OOC: the bio; or, more than you ever wanted to know about the Naruto series and Subaku no Gaara.
Character: Subaku no Gaara (Gaara of the Sand)
Series the character is from: Naruto, the animanga
Character's age: Fifteen
Character's gender: Male
Character's "Real Name": Gary Sanders
Please give us a detailed personal history of your character:
OK, Naruto is a hard world to explain. Basically the land has countries, and each country has a hidden village in which ninja are trained. These ninja are kind of like the country's armed forces, but they're given all kinds of missions and tasks for pay by civilians, by wealthy business folk, and so forth. There are five major hidden villages with kage (shadow) rulers-the series focuses on Konoha, the Hidden Leaf Village, which is in the Fire Country and lead by its strongest ninja, the Hokage, the shadow of Fire. The next most focused on village (as an ally), however, is the Suna, Sand Village, within the Wind Country, lead by the Kazekage, the shadow of Wind.
The series focuses on a young new ninja named Naruto. The whole initial premise is that twelve years before the first current time frame in the manga, a nine-tailed fox demon attacked the village of Konoha. Lots of people died until the Hokage, the Yondaime (The Fourth) was able to seal the demon at the cost of his life. He sealed the demon in an infant, Naruto. Though he wanted Naruto to be seen of as a hero, the villagers couldn't look at him without seeing the monster who'd killed so many. But it was forbidden to talk of that time, so while the adults know who the demon child is, the kids don't. But attitudes get passed on, so Naruto was a lonely kid, until he starts to get recognition, first from his teacher Iruka, then from the Genin (first, juvenile rank of ninja, after graduating from the Academy) Team he is placed on.
OK THAT WAS ALL RELEVANT, I SWEAR. So is this next bit. The ninja villages used to be at constant war, and turmoil was big. Peace is a very, very recent thing. The Suna Village was falling on hard times, as the daimyo, the leader of the Wind Country was beginning to hire ninja from other villages, from places other than Suna. He wasn't giving Suna business, which made Suna weaker in the war, weaker and less able to provide for itself. And weaker ninja are given less assignments. Suna needed to up its strength, to prove itself, to have a few cards in its sleeves as well. Desperate times lead to desperate measures, and the Kazekage of the time looked to strengthen his village.
Konoha having a jinchuuriki-a boy with a demon within him-was dangerous. It made it stronger, it gave it an upper hand. But Suna had a demon of its own. Sealed in a tea kettle was the spirit of a demonic priest, who had in the past possessed other Suna shinobi (ninja). This was the one-tailed demon. The kazekage began to plan. At this time he was married to Karura and had two children, Temari and Kankuro. His wife was pregnant with another.
As a reaction to the actions of the feudal lord of the Wind Country, the Kazekage of Sunagakure determined to make use of the living spirit of a Sand Priest, Shukaku, sealed in a tea kettle. He ordered the crone Chiyo to use ninjutsu to attach the "incarnation of sand" to his unborn child. The process required a sacrifice, and so the wife of the Kazekage, Karura, was unwillingly sacrificed so that the infant could become the Jinchuuriki of Shukaku. Karura was against the process and died cursing her child, cursing the village. Before she died she named the child Gaara.
The difficulty of being possessed by the sand demon is that, should the host ever sleep, his personality will be slowly eaten away by the demon, bit by bit. So already unstable in spirit from possession, Gaara would be even more unstable because of his being forbidden sleep. He spent most of his time with his uncle, his mother's brother, Yashamaru. Yashamaru was responsible for keeping Gaara awake and under observation, his keeper. Gaara was spoiled by his father, taught shinobi secrets, given material goods and highly prized. He came to understand that as love, until Yashamaru explained otherwise. Young Gaara was feared by the other children and alienated, left to his toys and given little to no affection or positive attention - not from his siblings, not from any person. Except Yashamaru: the only individual who never regarded him from a distance.
Another tenant of possession by Shukaku is sand manipulation. Gaara could control sand, and in his youth, it would react with his emotions, regardless of his will. As the Jinchuuriki grew older, he became more self-aware, but his control over the sand was not perfected and easily influenced by his emotions. One day, when Gaara was six, he tried to bring a ball a group of children had lost back to them. They ran from him, calling him a monster, which upset the kid. He didn't want to be alone and begged for them to come back, and as he became distressed, the sand lashed out (The Sand Village is in the desert. Gaara was helpfully surrounded by sand). The sand would have crushed the children had Yashmaru not intervened.
Though the children survived and Gaara attempted to make amends, it began to seal his fate in his father's eyes. The clincher would be, after a talk from Yashamaru, Gaara intended to bring medicine to the houses of the children he'd accidentally hurt, to try and help them feel better and make amends. But they slammed their doors in his faces, calling him a monster. Depressed, Gaara walked back, and in the streets, a man looked at him with "those eyes" -disapproval, hatred, fear. Totally upset, the sand leapt up and crushed the man, drawing a commotion and his father's disapproval. His father knew: Gaara's spirit was too unstable, the weapon too powerful. He was a threat to his own village, and had best be exterminated. It had been a mistake.
