{Info}
In Character Information
character name: Sakura Haruno.
canon source and the point from which they're taken: Naruto manga chapter 453.
character's age: 16.
canon powers, skills, pets and equipment: Sakura has been trained as a ninja from a young age, and thus has a level of proficiency in taijutsu-hand-to-hand fighting-genjutsu-illusions-and certain ninjutsu-techniques that involve the utilization of they body’s natural energy, known as chakra, normally shaped by forming hand seals. Her main fighting technique is an enhanced taijutsu style based on her elevated ability to control chakra. By directing chakra to various parts of her body, she can enhance her strikes by forcing it into the object she’s attacking with deadly force. She has also been trained in high-level medical techniques, including the poison extraction technique. (The scope of Sakura's training is not firmly delineated, but it does go somewhat beyond mere battlefield triage.) It is also established that she is naturally a genjutsu type, although the extent of her training in this field at the time she’s been taken from is not known. She can also summon slugs using Kuchiyose no Jutsu.
In terms of equipment, Sakura will be bringing with her an array of weapons, predominantly kunai, shuriken, and senbon, as well as exploding notes. She’ll also have her medical supplies with her-bandages, disinfectants, etc. She also has one vial of antidote, but this is specific to a particular poison used by Akatsuna no Sasori and likely won’t work for any other purpose.
non-canon powers: None.
canon history: Sakura is a kunoichi from Konohagakure, in Fire Country. When Sakura was first in the ninja academy, she was often ridiculed by her classmates. Young as she was, she was insecure about her wide forehead, and the girls in her class preyed on this weakness and picked on her mercilessly. It was then that she met Yamanaka Ino, who stood up for her and chased off her bullies. Ino gave Sakura a ribbon to tie in her hair so that Sakura wouldn’t have to hide her forehead any more and helped Sakura out in areas of the kunoichi arts where she was struggling, like flower arrangement. They became very good friends. Sakura admired Ino very much, but as she grew up she wanted to come into her own. When it became clear that both Ino and Sakura had crushes on the same boy, Uchiha Sasuke, Sakura ended their friendship and declared that they two were rivals in love. She went on to say that when she wore her forehead protector in its proper place, against her forehead, she would not lose to Ino as a kunoichi. Ino declared that the same was true for her.
After graduating from the academy, she was placed on genin Team Seven with Uchiha Sasuke (much to her delight) and the troublemaker Uzumaki Naruto (much to her chagrin) under the instruction of Hatake Kakashi. Their team struggled during their jounin teacher’s bell test, but after realizing that they needed to work together instead of separately, they passed and became a true team.
Team Seven’s first mission outside of Konoha’s walls was very nearly disastrous. The man who commissioned their services, a bridge-builder from Wave Country named Tazuna, lied about the dangers of his situation and their team ended up encountering Zabuza, a dangerous missing-nin from Mist. Kakashi won their first encounter but was out of commission and unable to fight for about a week. In that time, he taught his students how to climb trees using precise chakra control. While Sasuke and Naruto struggled, Sakura showed an immediate aptitude for it (much to the boys’ disgruntlement). Later, when the team encountered Zabuza and his partner, Haku, on what would become known as the Great Naruto Bridge, Sakura admitted to violating shinobi rule number twenty-five--show no emotions--while crying over Sasuke, who appeared to be dead.
