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[sternitfortem]

PLAYER INFO

Name/Nickname: Random
Age: 19
Journal: okroginator
AIM/MSN/IM: dishonor4honor | plurk: random_idiot
Email: random_idiot_v2@yahoo.com

CHARACTER INFO

Character Name: Yuki Juudai
Canon: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX
Point taken from canon: Post-series, pre-movie


Age: 18 as of the end of Season Four
Gender: Male/has an androgynous spirit sharing his soul that might come out for events

Appearance:
Juudai as he appears in seasons 1-3
Juudai in Season 4, featuring Yubel's eyes
Juudai as Ha-ou, just look at all the fucks he gives
Yubel

Background:
Wiki link (But since the show barely makes sense on its own, I'm going to do this section anyway.)

Once upon a time, there was a young boy who completed an ancient puzzle and unsealed the spirit of an ancient pharaoh, who took up residence in his soul so he could help this boy be really good at games. The young boy made a whole bunch of friends, battled some villains once or twice, helped keep the fabric of reality where it was, and eventually helped the pharaoh's spirit get back to ancient Egypt where it belonged.

This is not the story of that young boy, but it is the story of what happens when you get too good at saving the world with children's card games.

Ten years after the story of the previously mentioned young boy came to a close, there was a different young boy named Yuki Juudai who was also (surprise!) really good at children's card games fine, I'll call it Duel Monsters. His journey began with a chance collision with the young boy - now young man - of the previous paragraph, who gave him a very special card, a card with a very cute fluffball on it.

Juudai just so happened to be a very special kid, a kid who could see and speak to the spirits of Duel Monsters cards - as it turns out, mass-manufacturing a card game connected to real magical powers that were sealed away a long time ago in ancient Egypt kind of turned out to have consequences! - which somehow helped him win his first duel and gained him entrance into the prestigious Duel Academy, a school founded by the richest and most influential bastard in this show's universe, Kaiba Seto. Thus began the first of a vast clusterfuck of spinoffs in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, the one show the fans love to ignore, the veritable Canon High School AU of shonen gaming anime... Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.

SEASON ONE (SEVEN STARS)

Juudai's freshman year mostly consisted of near-constant dueling and herpderpery. He made several friends right off the bat - Marufuji Sho, the Designated Sidekick; Tenjion Asuka, the Only Girl (yet one of the best female characters in Yu-Gi-Oh!); and Manjoume Jun, the Rich Bastard/Failed Rival. (These three are not the only ones, but they are the most important and show up the most.) There was much Character Developing to be had, and there was much rejoicing.

The first half of the year was rather uneventful - other than a weird incident in an abandoned dormitory with someone who was possibly possessed by demons, nothing really plot-relevant actually happened. That is, until halfway through the year, when on a school outing, Juudai was unexpectedly transported to an alternate dimension where he had to duel for the lives of his friends (Get used to this, it's going to keep happening until it isn't funny anymore). He won and gained half of a special ancient friendship necklace, which they told him would be useful if he ever found the person who had the other half.

After that, the principal called him and six other top-tier students to his office to explain that the school was about to be attacked by seven evil duelists, seeking to open the seven Spirit Gates that guarded the card game equivalent of nukes: the three Phantom Demon cards. The seven students would each need to take one key and guard it with his or her life, because the magic of the keys ensured that they wouldn't work unless they were fairly won in a duel. (Why they didn't just give them all to someone and then send that someone off to a distant city never to duel anyone again is anyone's guess.)

The first duelist - of course! - had the other half of Juudai's new bling, and after a tense duel in the heart of a volcano, turned out to be the missing brother of Juudai's friend Asuka, Tenjoin Fubuki, who had been possessed by a malevolent entity known only as Darkness. (You should probably forget about that, I'm sure it isn't going to be important later.) After being freed from Darkness's shadow, Fubuki told them about how he was lured to the Abandoned Dorm and accidentally ended up in the Shadow Realm, where beings of pure hell gnawed on his consciousness until his mind broke from the strain. (You know, for kids!) But everyone was pretty happy, especially Asuka, who had her derp ukelele-playing surfer star older brother back.

Then they dueled, in order, a vampire lady with a great rack, an Amazoness woman who turned out to have been a tiger the whole time, a quirky band of duel spirits that were brought to life by the power of an unexplained artifact, a flamingly homosexual Egyptian pharaoh from the past (no relation to that other pharaoh though), the guy from the first paragraph of this section, and finally, Amnael, a sinister alchemist who turned out to have been their teacher who went missing several episodes beforehand. Amnael, a.k.a. Daitokuji-sensei, may have had better intentions at heart, though, for he forced Juudai to defeat him in a quite climactic duel and put all of his skills on the line to gain back the last Spirit Keys and save the world from the doom the Phantom Demons would have wreaked. Daitokuji then died, and his spirit was swallowed by his cat, because the writers didn't want to give him up.

And so, the day was saved - except that Manjoume, the token Jerkass Rival/Rich Kid suddenly lost a duel to Asuka while wearing all seven Keys at the time as an attention stunt, which activated their magic and released the Phantom Demons anyway.

Yeah, it seemed that contrived in canon, too.

As soon as this happened, the real mastermind behind the Seven Stars (Shadow Riders in English) showed up: Kagemaru, an old man in a test tube who just wanted to regain his youth. Oh, and to control the world with the power of three ancient demons sealed into trading cards, too.

Despite Fubuki's valid grudgewank against the guy, everyone agreed that Juudai should probably duel him and save the world, on account of his Main Character status and all. The duel was tough, climactic, and full of complete nonsense about the actual game of Duel Monsters itself, just like every other plot-relevant duel in this series. But Juudai put all the power of his deck and of friendship on the line, and came out the victor! Kagemaru lost the youth the Phantom Demons granted him and became an old man again, full of regret, waiting to die alone. Juudai convinced him, with the power of Shonen Messiah bullshittery, that he still had hope to turn his life around, and offered him the hand of friendship, which Kagemaru took.

And then, with a great big hug, Juudai snapped Kagemaru's spine.

No, really, that actually happened.

