character history | sunshine

[not_thedragon]

Name: Uchiha Sasuke
Canon: Naruto
Journal: not_thedragon
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Village Affiliation: Konohagakure
Rank: Jounin

Personality & Pre-Game History
Sasuke's most defining and stable trait is his willpower. As the younger son of the head of the Uchiha clan, a ninja clan that is not only one of the founding clans of Konohagakure but renowned throughout the shinobi world, he has a lot of expectations to meet with rather limited reward, but he still puts forth immense effort to not only meet but try to exceed these expectations, both in general and more specifically from his immediate family. He demonstrates stubbornness and a willingness to work himself into the ground in order to achieve goals that he sets for himself -- whether these goals align with the expectations of others or not.

He had good grades in the Academy as was expected, but was thoroughly relieved to graduate and have done with classrooms, often clamouring for better missions and more practical application of their skills when on his genin team. As a student, he can learn too quickly for his teacher's tastes and, when still working as one genin team, for his teammates to keep up; he needed to be reminded of the value of teamwork and of skills different from his own on occasion. All in all, Sasuke is a demanding student.

Considered attractive, Sasuke wasn't unpopular as a student or a young adult, but lacking the mysterious aura of trauma and avengerly angst, he was far from the fanclub idol he was in canon. His responsibility to clan and drive to excel means that his meaningful relationships prior to game start were limited to a small circle of study-buddies and sparring partners. He graduated the Academy at the same age as he did in canon (12/13). He worked hard and was one of the top graduates, whereupon he was taken onto Obito's team along with the previous Hokage's son and the Hyuuga clan's heir apparent.

Obito's selection of him for his team plucked Sasuke out of Itachi's shadow for the first time in his life, and it was a somewhat bewildering experience. In many ways, it is this team selection that has made him first aware and then determined to take the option to excel in ways different from his brother. Further, the Hokage's team was, of course, a high-profile team. Sasuke occasionally felt somewhat out of place as the second son of a clan head, not particularly destined for political strength and groomed to obey the heir, Itachi. As with Fugaku and comparisons against his brother, that insecurity drove him to work harder and excel rather than wallow; Sasuke is action-oriented and will work himself to the bone in order to achieve his goals.

He completed the next chuunin exams conducted after Academy graduation and acquitted himself respectably if with less fanfare than in canon (given that people are used to Uchiha here), whereupon he immediately began to badger Itachi to sponsor him for a jounin promotion -- unfortunately, Itachi has his own very high set of standards for a jounin, and only allowed Sasuke to proceed well after he technically qualified, concerned about exposing his younger brother to the difficulties of jounin life. It was a source of frustration and continues to be a matter of insecurity to Sasuke that it took him over three years after making chuunin to receive his jounin promotion.

In-Game History & Development
In the year and a half since game start, Sasuke has made jounin, had his first major mission failure, led his first critical mission, and lost many of the guiding lights that used to demarcate his path and place in the world.

YEAR 68
Sasuke finally made jounin in August, though he was beginning to think he didn't deserve it after a spate of missions gone bad -- always someone injured, almost always not him. The month prior, he signs a summoning contract with goshawks largely due to an accident and finds himself the guardian of a trio of enormous goshawk chicks in exchange for their loyalty and the right to summon their parents in times of need.

Nearly as soon he completed the jounin exams, he found himself on a mission where the Hokage's lover was targeted and kidnapped; in the course of retrieving information, he used seals originally intended for medical use on a captured enemy-nin, locking down their senses and trapping them in their own minds. This turned out unexpectedly useful for interrogation purposes, and he was drafted into T&I immediately upon return. This was not necessarily the best fit for his personality, but given the usefulness of the seals, he took the request as duty and joined.

YEAR 69
Returning from an innocuous diplomatic mission in the beginning of the year, Sasuke stopped at a restaurant and was "poisoned" by a mind-controlling drug. Under the control of the poisoner, he went to a civilian's house and killed the lord in residence in broad daylight, whereupon he returned to his senses, panicked, and put everyone in the house in stasis with the same seal that T&I had turned to interrogation. Rushing back to Konoha, he was stunned when Obito decided that all witnesses needed to be eliminated in order to prevent hostilities from breaking out, but he went with Obito and helped to cut the throats of civilians nonetheless. He still wakes up with the feeling of blood on his hands and the memory of a child who looked him dead in the eye without fear.

Obito's advice on return was to act natural, and that has been what he has done since then. Formerly easy to read by anyone who knew him, Sasuke learned to bury himself in work and appear busy more than anything else. Obito further permitted him to lead the investigation into the person or people who poisoned him, which gave him the opportunity to leave on a string of endless missions and thus avoid being called out by anyone who knew him well.