When the Chunnin Exams came around, Sakura expressed a reluctance to participate because she believed that she wasn’t ready. After some encouragement from Sasuke, however, she resolved to do it. During the survival section of the exams in the Forest of Death, Team Seven encountered a disguised Orochimaru, a dangerous missing-nin. Orochimaru appeared to be very interested in Sasuke and attacked him, biting him on the neck and giving Sasuke his curse seal. After Orochimaru withdrew, Sakura was left to take care of both her unconscious teammates through the night. The next day, they were attacked by a team of Sound genin sent by Orochimaru. Rock Lee, a boy on an older genin team (who had noticed Sakura just prior to the start of the written exam and had professed his love for her), jumped in to protect her but was defeated. The Sound kunoichi Kin immobilized Sakura by grabbing her hair and mocked Sakura for having spent so much time on keeping her hair pretty, for caring more for her appearance than for bettering herself as a ninja. Ashamed by the truth in this statement, tired of being left in the dust by her talented teammates, Sakura swore to become better, and that one day they would be the ones watching her back. She cut her hair off above Kin’s grip with a kunai and desperately attempted to fend of the Sound team, even resorting to biting Zaku as he beat on her. It was at this point that Team 10--comprised of Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Akimichi Chouji--stepped in. Sasuke awoke shortly thereafter, and observed the state that Sakura was in. He demanded to know who had done that to her as Orochimaru’s curse seal overcame him. Scared and horrified at the change in him, Sakura hastily embraced him and asked him to stop. Her plea reached him, and Sasuke backed down.
Team Seven passed the survival stage, but too many teams had done the same. A preliminary round of fighting was held to eliminate more genin before the final round. She and Ino were paired to fight. Their old rivalry surfaced. After exchanging some blows, Sakura paused in the fight to adjust her headband, so that she was wearing it on her forehead. Recognizing the symbolism in this, Ino did the same, and the two fought each other seriously. At one point, Ino trapped Sakura with her hair and used her family’s body switch technique on Sakura, attempting to make her forfeit. However, just before she could, Sakura’s violent alter personality, Inner Sakura, rebelled and ejected Ino from Sakura’s mind and control, and the battle continued. In the end, they knocked each other out and neither advanced to the finals.
In the final round, Sakura was one of the few people to repel a sleep genjutsu laid on the entire crowd during Sasuke’s match. Kakashi told her to take a team and go after Sasuke, who had run off in pursuit of Gaara. When she found them, she valiantly stood up to him at the risk of her own life. Early into the fight, he trapped her with sand and tried to suffocate her until Naruto jumped in to her rescue.
Some time later, Sasuke was hospitalized by his brother, Itachi. Sakura visited him daily, bringing him sliced apples and otherwise tending to him. After Tsunade, one of the legendary Sannin and newly returned to the village, healed him, Naruto visited and Sasuke demanded that they two fight. Sakura protested, but they ignored her. They proceeded to the roof of the hospital to duke it out. When the fight escalated to the point where they attempted to use deadly attacks on each other, Sakura jumped between them. Sasuke and Naruto couldn’t stop their momentum, and they would have hit her if Kakashi hadn’t intervened at the last minute and thrown them away from each other. Sakura began to cry, but Kakashi assured her that everything would be okay.
The night that Sasuke defected, Sakura was there waiting for him. She told him that she suspected that he might try and leave, and that she had waited for him at the only route out of town. She tried to convince him to stay, but he brushed past her to leave despite this. Desperate, she confessed that she loved him and that if he couldn’t stay, she would go with him. She threatened to scream and alert the village. Sasuke quickly got behind her, told her “Thank you,” and knocked her out. He left her on a nearby bench as he left the village.
Several Genin went out to retrieve him, and many of them came back badly injured. Sakura learned that Naruto was unable to bring back Sasuke, but Naruto promised that he would bring him back. Sakura told him that next time he went to retrieve their lost teammate, she’d be there with him. After that, she asked to become Tsunade’s apprentice. Tsunade agreed.
Naruto left Konoha for two years to train with Jiraiya. During that time, Sakura trained hard under the fifth Hokage’s tutelage, learning medical techniques and Tsunade’s taijutsu technique, which utilized the focusing of chakra to maximize the impact of Sakura’s strikes. In that time, she ascended to the rank of Chunnin. When Naruto returned, Kakashi gave them a second bell test to determine their growth. Kakashi disappeared at the start of the fight, and Sakura showed off the fruits of her training by cracking the ground underneath her with her fist, revealing Kakashi’s location. The two of them were able to get the bells by tricking him.
