Ruka's Biography (Currently up to Timeskip)

[voicesofspirits]

NAME: Ruka Terasaki
AGE: 21 (D.O.B: 20th June)
LIVES: Sakana Apartments, Domino City, Japan
JOB: Duel Spirit Researcher at SAI
DECK: Spirit Deck
SPIRITS: A number of small, low level spirits, but the most notable are: Kuribon, Sunlight Unicorn and Regulus

PERSONALITY

Ruka, the youngest of the twins, is very different from her brother, Rua. She is very calm, polite and collected person, she is also seen as being very frail, as she was often sick as a child. Although seen as quite weak, Ruka will stand up and fight when she really needs to.
Ruka is also the one who tends to correct her brother the most, often letting him know when he's wrong about things. Ruka tends to occasionally find her brother's antics annoying, but despite that, she loves her brother with all her heart and sees him as a hero who helps protect her.

As an adult, she remains very polite, calm and collected, but she is also now a more independent person.

HISTORY

Ruka and her twin brother, Rua, came from sometime far in the future, where they originally lived. They lived in the "Tops" area of Neo-Domino city, seemingly on their own. Their parents work away from the home and occasionally kept in contact through e-mail. Because Ruka was often very sickly as a child, the twins were originally home-schooled through computers.

Ruka began dueling at a very young age and was considered a rather talented duelist for the age she was, but when she was only 3 years old, she fell into a coma after a duel and didn't awaken for a whole month.
During this time, her mind had gone to live with the spirits in the Duel Monsters spirit world, where she happily played with the spirits there under the watchful eye of Ancient Fairy Dragon. Before waking up, Ruka promised Ancient Fairy that she would always protect the spirit world, but this promise was too much for the young Ruka and she gradually forgot about it. After her visit to the spirit world, Ruka was now able to communicate with Duel Spirits in her own world.

Years later, when Ruka was 11-years-old, she and Rua were dueling in their home when Ruka was able to sense Yuusei in trouble. The twins went to his aide and took him back to their home while he was unconscious. The twins wondered if he was a bad person, noticing the marker on his face, but Ruka could tell via his deck that he didn't seem to be. Once he woke up, Yuusei attempted to leave as he felt he was putting the twins in danger, but Rua manages to convince him to duel. That night, while the twins are sleeping, Yuusei fixes their duel disks, which were too big for them, and then leaves.

Ruka was invited to attend and take part in the Fortune Cup, being held by Rex Godwin. Unknown to them, it was a ploy to find out who the signers were. Ruka, who didn't like dueling much since she gets very tired after duels, decided not to take part, so Rua dressed up as her to duel in her place, while Ruka sat in the audience in a disguise. Sadly, it was realized that Rua was the one dueling and that Ruka had been in the audience, so later in the tournament, they announce a consolation game, to which Ruka is chosen for it, singling her out in the spotlight.

Ruka is chosen to duel Professor Frank, who manages to hypnotize Ruka in the duel in order to get her to go the Duel Monsters spirit world. Rua is also hypnotized at the same time as he sits in the audience and he passes out. While her mind is in the spirit world, Ruka remembers her promise to Ancient Fairy Dragon and sees how the world is degrading, with Ancient Fairy now sealed into a stone. After this, she decides to uphold her promise to protect the spirit world and manages to draw in her duel with Professor Frank. During this duel, her power as a signer awakens, but it's not until Yuusei and Jack's duel in the Fortune Cup finale where her mark appears permanently on her arm.

During the duel between Jack and Yuusei, the Crimson Dragon appears and shows the Signers the Legend of the People of the Stars and the destruction of Satellite with the spider mark over it. But then something happens... the Crimson Dragon ends up propelling the Signers into the past.
Ruka, separated from the others, was lucky enough to come across some people to help her, including Juudai who helped her get back to Yuusei who he had met previously.
During this time, Duel Spirits had briefly been made visible by Katou Jin and this played havoc on Ruka's health at first, who wasn't used to being around that many spirits, especially solid ones. Thankfully, it's something she has gotten used to and doesn't effect her anymore now that solid spirits are a permanent feature around Japan.
During the first year or so, Ruka was often feeling homesick or worried about whether her and Rua's parents had noticed them missing and if they were wondering where they were.

Ancient Fairy Dragon was still missing at this point, though Ruka could occasionally contact her, but sadly her words were never clear when she spoke. Regulus, Ancient Fairy's servant, was able to find Ruka and eventually they found out that Ancient Fairy was in the hands of a man named Honjou Jin, who had been able to take a cursed needle from Ancient Fairy's previous captor, Zeman the Ape King and was able to un-minus the dragon, who had been dragged back in time along with Ruka. Honjou struck a deal with Ancient Fairy and with that Honjou summoned a small squad of duel monsters to hold off people from getting to Duel Academy island. The twins, with the help of Aki and Yuusei, were able to infiltrate the island and the twins were able to reach Honjou. The two dueled him and Honjou revealed his weapon to stop all evil from destroying the human world. An artificial unstoppable army of angel-like creatures.
The twins ended up winning the duel and Ruka was able to gain possession of Ancient Fairy Dragon.

