Kurage

## Background

Kurage is the alternate identity adopted by Haruno Sakura when she joins Root. It is implied that she keeps both identities strictly separate, avoiding all thoughts related to the other side of her during her down time. The name Kurage is the japanese word for jellyfish, a code name given to her first by the ANBU Commander Kuma, and later kept and re-used by Danzo. It is revealed that the one who first coined the name for her was Uchiha Itachi, calling Sakura 'little jellyfish' when he first met her during Sasuke's eighth birthday party.

## Personality

Kurage is much more assertive and even agressive than the regular Haruno Sakura. She often acts arrogantly, notably taunting Kifu / Eizen on numerous occasions, and even treating Danzo as an equal, rather than a superior.

Her personality is based upon the duality between Sakura and Kurage.

> *A cold green eye peeked out behind the mask, intense as she met her own gaze in the mirror. She had propped the ANBU mask of the day sideways over her face, so that only half of it was covered, her hands in turn covering most of the mask.*
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> *She was used to wearing gloves – well, Sakura was – but her gloves were never this long. Kurage’s ANBU gloves reached mid-biceps, almost like a parody of those white ball gown gloves she’d worn on the day she had slaughtered those assholes.*
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> *Her mind cast back to their screams as she boiled them alive in the ship’s hot tub. It hadn’t really been a Root-sanctioned mission, that. Wouldn’t have been, but Danzo had had no complaints when she’d told him she wasn’t taking that other assignment because she had a date with destiny in Kiri.*
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> *More like a date with her team’s murderers. She smiled bitterly. Between her hand holding the mask and the mask itself, both covering her face, her lips were not visible in the mirror. Only that green eye, staring straight into her soul.*
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## Appearance

Kurage often changes her appearance for missions, but her baseline is dark red hair, cut so that her left side is almost shaved off, whereas her right side has long hair, with bangs that often fall over one of her eyes. Her breasts are concealed with bandages, giving her a purposefully androgenous apperance meant to help confuse those attempting to find her identity. She keeps her eyes green in order to have one constant feature that her teammates can cling to when looking for her within the disguises she often wears but often changes her skin colour, or even her height and gender.

> *When she was finished, she opened her eyes and… voilá. Her hair was a dark red colour, almost like blood.*
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## Abilities

Kurage is an expert in disguise and infiltration, skilled enough at repressing her chakra to completely erase her presence (something no other adult shinobi has managed before). Kurage is also capable of utilizing all of Haruno Sakura's attacks, but she tends to avoid doing so, as it would be too risky in terms of giving her identity away. She boasts control over wind and water nature jutsu, being also able to smash the earth easily with a punch or kick, which makes it easy to pretend she can use earth nature by timing a tap of her heel with hindsigns.

During her period serving under Kifu / Eizen, Kurage developed certain skills to help her survive, and later, thrive in ANBU Root.

### Super Jumps

Kurage is capable of jumping twenty to thirty meters in height and landing without injuring herself, a skill which has been shown to have saved her life many times. If a fight becomes complicated, she always has the option of using a super jump to buy herself a few seconds away from her opponent.

### Oxygen Suction

This was the first jutsu developed by Haruno Sakura in order to survive as a genin in times of the post-Crush Konoha, but as it isn't known as one of her signature techniques, Kurage is free to use it. This technique is useful, as it can be used to automatically cancel any combustion reactions ie. turn off explosion tags.

### Storm Walking

Derived from Waterfall Walking, Storm Walking is the name Sakura coined for her training episodes in the Naka River rapids (place of Uchiha Shisui's suicide) during storms. While not a jutsu, per se, Sakura used this exercise to develop her control to such an extent that she has long surpassed Tsunade's, and, theoretically, could easily dodge a water dragon jutsu by simply scating down it.

### Clothes-drying jutsu

While deceptively weak-sounding, with this technique, Sakura or Kurage could shred anything closeby with carefully controlled wind chakra, or, if her aim wasn't to kill, she could merely dry clothes. Being able to dry clothes quickly can be essential in battle as a wet individual is much more easily electrocuted. An alternate use of this jutsu is to move airborne poisons towards a target without being noticed (Sakura used this to drug Mirai / Kurenai).

### Cancer Blades

This jutsu was used primarily by Haruno Sakura, but it would, of course, also be in Kurage's arsenal. It is shown that Sakura only resorts to this technique when in borderline situations, once she loses control, the two incidences being during the fight against the sand rebells during her first mission with Su-san and during her escape from T&I. While not yet much explored in the series, this jutsu is capable of causing cancer on anyone touched by it.

### Kusarigana Abilities

After defeating one of the Suna rebells by grabbing his Kusarigana (a chain and sickle type of weapon), Sakura began to use the weapon for her own purposes, mainly as a capture weapon or long to midrange attack weapon, capable of having wind chakra channeled into it.

### Water Boiling

A skill stolen from the Boiler, Kurage is known for her mastery over water jutsu, and more particularly, being able to make water boil.

### Fuinjutsu Abilities

While not a master capable of creating great skills, Kurage is proficient at breaking them, combining her extensive knowledge of seals (always focused on how to break them) together with her superb chakra control.

### Medical Ninjutsu

Kurage is of course a medical ninja, though she has to hide her skills in order to avoid being discovered.

