Name: Satoru Sanada, commonly referred to as "Sanada"
Age: 18
Physical Description
Sanada is a tall, lean man, standing at six-feet two-inches and wearing with him a sculpted build -- adequate for a Taijutsu user, despite his budding inexperience. He has a fair, youthful complexion with no notable scars save for a small indent-like cut below his left eye, and a two small pock marks hidden on the underside of his jaw. His hair is a jet black shade that is typically somewhat unkempt, but straight and downward-flowing. His features are in-extraordinary but fairly "handsome", largely due to his clean appearance and maintained aesthetic. Outside of combat, he dresses fairly well and often, formally.
In terms of his physical build, aside from being lean he has a runner's physique, with developed thighs and well-defined abdominal muscles, as well as back muscles. Considering that, as a shinobi, he focuses largely on speed and lethality, his physical form is only fitting.
Mental Description
Satoru is a skeptical man, with an observational nature, much as a wallflower. Though he will participate in conversation, it is often with a false demeanor built by his observations of his surroundings. He is -- in fact -- highly disingenuous, largely because he does not truly understand social graces, with little social development from even early childhood on. Mentally, he is calculating and critical, though he lacks much motivation to put his observations and insights to use. He merely watches and learns, with no true ambition to speak of, and nowhere to place his learnings. Ideologically, he does not stand for much, either; not particularly loyal to the village, and following no clan, he is a true chameleon -- but one stoic and quiet enough to not be recognized for his flippant disloyalty, and really, his inability to empathize with any true ideals at all.
History
Satoru was born to a skittering creature, an ephemeral victim, the status of said victimhood flickering on and off through each of her interactions. A woman who knew nothing but the life of a nomad -- fearful of others and desperate to survive. His father was a man who had taken her in, who had offered to hoist the heavy weight of working and wandering from her back. A man incomparable in both his compassion and affection -- and of course, his commanding desire, which compelled her to live a life as one of many carefully selected sister-wives.
It was not this truth that terrified Satoru's mother, however, but rather her own ever-present paranoia which led her to fear the perceived jealousy of her own... "sisters". And so, though late into her pregnancy and failing of health, she fled to the Wind Country. Satoru was conceived upon the burning sands, within the vast emptiness of a desert unknown. The sky scorched his fair mother's skin so, and the pain and weakness wracked her body. But she survived - still, and continued on. Fleeing to Sunagakure was all that she desired, neither migrant nor refugee, but merely a visitor who had limped sorrowfully through the desert with tears in her eyes and a pale nausea overcoming her already struggling form.
Not long after she 'delivered' Satoru to the village, the woman passed, laying upon the cold pavement as her sputtering breath ebbed in coughs and weak gasps. She died and left no true legacy behind . . . but a small babe who knew nothing but hunger, and the blistering heat.
Within the story of Yukiko Kasawa was an ever-present sorrow, one she was subjected to only by herself. But such sorrow was balanced in the great miracle that was her son's survival - taken by an elderly gentleman, a man with no connections and not much longer to live. He raised Satoru and provided for him, considering the small boy a tranquil blessing gifted to him by the Gods. Satoru took on his father's name -- Sanada -- as a memento, the memory given to him by the scattered thoughts of his mother's dying journals. Though young, the struggle he had known in his early life led him swiftly to maturation, and an interest in the world that laid around him.
He learned to see life as a thread -- an inter-connected possibility to all others, given permanence by actions and reactions. His mother was paranoid because she was abused young; he was born because of an opportunistic man; he was raised by an elderly man as the result of a mixture of both the opportunistic man, and the crippling paranoia. Observing his own reactions for their affect on the world around him, Satoru grew fixated on possibilities and impact, and what meaning humans could impart to the world around them. He became a student at the Academy for that same reason -- a desire to change things, with no necessary morals or ethics behind his actions, but a mere observational interest of the world around him.
He was precocious, and he did well in the Academy. He graduated with flying colors around the age of ten, but from then-on exerted himself little, finding no interest in the further examinations meant to progress one in their rank. He . . . wished to embark on a journey of personal development, truly, more than anything else. For a long time, he took missions that carried him away to other lands, acting as one with his squadron before allowing them to pass him by. He realized that in the thread of time, his own life had been insignificant, and his motivation stilled to nothing.
Until, now. Falling to the cravings of the mind, Satoru seeks a future again -- though uncertain.
Core Ability Request: Temporal Strider
"I feel -- the buzz," he whispered, holding his hands forward as his fingertips tingled with an odd, astral sensation; a touch reverberating from his palms. Setou Kazuo was a very, very old man indeed . . . one who touched time like a thread, weaving echoes of both the past and future around him. From Sanada's early youth, he had guided him to know much the same feeling, the humming reverberations of time touching this warped reality that they knew.
"Don't let it go," he commanded, in a lulled, low voice. The young boy nodded his head innocently, following the elder one's direction; he did not let go.
It hummed. He felt it warp around him. It was like memories flowing through, but . . . of things yet to come, so diluted and disturbed that he could not perceive them. Time's ethereal tangle warped around his touch, a feeling he had tried to master for such a long time. Years. Since he could truly understand the world around him, even from his skewed and childish perspective, he had always wanted to learn the flow of time as Setou knew it.
"Setou!" the young boy exclaimed. "I can feel it -- I..."
"Let your chakra bend it," he commanded. Satoru's eyes shut as he concentrated -- focused, as well as he could.
"How long does it go on for? The thread..."
"Minutes. Hours. Lifetimes. It is uncertain. But time is a weave of many threads, as you have learned, and they move through space as parallel lines. Never touching one another, never colliding; except for... in you. A Temporal Strider is one that can pull the threads together, and make them intersect. They cannot truly move through time, but operate it around them. Remember that as you grow."
The young one could feel it . . . and see it even better as his eyes laid shut. A plethora of translucent strings folding outwards from the core, like falling petals from a flower. He could feel a time that wasn't his own, in his palm, and could operate within the future . . . somehow. Operating forward, beyond his own grasp, he felt his chakra funnel into the future, delayed to him. A minute passed, and the energy reappeared, flowing through the air with the same hum of time. It faltered, formless and with no jutsu crafted, but still it came from the past. Such a thing was phenomenal to him; he couldn't wait to show everyone at the Academy. His friends, his teacher, everyone.
With a bright, giddy smile, he held the elderly man's legs with a soft embrace as he imagined himself mastering the flow of time . . . and all the many futures he could change.
Note: I am hoping to begin as a Gennin, thus the age.
