Screaming Mantis

Screaming Mantis was the leader and psychological warfare specialist of the Beauty and the Beast Unit. She, along with the other members, suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Early Years
Screaming Mantis was born in a war torn village in South America. When she was just a child, her village was attacked and eventually burned to the ground. Hunted by enemy death squads, she was separated from her family. She took haven inside the basement of a building, which she would soon discover was actually a makeshift torture chamber. However, given the constant military presence outside in the village, she wasn't able to leave the corpse-littered room, and to make things worse, she was eventually locked into the basement. The constant screams of tortured villagers haunted her every day and night. After weeks locked in the cellar, keeping herself hydrated by drinking the dirty water that had pooled up on the floor, she began to hallucinate. She saw a single black praying mantis, who would teach her how to block her ears from the screams. She learned from the mantis that to survive, she would have to eat the corpses that littered the floor, however, she only ate the male corpses, much like the female mantis devours her mates. The starvation and dehydration had done irreparable damage to her mind. She survived for several weeks and somehow got back to the surface.

Later, forces led by Liquid Ocelot somehow acquired the young girl. They subjected her to gene therapy and drug induced nanotherapy, building up her psyche for their ultimate plan. Eventually, Mantis's psyche was torn out of her own mind, and was replaced with what remained of Psycho Mantis, the psychological warfare specialist of the FOXHOUND unit that Solid Snake fought in 2005.

&nbsp In 2014, Liquid placed Mantis in charge of The Beauty and The Beast Unit, using his brainwashing techniques to further drive the unit's goal to utterly destroy Old Snake. Screaming Mantis and the rest of her Beauty and the Beast Unit were spotted by Snake attacking a group of rebel soldiers in the Middle East. Mantis used her ability to control a person's nanomachines, allowing her to lift a rebel soldier completely off of the ground and contort his body into a sick, twisted knot, instantly breaking his spinal cord. She also turned the very same soldier on his own comrades, aiming his assault rifle at their backs and killing them. Then, suddenly, with a wave of her arm, The Beauty and the Beast Unit withdrew, leaving Snake in awe at their power and ferocity.

Much later, during the final assault of Outer Haven, Snake finally came face to face with The Beauty and The Beast's leader. After disposing of a large unit of FROGS inside Outer Haven's command center, Screaming Mantis appeared before Snake, using her Psycho Mantis doll to take control of Meryl Silverburgh and point her Desert Eagle at Snake. Snake was able to quickly subdue Meryl by suppressing her nanomachines, while Mantis took control of the FROGS scattered around the room using her Psycho Mantis and The Sorrow dolls.

Screaming Beauty
Unfortunately for Mantis, though, Snake was able to see through her techniques, and also injected himself with the nanomachine suppressor. After knocking her dolls free of their strings, Snake was able to snatch them up and use them on her. Despite her bond with Psycho Mantis and her strong mental force, she was unable to suppress her nanomachines, and Snake ironically used the Psycho Mantis doll to destroy her.

Defeated, Mantis's power suit flew forcefully away from her body, with her arm blades narrowly missing Snake's head and sticking into the core of the command center. Screaming Beauty fell from the shell, landing on the ground with a hard thud. She instantly began panicking, screaming at the voices in her head, telling them to leave her alone. She begged at her inner demons to have mercy before collapsing once again, then moving in on Snake, telling him to release her from her torment. After she was defeated, she elegantly assumed the fetal position.

Psycho Mantis's Rebirth
Suddenly, Screaming Mantis's armor reformed itself and began floating before Snake. Above the armor materialized the disembodied spirit of Psycho Mantis. Unable to believe his eyes, Snake stepped back in shock, back to the Outer Haven command core. Psycho Mantis, eager to prove himself once again as the world's greatest psychic and telekineticist, attempted to impress Snake with his abilities, however this time, nine years later, he failed miserably. Psycho Mantis's body began spasming uncontrollably as the armored pieces of Screaming Mantis fired off in multiple directions and the spirit of the once great psychokineticist disappeared, defeating him for good. Snake then heard a mysterious voice in his head: "The spirit of the warrior will always be with you." Looking up to the upper balcony of Outer Haven, Snake spotted a ghostly man in a black raincoat, smiling down on him.

