Screaming Mantis

{{Character Infobox

{{Character Infobox }}
 * name = Screaming Mantis
 * image = ScreamingMantisMGS4.jpg
 * nationality = South American
 * affiliations = The Beauty and the Beast Unit
 * status = Unknown
 * hair = Black
 * skin = Caucasian
 * games = Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
 * creator = Hideo Kojima
 * voiceactor = Andrea Zafra (Beauty) Fred Tatasciore (Beast)
 * japanactor = Mao Yuuki
 * motionactor = Mao Yuuki

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, bloody 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 before eventually escaping.

Later, forces led by Liquid Ocelot somehow acquired the body of 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 during the Shadow Moses Incident. 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 Snake.

While in the Middle East, Screaming Mantis and the rest of her Beauty and the Beast Unit were spotted by Snake attacking a group of rebel soldiers. 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 all of the bones in his body. She also turned the very same soldier on his own comrades, aiming his assault rifle at their backs and killing them before they were able to fire an RPG-7 at Laughing Octopus. 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 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 is defeated she elegantly assumes 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 telekinetic, attempted to impress Snake using his fourth wall breaking abilities, however this time, nine years later, he failed miserably. Psycho Mantis's body began spazzing 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. However, both require the target to have nanomachines. The dolls allow for 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 pull backwards and snap. 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

 * 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.
 * Screaming Mantis's beauty form is modeled after Scarlett Chorvat.
 * 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 their 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.