SEASON TWO (SOCIETY OF LIGHT)

And lo, Juudai's second year began with a bang, as the famous pro duelist Edo Phoenix came to Duel Academy to challenge him. Little did Juudai know that Edo's true purpose was much more sinister; his manager and best friend, Saiou Takuma, sent him there on orders to throw a match to Juudai so that Saiou could test his true potential - which, as everyone knows, is shorthand for MYSTERIOUS BUT EXTREMELY EEEEEEVIL PLANS ARE IN STORE. Meanwhile, a new student was added to Juudai's harem - a dinosaur-obsessed maniac named Kenzan Tyranno - and Sho proved himself worthy of true manhood after his older brother's graduation by earning his way up a color rank. It looked like it was going to be a good year.

Suddenly, Edo returned after a couple weeks, demanding a rematch with Juudai, claiming that he was going to duel him for real this time. Juudai - what else? - accepted this challenge, and for maybe the second time in the entire series, lost. Not only did he lose, he began to feel strange almost immediately. Unbeknownst to Juudai and crew - and Edo himself - Saiou had used the powers of an Eldritch Abomination to infuse Edo's deck with the power of Scientology instant brain-washing.

Luckily for Juudai, he somehow had a natural resistance to having his "soul wiped clean," meaning his will was still his own. Less luckily for Juudai, it screwed with his mind and made him unable to see his cards. Since he was unable to duel, Juudai became depressed and decided to leave Duel Academy FOREVAR, or at least until someone could fix his brain. Floating in his stolen motorboat out on the open ocean, half-dying from thirst, Juudai wished on a falling star for a sign, something, anything!

And then he passed out and woke up in space.

No, really.

Okay, not "space" space - Juudai woke up in Neospace, some implied alternate place between sides of existence, half light, half dark (yet a place where planets could visibly be seen and alien creatures lived, apparently? THANKS, GX WRITERS). Upon waking up in Neospace, Juudai was promptly approached by a talking anthropomorphic space dolphin, who told him about the approaching battle with the Light of Ruin, a terrible force from the outer reaches of reality whose presence threatened to overthrow the balance between Light and Dark and eventually destabilize the structure of the universe as we know it.

Juudai, understandably, felt that he had done quite a bit of world-saving back in season one, more than the average high school kid gets to do in his or her life, and with all due respect he couldn't possibly be saving the world if he couldn't even play a card game properly. The dolphin told him not to be ridiculous: of course he could still duel. All he needed was to believe in himself - and also, he needed to use his ~new deck~, which could be found in the satellite that had crashed to the surface of this planet nearby. Juudai approached... could it be? Yes! It was the deck that KaibaCorp shot into space in a special space program initiative; moreover, it was the deck that Juudai himself had created as a child of six years old and won the new card design contest with! Follow that? Good!

Somehow, finding this deck and dueling an evil android with it cured Juudai's soul cataracts, allowing him to see Duel Monsters cards again. He returned to Earth just in time to keep Edo from dueling another of his friends, and beat him with the power of his ~new shiny deck~. But this was just the beginning of a long plot arc. After finding out that his plan to use Juudai to spread his influence failed, Saiou himself came to the island and defeated Manjoume in a duel, and brainwashed him into becoming the new spokesperson for Saiou's cult, the Society of Light.

At first, Manjoume was taken seriously by all of no one, but as he began defeating people in duels, and as those people joined the Society and began defeating more people in duels, the influence of the Society of Light spread. Eventually, nearly every student in the school but Juudai, Sho, Kenzan, and Fubuki fell to the Society's influence. And then, Saiou made his move. He strong-armed the principal into admitting him as a student, and managed his new small army from within the school grounds.

On a school trip to Domino City, Saiou's sister, Mizuchi, made her move, sending duelists to attack Juudai and his small core group of people who had not yet joined the Society of Light. She took Sho and Kenzan captive in a virtual reality simulator, and only Juudai and Edo's victory over her in the computer world saved them. As they escaped, Mizuchi warned them that her brother was not himself - he was, in fact, enslaved by the will of an Eldritch Abomination called the Light of Ruin that he had been given in the form of (what else) a trading card. Mizuchi begged Juudai to save her brother, to duel and defeat the evil that had taken control of his body and deliver him to salvation. She remained behind in the virtual world, for roughly no coherent reason.

When they returned to Duel Academy Island, a tournament arc began, which was a great executive decision on Principal Samejima's part (read: his executive decisions are terrible). During this tournament, Juudai managed to defeat Manjoume and help him to break free of the control of the Society of Light (notably, this didn't happen after Juudai defeated him - rather, Manjoume broke the control during the course of the duel [with the help of Señor Friendship Speech], which is rather uncommon).

Then, one night, Juudai was awoken in the middle of the night by a vision of Saiou entering his room and handing him a small key. Don't give this back to me, the apparition said, no matter what I do or say. His eyes then glowed with a terrible light, impressing this command as strongly as possible, and Juudai's eyes went blank. When Juudai woke up, he assumed it was a weird dream, until he discovered the key in his hand...

As it turned out, Saiou's good side had decided to go on a trolling spree, giving Juudai and Edo the two keys required to activate the death laser satellite he recently won in a duel in order to keep the evil plans of the Light of Ruin from coming to fruition. His evil side was not amused, and forced Asuka to duel Juudai to get it back. This backfired, though, because Juudai defeated Asuka and freed her from the Society's control as well. A few episodes were then wasted with some one-shot duels from various mooks Saiou sent to get his dang key back, all of whom were defeated. Haha, troll harder, Light of Ruin!

Eventually, though, Edo figured out that there was something vastly wrong with his long-time friend, and tried to reason with him. Evil!Saiou challenged him to a duel with his key as the stakes. Edo accepted because he thought that he could save Saiou if he won. When Juudai heard about this duel as it was in progress, he hustled his ass over there to yell at Edo not to go through with it. Like the brilliant child that he was, Juudai also...brought the other key, without which Saiou could not hope to successfully implement his plan. Great planning, there.

Edo lost, even with the soul of Saiou's good side supporting him, and Saiou immediately turned and offered Juudai a deal: either Juudai would give up the second key, or Edo would die in a random pit of lava (it made as much sense in context). Juudai, like the brilliant hero he was, threw the key over to Saiou (wait, wasn't he brainwashed to not give it back? Was he resistant? Then why did they bother to show it taking effect? Did it wear off? Then what was the point? DAMMIT, GX WRITERS!) and rescued Edo, then challenged Saiou to a card game to get the key back. Standard Yu-Gi-Oh! conflict resolution!

