Yuki Shinohara - "The Youngblood"

Yuki is youthful and brash and a tad-bit stubborn. He isn't exactly a freedom fanatic or anything, but he is a strong believer in his rights and liberties. He tends to mouth-off and get into bad situations really quickly due to his poor temper and outright immaturity. However hot-headed he may be, due to his youthful energy and constant need for change, he tends to get things done concisely and to the point. He was never really one for details. He would say something like, "The scenic route is for chumps." However, Yuki does have a small fraction of his personality that people just call plain "off." He'll go quiet, icy, and solemn. His voice becomes broad, and the sliver of maturity he has accumulated through age shows through. His "commanding" side. It really only ever shows up in duels, when the time for change is necessary. When he really has to man up and get down to business.

Yukiteru Shinohara, age 12, is sitting in his living room playing Duel Monsters. Yuki is playing a deck of well, birds. He really liked birds. He owned a pet dove, whom he kept in a cage near the kitchen. His brother, Hideki, was playing a deck of well, circus animals, all of different colors and shapes and sizes.

"Onii-san, your monsters will be dealt with in one go!"

"Hoh? Okay, show me then, Yuki."

Yuki and Hideki continued to duel for years to come, growing together through a small rivalry they developed. Years passed, people grew up, the world changed. These two continued to grow up in Mizunia for some time as mass war broke out across the world. They were innocent and ignorant to it all. Just as kids should be.

Hideki wanted to be a performer; someone who would inspire and strike the audience he had with awe. He used Duel Monsters to do that, with his beautiful circus acts. His famous lines would always fire up the crowds he presented in front of, most importantly, Yuki. Yuki was so happy to see Hideki, or Hide, as he called him, up on the stage making a show for everyone to enjoy. These were the moments and things Yuki lived for throughout his adolescence.

Fast forward three years. Yukiteru Shinohara, 15 years old, is sitting on his living room couch, hands covered in a crimson, sticky wetness. His face was frozen solid as the burning sensation in his nostrils started flaring up before the floodgates opened. His brother was nowhere to be seen, and his parents had fled the house earlier. On the floor in front of him, was his dove. The originally unstained white feathers of the bird had turned red and tattered, broken and stripped of their only freedom. To fly. They often let the dove walk and fly around as he had actually become very obedient after awhile, and always came back. But on this night, Yuki was kneeling in front of his bird, as chaos and yelling ensued outside. Chaos and destruction from all over. His neighborhood had become a warzone for the newly founded rebellion and Mizunia, where had been residing for the past bit.

He opened the door, unable to be broken from his trance. He walked outside, holding his dove. It lay lifeless in between his shaking fingers. The feathers were burnt at the tips, black. It wouldn't fly. He knew it wouldn't fly. But he had to believe that even the dead could fly.

Yuki tossed the bird up. For even a brief second, the smallest fraction of existent time ever, Yuki could have sworn he saw the bird flapped its wings... and then proceed to nosedive into the flames only a few feet ahead, in the yard. The bird's carcass burned to ash.

He gripped his hands into fists, gritting his teeth, running with tears strewing down his face. There was nowhere to go now. His parents were gone to who knows where. His brother has disappeared days ago, to what Yuki thought was maybe just visiting friends. But he never replied to messages or even called the house. He just up and vanished. The young boy Yuki had only two things with him; a broken wristwatch, a leather strap and bronze watch arms. The other, his dueling deck. His birds. Their wings had yet to be stripped from their right to fly. To soar in the sky. Yuki had come to realize that even the living can lose those rights to. To live peacefully. To keep their privacy. To love who they want and to enjoy their own beliefs without persecution.

Yuki didn't realize these things the way everyone else did. He learned it all at once without a second to process it. This knowledge flooded his head, and was promptly pushed for back into the depths of his mind. He didn't want to believe that everything he had come to understand was able to be taken away from him if someone with more power than him wanted it so.

Running, sprinting, out of breath and coated in a thin layer of sweat produced by the fire and heat around him, Yuki drops to his knees in front a green military truck. The battle going on wasn't even between Mizunia and the Rebellion; it was a battle between Kuronia and the Rebellion in fact. Kuronia had simply met the Rebellion halfway and gave no remorse for the fact that they were taking their battle to a foreign land. It was against diplomacy, but then again there was really no diplomacy to be had at this point.

