Squirrelstar Deserves Better™

I saw that text post and had a vision-

Very interesting that all three of the Arclight brothers (but not Tron, whose Numbers appear to be Psychic instead) use machine based Number monsters. Something about them having their similarities despite being very different and dysfunctional.

(Also maybe something about Tron viewing his sons as his pawns and tools to discard once no longer of use rather than the people they are, stripping them of their birth names and binding dangerous crests to their souls and maybe even giving those Numbers to them if they didn't hunt them themselves.)

A little minific for my Zexal cast in 5Ds AU.

(No beta we die like the Dark Signers-)

Zexal Characters in 5Ds: The Dark Signers

(This is less developed than the Signer side of things. Also obligatory long post under the cut)

Thinking about my zexal characters in 5ds au and the crimson dragon really made some Choices regarding who should be a signer

Both Shark and Rio are Signers. Thomas is too, and he is so fed up with all of this/hates being forced to work with the Kamishiros for any reason. (The Kamishiros in turn don't like Thomas much either.)

Kaito is also there, and he has arguably the best knowledge of what the goal is here since his father is functionally our stand in for both Rex and Rutger Godwin and actually shared info with his son, but it's also Kaito so good luck getting him to work with his squabbling teammates.

They still haven't found the fifth Signer, btw. Nor do any of them realize Dr. Faker caused Zero Reverse/killed Thomas' dad Byron.

(Byron, meanwhile, has been hanging around on Satellite as a Dark Signer for the past ten years. A solid decade of Earthbound God induced madness and anger directed at Dr. Faker was not good for him.)

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: III | Michael Arclight & IV | Thomas Arclight, III | Michael Arclight & Tron | Byron Arclight Characters: III | Michael Arclight, IV | Thomas Arclight, V | Chris Arclight, Tron | Byron Arclight Additional Tags: zexal characters in 5ds, a character becomes a dark signer on page by choice, Sad Ending, Autistic Michael Arclight Summary:

Domino City was shattered by Zero Reverse ten years ago. Now, the Earthbound Gods and Crimson Dragon are rising again.

---

So. I wrote this. I am so sorry.

My brain, completely completely occupied by Arclight Blorbo Thoughts, has supplied me with an uncalled for Arclight 5Ds AU.

-The whole family, fittingly enough, are Tops.

-Chris is a scientist. At 20, he was not involved in the Zero Reverse Incident (in the AU the incident took place ten years prior to main events, making Chris ten at the time it happened), but he does do work on the Momentum system.

-Thomas is a D-Wheeler. Not sure what his AU archetype would be, but much like his canon self he acts kind to his fans, but has a nasty tendency to let his emotions take control during duels.

-Michael is a middle schooler with a history obsession. He knows a good amount about history, including, notably, the Nazca Lines.

-Byron was also a researcher, and was involved in Zero Reverse. He vanished in the incident, and his body was never found...

(Byron is a given for Dark Signer BS, but which of his sons do you think also goes Dark Signer? I know the whole family were antagonists in Zexal, but I think there should be familial angst over the Dark Signers in a 5Ds AU.)

Staring at III's deck archetype like

Yes, it's obviously about his love for history and belief in Ancient Aliens stuff. On the most surface level, that's why he uses Chronomalies. Dig a bit deeper, and it's also about III clinging to the past/how his family used to be, his desperate hope that his family will go back to normal once the revenge scheme is done.

It's also about his connection to his father and their similarities. Byron was investigating interdimensional portals, and that very likely influenced III's belief that 'out of place artifacts' came from other dimensions. When III gets pushed over the edge due to jealousy and desperation, he, much like how his father accepted power from the Barians for the purpose of revenge, went ahead and accepted extra power from his father for the purpose of being able to help his family. He outright commits himself more closely to Tron's revenge scheme, in hopes that things will return to normal afterwards. He starts acting more like Tron, going out of his way to alter Yuma's memories and murder Astral, and, in a parallel to the portal incident, almost rips open a portal to the Barian World (and almost destroys the world) himself.

The connecting point: Tron uses Heraldic Beasts, an archetype focused around heraldic animals. Heraldry is its own brand of history, maybe not the same kind as III's Chronomalies (Chronomalies puts focus on ancient civilizations and artifacts with an Ancient Aliens bent, Heraldic Beasts puts focus on the more family/heritage focused topic of heraldry), but close enough? It certainly implies that despite Tron's horrific mental state, he still cares about his family to some degree, enough to get III and IV out of the orphanage and keep them around at all, even as pawns. Enough to be convinced to put their souls back after his loss in the WDC.

III really did get a lot of his father's personality, for better or worse.

Hmm. Yeah. Kings and Queens by 30 Seconds to Mars is an excellent Keyswap AU song.

Just check out some of the lines below the cut:

Psst.

Who wants some Keyswap AU angst?

You're gonna get it anyway.

(Long post + spoilers for the fanfic I'm writing below cut.)

You know what, let's get overanalytical of the Arclight crests.

IV's crest is easy. It's a stylized flame. IV himself is impulsive, destructive, the most hot tempered of the family. He's the one who accidentally got Rio hurt in a fire.

