Justin Aldatan

## Origin

Born on April Fool’s Day, in Chicago, Illinois, Justin was raised in a military family. An army brat, as they say. His dad travelled from base to base, dragging Justin and his mother with him.

Justin didn't make friends easily. Always being the new kid made it tough to get close to anyone. After a time, he just gave up trying. What was the point in getting attached? He'd just end up leaving again in a few months. Instead, he stuck to his books, letting the written characters become his greatest allies and friends. They never left him. They were there any time he opened their dusty pages. Always there to guide him.

Then, when he was nine, his dad was stationed in Fort Polk Army Base, in Louisiana. Their neighbours on the base had a dog. A big, shorthair; greyhound, he later learned. He couldn't help getting attached. He knew he shouldn't, but he did. He was an only child, with no friends… the friendly dog nextdoor was the perfect companion. And when it had puppies, their neighbours were happy to give the Aldatans one of the litter.

Justin was ecstatic. He loved his new friend. The pair were inseparable. They took little Grey with them when they moved, and young Justin finally seemed to come out of his shell. He made friends at the next school he went to, because he wasn't afraid to lose them; even when he moved on, he still had Grey.

That was until they were at Fort Leonard Wood Army Base in Missouri; three years and five army bases later. Justin and Grey were playing in the yard as usual one evening before dinner, when Grey went behind a woodpile chasing after something Justin didn't see. All he remembered next was hearing a yelp, and Grey running out, whimpering and limping. The Aldatan’s beloved pet was bitten by a spider, the necrotic venom quickly eating away at the canine’s flesh. His mother brought the dog to the local vet, but without the spider to identify the bite, they couldn't do much more than give him antibiotics and wait.

In too short a time, Grey was gone, and Justin was alone again.

It hurt. But the young, curious Justin wanted to know WHY. So he searched the woodpile, finding a small, messy web hidden between the wood and the nearby toolshed. Always wanting to know more, the youth poked at the web with a long branch near the pile. Out crawled a long legged spider, light brown with a dark marking on its back. Was that what killed his friend?

He went and got a cup, capturing the spider to better study. He grew fascinated by the spider, going to the library and finding out all he could about it. He learned its name was Loxosceles reclusa, or more commonly known as the Brown Recluse. It was highly venomous, and tended to hide rather than bite; living in dark, disused areas like the woodpile and in basements.

He began wondering how venomous its necrotic bite was. His searches proved that the bites weren't ALWAYS deadly. Which made why Grey died from it so sad. So he went on to study the venom itself. Over the next few years, the boy had brought with him a few samples of the spider to the various bases when he moved, keeping them as almost secret pets. They were easy to care for; a glass jar with tiny holes in the lid, filled with wood chips and the like made a simple yet cozy home for Charlotte and her descendants. They ate almost any bugs, alive or dead, so feeding them was simple in and of itself, too.

As the boy grew into a teenager, he learned more and more about the arachnid that had become his secret fascination. By thirteen years old, he had already been experimenting with various potencies of the venom it secret. He'd tried so many ways of exposure to the necrotising toxin in animals of varying sizes. He tried making it airborne, poisoning them with it, putting it in their eyes, ears, or other membranous parts, but it seemed the most potent way was the classic injection. Which made sense. That was how nature intended it to be administered.

So then he focused his attention on how to extract the venom and concentrate it. He slowly saved up his money from chores and presents to buy himself a sort of biochemistry lab that he kept in his room. The transfers began to become fewer and farther between as he got older, and as he got to high school, his parents assured him that it would be the last time they'd have to move. His father had gotten a promotion, so they didn't have to move around anymore.

Great. Or it would be, if he hadn't relied on the constant change of scenery to put off suspicion from him over his ‘experiments’. At least they were still in the Midwest, well within the confines of his precious Loxosceles reclusa’s habitat range. But now, he would need to be careful not to allow himself to become suspect.

Still, he made the best of it. He kept his ‘hobby’ a secret, perfecting the potency of the venom best used for his purposes. And with his animal testing done, he moved on to human testing.

He began working on vagabonds, strays that no one would miss. And he was careful not to leave a trail. His favourite means of testing his synthetic venom was by swapping it with the drug filled syringes of a junkie looking for a fix. Not only did it give him a means to test the potency of his venom, it did the world a service by ridding it of another trouble making druggie. Or that’s how he saw it. Kill two birds with one needle.

Perhaps it was because of his fascination with spider venom that made him excel in chemistry and biology… maybe it was a natural skill that cause his fascination. Whichever the case, he retained top marks in the subjects, though history and sociology were both only a high C (something his authoritarian father would NOT stand for). He had to do extra credit after school to bring his grades up… which annoyingly cut into the time he had for his experiments.