This investigation and frequent travel ended abruptly when he was captured in April. He was initially treated well by his captors in hopes of turning his heart over to their cause; he was shown around non-integral parts of the base where he was kept and emphasis was placed on the degree of cooperation and collaboration between the small hidden villages and their countries. He was impressed not so much by the village alliances as by the extent to which civilians and shinobi worked together, seemingly without the same gulf of difference and tendency to treat ninja bodies as currency in his own experience. Unfortunately, news of a team sent to rescue him reached his captors early, and his last days in the base were spent in torture in an effort to force him to reveal intel.

Over the course of those days, he was dosed repeatedly with the drug used to control him in January and made to torture the two intel subordinates who had been captured with him. Due to the interaction of his chakra and the drug, his Sharingan was activated during this time, resulting in the memories being imprinted with Sharingan-level clarity. In between these torture sessions his fingers were broken to prevent any attempt to heal said teammates. In the end, just before rescuers arrived, he put out the eyes of one of his subordinates, rendering him blind.

On return to Konoha, he was quarantined for fear of his being under the control of the drug; though he tried to make himself believe that he did not care, being directly treated with mistrust for the first time stung. His ability to maintain a deadpan expression had improved drastically since January, however, and he has not thus far allowed himself to really react to any of what has happened this past year.

All this has added up to a Sasuke very much disillusioned about shinobi life -- he tried so hard and for so long to become jounin and run the most valuable missions in the village, only to discover that a great deal of what the village required was a shocking amount of collateral damage. Obito did his best to explain the importance of sacrificing for the village, and although Sasuke was raised to sacrifice for clan and the village as part of it, the relative peace of his childhood and the philosophy he'd thought his teacher meant for him to learn were difficult to reconcile with cold-blooded murder.

As of June, he is struggling to understand this and has been temporarily removed from active duty somewhat against his wishes. He briefly trained his cousin's genin in advance of their chuunin exams, but just before leaving with them for said exams he received the biggest shock yet: unbeknownst to him, while he was constantly away from the village, Itachi had moved in with his lover and abdicate his position as heir. Fugaku, unable to avoid offering him the position of heir, does so. Sasuke, raised to duty even while grappling with the cost of it, accepts.

The way that he received this news and his absence from home means that he has no real way to interpret it other than to assume that Itachi -- always somewhat worryingly distant from the clan, but always a steady presence nonetheless -- no longer wishes to be associated with it. He feels an unavoidable sense of betrayal, though he buries it deep, and believes that respecting Itachi's wishes means not imposing on his company in the future.

Compared to Sasuke at the start of the game, he has become more withdrawn, more thoughtful, and both better at hiding his thoughts and more likely to do so. Although he has not voiced it to anyone, his experiences as jounin have him questioning the cost of the shinobi system.

Family & Team
Sasuke's relationship with his parents is far from bad; Fugaku is demanding, but Sasuke values it in that it helps him improve his skills. He remains (as can be seen in canon) somewhat dubious of his father's affection and insecure about meeting his standards, but in many ways this insecurity keeps him from being complacent in his natural talents and is one of the factors that pushes him towards hard work and trying to excel. He remains somewhat in awe of Fugaku and tends to actively approach him only when he has accomplished something he feels particularly proud about.

Sasuke is closer to Mikoto than to Fugaku. With her, he was quite an open child with and easily affectionate. Although he doesn't go to her for comfort anymore as a teenager, he goes through life with the awareness that he is well-loved and, as he still lives at home, pretty well cared-for. Sasuke is at heart a bit of a mama's boy in the ways that count; he loves his mom unreservedly, though he is of course a teenager and overwhelmingly embarrassed by even the slightest shows of affection in public. He is the kind of child who remembers birthdays and anniversaries and gets excited about planning them because he rather enjoys making his mom happy.

Itachi is easily the biggest influence in Sasuke's life. He grew up entirely in Itachi's shadow, lacking the cool intellect and patience that makes Itachi an excellent shinobi at a much younger age; Sasuke is more hot-tempered and significantly more emotional. Itachi is the sun and stars in Sasuke's world, and what he says is ironclad truth even when Sasuke actually disagrees with him. As a child he was openly affectionate and admiring of his brother, chasing after him in a constant bid for attention and approval; as a teenager he still wants that attention and approval more than he even wants Fugaku or the clan's good opinion. This prevented him from resenting Itachi as much as he could have for setting the bar incredibly high for him to meet. He is deeply aware that he is constantly being measured against his brother -- something that will now be extremely complicated with Itachi's abdication.

His relationship with teammates is healthy, with a competitive edge between himself and Naruto that lacks the virulence in canon, given their vastly different canon histories. Given that all three are similar in age and station in life, they knew each other well before being assigned to a team, and those interactions have matured over time to where they are today (to be finalized pending discussion). He and Hinata get along in the way that kids who are not particularly similar but grow up close together do, a kind of habitually peaceable relationship. Since Kushina and Mikoto were friends, Naruto and Sasuke met in utero and have been competing ever since. They have the sort of relationship that longtime pseudo-rivals do where they train together often and are fond of each other without admitting it; they've come to a sort of standstill where they've known each other too long and have too much dirt on each other to get into serious disagreements by now.