V's crest, with its colour and design, calls to mind water. Water can be still on the surface, but that masks what's potentially going on beneath. There's a damn good reason they tell you not to wade into floodwaters, even if they don't look deep or hazardous. In turn, V is the most emotionally distant/emotionally repressed, and we don't see him duel until late in the WDC arc, but he does have his own moments. He does, in his own way, still care about his family, even if he doesn't express it well.

Push him, and you'll find yourself on the wrong end of his Dyson Sphere.

III's crest is a flower. Flowers are pretty things, often seen as harmless or associated with gentleness, but many flower species have thorns and toxins hidden away for defence, vines to choke out invaders. III initially appears to perhaps be the kindest of the brothers, he's the only one to visibly show discomfort with what happened to Haruto, but he's also intensely protective of his family and will fight fiercely to defend them, even to the lengths of attempting murder to do it if he thinks he has to. He packs a sword around sometimes and is not above threatening with it/throwing it to make a point.

Tron's crest is a stylized pink eye. He's the one leading the Arclights, he directs and watches over his sons.

But there's another layer to this one. Don Thousand also has an eye motif, and while Don K wasn't yet active when Tron made his deal, the pink eye design still connects him to the Barians and the deal he made with them for the power to take revenge.

When you accidentally make a parallel in your keyswap au...

(Dr. Faker sacrificed Byron and Kazuma to open that portal, then five years later Kaito ends up helping to send Michael and Yuma to the Astral World, this time to help them find Astral.)

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: III | Michael Arclight, IV | Thomas Arclight, V | Chris Arclight, Tron | Byron Arclight Additional Tags: keyswap au, Alternate Universe - Roleswap, eventual aztecshipping, will update to m/m once yuma shows up Summary:

Things go a little differently, and the Emperor's Key makes its way to someone else instead of Yuma.

---

Welcome to keyswap au! I hope you have fun!

As someone who loves seeing family dynamics in fiction, Yugioh Zexal came for my fucking throat.

There's Yuma, who misses his parents and lives with his grandma and older sister, who looks up to his father as a sort of idol and chooses to sleep in the attic with all the stuff brought back from their adventures because he still misses them so much.

There's Shark, who lost his parents as a child and then had to deal with his twin sister Rio ending up comatose in the hospital. Shark and Rio bicker and go at each other, but hurt one and you Will have the other coming for you.

There's Kaito, whose whole focus was on helping his younger brother Haruto recover, even if it meant damning himself in the process. He sacrifices his own well being via Photon Change time and time again for Haruto's sake, and puts up with so much from his shitty father, all for his baby brother.

And then there's the Arclights. The family patriarch Byron was betrayed and came back years later swearing revenge, using his sons as pawns in his scheme. The boys are also messed up, between V's emotional distance, IV's sadistic tendencies, and III's self sacrificial desperation to protect his family no matter the cost. And yet, the three brothers do still care about each other despite it all, remaining loyal to their broken little family despite knowing their position.

Zexal was so good on that front. It's one of my favourite YGO series.

These two are pretty much the same, just portrayed in opposite ways by their respective narratives.

Tron (on the left) was betrayed and sacrificed to the Barian World by Dr. Faker, came back with the body of a child, and is now bent on getting revenge against Faker, using his three sons as his pawns in his scheme. It's made clear that Tron is one of the villains of the first half of Zexal, as his schemes go on to hurt numerous characters beyond just Faker and his family, and he willingly tosses his sons aside the second they're no longer of use to him. You're not supposed to view Tron as a good guy, you're supposed to view him as an villain who has let revenge consume him.

Mary (on the right), likewise, was tricked and poisoned with the plot driving poison by Vermouth, but survived in the body of a child. She likewise wants to strike back against Vermouth, with the addition of also wanting an antidote to the poison so she can get her adult body back. She's also paranoid, and frequently uses her teenage daughter, Masumi, to act on her behalf regarding getting info about Conan and the antidote. She tells Masumi to steal the antidote from Conan once she finds out he has one, she refuses to let Masumi openly communicate what she wants with Conan/refuses to trust anyone but Masumi to help her, once picked a physical fight with her adult son Shuuichi because Shuuichi wouldn't come home to act as a substitute father to a then young Masumi...

...and the narrative wants the readers to view Mary as a good guy, or at least Not A Villain. Mary is not condemned for her actions or her intense paranoia, it doesn't really touch on how she refuses to communicate with anyone beyond Masumi/how that might be a problem (and even Masumi doesn't have all the info she needs), Conan is shown to be annoyed by Masumi's attempts to get info/antidotes out of him and is now wary of Masumi because of what Mary keeps telling her to do, Mary refuses to trust Conan despite knowing that he is on the same side as her/lets her paranoia control her. She is, narratively, in an extremely similar role to Tron, but unlike Tron is positioned as Not A Villain because she also wants to see the villains taken out, despite the extra stress she causes Conan and her refusal to talk to him directly/insistence on trying to steal an antidote from him.

I feel like the dub choice of renaming III, IV, and V Trey, Quattro, and Quinton kind of loses the point that those weren't meant to sound like real names. III, IV, and V are blatantly meant to be 'names' given to replace their original names, nothing more than symbols of the trio being used as nameless pawns by Tron. Trey, Quattro, and Quinton, while retaining the number theme, sound like actual names/are actual names, and therefore lose the intended point.

4Kids were you afraid kids wouldn't understand the concept of roman numerals open up i just want to talk-