Shortly thereafter, Gaara (who had become Kazekage) was kidnapped by members of an organization named Akatsuki, who were trying to collect the tailed beasts such as the ones residing in both Gaara and Naruto. Kakashi, Naruto, and Sakura were sent to Suna to help retrieve him; Team Gai later followed. Gaara’s brother, Kankurou, had been poisoned by one of the Akatsuki members, Akatsuna no Sasori. Upon Team Kakashi’s arrival in Suna, Sakura used a high-level medical technique to purge the poison from his body, then used the poison extracted from him to create several antidotes. Team Kakashi and Team Gai left shortly thereafter with Chiyo, an advisor to Suna.
When they arrived, Team Gai dispersed to dismantle the seal on the boulder blocking the entrance to the cave. Sakura then broke the boulder down. The only Akatsuki members in the cave were Deidara, the explosives expert, and Sasori, the puppet master. Deidara took Gaara’s body and left, sending Naruto into a fit of rage and pursuing him. Kakashi followed. Sakura and Chiyo were left to fight Sasori, who turned out to be Chiyo’s grandson. To aid Sakura’s dexterity, Chiyo attached chakra strings to Sakura’s body, controlling her like a puppet as Sakura used her strength, ability to dodge, and quick analytical mind to attack Sasori and repel the Third Kazekage’s iron sand techniques. Sakura destroyed the puppet of the Kazekage by allowing herself to be scratched by the sand, then using the antidote she’d created and faking having been poisoned. Sasori then used one hundred puppets against them. During the fight, Sakura threw a seal at Sasori, which rendered him immobile. She and Chiyo thought that they’d won, but Sasori appeared in another puppet body and raised his sword to attack Chiyo. Sakura leapt between them at the last second and was stabbed through the stomach. Sasori withdrew to attack Chiyo again, but Chiyo used puppets fashioned in the image of his parents to stab him through the heart. She then used the final antidote on Sakura and healed Sakura’s wounds. As a reward for having defeated him, Sasori told Sakura that he had a spy in Orochimaru’s--his former partner’s--ranks, and that he was scheduled to meet the spy soon. Sakura and Chiyo met up with everyone else, and Chiyo used a life exchange technique to restore Gaara’s life at the expense of her own. After Chiyo’s funeral in Suna, Team Kakashi and Team Gai went home.
Sasori’s scheduled meet with his spy was a little over a week, and Team Kakashi intended to go there in his place. However, Kakashi had used his mangekyo sharingan too much and was out of commission. As a result, the council assigned a third member to their team. He was the Root ANBU member, Sai. Because Tsunade didn’t trust him, she sent an ANBU member she knew to be loyal to her, Tenzou (code named Yamato). This new Team Kakashi got off to a rocky start. During the trip, Sai badmouthed Sasuke, Sakura smiled at him, then punched him across the face. Later, however, she enquired after his paintings in an apparent attempt to get to know him better.
Team Kakashi met Sasori’s spy, who turned out to be Kabuto, Orochimaru’s top henchman. But Kabuto was actually a double agent, working on Orochimaru’s behalf. Naruto became enraged when Kabuto and Orochimaru refuse to give Sasuke back, and transformed into a three-tailed version of the Kyuubi. Blindly destructive, he lashed out and Sakura got thrown and hit her head, knocking her out; when she came to, Sai had apparently betrayed them and gone off with Orochimaru. They pursued him to Orochimaru’s hide-out. They learned that Sai had a secret, second mission: assassinating Sasuke. However, Sai abandoned this mission because he wanted to explore the bonds that Team Seven had. Team Kakashi split up in search of Sasuke. There was an explosion. When Sakura arrived at Sasuke’s room, where the explosion had occurred, she initially attacked Sai and demanded to know what he was doing, but then she spotted Sasuke for the first time in years. Sakura looked on as Naruto yelled at Sasuke and as they fought. Sai and Naruto were taken out by Sasuke’s Chidori Nagashi. Sakura ran at him with the intent of attacking him and bringing him home under her own power, but Yamato jumped ahead of her and took Sasuke’s attack. Before Sasuke could kill them, Orochimaru stepped in, and Sasuke left with Orochimaru. Naruto began to cry, then, berating himself for being so weak. Sakura, through tears, declared that crying wouldn’t bring Sasuke back, and that they’d get stronger together. Defeated but with a renewed vigor for bringing Sasuke home, Team Kakashi went back to Konoha.
