MAJOR DEEJ UNIVERSE

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Carlos Castillo is a Cuban-American who came to the United States, as a very young boy, with his family on a raft escaping Cuba.  Sadly, not long after his parents became American citizens, they were killed in a hurricane in Florida. Carlos only survived by somehow 'digging' a hole in the ground and riding out the storm there. Relatives living in Miami took him in, however, these relatives were not like his parents; they were drug dealers.

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From his elementary school days until his teens, Carlos was forced to be a delivery boy for drugs for his relatives. He hated doing the job, but by his late teens, he gave in to the pressures of the work and succumbed to another greater thing: love.

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Carlos fell in love with the daughter of a local crimelord. The daughter's name was Maria Escalanza.  Carlos, being just a delivery boy, thought he'd never be able to gain her attention or interest, however, one night when Maria was at the same club that Carlos was delivering to, Carlos saw Maria's 'boyfriend' treat her rough, slapping her around. Carlos chivalrously intervened, but had guns drawn on him by the boyfriend's security detail in the process. It turned out that the boyfriend was the son of another rival crime gang and that neither Maria nor the boyfriend had permission from either's parents to be seeing each other. Thanks to Carlos' intervention, everyone now knew of the unauthorized relationship. Maria prevented Carlos from getting shot, with Maria taking Carlos from the club for his own safety, thus driving him to his home.  There, however, Maria quickly discovered Carlos was in actually in love with her (he did have a few pictures of her lying around...all over his place). Feeling for the first time she was being loved by somebody that wasn't after her for her father's money or position, Maria, knowing their relationship was a bad idea from the start,...had  a relationship with Carlos.

 

Thanks to witnesses of Maria and her previous boyfriend's account with Carlos at the club, it didn't take long before Carlos was tracked down by Maria's boyfriend, where Carlos was cornered, shot and left for dead. Carlos almost died of the gunshot wound, but something else interesting happened. Carlos saw 'dirt' actually enter his wound and push out the bullet, sealing the wound with a patch of dirt that stayed in the wound until he 'thought' of trying to move said dirt...which, upon thinking about it, the dirt moved, thus opening up the wound again. Carlos made the dirt cover his wound again and found his way back to his relatives' drug house.  There, he told his relatives who'd shot him. His relatives got all their gang and family members together and went out to do a hit on the crime family's son that shot Carlos. One of his cousins at the drug house took care of Carlos and got him to one of their hidden stash shacks in the swamp and bandaged him up there before she herself left to help the family with the hit. She, nor any of the rest of his family, ever returned for him...ever again.

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It was a bloodbath for both the drug and crime families.

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Before the night was over, all of Carlos relatives, as well as a high majority of Maria's family, were summarily killed in a massive shootout and several drive-by shootings, with over 80% of each side's gang members being wiped out in the process.  The remaining (living) gang members abandoned each family (not wanting to get entrenched in any further in their blood feud) and escaped to find work with some other drug or crime families anywhere else but in mid or southern Florida.  Carlos, with his relatives all killed was, once again, all alone.

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Days later, Carlos was strong enough to stand again, but barely. As he tried to open the shack's door to exit, he started falling back...only to have a huge pillar of sand erupt from under the floorboards and prop him up instead. He quickly realized he had a good ability to control and manipulate sand and rock.  Not a lot; maybe ten square feet or so, but he still had the power.  Realizing no one had come for him, Carlos weakly made his way back to his family's drug house only to witness dozens of police and detectives all over the place. A local person told Carlos about the shoot-out and massacre and that the police were still looking for someone name 'Carlos' and a rival gang's girl named 'Maria'.  Carlos had only hoped Maria was alive and made off to one of the places he knew she went to when she wanted to be alone (he was, after all, stalking her for awhile!), and went to her Cuban-American themed park that one of her relatives had built for the community. After taking a bus there, Carlos saw her. Maria was alive.

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Together, both Maria and Carlos, as teenagers, escaped Miami and went to Panama City, where Maria got a job in retail and Carlos got a job as a construction worker.  For the next few years, the two of them lived happily ever after, but never married for fear of being found out.  They were also afraid to have children too because of the unpredictability of the nature of Carlos' powers (which he'd told Maria about). Regardless they were a young Latino couple in love and all they wanted to do was to live a life together forever...

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...until one of the ex-thugs from Maria's family's gang recognized her at her store.

 

The ex-thug, Raul, kidnapped Maria and sent a ransom request to the head of Maria's crime family -  her father, Eduardo Escalanza. It turned out that Maria's father got shot twice during the massacre and supposedly died in surgery twice, but was brought back to life each time. Thanks to his shaky health after the surgeries (and a generous lot of information about Carlos' family's drug dealings given to the authorities), Maria's father was given a deal with no jail time, but was confined to his home with around the clock medical coverage (at the family's expense, of course).  As such Maria's father had been looking for Maria for the past few years. Now that he knew where she was, he wasn't about to fail at getting her back. The ransom was $40 million. Maria's father sent three of his trusted Lieutenants to bring the ransom to Raul with order NOT to do anything to jeopardize Maria's life; just simply give them the money and bring Maria home safe.

