social life, considering how many routine gatherings involve food and drink.
- Blackmail: Records Dr. Lulenski killing Roger and forces her to lie to SHELL about the events of that day (including the kid's survival) and inform him of SHELL's activites.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Chapter 1 shows a stomach as one of the organs manifested by the initial six ARMA escapees. Chapter 2 shows Lulenski and Roger reminiscing of a kid with curly hair with a monster erupting from his midsection. Chapter 3 finally introduces West and Guuzy, his stomach monster.
- Friendless Background: West. He was found by an ARMA ghost when he was trying to make a friend in Julie (another found her at the same time), and she later spurs him into action by pointing out that he really wants to have friends.
- Jumped at the Call: Is the first to suggest that the kids start actively working against SHELL and using the boat's equipment to fight escaped ghosts, and imagines a For Great Justice-style team dynamic.
- Last-Name Basis: Most of his friends call him West. Possibly due to seeing Desmond as an Embarrassing First Name, but we don't really hear his opinion on it. Julie apparently didn't even know it until he told Dr. Lulenski.
- The Pollyanna: Initially, at least, he is relentlessly cheery and treats getting his stomach monster and fighting SHELL like a game, gushing about having the opportunity to fight bad guys and save people. This doesn't last.
- Straight Gay: Eventually starts dating Raffi.
- Stepford Smiler: The other kids frequently accuse West of not understanding how serious the situation is and even occasionally say that he doesn't have real problems, unlike them. Usually they do this on a day where his very-much-extant problems have flared up hard, but because he tries to make the best of a situation and is fairly diffident about expressing his negative feelings, he stews in silence.
Abel
Abel Flores
A homeless street urchin who was attacked by a ghost and gained an eye-monster named Rixis some time before meeting the rest of the kids. Maintains an aloof and unfriendly demeanor, at least at first, as a result of his traumatic history and fear of SHELL.Provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: He didn't know how organ monsters worked when he saw a ghost form a monster out of his sister's lungs. He causes her death by tearing it open with a stick.
- Cain and Abel: Accidentally kills his sister by attacking her lung-monster after a ghost attaches to her, not knowing that attacking the monster harms the corresponding body part of the host.
- Harmful to Minors: 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 (though he later admits he was not capable of actually following through with this). In addition, when he witnesses Roger's murder by Lulenski, he immediately breaks down crying due to having seen this before when he accidentally killed his sister.
- I Work Alone: Abel, at first. He grows out of it after spending more time with the group and dating Violet.
- Street Urchin: Grew up on the streets of Antler Pine after his parents and sister all died and he had to hide from SHELL (and as a result, his godfather) to survive.
Monsters
Ayo
Ayo
Bina's monster, formed out of her heart. One of the most powerful monsters, shown to be stronger, faster, and larger than most others, is able to fly, in addition to being able to generate large amounts of raw arma energy. However, Ayo is also one of the most vulnerable monsters due to being manifested from an incredibly vital organ.Provides examples of:
- Flying Brick: Ayo's powerset. Though she has the flying, strength, and speed for sure, it's not shown directly how durable she is, as the only things shown to actually harm her are arma-based weapons and other monsters.
- Meaningful Name: "Ayo", as in aorta, the largest artery in the body directly connected to the heart. Though in-universe, Bina actually named her after the vocalizations Ayo makes.
- Power Incontinence: Not normally, but she "beats" in time with Bina's actual heart rate. Also, her "arma jets" are shown to sometimes ignite involuntarily when Bina's emotions flare up. When Bina is incredibly angry due to Ray attacking her parents and insulting Abel, the resulting flare-up causes Ayo to fly into view of a crowd of people.
Kera
Kera
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 internal structure that can be damaged.Provides examples of:
- Big Friendly Dog: Kera looks and acts like this, despite not being a dog.
- Hiding in Plain Sight: Does this a few times, such as serving as Julie's Halloween costume and pretending to be a blanket when inside the Greathouse home (though it turns out Julie's mom already knew about her).
- Kill It with Fire: 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 become withdrawn and terrified of losing Kera.
- Meaningful Name: Kera, as in "Keratin", the material that hair is made out of. Julie says that her older sister Marni came up with it.
