Shiro's eyes widen and his jaw goes tight but he doesn't look away from the fire, or react in any other way to the word toy. It's not inaccurate, after all. After a moment he shakes his head, slowly.

"Mmno, it did not." He looks down, shrugging faintly. "It happened with the people living across the thousands of worlds the Galra had subjugated over the course of their reign. I was pretty skeptical, but you've got to remember it wasn't just... some scarred up, one-armed human reciting lines poorly." He smiles a little, more tired than anything. Too weary to be properly dry.

"I had a team. We had... a symbol of hope, that was what people really cared about. That was why it worked."