Basics
Who: Uchiha Sasuke
Age: 18, moving onto 19 as of the 23rd
Sexuality: Either gender. What matters is whether or not a) Sasuke can even be bothered to think about anything sexual at the time and b) the strength of and opportunities provided to him by said candidate of interest. For the most part, Sasuke’s too consumed with other things to spend much time thinking about the topic, though. . .an 18 year old male is precisely that.
Rank: One/First year
Callsign: Taipan
'Superpower': Though unaware of it at the time, Sasuke was subjected [volunteered by his father was more like it] to genetic experimentation from a young age. This resulted in the ‘Sharingan’ hailed among their clan, an 'eye technique' that comes with a three-stage development.
First, memorization. Just from playing witness, whether simple hand movements or martial art moves, Sasuke can get every detail down on just a single glance. Though the ability to pull off anything learned depends on the physical state of the user, and it actually makes Sasuke rather boring to teach if he decides to use the technique to hasten his learning. The problem comes in making sure he is physically able to execute the actions learned, and in that, Sasuke doesn’t feel the need to rely on teachers but rather endless hours of training.
Second is the ability to track every move made by an opponent. This aspect, while hardly a burden, does place a small strain on Sasuke, and requires him to maintain a strict mental training regimen to ensure that he can handle the influx of information being processed by his brain. Physically, it has made him shift away from power in favor of speed, as he found out rather quickly that force couldn’t compensate for agility and a fast reaction time.
Last is the power of suggestion, the ability to hypnotize an opponent through direct eye contact. It places the most strain on Sasuke both mentally and physically, and he can be out for a good day if he is reckless with its use. Because of this, Sasuke tends to rely mostly on the first two aspects of the Sharingan, which he has a far better handle on at this point, and often couples them with his martial arts training.
Other special skills: Since he’s originally from Japan, Sasuke is fluent in Japanese, though he has a surprisingly good handle on English. He also has a special talent for alienating everyone around him while appearing completely unaffected by the fact. But more seriously, he took up the katana at the age of 15 and is now quite adept at wielding it. And given the strain put on him by his own powers, Sasuke has been forced to become a close-range fighter, using various styles of martial arts. [He now rather loathes the brutish display of power a lot of “street” fighting employs, and he happily includes the idea of “boxing” right in with that].
Played by: Narimiya Hiroki
Character Personality and History:
If you were to ask Uchiha Sasuke about his childhood, you’d probably get a glare colder than Death’s grasp and a sharp click of his tongue, thoroughly dismissive in nature. Because he doesn’t talk to just anyone about that, and when he does, he merely mentions that man and the fact that he intends to kill this strange embodiment of hate. Just like that. As if there’s nothing at all wrong with living your life for the sake of revenge.
For him, there really isn’t. It is all as simple as counting down - three, two, one - and inhaling. There is the proof that he is alive, and in that, the means to move towards the one goal that has eluded him for all these years - the death of his brother and a chance to start over. Not that he believes you can erase the things that had already happened.
No, those acts are too firmly engraved in his mind. So, when you ask him about his youth, he’ll brush you off, but the memories will surface, and he’ll be left to cycle through them. Bitter and painfully so. Like flipping through the pages of a photo album, each page charred at the edges, the plastic protection melted and furled, the pictures glued impossibly in place by the heat that had once sought to destroy them.
He would remember how simple it had all been. He had gone to school like all the other children of his clan, bright-eyed and overly eager to impress. Family dinners, where he had been chastised for talking with a full mouth but patted on the head for being ridiculously cute about it anyway. But most of all, he would remember how his mother had smiled at him like he was the purest reason she could find to exist, a smile that not even Itachi was granted. And Sasuke had cherished that look because it was his and his alone. His brother had their father, but Sasuke? He had his mother, heart and soul.
