futurology app

APPLICANT INFO.
NAME: Batty
CONTACT: goodluckmodes @ plurk
CURRENT CHARACTERS: n/a

CHARACTER INFO.
NAME: Sai
CANON: Naruto
AGE: 16
APPEARANCE: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/p__/images/0/02/Sai6.png/
CANON POINT: end of chapter 312

BACKGROUND: Little is known about Sai’s early life, prior to being orphaned at some point and taken in by Root, a secret underground division of Konoha’s ANBU (a task force of shinobi that take orders directly from the village leader, the Hokage) led by Danzou Shimura. All members of Root underwent training intended to suppress their emotions and individuality, even their true names. Sai was largely successful in this regard, although he retained an interest in art, an interest that was encouraged by one of his fellow Root members, Shin. The two grew close, and Sai came to eventually think of him as a brother. He started working on a picture book as a present for him, which depicted each of them fighting various opponents on each half, with the center pages intended to depict the both of them holding hands and smiling. Before he could finish the center pages, however, they were slated to fight each other to the death as part of Root’s training to eliminate emotions. However, before this could happen, Shin died of an unknown illness. Because of his training, rather than be able to grieve properly, Sai repressed most of his memories of his brother, and could not remember his original intention on how to finish the picture book. Still, he found himself unable to get rid of it, and carried it with him despite being unfinished.

There isn’t much information on the missions he undertook prior to joining Team Kakashi and being given the codename ‘Sai’, but we do know that he was given a number of assassination missions for individuals thought to pose a significant threat to Konoha. When he is assigned to Team Kakashi with Naruto, Sakura, and Yamato (as a stand-in for Kakashi, who was hospitalized at the time) to meet the Akatsuki spy at the Tenchi Bridge, his real mission given by Danzou was actually to infiltrate Orochimaru’s hideout and assassinate Sasuke Uchiha, who had defected from the village three years prior. He succeeds in infiltrating the hideout, but he is tracked down and confronted by the rest of Team Kakashi about his true motives. He gives a false explanation about being ordered to gain Orochimaru’s favor so that he and Danzou could join forces in destroying Konoha. Naruto and Sakura try to explain the consequences of such a plan, but Sai simply brushes them off, saying that such appeals have no effect on someone like him, who doesn’t truly exist and is nothing more than a tool for Danzou. Sakura argues that he’s wrong, because if his bonds with his brother weren’t important to him, he wouldn’t still hang onto his picture book. Restraining him, they then go on to try to find Sasuke, which Sai questions, as Sasuke had said he didn’t care for them any longer. Naruto counters that he would do anything necessary to retrieve Sasuke, because he had been the first to truly accept him and represented the bonds Naruto had waited most of his life to have with others. Sai finds himself intrigued by the bond between Naruto and Sasuke, and when Kabuto shows up to free him, switches sides and attacks him instead, joining up again with Team Kakashi in the hopes of learning more about bonds.

While searching for Sasuke in Orochimaru’s hideout, Sai has a conversation with Naruto after he collapses from previous overexertion, in which he talks about how the ninja reminds him of his brother and how alike they were, which suddenly stirs the old repressed memory of what he’d wanted to draw in the center pages of the picture book. Finally having completed it, he smiles genuinely for the first time since his training began.

They’re interrupted by Orochimaru, however, and Naruto manages to get back to his feet to distract him so that Sai can go on ahead and search for Sasuke. In the meantime, Sakura and Yamato come upon Sai’s “bingo book” of assassination targets, finding Sasuke among them and thus learning about his actual mission. However, when Sai does find Sasuke, he doesn’t attempt to kill him, instead saying that he wants to see if he can protect the bond between him and Naruto by taking him back to Konoha. Sasuke was irritated by Sai’s reason for bothering him, prompting him to attack, and pulling the rest of the team into the confrontation. At first they believed Sai was still trying to fulfill his mission, but then Sasuke revealed what the other ninja had said about trying to protect his bond with Naruto, and Team Kakashi banded together once more to attempt to capture Sasuke. However, they were overpowered, and Sasuke initially intends to kill them all before Orochimaru convinces him not to and they leave together. The mission a failure, Team Kakashi returns to the village, where Sai asks Danzou permission to keep his assigned name and work with the team a bit longer. Despite some cautionary words about the danger of emotions, Danzou agrees.

That evening, Sai makes his first ever titled drawing, called “Friends”. Sai comes in one chapter after that point, most of which is plot-irrelevant and shows Sai trying to figure out this new ‘friendship’ thing via reading books in the library and trying to apply the things in them, with...mixed to poor results. :’)

PERSONALITY: If you asked Sai about his personality, he would say he doesn’t have one. And in his initial appearance, such a description would not be far from the truth. Trained from an early age to suppress his emotions and all traces of personal identity, a good summary of Sai at the point when he is introduced is in the cautionary words spoken by a fellow Root member: You have no name. You have no feelings. You have no past. You have no future. There is only the mission.

