Theo was born the result of a fling that his mother Michelle had with an up-and-coming musician she met in her teens. The two weren't really in love, and when Michelle expressed a desire to keep the child, the musician flew the coop quick. Michelle's family was a well-to-do one, though, and would never have let her keep the child. Or if they did, they'd make her marry the first man who could keep a respectable facade. So she struck out on her own at 16 to raise her child herself.
Theo's life was hard, but it wasn't terribly unpleasant. Michelle worked hard to provide for her son, and managed reasonably well. Things picked up when Theo was ten. Michelle met someone else — her love of music bug bit again, and she started seeing Yoshiro Aguchi, a classical violinist from Japan. There wasn't really a transition period for Theo; he'd learned to accept things as they happened. Besides that, Theo and Yoshiro seemed to get along well. So Michelle and Yoshiro for got married, and Theo's chose to take his stepfather's name.
One day, when Theo was fifteen, he and a few of his friends decided to try one of those "opening of the third eye" exercises. None of them were professionals, and all of them were kids. Most of them botched it, and giggles were had. But in Theo's case, it worked. Unfortunately it worked too well! Rather than merely "open" his third eye, it TORE it open! He immediately passed out, and for the next few days, was vacant and spacey. And it was about to get worse.
Theo seemed on the mend, as his mind healed from the violent forcing-open of his third eye. And then he started to hallucinate, and it was always the same thing — spiders. Little did he (or anyone else) know, but he wasn't hallucinating. He was seeing aetheric spiders. Aetheric spiders are a form of astral creature that feeds on the auras of human beings.
Unfortunately, due to his constant state of psychic "openness", he began attracting the astral spiders in worrying numbers. He fell ill, and the "hallucinations" got worse as more and more of these astral blighters came to feed on the constant stream of psychic energy he was producing and emitting. For the next two weeks he was all but incoherent as he tried to battle these invaders that only he could perceive.
In the end, he came up with an unconventional way to win. He gave them the very thing they were after — his psychic energy. In a desperate battle on the astral plane, he blasted the spiders with every spare bit of psychic energy he could manage. In the end, the spiders took in so much that they became saturated with his energy, and in doing so they became part of him — a hivemind that would end up taking a while to get used to.
Once he recovered, he told his parents the story, and they made the call to Coral Springs. The school was in a transitionary period after a catastrophe that destroyed their ocean-based facility, but they promised they'd do what they could to accomodate Theo as he learned to control his new… "residents".
Psychic: Theo is in control of a number of "aetheric spiders" that he can manifest or de-manifest at will. There's about fifty, each about the size of a quarter. They're usually invisible to people who don't have psionic abilities. They can attack opponents either by draining astral energy (which almost all living beings have, even those not gifted with psionic abilities), rendering an opponent fatigued, or through biting. The bites inflict damage on the psyche (and really feel creepy besides, like spiders crawling on your SOUL). Theo can use these spiders as lookouts, seeing through the eyes of one of them.
Physical: Theo can direct his spiders to produce a glowing, silvery-blue thread that can be used for offense (weaving together enough to make a whip) or defense (spinning them in a web around a person or thing to be protected). Additionally, Theo himself is pretty physically fit, and can generally stand more punishment than the average human being.
Connected: Due to his ability to perceive things through his spiders' senses, Theo can be scarily well-informed as to what goes on in his general area. He doesn't spy on individuals unless he has no choice, and never in private rooms.
Dance: Theo's not only good enough to follow someone else's choreography. He has enough skill with it to create his own choreography, whether by splicing together steps he's picked up elsewhere into something cohesive or making new steps.
Multitasking: Theo can spread his brain's processing power over many of his spiders at once, and is capable of true multitasking — the literal simultaneous progressing of many tasks at once.
Sing: Having both parents being music fans, one learns to sing along from a very young age. The voice lessons as a younger teen only strengthened this talent into a reasonably good skill. He also can sing in Japanese, thanks to his stepfather's instruction.
Strings: Channeling his psychic energy through the spiders allows them to spin threads of varying thicknesses. They have about the same strength to thickness ratio as spider silk, and can be spun in thicknesses from as thin as half the thickness of a human hair, to the thickness of a soda straw. These can be used for a variety of tasks. They can be used for all the normal things one can use strings for, but their most incredible use is for stitching up injuries — his own and others'. They can seal cuts and tears in the skin, and reattach limbs. However, they can do nothing for blood loss, nor are they any use in illnesses where tissue has rotted away. Horrifyingly enough however, they can graft OTHER limbs onto a de-limbed stump, forcing the body to accept the foreign limb as its own.
Tactics: This differs from strategy, which is planning in a base or office. Tactics refers to the ability to assess a situation one is in, and use the existing situation to one's advantage. He's a pretty decent chess player thanks to this.
Telepathy: Theo can attempt to mentally communicate with a being when his spiders are in physical contact with it. It's harder with animals, since they act completely on instinct. Be wary of initiating telepathic contact with Theo; the whispers of the spiders will generally be heard "in the background". When Theo's initiating it, he's channeling through a SPECIFIC spider; when it's initiated by someone else it's a connection with the "hub".