That was why he didn’t mind the visits to that place, all cold conduct and imposing steel. He hadn’t minded the blood taken from his veins, the needles that pricked at his tender skin or the pain the frayed the nerves behind his eyes. Because across from him, she would sit, that loving smile on her face [though he was far too young to note the touch of misery in her eyes that darkened with every visit, with every word of praise that spilled from strangers' lips and the cool satisfaction on his father’s face that came in its wake]. When those strange men clothed in sterile white babbled on and on, his mother listened with a worried, attentive look on her face as her fingers dipped into Sasuke’s hair. He accepted it all without fuss. Because she was there, and this was what the sons of Uchiha did.
After all, his brother had played this game himself, and every time his father spoke on the matter, Sasuke could recognize that glow of pride that illuminated the older man’s face. It became so ingrained in him that soon enough Sasuke wanted it as well, as any child would have. So, he grew out of his mother’s shadow and began his pursuit of the men in his life.
Fugaku, however, was not a man to be won over so easily by a second son. Particularly one who performed at levels far lower than his first. And though his mother spoke endlessly of how much his father adored him, Sasuke could only writhe with displeasure [that was until she smiled at him again and somehow all that unease dissipated like smoke from a blown-out candle] when the connection failed to connect - adoration yet stern disapproval, adoration but glowing affection for the son who conquered all records as easily as a bird ascends to the sky.
Itachi was a different matter altogether. For whatever harsh lessons their father had to teach his youngest, Sasuke felt he had found a new harbor of love in his older brother. To the point that he began to prefer Itachi’s attention over his father’s. Over even his mother’s. Because as long as Itachi smiled at him like that [like he meant something] he would be perfectly fine. Not that he didn’t ever stop trying to learn and outdo everything his brother did, but the joy that rested in those trials came from the fact that he had Itachi there with him. One could [and most did] joke that Sasuke had developed quite the brother complex.
Not that he understood the meaning of those words at the time. Just like he didn’t understand the plots and plans being laid and hatched by his own clan. Sasuke only knew that his family had entwined itself with the legacy of war, though he remained naively under the impression that everything his clan did, they did for the betterment of the world. To make it a happier place. To stop the wrongs, not just right them. [For what would weapons manufacturing and distribution mean to a child?] And just as everyone in their family did, Sasuke took pride in the great workings of his father. Just as he took pride in the fact that he was Itachi’s little brother, his only little brother.
So, when he returned home late one night from a self-prescribed training session [just because Itachi couldn’t be there didn’t mean he should skip out; he was after all, the son of the Uchiha clan’s head, a family that prided themselves on their expertise in war, in self and world protection] to flames licking the neighboring houses like dehydrated dogs, Sasuke had no idea what to do. He ran, naturally, because home was just around the corner, and there was no one here to save him from this tragedy in the making. But surely, there would be people coming, and surely his father had to be there directing his uncles and aunts and cousins to the places they needed to be to keep it all from burning down.
His father was there. And his mother. And Itachi. And there was blood and silver and a frigid deep-freeze of non-emotion in his brother’s eyes. It reminded him of that time he had accidentally stored the lettuce in the freezer and when he went to get it, the leaves were dark and wilted and covered in vicious little ice crystals. He had screamed then, as any normal, well-loved child would have. Because here was all he loved slain by the one loved most [or so that was the only way he could really look at the situation; memory has this nasty little of habit of picking the cuts choicest for one’s own survival, and thus this is how Sasuke now remembers that night]. And from that, a new love sprung - the kind that had him begging for his own life.
And then, in the wake of all that had been [which now sat as charred remains and ash like dust waiting to be discarded, a bitter memory best left forgotten by a country with too much honor] and of the undeniable fact that he had betrayed his honor selfishly, Sasuke learned the big problem with love - it had this horrid tendency to tiptoe into the realm of hate. When you loved something so much. . . .well, sometimes, it became all the easier to loathe it.