When Konoha heard news that Orochimaru had been killed by Sasuke, and that Sasuke had set out in pursuit of Itachi, Team Kakashi along with others of their generation set off in pursuit of him. Along the way, they met Tobi, a mysterious member masked member of the Akatsuki. All attacks against him seemed to go right through him. Hinata informed them that his chakra hadn’t moved, so Sakura deduced that Tobi must be moving specific parts of his body out of existence. As they were fighting, another member of the Akatsuki, Zetsu, arrived and announced that Sasuke had defeated Itachi, and that the latter was dead. Tobi and Zetsu vanished. The Konoha team rushed to the site of the battle, but Sasuke was gone by that point.
After Jiraiya’s death at the hands of the Akatsuki leader, Pain, Sakura tried to comfort both Tsunade and Naruto. She helped with deciphering Jiraiya’s coded message to Konoha. When Pain attacked Konoha, Sakura fought off various frightening summons until she was told that she would be more useful back at the hospital, treating the injured. After Pain used his Shinra Tensei technique to blast a crater into the village, Tsunade collapsed under the strain of using her Souzou Saisei technique to heal villagers. Sakura watched as Naruto fought Pain, then left to go talk to Pain’s real body. Sakura was shocked to hear that Hinata had jumped in to protect Naruto, and Sakura healed Hinata. When Naruto returned triumphant, Sakura hit him for being so rash, then hugged and thanked him.
Tsunade, exhausted and drained from using her technique, fell into a coma, and Sakura said she didn’t know when she’d wake up. This news upset Sakura very much. In the mean time, Danzou used Tsunade’s condition to take over as Hokage, and then order Sasuke’s death. Upon hearing that news, Naruto and Sakura want to rush in and confront Danzou, but Kakashi cautioned them, telling them that doing so would only make the situation worse. They then saw Sai, and tried to get information about Danzou out of him, but Sai revealed that he was literally forbidden from talking about him due to a seal placed on his tongue. It was then that they were confronted by a team from Cloud, demanding to know everything they knew about Sasuke. The Cloud team said that this was because Sasuke had killed their master, Killerbee, who had the Eight-tailed demon inside of him. They revealed that Sasuke was an Akatsuki member. Upon hearing this news, Sakura began to cry. Naruto told the Cloud team that it was possible that their master was still alive, and that he would help them find him. He went off with the Cloud team, leaving Sakura behind.
personality: Sakura is a very passionate person. In many ways, she allows her emotions to dominate - she’s never been very good at shinobi rule # 25. Whether she’s happy, or sad, or angry, it’s not hard to read Sakura’s emotions. In the beginning she thought that this was a bad thing and attempted to suppress her feelings, but after her apprenticeship with Tsunade, she no longer tries to.
At the beginning of the series, she appears to be a shallow person, and maybe she was, in the way that twelve-year-old girls often are. She was obsessed with Sasuke and dismissive of Naruto. But as the three of them began to work together as a team, she realized that both boys had their faults and their strengths, and she came to see them as real people who she admired and cared about very much. Now, Sakura is fiercely loyal to those she calls friends. She is not one to back down from a fight, especially if the people she loves are in danger. She can be quite stubborn in that way.
There is a balance to Sakura’s hot-headedness, though. When not dominated by extreme emotions, Sakura is generally a calm and rational person who is good at reading situations and finding a way to resolve conflict, on and off the battlefield. She shows a propensity for leadership. She is also compassionate and friendly (or at least she tries to be, even with people she initially dislikes: she attempted to reach out to Sai not very long after she’d hit him for trashing Sasuke).
Sakura is also quite intelligent. From a young age she showed aptitude and an analytical mind, even when she wasn’t the best student at academy. During the written part of the Chunnin exam, she was one of the only Genin who was able to answer the questions without cheating. When fighting Sasori, she watched the movements of his fingers and quickly learned to predict his actions.