Except Saiou refused to duel him. Wait, what? A villain whose evil plan doesn't completely predicate on card games?! If it weren't for Neos Ex Machina, Saiou's evil plan would have succeeded; as it was, the spirit of Juudai's strongest monster card managed to summon itself to the real world (for no adequately explained reason, something like the strengthening influence of the Light of Ruin making the dimensional barriers thinner between Earth and Neo--yeah, you know what, I don't know either) and cockblocked Saiou from grabbing the keys unless he - you guessed it! - defeated Juudai in a duel.

During the course of their duel, Saiou played some card that weakened Neos enough for him to get one of his mooks to grab the keys and activate the satellite, not waiting for the duel to be over (such Genre Savviness! Shed a tear for its passing!). The satellite began warming up, but Neos (the real spirit, not the representation currently fighting in the card duel) managed to destroy it with the help of Kenzan's soul in the form of a talking Tyrannosaurus Rex (for the love of God, don't ask) and Mizuchi hacking the satellite with her brain. Then Juudai defeated Saiou and banished the Light of Ruin from his body forever! :D

...If you managed to follow that, you are a champion.

SEASON THREE (DARK WORLD)

Senior year! I'm sure nothing horrendously awful and emotionally traumatizing will happen this year, right guys? Guys? ...Guys?

Senior year featured a host of new characters: four transfer students from other prestigious dueling academies across the globe, and one brand new teacher, with the very positive-sounding name of Professor Cobra (if you ask me, I guarantee you his last name is "Bubbles").

Juudai initially took little interest in these new developments because he was too busy trying to figure out why he was suddenly having recurring persistent nightmares about a faintly-remembered voice and the destruction of all he loved. Hmm, that probably wouldn't turn out to be significant. While mulling about it up on the roof, he ran into a tiny adorable Duel Spirit, who turned out to belong to...a tall adorable student! What's more, this tall adorable student could see and communicate with Duel Spirits, the way Juudai (and Manjoume, but he's never important to the plot anyway) could! They immediately got along like a house on fire, especially when the kid was revealed to be North Academy's champion duelist, Johan Andersen.

Professor Cobra turned out to be something of a hardass, and declared a new system for grading: Every student would have to duel another student at least once per day, in order to improve on their skills. What's more, they would be forced at all times to wear bio-sign-monitoring wristbands, called "Death Bands." Well. Um. That doesn't sound dangerous at all.

Juudai and Johan got to be the first to demonstrate this new policy, and man, they were excited to duel one another, let me tell you. Johan almost defeated Juudai with the power of his one-of-a-kind Crystal Beasts Deck, and the only reason he didn't was because the final, most powerful card, the Rainbow Dragon (I am not making this card up.) had not actually been made by Industrial Illusions yet. They were working on it, though! However, Juudai and Johan began feeling light-headed the second the duel was over - in fact, Juudai flat-out passed out. That...didn't seem right, but oh well, they were sure it was just a little youthful overexcitement!

But one student wasn't convinced - Amon Garam, the representative from East Academy. He used the connections and resources of his rich, influential family to monitor Cobra's doings and discovered that there was something quite sinister going on with those Death Bands. Namely, that they sucked out the life force of anyone dueling until eventually there was nothing left. The badass mercenary representative from West Academy, Austin O'Brien, turned out to be working with Cobra, but stopped when this terrible plan was brought to his attention.

When the rest of our protagonists cottoned on to this, they stormed the secret complex where Cobra made his lair. There were many duels, many terrors, many confrontations, and many homoerotic glances and touches between Juudai and Johan (I am mentioning this purely for plot relevance, of course). Eventually, they made it to the center of Cobra's secret lair, where it turned out that he had been harvesting life force from students to feed that power to some strange being he was keeping in a giant lava lamp. Amon went in to shut down the power grid for the Death Bands, but then the spirit trapped in the lava lamp spoke to him, promising him his heart's desire if he'd just shut up and leave everything as is.

Hmm, this final confrontation seems to be a little early in the season, doesn't it? After all, Cobra has to be more important than OH MY GOD THE TEST TUBE SPIRIT JUST RIPPED HIS FACE CLEAN OFF HIS SKULL OH MY GOD. (That is not a hyperbolic exaggeration or a poetic description, that is literally what happened.) Yeah, you're not seeing Cobra again, guys.

Suddenly, a brilliant light flashed, consuming the school grounds. When Juudai and crew opened their eyes again, they discovered that the academy and all the students inside at the time had been transported to an alternate dimension, a barren world of sand and rock. Not only that, any Duel Spirits summoned here would manifest in their true physical forms, as this was one of the home dimensions of such monsters. Sound like fun? It wasn't; the Death Bands were still active, and any unnecessary use of "duel energy" would activate them, costing more and more of the student's life force.

Thus began a moderately lengthy survival arc: limited food supplies, limited water, harrying attacks by the native Duel Spirits, and the presence of a malevolent spirit hiding among them, slowly bringing its dark purpose to fruition... (If you are wondering how this is the plot of a children's show, just sit and wait! It gets better!) They ran into an old face - Daichi Misawa, who used to be a somewhat important character but never managed to meaningfully impact the plot until now. He was last seen leaving Duel Academy to work with a famed scientist, and explained that when studying interdimensional theory, he accidentally transported himself to this dimension several weeks ago.

While Juudai, Johan, Misawa and Austin led an expedition out to see if the power generator still existed and could be somehow manipulated enough for Misawa to send a message to their dimension, Asuka, Sho, and Manjoume stayed behind to help guard the school. As the food supplies began to run low, and tempers began to run high, Manjoume was set to guard the food, on account of his stubborn asshattishness preventing him from being moved by tears, threats, or trickery. Thus, the evil spirit (who was now inhabiting the body of a young student named Martin Kanou) set its diabolical scheme into its next phase. By dueling a few students into exhaustion, the Death Bands sucked out so much of their life force that they became mindless zombies, unable to resist the single command the spirit placed in their subconsciousness: duel. Those students moved out and mobbed any stragglers they could find, forcing them to duel until their life force was gone enough for the spirit's power to take effect on them, as well. (Don't start asking any logical questions, like, "if all they're capable of doing is nagging you for a card game, why not just not play the card game?" It will only end in tears.)