 

Carlos found out about Maria's kidnapping and did his own tracking and investigating, killing some of Raul's thugs to find out where he and Maria were. When Carlos arrived, he had two handguns with him (he'd taken off of Raul's now-dead thugs) and stormed Raul's place...right in the middle of the ransom exchanged between Raul and Maria's father's lieutenants.

 

A firefight quickly ensued. Bullets blazing through the air caused a gas line to get hit and a bullet's ricocheted spark off of some metal furniturelight it all off. Carlos, in the nick of time, grabbed Maria and using his new powers, used the dirt and rock under the house to come up out of the floorboards and cover them to protect them from the effects of the massive gas explosion. When the flames subsided, Carlos dropped his earthy shield from over both he and Maria. Maria and Carlos had survived...

 

...and so did Raul, who then shot Carlos and Maria, winging Carlos and instantly killing Maria.

 

Carlos erupted with his powers creating an earthly spire of rock that jut-up from under the floor and impaled Raul through one of his lungs, bursting Raul up through the roof and at least 20 feet into the air, where Raul remained impaled, gasping for air atop the spire.

 

Carlos spied Maria's body and the case with the ransom money and ran off, hoping Maria was actually still alive.

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After a few blocks, Carlos realized...Maria was indeed dead.

 

Carlos took Maria's body and the case with the $40 million in it and carried both through the city's back alleys.  He walked with her in his arms all night, grieving the whole time. Eventually Carlos brought Maria to a closed funeral parlor. The funeral parlor's owner had himself and his family living on the 2nd floor of the funeral home.  Carlos woke them up and threatened them to give Maria the best casket in the place and to set her up for a proper funeral service at the parlor with a setting befitting that of a queen.  With left over flowers from the day's previous funerals, the funeral service family did as Carlos requested.  An hour later, the cleaned-up body of Maria, changed into a beautiful funeral dress and adorned with flowers and an exquisite funerary setting, was completed by an exhausted funeral home family. Carlos said his final words to Maria alongside her casket telling her he loved her more than anything in the world and that he'd never love again. Before Carlos left, he gave the funeral home family $500,000 to ensure she was properly taken care of and gave them the address to what was once her family's home (unknown to him, still was) and to find a way to get word to her family for proper internment. Carlos took the rest of the money and left, looking like a broken, sad man as he walked away into the morning sun.

 

Days later, Carlos, living under a highway overpass, brooding about his loss of Maria, saw a TV news alert about Raul surviving an attack by a super-powered criminal that Raul said was to be 'hunted like a dog and taken down like one'. It didn't take long thereafter before Carlos had several engagements with Raul's thugs, with the last engagement nearly killing Carlos.  Carlos' powers were handy in the fight, but they were limited. He was never able to make the spire of rock like he did that night that Maria died.  As such, he knew he'd either have to find a way to 'boost' his powers, or form his own gang of thugs to take out Raul.

 

So, Carlos did both.

 

Long story short: Raul with the remaining ransom money, did a down-payment to have a secretive band of doctors and scientists from Zenith Labs boost his powers to an all new, remarkable level, capable of manipulating over 300 square feet of dirt and rock now. With that, he was introduced to other super-powered people who'd also received powers from Zenith Labs. One group of these people were called the "Demolition Party". Together, Carlos, now called "El Excavador" (or "The Digger" in English) and the Demolition Party worked together and killed Raul and took over Raul's criminal operations, which, to this day, continues to net the Demolition Party an average of $5 million in profits to split between each party member each year.

 

With that, Carlos got his revenge on Raul, got the boost to his powers and also got a gang he could now roll with.

 

Today, Carlos AKA El Excavador, continues to team with the Demolition Party. Carlos is now a construction excavation business 'owner' that's not only used from time to time for legitimate job (and of course illegal Demolition Party jobs) but is also a shell company for the group's illegal financial deals.  Carlos is still sad at losing Maria, but had come to accept his new lot in life (and the fact that he still owes hundreds of millions of dollars to still pay off Zenith Labs for their work on him).  He is a good team player, but his fiery Cuban temper has been known to continue to get him into trouble from time to time.

 

On an added note, not too long ago, another new public park was built for the Cuban community in Miami by an anonymous donor; a park called the "Maria Escalanza Park". The park is noted for its 20 foot high granite obelisk that adorns the center of the park. Rumors in the criminal underworld say that Maria's body was buried under the obelisk by her father. But that's just a rumor, right...?

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