The Dastardly Dire [Aesthetic Change and Addition of Site History]

Malik Dire Faulkner was born September 4th 1999 in a hospital in Mobile, Alabama. His mother [Sandra] and father [Thomas] named him Malik because it meant "King", and they thought he would be the "king" of something. Over the next 4 years, Malik was called the king of anything and everything. King of love, king of jokes, king of breadsticks, even the king of jumping. Malik was watching the news with his mother and father while a report about metahumans was on. "Hey, mommy. You know what I want to be the king of?"
"What is it, moonpie?"
"I want to save the world. I want to be a superhero. I want to be the king of the superheroes."
His dad chuckled and said, "Well kiddo, that ain't gonna happen. To be a superhero you need to have something called a metahuman gene. Something you have to be born with. Something that YOU weren't born with. You need to think about something more modest, and stop trying to be the center of attention."
"I'll show you. I'll get them one day."

One stormy night when Malik was 5, his father came home drunk. His father swerved into the drive and stumbled into the door, empty bottle in hand and keys still in the ignition. When Malik went to welcome his father home, all he did was push him out of the way. His dad stumbled up the stairs, almost falling. Malik, being a smart kid, knew what was about to happen. He ran to the side of the stairs, opened the door to the storage area that no one used, and locked himself inside. He could hear the crashes of broken glass and screams from his mother as he curled into a ball and cried. He heard footsteps slam down the stairs, he could tell they were his mom's because they were fast and sounded small. He heard her barrel out of the door, get into her car, and leave. Never to return. Malik peeked out of the closet to see his father yelling out of the doorway, "YEAH!!! THAT'LL TEACH YA'!"
Malik shut the door back, and slept there until the morning came. Only to do it again tomorrow. Not very heroic was it?

As the years went by, that room became a part of Malik. It was a sanctuary, his happy place, and where he learned he was great at writing at 16.
At 18, Dire was sitting with his father. Watching the news. A metahuman report appeared again.
"How does that not fascinate you? Have you never wanted to be the one to be the one to save the world?" Malik asked
"No, because I'm not selfish like you and leave it to the heroes!" He turned the channel to the football game.
He then took one more swig of whiskey, and sat the bottle down.
He watched as their team threw an interception and the other team run it back for a touchdown. He ALSO saw the empty bottle of whiskey come around and whack him right in the face. "DAMMIT!!!" His father yelled as he crashed the bottle over the table, breaking the bottle and a part of the table.
"Dad, calm down!"
He whipped around, and Malik knew in that moment the he messed up. His father reared around and back handed him, "No, YOU calm down!!!" He delivered another blow.
"Dad, it's just a game!!!" Now realizing that he may as well speak, because he can't make it worse.
His father didn't say anything. He simply laughed, picked up the broken bottle, and advanced toward him. "This is just a game too. It's called: Get your ass beat."
Malik ran to the kitchen and prepared to defend himself. His father ran ahead and swiped, nearly sliced his eye open. He came around again with the bottle and this time connected with his arm.
Malik looked down to see the wound wasn't too deep, but the piece of glass was broken off in his skin. "What the fuck!!!!" He exclaimed to his father
"I'm tired of you being such a baby!!!" He yelled as he thrust the bottle to his heart.
Malik now knew he was going for the kill. He ran to the other the staircase. He almost bolted upstairs, but he then thought about how stupid he was.
What was he gonna do? Jump out of the window? But, under the staircase there was a way to get under the house and crawl out of the side. He learned that when he decided to sneak out a few years ago. "I guess that was good for something after all." He mumbled to himself as he slammed the door of the storage room shut. He was presented to the majority of his stuff [because at this point this was his room]. He decided to pack up most of the things he would need to survive a couple of nights. He grabbed a bunch of clothes out of the closet, some probably stale food from the mini fridge, a flashlight, a hunting knife, his phone, and his charger. On his way out of the cubby hole, a flash of gold caught his eye. He looked over, and saw a slightly loose board. Under that board there was something with gold on the outside of it. He pulled the board really hard, and found a book underneath it. He didn't understand how he couldn't have seen it before this moment in time, but he never really pulled on his floor boards for fun. It was evident this book had been there for a LONG time, because of the thick layer of dust that was on it. Yet, this wasn't an ordinary book. He could tell from the cover being the contorting face of a demon. He got scared, but felt like he needed to investigate more and took it. He then went to the cubby in the left corner of the room, and walked into the rainy night. Headed for the woods.