Juudai and the others made contact with their home dimension. Dr. Albert Zweinstein, Misawa's mentor, told them that they had discovered the ancient stone tablet that contained the spirit of the Rainbow Dragon, and that the power of this mighty and ancient spirit would be able to bridge their dimensions if Johan was able to awaken it. Thus, they would be sending the newly completed card to them via a missile that they would shoot through a Stargate interdimensional hole created via card games Stargate.

They retrieved the card, but like all bullshit plot points in this show, it wouldn't work properly unless they had a big climactic duel, so naturally they needed to return to Duel Academy. When they got there, the school was teeming with student zombies. Manjoume and Sho had already fallen, and the others were just barely holding out against the horde. Meanwhile, the evil spirit and Amon had teamed up and descended into the bowels of the school to find...the holding place of the Phantom Demon cards! Yes, the plot devices from season one!

Juudai found out about this and raced to the inner caves to stop them, but the zombies slowed him down long enough for the spirit to get what it wanted. The spirit finally made its demands: Juudai, on the roof, in one hour, or it would command the zombies to kill themselves (what the shit D:). When Juudai got there and demanded to know why the spirit was doing this, the spirit gave him a deal: duel for the lives of his friends. If Juudai won, the spirit would send everyone home. (I don't remember what the stakes were if Juudai lost, but I remember them not being good.)

Juudai wasn't doing very well when Johan butted in and saved his ass, tag-teaming the spirit until he was able to summon the Rainbow Dragon. The spirit finally assented to Juudai's demands that it let Martin go and reveal its true self. It had gained enough energy from the Death Bands and the zombies coming up the hell right now to assume its own form: that of a humanoid demon, half human, half something-else, with huge bat-like wings and one eye in the center of its forehead. But that wasn't half as surprising as Juudai's reaction:

"...Yubel?"

Yes, as it turned out, those two had history, although Juudai could not remember it until Yubel looked into his mind and unlocked it: when Juudai was young, since his parents were extremely negligent and never around, he turned to Duel Monsters. He couldn't fully see monster spirits yet, but he loved playing the game and saw it as a way to make friends and ease the loneliness of his parents never being around. At that time, his favorite card was "Yubel," a high-ranking monster that was difficult to summon; when asked why he tried so hard to use such a difficult card all the time, Juudai insisted that he felt a special bond with this card. When he was six years old, he finally managed to summon Yubel in a duel with his friend. But then he lost the duel, and his friend suddenly dropped into a coma. In fact, the more Juudai dueled his friends, as long as "Yubel" was in his deck, bad things started happening to them, to his great consternation. Eventually, no one wanted to hang around with him.

So when that KaibaCorp space contest rolled around, on the advice of his parents, Juudai convinced the staff to send his Yubel card up into space in a separate capsule, hoping that a few orbits around the Earth would calm the spirit of the card and make Yubel safe to use again one day. Which, according to the wacky logic of Yu-Gi-Oh!, actually might have worked out. But when Yubel was up there, ze (see note on Yubel's gender below) was exposed to waves from the Light of Ruin, racking hir spirit with pain and eventually driving hir insane. Yubel convinced hirself that Juudai had done this, had caused hir all this pain and suffering, out of love, and that it would only be the right thing to do to repay him in kind; thus, Yubel was determined to destroy everything Juudai loved so that they could be together ~forever~.

Naturally, Juudai's reaction was "oh fuck no," and this duel was on. Johan's Rainbow Dragon managed to open the gateway between dimensions, and the school was bathed in light once more - but, Johan explained to a stricken Juudai, he'd have to remain behind to keep Yubel from pursuing them. He smiled as the portal closed, and with a huge flash, the school and everyone inside it was back where it belonged.

But without Johan.

Juudai was an absolute wreck; he blamed himself for Yubel's evil designs against the school and the people he cared about, and for not being able to bring Johan back with them. However, he didn't remain back in his world for long. Because of the all the wackiness in the area, weak places and holes began popping open between the dimensions more regularly - and one such hole had opened large enough to admit someone through. Juudai packed some supplies and went tearing off to this gate the second he heard about it. When he got there, though, he was stopped by his pursuing friends, who had just caught up to him. Juudai tried to protest, that this was his responsibility and that only he needed to take on the dangerous mission of rescuing Johan. His friends busted out the N-word - NAKAMA - and said that they'd never abandon him.

Thus, the "rescue Johan" party consisted of: Juudai, Manjoume, Kenzan, Asuka, Fubuki, Sho, Misawa, Austin, and Jim (the last exchange student from Australia). However, the portal also accidentally sucked in a few other people who were nearby: Chronos (their comedic relief quasi-villain teacher), Ryo, Edo, and Echo, Amon's love interest.

The only problem is, once they passed through the portal, they realized that they weren't even in the right dimension.

Whoops.

But - well - they'd just have to keep going; after all, there was no way back for the moment. What's more, they world they landed in kind of...well... sucked. There was a war going on between an army of high-level monster spirits, and most of the lower-caste monster spirits and their human allies. When they got there, they were approached by an old enemy-turned-friend - Tania, the wacky Amazoness tiger lady from the first season, who informed them that dueling in this dimension cost you more than bragging rights - it cost you your life.

Well, shit.

Thus began a dangerous journey. When confronted by an enemy they couldn't escape or hide from, the task of dueling it to death usually fell on Juudai's shoulders, considering he was a.) the best duelist in the group, and b.) the one who wanted to come in the first place. If dueling had ever seemed like a harmless pastime before, it surely didn't anymore. Juudai was made very aware of this the longer he remained in this dimension - known to the group as Dark World - but he couldn't stop. If he didn't duel, he risked the lives of his friends, who had come here counting on him to have a plan. Worse, as they associated more with the bands of human survivors, asking all they came across if a boy of Johan's description had been seen, they began to risk revealing the refugees' location if caught.

