#their story is also inspired by Exit Music For A Film by Radiohead ; Labrinth and Mind Electric by Miracle Musical

[pies-database]

SMILER [They/it]

Name(s): Sylvester, SW7

PHALANX code: ALTN - 007 - 013

Nickname(s): Syl

Likes: Puns, dogs, lasagne, cough sweets, apples, calpol, EDM music, Drum N Bass music, brutalism, warehouse aesthetics, urban exploring, biochem, cilantro, marmalade

Dislikes triggers: Medical settings, touching their face/scars uninvited, boredom, being handled in any form.

Personality: In a completely complex situation where it is constantly trapped between being a complete Smiling Advocate and their own brain chemistry trying to reject the treatment due to inconsistencies.

They come across as very fidgety and unable to sit still and generally chaotic. They constantly are moving their hands and face and can sometimes seem like they're either not listening or just plain bored. That may not be the case, it just needs the stimulation.

They have a very strong personality, and will not be told what to do (if you are not close, at least). If they think it can do better than you, it will make that very clear, and can be downright cruel and insulting at times without realising.

When under duress is incredibly unstable and its a 60/40 about whether they'll fight or flee respectively. If they choose to fight you are not making it out with either your mind or body intact. They don't like to kill, but when under duress their body is quite literally fighting itself to the point where a splinter can make its system think its dying.

Abilities:

-Mind control, in the way that they can make people more pliable to commands by forcing their minds to release copious amounts of dopamine upon responding positively to their instructions. They can increase the amount released, but its a very fragile thing and can completely break people's mind when they're not careful. They can quite literally make it so they can't remember to breathe without it instructing them to.

-minor mind reading, moreso in the way they can just kind of sense certain emotions and glimpse some memories. The information just kind of imposes itself on Smiler and it's like they always knew it.

-increased resistance to drugs. Any and all drugs. Including medicine and alcohol.

Abnormal physical features:

-Larger top canines that constantly hang out their mouth, even in a more adapted form. They are straight and slightly hooked, good for stabbing and not leaving a clean wound [think like the blade of a fishhook.

-eyes are a bright yellow with a spiral pupil that starts at the centre of the iris and ends on the outside of the iris.

-Hair looks to be dyed yellow on top. That is not Dye.

-White freckles. Thats the point.

-Glasgow scars. Except they're not scars. Sometimes theyre scars, but only on good weeks. Most of the time theyre still open wounds.

-Pointed ears.

-claw-like fingernails. Ideal for cutting, forever stained a little red.

Backstory: PLEASE CHECK TWS/CWS IN TAGS

Its 2011, and kids have started going missing. Well, the posters don't exactly say "kids" but, they're teenagers. And homeless people, too, but people don't necessarily talk about that one at all. Not frequent enough for national outcry, but enough for a curfew to be announced. Its 2010, and Sylvester is 15, and a downright menace to anyone who knows him that's not in his little group.

Sylvester, of course, is above just going missing like that. His mum cares way too much, its embarrassing really, but there's no way someone has it out for him that much that they'd greatly upset his charity-running, gold star mum. And he seems to be proved right, when there isn't another abduction for 6 months.

The missing posters slowly get replaced for advertising to this behavioural summer camp thing, and the incidents don't go forgotten, but they get buried. He goes on with his gang, picking fights where they can, and getting reactions where they can't.

Sylvester is 16 years old when he comes home to find his mum stood ashamed to the side, with two smartly-dressed men in his living room to tell him they were taking him to a place where he could be better. Just one summer away, yes? That's all they'll need.

They let him pack a suitcase. And, Syl thinks, these 'summer camps' never do much. Colour in this sheet, tell me how you feel, now fuck off back to your cabin.

They drive for an hour or so, before they come to this small village, and they drive into the hills.

Its not a camp. Its some kind of warehouse, and it's not just kids here. There are people in white coats stood next to two middle aged women, dressed in what would seem to be every day clothes. Clothes you'd go take the bin out in. The women just stare at each other. Smiling.

"Where am I?" And they don't answer.

"We're here to make you better." Is what they say instead.