That would have been that for Gaara, had it been that easy. As a jinchuuriki of Shukaku, the boy received protection from a shield of sand, also completely out of his control. When any physical harm threatened him, regardless of whether he was ware of it or not, the sand shield would leap up. In a village in the desert there was plenty of it. All assassination attempts would fail, as Gaara would be protected by his sand then able to retaliate. It was the first assassination attempt that would make Gaara willing and eager to kill all those that moved against him.
The same day he nearly killed the other children, Gaara questioned physical pain, because he had never been able to feel it. Yashamaru cut himself to show him, and explained. Yashamaru told Gaara of the different kinds of pain, that physical might scar and hurt, but nothing compared to emotional. The little emo kid that was Gaara clutched his chest over his heart and expressed that that part hurt all the time. However, love could cure emotional pain, and Yashamaru loved Gaara, Gaara was his precious person! And his mother had loved him as well, and he was protected by her love. This is what prompted Gaara to try and bring the kids medicine, to mend their wounds.
Unmasking the assassin who attacked him that very evening revealed none other than Yashamaru, who explained that he had willingly taken the assignment. Completely to the opposite of his earlier words, Yashamaru confessed that he loathed the young Jinchuuriki. Yashamaru had tried his darndest to like him, to love him over the years, but just couldn't do it. Yashamaru told him he was a monster, he'd lied because his mother hated him too, in fact, she hated everybody, and her last wish was a curse on the village and the hopes that he could live out her hate. In fact, his name meant 'a self-loving carnage.' Then, asking him to die, Yashamaru blew himself up. This was a kind of dumb move since the Sand Shield kept Gaara safe.
Understandably, this didn't leave the already troubled six-year old in a happy frame of mind. No, from that point on he decided to live for only himself. As a relic from the past they meant to dispose of, Gaara chose to become that monster to the best of his ability-that was what he was, wasn't it? He struck himself with his sand to make the character of love on his forehead, as a symbol of his self-love. He would kill as a confirmation of his existence as monster, and every time his father sent another assassin against his son, Gaara relished the opportunity to soak the blood in sand and be alive, alive against death. From that point on, he was pretty batshit insane.
Gaara grew, passed out of the academy at the standard age, and was put on a team with his siblings. Though he had only met them a handful of times, and didn't even know them casually, in the loosest form of the word, it was assumed that there was a slimmest chance of his responding to blood. Furthermore, who would willingly be on "the demon"'s team, except family as ordered by the father? With them he completed a number of missions, always unscathed, until that fateful assignment to take place during the Chuunin exams.
OK, erasing my whole explanation of the Chuunin exams. This is way too long. The important part: Because of a whole lot of things that happen, Naruto ends up fighting Gaara to save Sakura and Sasuke, his teammates. This ends with them both exhausted on the ground, but Naruto keeps crawling over to Gaara by his chin. Gaara gets real scared, shouting for him to stop, that he doesn't want to die. He learns Naruto is so strong because he fights for people, because of love, because he doesn't want to be lonely like he had been and Gaara was. Also, Naruto claims he understands his pain. That, with a few other Chuunin exam influences, sparks a change in Gaara.
He apologizes to his siblings. During the exam, his father had been killed by some betrayal I won't get into now. The next time we see Gaara, maybe a month later, he and his siblings intervene in fights, on the side of Leaf, to try and help in the Bring Back Sasuke mission. Suna is on Konoha's side (er, they invaded Konoha during the exams, long story). He seems utterly sane. He helps out a kid he had previously tried to grind into sand and blood, completely calm, and makes a comment on the nature of people and those they value. He cites his involvement as being from a great favor owed to the leave, pan to a shot of Naruto.
And then? The manga cuts for two and a half years. Now Gaara is the KAZEKAGE, because he wants to protect everyone, be needed by everyone. And because he's the most powerful ninja in his village. It was hard for him to be accepted, obviously, because everyone still mistrusted him. Then, a rogue ninja attacks. In the fight, Gaara ends up sacrificing his safety to protect the village from an explosive, and he's captured.
In Naruto there is a group called Akatsuki which has plans to dominate the world by taking the demons from their hosts. This process kills the host, but no use crying over spilt juice. So, they intended to remove Gaara's demon, killing him in the process. Suna asks Konoha for help and though Gaara dies, a crone from Suna is able to use a forbidden jutsu (cough deus ex machina) to bring him back to life, exchanging her life for his, as it were. This is mostly because of Naruto, but, again, long story. Also, a whole lot of the Sand Village is there, having come to help in the rescue. I.E. OH YAY GAARA, YOU WERE FINALLY WANTED.
Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality: Gaara was once batshit insane in a strangely self-willed way. Now, Gaara retains remnants of everything he's been through in his short life. It would be erroneous to say that, simply because Gaara's gone through a change of perspective and was living life in a decidedly more optimistic way, he's completely all right. He did live for six years determined to make the world a blood bath, convinced his mother was in his gourd/head. He doesn't regret any of those murders and feels absolutely no guilt for his pervious behavior, nor would he ever understand why one might expect him to.