Rixis
Rixis
Abel's eye-monster, resembling some kind of small winged serpent with the ability to shoot lasers made from ambient light.Provides examples of:
- Animal Eye Spy: Is the animal, in this case, though unusually for this trope it's actually Rixis who can control when Abel can see what he does.
- Eye Beams: They're made out of condensed light (and perhaps arma energy, given their ability to harm ghosts) and his ability to fire them is limited by his access to light.
- Handicapped Badass: His wing getting slashed by Rjinder's skin renders him unable to fly. However, Rixis still continues to fight monsters with Abel by coiling around his arm and acting like an Arm Cannon or Laser Sword.
- Super-Senses: Sight, of course.
Guuzy
Guuzy
Desmond West's stomach monster. Has the ability to produce several different kinds of "goo", but his absence from West's body means he can't eat food for himself any more and has to feed Guuzy to survive.Provides examples of:
- All Balloons Have Helium: His balloon goo's balloons have buoyancy despite having no obvious source of helium or lighter-than-air gas, and demonstrate much greater lift than their size would indicate despite this.
- Balloonacy: The pink goo has this ability, being able to lift Guuzy and West using bubblegum-like balloons not much larger than they are.
- Cartoon Creature: 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 proper muscles.
- Healing Shiv: Guuzy can produce healing goop that instantly restores injuries. Since he's a stomach monster, he applies it by vomiting.
- Hollywood Acid: One of Guuzy's powers, as befitting a stomach monster. Though it's one of his least-used powers due to how dangerous it is.
- Made of Explodium: His blue sticky goo explodes violently when Rixis shoots it with one of his lasers.
Red
Red
Nancy's monster, formed from her blood and at least some other portions of her circulatory system. Has a range of abilites, which Nancy keeps hidden from SHELL due to fearing what would happen to her if they found out.Provides examples of:
- Superpower Lottery: One of the more versatile monsters, including Super-Speed, Rubber Man-style body manipulation, the ability to freeze people in a Crystal Prison, generate giant barriers, and heal Nancy's injuries.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Pretended to be a useless blob during SHELL's experiments, causing them to fail to realize how powerful he was and to pay almost no attention to him or Nancy after they left the lab.
Wilbur
Wilbur
Ned's arm-monster. Is quite creepy-looking and antagonizes the kids due to his host being a SHELL agent, but is shown to be weaker than average due to his host being an adult.Provides examples of:
- Body Horror: When attached to Ned, he superficially resembles a normal arm, but has a tentacled Lamprey Mouth in the place of a hand and has an eye on the forearm area. Also, when he's separated from Ned it's shown that what appeared to be large stitches holding Wilbur on to Ned's shoulder are actually a set of skittering, insect-like legs.
- Punny Name: He's a monster made out of Ned's right arm. In other words, 'Wilbur [W]right'.
Lampwick
Lampwick
A pituitary gland monster belonging to an adult named Nate. Since the pituitary gland secrets hormones that influence the aging process, Lampwick has the ability to control Nate's age.Provides examples of:
- Fountain of Youth: Has control over Nate's age, reducing him to the age and size of a young child when he first manifests. He's shown to be able to change Nate to anything between his real age and early childhood, at the least.
- Rapid Aging: He defends Nate from one of monster-Lulenski's skin minions by aging it to death, at the cost of increasing Nate's age slightly.
Greenie
Greenie
A small vocal chord monster belonging to Bea Nyguen. Has powerful sound-based powers, but like her host is small and physically vulerable.Provides examples of:
- Make Some Noise: 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 Throwing the Distraction), in addition to the ability to magnify sound to harmful levels. Also comes with the Required Secondary Powers of being able to control who hears what effects (somehow).
- Meaningful Name: Named "greenie", and looks like a green slug-shaped plushie.
Drummer
Drummer
A small flesh-colored ear-monster belonging to Ozzy, Drummer features metallic parts as a result of Ozzy's piercings.Provides examples of:
- Breaking Old Trends: The only monster seen so far to have a natural skin tone that matches that of the host.
