Valon

Name: Valon

Age: 16

Nationality: Australian

Special Skills: Motorcycles, fighting, gaming

Likes: Motorcycles, fighting, gaming, Mai, his friends

Best Friends: Alister, Raphael

Background: Valon was orphaned at a young age and was raised by the nun Mother Mary. He had a bad temper and was always getting into fights, sometimes while defending someone, sometimes just because he felt like it. Mother Mary tried to show him another path, but it never seemed to work.

Mother Mary was being bullied and threatened by some thugs whose boss wanted the property the church was built on. She always refused. One night the church burned down very mysteriously. She managed to save all the children, but she could not save herself. Valon stood and watched in horror as his home was devoured by the flames. When he saw the thugs laughing about it, he was sure that they had burned the church and killed Mother Mary. In rage, he cornered them in an alley and beat all of them very seriously with a metal rod. This resulted in him being sent to prison, despite his young age.

Prison life did not agree with him and he was soon getting into more fights and ending up in solitary confinement. But the facility was owned by members of Dartz's organization. One day they called Valon in and told him he had a chance at freedom if he agreed to participate in a Battle Royale competition with other problem prisoners. They would be left on a deserted island and forced to play Duel Monsters games with the Orichalcos until only one was left standing. In the end, that one was Valon. Dartz arrived on the island, impressed, and asked Valon to work for him. Not seeing any other options, Valon agreed.

Unlike Alister and Raphael, whose reasons for joining were more noble, Valon mostly joined out of survival. And unlike the others, even Dartz, the Orichalcos never seemed to have much of an effect on Valon's personality. He attributed this to his having accepted his darkness, while everyone else was denying theirs.

Valon got along beautifully with Raphael, but he and Alister couldn't seem to hold a civil conversation. Raphael was always having to break up their arguments. Valon hated that Alister always seemed critical, while Alister hated that Valon couldn't see he was worried about Valon's wild stunts.

Dartz wanted to recruit Mai Valentine to his ranks as well. She was in a position of desperation without Dartz even having had to do anything. Seeing Valon's interest in the woman, he sent Valon to recruit her. In this Valon was successful, but despite his longing to get Mai interested in him, she always refused. This was likely from a combination of the Orichalcos' influence and Mai's own feelings of feeling she had to stay apart from everyone and be on her own to be the best. Yami Marik had completely shattered her self-confidence and her fledgling belief in friendship, and no matter what Valon or anyone else said, she was unmoved.

Valon was always undaunted. He felt that he and Mai were very much alike, as they both felt they didn't want to depend on anyone other than themselves. But he also saw that deep down, Mai still cared about Joey despite the Orichalcos' darkening of her mind and heart. He wanted desperately to get Mai to forget about Joey and choose him, but that was not to be. When he lost a long and hard duel with Joey, he accepted defeat and told Joey to save Mai. Then the Orichalcos claimed his soul.

After Atem saved everyone, Valon awoke to find that Mai had left him a Cyber Harpie card to remember her by and had left. Valon left as well, looking for her but also wanting to find Alister. He was sure Raphael would return to the beachhouse, but he doubted Alister would and he wanted to make sure Alister was alright. Eventually they found each other and Valon learned that Alister had called the beachhouse after Valon's departure and he and Raphael had been looking everywhere for him. The three of them decided to make a new life together in Domino City.

Personality: Valon still likes a good fight. He also likes dangerous motorcycle stunts. He is the most playful of the bikers and wants to keep hold of having fun instead of becoming serious like the others. He is very streetwise and knows a lot about gang life. He enjoys video and card games, rock music, and anime and manga. It's nice for him to be able to discover what a normal life is. And even though he and Alister still argue, it's even nicer to know that he has loved ones again and a family at last.

He doesn't know what his real last name is, and although Alister and Raphael have suggested that he figure out a new one for himself, he isn't sure what to pick. In the end, he may decide to take both of his friends' last names for his own.

Differences between the timelines: Valon is pretty much the same, save for actually addressing the canon thing of the Orichalcos not really changing his personality. In the old timeline, his birth parents eventually surfaced and tried to take him back, but not out of love. Alister and Raphael fought back and Valon has been allowed to stay with them. In the old timeline, Valon's age was somewhere around 17. It seems to have dropped a year in the new timeline. There may be a new version of the mess with his birth parents at some point in the new timeline, just as I have also come up with a new version of how they met after season 5 that seems to be more canon-compliant. I still like the old version, where they're all wandering looking for each other, but since they did seem to be living at the beachhouse, it seemed more logical to me for the new timeline to have Alister and Raphael reunite, discover Valon gone, and go out looking for him.

The old timeline also had Valon frustrated because Alister seemed to have closed off his heart. Considering Valon's upbringing and his "I fight for myself" attitude, I decided it made more sense if Valon was also closing himself off, and maybe being the main one doing so.