And it’s clear, at first, that Sai really doesn’t seem to have much sense of self, or any idea how to interact with other people. When he is not entirely blank faced, he smiles constantly, even when clearly inappropriate. He tells Naruto he’ll hit him if he doesn’t stop staring, then in the same breath that he meant no malice; he was simply “trying on” a certain attitude. He tells Sakura he likes “friendly crones”, with no apparent understanding that he's just insulted her. At one early point, he admits that he's never titled any of his hundreds of drawings because they "don't put him in mind of anything" and claims that he's never felt anything.

Yet, even early on, there are plenty of hints that Sai isn't as blank and emotionless as he himself thinks. He carries the incomplete picture book he drew for his brother around with him everywhere, does not permit Sakura to open it, and seems to experience some degree of consternation when he discovers it to be missing from his bag at Orochimaru's hideout. He manages to note that Sakura is particularly gentle with Naruto, although he can't understand why. He apparently has some form of concept for loyalty going beyond merely following orders personally, as he expresses disdain for Sasuke's defection, remarking when Naruto is yelling that he's nothing like Sasuke that he is glad not to be compared to someone like him. And when he arrives at Orochimaru's hideout and meets Sasuke, he shows some manner of self-awareness that people don't like him. This fact--that he is not actually devoid of emotion--is demonstrated to him at this point when he recognizes the physical signs of fear in himself after looking into Sasuke’s sharingan eyes. We see him questioning to himself if it’s possible that he truly fears Sasuke even though he does not realize he does.

So it’s not really that Sai has no personality, even in the beginning. It’s simply that he is a deeply repressed individual, who for so long has been taught to deny his own humanity, to seal it away much as the cursed seal on his tongue keeps the secrets of Danzou locked inside of him. He accepts these things without question as necessary for the sake of the village, because that is how Root trained him to think, and does not see it as a sacrifice, despite some academic awareness that most of the rest of Konoha are not like them. “Sai” was meant only to be a moment in time, a title of convenience for a singular mission. It is spending time with Team Kakashi that gives him a taste of the “other side” for the first time since he was orphaned and taken in by Root. He gets to see his teammates show concern for each other and for their absent teammate Sasuke above and beyond the call of duty, for them to be willing to throw their lives away on a foe far out of their league without even being ordered to. And above all, he gets to be treated like a person, rather than a tool, to be told that he does exist, because of that bond with his brother that he still carries in the form of the picture book. It is this desire to understand bonds that fuels his decision to abandon Danzou’s orders to assassinate Sasuke and attempt to start thinking and acting for himself.

So what is Sai “really” like, when the first layers of training and repression are stripped away, and he begins trying to live for himself? The databook describes him as frank, submissive, and obedient--all traits that make sense for a person raised to be a weapon. A sword, after all, does not need to be considerate or tactful, has no need to understand others beyond what would be useful in conducting such affairs as espionage. Kept apart from society at large, Sai thus has no knowledge of social norms, nor any sense of differentiation between what’s ‘honest’ and what’s ‘rude’. He cannot appreciate a lot of the subtle nuances in human behavior, cannot tell the difference between Sakura playfully calling her long-time friend Naruto an idiot and himself calling her “Ugly-dog.” He overgeneralizes as well, thinking Sakura’s reaction (to deck him) means that women prefer to be told the opposite of “how they really look”, and showing that he lacks an understanding of subjectivity. He uses books to try to compensate for this deficit, but one can only learn so much about people from reading about them academically, and we’re shown how awkward he is when attempting to apply these principles in practice.

What becomes clear eventually, however, is that once given proper avenue to express it, Sai is actually a deeply caring person. At the beginning of a later arc, Danzou orders Sai to keep an eye on Naruto. Although he does not resist the order, he stops to ask what his superior intends to do with him, stuttering and hesitating a couple times, which suggests that he is unused to questioning Danzou’s orders or intentions. Even after Danzou tells him that he doesn’t intend to bring any harm to the jinchuuriki, as it would reflect badly on him, Sai is shown to be privately uncertain that there’s really nothing to worry about. When the Kumogakure ninjas arrive and demand information on Sasuke from Naruto and Sakura, upsetting the latter, he attempts to deflect them by pointing out that the village would give them all the information they needed now that a kill order was in place. He’s then seen watching from a distance as Naruto allows Karui to vent her anger by beating him up when he refuses to sell out Sasuke, intervening when she says that she won’t stop until he tells her what he wants to know. He doesn’t back down even when Naruto tells him to stay out of it, and for the first time, Sai actually looks heated and upset as he asserts that there’s no need for him to get beat up for Sasuke’s sake, and that all he’s done is hurt him. He’s then seen kneeling by Naruto’s side and later helping to bandage his injuries, expressing concern as to whether Sakura (the medical ninja on their team) should take a look at him instead. Later, he seems bothered by the thought that Kakashi does not trust him, and is visibly touched when Kakashi asserts otherwise. Sai’s range of emotion only broadens further throughout the series--he becomes enraged when his “brother” is resurrected and used as a living bomb by Deidara, and sheds tears when Shin is freed from the technique and dissolves into ash.

