[OOC] Animus application

[medicalpunch]

Player Information

Name: Del
Personal Journal: elalmadelmar
Age: 26
Contact Info: [AIM] Alma Oceanica
[Plurk] oceanica
Other Characters Played: [AU1] Kankuro

Character Information

Character Name: Sakura Haruno
Character Series: Naruto
Character Age: 16
Character Gender: Female cisgender
Original Canon
Canon Point: Her most recent appearance in chapter 615 of the manga
Background Link: Sakura @ Narutopedia
Personality: Over the course of the series, Sakura demonstrates a very dramatic -- and very realistic -- process of growing up. Unfortunately, much of it is steamrollered by plot events, not helped by the lack of decent attention the series gives to female characters and their personalities. But it's there nonetheless, and it makes her a significantly dynamic and very realistic character. As a contrast to a lot of the other characters, there are very few extremes with Sakura -- she paints a far more realistic picture of adolescent personality than most of her castmates, who are either very vaguely sketched-in or have very absolutist personalities (for example, Shikamaru and Sasuke are both absolutes with very little character balance.)

At series start, Sakura is twelve years old -- a highly intelligent twelve, but at the same time, relatively shallow, just starting to really figure out that boys are very fascinating creatures, and at the same time, very exasperating ones. She excels in her classwork, but like many children her age, her self-confidence is very fragile, and she's struggling to shape herself into someone that she likes and can respect. Because she wants to appear attractively feminine, she subsumes a lot of her more assertive, blunter, more forceful emotions, showing them only on the far side of the fourth wall as the gag known as "Inner Sakura" -- a manifestation of an outspoken, often vulgar, and extremely aggressive inner self that she struggles to contain. At the same time, because that "Inner" is a part of herself, it still leaks through into her everyday behavior at times, leaving her largely retiring with occasional severe outbursts of temper. It isn't a balanced state to be in -- but then, at twelve and thirteen (and twenty-seven, Kakashi's no better at it than the kids), there isn't a lot of balance to go around.

However, even then, Sakura's showing the seeds of the young woman she'll grow into. While her control over her emotions is spotty and variable, her control over her chakra is absolutely spot-on even fresh out of Konoha's ninja academy, and her ability to retain information is second to none. Even Shikamaru has to cheat off her during the written portion of the chuunin exam. These are traits that it takes self-control to really harness and exploit, so it sets her up to a position where she'll have to learn t ocontrol them if she wants to match her teammates' raw power and inborn talents.

And that's the ambition she hatches. Even beyond getting Sasuke back, it's not hard to see that her long-term, unstated goal is to excel -- as a twelve-year-old, she compares herself unfavorably to Naruto's raw power and Sasuke's inherited family talents, and decides that she has to be worthy of them. Rather than giving up, she indulges her inherent dogged determination, which stands her well at the times when her confidence fails, and promises herself that she will not be content to be the weak one. She will improve, she will be worthy of being their teammate.

(It would be worth noting that with a slightly different treatment, she should be absolutely worthy of that already, the Hermione to their differing Harry Potters; her intellect is, if anything, stronger than Sasuke's, and with more confidence she'd prove that. But the story is really about Naruto and Sasuke, and so she gets pushed into the background, the trials they face ones that are better overcome with raw power than with deep thought.)

The time jump between manga parts, for Sakura, kicks off with her marching into Tsunade's office and demanding that Tsunade take her as a personal student. I'll touch later on why this -- and Tsunade's agreement -- is such a big deal for Sakura, but suffice to say, that takes a hell of a lot of gumption.

When things pick back up after the timeskip, we're quickly introduced to the new and more grown-up version of Sakura, who spends the next year or so of part 2 canon showcasing the growth that she's been through.

The most striking difference is that she no longer needs Inner Sakura, who now makes very rare and mostly gag appearances. Sakura well into her teens is forceful and assertive all on her own -- and even tips over the opposite line into occasionally becoming too brash, plunging forward into situations that almost certainly leave her outclassed -- the fight with Sasori, for instance. She's integrated Inner Sakura's temper as well, occasionally indulging in displays of anger that would almost seem uncontrollable, except for the overriding sense that she is absolutely in control of her self even at the height of them, and is expressing exactly as much anger as she cares to. It just happens to be a lot. And she's okay with that -- she's not all that concerned with seeming unfeminine anymore, not when there's a job to do.

