At 6'2, it's no surprise that Zhayne is easily noticed, and he seems to take a little but of pride in the fact that he sometimes had to bend his head under Forrest's to fit under them. His body is slender, and his skin wraps tightly around thickly veined muscles, he is by no means a body builder of any sort but seems to harbor some sort of modicum of strength and finesses in his bones. His lofty stance gives way to a young man who looks a bit frail but is stronger than he seems. His skin is a light brown due to his mixed ancestry, and his face is well proportioned, one could argue that he looks handsome for his age, but Zhay would probably laugh at the assumption. Features like his dark brown eyes seem to keep people focused on him whenever he grasps their attention, and blend well with his face. Arguably, his most noticeable feature is his long dreaded hair which is usually kept in a twisted ponytail or obscured by some hat. Often times he has other touching that long hair of his, which annoys him to no end since he usually asked questions about he upkeep or how long it's taken to grow it out. As far as he's concerned it's been this way since early childhood and he isn't all too eager to cut it off anytime soon at the behest of those claiming he could never get a job because of it. (if that wasn't already compounded by the fact that he was a mutant...) Normally you'll find him wearing a long sleeved shirt, or a hoodie, and some jeans, along with roughed up Nikes to boot, he isn't too in tune with his fashion and will wear anything sprawled on his dorm room floor.
Name:Zhayne (Jah-ne) Spencer
Code-Name:Animus
Age:19
Gender:Male
Danger Rank:3
Personality:Zhayne would consider himself to be a very practical person, down to earth, and as nice as time could afford. He always been labeled as rather relaxed, and mellow, and never finds it hard to adapt to his surroundings. He is calm and analytic, but slow at first approach whenever faced with a dilemma, it usually takes him some time to be open with others, but despite the small number of friends he has acquainted himself with, he is kind and generous to no fault. Disregarding his sometimes strange and awkward moments, Zhayne can be a true joy to be around once you learn to gain his trust. He is diligent about testing those he feels he can trust, and is always better in a small group of friends, though in hindsight the slow approach is the reason why he hasn't much experience in romantic relationships, and he be quite nervous when anyone asks him about his interactions, he isn't even quite sure himself, at 19 he should have at least laid claim to being with one person. He tends to come across at shy because of his preference of silence, while this is true to extent, his intentions are often misunderstood, especially when trying to gain new friends.
Yet, even with his bashfulness at times he isn't afraid to be who is, or show off a bit of his anger streak when others cross him the wrong way. Perhaps an interesting part of his personality is his sexuality, he has admitted to being openly homosexual, but is coy in delivering the terms to others, which either surprises them or doesn't. Despite being somewhat quiet, and observant, when put into danger Zhayne has shown many times that he is capable of defending himself, or crafty at escaping lest the situation calls for it, those who claim him to be a slow thinker, may not realize that it's effective to the way he methodically attacks. He can be taciturn, and stubborn when he feels he needs to be, and gets annoyed when things don't go his way. At his worst he can be self-indulgent, lazy, and even downright uncaring, at his best he is kid, generous, and intelligent. He would say that he is a perfect balance between the two.
Powers:Animal Mimicry: Zhayne has the ability to mimic various abilities attributed to certain animals, like for example; being able to grow gills and breathe underwater like a fish, to run with the speed of a cheetah, or fly like a bird. This has advanced to the point that he can communicate loosely with other animals, his most recent experience being that with a chimp. The setback of these abilities is the fact that Zhayne needs to study said animal in order to duplicate the effect, and using mimicry can be hit or miss if he doesn't take care to practice. Having yourself unable to reassure your natural breathing habits for a whole day after figuring out how to actually mimic gills was a rather transformative experience for the young man, for one, he learned that it's never pleasant to have to tie a plastic bag full of water over your gills just to function. Trips to the zoo has helped him gain a slew of abilities, though their usefulness depends on the situation, so he finds it better to let this ability become a convenience for impressing others, or showing his powers off when suitable.
Animal Shapeshifting: New to Zhayne is the ability to take the form of animals, an ability that he came upon accidentally a few months before enrolling. His first year there he found it to be more of a burden than an actual help, and he had (and still has) actual fears using this power. The first time when he transformed he took on the form of a cat, which scared him to say the least, not knowing what happened to his body, and having very little control over the events surrounding him. The worse of it though was transforming back, the pain of which turned him off to transform again (not to mention the sudden lack of clothing). Even weeks after the transformation he was left with strange aftereffects, just as sharp claws, sharpened pupils but no night vision, and he could recall shedding hair much more quickly than any normal humans. Yet, only a year after remaining at the academy Zhayne has learned to temper this power, being able to change into fro far more easily when it comes to smaller animals, but limited by his transformation into larger animals. While it still garners pain on the occasion, he seems to be able to ignore it for the most part as long as he doesn't overexert his form.
How long at the Institute: 2 years
Favorite subject:"I don't know...Math?" Favorite teacherBeast ('Well not really a teacher is he?")
