[Shun doesn't seem to notice the squeeze as much, probably because the hand's already there and he's decided that's fine, so extra movement isn't much of a problem. Nodding in agreement with Ren's observation on the council, since that had been exactly what he'd thought about it, he continues with a little of that previous bitterness and anger in his voice, but not quite enough to make him try to rein it in.]
I suspected he was a traitor already, so I drove him into a corner until he finally took off his mask and showed himself. I hadn't known exactly who to blame for Ruri or the invasion before that, and when he admitted it I had a target for all my comrades' regrets, all that I'd taken it on myself to become a channel for. I ended the duel with Satellite Cannon Falcon and destroyed half the track with it, but when I tried to seal him into a card I found out my duel disk had been tampered with when I'd handed it over for modification with the others before we left for Synchro. I couldn't use the sealing function anymore, so I tried to beat him down even though he was already semiconscious at best. The security crews dragged me away before I could actually do anything, though.
[He definitely sounds a little bitter about that, because that's one time he considers his blind rage actually justified for.]
I couldn't trust anyone after that. If they weren't from my own dimension, they were an enemy, and if they got in my way I'd treat them like I would any other. I went into my next duel with that in mind, against a Synchro resident called Crow.
[It's pretty clear from the absolute dissipation of negative emotion from Shun's voice at that point that things changed after that.]
We were both furious with our situations - me with the war, Crow with being locked at the bottom of society and the orphaned children he looked after having no future beyond that. He wanted to carve a new path for them, and during our duel, I realised I respected that. That there were worthy things to fight for even outside of the war. But his children were watching the duel, and one of them fell from a bridge across the track onto one of Crow's monsters. I was behind him, so I could see it, but he couldn't, and he wouldn't listen when I told him to stop the duel. He didn't even realise until just before the kid fell off, and at the speed we were going, it'd be a miracle if he lived hitting the track unprotected.
So I took advantage of the autopilot function they use in D-Wheels and rode Revolution Falcon to help him instead. I caught him before he was hurt, but everyone seemed surprised that I'd do something like that to help another person. Even the kid asked me why I did it, so I told him that before the war, I'd had children like him cheering me on as well. [A faintly mournful note creeps into his voice at that.] And I realised that I'd forgotten why I'd started fighting, what had made me so angry about the war in the first place. Those children...they should never have had to live through something like the war, or Synchro's society. Crow and I started that duel as enemies, but we ended it as friends. It was his battlefield, not mine, and it was the first time in a long time I can remember being fine with losing.
Losing in the Friendship Cup meant being sent into what might as well have been the depths of hell, though, so I promised him I'd claw my way out from that and we'd both win our respective battles before I was taken away. [There's that quiet disgust again, as he remembers it being when he learnt what the stakes of that tournament were, hidden behind a name like that.]
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I suspected he was a traitor already, so I drove him into a corner until he finally took off his mask and showed himself. I hadn't known exactly who to blame for Ruri or the invasion before that, and when he admitted it I had a target for all my comrades' regrets, all that I'd taken it on myself to become a channel for. I ended the duel with Satellite Cannon Falcon and destroyed half the track with it, but when I tried to seal him into a card I found out my duel disk had been tampered with when I'd handed it over for modification with the others before we left for Synchro. I couldn't use the sealing function anymore, so I tried to beat him down even though he was already semiconscious at best. The security crews dragged me away before I could actually do anything, though.
[He definitely sounds a little bitter about that, because that's one time he considers his blind rage actually justified for.]
I couldn't trust anyone after that. If they weren't from my own dimension, they were an enemy, and if they got in my way I'd treat them like I would any other. I went into my next duel with that in mind, against a Synchro resident called Crow.
[It's pretty clear from the absolute dissipation of negative emotion from Shun's voice at that point that things changed after that.]
We were both furious with our situations - me with the war, Crow with being locked at the bottom of society and the orphaned children he looked after having no future beyond that. He wanted to carve a new path for them, and during our duel, I realised I respected that. That there were worthy things to fight for even outside of the war. But his children were watching the duel, and one of them fell from a bridge across the track onto one of Crow's monsters. I was behind him, so I could see it, but he couldn't, and he wouldn't listen when I told him to stop the duel. He didn't even realise until just before the kid fell off, and at the speed we were going, it'd be a miracle if he lived hitting the track unprotected.
So I took advantage of the autopilot function they use in D-Wheels and rode Revolution Falcon to help him instead. I caught him before he was hurt, but everyone seemed surprised that I'd do something like that to help another person. Even the kid asked me why I did it, so I told him that before the war, I'd had children like him cheering me on as well. [A faintly mournful note creeps into his voice at that.] And I realised that I'd forgotten why I'd started fighting, what had made me so angry about the war in the first place. Those children...they should never have had to live through something like the war, or Synchro's society. Crow and I started that duel as enemies, but we ended it as friends. It was his battlefield, not mine, and it was the first time in a long time I can remember being fine with losing.
Losing in the Friendship Cup meant being sent into what might as well have been the depths of hell, though, so I promised him I'd claw my way out from that and we'd both win our respective battles before I was taken away. [There's that quiet disgust again, as he remembers it being when he learnt what the stakes of that tournament were, hidden behind a name like that.]