I am the terror that flaps in the night!

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Icey
Contact: iceyly | iceyly#7221 @ discord
Are You Over 18?: yep!
Other Characters: n/a

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Kurosaki Shun
Age: Canonically 17
Canon: Yu-Gi-Oh! (Arc-V flavor)
Canon Point: post-series/end of episode 148
Character Information: "Prideful Falcon, spread your wings dyed in the blood of heroes! Advance through the path of revolution!"

Personality:

Born in the city of the future, Heartland, Shun was once an ambitious and proud duelist of the Spade district duel school and rival to the guy that was said to be the future Duelist Champion of their homeland; he aimed for the top in a world where dueling was recreation and fun, and a city that was said to be overflowing with smiles.

At that point, Shun was a mostly peaceful person who didn't desire conflict, an ordinary but demanding teenager, who held himself and the people close to him to high standards; which is shown when he scolds his sister for losing a duel and then accepting cards from the very girl who had just defeated her as it was against his own code as duelist to give away cards ("If you are a Duelist, you shouldn't give your own cards away so casually.")

While initially close with his sister – he is implied to have been the one who taught Ruri how to duel – they seem to have grown apart as Shun rose in the ranks and was disappointed in his sister for not following his pace, even noting later in the series that Ruri wasn't able to do anything without him by her side.

Still, when he and his rival, Kaito Tenjou, met in duel, it was said to have been a great show that drew out many children of Heartland, who looked up to them both. They both had embraced their home dimension's mindset at that point – dueling is fun, it is competition, but it is overall not particularly drastically life changing and/or -threatening.

Then, everything changed when the Fusion Dimension attacked.

Shun of the present is an intense and hardened fighter – who will absolutely do everything he feels he has to in order to archive his aims, no matter what it takes. He is rude, he is aggressive and he doesn't seem to have any sense of restrain once he's picked a fight. There is a sometimes more, sometimes less underlying sense of tense rage in the majority of his interactions, the impression of a temper that seems just steps away from unloading.

He will absolutely go as far as he must in order to destroy his enemies and take back his sister – which is his primary motivation and purpose over the course of the series. He carries himself with an element of cold confidence, iron determination and steeled strength, only talks when he feels it appropriate and doesn’t care to reply or react much when his opponents attempt to provoke him with actions or trash talk – especially if he knows them inferior to his own skills.

No matter how far he is forced to go – be it hurting and killing people by sealing their souls away into playing cards, be it threatening his own friends, be it razing the mirror image of his hometown into the ground (and become, in a sense, quite a lot like the very people he is fighting against) Shun will cross that distance without hesitating for even a second.

In spite of this lack of hesitation, he never appears to hold no enjoyment and very few regrets towards any of his actions.

Duel – as far as he is concerned – has become an act of battle, a matter of hunt or be hunted. Every Duel is a battlefield and anyone who enters it without the "iron determination or steeled strength" it takes to survive, deserves the defeat that's coming towards them and is not worth of his respect.

This translates into his incredibly rude demeanor – he has never been seen introducing himself or asking for an opponent’s name, and when reminded of his first victim Marco by Marco's student, he is quick to insult him as well as everyone else in LDS and seems irritated by the fact that none of them came even close to being a challenge to him ("It wasn't just Marco. Every one from LDS was flimsy and pathetic.").

This opinion doesn't change initially even after he allies with Reiji Akaba – he notes (correctly) that the first batch of Lancers don't stand a chance against Academia and coldly advises them to do their best to stay alive when called out as impudent by one of them.

His relationship with Reiji starts out as one of mistrust and mutual convenience that is very much based on an 'enemy of my enemy'-kind of mindset – and while Shun seems to have resigned to a point of having to put up with Reiji's manipulation of him as a means to get to Ruri, there are limits of what he is willing to put up with. He is the first to object to accepting Reira as part of the Lancer, noting that they 'are not leaving for a playground', and that the kid would tie them down and get in the way, then almost walks out on the Lancers when Reiji reveals that despite his original agreement with Shun, they are leaving for Synchro rather than Fusion. It's only due Serena's intervention and assurance that Ruri should be fine that he accepts the detour to Synchro, though he notes that he doubts the use of this move.

Shun seems to have a certain amount of pride in his Xyz Summoning, which he considers superior to that of LDS. Between that, his rudeness and general stand-offish behavior, he can come across as incredibly arrogant on the first glance – and while he definitely looks down at people he doesn't consider his equal as fighter or otherwise unworthy of respect, he always fights with everything he has. ("I'm always serious when I duel. Even if it's against a worthless opponent!")

There is no denying that the destruction of Heartland and the years spent fighting off Academia have left their marks on Shun – while he does occasionally speak of the experiences, he usually keeps himself vague, preferring to retreat into talking in first-person-plural and referring to the suffering of Resistance as a whole, rather than talk about just himself, distancing himself from the events to a certain degree ("We could hardly manage to protect ourselves against such an overwhelming foe... But we didn't even have any organized resistance... Pushed to our wit's end, we started losing comrades one by one...").

