Ruriko
| Ruriko Gin Sabrina Mazzoni dell'Alberti detto Belvedere | |
|---|---|
| |
| Quote: | "One green maraschino cherry short of a fruitcake." |
| IC Info | |
| Race: | Half-kitsune |
| Gender: | Female |
| Sexuality: | Lesbian |
| Age: | 26 |
| Place of Origin: | Sicily, Italy |
| Height: | 183cm (6'0") |
| Weight: | Not telling. =P |
| Eye Color: | Hazel |
| Hair Color: | Black |
| Bloodtype: | O+ |
| Sign: | Cancer |
| Hobbies: | Tinkering, cooking, being cute |
| Likes: | Amy, cooking, tinkering |
| Dislikes: | Cleaning up after tinkering, cooking |
| Romantic Status: | Single |
| Romantic Identification: | Polyamorous |
| Religion: | Agnostic |
| Residence: | Wild Hare Inn |
| Occupation: | Innkeeper |
| OOC Info | |
| Source: | Original |
Ruriko Gin Sabrina Mazzoni dell'Alberti detto Belvedere commonly just Ruriko, Ruri, or Rori is a non-native kitsune, adoptive niece to breisleach, and long-time resident (relatively speaking) of Yuriba. She dabbles in many fields, but runs most publicly owns and runs the Wild Hare Inn, just south of the Village Center.
Contents |
Physical Description
Ruriko appears to be a young adult kitsune with four tails, standing with the tips of her ears coming in just a hair under six feet (183 cm), although she doesn't seem to be quite completely comfortable with her height, and especially not when she's thinking about it. Long-limbed, but toned, she has a slightly athletic build, and a well-defined back. Save for wide hips and a well-developed back...side, she is of average proportions. She has long, black hair with purple highlights that reaches down to her knees, although the pattern of the highlights seem to change as often as she changes clothes. Her ears and tail are also black, but tipped in just a bit of silver, Her hazel eyes stand out from the rest of her Asian features, a mark of her mixed heritage. Notably, she is "walleared", her left ear perpetually tweaked to the side at a 'jaunty' angle.
Clothing-wise, her wardrobe seems to have settled somewhere between her two old friends Form and Function, but it still enjoys a brisk dance with either. A common outfit for her is a single-sleeved tunic coupled with a skirt with a diagonal hem and knee boots, with accessories like a short cloak, or tights, or shorter hem or sleeve depending on the weather, thoush she also has an on-and-off again love affair with a brown leather shoulder holster for her tarot cards.
Personality
To the person first meeting her, she comes off as cool and professional, with little to no regard for how she comes across beyond that. Understandable, since she runs an ryokan which makes the attitude all the more readily summoned, but it does have the unfortunate effect of leaving the impression that she is all hustle, and no fluff. It's no surprise then, that she is fiercely independent, prone to just learning how to do something herself, rather than seek outside aid now and in the future. She is comfortable with her own identity, although her height does give her some pause at times.
Unlike most kitsune, she doesn't really quite see the point of constantly playing at being mysterious. She can keep a secret, and goodness knows she has many of her own, but she doesn't share the kitsune mindset of prancing about, singing, "I've got a seeeeeecret~" like some of her kin does. Metaphorically-speaking, of course.
Biography
Growing Up
Ruriko is the second daughter of an affluent Italian art broker that fell in love with Japanese spirituality, and a Japanese insurance agent that fell in love with Italy's countryside living. Ruriko more or less grew up with a fusion of both Eastern and Western cultures. A cursory dissection of her name, if analyzed under Italian naming conventions, reveals:
- Ruriko: Child of Emerald. Likely a reference to the green eyes she had as a child, but since the name is Japanese, it also may also be the name of her maternal grandmother. This would indicate that she was the second eldest female child.
- Gin: Silver.
- Sabrina: "From the border". Possibly a reference to her mixed birth.
- Mazzoni: A family name. Origin unknown, possibly an extreme variant of "Messina", meaning "From Messina, in Sicily".
- dell'Alberti: "Of the Alberts"
- detto Belvedere: "The beautiful ones."
Bearing Italian naming conventions in mind, it appears that her father was Italian, and her mother Japanese.
As for her childhood, what little Ruriko has disclosed publicly, her parents were quite the jet-setters, shuttling around internationally on work. Ruriko herself split time between Italy and Japan, alternating every other year. Of particular note is her time in Japan, which mostly was spent near her mother's childhood home. Ruriko now knows full well just exactly why her childhood was as sheltered as it was, but at the time, it was great fun to be known by the elder villagers as "that peculiar gaijin girl that speaks fluent Japanese", "that girl that terrorizes all the boys", and "the little green-eyed demon". What Ruriko would not find out until much later was that everyone in her mother's childhood village either was a kitsune, was married to one, or had some kitsune ancestor, essentially hiding in plain sight, in their own town. Ruriko takes great offense at any comparisons of her mother's town to "The Wicker Man" or anything like it.