Juudai began to focus obsessively on one thing and one thing only: finding Johan and getting everyone the hell out of this place. The stress began to visibly take its toll on all of them: tempers ran shorter, fear lasted longer, and schisms in the group formed, healed, and formed again in different configurations, and at the head of it all lay a leader, consumed by guilt and fear, who didn't know how to lead; who just wanted to find his friend; who would do whatever it took to make that happen. (Yes, I assure you: we're still talking about GX here. We haven't moved on to some other show.)

After defeating one very high-leveled enemy, the group didn't realize that his lingering spirit had cursed five members of the group (Manjoume, Kenzan, Asuka, Fubuki, and Sho) with runes that amplified their anger, hatred, sorrow, anguish, and doubt, in that order. These negative emotions began to grow in their bearers without them realizing, like cancers in their hearts. Meanwhile, Juudai was growing desperate to the point of obsession. He heard a tipoff that someone matching Johan's description had been seen in the prison of a nearby enemy stronghold, and impulsively charged off to attempt a rescue, thinking that it would be easiest for one person to sneak in and out.

Three things wrong with that: one, while he was gone, four of the five affected friends were captured by the enemy; two, it wasn't actually Johan, just someone who looked like him; and three, IT WAS A TRAP.

The maker of this trap was none other than the spirit in charge of this dark army: Brron, Mad King of Dark World (what a cool title). What's more, he revealed, he had kidnapped Manjoume, Kenzan, Asuka, and Fubuki, and chained them to the wall on the other side of the courtyard. After Juudai's attack struck Brron (I'm sure you've figured out by now that the answer to every problem is dueling in this show), he tried to reassure his friends, to tell them that he'd save them (as he had been doing), but Manjoume suddenly burst out in an uncharacteristic rage, snapping at Juudai that it was his fault they were in this situation in the first place. And before Juudai could even reply, Manjoume suddenly - died. And dissolved into sparkles because that's how you die in Dark World, but - wait a minute, he died.

Brron chose this moment to helpfully inform Juudai that, so that Brron could use their souls to forge a spell card of cataclysmic power, every time he lost one hundred life points due to Juudai attacking him, one of Juudai's friends would die.

Oh shit.

Juudai froze, unable to think of what to do, of how to process this. Duel Brron full out, and his friends die because of him. Refuse to duel, and he dies, and then his friends die anyway. What. What should he do? He ended his turn to buy himself time to think of a way to defeat Brron by the rules of the game without inflicting damage (Duel Monsters is a game that runs on enough bullshit that there would be ways to do this). But Brron had a plan for that. Brron had cards whose effects forced Juudai's monsters to do battle damage to him, regardless of whether Juudai wanted them to or not. And one by one, Kenzan, Asuka, and Fubuki died, but not before they, too, condemned him for his actions.

Leaving Juudai alone, in an alien land, with one friend's fate uncertain at best, and four friends' blood all but literally on his hands.

Juudai? He got mad. He got very, very mad.

Something changed in Juudai at that moment, some hateful, vengeful impulse that he had always kept sublimated or controlled - or maybe that he had never been aware of until now, either is possible - came out, then. Something dark. Along with these new emotions came something...else, some strange and terrible power that glowed in his eyes and burned in his voice. With nothing and no one left, nothing left to lose or gain, Juudai had nothing to keep him from utterly ruining Brron, from making him pay for the hurt he caused - nothing to keep him from doing these things and liking it. He didn't just defeat Brron: he destroyed him, and when Brron's life points fell to zero, Juudai put a foot in his abdomen and demanded to know where Johan was.

Brron grinned madly as his body began to fade and said, with his final breath, "Oh, your friend? He's already dead."

As if that weren't enough salt in a sucking wound, Juudai turned to see that Jim, Austin, and Sho had found him, in just enough time to see him duel Brron to death with extremely uncharacteristic violent fervor while the others were nowhere to be found. Sho, the first and last remaining of Juudai's close friends, reproached him for dooming them to die alone in a vast wasteland for a suicidal, pointless mission, and abandoned him in the arena. Leaving Juudai in the middle of an enemy stronghold with nowhere to go, no one to depend on, and nothing left but his deck and Brron's half-finished Artifact of Doom.

Fast forward one month.

Dark World was in turmoil, even more turmoil than it had already been in. The Dark Army, once scattered and disorganized under Brron's schizophrenic command, had remobilized under a new leader, with the ominous-yet-helpfully-opaque title of Ha-ou (rendered in English as "The Supreme King;" I will probably end up swapping between them based on convenience :V). Said dark army was now pillaging its way methodically through the countryside, storming villages, capturing any strong duelists, and burning the rest to the ground. Well, that's a good sign.

Jim and Austin had by this point decided that, after reexamining their actions, it was probably a bad thing to abandon a seventeen-year-old boy in a fortress teeming with demons just because they had some personality problems to work out at the time. When they heard about this whole "pillaging and capturing the strongest duelists" thing, they assumed that if Juudai was anywhere and not dead yet, he'd probably be at the Scary Dark Castle area, given that he was the strongest duelist they could think of off the tops of their heads.

As it turned out, Juudai was at the Dark Castle Area! Because, as it turned out, Juudai was the Supreme King! WAIT A MINUTE WHAT. Yeah, uh, haha, um. Yeah. Jim confronted him on the spot, but Juudai didn't seem to recognize either of them. Either that or he just didn't give a fuck. Jim, in a grand and ancient Yu-Gi-Oh! tradition, revealed that he actually had a mystical eyeball underneath his bandages that allowed him to see into people's souls. He only managed to catch a glimpse for a few moments, but it was enough: Jim saw Juudai, alone in a dark corner of his mind, clutching his head, sobbing brokenly, alone, repeating to himself over and over, "It's all my fault... my fault... It's my fault..." Jim tried to call out, but Juudai couldn't hear or see him, and then the dominant Ha-ou personality bitchslapped Jim out of his brain.

Naturally, this called for a case of DUELING WITH THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP! Jim busted out his Duel Disk and challenged Ha-ou on the spot, with Austin looking on. Jim figured that if he weakened Ha-ou enough by dueling him, he'd be able to get through to Juudai's fading good personality and rescue him from his own abyssal despair. This being Yu-Gi-Oh!, one would consider this duel in the bag; the combination of a Magical Artifact and The Power of Friendship is always enough to rescue someone from darkness.

