Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. In fact, I legally own nothing.
Notes: Some of these fit into the first half of Naruto (i.e. "gift"), some fit into the time skip (i.e. "prisms"), and some fit quite well into any bit of the series (i.e. "genjutsu").
Haruno Sakura: prisms
The crystal wind chimes glittered in the afternoon sunlight. Their edges caught the light, and split into rainbows, hundreds and thousands of rainbows, until she couldn't see anything else. Their quiet, silvery noise was overshadowed by the noise of hundreds and thousands of cicadas.
Sakura sighed and blinked, and the rainbows vanished.
She rolled over on the lounge chair, and looked at the notebook on the table beside her.
1. Sasuke
√2. PRACTICE JUTSU!
√3. Ask Tsunade about Naruto
√4. Call Ino
5. clean room
Oops. She sat up, looked across the small balcony to her room. The clothing piled on the floor, the papers sliding off the desk, the unmade bed, the broken picture frame with the photo she'd torn him out of... She frowned, looked unhappily at #1 on her list, and turned away, avoiding the hurt, staring up again at the wind chimes and the rainbows.
Inside the room, the phone rang. Her mother must have answered on the downstairs line, because it didn't keep ringing.
"Sakura! It's for you!" came the voice.
She got up, and tripping over things, got to the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Sakura. I was just returning your call..."
"Ino!" She and Ino were still in the process of mending their friendship. It's hard to put the pieces of something you broke years ago back together. But somehow, they were making it work again.
"How are you, Sakura?"
"Fine. You?" They talked like that now, formal and hesitant. They still didn't wear their forehead protectors properly. But they didn't call each other names anymore.
They talked for a little while longer, avoiding the topic of Sasuke, then Ino had to go run the flower shop.
"Good-bye, Sakura."
"Good-bye, Ino."
Sakura hung up before Ino did, and bit her lip.
She looked back out at the balcony, where there were hundreds and thousands of rainbows dancing through the prisms.
Notes: Sakura is not my favorite character. At all. But I have a strange habit of wishing she was. Her character had a lot of potential, but Kishimoto doesn't really give his female characters the same strength he gives the guys. The girls of Naruto are weak. Sakura is the weakest. Tenten isn't given enough development to say she's the weakest, so that title to Sakura goes. Which is sad, because I really want to like her, but... I can't. Her development in the Time Skip seems to be Kishimoto trying to please the fans who think she's weak, but her sudden abrupt strength is rather unrealistic. So I in this chapter I tried to make myself like her. I came out rather ambivalent. This whole chapter is ambivalent, but in it you can get pieces of her personality as I see it. Her to-do list gives you a clue about this: #1, the most important, is find Sasuke. He's the most important thing in her life. #2 gives you a potential explanation as to her strength: she practices a lot. I rather think Lee must have influenced her. Plus, she needs to be strong if she's gonna be sent to retrieve Sasuke. #3 Naruto, another important person, but not as important as Sasuke or training so she can be sent after Sasuke. #4 is Ino. #5 is last because, as you can see, Sakura doesn't like to clean her room. All these things are ranked by their importance to her. Sasuke, training, Naruto, Ino, housework. Also, guess what photo it was that "she tore him out of." There are two firsts in this one. #1 on the list, and first steps in repairing a friendship. Wow. The Notes here are practically as long as the chapter.
