hyperhero | Profile (Judai)

> Basic Information

Name: Yuki Judai (遊城十代)
Gender: Male
Nationality: Japanese
Age: 15 (Year 1), 16 (Year 2), 17 (Year 3), 18 (Post-Canon)
Blood Type: O+
Height: 165.7 cm
Weight: ?

Favorite Foods: Fried shrimp, golden eggwich, fermented soybeans
Hated Foods: None (will eat most anything)

> Personality

He is extremely hyperactive, thanks to his connection with magic. Since it's basically flowing into him, rather than him exerting it to do stuff, his energy constantly runs high and has to be burned off in some ways. This is one of the reasons he's always so energetic, and only tends to calm down after he's done things like dueling (and why he eats so much, because sustaining his body through that much magic and energy takes a toll).

Judai is a very cheerful boy, coming into most things with a positive attitude and a willingness to keep trying at them. Even if he fails seven times, he's willing to go again an eighth, and though he can be childish with losses sometimes, or more than a little cocky, it's never meant in an insulting way. He never, ever wants to ruin someone else's fun, and if he does, he apologizes and makes sure not to do it to that person again. Most people who get the more negative attitudes are just those who can push back and joke with him, since it's always in good faith. Judai never really feels negatively towards other people, even if he can get upset and grumpy that he's lost at things.

Because of this, while he doesn't mean it, he can come off as incredibly annoying to some people. Sometimes, it's simply because jerks can't bother him or piss him off by insulting him, but for some, it's just because Judai's naivety and easy-going nature is just grating or impossible to stand, even if he doesn't mean anything by it.

While the cheer is completely real -- Judai genuinely is that upbeat -- the display of it isn't always so. He might be able to shrug off a lot, but Judai is human, and humans have things that get to them, or things that are too much for them. Judai feels these issues the same as everyone else, but his are compounded by his sad history as well. The issue is that he rarely tries to show these; because Sho was one of the first friends he made, and because a lot of his friends seem to be shocked or freak out when he acts different, Judai doesn't usually show any negative emotions he's feeling. It's not out of a desire to hide it -- in fact, he'd be more happy being able to show it -- but more that he feels like if he cracks, he'll let everyone down. This is especially true for Sho specifically, because while Sho is getting better, he was and still somewhat is a very anxious person. In the beginning, if Judai cracked, Sho would have an absolute panic attack, and so he just... swallowed his feelings to try to avoid that. Nowadays, they're a bit more on even ground and Judai is more willing to show when he's lower around Sho, but he still hasn't completely broken that habit. In fact, the only person who Judai is ever fully open around is Johan, though whenever dimensional or time warps happen, there have been others who have been able to get his true feelings out of him (Jounouchi, Yugi, and Yami, as an example, though Yami usually draws his feelings out through a duel rather than a normal discussion).

In addition, as both of these are parts of him, Judai's cheer (even sometimes forced) is less of a mask and more flipping a light switch. Light or dark, the inside of the room hasn't changed, but the perception of it has, and it Judai finds things much easier to tolerate/shrug off/not let dampen his cheer when other people are around to help him out. Or see, because how bad he feels and what about is directly related to how much he shows (being upset over a loss or being scolded is something almost everyone can see, but a genuinely traumatizing nightmare he'll quickly try to hide the effects of).

Despite being so cheerful, there is one way to get Judai angry, and that's to insult his friends -- whether real or in his deck. Doing so will completely wipe all that cheer, and instead Judai will become snarly, snappish, and forceful, harsh in duels and any sort of competition until the smack-talker has been beaten or apologizes. Once some sort of reparation is made, however, Judai calms down pretty quickly. He doesn't tend to hold a grudge unless someone is repeatedly nasty to his friends.

He also comes off as very dumb to most people. He does poorly in school, struggles to focus on anything he finds boring, doesn't understand the meaning of what other people would consider simple words, and even seems to struggle to understand sarcasm or implications a lot of the time. This leads most to assume he's just an incompetent idiot, though the truth is more complicated than that -- and a lot sadder. Since he was in and out of the hospital for the majority of his very young life, and since he never was close with or had much interaction from his parents, Judai simply... never learned a lot of things, especially once he began to bury himself into games and cards to find some kind of comfort and companionship. As such, things most people take for granted as being "common sense" are lost on him, because Judai simply never had the social interaction to pick up these "common" things.

Despite this, when it comes to things he finds interesting or he can focus on, Judai is immensely sharp and a very fast learner. He's a skilled duelist because of it, able to not only know what his deck is capable of but to even modify and adapt new strategies on the fly to deal with opponents' unpredictable moves. It isn't just limited to Duel Monsters, either: as long as Judai is given a reason to care about something that matters to him, he can pick up and start to learn nearly any subject with unnerving ease. Of course, the downside to this is that he has to care; it's not enough for someone else to. If you can't make him passionate about it, or at least interested, he's simply not going to be able to retain it. If it's important to his friends, he'll try his absolute best, but it's just not going to stick.

Judai has a few things he can be very selfish with. While outside of these he can be generous to a fault (see point below), with these, he's often very possessive, though it never comes off as mean. These things tend to be food (never shared but for Johan), his games (shared with friends, but never lent out), and things like his cards (shared with friends, commons/repeats given away, but his actual deck cards/special cards never even lent). While he won't give it away, he's happy to trade and shuffle things; ie, if someone got food they hated but loved his food, if his food wasn't his favorite and they were the same amount he'd trade them. Judai's pretty casual about swapping things if the thing he's swapping for is equal value -- it's what you do with card games, after all! -- but if the thing he has is something he really adores, then it's impossible to get it away from him, no matter what the actual value is.