Which is what Jim believed right up until the moment Ha-ou killed him with a fucking meteor.

Austin recovered Jim's magic eyeball and decided that, on the whole, there was only one thing to do: GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE. The dark army asked Ha-ou why they weren't chasing him, Ha-ou told them to look at all the fucks he gave, and Austin began a brief character arc about overcoming fear. Oh, and he mobilized the final remaining village and any refugees, plus Sho, Ryo, and Edo, into a small guerilla force with which to storm the Supreme King's castle and bring an end to his dark reign once and for all, because no one fucks with Austin O'Brien, bitches.

Austin challenged Ha-ou to a rematch (or...a match, since Austin hadn't dueled him before :V), and dueled him to a draw, sacrificing his life to use the power of the Eye of Orichalcum to banish the darkness from Juudai's heart and defeat Ha-ou. The dark army was cast into confusion and ran for it, while Ryo, Sho, and Edo took Juudai's unconscious body and made their escape.

When Juudai woke up, he was initially so disoriented that he thought he'd dreamt the last month. But one look at his remaining friends' faces told him the truth. He lapsed in and out of unconsciousness for the next twenty-four hours, burning with fever and barely able to stand, as they made their way across Dark World, searching for any route out. They found a door, but Ryo wouldn't let them go through until Juudai could prove to him that he was still capable of dueling at his peak, considering they'd be jumping from a frying pan to a fire if they went through.

Juudai was not able to duel at his peak. Juudai was, in fact, a complete mess. He couldn't even use his signature card to summon his best monsters because it brought back flashbacks to all the killing and atrocities he committed as Ha-ou, flashbacks so vivid that they made him hyperventilate, sweat uncontrollably, and panic to the point that he could barely think straight.

Which made this a great time for Johan to turn out to be alive after all! That was a good thing, right? Actually, less good than one might hope, because Johan was currently being possessed by Yubel, who was in the mood for some retribution. Actually, Yubel was in the mood for some world-destroying; when Juudai dueled Johan to free him from hir control, Yubel stole the Super Polymerization card and ran off to execute the plan. The plan being to fuse all the twelve dimensions of the world into one (coughstephenkingdidthatfirstcough) and destroy everything, allowing hir to be with Juudai together, just the two of them, forever.

Juudai had just about had enough of this shit, and forced himself to overcome his fear, his despair, his guilt and shame over what he had done, and acknowledge the truth: that he and the Supreme King were, in fact, one being, and that in order to right the wrong that he had done, he'd have to take responsibility for that power, and use it to save the worlds. He dueled Yubel, forcing Yubel to tell him why ze was doing this, why cause all this pain and suffering just for him, why? Yubel, still crazed with pain and loneliness, triggered memories from Juudai's past life; Yubel was once a human but elected to undergo a life-threatening alchemical ritual in order to become a Duel Spirit and protect Ha-ou, who made hir a promise in return that they would love each other for all time, even beyond death and reincarnation.

Juudai realized then what needed to be done in order to protect everyone and take responsibility for the things that had happened because of him. He used Super Polymerization to fuse his soul to Yubel's, uniting them forever without any world-destroying necessary. This soulfusion healed the damage that the Light of Ruin had done to Yubel's psyche, and caused a huge backlash to blow everyone back to their home dimension, including everyone who had died, because they just turned out to be in another dimension! Copouts.

Back at home, everyone felt kind of bad about what happened in Dark World, especially Sho, who realized that basically the last thing he'd ever said to Juudai was full of awfulness, and that he deeply missed his best friend, who was likely gone forever. This state of affairs persisted for a week, until Sho went out to wish on a falling star dramatically for Juudai's return.

And then the falling star turned out to be a meteor that crashed into the woods nearby, which turned out to be Juudai returning late from the other dimension, who turned out to be really, really hungry, and asked Sho if there was fried shrimp for dinner.

HAPPY ENDING?

SEASON FOUR (CLUSTERFUCK IN WHICH THE WRITERS RAGEQUITTED NEON GENESIS EVANGELION 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO DARKNESS)

Man, we're still in senior year? Holy jeez. Anyway, this season can be divided into two distinct plot threads: Plot Thread B, the underlying heartwarming story of Coming of Age and Growing Up and Graduating and Facing Adulthood and etc.; and Plot Thread A, a wacky shitshow of an Assimilation Plot, which attempted and largely failed to tie up any remaining plot threads. Got that? Good!

Juudai's involvment in Plot Thread B was actually quite minimal, since Plot Thread B was mostly devoted to secondary characters and their respective character arcs. The reason Juudai was barely involved with the character arcs of his friends was that he was barely involved with his friends. He was a little bit too busy battling clinical depression and the A Plot to be around much, see.

While his friends all had nice, heartwarming character arcs, Juudai was isolating himself from most human contact. Where he had never been much of a good student before, now he started skipping classes in earnest. At one point, he did not go to a single class for over a week. (The logical question being why isn't there a fucking child psychologist at this boarding school???) His friends were concerned but didn't know how to approach him. After a wacky incident involving a dead student being impersonated by a card spirit, he went to the principal to withdraw from the school, feeling that he was just going to attract more danger to his friends if he stuck around, being something of a Danger Magnet anymore. However, on his way to leave, he was stopped by Kagemaru and Saiou, the reformed villains of seasons one and two, who warned him that there was a great evil approaching, and since they were 1. really old and 2. bereft of their clairvoyant abilities, respectively, neither could really do anything about it, so it was up to Juudai. Sucks to be you, kid!

After a couple confrontations with the mysterious Trueman, emissary of Darkness (You remember, that minor villain from season one? The one that possessed Fubuki? You liar, you didn't remember.), Juudai found out that some evil shit was going down in Domino City, and motorboated off to the mainland to put a stop to it. This freed Darkness up to assimilate everyone at Duel Academy while Juudai was gone. Good plan! When he got to Domino City, it was already too late; the city was deserted and Trueman clones roamed the streets, making sure no unassimilated people were roaming free.