Sakura's book-smarts and sharp mind have not decreased from part 1, either -- rather, they've developed into a battlefield sense of strategy. It's her idea, for instance, to allow Chiyo to manipulate her as a puppet during the confrontation with Sasori, melding Sakura's physical strength with Chiyo's personal knowledge of Sasori's puppets and techniques. She also, of the entire shinobi alliance, is the one to figure out just who the embedded traitor is, unveiling the Zetsu clone disguised as Neji. As someone who isn't particularly familiar with Neji on a personal level, that leaves quite a lot of deduction for her to have done. But something pings her enough that she sets up a verbal trap for him, and when he falls into it, she takes it very much personally to demolish him.

She still does struggle with confidence, however. While she has good reason to be much more confident at fifteen and sixteen than she did at twelve (since Tsunade's teaching has left her as a frighteningly competent medic and hand-to-hand fighter both), she still seems to question herself and her decisions at times, especially when it comes to either her personal life or to matters involving Sasuke. When she's acting purely as a ninja, she knows what to do, how to move forward. But when she finds her duties as a ninja conflicting with her feelings as a person, as Sakura, what's when she backslides, or tries to force herself with ultimately unfortunate results, such as her attempt to kill Sasuke -- squaring her duty as a ninja, to eliminate the traitor who has demonstrated obvious negative intentions toward Konoha, with her emotions, the desire to have Sasuke come home and be one of them again. Her attack ends up wild, uncontrolled -- there isn't the clear preparation, strike, followthrough that she shows at other times.

Abilities: Aside from the standard complement of Naruto-universe ninja abilities, Sakura has a few particular areas of specialty.

To begin with, her level of control is excellent. Relative to most ninja in the canon, her raw store of energy is rather low; she compensates for this by having, from the very beginning of the series, absolutely exquisite chakra control. Most ninja, even extremely talented ones, tend to have a certain level of power waste when they use their abilities; Sakura has none.

This exquisite control also gives her remarkable abilities in other areas; for example, the ninja art of genjutsu (illusion creation) relies on the user overcoming the target's own chakra and imprinting their desired image or illusion onto it; because Sakura has such perfect control of her own chakra, she is described in the series as being both proficient at using genjutsu on others, and being more resistant to having genjutsu used against her, as she's able to detect the interference of another person's chakra upon her own.

Her primary specialty as a ninja is in medical arts, and with her excellent control and naturally high intelligence, she is one of the most talented medic-nin in the ninja world. This is demonstrated when she is able, at the young age of fifteen and after roughly two and a half years of learning, to heal Kankuro's poisoning when even the most experienced adult medical ninja in his own village are unable to assist and have given him up as inevitably dying. She's also able to formulate antidotes to even Sasori's most masterful poisons practically on the fly, setting his decades of experience and acknowledged genius against her recently-gained skills. Medical techniques for ninja include straight-up magic-based healing, but also include techniques such as using chakra to create an absolutely sterile and controlled scalpel, resetting and redirecting nerve pathways, and other techniques.

Sakura also uses her chakra to boost her physical strength, letting her perform massive feats of power so long as her energy lasts. She can shatter immense boulders, leave craters in the ground, and otherwise far outperform the implied strength of her slim body.
Sample Entry: The lab was the last sort of place Sakura would ever have wanted to compound any medicines in, but unfortunately, she wasn't able to find any better; at least there was equipment here, and she'd made a fierce effort to clean and sterilize it as much as she could. Not perfect - she'd have to do another session with the medicines themselves to make sure they were fit for use, once she'd completed the formulating. But this was better than assuming that all healing work she'd need to do here would be supported by her limited chakra stores. Prepared medicines limited what she would need to do purely on chakra effort, and that was no bad thing.

Still, though, this was the worst environment for it. She could only imagine what Tsunade would have to say, seeing the filth, the detritus, the implements that looked far more like torture tools than medical.

I'll do my best with what I've got, she told herself firmly, and it will be good enough. Because there was no other option. It would do, because there was no other option.