Character Name: Spider.
Age (how old you look, and then your actual age): Looks to be mid 20s, true age is 108.
Height: 5’ 11”
Weight: 171 lbs.
Appearance: His hair is a mess of fine strands of various shades of brown from light to dark, to pale to bold, all combed straight. The bangs are combed forward, just hiding his brow in such a way that the light often casts a shadow over his dark, gray eyes. It is very ominous. As a whole, he is creepy to the point of repulsion.
Spider has kept his body in well enough condition for his line of work. A toned, well kept tool for killing. He would have it no other way.
Gigai: Unlike his cold, off-putting shinigami self, his gigai is a bright and cheery young blond fellow, dressed in seemingly friendly colored clothes compounded with a gentle and bright demeanor. After all, you can’t lure others into your traps if you’re repelling.
Personality: Spider is a borderline amoral being, full of self-love and a general disregard for the lives of others, carried over from his life as a human. He is practically obsessed with murder and all that entails: the meticulous planning, the orchestrating, the moment the victim finally realizes I am going to die and there’s nothing to do about it, and most importantly, executing the final step of… execution. After a job well done, he always makes sure to remove and keep the victim’s canines, a trophy of sorts to be added to his collection.
While Spider likes to perfectly plan killings, he by no means has an aversion to getting his hands dirty – quite the opposite, the kills he remembers the fondest are the ones that went the bloodiest.
Likes: All that has been mentioned before; his job; most fittingly, his namesake, which he has grown to identify with.
Dislikes: Many things, such as when things go wrong, for Spider is not a quick thinker.
Biography (optional): Spider, as a human, was born some very, very many years ago to some very, very foolish, as well as high-class, people, who thought it’d be funny to name their son after an often hated insect. After all, everyone else around them was giving their children funny names, and they just had to be part of the group. Not fitting in would be absolutely dreadful.
“Wouldn’t it be ironic,” they had thought, “if he grew up to hate spiders? How droll!”
Droll indeed. Young Spider, however, did not grow to hate his namesake, quite the opposite in fact. He grew to sympathize with them. Young Spider was seen by other children not as something to mock (as he thought he would be), but to avoid. Other children were repelled by him, by this natural, eerie air about him. They were much too frightened of him to try and tease. They would much rather Spider simply did not be. Spider himself would have much rather been hated and teased than feared and avoided; at least he would be getting some type of attention.
Soon enough, however, Spider found company with the insects whose name he shared. Here, too, were things shunned by humanity for simply being. Children looked at them with disgust and fear. Adults looked at them with disgust and fear.
Neither had done anything wrong, all they did was… be.
Time passed and when Spider grew to be not as young, he entered High School. Here he discovered two things: first, that others at his age did not let things like fear get in the way of a good mocking (in fact, for some it was a reason), nor in making another’s life a living hell (again, it was sometimes a reason); and second, the world of mystery novels.
Spider found the works of Agatha Christie to be much too simple, and on the whole not very engaging. On the other hand, while he found Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” series much better written, he also found it hard to relate to a nearly-flawless genius. Still, Spider enjoyed those and other mysteries. Here were heroes who discovered, solved and revealed carefully constructed plots and murders with nothing but their own wits, for they needed nothing else.
As time continued to pass, as it is wont to do, and proved to be even more antagonistic, Spider’s focus shifted away from the heroic detectives of mystery novels and towards their villains – the murderers.
They too went by with not much more than their wits and know-how; they may have made use with a knife, a gun, or some other tool of death, but the one weapon they all had in common was their mind. All they needed was a plan.
Spider looked at those around him and discovered, he wanted a plan, too.
Towards the middle of his first year, he went to constructing one, settling on his parents as targets. Spider had long since convinced himself he did not need them for much; he could easily live on his own by now, at least, so he thought. Even better, if he could pull off the act correctly, Spider could play the “helpless orphan” card. Well, by then he was a bit too old to tug at the heartstrings of others with such a sad tale, but if there was anyone who could pull it off, it was him. Or, at least, so he thought.
The rest of the first year was spent in plotting. The second year was spent executing his plan. There were people to manipulate, public opinions to be swayed; scenarios to be perfectly orchestrated, motivations to be given. At last, at the very start of the third year…
On one fateful day, a young teenaged boy walked into his parents’ bedroom to find them both dead, apparently the outcome of a murder-suicide. A tragic end to a long and public affair regarding rumors of a mistress, possible embezzlement... Most were expecting things to go sour, but not like this. Tragic of all, they left behind a poor, young son, who must be so very torn up over it all…
… And was also quickly forgotten. When it comes to public interests, the simple truth is that murders and crimes are and always will be the most interesting of stories. No one cares about the orphan looking for the home, or how his new life is going (it was going the same as his previous one, for the curious). It’s just boring, really. No excitement.
Regardless of this failure, the plan itself went perfectly. Every event went as Spider thought and hoped it would. The murders went as they should have. The public reaction to it was exactly what he thought it’d be (their reaction to his predicament was his one and only miscalculation). Spider had gotten everything he wanted: he managed to emulate his icons; he felt fame, pity and attention (briefly, at least); and, so he thought, Spider had finally found his forte, his purpose. Some built houses, some healed the sick; Spider killed. Someone had to, he thought. Someone has to show what is right and wrong, to be an example. Why not he, who enjoyed it?