- Killed Off for Real: Drummer dies as a result of being chopped apart by Rjinder's beserk skin. Ozzy permanently loses his left ear and an unknown amount of his ear canal and is in danger of bleeding to death before Maugras saves him.
- Shock and Awe: For unexplained reasons (perhaps the fact that he originates from an ear with piercings?), Drummer has the ability to generate large amounts of electricity. However, doing so prevents him or Ozzy from being able to hear anything for a brief period of time.
- Super-Hearing: Grants Ozzy superhuman hearing.
- Meaningful Name: "Drummer", in reference to eardrums.
Cav
Cav
A big, gorilla-like tooth monster created from one of Ray's front teeth. Similar in size and strength to Ayo, but significantly more durable as a result of being made from a hardier organ, and also a non-vital one (so damage to Cav can't kill Ray).Provides examples of:
- Super-Strength: Strong enough to pick up and throw Ayo.
- Meaningful Name: "Cav", in reference to tooth cavities.
Luna
Luna
A sharp-limbed, animalistic and violent creature created from Claire's spine. She and Luna did not get along at all, with the subconscious mental connection between monster and host being a source of immense stress for them both.Provides examples of:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Luna's forelimbs are sharp enough to slice Kera apart like butter, and also end up actually puncturing Ayo in the chest during a failed attempt to kill a mutated ghost.
- Fastball Special: Gets picked up and thrown by Ayo as part of an attempt to kill the mutated ghost, but the ghost smacks Luna back and she ends up spearing Ayo through the chest with her body.
Family Members
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.Provides examples of:
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Follows her husband in pretending to be a government agent to get Ayo away from a crowd of people.
Bina's Dad
Mr. Blum
Bina's dad, a record-store owner. He's Locked Out of the Loop for a large part of the story but eventually gets made aware of Ayo and what's going on with SHELL.Provides examples of:
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Pretends to be a government agent to get Ayo away from a crowd of people.
- Noodle Incident: 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 impersonating a government agent in order to save a monster psychically linked to his daughter from a crowd of people.
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.Provides examples of:
- Domestic Abuse: Her (presumably former) husband is 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).
- Secret Secret-Keeper: 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.
- Open-Minded Parent: 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.
Marni
Marni Greathouse
Julie's older sister, something of a substitute parent due to their mom's long hours as a nurse.Provides examples of:
- Cool Big Sister: A substitute parental figure to Julie, and who either was entrusted with knowledge of Kera or figured it out on her own.
- Secret-Keeper: Knew about Kera, and in fact was the one who suggested that name to Julie.
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 andProvides examples of:
- Amnesia Missed a Spot: 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.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Violet erased all his memories of her in an attempt to make his life easier.
- Open-Minded Parent: 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 hanging out and eating chips in his living room still freaks him out a little, though.
Mr. Flores
Hector 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.Provides examples of:
- My God, What Have I Done?: Freaks out when he realizes that Abel spent a significant part of his life living on the streets due to his believing that Abel was dead.
- Intrepid Reporter: 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
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.Provides examples of:
- Dressing as the Enemy: Disguises himself as a SHELL agent by stealing 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.
- Emotional Powers: The reason his power first manifests as de-aging into a child is because he was behaving immaturely about his partner being pregnant. After they resolve their argument, he's able to return to his normal age (and from then on is able to consciously change his age at need).
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: In fact, he's the only character who swears regularly at all! Most of it is rendered as Symbol Swearing 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 Super-Hearing opponent, shrinking himself to a small child to fit through a window, and becoming a young adult to fit into Dolan's stolen uniform.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: 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
Nancy
Nancy 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.Provides examples of:
- Didn't Think This Through: 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.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: 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.
- The Paranoiac: 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 Never My Fault tendencies that are clearly masking insecurity.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: 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.
-
The Woobie: As a couterpoint to her terrible behavior, she's clearly suffered from severe Parental Neglect and 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.
Violet
Violet LeBlanc
Provides examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: Violet realizes this herself after she poses as Edward in Julie's mind in a misguided effort to get to the root of Julie's behavior. Julie points out that it's pretty common to make the same mistakes even after learning from them.
- Comes Great Responsibility: 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.
