Lance was born in one of Ohio's poorer towns, to a father working steel and a mother making pennies on the dollar for the newspaper. Still, they were members of a fiercely strong community, and it takes a village to raise a child: with the town's support behind them, Lance didn't feel deprived. His parents had lived within their means for years, and knew well how to - Lance's arrival was well-planned-for, and through careful budgeting, a review of long-term financial ambitions, and the occasional slice of weekend overtime, Lance did not upset the delicate economic equilibrium of the Mangione household.

The accident that closed the steel mill and the birth of Lance's sister, however, did.

Those years were hard years. It’s not easy for a parent to prioritise which child to feed; harder still to explain why some days Lance could make lunch for his sister but not himself. He wore his clothes two years too long, walked holes in the soles of his shoes, doubled up on stained pyjamas in the winter months. It didn’t really shock anyone when Lance began developing strange appetites for all manner of things that would fit in his mouth, and some things that didn’t; concerning, of course, but almost understandable in a way, twisted logic clicking into place. The town doctor was quick to diagnose, but unable to treat, what was ultimately an entirely mental disorder: Pica.

Then came the locks. Cabinets secured with keys and combinations, things like talcum and bars of soap and and logs for the fire forbidden from the home completely; what his parents couldn’t prevent they simply removed, trying to rid their son of all temptation entirely. They fed him, or tried to, but more and more frequently he would refuse traditional supper, push the plate back across the table, and later be found chewing on his leather boots, or gnawing at wooden furniture, or sucking on screws like hard candy. Lance withered, eschewing conventional nutrition for his own perplexing substitutes. His parents begged, pleaded, wrung their hands and screamed at their child that would he please just eat something!, but he paid them no mind. Though he thinned, he felt no ill-effects, none of the expected symptoms of starvation. He was fine. He was hungry, but he was fine.

Eventually, it became clear that Lance would not pass away from his unusual appetite; indeed, he seemed to reach a level of stasis, sustaining himself on a diet of minerals and lumber. His parents grew to accept this, ever-so-slowly; both of them had 'peculiarities' in the bloodlines, if not themselves directly (or so they believed), each family tree tainted by the Grey Death. Lance, then, was just the latest 'peculiarity', and a fortuitous one at that - though they still provided customary meals as often as they could, there was some small comfort in knowing their inability to feed him consistently wouldn't harm the growing child. The family as a whole adjusted to Lance's new habits, and the saga was deemed dealt with.

Lance, for his part, took the development in stride, though the compulsion to eat egged him on from the opening of each day to its close. Slowly, he found his teeth breaking things teeth usually have no business breaking; a party trick was to lean in close to the corner of a wall, and take a bite out of the brick, leaving behind an absent chunk almost cartoonish. Lance didn't mind; he was hungry, near all the time, and no new morsel seemed to sate his appetite. He moved on from brick to concrete and concrete to metal, tearing at sheets of rusted scrap iron like cookies. He didn't mind; he was hungry, and he grew accustomed to the flavours.

As he weathered puberty, his appetites grew stranger. Clumps of hair would be torn from his head and pushed down his gullet; fistfuls of dryer lint, nail clippings and dirty laundry. The pivot back to biological gave Lance himself cause for concern, and more than once he caught himself staring slightly too long at an exposed calf or shoulder or midriff; caught himself wondering what flesh might feel like beneath his extraordinary teeth. He shook it off, ignored it, returned to snacking on drywall. It didn't last.

When Lance's mother returned home from work one afternoon to a hysterically sobbing daughter, blood-soaked tissue wrapped tightly around the stump of a finger, Lance could only offer one line of explanation for the blood staining his chest, chin, and teeth, rivulets cut through the red from his own cascading tears.

_{"I just wanted to see what she tastes like..."}

He left his home and Warren that same afternoon; the smallest mercy his mother could offer - Lance was gone before his father returned home, and had the other parent discovered him instead of his mom, he may never have been able to leave at all. He hit the road at the ripe age of fifteen, wandering and living - quite literally at times - off the road. Slowly but surely, he walked, hitch-hiked, and train-hopped eastward, toward the city that was a supposed haven for freaks like him - not with any sense of purpose or ambition, but just with the vague feeling that any objective was better than none. When he did eventually reach Calder City, he got picked up for vagrancy in his first month, and when he was revealed to be a Gray, and also a homeless minor, he was deposited at St. Dymphna’s.

In the four years since he's been in and out of the institution; no longer trusting himself in the company of others for extended periods, he'd often disappear from the refuge for months at a time, usually returning when the nights got too cold or too wet for him to bear. He keeps to himself, and eats alone, if he eats at all - not that there's a lack of meals available for him. He still eats whatever he can, and he's still hungry. Always hungry.

Universal Consumption
Lance's mouth and digestive system is capable of consuming and digesting nearly any kind of matter - or at least every kind of matter he's tried so far - whether organic or inorganic. His teeth can bite through any material he's cared to levy them against, chewed up whatever's he's been able to fit within his maw, and he has swallowed, digested, derived nutrition, and passed everything he's ever tried to eat. He has lived, and can live, from typically inedible matter, for extremely extended periods. He hasn't tried to eat anything he knows to be directly chemically harmful or toxic - mushrooms, bleach, off-the-shelf pest poisons, etc - but he's not sure he wouldn't be able to consume them without much issue either.

What this strange diet comes with, however, is an appetite to match: Lance is effectively perpetually hungry, and when literally everything is food, it's difficult not to indulge - and despite his subsequently gluttonous habits, he remains a scrawny boy, perhaps due to the average quality of what he eats; as it's yet to kill him several years on, he doesn't really pay it any mind.

What he does pay mind to is the temptation to eat others, a compulsion he is deeply disturbed and frightened by. Though usually able to suppress it, when the urge becomes unbearable he opts to remove himself from the company of others completely, unwilling to allow another incident like his sister, whom he still dearly loves despite what happened so many years ago. Several times he's even threatened himself with suicide rather than give in to the temptation - and he has made a sworn oath to himself that should he ever lapse again, he won't live to see the sun rise the next day.

Unbeknownst to Lance, his appetite will eventually transcend the physical, and he will adapt to be able to feed on not just matter, but energy, emotion, thoughts, and the very life essence of a person - and maybe some day, even the metaphysical, drawing sustenance from abstract concepts themselves.

Moody and reserved, Lance is too wrapped up in self-loathing and deliberate distance-keeping from others to let himself get close to anyone. As much as he desires the feeling of belonging again - part of why he even made his way to Calder City in the first place - he's too scared of what he knows he's capable of to risk anyone else's safety. Instead, he's withdrawn into himself, able to hold a conversation but always keeping at least one degree of separation from reality at any given point. He would love a friend, and fondly enjoys the found-families that litter the halls of St. Dympha's and the wider streets of Calder City itself - but always from a a distance, standing in self-imposed exile looking in.

Lance is currently looking, mostly likely pointlessly, for the meal that might finally fill his belly after so many years; until then, though, he’s mostly just surviving, taking each day as it comes. In his wildest dreams he’d like to reconcile with his family and return home to his sister and parents, but even if they’d eventually forgive him (and he doesn’t even think they should), he’s not sure he’ll ever forgive himself.

He doesn’t trust himself around people, and is determined to seize hold of the reins of his appetite, though he’s not sure how or even where to begin despite the support St. Dymphna’s offers during his sporadic stays. While Calder City feels like it’s simmering around him, the boiling pot to his proverbial frog, he can’t bring himself to break his routine, and seems to be waiting for everything to finally burst around him and take him with it.