When Malik had made it a safe distance into the woods to stop, he immediately pulled the book out. Although it was raining, he couldn't help himself so he decided to get under a canopy of trees. He flipped through the pages, and he found out that these were ways to summon demons in the olden days.
"How to summon vampires? Lame. How to expel a demon? Who cares?" He was mad at his father, but not mad enough to summon a demon to kill him. Just as he was about to shut the book and move on, he looked at the page he was on. "How to gain powers from a demon? Me likey..."
He read the instructions, they seemed fairly easy. All he needed was to hold something dead in his hand and say a chant. He looked around and saw a chipmunk sitting about 50 feet away from him. He slowly moved to pick up a rock that would surely hurt the thing.
"Hurt the chipmunk, get powers. Don't hurt the chipmunk, let the world destroy itself... Chipmunk, or millions of people... Hmmm..." When he succeeded to make the descision, he threw it, THWUNK and it hit the poor chipmunk square on the head to turn his brain to mush. He picked up the chipmunk and said, "Sorry dude, you were just a victim of your everyday demon spawning."
He held the chipmunk in his hand and said the chant.
Then the wind seemed to pick up, the trees began to shake. He felt excitement well up inside him, then the wind stopped.
Then complete silence, "Aw, cmon!" He yelled.
Then all of the sudden, there was a jolt throughout his body.
He involuntarily squeezed the chipmunk, to the point of making it explode.
Then, there was nothing.

Malik was awoken to a loud roar, and a very deep voice booming, "WHO DARES DISTURB ME IN MY HOUSE!!!"
He stood up to see a horrible sight, everything was orange with magma rock for floors and lava waterfalls outside. The air was painful to breath and his eyes couldn't cry because it was so hot. "Where the hell am I? Am I dead? Who are you?"
When he finally stopped looking at the scenery and looked at who he was talking to, he looked up to see a truly terrifying... Thing. It was a very large [at least 20 feet tall just sitting there] grey demon with fire for eyes. Horns pointing backwards out of his head, looking down upon him menacingly.
"You have answered your own question fool, you are in hell. You are not dead. You have summoned your undeserving self to this place. I am the almighty Errtu! Ruler of this whole pit of hell."
"HELL!!! I'm in HELL!!!"
"That is what I said, is it not? You have summoned yourself here to gain powers from me, so listen closely I will not repeat myself. In order to gain any power I could give you, you must prove yourself." After he said all this, a weapon rack full of demonic weapons appeared. "Choose one weapon."
He looked around to find a wicked looking dagger and picked it up. He realized that he needed to at least ACT like this is something he does everyday, because this is a quite powerful demon he's messing with. "I am ready, Errtu. My name is Malik by the way." He said with a shaky voice
"I know who you are you imbecile. Do you really think a powerful being such as me wouldn't know who was entering his realm? I know everything about you Malik Dire Faulkner. I will call you by your middle name, Dire. Now, this is my champion." A strange mutation that looked like the mixture of a demon, a praying mantis, a wasp, a gorilla, and a lizard stomped out. "No one has ever defeated it in the ring of dishonor. Let us see if you shall break the streak shall we?"
Malik stepped into the coliseum looking area, and waited to see what the monster would do. The monster seemed to be doing the same thing. So Malik bluffed a bull rush straight to the monster. The thing apparently knew that was coming, and bluffed a jab then brought it down. If the coliseum weren't sand, he would have been dead. Yet his luck of getting away with minor cuts came through again, and he got slammed into the sand. He rolled left and ran around the thing, the only place he saw was under its wings and its eyes. He decided he needed to make the monster fly.