Saiou suddenly turned up and saved his ass, only to turn around and duel him in a building rigged to explode, because Darkness had his sister. Juudai defeated him and escaped, although he was hurt and shaken up pretty badly. On the verge of collapsing, he was confronted by someone he thought to be Trueman, a Trueman clone who - horror! - had Johan's one-of-a-kind deck. Enraged, Juudai dueled the fiend, but he was in no condition to duel at his best, and Trueman defeated him. Juudai screamed as something was blasted out of him, but when his vision cleared, it turned out to be Johan himself who had dueled him. Unknown to Juudai, his cards had been infected with Darkness, which had obscured his vision and made him think Johan was the enemy. But it was okay; now the two of them could go back to Duel Academy, because Saiou had revealed to Juudai that Darkness was making his stronghold there.

They arrived almost too late. The final person left standing on the island was Fubuki, who had been able to resist Darkness up until this point because of his previous exposure. Not only that, Darkness turned out to be possessing Fujiwara, the thought-to-be-dead student from several paragraphs ago, as its physical avatar. Fubuki tried to break through to Fujiwara, his former best friend, but he was defeated, leaving only Juudai and Johan to save the world.

The three of them faced off in the sketchiest three-way duel that was ever beheld in any Yu-Gi-Oh! canon. Fujiwara tried to turn Johan against Juudai with his powers of Darkness, but Johan was just too kinky to mindfuck, and in the end, Juudai and Johan won via the power of homoeroticism leeeeet's just call it friendship.

That apparently wasn't good enough, though, and Juudai ended up having to face Darkness itself all by himself. Darkness told Juudai that he was the last person on earth not to be absorbed into the World of Darkness, the vast assimilation of human consciousnesses where their individuality would eventually be eroded away by despair, because he was no longer completely human, as half his soul now belonged to a Duel Spirit. Yubel took offense at this and told Juudai to kick his ass; Juudai happily obliged, and he saved everyone from Darkness with the power of really awesome friendship speeches. \o/

Graduation came, but Juudai was ready to just leave Duel Academy and strike out for adventures on his own. However, his partner spirit Winged Kuriboh led him to a room, where Juudai met his idol, Mutou Yugi (the young boy of the very first paragraph!) and was sent to the past via the power of Fan Pandering in order to duel Yugi and the Pharaoh in the past.

It was this duel that helped Juudai finally realize what he had lost back in season three, a very important thing: his sense of fun. He was older and wiser now, ready to take on the responsibility of having wacky, unexplained powers and probably being called upon time and again to save the world with them - but that didn't mean that he couldn't rediscover his enjoyment of life.

And so, in the spirit of this inexplicable but heartwarming show, the last we're shown of Juudai is him running into the sunlight, randomly in a desert for no reason, smiling and shouting his catchphrase towards the sky, vowing to forever keep moving forward.

Don't lie, you wibbled too.

Personality: Juudai was always the most energetic of all the students in Duel Academy; the friendliest, loudest, most hopeful, most optimistic, most likely to succeed. He effortlessly saw the good in everyone he met, even the ones that had attempted to take over the world. Dueling was more than just a hobby, job, or even obsession to Juudai: it was literally a way of life. There was no problem, Juudai once thought, that could not be solved in a friendly duel, no conflict of personalities that could not be resolved or understood. Juudai couldn't be ruffled, or troubled, or overly concerned by anything, for he always believed that another day, another duel, another friendly face would come.

Not anymore.

Not since Dark World.

Juudai came back from Dark World vastly different; hurt and confused and changed in ways he barely understood. For the first time, he'd seen the consequences of unwise actions: the pain of loss, the terror of loneliness, and the dark and terrible things that people - that he could do after losing all hope. He'd experienced the prey-fear of being on the run in a strange and unknowable land; experienced the black empty despair of losing the ones he'd loved the most, and knowing that it was his fault in every way; experienced hatred and rage and sadness, anguish and self-doubt, and the ugly pleasure in finding what makes you hurt, and hurting it back.

Juudai spent the final weeks of his senior year withdrawn from the world for a while. His friends were concerned; they knew that he had changed, but not how much, and they didn't completely understand the reasons. If Duel Academy actually had a trained therapist on staff, he or she should have instantly recognized the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Juudai had seen and done things that nearly broke him; if it weren't for his friends' support, he never would have recovered.

Juudai's basic nature remains the same as it always was: he wants to see the good in people, wants to live and love and laugh and enjoy the little things in life. But it's tempered in caution now. Juudai's laughter is more restrained these days, his temper slightly shorter, his maximum capacity for socialization vastly narrowed (to be fair, it was huge to begin with). He is jaded, less likely to instantly assume the best of people or situations, more likely to think before speaking.

But these changes aren't all for the worse. Juudai has learned and paid the price for impulsiveness and selfishness. He thinks things through, now; holds closer to the promises he makes; makes the right kinds of promises. He has grown more observant, more sensitive to the things that go unsaid. He's learned how to step back, to see the broader picture, to not cling so tightly to the people around him that it stunts their growth. Most importantly, he's learned why it is important that he has strength: he needs to use it for the good of others around him.

This newfound circumspection comes with a corresponding reduction in the speed at which he makes friends - Juudai is more hesitant to offer himself now, more guarded in the way he interacts with people. He knows that the more attached you become to others, the easier it is to get hurt, for either party involved (he's something of a Danger Magnet now, having saved the universe at least four times to date.)

But hope springs eternal and time heals all wounds; as Juudai goes on, he has been gradually opening up again. Will he ever be the same as he was in the first season? Definitely not. Will he get his old spunk back? It's already slowly returning.

Abilities/Strengths: Juudai's spiritual sensitivity is the core concept of his character; his ability to see and communicate with the spirits of his cards, and to forge bonds with them, is his primary strength. It isn't known at what age this ability began to manifest - by the time he was at least five or six, he was already beginning to communicate with cards, but it didn't seem like he was able to see them until later. The ability seems to only be getting stronger as he grows, particularly as he begins to grow into and realize the powers he has inherited as the legacy of the Supreme King.

