YUMA'S BIOGRAPHY

[kattobingore]

Name: Yuma Tsukumo
Age: 25 (D.O.B: 19th June, 1999)
Gender: Male
Occupation: Duelist in the Super Junior League / Exploration Lead in SAI's Exploration and Research team.
Duel Information: Syllable Deck [Ace: Number 39 - Aspiring Emperor Hope]
Family: Kazuma Tsukumo (Father), Mirai Tsukumo (Mother), Akari Tsukumo (Older Sister), Haru Tsukumo (Grandmother), Kotori Tsukumo (Wife)
Current Residence: Sakana Apartments, Domino City

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Appearance:
Now an adult, Yuma has quite a few differences to his canon counterpart.
Physically, he is a lot more well-built and he's actually rather tall (Around 6'0"). He's now taller than his sister and mother, and is only slightly shorter than his dad, Kazuma. He is quite often the tallest out of most of his friends and he often walks into door-frames that are too low for him.
He still has dark hair with red highlights, but the spikes are now a lot shorter. He also now sports a small goatee on his chin.

Yuma does not have a very varied wardrobe and will often be seen wearing hoodies, which are his favourite thing to wear. Red coloured hoodies tend to be his favourite.

He still wears the Emperor's Key around his neck and keeps this on him at all times.


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Personality:

Yuma is an energetic and happy guy who believes in taking on any challenge, no matter what it is! No matter how much he fails at something, he refuses to leave things halfway and prefers to see things through until the end.
Yuma is very competitive, but he also has a habit of rushing into situations headfirst without thinking, though he's been getting a little better at stopping and thinking things through a bit more as he's gotten older.
He does tend to still be somewhat clumsy, and rather forgetful at times. He also gets very easily distracted, especially if it's from something he finds rather boring or has no interest in.
For the things he does have interest in, he may often hyper-focus on those subjects.

Despite his 'never-give-up' attitude towards life, Yuma can sometimes get in over his head with things and be prone to doubting himself. Even so, he will always see through a challenge that's in front of him, even if someone has to snap him out of the self-doubt and remind him about his 'Kattobing!' first.

Yuma believes very strongly in the bonds of friendship and will go to great lengths to help or protect those closest to him. He will even go to great lengths to help someone he doesn't even know. He will never give up on someone who needs help. These traits tend to make him a very loyal friend to people, but he does have a habit of putting others first before himself in these situations and runs the risk of running himself into the ground.
He also has a very trusting nature, as he likes to see the best in everyone. This unfortunately can make him a bit too trusting and naive and thus he can sometimes be easy to take advantage of.

He can be prone to being very headstrong, short-tempered and stubborn at times, which can occasionally make him clash with others. Though he's been trying in recent times to curb his short-temper a bit.

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History:

(Yuma's old biography can be found here. Most of his history remains the same, only Heartland was seen as an 'Earthquake' instead of an invasion. Everything mentioned here is from the new reality.)

A few years after most of Heartland had been destroyed by an Earthquake, the city was being rebuilt and renovated and was starting to allow people to move back into the city. Yuma's sister, Akari, and grandmother, Haru, planned to gradually move back to their old home in Heartland, but Yuma and Kotori were hesitant about the idea, as they were now rather settled living together in Domino City.
Because of this, Akari offered the idea to them that they could remain living together in the apartment.

The two of them now live on their own at their apartment at Sakana, but do get financial help from Yuma's family and Kotori's parents, as they don't quite yet earn enough to be completely independent.

Yuma was one of the first to start questioning things that didn't quite match up to his memories. He noticed he had special cards that he didn't remember receiving and Kotori had suddenly become an almost professional level duelist, as well as her telekinetic abilities being suddenly a lot better, with no explanation for either. After asking around, he found others had similar stories and feelings of things not quite being right.

After Yuya dueled Reira and everyone's memories began returning, the things Yuma had been suspicious over became clear and now had explanations. Yuma, for the most part, coped with his returning memories, although he found them disorientating, but the biggest challenge was how they began to affect Kotori, who really struggled with them.

Likewise, when Kotori gained her demon form, she once again kept how much she was suffering to herself, fearing that she'd hurt others, which put a lot of stress on their relationship. After an argument between them and Yuma losing his temper briefly with her, Kotori fled into the mountain forest near to Domino City. Yuma instantly went looking for her in the hopes of bringing her around and getting her home.
Despite the resistance Kotori had, Yuma refused to give up on her and eventually Kotori admitted to everything she'd kept quiet about regarding the demon form she was struggling with and Yuma apologised for losing his temper with her.
The two spent 3 days in the forest, but were eventually rescued and taken to the hospital.

After this, Yuma spent a lot of time supporting and caring for Kotori, who was suffering mentally, emotionally and physically from her ordeal. The two agreed that they needed to communicate better when there was an issue and agreed not to keep things hidden out of fear of hurting the other, as that just caused more hurt and stress. Yuma also has been trying to curb his short-temper a little, as he felt a lot of guilt for yelling at Kotori, when he felt he should have remained calm.

