Laissez les bons temps rouler! Kirk is at heart a very jolly and friendly soul, hailing from a from a humble home in the heart of Lafayette, Louisiana. Despite being one of the larger cities in the state not named New Orleans (pronounced, of course, "Nawlins"), essentially every bit of his large extended family hails from more rural towns such as Opelousas or Laplace, and they've imbued him with that small-town southern kid politeness and humility. Like many Cajuns, he's a practicing Roman Catholic whose worship celebrates the life God gave him and the community he grew up in, and so he intends to live in an honest way that does both proud. He's as hard a worker as you'll ever meet, and though he does carry that classically fiery, long-lasting temper if you cross him, even a Ragin' Cajun would scarcely stoop to underhanded reprisal. If it's a matter of honor between men, you fight it out and settle it, otherwise find somebody to mediate. For as hard as he works, he's every bit as willing to play hard, and will extend his own joie de vivre to all comers. Nobody's unwelcome here at the dinner table. We all live this life together, may as well have fun doin' it. To echo our beginning: Let the good times roll.

Kirk has yet to discover his Attribute, but it is primarily control over and the creation of adhesives, binding agents that he can theoretically dial the strength of up or down as needed. As such, he could bind objects together through the use of these substances, coat a surface with a thin layer to catch things upon them, or potentially even "catch and release" to the point where he could scale sheer faces. A weaker glue could simply add an extra boost to his grip strength, he could revive an old sticker's stickiness, and maybe even remove something you glued on wrong.

But first, he has to figure out that he can do it.

Being a Collegiate Wrestler for Louisiana State University's recently-revived (as of 2021) Division I Wrestling Team, Kirk is something of a minor deity on the mat compared to most men in the world, with a technical arsenal of trips, throws, body locks, blast doubles, high-crotch singles— the list is exhaustive. A lifetime of Freestyle and Greco-Roman Wrestling has granted him a number of physical gifts, including a fully-developed athletic profile: he's strong as an ox, quick on his feet, he has amazing balance and flexibility, and above all else, he is as hard-nosed as they come. A wrestler embraces the grind, and to compete at the highest level outside the Olympic Games, the Cajun has an unfathomable mental fortitude and toughness.

Additionally, while he has no appreciable striking training, he is every bit as aware of the UFC as any honest man in his sport could be, and understands punching mechanics well enough to not break his hand in a fistfight as well as hit with that classic "Wrestler has a wicked Overhand Right" power. Should one attempt to teach the Lafayette boy boxing or kickboxing or some other such art, they would likely find that he has an easy time applying underlying principles that exist between both realms of hand-to-hand combat (e.g. timing, misdirection, feints— fighting is a game of lies), and could potentially make great strides in his skill in that area.

Owing to childhood winters spent with Poirier family both to the north in Opelousas and south in Reserve, Kirk is also a fair shot with most long guns— he's been on Deer hunts for food and Nutria hunts for pest control. The little bastards tear the fuck up of the swamp, nahmean?

As mentioned above, Kirk is in tremendous physical condition, even moreso when he gets to be fully hydrated and not shave his weight down to his weight class. It's not always a tremendous cut to 174, but his natural weight is somewhere closer to 190 or possibly even 200 pounds (during Mardi Gras), and he has the build to reflect it. He is an all-around athlete that is every bit D1-caliber, but owing to his rural community ties he also has some skills one might not expect from such a man. He's stealthy, able to limit the noise of his movements through both forest and swampland. He's good at fishing and cooking, excelling in his grandmother's recipes for gumbo, anything that needs a roux, jambalaya, and other Cajun delicacies. He has a decent grasp on French, it being the natural Foreign Language credit of just about anyone growing up in Louisiana's schooling system. That said, he has every bit as thick of a Louisiana accent as he does in English. Finally, he could likely operate a boat and navigate the bayou in a pinch, but is not licensed.

Lafayette, Louisiana has proven itself to be the home of champions. Despite being overshadowed by the state's cultural titan in New Orleans, or the most prestigious University's seat and state capital in Baton Rouge, the comparatively small town of a couple hundred thousand is alive and well, and is with no doubt dominated by the Acadian-American culture. Descended from the French expatriates kicked out of Nova Scotia by the British, they're a people full of hard work, hard play, and hard ties to their fellows. It was this atmosphere of family and love for life that Kirk Dean Poirier was born into, and his life has been steeped in it ever since. He had a childhood full of visting and visits from extended family, grandparents, aunts, and uncles alike all in pretty consistent contract with the boy in his formative years. If the saying is that it takes a village to raise a child, the Poiriers were roughly a village's worth all on their own, taking Kirk into their lives just as much as they entered his. From an Uncle in Opelousas, he learned to fish. From an Aunt in Gramercy, he was taught to make his first biscuits. His Grandfathers took him hunting. His Grandmothers helped him with his times tables. It was this type of life that the young boy had, steeped in tradition, and like any good Cajun upbringing, it instilled a profound sense of honor and pride in your work into him.

He would take this ethic not only to academia, where he proved himself fully capable of staying on top of his grades, but also into athletics. A bit small as a child and somewhat bored by football, he instead began an after-school wrestling program in the third grade— and by the time he could try out for the middle school team, it was little more than a cinch. Kirk was fully hooked. He began placing well in local tournaments right away, something that would prove true all the way through puberty and well into high school. He would be a regular face in the State Championship bracket from Freshman year onward, and this blossoming mixture of talent, training, and athleticism caught the eye of none other than Mike the Tiger. After his senior year, he was offered a scholarship into the LSU Wrestling program— itself having little more than a decade to its name as the second iteration.

He accepted after some deliberation. While it wasn't a titan of the sport like Oklahoma State, when it came right down to it? LSU was at worst an afternoon's drive away from home. A home full of proud purple and gold fans, no less. It wasn't a big move so much as a bold one, to ignore truly established venues such as that, but, hell. This way if anything ever truly went wrong, he'd have someone he could turn to close by. He wouldn't have to give up on his way of life that he'd known for eighteen years, the fais-do-dos, the crawfish boils, the boudin, and besides—

Who'n the hell was to say he wouldn't be the one to put Louisiana back on the map in the Wrestling world?

Geaux Tigers, baby.

Now he is fully entrenched in the LSU campus as one of their athletes, even jovially participating in the athletic program to assist new students move into their dorms— after all, even the football players know to respect just how used a wrestler is to picking up heavy, awkward things. His training and studies both are reaching their zenith, and honestly, it is for the first time in his life starting to really catch up with him. Like many a wrestler (due to the lack of post-collegiate opportunities outside of the Olympic Games or a transition to MMA), he doesn't have the luxury of not pursuing a degree of some form, and as such is majoring in Kinesiology, and eyeing a minor in either psychology, anthropology, or maybe even biology. The combination of schooling and sport is deadly for a mind that doesn't have some release, and as such, Kirk Poirier has gotten quite good at kicking one back.

Or kicking two back. Or three.

Or however many it takes to wander into a rift at "dumbass o'clock". It was one of those very short, very small manifestations, the kind that didn't even send you anywhere and disappeared by morning— but it appeared somewhere on campus, and he managed to make contact. That's about all he remembers, and while the subsequent hangover has made him consider swearing right the fuck off of booze for a good long while, the thought of exploring a new world as his getaway, to at least once in a while to have a think for himself...

It's appealing.