The Academia is a cult of personality. Anybody who refuses to see that is an idiot, Yuri thinks. The entire island is littered with propangada, Fusion first, everyone else second. The Professor above all.
Yuri sees through it. He's unusually perceptive, people say. It took a long time for him to learn how to focus that only on the enemy. He turns a blind eye to the propaganda, the beatings, the public executions now. Not worth the trouble.
It wasn't the same when he was young. He still had the scars from too many beatings. Yuri was an easy target, he reflects. As a small child, the teachers had said he wouldn't amount to anything. He was too strange, always the odd one out, always a shy child. Yuri had made sure to prove them wrong.
Yuri doesn't remember his parents. His very earliest memories are of the Academia's childcare program. He doesn't know if he even had parents. Plenty of early Academia students were plucked from orphanages, when approval of the new regime wasn't quite so high. If there's still a Fusion Rebellion, Yuri hasn't heard anything about it in years. Life on the island isn't like reality anyway.
Yuri has seen real life, in Synchro, and Standard, and what used to be Xyz. He found himself disconnected from it. They all gave their real smiles too easily, and ran about with no real purpose. Nobody was giving them directions from on high, so he figures that must be normal, but to Yuri it seems like absolute chaos. Every Academia soldier is taught from birth their purpose in life. Yuri was already one of the few to exceed expectations, he can't imagine life without war or hardship or order.
War is a strange comfort, but Yuri indulges in it anyway. He enjoys watching the Xyz rebels scramble about, it's a power trip like nothing else. Yuri knows himself well enough to say that it's not right, but he doesn't care, unlike those weak-minded enough to believe that anything they do is temporary.
He sneers at the term "turned into a card". The Academia policy is that no one turned into a card should ever be unsealed, even if there was such a technology in the first place. Death is death, Yuri thinks, but doesn't say. They've slaughtered an entire dimension, and eventually they'll do the same to Standard. Synchro is only saved by its' usefulness to the regime. Yuri finds it difficult to sympathize with any of the struggles he sees in Standard when he knows that soon everyone who lives there will be reduced to ash in an Academia bonfire.
Yuri was sent to oversee the dissolution of the Tops in Synchro a few years ago. Fire, screaming, the smell of meat, more of the same, really. Apparently they're much happier now under Fusion rule than they were free to make their own choices. Maybe the stereotypes about the people of Synchro are right, because that is incredibly foolish.
Still, Yuri ascends through the ranks of Academia. He took the girls with the same face himself. According to his superiors, Yuri is guaranteed glory and a place in the history books. A stable life after his inevitable retirement due to age or injury. Yuri has no strong ideals, and so he's satisfied with that. It's obvious that the Academia will win anyway.
The first time Yuri met the Professor, he told him there was nothing to worry about. Yuri was eleven years old, and his hands were already stained with the blood of strangers.
Yuri sees through it.