- Emotionless Girl: She appears to have no strong feelings and always speaks in a cold, clinical manner. However, this is because she is very much not this. Anima has amplified the intensity of Violet's emotions so much that she feels she has to suppress them to keep from losing control.
- Omniscient Morality License: 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 vulnerable to missteps as anyone else (especially as she is still fundamentally a traumatized young girl).
- Sixth Ranger: After realizing that she's been misusing her powers and getting to know the others better, Violet becomes a regular part of the group.
- The Woobie: 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.
Ozzy
Osbourne "Ozzy" Dieter
A teenage boy with piercings and an ear-monster named Drummer, kidnapped by SHELL and made to work for them in order to be restored to normal. He loses his monster, Drummer, when Rjinder's skin goes crazy and cuts it in half. This results in him losing his actual ear and parts of his ear canal, and he almost bleeds to death before Maugras saves him.Provides examples of:
- Evil Counterpart: For a given value of "evil", he's one to Axel, being an apathetic teenage boy with a sensory-organ-based monster.
- Forced into Evil: Like the other members of his "team", he doesn't actually care about SHELL's goals and is just working for them on the promise that he'll be restored to normal if he cooperates in their plan to attack and kidnap the main kids.
- Only Sane Man: Between Enid's craziness, Claire's hysterics, and Ray's obviousness, he's the most normal of the four kids working for SHELL.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Suggests just going home and dealing with the fallout of the organ monsters with their parents instead of going along with a crazy kidnapping plan, which is shot down when Claire refuses on the grounds that she's terrified out of her mind of her spine-monster and wants it to go away.
Ray
Ray Wu
A teenager taken in by SHELL as part of the attempts to recapture the main kids. Tall, dark, handsome, possessor of a very strong and durable tooth-monster, Ray fancies himself something of a charmer (which isn't really the case.)Provides examples of:
- Casanova Wannabe: Hits on Bina while his monster is attacking Ayo right in front of her and her parents, and doesn't even seem to properly grasp why he is subsequently rebuffed and threatened with violence.
- Forced into Evil: Like the other members of his "team", he doesn't actually care about SHELL's goals and is just working for them on the promise that he'll be restored to normal if he cooperates in their plan to attack and kidnap the main kids.
- Smug Snake: His tooth-monster, Cav, is actually fairly powerful, being large and strong enough to fight Ayo, but almost everyone he interacts with considers him more or less insufferable and he's not shown to be particularly intelligent.
Enid
Enid
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.Provides examples of:
- Ax-Crazy: Remorselessly stalks and attacks West, Bea, Guuzy, and Greenie, and sets Kera on fire with matches and nearly kills her.
- Psycho for Hire: Sort of, since she's not really being paid. Like her teammates, she doesn't really care about SHELL's objectives beyond the restorative procedure they're offering if they succeed, but unlike them she takes pleasure in scaring and hurting people in the process of accomplishing her objectives.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: The other three members of her team are really creeped out by her appearance, speech, and habits.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Where to begin? Her list of offenses include attacking other children, including an infant, distrubing her teammates by talking casually about committing murder, and burning Kera with matches, almost killing her.
Claire
Claire
A teenage girl with severe anxiety issues who is kidnapped by SHELL as part of an attempt to recapture the main kids. As part of this she was turned into a host and gained a dangerous, sharp-limbed spine monster that completely terrifies her.Provides examples of:
- All Take and No Give: Her "relationship" with Violet—all she does on their date is ask Violet to take away the anxiety and then traipse off. Violet eventually calls it out and dumps her, after which Claire does some soul-searching.
- Forced into Evil: Desperately wants to avoid getting personally involved in conflict and violence, but SHELL tells her she'll only be restored to normal if the mission to kidnap the main kids succeeds.
- Minion with an F in Evil: 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 extraordinarily violently.
- Nervous Wreck: She seems to have untreated anxiety. Initially, she's afraid that Luna is going to kill her any second, she's always on the verge of tears, and says that Violet psychically putting her to sleep is the only time she's ever felt calm.
Annabelle
A young girl whose monster (so-far-unnamed) appears to have manifested from her mouth. She appears as a background character and a test subject for the half-repaired Chakra machine.
