"What? You think that guy from that cartoon show is so special? Let me show you what sand can really do. That guy's a PUSSY compared to me!"

Nice jab at Gaara from Naruto there. That did not go unnoticed.

His powers are interesting because at first you think sand is just going to act like it does in anime and leave a few tiny scratches and splash away like water when it's struck.

But oh how wrong you are. As Dirt explains sand locks together and so it can easily be as strong as solid rock or potentially even stronger since sand can absorb force like a cusion and since it's already made of particles it doesn't break apart when hit with force merely gets a hole in it the size and shape of the thing hitting it. Also one huge advantage sand has over all the other elements is friction. it's surface is the same as sand paper and as we've seen even a glancing blow has the filing capable of sawing half way through someone's head.

I like how it was handled in Albion. Aard, yeah remember that guy with the superfluous tissue disorder who looks like a rejected character design from the hulk movie, well he explains that the thick skin, bone and muscle fibre around his body acts like a motorcycle outfit. Dirt couldn't use the friction to his advantage in the fight because he was barely penetrating Aard's skin. But Dirt's more experienced than aard and covered Aard's face with sand so he's suffocate.

Interesting thing is that Dirt sees himself as greater than his master Afhden who's actually a Diit and technically a living god. Summarizing that it took 6 of the other Diit to take Afhden down he also assumes himself as being greater than all the Diit combined. He's increadibly bitter about not being officially a Diit since his master still lives. In Dirt's mind Afhden being incarcerated means he should be stripped of his Diit title which in Dirt's mind means that title would fall down to Afhden's second in command which of course is Dirt.

With the Diit refusing to budge on this issue telling Dirt that he'd have to earn the position as Afhden did meaning that Diithood doesn't flow down the ranks to give Dirt credit he actually does man up and start trying to be worthy of the position sticking to the no kill rule as much as he can. However Dirt still bends the rules at first brutally disfiguring one guy and then when he's told he went too far by permanently scarring them contorting another guy to sprain most of the muscles in his body so he can win without causing permanent damage. When he suffocates Aard in a later fight as a last ditch attempt to win he says Aard will be okay because he didn't suffocate him enough to kill him but when Aard's friend explains that the superfluous tissue around Aard's body acts like a vice making it difficult for Aard to breathe normally Dirt panicks and improvises his sand technique on the spot to work as an artifial resperator to bring Aard around. After doing so and seeing that Aard is okay it's at that point when Dirt starts having terrifying flashbacks of his death where he was buried alive by some other kids when he was a child because he was a social outcast that was into petrology.

However as we learn he's no mere obsessed nerd as the other kids saw him. He's actually a consultant on geological issues and analysis even at the age of 7. His talent was unparalleled by anyone alive or dead. He had an affinity with rocks that enabled him to be able to analyse them in such detail that he didn't need the aid of even a microscope even recognizing the past presence Oganesson isotopes by the condition of the material around it. A feat no human or machine is even capable of today. When asked how he did it he explained that it's not something you can explain to someone else, you have to see it for yourself, before correcting himself and saying that it's actually more like a feeling.

From this description it could be possible that young Dirt was actually a native magic user and without the aid of any teachings in the subject matter or if indeed he came from Earth without the aid of even the Mage machine being active during his life time. The is quite a revelation because this is supposed to be impossible as nobody is supposed to have the spiritual capacity to understand the laws of the universe intrinsically especially when he's only 7 years old. Dirt might very well be a god of Earth's own dimension incarnate but be unaware of it at such an early age.

One annoying thing is that we never discover his actual name as he goes by the name Dirt today and no-one who knows him today knows any other name and we find out in the the flashback that the kids in school call him Dirt as an insult, which is a name he grabbed with both hands and took for himself even getting his own mother to refer to him by that name when in his presence which she happily accepts thinking of it as a phase. Even the scientific community uses the name Dirt as a buzzword for him as seen in the articles in the scientific magazines. When he gives a speech at a seminar a man from the crowd asking a question accidentally calls him Dirt before appologizing to which Dirt says that it's quite alright and explains that he'd rather be known as Dirt because it expresses his affinity with the Earth.

It actually shows an interesting side to him as when we see him around the other kids he looks like a typical social outcast but when you see him around adults you discover the reason he doesn't get along with the other kids is because he's actually already much more mature than them and more like an adult in a child's body, which his unfortunate mother fails to grasp somewhat living in denial of her own child's maturity and intelligence, not even noticing how out of the two Dirt is actually looking after her rather than the other way around.

I personally found the story fascinating as it speaks to me on a similar level even if a bit extreme. Though the study of rocks is definitely not my thing. Some people have said that Dirt's backstory is remarkably similar to the backstory of Mole from Disney's Atlantis which was never used because it may be considered too dark to have a character, a child even, buried alive in a kid's film, even if we know it's a flashback so we know they'll be okay in the end.

It looks like Dirt's past might be the route of both his violent behavior and possibly his arrogance too as I imagine he's probably not such a great petrologist anymore compared to people with magic powers and is bitter about people beating him in that field too when he used to be the talk of the entire petrologist community.

His power level might be considerably higher than he's showing as well as in one fight when someone tried to hit him he turned his body into what i can best describe as nothing but bloody soup which disolves into the ground and then the fighter turns around and sees Dirt reconstruct his body out of minerals from the ground to which the opponent yells out that it's impossible and has to be a trick since no-one can construct an entire human body out of nothing but minerals just about getting out that he'd have to construct all the hundreds complex molecules in the body perfectly and in the exact right structure to form cells claiming that people can barely make a pint of blood in seconds not an entire human body before Dirt takes him out with a very solid punch of sand to the chest.

I get the feeling that Dirt is going to be a pretty powerful and significant character in season 3. Gotta admit Albion is constantly throwing me for a loop right now. I have no idea where this is going.