They take his suitcase, drag him to a room at the very back and very top of the facility. Its dank, It has a bed. It has a bathroom. It does not have a bath. It does not have a single surface. It does have a clock.

The next day they drag him down to a doctor's room for an hour, where a guy in a white coat performs a checkup.

The next day, they take him down to another room. They leave shortly after, completely alone. There are two vents. The room slowly gets stuffier, it gets harder to breathe. The lights flash. They can't see, he can't breathe. They get back 1 hour and 30 minutes after he left. He can't remember much of it.

The next day, they take him down to perform some tests. They tell him to do some relatively simple activities. They don't know why, but they do it almost immediately. but then the people start complaining, "No, you haven't actually organised those books have you?" They had. "Do it again." Well, now he doesn't bloody want to, thank you very much, he already did as you asked.

They get back to the room exhausted, with a faint tinge of confusion. They had been gone for 3 hours and 47 minutes.

This happens on a cycle. The calendar in the doctor's office gets crossed off every day, they are gone for 4 weeks before something happens.

A new doctor comes in. They announce their name as Doctor Kelman. He is here to help with treatment, you see, they weren't responding as hoped, so they wanted to try some old tactics, see if they worked better than new ones.

He pinned Syl down with ropes. He took the scalpel off the surgery table. He scored two lines down Syl's face.

Looking in the mirror, 6 hours 2 minutes and 30 seconds after they had left, they recognised what they were trying to do. A smile constantly stapled to their face. They poked the tear tracks staining their cheeks, felt the flush of blood from under their skin. Good.

They wrote in their own blood under the bed. They can't remember what they wrote.

They continued the cycle. The treatments were harsher, the gas turned to a syringe, their mouth forced open with some horrible metal contraption until their muscles ached. They found, after a while, it didn't care much about all that.

What really irked it, was the trials. The instructions felt like they kept getting vaguer, and they would get more and more upset whenever they'd "tidy this space" or "Make a shopping list for cake" wrong.

At the end of the day, theyd come back, and write on the wall again, always in its own blood. They can't remember what they wrote. It would always get rubbed off.

Things continued, but this could barely be described as a cycle, it would be more apt to say a spiral.

30 weeks after their first meeting with Kelman, they sat and scratched out in their wall the same message they had written in blood all previous times.

2 weeks after that, the Ministry found out. And Sylvester met The Maitron.

It can't remember what happened in that room, with Maitron. But it returned to its room 6 days later.

It scratched the message out in the wall again.

It spent 12 days with the maitron.

On the 13th, things changed once more. Before Maitron came into the room, Syl was starving. Starving, pumped full of drugs, barely aware of their own name. Maybe it wasn't theirs anymore anyway.

They started scratching at the rope, and it started snapping. And when Maitron came back in, to see all the ropes hanging loosely around its body, to see what was left of Sylvester stood tall, smiling manically, she must have realised that would be the very last thing she would see.

That warehouse was discovered a week later, after an anonymous tip. 14 bodies were discovered, some that seemingly went missing up to two years ago. Most of the bodies gored past recognition. It was deemed an animal attack due to the claw and bite marks. All of them in white lab coats.

You think that's it? No, Syl tries to run. And they run through the hills, as fast as possible. Into the forest. They hang out there a little while, finding an old abandoned pub to set up in. It went 2 weeks before being found. Smiler, at 17 years old, was first touched without bad intentions for the first time in almost a year.

Oblivion was the one to find it, actually. And when Smiler got tired of stealing markets from the markets, He was who they turned to to start a "fun new project" .

Said fun new project took 5 years to come to fruition, showing the long deceased people of the old Ministry Of Joy how mass brainwashing Should Be Done, jackasses. Smiler acting as the main brains behind the operation, trying to form a new drug that could be taken as a liquid or inhaled. And it worked really well on the neighbouring village! For less than 5 months before someone broke through enough to start a revolt, and send a letter to the government to make the Phalanx officially recognised and funded. Which. Unfortunately. Passed.

Back into the Labrotories Smiler goes!

Current residency: an abandoned pub in X-SECTOR

ASKS: OPEN