You don't get much more socially stunted than Gaara. He's always been fascinated and hungry for human interaction, but had never got it, then rejected it completely, then had to try and figure it out again, in a situation where everyone still rejected him. Gaara understands nothing of human conventions. Manners, emotions, behaviors, shy, awkward, nervous. He once understood and valued only himself. Gaara lacks empathy, lacks sympathy, and understands very little of emotional reasoning. He can deal in cold, hard logic, and in instinctive logic as well. What sense of humor? What sex drive? Emotions and emotional drives don't make much sense to him, are slow to develop, influenced by others.
But Gaara is curious, and Gaara wants to know. He wants to know how people function, interact, what makes a person important, love. But because he's so apart from that still, Gaara is blunt. Don't ask him if that dress makes you look fat. He is terse, succinct, and disinclined to speaking much at all. He waits, he watches, he plans.
Most of the time, Gaara is stolid and seemingly emotionless. Things should go his way. He is irritated by things not going according to plan or getting in his way - Gaara was, after all, a deranged form of your everyday spoiled child. He can only begin to comprehend not getting what he wants so far as material things go, and he will be determined to get it. First he was showered with toys, then he devoted his life to himself, and then to others. He used to have much less patience with other people, but since turning his life around, he's begun to work with that as well. Still, Gaara is very accustomed to giving orders and having them followed, and if someone wants to disagree, enforcing them with sand. Not being able to keep someone back and out of harm with sand will be quite troublesome.
Gaara values rules, but most of all, values his self-interest. His entire devotion to protecting others is a result of his needing to be needed, and he wants to survive. But now he wants to survive in a more symbiotic fashion. He is stubborn as all heck, unyielding, and is quite determined to stay alive at all costs. He would not, however, betray.
Please give us a detailed physical description of your character: The first thing to notice about Gaara are the rings around his eyes, black that marks the host of the tanuki demon. You've never seen bags around the eyes until you haven't slept for fifteen years. ..Of course, these may begin to fade once he gets sleep at Landels... he would prefer not to, but the system doesn't seem to leave room for that. He lacks eyebrows over pale green eyes. His hair is short, uncared for, and a dark red color. Gaara is pretty short-he was 4'10 at twelve, and though I'm not sure of his exact height three years later, it's probably not much more. Let's call it 5'2, because he wasn't sleeping, so it's not like he could have had too many healthy growth spurts. His physical shape is weak when compared to other ninja, because he's never trained in taijutsu, but is quite able to keep up with his team when racing through terrains. Not that chakra accumulation in the feet doesn't help. In any case, he lacks the same muscle and tone, but is thin, not having much of an appetite.
What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's?: I'll be taking Gaara from the moment of his death. The demon has been exorcised and Gaara dies, fading into oblivion, woe etcetcetc, never got to see his village and Naruto come for him, boo hoo.
What kinds of magical/special/crazy powers does your character have, if any?: I'll go from before Shukaku is removed, because we haven't really seen afterwards, except that he can still control sand. When in Konoha he traveled with a really big gourd on his back which was basically all sand, and it was blood and chakra soaked sand which means he could move it quicker, easier. Because of his chakra being already on it.
Gaara, due to being the host of Shukaku, is able to manipulate (and create) sand with his chakra. Because the Sand Shield prevents even self-inflicted injuries Gaara has not only had no need to learn taijutsu (martial arts basically), but been to some degree unable to, as intense training of the body and constantly beating against, say, a post, could be rough on the body and considered a threat. His genjutsu (illusions) is passable, but his attacks are entirely sand-based. He uses sand for offense and defense, able to create sand-clones and cover his entire body with sand, though that slows him down considerably while using a great deal of chakra. The sand can also be manipulated as a third eye for observational purposes and to lift himself in the air. He is mostly stationary in battle. Though able to create sand, its speed is surmountable by the quick. The sand he can best control is the blood and chakra soaked sand in his gourd. By putting himself to sleep, he can instantly let Shukaku have control, at which point things become a lot more complicated! He has excellent chakra control, to say the least. There's a whole lot of crazy stuff he can do with sand that I won't begin to get into. He's also got a lot of information on shinobi ways, on basic jutsus, information and rules. He's a pretty well-informed, clever kid.
This exchange happens in the Manga, between an opponent and Gaara: "What an idiotic alias. You can't do anything unless you have sand." "But if I have sand… I can do anything."
If present, how do you plan to tweak those powers to make him/her appropriately hindered in the setting of Landel's?: Well, chakra manipulation won't even be the problem for Gaara. There's not exactly sand at Landel's, is there? Or even dirt to crush. In fact, Gaara, the once extremely crazy powerful, will be very useless. Due to the automatic sand shield, Gaara was never able to train his body for physically trying things, and he was never forced to move in battle. Just stand there, arms crossed, waiting. Gaara never really trained with weapons or any kind of martial arts, or, really, anything. Without sand he is pretty hopeless.
However, special counseling should prove interesting. Just give him a gourd, the ability to mould chakra, and put him back in the state he was before the Naruto-sucker-punch.
Does your character have any other non-magical skills or abilities that we should know about?: You won't beat Gaara at insomnia? He's smart.
How about improbable appendages?: Not so much.