When it comes to Johan, Judai will give anything. Either to him, or for him. It's the one time there isn't a single thing he'll be selfish about.

Because he was alone for most of his childhood, having no real friends (or even a connection to his parents), Judai is fairly emotionally vulnerable despite how he comes off. He deeply desires to be liked and to have people stay close to him, and while this does manifest positively a lot of the time -- such as being accepting, forgiving, hard to offend when he's personally insulted, and willing to help out -- it can manifest very negatively for Judai himself, leading him to give too much of himself, forgive when he really shouldn't, and makes it pretty easy to walk over him if it isn't something he tends to favor (IE, he'd probably help you in your room far beyond what he should to move out, but he won't share his food most of the time unless he really wants to).

This, and his love for Johan, makes him incredibly clingy when it comes to the crystal boy. It isn't in a way that's entirely negative, at least; Judai is perfectly fine spending time apart, going to different places, or not having Johan around, and doesn't protest or feel bad when these things happen... as long as he knows that Johan is okay and he's going somewhere because he wants to. Johan doesn't need to tell him where he's going if he doesn't want to -- something as simple as "Oh yeah, I have something to do" is enough to make Judai calm. He doesn't care that Johan has a life or other things he wants to do, since Judai himself does as well despite their shared interests. He just cares -- and worries -- about being left, so as long as Johan isn't disappearing or kidnapped, he's pretty chill about it.

That said, being alone has bad results for Judai. Normal solitude is fine -- going to bed, sleeping in your own room, having to do something on your own, none of that bothers him. It's the sense of being abandoned, of having no one to turn to at all, of there being nobody around, that really gets him. This means that something like being lost in the forest could cause a bad reaction and bring his anxiety and depression back up, but just having to work by himself in a classroom or outside alone doesn't do anything to him at all.

Despite his issues, he doesn't really have any self-hatred. Judai likes himself pretty well. That being said, it can and will come up if Judai hurts his friends in an immensely bad way, and once it is there, it can stick and hard. Thankfully, this is only if it's extremely bad and there's no way to fix it -- as long as he can make it up to them and they genuinely forgive him, Judai feels okay. And he goes a long way to actually make it up to them if he needs to.

> Abilities

High Luck.
Much like Yugi before him, Judai has a habit of drawing the exact card that he needs in times of distress or problems. While Yugi called this the "heart of the cards," Judai instead refers to it as "trusting your deck." Regardless of the title, this makes him a formidable opponent, because Judai remains dangerous the entire time through... and some would argue that backing him into a corner makes him even more dangerous. Outside of duels, this manifests as an almost supernatural sense of luck. Whether it's something as simple as finding a special card in a pack or something far more specific such as being at the exact right place at the exact right time for something very special, that luck is almost as much of a defining trait as anything else for him.

Intuition.
While Judai is more intelligent than he seems overall, he also has a fairly strong intuitive sense. It's nothing like precognition or anything like that, but the feelings he gets tend to be right most of the time, and he's learned to at least consider them when doing things. He's a boy who "trusting your gut" is a very good thing to do with, and whenever he says he has a really bad feeling about something, most of his friends listen. This also can stretch to good things sometimes, such as Judai just knowing that taking the right path in a maze is a good idea, and ending up with everyone at an untrapped treasure room.

Spirit Sense.
Since he was a little kid, Judai has the ability to hear and speak with spirits of all kinds, though Duel Monster spirits tend to be the only ones he's ever interacted with at length. While he can't actually do much with the spirits, most anything having to do with them will register, and it's one of the reasons he trusts in his deck; he's able to hear the voices of all his monsters. Besides Winged Kuriboh, Judai also has Elemental HERO Avian and Elemental HERO Burstinatrix as his spirit partners. However, Avian and Burstinatrix rarely show up like Winged Kuriboh does, if ever.

Darkness.
This is Judai's strongest and most deeply hidden power. Because of Yubel's sacrifice so long ago, Judai's very soul has been forever tainted by and fully connected to darkness itself. What this means is that, even unaware of it, Judai is naturally protected from being drained in areas heavy with darkness magic or the Dark World/Shadow Realm, much as if he had a Millennium Item blocking the effects. In fact, long exposures to that other world charges him rather than drains him, though it's a very mild charge at best unless he outright attempts to draw power from it. Any time he's charged up or using powers, Judai's eyes shift to a heterochromic color set, one orange and one green.

Through this control comes skills such as being able to start Shadow Games at will or summoning his creatures even in the real world. Judai's powers go beyond simply mimicking the Millennium Items, however: he can outright command monsters, spirits, or creatures that are at least half or more entrenched in darkness, draw out spirits from whatever they reside in -- even to the point of breaking seals -- or outright generate fully functioning objects or bodies from the darkness itself for creatures or souls to reside in.

While these abilities are strong, the problem with them is that to use them at even a fraction of their strength requires very heavy training and practice with them. As these powers have been untouched -- and outright sealed -- since Judai was a little boy, Judai's skill with them is completely gone, leaving him at a level even below a beginner even with the powers awakened. On top of that, said lack of training means he tends to bleed magic all over, which can cause problems in certain areas.

Metaphorposis.
As part of his darkness control, Judai can warp and morph his body into various forms. This usually is manifested in large, bat-like wings and his arms shifting into long clawed variants. Like control in general, whenever using this at all, Judai's eyes shift to the mismatched orange/green colors.