Ruriko has mentioned now and again that her parents worked together frequently, wherever high-priced art and insurance fraud tended to overlap with eachother. Possibly because of this, when she was a teenager, her parents separated, but remained close. In their own words, they were a terrible husband and wife, but much better friends and lovers. On her eighteenth birthday, Ruriko set out from Italy on a trip to explore the world, with the intent upon her return, to go to a university. One partial circumnavigation of the world (the long way) later, Ruriko came back to Japan, and stayed with her mother and her family for a time before continuing on her trip, which would take a three-year hiatus when she stopped by a certain 'island resort' between Japan and Vietnam. Until this point, Ruriko had absolutely no idea that she had any kind of magical heritage at all.
Post-Arrival
Came here. Stayed a while. Found out she wasn't able to leave. Transitioned from vacationer to immigrant. Started the Yuriban Home Builders business. Got involved with Flash. YHB went under. Flash had to leave. Inherited the Wild Hare. Had not yet found the Spring of Drowned Kitsune yet. Made friends with Amy. Was mucking about in the Wild Hare's prodigious stores. Found some Instant Spring of Drowned Little Foxgirl. Used it. Started going to Rinkei Gakuen. Kept running the Wild Hare. Figured out a way to leave the island and return fairly reliably. Found out about the blood heritage. Locked curse with Chisuiton. Had lots of fun running around and doing what juvenile kitsune do. Created the Yuriban Tarot. Amy went away. Decided it was time to break out. Couldn't. Kept learning at Rinkei Gakuen, trying to figure out a way to break it. Graduated after learning everything she could about Artifice, and started experimenting on how to break the curse.
In 2010, Ruriko broke the curse inflicted by Spring of Drowned Little Foxgirl, although technically, it may have just broken through age, or degraded due to constant exposure to magical dampening fields from the crafting of artifacts. It seems her time spent bottled up as a nine-year-old has allowed her heritage to mature, coming out with what appear to be natural ears and tails.
Abilities and Resources
Half-Kitsune
Like her mother and many of her relatives, broadly speaking, Ruriko is a half-kitsune. As a result, much as in the tradition of other mythical Japanese figures, like Abe no Seimei, Ruriko manifests some magical ability. The exact percentage of kitsune blood in her uncertain, but most importantly, she is not quite a fully-fledged kitsune, although it is believed that her Jusenkyo curse somehow interacted in an unintended fashion with her blood heritage, allowing her to manifest what appear to be natural tails. While these tails do not appear to be linked to wisdom or age, as she is far too young to merit anything more than one tail, they are speculated to be some kind of battery, linked instead to the raw amount of magical energy she has built up.
In Yuriban terms, however, her "half-" status means little. As far as Yuriban society is concerned, if it has tails like a kitsune, has ears like a kitsune, and is reasonably mysterious and mischevious enough, it's a kitsune.
The Yuriban Tarot
Ruriko tends to carry around at least one deck's worth of tarot cards at any given time. As the creator of the tarot cards, they are especially attuned to her, and are not limited to the single effects that the cards perform when activated. She has been known to use the cards to:
- Form a bridge across water.
- Set up a windbreak.
- Assemble a giant paper airplane that flies.
- Expend the magic in the cards to set up a magical barrier.
- Shape a sword and shield.
Pure Artifice
Main Article: Artifice
Ruriko studied Artifice as part of her Yuriban education, partly in order to integrate herself in with Yuriban society, and partly to explore the new world she has available to her. It's said that she had some evil, nefarious plan in place leading up to the New Year of 2006. There has been a decided lack of an artifact-based world-ending catastrophe since, although she takes no responsibility for people whose lives may have been ruined by needing to indulge their completionist tendencies.
The Clue Wand
Contrary to what you may have heard, it most certainly is NOT a three-foot long crowbar, slightly bent and mushroomed, with chipped paint, and a large, ragged, yellow construction paper star taped to it, no matter what it may look like. Do not make Ruriko use it.
The Wild Hare
The Wild Hare's basement storerooms are far better-stocked than is necessary, or even 'expected' from a simple ryokan. Ruriko does not even yet have an inventory of a tenth of the supplies packed away in there. Suspicion abounds that not everything as it seems at the Wild Hare. Regardless, this has not stopped Ruriko from adding her own inventory of medicinals and spirits, as well as a small greenhouse and shed out back, and a workshop under the Inn.