[Gokudera rubs at his neck carefully, the skin raw and obviously irritated by the heat and tension that had been around it. He glares at Zuko’s words, but won’t be honestly angry at his friend. Those words are said out of ignorance and because he cares.]

Let me say again and elaborate something... that the only way I could live in the city of Tanagura, where Elites lived was to sell myself as a pet. The Tenth and Yamamoto would both be Elite, and I would have to live in the slums of Midas and be jailed, drugged and questioned for so much as touching them in a world focused on sex as a means to make money and survive.

[He clears his throat.]

I requested that he accept me as his pet so that I could see the Tenth and ensure his safety and well-being. The baseball idiot never used the collar on me, and in the last world I was on, he deactivated it. Seems traveling through time and space has made it malfunction.