It’s all a very far cry from the Sai who once coldly entrapped Naruto in his jutsu during a training exercise because he was getting in his way, who said simply in his defense that it was unpleasant to fight while having to take care of someone else--the Sai who claimed he did not exist. Indeed, the databook also notes that his favorite word is now nakama, a Japanese term for close companions. He’s coming to heal from the scars of his past, to grow into his own as a person, rather than a mere tool, and learning the meaning of love and friendship and to treasure the bonds he holds with others.

Sai at his point of entry in the game, then, is at the beginning of this journey of transformation. He’s still awkward and socially clueless, someone who notably stands apart from the rest of society, who’s still a bit odd and jarring with his complete bluntness and muted expressions. Earnest, yet a little nervous, a little tentative, his temperament at this point can be likened to a man who’s spent his life sitting in a dark room, taking his first careful steps around as someone with a lantern finally approaches in the hallway.

ABILITIES: Chakra control & Ninjutsu

Sai is a shinobi (ninja), trained from an early age to be an assassin and spy, to the exclusion of all else. As a result, he particularly excels in stealth and infiltration, but he is also highly skilled in combat, both hand-to-hand and with a weapon. In canon, he uses both a special tip-less tantou sword and the standard kunai and shuriken, which can be used both for close-quarters fighting or thrown from a distance. Further, as an assassin, it’s highly likely that he is highly knowledgeable about human anatomy and the various means of disrupting it, including poisons and the like, though this knowledge won’t extend to those found on other worlds, of course.

All shinobi in the Naruto universe rely on a sort of life energy called chakra, which flows through the chakra network in their bodies, a pathway analogous in function to the human circulatory system. Any and all techniques (aside from taijutsu--hand to hand combat) used by shinobi require the usage of chakra. As explained in-series, chakra is derived from a combination of physical energy in the body’s cells and spiritual energy from the mind. Shinobi combine these energies within themselves to build up chakra, which is then manipulated (frequently with the use of hand seals) to perform ninjutsu.

Chakra can also be transformed into one of five basic natures: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Lightning. Shinobi naturally have an affinity toward one of these natures, though they can learn to master more--most jounin have mastered at least two--though it is very rare for someone to have mastered all five. Aside from these elemental transformations, there are also the Yin and Yang releases, which involve changing the amounts/ratio of physical and spiritual energy in producing chakra. Non-elemental techniques are implied by Yamato to be of this type, so it’s possible that Sai’s ink jutsu (described below) are related to these, though this is unconfirmed by canon. Sai’s chakra affinity is also not stated in canon, but as of the 4th databook, canon has now specified that Sai is capable of utilizing Earth, Fire, Water, and Yang releases. (Note: I can provide links for a list of jutsu that use these releases! Writing them all out individually would go well over the word limit. However, if the mods would prefer I stick to what’s described here and earn back those jutsu via AC rewards, I could also work with that. Please let me know!)

There are some basic exercises in canon for learning chakra control, such as focusing one’s chakra to the soles of the feet so as to be able to climb a sheer vertical incline without hand or footholds, or its more difficult variation, walking/standing on the surface of water.

Standard ninjutsu known to just about every shinobi:

Ink techniques

INVENTORY: Sai will be coming in with his backpack containing his scrolls, brush, and ink, as well as the tip-less tantō he carries on his back. If possible, I'd like for him to have a couple of his kunai knives on him as well. I’ll leave the number he has of any of these up to mod discretion!

WRITING SAMPLES.
NETWORK SAMPLE:

Has anyone known someone to have completed their contract with ALISTAIR and been returned home? If so, what was the length of the duration of their contract, and what was their record of service like? Did they achieve any accomplishments for ALISTAIR that would be considered out of the ordinary?

Also, if anyone is familiar with Oska's history, I would be interested in speaking with you.

[Or, more specifically, ALISTAIR’s history, but he won’t say that. Paranoid ninjas are paranoid and have been thinking it's awfully convenient that people just so happen to be falling through rifts at a time when ALISTAIR needs more recruits.]

LOG SAMPLE:

http://maskormenacelogs.dreamwidth.org/243742.html#comments