"You might come to appreciate things you thought were creepy or bad, if the situation's dire enough."
Dwayne Lauder/James Chang
Alias: Webber
Nicknames: Jimi, Spider-boy, Oh Hell No
Age: 18
Gender: Male, he/they pronouns accepted
Personality: Jimi comes across as a typical, if perhaps overly cheerful, teenager at a glance. This glosses over some of his quirks, such as how superstitious he is, his somewhat fatalistic beliefs, and his need to be useful. Jimi is cheerful and optimistic, true, about everything but himself. For his part, he's convinced he's host to an evil spirit and one day, it will consume everything he loves and cares about - so perhaps it's best his lot in life is kept small and insignificant. This steadfast belief is directly at odds with his desire to have friends and not be lonely. The only way he could find to reconcile the two was to employ his services for others, regardless of their moral code. He is fiercely loyal to whoever employs him, but it has not stopped him from apologizing whenever someone gets hurt. It was this attitude that made him a candidate for the Wards program.
Since joining the Wards program, Jimi's attitude appears to have improved immensely. The belief itself has not changed but, according to him, "if the spirit takes over, they can all probably destroy me before it destroys them". This he finds to be a satisfactory condition for friendship. In all likelihood, the 'evil spirit' is little more than constant intrusive thoughts manifesting themselves as desires for violence and death. That has not stopped Jimi from maintaining a small herb garden among his possessions, growing lavender and sage in particular to "ward off the evil spirit". His loyalty has expanded to "everyone here", but it's hard to tell how many of them he actually counts as 'friends'.
As a sidenote, Jimi's performance in academic subjects is exceedingly poor for his age, though his creativity has been growing.
Appearance: Standing at 5'5" - a bit shorter than average - Jimi's none-too-impressive build often leaves others with the impression that he can be pushed around, and nothing about the way he carries himself suggests otherwise. Most of his clothing is a size or two too large for him, and is mostly hoodies and jeans, with bandage wrappings under the hoodie. Thanks to those wrappings, he typically smells of lavender and sage. Under the wrappings are ten scattered eye tattoos, which he insists is part of the 'evil spirit's' manifestation. Testing has suggested that, their placement and realism aside, they are completely normal. On rainy days, he ends up with a slight limp on his right side and has made use of a simple plastic cane when not in costume.
Jimi had to be pressured into a cape costume, not entirely understanding the need for one (in his words, "I don't exactly stick out. Who's gonna recognize me?"). His costume is as plain as his general attire, colored green with gold accents and including a pinned scarf that can be easily removed if snagged and a full face mask.
Biography: Jimi's backstory, as he recalls it, opens in a ravine facing down multiple spiders. He startled, badly, before realizing he couldn't move. The spiders crawled around and even over him, but he recalls clearly that "not a single one bit me". He took stock of his memories - he had no idea how he got there, or why he was hurting so badly and couldn't move. The name 'James' did come to him, so he assumed it was his name, though no surname accompanied it. He did know he was thirsty, though. As the thought crossed his mind, the spiders seemed to leave him - and wove a web that captured the next morning's dew and puddled it in front of him. When he wished for food, the spiders brought him insects that, while not tasty, were enough to keep him living.
James took over a week to be able to move again, weakened and with at least one fractured bone but in no way dead. He crawled his way out of the ravine and made his way back to civilization where he was confronted with a new problem: he had no idea where he lived or was supposed to even go. The thoughts in his head grew dark: hurt people, kill people, take their food, take their homes. They no longer felt like his thoughts. He wanted someone he could talk to who'd answer all his questions. Once more, the spiders came to him but could not directly grant this request, so they did the next best thing: they kidnapped a woman and took her to him, working in concert to do so. James was fortunate in two regards: one, that the woman did not have arachnophobia and so could keep her head toether, and two, that she saw a child first and a parahuman second. He apologized as he freed her, and she asked where his parents were. Upon receiving no answer, she offered to take him to the police. The spiders threatened to swarm at that, at which point she offered to take him to her house instead. Thus, Mei Chang ended up taking Jimi home to her husband, Haoyu Chang. While the child was a surprise, he was not exactly an unwanted one and, as long as he helped out around the house, he was allowed to stay.