Abilities
As their leader, Screaming Mantis was the most powerful of the Beauty and the Beast Corps. Using Psycho Mantis's mind control, she was able to keep the other members of the Unit under control, as well as regulate their bodies and abilities. She possessed a level of telekinesis similar to Psycho Mantis, being able to hover and manipulate the trajectory of thrown knives, and also had the ability to rapidly transport in combination with melee attacks. Her primary arsenal of powers came from the dolls held by her synthetic arms, modelled after Psycho Mantis and The Sorrow. The Psycho Mantis doll allowed her to manipulate the living and The Sorrow doll allowed her to control the dead (according to Otacon, the manner in which she controlled the dead soldiers is similar to how a frog's corpse can still react to electricity). However, both require the target to have nanomachines. The dolls allowed for an unprecedented degree of control over the victim, as demonstrated in the Middle East when Screaming Mantis was able to cause a soldier's head and arms to contort backwards and break. Aboard Outer Haven, she attempted to control Johnny Sasaki using the Psycho Mantis doll, but was unable to, as it was later revealed that he had no nanomachines.

Trivia

 * Although she was the leader of the B&B Corps, Screaming Mantis was the only member who hadn't killed anyone prior to adopting her "Beast" persona.
 * While unconfirmed, the events that Drebin described as being part of Mantis's past share similarities to the Argentinian Dirty War.

Behind the Scenes

 * Screaming Mantis's beauty form is modeled after Scarlett Chorvat.
 * The Beauty and the Beast Unit is a somewhat tribute to the bosses of the Metal Gear Solid games; the name of each member of the unit is derived from the name of a member of FOXHOUND (from Metal Gear Solid), their weapons are a derivative of Dead Cell members' weapons (from Metal Gear Solid 2), and their emotions similar to the Cobra Unit member codenames (from Metal Gear Solid 3): In the case of Screaming Mantis her name is taken from Psycho Mantis, the knives of Vamp and a mixture of emotions from The Fear and The Pain.
 * Appropriately, as leader of the Beauty and Beast Unit, Screaming Mantis displayed all of the white energy that rained down on the other members during their defeats. As she "changed" from her beast form to her beauty form, she is showered with white flower petals as she hears laughing (like Laughing Octopus), white snow as she hears crying and howling (like Crying Wolf), and finally, white feathers rain down on her while hearing bird caws when she leaped up (like Raging Raven).
 * Screaming Mantis is not the first character to utilize marionette puppets as a battle tactic. This tactic belongs to Marionette Owl of Black Chamber in Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.

Gameplay

 * Screaming Mantis manipulates Meryl just as Psycho Mantis does in Metal Gear Solid, by forcing her to shoot Old Snake directly. Players must knock Meryl out, similar to Metal Gear Solid, or inject her with the Syringe, temporarily disabling her nanomachines, in order to fight Screaming Mantis more easily.
 * As with the rest of the Beauty and the Beast Unit, her FaceCamo can be unlocked if the player defeats her "Beauty" Form using non-lethal means.
 * Unlike the other BB Corps members, her doll can be collected in the corridor which the player enters the area through during the "beauty" stage regardless of how they dealt with her "beast" form, due to the nature in which the player must fight her "Beast" form.
 * Occasionally when Snake (and reportedly other characters injected by nanomachines) dies, strings can be seen on his arms and legs similar to when Screaming Mantis takes control of someone. The exact meaning of this is heavily debated. The most likely reason for this is because Snake himself is controlled by the player not unlike how Mantis controls others.
 * Shooting off The Sorrow doll will allow the player to shake dead bodies to get items from that body.
 * A costume available to download for LittleBigPlanet allows the Sackboys to dress up as Screaming Mantis.