Match of the Millennium

-Current Timeline-
Family:
Jeff Mason - Father (Alive, Incarcerated)
Katherine Mason - Mother (Alive, Incarcerated)
Karen Mason - Older Sister (Deceased, Drug Overdose)
Kelly Mason - Younger Sister (Alive)

Known Allies:
Kelly Mason
Sound and Fury
Full Moon Society

Known Enemies:
Jedah
Black Lotus
Daniel Little
Fio Tessitore(Deceased)

Keith was an African American who was born the second child of three children, in Metro City. While his parents were poor, they still were still respected members of the community, due to his father's involvement in politics. However the public image hid a darker truth. Both their father and mother were quite abusive to the children, and often the children received curling iron burns or ended having their backs whipped by extension cords. No one was the wiser since their injuries were the type that would remain hidden as long as they were clothed.

Eventually Aranha ended up taking on a beating meant for his older sister guided by a dream. After that day, both Karen and Keith both started developing their individual plans to escape and get the other siblling out along with them. Karen came in from the direction of focusing on a music career. She later would go on to a performing arts school with a promise that she would return for them.

Meanwhile, Keith realized early on in the formulations of his own plans that he would need money to provide food and shelter for her and at his age, he couldn't legally work. He started out as a pick pocket and then he began hearing about parkour and looked at it as an escape method not only from police but also as a metaphor for escaping the house he lived in, plus being able to move through more and more places allowed him to be able to take more valuable things than what most people would keep in their wallets. He began teaching himself the basic movements and then eventually the ground work he put into the basics allowed him to see more possibilities and be able to adapt his movements to a given situation. After he received the money, he put a portion of his ill-gained money into poker games often coming out slightly ahead due to both a knack for card counting and reading most of his opponents' tells.

There was one situation he couldn't adapt to. Unluckily or luckily depending on how you see it, he ended up attempting to rob a Mestre. He didn't get away. However, he wasn't turned in to the police, either. After receiving a sound buttkicking, Keith told the Mestre about his family and the reasons he had turned to crime. After swearing a vow to give up a life of crime he was taught a style of Capoeira that sampled liberally from both Regional and Angola. In the process of learning Capoeira, he found that his ability to read tells had its uses in a fight situations allowing for him to gain more information than most fighters. Eventually the time came for his Batizado and he received the nickname Aranha(Spider). Most of the students thought it was based how he played in the roda, but it was actually an inside joke between Keith and the Mestre about how they first met.

While his talent in Capoeira and fighting in general was being nurtured through the Mestre drilling move after move into him and further sharpened through underground fighting circuits for more legal means of obtaining money, he didn't let his ability in parkour completely fall by the wayside either. While he didn't practice it as often, he did practice it in the spirit it was supposed practiced in (for self improvement rather than something that would make him more money).

Meanwhile, his sister Karen did manage to get a record deal and because of a song that exposed their parents, and they were imprisoned after. Unfortunately it came too late for Keith who by then was a legal adult and due to his skills in martial arts was unofficially one of Karen's body guards. However while he was able to protect her from others he was still unable to protect her from herself. After her first hit, she soon ended up overdosing on drugs.

Emotionally lashing out, Keith fell into his own old habits and started taking less than legal jobs once more. A notable one being a cat burglary job. However he encountered another burglar while at the scene. This cat burglar triggered the alarms. In spite of that, Keith managed to escape with the item in question and leave the other burglar to take the fall. If it wasn't for eye witness reports of a man bounding from wall to wall as he escaped from the scene of the crime, that story might have ended there. Instead, his Mestre was able to piece together that Keith had violated his vow and turned his back on him.

Keith would soon vanish from the public eye once more. While out of the public eye he became a drifter making money off street fights and dice games here and there, never staying in one place long enough to develop a reputation for his fighting ability. He went all over the United States in a journey of self-exploration.

-Alternate Timeline-
Family:
Jeff Mason - Father (Deceased, Murdered)
Katherine Mason - Mother (Deceased, Murdered)
Karen Mason - Older Sister (Deceased, Suicide)
Kelly Mason - Younger Sister (Alive, in spite of getting kidnapped more times than Princess Peach)

Known Allies:
n/a

Known Enemies:
Blackjack
'R'

How the Alternate Timeline background differs from the current:
This was the timeline that was the source of the dreams Keith initially received that would ultimately change the fate of his family. Because of that, he could not receive the warning that his sister would ultimately receive the beating that would cause her to commit suicide. This in turn ended her music career before it could begin. Another detail that was different was the fact that his parents were never incarcerated because Karen never got the record deal and thus no money for legal representation. Instead, Keith ended up killing them.