Provides examples of:
- Chekhov's Gun: Appears as the subject in a test used to set up the manner in which the semi-fixed Chakra machine will fuse the monster and host together, which later happens to Bina and Ayo.
- Facial Horror: 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 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.
- The Speechless: Has no lines and confirms that she's OK after getting partially fused and unfused using the V-sign rather than speech, so she's presumably lost the ability to speak.
Shell Personnel
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.Provides examples of:
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Appears to be drinking wine from the bottle after killing Roger.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Gradually becomes more and more of a Mad Scientist, failing to consider the moral ramifications of her actions and growing increasingly desperate as SHELL's fortunes deteriorate.
- Kaiju: 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.
- Mad Scientist: 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 gush about how they're infused with arma, and thus are exceptionally powerful weapons.
- Mercy Kill: Gives what she think is one to Roger when his monster starts to manifest. It's revealed later on that she killed Rjinder in this manner, as well, after he became too weak to move while hiding out on their boat, shining a different light on her subsequent actions as Monster-Lulenski.
- The Mole: 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.
- One-Winged Angel: 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.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Roger and Rjinder both contribute to her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: the former by telling her that their actions were justified due to the children with monsters being doomed from the start, and the latter by encouraging her Mad Scientist tendencies and her (ultimately doomed) attempts to reanimate Roger. 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.
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.Provides examples of:
- Big Bad: 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.
- Body Horror: 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 and it doing so extensively in order to attack people when he is knocked unconscious is implied to be the reason he wastes away while hiding from the authorities with Lulenski- which leads to his being suffocated by her as a Mercy Kill).
- Hearing Voices: 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.
- Mad Scientist: In addition to the Morally Ambiguous Doctorate traits listed below, it's hinted that the 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 Chakra machine and describes them as 'operating on some higher frequency'.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: 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 Lulenski that result in her Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
- Self-Disposing Villain: 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.
- Subverted: It's later revealed that his death actually came at the hands of Lulenski, who suffocated him after he became too weak to move while they were in hiding. Seeing as she was motivated to do this primarily by the above-mentioned request, it still counts as those trope.
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. 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.Provides examples of:
- Anti-Villain: Encourages his subordinates to keep deaths to an absolute minimum, not just for pragmatic reasons but also because (as Rjinder says), "the Director is an unusually optimistic man." After his Heel–Face Turn, he tries to do as much as possible to limit further harm and help the victims of SHELL.
- Boxed Crook: Ned alludes to him avoiding a jail sentence by working to undo the damage caused by SHELL as part of a plea bargain.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Though how evil he actually is is somewhat questionable, he does 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.
- Heel–Face Turn: 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.
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.Provides examples of:
- Body Horror: 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.
- The Dog Bites Back: After Lulenski subtly threatens his daughter, he starts recording his conversations at work and one of the first things he does after 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.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: 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.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Best summed up by his cast page entry:
Easy-going and friendly, he nonetheless does lots of dark, violent work for SHELL.
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 DARPA is withdrawing funding and shutting down SHELL.- Ambiguous Situation: 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 The Sociopath.
- Parental Neglect: 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.
- The Scapegoat: 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.
- The Sociopath: 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.
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. Lulenski and Rjinder attempt to bring him back to life, but fail, and his "ghost" is used by Lulenski to go One-Winged Angel.Provides examples of:
- Body Horror: 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.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He dies in the 4th chapter, after three appearances.
- I Did What I Had to Do: 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) kill several of those kids when they prove more threatening than anticipated.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Attacks the kids' monsters with a clearly painful arma laser weapon, and his response to Bina begging him to stop is to try to 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 Mercy Kill, as did Lulenski when she killed him.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Set up as a major supporting antagonist paired up 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.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Though he dies in Chapter 4, the consequences of his death and several characters 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 9 real years later.
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.Provides examples of:
- Ascended Extra: Has a throwaway appearance in Chapter 10, followed by getting Mugged for Disguise in Chapter 26, then shows up again in Chapter 34 and on as one of the only remaining SHELL employees after SHELL reforms into a ghost-fighting organization.
- Butt-Monkey: First shown as an Ascended Fanboy 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 raising suspicion.
- Mugged for Disguise: The victim of this during the infiltration of SHELL.