When he went to Dark World, Juudai discovered that he is the reincarnation of an entity known as "the Supreme King," a force of balance in the universe, the "creating darkness" that opposes the "destroying light" of the Light of Ruin. Unfortunately, this destiny eventually drove Juudai's predecessor totally mad, which proved to be quite the problem when his memories awoke during Juudai's Despair Event Horizon. Fortunately, that problem was eventually fixed, and Juudai can now use this power with little fear of losing himself to it. What this power actually does is very badly written vague - aside from the ability to summon physical duel spirits to the real world (without it being a Shadow Duel or any other such modifier), it's never expressly stated what it does. When possessed by Ha-ou, Juudai was able to cloak himself in a literal fog machine aura of darkness (it seemed to elicit uncontrollable fear and panic in all but the strongest-hearted opponents); on his own, Juudai once somehow manifested wind around himself that blew away the surrounding darkness of Nightshroud (possibly an exactly opposing effect of the darkness aura power? It would make some sort of sense, so that's how I'm going to explain it :V).

After fusing with Yubel, Juudai has also gained a power upgrade. He doesn't seem to have access to all of Yubel's abilities - for example, he can't read people's minds, amplify the darkness in their hearts, pull people's souls out of their bodies, etc. (It is implied (though never quite stated outright) that the fusion of their souls healed the damage done to Yubel by the Light of Ruin, so some of her more "evil" abilities may be gone due to this. Or something. Thanks for making these things so clear, GX writers!) However, he seems to have undergone a general strengthening of already latent abilities:

Where before, Juudai had a natural resistance (but not immunity) to mental tampering, he now is utterly immune to any sort of mental/psychic coercion or manipulation, to the point where he ended up being the last person on Earth not to get sucked into Darkness's Assimilation Plot (and it definitely wasn't for lack of trying, hoo boy). When tapping into Yubel's strength, he can also see through darkness, natural and supernatural, as well as sense spirits and supernatural phenomena more strongly. He's also received a vision/portent of some kind at least once while really weird shit started going down. (Not of future events - he's not clairvoyant at all - just of an event that was happening at that moment.)

As for more abstract strengths - as said before, Juudai's major skill is making friends with everyone (this is practically a paraphrasing of canon). His ability to find the good in everyone, and to forge bonds with people, is so strong it's pretty much the foundation for all his wacky abilities to begin with. His natural instinct is to help people, and he doesn't really hold grudges. (In fact, "forgiveness" is a major theme of the series and especially of his character arc in season three, even if they never mention it by name.)

Weaknesses: Juudai's core weaknesses are emotional ones. He's particularly susceptible to self-doubt, or what I like to call "It's All My Fault syndrome." He's had a great deal of responsibility thrust onto his shoulders multiple times, often with barely any warning or help. Thus, when he screws up, or when things go wrong, even if he couldn't have affected them, he has a tendency to internalize the blame and obsess about it - if it's bad, he can do this to the point where he makes himself sick (a wonderful example: upon waking up for the first time after Ha-ou was driven from his body and realizing exactly what he had done, Juudai collapsed with a fever for fourteen hours or more from the shock).

Juudai doesn't like being afraid. He has sort of this shame complex about it. He has a tendency to see it as a weakness in himself - it's okay for other people to be afraid, even his friends, as long as he isn't, as long as he can be the one who isn't afraid of anything. He's used to feeling pressured to be perfect, to be the strongest, the best, the one who always does the Right Thing, even if that pressure only exists in his mind.

But more than that, Juudai's primary fear, most primal aversion, is loneliness. As a child, his parents barely paid attention to him, and the few friendships he made were eventually torn apart by Yubel, who might have been the last bond he'd had if his parents hadn't convinced him to shoot her into space and then fucked his memories up with experimental medical procedures (WHAT GREAT PARENTS :|). That loneliness became the driving force in Juudai's life, his motivation to create friendships with people, to be the best, to be the strongest, to find the good in everyone; he thought that if he could be perfect, no one would say no to being his friend. At the same time, paradoxically it made Juudai guard himself more closely, made him afraid to share his deepest thoughts with his friends. There was always a faint wall, after a certain point, a sort of mental construction - a bubble, where Juudai managed to convince himself that it was okay, that bad things never really happened to himself and the people around him. His deepest fear was of losing his grip on that construction, of letting any mad or sad or bad feelings leak out and be seen, of his friends discovering that he wasn't really the perfect person he wanted to be, and leaving him.

Which is, er, basically what happened in Dark World that drove him off the deep end, so there's that. He's better about that now that it's actually happened and over and done, but that fear still irrationally persists at his heart, the fear of loneliness and loss.

I also headcanon that fire - not small, mundane fires, but bigass "geez-that-looks-a-bit-dangerous" fires - is one of his remaining PTSD triggers.

Defining Quote(s):

"The only reason anyone should duel should be to have fun!"

"Kaiser... I'll shine even brighter than you! And I'll make a miracle!"

"People can't protect their loved ones with just kindness... And I am going to protect those precious to me, even if I will be called a devil!"

"No, it's not like that. I'm not just sacrificing myself for everyone. I'm... I'm going on a journey, to become an adult. So... gotcha!" [**"Gotcha" is his Engrish catchphrase in the original Japanese - he's saying it here as a goodbye, not as a "lol troll" moment.]

"Straight ahead... I'll keep moving forward!"

Other:

1. Yubel, in canon, doesn't really have a gender. Yubel was born a male human, and I headcanon that when he was given the "heart of the dragon," the dragon in question was female. Yubel's central symbolic representation, as a Duel Spirit, is dichotomy and paradox; both human and monster, light and dark, and male and female elements are present. Yubel refers to hirself using male pronouns in the Japanese version, and many other characters use either male or neutral pronouns for hir in both versions. However, at least in the English version (I can't speak for the Japanese; there was nothing conclusive in season four and I do not have subs of season three at this time), Juudai seems to exclusively refer to Yubel with female pronouns. Thus, when in character, I will be using female pronouns; when out of character, I'll use gender-neutral pronouns, officially, just to cover my bases.

2. The issue is murky in canon, but I will be playing Ha-ou not as a separate consciousness from Juudai (i.e. a soul and personality separate from Juudai himself), but as a briefly-existing (possibly still-existing-but-buried?) secondary personality that formed from the shock of Juudai awakening his powers and past-life memories at the same time that he was dangerously emotionally unstable from trauma. There is evidence for either interpretation; this is the one that I'm going with.

3. Any other important headcanon (of which, due to the massive plot holes and bad writing, there will be a great deal) will go in a post on Juudai's journal.