And so James, nicknamed Jimi by Mei, became a part of the Chang household. He started getting a grasp on his powers and using them for tasks such as getting spiders out of the bathroom and the like. All the while, that little voice in his head never went away. It practically craved blood and when Jimi researched it, he learned about possession, something he felt fit perfectly. He was possessed, and he could not let the Changs know or else, as the voice liked to point out, they'd probably throw him back onto the streets.
Jimi did his best to balance his parahuman status (which he learned, neither Chang were particularly wild about parahumans), his apparent possession, and his less-than-legal status. He knew at any moment the Changs could hand him over to police to find his real parents - why that frightened him so badly, he couldn't remember, but he knew it had to be avoided. The 'spirit', however, simply got worse and worse until it provided Jimi with a gruesome plan to do away with the Changs. That was the night Jimi packed a bag and left the Chang household. The spiders helped him find an abandoned building that was safe enough to stay in, and he did for a time, before leaving the city entirely and finding a new city to call home. He was 16 (probably), he could handle himself. Though it quickly turned out what he couldn't handle was the loneliness. Even with a spider "pet" he was still lonely (and emphasized that this time, the spiders could NOT kidnap someone). It wasn't until reading the police blotter one day that he was struck by an idea: he could hang out with people, easily! After all, he could make for a great lookout and, if he could be honest, he probably wouldn't be as scared of the 'evil spirit' threatening criminals who would hurt others for a quick payout. And so Jimi began assisting various criminals in robberies, burglaries, and other property crimes. Despite his earlier thoughts, he found he had a hard time stomaching the company of those who really would kill for a quick payout. It wasn't to say no one ever got hurt on the heists he attended, but it was more a side effect than a goal. However, he still proved to be a soft touch, apologizing even to cops who got hurt while he tried to distract them or ditching his post to help someone injured and using spider webbing for makeshift bandages. It took a while to approach Jimi about the Wards Initiative, as by now he'd discovered his ability to create fear and used that to keep people at bay but once approached, Jimi seemed eager to join.
It is at this point that, while being investigated for fitness in the Wards Initiative, his fingerprints brought up a missing person case: a married couple and their son, who was 5 at the time of disappearance. They were Jacob and Victoria Lauder, with their son Dwayne Lauder, reported missing by Victoria's parents. According to them, Jacob and Victoria before their disappearance had spoken of having found a better religion to raise their son in, one that promised to "make him important or some nonsense like that". Cross-referencing the area they lived in with known Cape activity brings up one James H. Fisher, a Master known for being able to impose his mindscape on others' over a period of time. It is known he runs a small religious cult with the aim of bringing people to him. Between Jimi's assumed name and history of intrusive thoughts, it can be theorized that Fisher tried also using his power on him and failed due to Jimi's then-unknown parahuman status. From then, it's all unknown, but it's not unreasonable to assume Fisher had this failure "killed" and thrown into the forest ravine to hide the body, leading into what Jimi remembers.
Powers/Skills: [Master/Trump] Jimi's power is a very simple one - he controls spiders. The range is fairly small, only at 100 ft and maintaining control for 100 yards. Control requires him to be precise in his orders, as any vagueness will be resolved in the most literal interpretation available. He is able to direct the spiders to perform complex tasks, however. Verbal instructions are more effective than mental ones. More interesting is the effect he imparts on the spiders - an ability that allows them to 'transfuse' powers between people (most often from others to Jimi) via a bite. The longetivity of these powers is inversely proportional to their complexity and potency, with no copy lasting over an hour.
Jimi himself is proud of his parkour skills and seems to be quick to learn other physical techniques. He also seems to have developed an immunity to most spider venoms.
Other: He has a 'pet' wolf spider, that he just calls 'Wolfy'. It's a little over 2 inches wide and even with Jimi's power occasionally bites him.
It's also worth noting Jimi has not been reunited with his (technically not) adoptive parents, nor his maternal grandparents. This has been a request on his part, and not an oversight.
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