history
Albert was born 30 years ago to an herbalist mother and an Earth Kingdom soldier father. He grew up in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se and had a fairly unremarkable childhood other than the average amount of bullying one would expect for a quiet and shy child. He kept mostly to himself and his studies, wanting to make something of himself and rise above the Lower Ring, but also just being too painfully shy to make many friends. He was an earthbender at a young age, and his parents managed to scrape together enough money to pay for him to learn from a master. He took it as seriously as anything, being a solemn child, and became rather good at it though never did anything with it specifically. When he heard his master wanted to recommend him to be trained as a member of the Dai Li, he started to downplay his abilities, appearing to have hit a block in his training. Because of Albert’s apparent inability to progress, the matter was dropped.
Time went on and his parents died individually when Albert was in his twenties. His father was deployed to a border skirmish and killed in action and several years later his mother caught an illness in the course of her work and succumbed. This did not leave Albert alone, however. He had met and began a relationship with a woman from a merchant family and they planned to be married.
Unfortunately, the Earth Queen tightening her taxation of the people was taking its toll all this time and Albert decided there was no way he was going to be able to start a family with his fiancée in Ba Sing Se. So they planned their escape. It was a terrible plan, but Albert procured two passes to the Upper Ring through illegal means and snuck onto the Queen’s military airfield in order to steal a small aircraft to get over the walls. They intended to land and abandon the craft to prevent being tracked and then make their way to Republic City to claim asylum, but as you might expect, they were shot down outside the wall. Albert’s fiancée was killed in the crash and Albert was grievously wounded, having lost his right arm.
As luck would have it, Albert was pulled out of the wreck not by Earth Kingdom solders but by a group of traveling metalbenders seeking to expand their art through walking the world like Toph. They ferried the unconscious Albert away and, through an overeager desire to help, replaced his missing arm with a facsimile made through metalbending. Albert was less than thrilled when he awoke, being unable to move the arm as he doesn’t know how to bend metal himself (yet), and having had it done while unconscious and unable to consent, but he learned as they helped to heal the rest of his wounds that they had meant no harm.
The metalbenders brought him to Republic City at his request and he found an artificer to help replace the full metallic arm with one that has an inner working of gears and cogs so he can actually use it, using the hollowed out casing of the one made by the metal benders as an outer shell to protect the inner workings. Unfortunately, these things are not cheap and Albert remains in debt to the craftsman, as well as to the Republic City chapter of the syndicate that had helped him get tickets to the Upper Ring in Ba Sing Se to facilitate his escape.
As things stand now, Albert has a small apartment in a slum and works to repay his debts as a delivery driver for a courier company in the city. He keeps his inorganic arm hidden at all times, wearing sleeves and gloves even at the height of summer. He’s casually cordial to all he meets but there’s a sense of sadness that hangs over him like a weight; it may have been over a year since he escaped Ba Sing Se and came to Republic City, but he still wears his grief like a mantle.
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personality
Albert’s had a fairly harsh life, which all serves to make him taciturn. He’s not the most talkative or the most warm and cuddly person, but that doesn't mean he’s standoffish or rude. In fact, Albert simply reserves his words for when they’re most needed and keeps an eye on most things in order to keep everyone safe. Despite his own beliefs, he has a big heart and really does want to see the world at peace even if he’s more of a realist and doesn’t believe it will ever actually happen. Even so, he doesn't find that as any deterrent for working towards it anyway.
The biggest hurdle for Albert to overcome in his life is the loss of his fiancée, something that’s happened recently in this AU that he hasn’t come to terms with yet. He’s only lived in Republic City for under a year and he’s still going through the motions, desperately lonely but afraid to get too close to others.
His second biggest issue is the loss of his right arm and its subsequent replacement with a metallic, mechanical replica. The loss of that chakra has hindered his earthbending on his right side and he has to constantly wear gloves and long sleeves to keep from getting stares. He feels decidedly abnormal and therefore isolated. Because of this and his deceased fiancée he has issues sharing much of himself with other people. That’s not to say he doesn’t talk to others, he does and he’s perfectly nice about it, but almost all of his interactions are superficial unless something strikes a chord.
That being said, Albert is still quite likely to make sardonic jokes about any topic at hand. He is not without a sense of humor and he keeps watch over those he considers friends in a surprisingly caring way. It seems that his uncaring, blasé attitude extends to his own safety and not that of others; he’s willing to go the extra mile to protect the innocent, especially children given that he didn’t get the chance to have any of his own, but actually getting close to him is incredibly difficult.
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