When directly called out by Reiji in front of the other Lancers, he even freezes up, unable to put his experiences into words, and while Reiji then asks whether he is too ashamed to admit their failure in protecting their homeland, Shun himself seems more traumatized than anything else. The only time he does actually refer to his own memories, he admits to Serena that he is haunted by the cruelty of her people's actions ("Even now their faces and laughter are carved into my eyes and ears... I'll never be able to forget it!").

While he is untroubled facing Academia duelists, fighting in the middle of destruction or being the cause of it for that matter, he is visibly affected when forced to duel in the Heartland action field – he is seems fairly distressed at the reveal of the field (to the point where his opponent – an Academia member even – points it out) and unusually subdued through the course of the first few turns, but then regains his focus when he summons his signature monster and takes control of the duel's pace.

Apart of anger or irritation, Shun rarely ever truly expresses his emotions outside of tense gestures, clenching hands or twitching expressions. His temper, when invoked, usually starts showing itself through tense shaking or raised voice, but at very least during his duels it rarely seems to translate into his actions. As a duelist, Shun tends to act cautious and usually appears to be at very least one step (if not more) ahead of his opponent; he almost always has some kind of counter lying in wait to either render any action taken against him to uselessness or even to take advantage of them himself.

Still, once his anger does unload, it strikes down like a lightning bolt on the subject of his ire, as shown during his duel with Dennis, where Shun mercilessly crushes his opponent (and part of the Duel Palace) after finding out about his involvement with Ruri's kidnapping, then attempts to seal him into a card, and beat him up physically in spite of Dennis' injuries once he finds that function of his duel disk disabled.

Shun, once fully unleashed, has absolutely no sense of holding back. This also shows in how incredibly prone he is to outright tunnel vision when he has put his mind to something, despite his generally cautious and mistrusting mindset. This can result in him working himself up and jumping to the (usually somewhat understandable but nonetheless) wrong conclusions; and it usually takes a major interruption (such as a figurative or even literal punch to the gut or the sudden appearance of an enemy) to force him to back down again.

His general disposition is one of mistrust and paranoia – even more so after revealing a spy in the ranks of the Lancers – to the point where Shun declares that he trusts no one but his dead comrades and himself. However after seeing Crow and his children interact, he is reminded of the good times of Heartland and the true future that the Resistance has been fighting for all along – one where the children of Heartland can live in peace. Having realized their similarities, Shun calms and acknowledges Crow his comrade.

Tunnel vision and mistrust aside, his years of war experience have made Shun somewhat pragmatic – while he is generally incredibly independent and seems to prefer working on his own, he will (reluctantly) team up with other people when they share a common enemy. The tag fight against the Obelisk Force in the Battle Royal makes his incredible dislike to needing and having to accept help from others rather apparent. At the same time he seems to honor that assistance, by making use of the Pendulum cards that were played into his hand to win the duel, acknowledging the resolve of Standard's duelists in a sense.

Even with his preference to act as independently as possible, Shun seems to put high value to the concepts of family and friends; he is incredibly protective of his sister and is shown to be worried and uneasy in the wake of Yuto's disappearance, which shifts his focus towards finding out what happened to his friend and distracts him to a certain degree (and also may in turn have played part in his first on-screen loss). He is most definitely loyal to anyone he considers his comrade; declaring that even though his comrades may be taken away, he (as well as all of the Resistance) will never abandon them and absolutely take them back.

In the few moments that Shun is shown in to relax his guard a degree or two, he is withdrawn and pensive rather than angry, indicating that his anger is to some degree, weapon and shield alike to deal with anyone outside his comfort zone.

However, even with all that he's seen and survived, there is still a part of Shun that genuinely enjoys dueling just for the sake of fun and competition – it shines through during his Riding Duel with Enjou Mukuro, showing the smallest glimpse of a person that was thought burned away by the fires of war, but who may not be quite as dead and buried as even Shun himself considers him after all.



5-10 Key Character Traits: Resilient, Impulsive, Blunt, Irritable, Intense, Independent, Proud, Loyal, Pragmatic, Mistrustful
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Fit originally, please note that this is a reapp and I don't want to resort!
Opt-Outs: Gargoyle, Arachne, Troll, Kelpie, Naga (orignal app opt-outs)

Roleplay Sample:

"…Four years. What– How did–?"
"Existing and wanting to survive as something other than human won't make you a monster."


Additional Notes: I would like to reapp Shun with his memories and transformation and Fourth follower status from last time (Werebear | Third Tier Follower) intact! I wasn't sure if either of it was required, but I wrote down Shun's history and character development in Ryslig a while back; you can find that here!

Who: Shun Kurosaki
What: Monsters aren't defined by sheer existence, they are made by their actions.
When: -
Where: -
Warnings: -

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