Freind Reblog - Tumblr Posts
oc infodump smiles
So. Before I can explain like...ho Jess
and Niko are, I need to talk about the "asylum" they grew up in. It was quite literally ran by some meth head dude who somehow managed to get the money required to start and set up everything, and there just happened to be a bunch of people in on it for gits and shiggles.
Anyway, the whole reason Niko and Jess were put into that-lab. Not even asylum dude-was because their parents were "murdered". Their dad's body was found mangled in the basement, but their mother was nowhere to be seen so her fate is left unknown. But that's unimportant.
Probably.
And that finally takes us to Jess and Niko. The two were essentially kidnapped and brought into the labs to be tested on due to their very unnatural abilities. Or very unnatural for the world they live in (it's like genshin but extremely fucked up)
blah blah blah they were experimented on (Niko's arm was removed and Jess was mutilated, but kept alive due to her very slow regeneration ability. She later died of infection and her regen didn't work fast enough to keep her completely alive. But, said infection kept her body as a puppet, and quite literally manifested it's own consciousness into existence. Nobody is aware of that until much much later though.
Back to Niko- sorry this is super unorganized- she came up with a plan to flee the facility (/ref) with Jess. Niko escaped, but "Jess" did not.
shit I probably gotta bring up the fact that Niko was also turned into a biomechanical eldritch horror from the inside out (literally. had to do with some parasitical bullshit I'm too tired to explain) that backfired HARD and turned her into an artificial archon (genshin terminology is more fun shhhh)
the artificial manifestation of Niko's "archon" form also created another thing. Nicknamed smile because....it smiles. Yeah. Idk. It's actual name is Scithe cuz it's cooler (that's literally why)
In the most simple way I can put it, Scithe is a being that can take the form of anyone and anything and use said form to manipulate others into doing whatever it wants them to. Reason being- for funsies, why the hell not? It has no reason to care if it has nothing to care about.
Since Niko is the reason for Scithe's existence, Niko (nicknamed IkoN for no reason in particular) is Scithe's favorite target. It uses her fragile mental stability against her, convincing Niko that nobody is really her friend but Scithe is.
If that doesn't give a pretty clear view of how fragile Niko actually is idk what will </3