That was how Spider justified his actions to himself. He was never motivated by hatred, or anger, like some murderers – Spider loved his first parents, but they had outgrown their original purpose and he had no other choices when it came to victims (for Spider at the time believed his victims should be people he knew, and he knew no one else). Spider did not hate his second parents, either – again, he had no other choices. It was all simply circumstance; Spider was a killer, and someone had to play the part of victim. Everyone in life has their part. Unfortunate to them, theirs was to die.
Unfortunate for Spider, so was his.
Several months after adopting Young Spider, the second man who grew to call him “son” was found dead by apparent suicide, a bullet to the head. All the evidence may have pointed towards it, but no one believed it. Within days of the “suicide” being made public, people claimed to have seen him and thought he was acting perfectly normal up until then; some say, even happy. Others chimed in and claimed that, after the “suicide”, the mother seemed avoidant, even fearful of her new adopted son. They thought she was next. A select, determined (if unstable) few of those decided it was up to them take action and save her.
Spider couldn’t recall much of it. He was sleeping, and then he was not. It was quiet, and then there was shouting. It was dark, and then, the door slammed open, and it was bright. Things were warm, and then there was a bang-
And then things were cold.
Spider did not much like being dead. He was not supposed to be dead; it wasn’t part of his role. He couldn’t interact with the living; he couldn’t continue doing what he was meant to. Even worse, he couldn’t read his mystery novels, unless fate was kind and he came across a passerby reading one. Unfortunately they most often instead read of other genres. Also he was a slow reader and they always turned the page before he was finished.
Soon enough, a man calling himself a Shinigami arrived and took Spider off to Soul Society, specifically, some random area of something he called the Rukon. Spider did not like it very much.
For starters, everything was so very dirty. Spider did not like dirt; it made him feel uncomfortable, and he disliked uncomfortable, and so by proxy he also disliked dirt. As well, while Spider always felt satisfied, everyone around him grew hungry for reasons he did not understand. Spider did not like their complaints of hunger, for he always associated complaints with feelings of ungratefulness, and there was nothing he couldn’t stand more than a being (living or not) who was ungrateful. Lastly, Spider found the “bandits” and “murderers” that passed off for villains around his area to be laughable, characters out of a cartoon. Spider thought the place needed a real villain. Spider, as well, thought he was perfect for the job. Besides, he had wondered what happened when someone who has already died, dies again.
Some few months (or, what seemed like months) after the arrival of Spider and other souls who had recently departed, killings had begun to crop up in the area; in itself, nothing new for the place, but these deaths were different. They were not the brutal results of some bandit’s robbery gone awry. These were precise, done with intent; as well, the killer always left a sort of calling card behind: he tore out the victim’s canines.
Beyond that, there was never any evidence. Everyone knew who killed them, but not who. The public grew fearful. Spider grew happy.
The Shinigami grew interested.
On one fateful day, some many, many months (or, what seemed like many, many months) after he had began his spree, Spider heard a knock at the door. There stood in front of him two Shinigami, who said they had an offer for him. Spider assumed (or at least hoped) it meant having to spend time where they did and not where he did and so accepted immediately.
As they rode off towards the Seireitei in a carriage (for Soul Society’s technological advancement could best be described as either being “random” or “nonexistent”) the two Shinigami explained themselves and their offer to Spider: the Seireitei had for some time been observing him, for against all expectation he, a murderer, had died and avoided the fate of damnation in Hell. This was not a very common occurrence; murder was an evil deed and as decreed by the Rules of the Afterlife, genuinely evil deeds were punished by spending one’s time (to be specific, all time) in Hell. The simple solution was that Spider was not full of evil; he was full of delusion.
Said solution was not at the time known to the Shinigami and so they began to watch him, in the hopes that they would discover some latent, magical ability/power/trait of his that they could possibly exploit. They watched him as he forced others around him into bouts of hunger by existing. They continued to watch him as he went on his carefully constructed killing spree. They watched that in particular with great interest. They, then, were struck with an idea.
The two Shinigami explained simply that said idea was their offer and that said offer was to join their ranks. Spider asked if this meant living inside the Seireitei. They said yes. Spider then asked if he could continue killing. They again said yes, but clarified only when ordered to. There was a small pang in Spider’s heart (or where it would be if he had one; he made a mental note to find that out later), but he agreed to their conditions.
The rest need not explaining. Spider did well and was trained well. Spider went on to Squad 2 and the Black Ops. Spider is happy.
The writer is aware that yes, that was indeed explaining. The writer would like to point out that most of what he does is in fact unnecessary. This entire piece, for example.
Kidou (if any): None. Never bothered with the stuff.
Special abilities (if any): Because of the above mentioned lack of interest in Kidou, Spider has instead focused all attention towards the other areas of Shinigami combat. For this reason he has exceptional skills (for his level anyways) in both hand-to-hand and zanpakuto combat and is quite adapt at shunpo.