During the Desdemona plot, Aki began getting the blame for the attacks on the park at the time and despite some people being unsure, Ruka kept her faith in Aki and kept positive that she wasn't to blame, even when she seemingly attacked Isabel and went missing. Eventually both Ruka and Suguru found Aki, who was being manipulated by Desdemona and the two dueled her together to snap her out of it. Although this hospitalized them with minor injuries, Ruka was glad that Aki was back and safe.

TIMESKIP

As of the timeskip, Ruka and her brother are now 14-years-old and have started their first year in Duel Academy. Ruka did well on both her written and dueling exams and has entered her first year as a Ra Yellow student.
Ruka has grown up from the 11-year-old she once was and is very obviously turning into a young woman. Due to this, she is no longer comforted by the fact that one day they could go back to the same place in time they were taken from as she and Rua have now obviously grown much older than they were back then... although Ruka isn't sure what she would do if she even had the choice to go back now that she's made a life for herself and met so many friends in the current time she's in. These days, she tries not think think about such things and happily carries on with her life as it is. She figures she'll deal with it if and when it happens.
She hates to admit it, but she feels a stronger sense of family from her brother, Yuusei and the others, than she felt from her parents, who hadn't been around her and Rua for a long time. Though she still feels guilty that they maybe causing them to worry.

Ruka wishes to learn more about Duel Spirits and the 12 Dimensions that they come from, as well as learning about what people and Duel Spirits can achieve together, inspired by seeing people and spirits such as Isabel and Enzo, or Juudai and his spirits, who work together to accomplish great things. To achieve this, Juudai has taken her under his wing a little as a sort-of apprentice, and allows her to help him in his quest to connect people and the spirits who have decided to live in the human world, all over Japan. Occasionally Ruka will accompany him to situations outside of Domino City, as long as she has permission from either Aki or Yuusei and it doesn't interfere with her schoolwork.

During the appearance of the Tenors, known only to the residents of Domino City as "Ghost", Ruka was targeted by Lucciano and was forced into a duel with him. Although she fought bravely and hung on to the very end, she was defeated by Lucciano. Thankfully, her duel spirits were able to soften the impact of the last attack by attempting to block it, though eventually the attack got through and hit Ruka. Thanks to her spirits, she escaped the attack with her life, with the only major injury being a fractured shoulder, which was caused by the fall off her duel board.

When the Ark Cradle appeared, Ruka, along with Juudai, Isabel and the rest of Team 5D's went up to stop it from crashing into Domino City. The group were separated and Ruka found herself in a duel with Rua and Jack, against Aporia. The duel did not go well for the three of them at first, with Ruka taking a lot of damage herself. When Rua sacrificed himself in order to bring out Ancient Fairy to help protect Ruka, Ruka, devastated at Rua's apparent death broke down and began to lose the will to live without him. Because of this, her life point counter began to count down. Thankfully, the effect of one of Rua's monsters, along with help from Ancient Fairy Dragon, revived him and in doing so, he gained his own signer mark, the mark of the heart of the dragon.
With his new power, Rua was able to save his sister and the three were able to win in their duel against Aporia.

Although they won and Rua had finally gotten his own signer mark, the whole duel felt like a slap in the face for Ruka, who had struggled in the duel terribly and had to rely on the support of Rua and Jack through it.
For a girl that was already beginning to lose confidence in herself, this duel was definitely not helpful...

SECOND TIMESKIP
In the following six months, Ruka had began to become more and more concerned over the Crimson Dragon, their predicament and the building up of her own insecurities. Slowly over time, she had also began to receive taunting at the Academy, as students began to notice that she was always covering up her arms. She wore lone sleeved shirts under her uniform and even when in casual clothes, she would always wear something long sleeved, even in the summer. Girls, especially, began to taunt her, thinking she was just too shy to show skin or that she was hiding something, which in truth, she was. She had become incredibly self-conscious about her dragon mark and didn't want anyone asking about it, so she'd been hiding it since she started at the academy.
Due to the taunting, Ruka became more and more reserved, spending most of her spare time in the academy library as she delved head-first into her studies, which sadly resulted in more taunting when she was doing so well in her classes thanks to the extra studying. Classmates began to accuse her of showing off.

The worst was yet to come for poor Ruka. While at home for the weekend, Ruka woke one morning to find her brother, Yuusei and the others all gone. They were nowhere to be found. Ruka remembered a dream she had that night which involved the Crimson Dragon, which made her begin to panic and break down. Did the Crimson Dragon really take her brother and the others away? Why did it leave her behind if it did? What was she going to do without Rua there?? Despite the best efforts of the other residents at Sakana, Ruka completely broke down and locked herself in her apartment.