His relationship with Obito, his jounin sensei and Hokage, was confusing at times when the team first formed; he remembered Obito as a sometimes-babysitter out of the various cousins that babysat each other over the years, and the transition from "Cousin Obito" to "Hokage-sama"/"sensei" sometimes got lost out of familiarity. "Sensei" finally became comfortable after several years. As he has begun to question his role as a shinobi in the past months, and the inevitable memory of Obito teaching him the extent to which the villages' peace relies on bloodshed, "Hokage-sama" has become more common.

Abilities/Powers
His preference is for taijutsu and ninjutsu, lacking the patience and interest in the more subtle genjutsu arts, but he has a good grasp of the basics of all three. Since he's been training with the Sharingan since before the Academy and lightning-natured chakra almost immediately upon graduating, he is very fast and has a preference for a combination of speed punctuated by hard strikes. He's a quick learner, impatient to improve, and will put in the hours needed to master what he is taught; as such, he is fairly well-rounded as a shinobi. His preference for being in the action keeps him a short- to mid-range combatant, though he is also considerably more capable of following orders in this universe and will employ longer-distance tactics if necessary. He is excellent with the standard shinobi arsenal as well as the straight-bladed sword.

Lacking the sketchy methods used in Sound to accelerate his growth, he is still working on growing his chakra reserves and stamina, particularly when it comes to using the chakra-heavy lightning techniques he picks up from Kakashi. He's been working on Katon jutsu since childhood and is proficient with using it and its variations. He can and will use the Sharingan to copy techniques, but he has exposure to a much narrower variety in the village than he did in canon; by and large he will pick up pieces of techniques or taijutsu to incorporate into his own repertoire rather than lifting things wholesale.

Medical Ninjutsu: Obito put Sasuke in medical training in hopes of producing a team medic; Sasuke initially hated the training and is never going to take the medic's oath, but his chakra control and understanding of chakra and bodies has vastly improved. As a fire- and lightning-natured shinobi, his initial tendency was to overdo and straight-up cauterize rather than heal, so he had a steep uphill battle to refine his control to the point that his chakra nature did not impact his medical ninjutsu. He is now at a point where he can be a support for his team in battle and can heal himself in a pinch.

Seals: Sasuke works with seals mostly in supplement to his usual work; he has some storage seals for weaponry and has proficiency with the scroll seals. His more unique work is in a set of seals originally intended for medical use as field anaesthesia -- holding a wound in stasis by stopping the flow of chakra temporarily. These turned out to have horrifying consequences when applied at certain chakra points, removing all ability to sense anything, and have now wound up in use at T&I instead of in field medic kits, as he'd intended.

Bloodline: He is working on developing his Sharingan; for lack of emotionally traumatizing experiences, this has been a slower go than in canon. His Sharingan was first activated during a trip with Itachi at a young age and he has since then worked assiduously on developing its various levels and abilities. He is unaware of details about the Mangekyou except that it is exists, is forbidden, and isn't common these days in any case. In this universe, he uses the Sharingan much as he does in part one canon: to predict movement to a certain extent, to mirror movement and copy jutsu, and to see through genjutsu.

Summons: Sasuke accidentally knocked a next of giant Northern goshawks out of a tree, healed the broken wing of one of the chicks, and somehow found himself signing a summoning contract with them. He is now the official guardian, caretaker, and no-don't-eat-that-er of the three chicks, Hoderi (the eldest), Hosuseri, and Hoori (the youngest and the one he healed). Although they were more or less constantly around him when young, they have now reached their juvenile growth (standing about as tall as he is) and only appear when summoned. The parents, Konohana and Ninigi, do not usually hang around and only tolerate being summoned in times of great need.

Strengths and Weaknesses:
Mental
+ Driven. Hardworking. Quick learner, creative in a pinch. Practical.
- Impatient for results. Can have a tendency to overwork. Not particularly intellectual.
- Still needs improvement when it comes to teamwork.

Emotional
+ Has an actual family, and it's strong and suits him well.
- Other side of that coin, his family ties are so strong and he is not good at seeing things from others' perspectives, which can make him awkward around people who are not from similar backgrounds. For all that Konohagakure has closed some of the divides between clans, non-clanned shinobi, and civilians, Sasuke's world can be insular.
- Insecure about his position in the family, his skills, his position in the village, and his standing with respect to Itachi.

Physical
+ Speed, strength, Sharingan tricks. Large chakra reserves.
+ Loves his weapons.
- Needs improvement with genjutsu and long-range tactics.