Skills: -Cooking
-Skateboarding
-Hiking
-Brawling (knows enough to get him through superficial fights, and to defend himself)
-Free Jumping (very useful when you have the agility of a cat)Backstory: Shame how the boy was robbed of a childhood early in his life. For him, the first sensation he could clearly recall was the smell of cinnamon, and the fact that wherever he lived, the walls never seemed to be dry, and was always slick with water from the incessant boiling of a pot under a stove that he could never reach with his tiny stature. Then came an uneasy period, lots of fighting and shouting, things muttered like
mutant!,
freak!,
we can't afford that!. Zhayne was only half aware of some of things around him, and paid less and less attention with the yelling would occur. After that, being awoken from the only decent sleep he could ever remember having, and then being thrusted into the back seat of car, it seemed even in his sleepy stupor that the window burned with a fiery glow, like the night had suddenly borrowed rays from the sun. Little did he know about the riots that occurred that night, the riots near his place of residency, even to this day when he searches on the internet about the riots, the memory is fresh in his skull, angry faces, traffic abuzz, frantic breathes from the driver of the car. Somehow the two were able to escape the now ruins of his former hometown, and drove from miles. At this point, he made sure to commit more to his memory than the things he felt he should avoid just because he was a child.
The person he escaped with was his father, and he could only assume that the worse happened to his mother, or perhaps she felt it better to leave him in another's hands, he would never know since he'd never, met the woman, or felt the need to. He can at least have some type of solace in knowing that there was a time she wanted him, until (according to his father) when she held him a few months after his birth in the dark, and his pupils grew feline in shape. Afterwards, (he recounts humorously) they got rid of the cat, but the incidents never stopped there. It was only when he was five that his father was given the motivation to leave, he was forced by the riots, to think that someone could arbor such hatred for his child was an unbearable thought, it was already obvious by the way other kids were told to avoid Zhayne that others were catching on, he would be targeted, and who knows what else. The two of them spent 3 years on the road, motels, and gaudy fast food seemed to serve them well enough, he moved from school to school, and never found a way to stick. Of course there were still incident here and there, people still had a tendency to look at him strangely, and then his father was once again forced to whisk him away elsewhere, at one point it became damaging to the point that he found it difficult to communicate with others in fear that they would somehow see the fact that he was mutant. It was at that time that his father took him away again, far into the more nature bound places, his grandmother had long owned a vast amount of land, and was all too eager to offer a place for her son and grandson even knowing their predicament.
That was probably the most enjoyable part of his life, the period of time where abilities were greatly expanded upon. A lush forest seemed to jut out a little ways from the Victorian styled architecture of his grandmother's house, and from there he was able to pick up a slew of abilities, both strange and entertaining to the both of them. His father secured an obscure job in the small town a little ways from the land, and Zhayne attending school, but was able to control his abilities for the sake of keeping his identity safe. Years went pass, and for once Zhayne felt he had a home, and a permanent place to stay, he was comfortable enough with the people raising him to even reveal his sexuality, and they were just as accepting as they were of his mutant abilities, though of course it would be until he was 17 that things seemed to naturally spiral downwards. It wasn't long until popular opinion of mutant seemed to reach the little town, and things became terse for the small family. Zhayne felt himself rather bored with the fact that he couldn't completely be himself. When discussing the problem in a class of his, Zhayne was too adamant about his stance on mutants, and attracted the attention of a few students, whose beliefs opposed his own. Months later, when shopping in one of the small shops in town, just a few weeks since his graduation, you couldn't even say the word Mutant without being looked strangely, somehow the mention of such always had to be negative. He would find one of his old colleagues, drunken, gun at hand, idiotically ribbing a sore that he gone to for nearly years. Zhayne would fins himself trying to reason with him, until the gun was turned on him, slurs were thrown his way, none of which he'd ever wanted spurted to him ever again. When it became apparent that the gun was close to firing in his face, he felt the world shift and his body shrink, the gun slipping out of the grasp of the offender, and a small dark body racing out the store as fast as it could. Unaware of just where it was going or why, just running for the sake of running.
When exhaustion finally met up with the feline, it stopped dead in the middle of nowhere panting, reverting back painfully into it's human form, blistering rain seemed to sweep over Zhayne, and for whatever reason he was nude, and hurting in places he'd rather not speak about. After that, everything seemed to wash into a blur, similar to how his early childhood occurred. All he knew is that he wanted to hear nothing of mutants, or powers, and simply wished for a way out. He was able to find places to sleep, odd, low paying jobs that helped him acquire shelter and food to eat for a short time.For the longest it seemed he lived only to live, before he knew it a full year had passed until he heard about the Institute, he heralded the courage to travel to the Institute and craft a new life for himself, but time can only tell when he find it worthwhile to even have powers in the first place.
Please notify me if anything needs to be changed or updated, I kinda used a mix of the old and new template, though I'm figuring that I fucked up somewhere along the way. It's good to be back if I'm able to rejoin.