While in her state of despair, a Numbers card, Number 83 - Galaxy Queen, was drawn to her. Galaxy Queen began to comfort Ruka and her ability to feel like a mother drew Ruka in easily, not realizing that Galaxy Queen had sensed her strong connection to the spirit world which she was interested in using. When Ruka's spirits began to intervene, Galaxy Queen sealed them away so they could no longer be seen or heard.

When Juudai and Suguru broke into Ruka's apartment to try and get her to talk to them, Ruka fled the scene and ended up running into Samasu, Shinji. The two ended up in a duel where Shinji was able to eventually reach out to Ruka's spirits who let him know about Galaxy Queen and how she was controlling Ruka. Shinji was able to defeat Galaxy Queen and broke her possession over Ruka.
Ruka, feeling the entire weight of stress from what she had been through, simply broke down in tears before passing out from exhaustion.

Ruka was brought back to Sakana by Juudai, who has witnessed the duel, and allowed her to rest in the guest room at his apartment. Once she has awakened, Juudai told her that he and Asuka would be happy to have her stay with them, as her being on her own right now would probably not be beneficial to her. She was also given a small paid job at the Spirit Foundation as Juudai's official apprentice in order to be able to save some money for herself should she need it.
Ruka officially moved in with Juudai and Asuka, into their guest room and spent the rest of the year living there. While she wasn't attending school, she was allowed to do her school work at home, which Shinji brought to her while visiting her.

Right after the New Year, Ruka moved back into her Ra Yellow dorm, with plans to only stay with Juudai and Asuka during weekends. On her first day back on the island, she learned that Shinoko was the signer of this timelines Ancient Fairy Dragon, but that she and the dragon didn't seem to be getting along. In the hopes to help and make another signer friend, she offered to talk to Ancient Fairy Dragon for her, which didn't end up going so well. Shinoko was not interested in becoming friends with a "goody-goody" like Ruka and Ancient Fairy Dragon called Ruka naive for her attempt to try and fix the relationship between her and her signer. She left the situation feeling rather alone and quite jaded, wondering if she really was too naive...

Eventually, she and Shinoko began to become more on friendly terms with each other when Shinoko proposed the idea of an occult research club at the academy, which Ruka joined. Shinoko quickly made her the vice president of the group.

After graduating from the academy, Ruka started an apprenticeship at the Spirit Foundation working alongside Juudai, as well as doing her own fieldwork with spirits. She also gets paid a little for her work at the foundation now, which Juudai arranged so she at least had an income coming in. He's promised her a full-time position as the foundations duel spirit researcher once she's finished the apprenticeship.

Once she finished the apprenticeship, she began working at the Spirit Foundation (and then later SAI) as it's full-time Duel Spirit researcher and she also moved out from living with Juudai and Asuka into her own one-bedroom apartment at Sakana.

Some time later, Ruka was contacted by the Crimson Dragon, which she questioned about what happened to her friends and why she was left behind. As it turned out, because she was so split between going back to where she came from, or staying in Domino City, when the Crimson Dragon went to send them back, it's power accidentally split Ruka in two. The Ruka who wanted to go and the Ruka who wanted to stay, only this had been gradually causing an unstable balance and it had begun to affect her, her other self and Shinoko. Ruka could only choose one of two options; either go back and re-join with her other self, losing all memory of the last few years she had of her time with Juudai and the others, as well as everything she'd achieved, or stay where she was, but give up her signer powers, the last connection she had to her brother and friends.
It was a very difficult choice for her, but knowing that Rua and the others still had her with them and that they weren't worried about her being missing, she chose to give up her signer powers and remain where she was. With that, the Crimson Dragon took her mark and Ancient Fairy Dragon's form changed to a new dragon, called Queen Fae Dragon.

Since then, Ruka has been learning to accept her new life and has carried on working at SAI and living her life independently. Although it was a difficult transition, she also felt a weight lifted off her shoulder, knowing that her future was now not so uncertain anymore and she had the freedom to live life how she wanted with no fear that the Crimson Dragon would suddenly take her away from it all.

POWERS

Ruka is one of the Dragon signers believed to be from the future and has the Crimson Dragons front claw on her right arm. Her dragon is Ancient Fairy Dragon.
As with all signers, Ruka can at times sense where another signer is, or when they are dueling, if their marks are active at the time, as they are all connected through them. She can also make a force-field of sorts around people who need protecting if needed.
Her individual power is the ability to communicate with duel spirits. She seems to have a very unique ability to talk to them, her connection to them and their world is very strong.
Ruka is able to visit the Duel Monsters world through her mind, but while doing this, she leaves her comatose body behind.

As of recently, Ruka is no longer a signer and has lost all the abilities that came with her mark, though she still retains some sensitivity with spirits and can still sense what they are feeling.

Ruka has numerous spirits in her deck, most of them rather low-level, that will attempt to protect her if she's in trouble, though the most notable ones are Sunlight Unicorn, Kuribon, Regulus and Ancient Fairy Dragon.