riley is a 5’8” cyborg, with a slight build. most of his body is synthetic, with the only “human” part of him left being his brain, which is surrounded with protective casing. his body is a mix of artificially created muscle tissue and hard metal. this combination allows for greater flexibility than more traditional robots. the pink plate on his chest opens up to allow access to his internals, which are a combination of electric wiring, computer hardware, and “organs” made of artificial tissue. while most of his body is human-adjacent, his legs taper to small points rather than having “normal” feet. he has short pink fluffy hair that is synthetic, and orange eyes that can glow in the dark if he chooses. the orange light on his chest can also be turned on and off at will. he often adorns his hair with small barrettes and other accessories.

         in terms of fashion sense, he opts for bright, almost blinding colors, and anything that allows for lots of movement. his main outfit is a modified mechanic’s jumpsuit that is bright orange, paired with tall boots and a dog collar. he prefers to wear shirts open in case he needs to fuss around with his internals.

         his body language is energetic and open. he is almost always seen with a wide smile, and he tends to talk with his hands. when standing still, he will often fidget by swaying back and forth, or bouncing on his (metaphorical) heels.

        with riley, people either love him or hate him. he has a bright, outgoing personality, but tends to have little filter between his mind and his mouth. as such, people either like that he’s honest, or feel like he needs more tact with what he says. for what it’s worth, riley doesn’t want to compromise if it means that he has to squash his own personality. he doesn’t ever intend to be mean to others though, but he doesn’t understand the point of being coy about one’s thoughts when it’s much easier for him to be direct. the one exception to his directness are authority figures, as he tends to distrust them from his experiences in the past. he will lie and mislead them for his amusement.

        riley is more street smart than book smart. being a cyborg, as long as he has a cellphone connection he can look up anything he wants. as such, he can fake being smarter than he is as long as he sticks to facts and not their application. he is difficult to make angry, and is good at simply deflecting any attempts to incite him. in general, he’s good at compartmentalizing unpleasant emotions to deal with them later, or not at all. the vast majority of the time he’s cheerful and carefree, seemingly impossible to annoy or frustrate. on the rare occasions he is serious, it can be unnerving to see him drop his smile.

        despite being one of the leaders of the resistance group in monstrucatus, riley isn’t fond of being a leader. he dislikes being a follower as well, preferring to work on his own. this doesn’t mean he’s anti-social, on the contrary he is friendly, borderline flirtatious at times. he never really expects anything to come out of being flirty, though. it’s mostly just entertainment for him. in the case that someone reciprocates his advances, he’s not opposed to a brief relationship, but would cut things off before they got too serious. with friends, he has a wide circle of acquaintances, but almost no one he considers a close friend. letting someone know him truly feels too serious for him, and so he keeps most people at arms length.

        riley has no real plans for the future for himself, choosing to take each day as it comes. the thought of having no ambitions scares him, a little, but his work with guiding the rest of the resistance members suffices to distract him. he finds it much easier to form a framework for the resistance group rather than think about his own life. he feels like he needs to hide that he has no real goal in life from the others, for the sake of being a stout leader figure.

        he doesn’t like talking about himself much, and while he is honest with most of his thoughts, he tends to deflect questions about his own past. it’s not that he has anything to hide, just for him his life prior to becoming a cyborg is entirely separate from the life he’s living now. he struggles with empathy, being somewhat detached from his own negative emotions. he can feel pity for someone in the moment, but once the situation passes for him he quickly forgets about it. he is impulsive and a daredevil, owning somewhat to his semi-invincibility. he’ll put himself in dangerous situations for fun, although his thrill seeking has been reeled back somewhat due to having people to look after now.

         riley grew up in an unstable household. his parents divorced early on in his childhood, and riley lived exclusively with his mom. his dad cut contact with both riley and his mom. raising a child on her own forced riley’s mom to work long hours, which led her to being stressed and exhausted. riley’s mom often lashed out and abused riley, cycling between treating him like her only friend, and blaming him for everything wrong with her life. riley’s mom went through several stepdads while riley grew up, and each time she divorced again she took her emotions out on riley. over the years, riley learned to bottle his own emotions up, believing them to not be as important as what his mom was going through.

         by the time riley’s peers were preparing their college applications, he was itching for a way out of the house. he knew that they didn’t have the money to go to college, and the thought of being chained to student loans was almost as bad as simply staying at home. riley researched military service, and found a program offering education and board in return for four years of service in an experimental training program. riley jumped on the opportunity, feeling like it was the best offer he’d seen so far.

         the very next day, riley received a reply with a conditional acceptance, detailing a long list of guidelines and caveats. for riley, the clause requiring him to go no-contact with his family for the duration of the program was a blessing rather than a curse. he accepted, only skimming over most of the conditions.

         after telling her that he was accepted into a military college, fully paid for, riley’s mom smiled.

         the day of the start of the program drew close, and riley packed up the few belongings he cared about. the terms of the program explained they would take care of everything essential. the campus itself was a nondescript building fairly separate from anything else. riley and his mom were both wary, but for riley his desperation to be free of his mom won out, and he said goodbye to her for what would be the last time.

         after being taken to what riley thought was a briefing room, he was knocked out.

         as it turns out, the experimental training program was a project to turn humans into cyborgs, and through a series of delicate operations riley was transformed from a man to a machine. it was technically all explained in the contract that riley had thoughtlessly agreed to, but worded in a way that wouldn’t tip off careless readers. riley, and a half a dozen other young men who had agreed to the terms went through military training, cut off from the outside world in a facility far below the surface of the earth.

         riley’s group was only the latest in a batch of many young adults pseudo-kidnapped to be experimented on. as such, through the days riley made connections with the numerous other cyborg soldiers, and formulated a plan of escape. training the cyborgs in physical combat and endurance ended up being a boon for the prisoners, as their superior physical strength and nigh-invulnerability ended up making up for their smaller numbers compared to the guards and scientists swarming the facility.

         riley broke out three years after being taken in. he escaped with a few other soldiers, but left many behind in captivity, something that still haunts him to this day.

         the other soldiers broke off, wanting to return to their families. riley did not, and so he wandered for a while, simply trying to get as much distance from the cyborg facility as possible. he ended up customizing his body more to his tastes, as the default miltary cyborg look was not his thing at all.

         a few more years past, and riley came across monstrucatus. he crossed paths with anachou in the abandoned buildings on the fringes of the city, and after demonstrating that he could understand anachou using the translation features embedded in his system, anachou became… not friendly, but less hostile. he dragged riley back to the building he had been squatting in, and basically pleaded for him to stay and serve as a translator. seeing as riley had no better plan, he stuck with anachou.

         being significantly more charismatic than the eel monster, riley slowly started picking up monsters that were scattered around the edges of the city, forming a band of monsters. riley aside, most of the monsters had some sort of grudge against monstrucatus, and started to throw around plans to take the school down.

         eventually, riley came across seo-hyun peddling her psychic skills, and took her into the group. seo-hyun’s practical nature and psychic ability proved her to be invaluable for the group, and she became one of the leaders of the group, along with riley and anachou.

         seo-hyun was acquaintances with nashira, who gave riley a job working at her bakery, where he currently works part time.

         riley has also come into contact with members of the occult club on their patrols throughout the city, and due to his unique biology has become a person of interest for them.