After 30 minutes of getting tossed around and toyed with, he found out how to get it to fly. He was going to have to strike fast, but he was going to get on its back. Therefore it would fly up and try to impale him on the stalagmites. He COULD survive the fall, if he rolled. It WOULD hurt when he landed, though. He rolled his eyes, "Alright, if I'm gonna die... I'd better do it in style." He ran forward trying to confuse the thing by charging ahead and yelling, "LEEEEROOOYYYY JENKIIINS!!!!"
It confused it long enough for Malik to get half of the distance, then it was ready again. He waited for the thing to jab and when it did, he grabbed onto it despite all weird spikes coming off the inside. "Hope you don't have poison, big fella."
He swung around and landed on its head, to look dead in its eyes. "Staring contest!" He poked it in the eyes "You blinked, I win!"
As if on cue, the thing flipped its wings open. The droning of the wings was so loud, he almost passed out. He looked down to see the wings didn't seem to give easy access to his under skin. He winced. He decided to go for the eyes, "Hello again, I need this." He said as he stabbed it in its eye. He pulled the knife out and the thing started to fly around in circles. "Cmon man, just give me a break!" He struggled, but got his knife into the thing's eyes. Being completely blind, the thing flew straight up at top speed, "Oh, shit!" Malik said as the thing shot up.
He stabbed the thing in the side and flipped down the side. The thing slammed itself up through the stalagmites and Malik thought for sure the thing was dead. He pushed himself off the side into a swan dive so he could roll. When he did so, he turned around, flipped the thing off, and started to walk away. Then he heard the thing try to move. He stopped, groaned, and started singing the chorus of "F*ck You" by Lily Allen. Then the thing fell off the stalagmites. It tried to fly but it impaled its wings on the stalagmites, so it couldn't fly. It slammed to the ground and made a big crater in the sand.
Malik decided he was going to have to make sure he killed the thing. He found the dagger laying in the sand a couple feet away from the thing. He the began to saw at its neck.

Malik slammed the head down at the foot of Errtu's throne. His look of disbelief was priceless to Malik, as he beamed with proud.
"How did you..."
"Luck, mister tu. I can't believe it either, if the helps."
Errtu shook his disbelief off his face, "No matter, you'll kill yourself with your powers." He snapped his fingers and a watch appeared on his wrist.
"What're my powers then?"
Errtu simply pointed at the watch that appeared on his watch when he snapped his fingers.
Malik examined it to find a button that said deploy, he never saw that on one before.
He pressed the button and a black compression shirt, black joggers, black knee length boots, two swords sheathed at his side, and a red cloak.
"Whoa, this is awesome!"
"Yes, but with powers... Come weaknesses. Remember that. You have many more powers to unlock, but I will tell you two things.
You can teleport. Not going to tell anything more on that.
The other is about your apartment. I-"
"Uh, Errtu... I don't have an apartment."
Errtu growled, "Do not think I know that. I am getting to this. Your apartment is warded with powers. One of the wards being you can heal any mortal wound inside the apartment. That is if you can get there, before dying. Another ward is on the specific item of the chalkboard on your wall. It will have the name of a target. Whenever the name appears, you must kill them within one month or die yourself."
At that, Dire's happiness sunk.
"Yes, I know you wanted to be a superhero. You will not be killing superheroes every month, sometimes a name may not even appear. You will be killing everyday people who tempted me. You may get a hero, or even a villain. I care not of your pointless squalls." He snapped his fingers and the key to his apartment appeared in his hand. "Have fun, young mortal. I know you will."

When Malik woke up in his bed, in his apartment. He went to check the chalk board. It read "Thomas F. Faulkner."
Malik looked down at his watch, on the side was a button on the side that said "Deploy". He pressed it and his suit slid out of his watch and went onto his body in a split second. He grinned and said, "I'll show you who's selfish..."

Dire's journey of... Something started upon meeting Jeannie Rose there was some kind of list that needed snow from the top of Mount Everest or... Something? Anyways, they went on to begin the greatest friendship that this universe has ever seen. After that, he met a wonderful Spanish woman who's name he... Can't remember. They had a nice romantic trip to Germany with many kisses and many ninjas and a clone of himself that was a super sexy blonde girl... Cool, right!? After like... A bunch of other adventures with Jeannie Rose, he found a girl who was just... Wonderful. He kinda forgets her name too... Nalia? Something like that... He really seemed to think they would last forever, but he thinks she died. On a date with her, the Queen of Hell herself visited him to abolish the demon pulling his strings. He promised he'd be back, but it's quite doubtful... This left him with the question: What will he do now?

To answer that question, Dire went on to save the world with Fort, a lovely hero that should have never met him. The two got along fairly well until morals began to conflict. There was a young teen who called the two out by name and forced them to make a hard choice between killing him and letting a train full of people go down in an explosion... Neither had the heart to kill the boy, so they had to deal with the backlash of the public in the bombing that killed many. In this, Dire killed a reporter who had started the mess and Fort walked in on it happening. This caused Dire, out of respect to Fort, to go to the metahuman prison. After bringing the teen in, Dire was sent to the metahuman prison where he was treated harshly because of his past. He then took it upon himself to break out of the facility and go under the radar for a couple of years, changing his name, dying his hair, and getting new colored contacts. During this time, he was a store clerk.