He was more careful after that, working even harder to keep a B+ minimum in all his classes. It wasn’t the perfection he was hoping for, but even his stringent father couldn’t fault him for a B+ or two. And it gave him back the time he needed for his studies.

As Junior year rolled around, he found time for extracurricular activities, to pad his college applications. He did projects that allotted him time to sneak away, while still looking like he was working diligently. Cleaning up the town, helping out at homeless shelters, spending time with the elderly in nursing homes, things that made him look even better on paper. He was careful, though. Always careful not to do his experiments too close to where he worked. For risk of someone putting two and two together.

By graduation, he had enough information to begin the second stage of his plan… he was going to use his knowledge to his benefit. It started off small. After all, spider venom didn’t have quite the same staying power as other poisons. And, in honesty, it probably would have been easier to just find a better alternative. But he liked his spiders, and their venom was too fascinating. He started by picking his victims more… decisively. His first victim was a drug dealer that went to his school. After school, Justin stopped by the street corner, making it look like he was aiming to purchase some product. But, during the handshake, two tiny needles punctured the dealer’s hand, injecting their necrotising venom into the thug. As the other teen looked on in bemusement and scratched his hand, Justin punched him in the face and stole both the money and the product. It wasn’t hard to run away when the youth’s gun hand had clearly begun to throb. The bullets he HAD managed to get off missed Justin completely.

That would be a success, though he’d have to be extremely careful until the kid died. IF he died. Venom wasn’t 100% perfect. But he didn’t want to be recognised. He’d have to remember not to go after anyone within his circle of acquaintances again.

It was a lesson he learned well, and refined his techniques and rules accordingly. Every death from that point onward was a means to an end, but done according to his rules. He liked rules, they made him feel stronger. And, in a way, they did. Using subterfuge and misdirection, Justin slowly began taking out criminals from various syndicates and mobs, starting turf wars between them, enabling him to reach higher and higher level bosses.

All the while, he took forensic science, criminology, and other similar courses. After graduating with a BA in criminology, he went to the police academy, working as hard as he did everything. He build up a reputation as a good, clean, hard working rookie, while surreptitiously working to fuel a turf war that sent the criminal element in his city into turmoil.

It was then that he swooped in and took over. He envenomated enough of their ranks to earn a reputation as an unknown assailant picking them off, one by one. Remaining anonymous, he sent in his warnings and commands via messengers and the occasional kid paid to drop off a package containing a video or a note. The videos were always just silhouettes, of different people he’d pay to sit in for himself. Using their own money. Money that he had recovered from his victims before he killed them.

Contrary to rumours, he didn’t always use venom and poison, but the murders he didn’t use them for weren’t intended to be traced back to his alter ego: the Brown Recluse; they were to gain something else. Acquire funds, stir up the turf war, things like that. Those deaths he didn’t claim.

In his day job as a young beat cop, he was seen as clean. He didn’t take bribes, never lived outside his means… he didn’t even have any accounts full of money. All his ill-gotten gains were funnelled back into his work, and done all in cash. Nothing traced back to him directly… just to the Brown Recluse and nothing was really known about him, not even if he WAS a him. He had a rumour running that the Brown Recluse was a woman, hiding her identity to help her build up her power base.

It worked, so well, in fact, that he started exclusively using women to sit in for his announcements and messages, still silhouetted, still with their voices masked. Soon, a real life villainess was created, with him as the puppet master, narrator, and progenitor.

During his day job, he worked his way up to detective, earning the respect and admiration from his coworkers for his sense of diligence and work ethic. In a way, he was a real life vigilante hero. But in another, he was a villain just biding his time.

But he never came from the shadows. The criminal element in his city diminished severely when he took over, their work diversifying and extending, like a spider building its messy web. Crime didn’t actually stop, it just reshaped and rebranded itself; a fact the police force would be more than happy to explain, or at least try to.

By the time he was 28, he was at the top of his game: a top notch detective with an unflappable moral code by day; and a cold, manipulative, villainess by night. And ne’er the twain shall meet. As is proven by the fact that he’s STILL in it, a decade on… still balancing his double life.

Relationships:
He never married, but he’d had plenty of relationships over the years, most of them for show… to look the part of a normal, flirty man. But they all bored him too quickly, so none of his relationships lasted long. Most of his friends on the force just thought his straight laced, by the book mentality was too much for most romantic partners. It was a running gag that it was because he was already married to his work. Hard to cheat on Justice.

## Weaknesses

Abandonment issues. Fear of attachment. OCD. Difficulty connecting to emotions or feeling empathy towards other people. Fear of being found out. Strict routine with a severe disdain from straying from said routine. Quick to temper (though he tries to hide it). Impulsive. A sociopath. Oh, and TERRIBLE at other languages.

## Paraphernelia

Standard Police gear. Neurotoxin derived from Brown Recluse venom.