But in spite of how far she’s come, there are many ways in which Sakura is still insecure. She’s aware of her strengths, but she’s also well aware of her weaknesses. She knows she’s not as strong as her teammates, and to some degree she feels like she might still be a burden to them. Because of this, there is always a small voice in Sakura telling her that her best is never enough, as well as an ever-present drive to become stronger--both to bring Sasuke home and to make sure she can protect her loved ones.
Previously Played Information
previous game: kannagara_rpg
length of time there: 3 ½ months
important development and/or events in your previous game: Sakura was catapulted from the frying pan and into the fire, as the saying goes, upon arrival in Kannagara. Shortly after she got there, Pain (the leader of the Akatsuki) declared war upon Konoha, and so much of the time there she was on edge and attempting to prepare. This frayed on her nerves, and along with the invasion of privacy that was the Hitomi--a device that would occasionally record her dreams and post it on the network for anyone to see--Sakura was a short fuse, likely to blow up at anyone, particularly members of the Akatsuki. This occasionally led to conflict with Kakashi, who cautioned her several times to watch herself lest she exacerbate the volatile situation.
In the time before the war, she did form attachments to some of the people in Konoha (outside of her canon attachments). One of those people was thirteen-year-old Okuzaki Akira, whose brooding and troubled nature vaguely reminded her of Sasuke. Through her concerned persistence, she’d managed to get him to open up to her somewhat. She came to view Akira as something of a younger brother and was very fond of him. She wasn’t quite so fond of Sha Gojyo, who shamelessly flirted with her and with whom she constantly argued whenever they ran into each other.
She has had oddly civil and thoughtful conversations with Pain and Hoshigaki Kisame, though she cannot claim them as friends by any stretch of the imagination. Prior to the war, Konan, Pain’s wife, appealed to Konoha to give her a reason not to fight, and she and Sakura had a long conversation on the past and future of Konoha and what it meant to be in love. Despite their differences, Sakura saw a lot of herself in Konan and wondered what she, herself would have been like had her life been so terrible. (In the same post, Sakura learned some of Kakashi's tragic past: where he got his Sharingan and who his teammates were.) Sakura was not so forgiving of other members of the Akatsuki, namely Sasori and Itachi, both of whom she hates.
Sakura screwed up in a big way before the war. A big way. She overheard a conversation over the Hitomi about Itachi: Pain said that he had killed his clan on orders. When she pried, Uchiha Madara, the founder of the Uchiha clan, intervened, telling her she had no right to know such things. He then manipulated her into meeting him and immediately caught her in a genjutsu, in which Sasuke came to meet her and kissed her. Having thus distracted her, Madara brainwashed her, making her forget ever leaving Konoha to meet him but leaving her with a directive to obey any order he or Pain gave her. In this way, she was compelled to give the Akatsuki valuable information on the village.
When she, Naruto, Kakashi, and Neji left on a reconnaissance mission, Madara intercepted them and kidnapped Kakashi. He led Konoha to believe that he beheaded Kakashi but in fact he wiped Kakashi’s mind, making him into little more than a weapon that he then turned upon Konoha. Kakashi was captured before he could cause major harm, and Itachi was secretly contacted to help fix him. Itachi detected Madara’s chakra in Sakura and fixed her, too, and Sakura’s memory of her foolish actions came back to her, but there was no time for guilt. At that moment, the Akatsuki invaded Konoha.
There was nothing to do, then, but go out and meet them. Sakura and Neji engaged Sasori, and after a long, hard battle she found a clear shot and managed to stab him in his heart, but not before he returned the blow with his own. Sakura gave herself the antidote she’d prepared, but Sasori had anticipated that and had coated his blade with a different poison, an enzymatic compound that dissolved her inner organs. She tried to extract the poison but it acted too quickly for her to counteract the damage it was doing. Naruto, sensing her chakra fading, sent back a clone to help, but the last thing Sakura wanted was for him to see her die. She tried to get him to leave but he wouldn’t budge, so she finally resorted to punching him to disperse the clone. It was the last thing she did before she passed out.