Overall though, Yuma felt like his relationship with Kotori had grown from the incident and he realised just how much he wanted to support Kotori and carry on with life by her side.
As a result, he decided on New Years Eve of that year, to propose to Kotori, using an engagement ring that had once belonged to his parents. Though it didn't go quite to plan, as he lost the ring before he was able to ask, then when he went to look for it, Kotori found it and realised Yuma's intent.
Yuma felt like he'd messed it all up once he saw that Kotori had found the ring, but she encouraged him to not give up and still ask her, to which she agreed to accept his proposal.

Yuma is now slowly looking at ways to advance his career as a duelist, by looking at tournaments outside of the SJL. He is also gaining an interest in learning more about the 12 Dimensions and the worlds within them. This has lead to him being offered a position at SAI as a member of their research and exploration team.

On 4th June, 2023, he and Kotori finally got married, after three years of planning the wedding.

During a visit to Heartland, the large theme park situated within Heartland City, around a year later, Yuma and Kotori got caught up in an incident there involving the alter of Yamamato Suzume, known to them as 'Houou', a girl they'd given directions to the park to earlier in the day. She was threatening to destroy the entirety of Heartland in order to find 'Wakahisa, Noriko'.
During this event, Yuma and Kotori, fought a massive blue draganoid looking machine, which was built as a war machine that was was carrying many weapons, including a nuke. They struggled against it, using their full power in their ZEXAL and Demon forms, but were eventually able to take it down, by spearing it with ZW - Unicorn Spear and dunking it into the ocean seconds before the nuke detonated.

Injured and exhausted, they returned to Heartland, where they were approached by a truck being driven by Tachibana Rekka, who told them she had just been paid an ungodly amount of money to take them to a safe place, as the incident had put them down as terrorists, by the right-wing, anti-monster government.

The two of them hid out at Kaikori until the issue with the anti-monster government and protestors was solved and Japan came under the power of the Wakahisa family as it's new rulers. After this, they were able to return to their apartment at Sakana, but had to lay low for a while afterwards.

In December of 2024, after Kotori had been feeling unusually tired and unwell, the couple found out that Kotori was actually pregnant with their first child.

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Relationships:

Tsukumo Family: Yuma has a close relationship with his family. He idolises his parents, especially his father and enjoys spending time with his dad doing things like camping. He's taken anything they taught him when growing up to heart and is the reason he has such a love for exploring and history.
His relationship with Akari is very much like most siblings. Both of them are very stubborn and determined people, so a lot of times they will clash and have disagreements, but sometimes they also work well together.
He enjoys his grandmother, Haru's cooking a whole lot when he's over visiting.

Kotori: Yuma has a strong relationship and bond with his childhood best friend and wife, Kotori. The two have known each other a long time and he feels that she knows him the best out of everyone he knows. He appreciates how supportive she is of him and in return, he is supportive of her. He has complete trust in her.
He does get a bit annoyed if she nags him to do things, but he also understands he kinda needs it to get things done sometimes.

Yuya: Yuma considers Yuya to be his other best friend. The two formed a bond very quickly when at the Academy together and feel they'll always have each others backs. Although their adult lives are keeping them busy, they try and find time to spend hanging out with each other. Their favourite place to go is the Domino City Arcade where they challenge each other to the games there.
Both Yuma and Yuya don't believe in using dueling to hurt people, but Yuma is much more headstrong than Yuya is and more willing to rush straight into a situation without thinking and do what needs to be done to help people, where the more passive and hesitant Yuya might be a bit more cautious. This can cause clashes between them, but they are usually rare and very brief.

Hope: Although Yuma can find Hope annoying sometimes with his endless observations, he considers him a close friend and important partner to him. The two quite often have disagreements and tease each other, but it's seen as a show of how close they actually are.
In the end, Yuma has great trust in Hope and feels he's an ally he can rely on.

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Hobbies and Interests:

Dueling: Yuma loves dueling people and is always up for a challenge! He's currently attempting to build a dueling career for himself by being part of the Super Junior League. He's also starting to look at other tournaments he can take part in.

Exploration and History: Although you wouldn't think it from first meeting him, Yuma has a strong interest in history, which was actually his best subject while at Duel Academy. His parents have installed this love of learning about the past, as well as learning and understanding cultures into him through their many stories about their adventures that they told him.
He, of course, also loves exploration and adventure and is completely in his element when he's out exploring somewhere. He has knowledge of basic survival skills and keeps a large bag which is full of his various adventuring gear.

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Abilities:

ZEXAL - Gives him the ability to change his form upon activating the power. He is able to preform something called a "Shining Draw" where he can create and draw a card that he needs in a desperate situation. Usually these shining draws result in drawing cards called "ZEXAL weapons" which he only has access to when using his power.
At current he can only activate this ability in certain circumstances and can only activate it when Hope is with him.
He was able to gain this ability due to his Astral heritage (which is several generations deep on his mother's side)

As mentioned above, he has great knowledge on basic survival skills and also knows other various things, like how to tie a perfect knot in a rope, how to put up a tend and get a fire going on bare minimum and even some knowledge on good or bad plants to eat.