Kaiba shouldn't have had to do something like that. Not at his age. But that's the basic cry of this goddamn train. A bunch of people that had to do shit way too young, whether they were grown or still in the throws of adjusting to an uninvited, painful adulthood, or fresh from the oven.

"You'll find him. Just for the reasons I just said. You'll get 'im back and you'll have a family ready for him."

Yondu sighs and rubs his nose. Decides then that... well, he can't tell him the full story. He told Tobirama the full story only recently to level the amount of secrets they shared between them, and he tore his heart out in the process.

"I ain't gonna get into specifics. But... My son came to me under troubled circumstances. He was gonna be hunt down and killed if I didn't keep 'im. But my crew didn't want him, and he didn't wanna be there, but if I left him anywhere else he woulda died. So I had to treat him like crew. Just... tiny crew. Had to slip everything in edgewise. Get him out of trouble on my own. Post his bail out of my money. Train him personally, away from everyone else. I'd buy 'im Terran stuff from backalley shops and gave him his first translator and I'd make sure we stopped at places that suited his mood. But I never expected 'im to notice, and he didn't, and I never punished 'im for not lovin' me."

He's looks down. "I needed him with me to protect 'im but I also needed to protect him from my crew by lookin' as hard as possible. So I weren't as good as I woulda liked. Make sure you set the record straight as soon as you get back to 'im 'cause I only got a few words in to apologize to my boy before I died."