[@Leah] Tag me to edit if I took too many liberties with the CS! I don't mind changing things around.

[hider=Jun-He - Earthbender]


[b]Name:[/b] Jun-He Tung
[b]Age:[/b] Fifteen
[b]Gender:[/b] Male

[b]Physical Description:[/b] Jun-He seems sort of ratty and ageless—you’re honestly not sure if he’s ten or twenty-five, though his shrill voice and terrible grammar might make you think (or at least hope) he’s on the younger side. His growth is actually physically stunted and he seems very scrawny to boot, with thin, slender limbs and bony ribs. He’s clearly of pseudo-oriental descent, with short-cropped black hair, straight bangs, and tanned skin. He would almost have a beautiful, symmetrical face if not for the almost caricature-like skew of his more prominent features—his slanting eyes are enormous and muddy green. He’s often squinting or stares without blinking at someone he’s talking to (note that he has terrible eyesight.) He also has a huge, broad mouth with a smile that shows all his teeth at one time, which unfortunately also shows off a large gap between his top incisors. You’ll find he prefers to wear large adult clothing, resulting in giant shirts that drag past his knees like huge smocks or are otherwise stuffed/tucked into unflattering high-waisted pants. Jun-He has many part-time jobs and can usually be found wearing some part of their uniform depending on where he is. If you’re lucky, you might get to see Jun-He run—he’s shockingly speedy for such a little guy, and very tough to spot from behind. Hope he doesn’t have your wallet.

[b]Backstory:[/b] Sure, it’s Republic City in the modern age and it’s never been a better time to be a city dweller—but not everyone has such comfortable urban origins. Even skyscrapers are built on bedrock. Jun-He comes from a rural mining town deep in the mountains of the Earth Kingdom near the historical Northern Air Temple. There his people drill tirelessly for valuable ores, stones, and other useful building materials to feed the relentlessly-growing metropolises across their kingdom and the world. Out on the quarries Earthbenders are in high demand, and a miner or worker with the ability can make three or four times what a non-bender can in the right conditions. When Jun-He was born, his impoverished family was overjoyed at their good fortune. Their son, with his talent, could single-handedly turn their lives around. 

Well, ‘talent’ was a little bit of a stretch. Jun-He was never the most adept Earthbender, but he could throw rocks and dig holes, and that seemed to be enough. He started working in the mines at an early age to help his family, though he was never the most ‘applied’ or ‘reliable’ worker. Exposure to so many hard minerals can have a negative effect on someone so young, however—mild cases of lead poisoning all his life stunted his growth and impacted his health, leaving him with a feeble, easily-upset stomach and even stranger compulsions. Perhaps this had something to do with his mental development as well, but more likely it was just his utter lack of education. There were no schools because there were so few families with children on the quarry, and his parents were too poor to fund transport to a different town.

When he was ten years old, the Earth Liberation Front set up a base in the mining town and began to offer free education (or ‘re-education’) to the townspeople. Jun-He was, thankfully, too stupid to be effectively indoctrinated into what was definitely systemized propaganda, though some distrust of government may stem from these ‘re-education’ years. As time went on, Jun-He’s limited usefulness as a miner and Earthbender was going as dry as the dwindling mines themselves, and his parents sent him away to Republic City as an apprentice to a respectable craftsman to make real money to support the family. That lasted about a week. Now he lives under a bridge.

…You been to Republic City? You’ve probably run into Jun-He somewhere. He always seems to get hired and fired from a new part-time job in the same week, and his gap-toothed smile is surprisingly memorable. Lying (blatantly) about his qualifications during job interviews, spinning a new wild tale about how he came to the city every time he meets a new face… well, even someone as literally stupid as Jun-He will pick up a thing or two after working somewhere. A skill. A story. Maybe even a secret. The top paper accidentally snatched off a desk beneath his notice of termination—the Pai Sho piece that fell into his boot during a high-stakes game he’d tried to cheat in—maybe even the conversation he heard at the end of the night as a busboy clearing off tables, a conversation forgotten after he dropped all the water glasses and broke them on the ground.  Funny how that happens. 

[b]Bender/Non-bender:[/b] Earthbender. Technically.
Nothing that wouldn’t be functional in a mining environment, mostly lifting and removing quantities of rock and shale or using his bending to dig/drill. Excavation, not really combat.
[/hider]