Gasping down air and desperately reaching for the ground, trying to keep his balance, he felt a grip on the back of his t-shirt. His head was promptly jerked up by two men. One had short blonde hair and wore a bandanna. The other was wearing a fully geared combat mask and a long black coat with gloves. The one with the gloves was holding onto Yuki's shirt, as he spoke through what seemed like a voice-modifier.

"Kid, 'the hell are you doing out here for? You're gonna get killed at this rate."

Yuki just shook his head, eyes wide and tears forming at the edges. Words wouldn't produce. His mouth wouldn't even open.

The two men exchanged glances. The one with the bandanna shrugged, jerking his head to the truck. The man with the mask looked back at Yuki, shaking his head with slight disapproval. With one good heave, he tossed Yuki over his shoulder and laid him down a bit forcefully in the flatbed of the truck. The man with the bandanna approached him, leaning over the flatbed with a few words.

"Hey. What's your name?"

"Y-Y-Yuki..."

The man's face seemed to be happy. His expression looked kind, from what he could tell. The marks on the sides of his eyes showed he was smiling. Just a bit.

"Yuki? Alright then, Yuki. We're going somewhere safe. Safer than here at least. Just stay calm, and keep your head down. Okay?"

Yuki nodded, sniveling still.

The truck started up, the passenger seat door closed, and without another notice the truck had started moving forward at a decent pace. The turning was rough and Yuki had hit his head a couple of heads on the flatbed and it's edges as his head and body wobbled around. The pavement was mostly smooth in this neighborhood, but the driver obviously wasn't waiting to take proper turns, so he most likely ran over speed bumps and sidewalks to get through the area faster.

Hours passed. The screaming and sound of crackling fire had finally ended. Yuki was dozing off, nearly asleep. He developed a few bruises and scratches over the course of the trip, considering how poor the driving of the masked man must have been.

They were there. Yuki was lead by the two men into a... a cafe?

Walking inside, he was seated by the bandanna man, the nice man, while the rude, masked man walked into the back area behind the counter. Stripping off the bandanna, Yuki nearly threw up whatever he had eaten earlier that day from seeing the bandanna man's face. A long, putrid, glasgow scar raced over his lips and up his cheeks. Yuki had to look away for at least a few minutes to keep his stomach down. The bandanna man didn't really mind. He understood that seeing something like that for the first time was probably horrifying.

They chatted for a bit, and the night came to close as the young men and women in the back of the cafe came to a decision concluding Yuki.

Fast forward nine months. Yukiteru Shinohara, is 16 years old and a new recruit of the Carvas Rebellion. He had called these people family, and the places he had been; home, for nearly a year now. They were the haven that kept him safe and taught him during the absence of his biological family. His phone was destroyed and replaced with a disposable one for the mean time, so he couldn't be tracked by anyone. He had to disconnect from everyone he knew and loved in order to move forward.

He was... a bit of a problem child. Dealing with others was difficult as he was hyper-energetic, but also had a short fuse. A side-effect of losing out on, well, pretty much everything. From scratch, Yuki grew up a somewhat temper-headed, stubborn, brash child, with the mentality that there was nothing to lose but everything to gain. This made him hyperactive and work harder as a result. Despite this, he was still happy more often than not, as it was hard to provoke him anyways. Finding perspective in the weirdest places, he was a bit of paradox. He was stubborn, for sure, but there wasn't much to be stubborn about as he saw everything from a plethora of different points of view. With a solid mindset, the only real problem was keeping himself from saying the wrongs things at the wrong time.

Which he did. A lot.

The Rebellion had a bit of an issue with getting him to be a bit more diplomatically sociable, but after a few months of slight hazing and teachings, he was ready. He was ready to get everything he lost back. His enemy? Anything and anyone who would stop him from flying. Anyone who dared keep him from spreading his wings of revolutionary force would pay dearly.

Yukiteru Shinohara, 16 years old, stands at the bottom of the chain of command. But with such brightness and potential to be powerful, he has been given the title of "Youngblood" by his peers. He is in fact one of the newest recruits and the youngest of the Rebellion as it stands, only older than the children who are currently under the protection of the Rebellion until the war sorts itself out.

With this in mind, he sets his foot out the door and spreads his wings. He has a war to fight, and a home to reclaim. With his fists no longer tightly gripped, and his teeth no longer shuddering against each other, his will is iron. His mental fortitude is ablaze, and his wings are spread out open wide. He's ready to take to the skies.

"Time to soar... way above, way up high. Over the clouds."