So, love was best avoided, and he managed that quite well for a few years. It wasn’t that hard to either when the same men who sat as ghosts in his memory [fuzzy, pixilated images of beings that poked and prodded and expected] came to claim him. Last of living kin though both parties, government and corporation alike, knew this to be false. He was tossed into a sea of others like him, abandoned by one cause or another. Though, he was held in higher esteem, not the highest, but genius nonetheless to all the others. Not that they would know that he had been experimented on long before any of them had been. No one would [and no one had told Sasuke either; instead, the deduction was left to a not-so-idle mind, hell-bent on destruction].
Sasuke was nine when he arrived at the Leaf Sector. His training continued as though nothing had happened to disrupt its flow, and he fell into its rhythm unhindered. Comforted, perhaps, by every thrust of his arm, by every problem solved, knowing that with every task completed he grew one step closer to becoming a man capable of defeating the god his brother had built himself into [mind’s eye view and all]. It was easy enough to turn your heart into a crate, isolated from the world while harboring its own within. In the months that had separated the end of one life with the beginning of another, Sasuke had crafted for himself his own little Pandora’s Box.
But there was a problem with that too. Somewhere along the way, Sasuke ran into Naruto. The Naruto. Quite a notorious name, actually, though Sasuke scoffed at such a use. Because he was obviously the better fighter, the better student - stronger, faster, and with a wicked brand of intelligence. Yet, it was that idiot, the dead last of dead-lasts in his mind, who managed to find hope in the midst of all the haunts and horrors of the human condition resting within him.
Over the months, the fights shifted away from testing-ground matches, taking on an almost affectionate tone, and Sasuke, for a time, allowed himself to believe himself capable of finding someone else to place an ounce of love in. Until that was, Ego and Insecurity came to claim what they felt was rightfully theirs - namely Sasuke and every bit of soul he still held onto. And once more, love snuck into the realm of hate [though this was where it got funny because Sasuke knew he didn’t really hate Naruto]. In every power move that moron made, Sasuke saw his own insufficiencies. In every bold challenge, Sasuke saw the darkness cloaking his own heart. And in every mention of friend, Sasuke began to realize that if he stayed here, he would be faced with a choice - revenge, sole reason of his existence, or friendship, a new reason to exist.
It was the former that won out. After all, once you had begged for your life in the most shameless of fashions, in the pool of your own clan’s blood and dreams [which he still remained blissfully ignorant of], you couldn’t really face the prospect of living until you reconciled that sin with one other. The fights between the boys became more vicious, a means to prove his own self-worth, his own reason to exist, and the trips to the medical ward became more frequent as time and time again Sasuke saw himself faltering before Naruto’s power.
At eighteen, this has only created a volatile mix of emotions in a young man not quite claiming to be fully stable. You can’t with that sort of history. Most of the time though, Sasuke has a cool demeanor, his anger carefully chained and locked in a place where it can poke and prod at him while leaving the rest of the world around him untouched. It’s only when frustration at his own failure to improve in a timely enough fashion rears up that he finds himself unable to keep the emotion from gripping him. If it’s around Naruto, more than likely a fight is bound to erupt [because Sasuke begrudgingly acknowledges the fact that Naruto does actually have something to offer by way of power], but with anyone else, it shows itself as a fire-branded sense of disdain.
Sasuke has never once forgotten where he has come from, what exactly he has lost, and it is for that reason that he holds himself to high ideals [convoluted as they are] with an arrogance that bows before no other. When he is feeling more settled, however, Sasuke has the air of someone who knows precisely what he wants and how to get it. Very little seems to affect him in this state, though that is a horribly deceiving trait of his. Emotional, he can be both fire and ice in the same instant, or be completely overwhelmed by one element or the other.
Beneath it all though, he remains a strangely kind kid. He might damn you to hell in the same breath used to protect your sorry ass in a fight, as if that will somehow keep his reputation as a cold bastard intact while appeasing his innermost desires. And if you throw a thank you in his direction for some apparent kindness, he’ll probably return the favor with a scowl, and if he’s feeling particularly cheery, the finger. Unless you’re Naruto. Then you get a harsh blend of insults and a superiority-infused Tch.