### Underwater Breathing

Sakura is shown to be able to last a long time underwater, even up to a day, during her mission to kill the Boiler.

### Fire Resistance

It is also shown that, while not invulnerable, Sakura's medical skills give her a degree of resistance to fire.

### The Founder's Taijutsu

While training under Touka, Sakura picked up the founder's taijutsu styles, focusing mainly on Senju Tobirama's, but going out of her way to learn both. She also learned the nidaime's kenjutsu style, which she later fused with the monkey stick (short staff) forms also learned from him.

### Kurenai's Genjutsu

Sakura managed to steal all of Mirai/Kurenai's genjutsu, and, thanks to the help of her prior genjutsu training owed to reading Senju Touka's book on the matter, as well as some of her research on chakra natures, was able to rework all of Kurenai's techniques to work for her. (Kurenai's jutsu were meant to work for an earth user, not a wind user.)

### Chakra Braids

A new technique Sakura began developing when she planned to impersonate Itachi, which would consist of 'storing' a technique ie. a genjutsu in the form of a chakra braid until the time was ripe to use it in battle, saving the user the chakra drain and the long handisgn sequence (genjutsu being known for requiring many handsigns).

### Feather Flutter Jutsu

Jutsu invented by Sakura during her time at the temple with Kakashi, during the rooftop spars, which involves her switching places with an object of very low mass, like a feather or a pebble. An ordinary substitution would only work with an object of much greater mass, so the feather flutter is much more versatile, even more so than a hiraishin on short distances, not requiring kunai being thrown. However, it does require prepping the technique by forming two chakra threads, one to be attached to a solid, inmovable surface, and one to be attached to the target one wants to switch places with.

An additional advantage of this jutsu is that momentum is conserved, and so speed is easily gathered.

### Wind Scalpels

Kakashi secretly taught Sakura many of the jutsu he knew, including Asuma's wind blade technique, later rmerged with Sakura's chakra scalpels to create a whistling, imposing jutsu that they jokingly called 'wolf whistle jutsu', or more simply, wind blade.

## Biography

Kurage was created when Tsunade warned Sakura that she could only participate in the ANBU exams if she was not recognized by anyone. From there, she created the disguised based on plastic surgery, rather than a hengue, thus inventing her signature disguise ability. When it still looks like that she will be allowed to join ANBU, Sakura visits the maker of masks, who goes under the alias "Kishimoto", who also calls her jellyfish and makes a mask for her depicting a weeping woman - blank, as masks are only painted on during ANBU's initiation ritual.

Later, after feeling humiliated by Rock Lee's refusal to spar with her seriously, Sakura formally creates Kurage, calling herself Habu Kurage ("viper jellyfish") and seeking Lee to challenge him to a match while pretending to be her own boyfriend.

Later, upon her induction to Root, Danzo chose to let her keep Kurage as her alias, explaining the dangers of habu kurage jellyfish, a local name for the lethal subspecies of box jellyfish endemic in Japan, known for being transparent and extremely poisonous.

Once formally a member of Root, Kurage stays on as a member of team Kifu / Eizen for less than a year before giving her own team, which she has captaincy over for some months, before they all perish on the assassination mission of The Boiler. This mission was pivotal in changing her as a person and as a ninja, and in ensuring that Kurage became a separate entity from Haruno Sakura. In particular, this moment:

> *And where was Sakura during all of this? Where was she? She was… not sure.*
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> *She was there. There, but not there. War drams beat in her head at a fever pitch, her eyes watered, her throat constricted. She didn’t scream, like the others. She had hengued her skin  dark blue like the ocean at the start of the battle, and since she could turn off the pain receptors, not even the boiling water she was floating in had broken her concentration.*
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> *With her camouflage she  went unseen, unnoticed by all. She couldn’t move, could only just… just stare at what was happening.*
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> *Her dying teammates would think she’d abandoned them…*
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> *She was supposed to be the up-and coming new Root captain. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t a nightmare, but it felt like one. She felt like she was about to wake up. If she said kai, she would  discover that this was all just a simulation. Except, for a genjutsu, they were doing a pretty dark good job at cooking her skin alive. She doubted even Uchiha Itachi’s mangekyo could emulate the ins and outs of boiling a human, the itsy bitsy details like protein denaturation, for he didn’t know how the process worked on a molecular level. Sakura’s  proteins were denaturating. If she used the medical palm on her teammates, they’d likely be much worse.*
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> *Vile rushed up her gullet, and then pounding increased. Reality itself seemed to be pounding, slowing down between each blow to her head so that she was watching it unfold as if in a dream,  like some sort of wallflower. Beyond everything, beyond her pain and her anguish and the war drums, she just felt… incredulous. Some part of her had thought this would never happen. Not to her. Not to her team. And yet…*
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> *Their screams were testament enough.*
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> *It was all she could do to fight an embittered fight to survive the boiling environment around her, and then, eventually; when that became too much, and her muscles started to give out, she let go.*
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> *And sank,*
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> *and sank,*
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> *and sank…*
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> *She sank until their screams were no longer audible.*
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>  *Until the water became cold again.*
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> *Until it was too dark to see.*
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> *And there she stayed, laid horizontally in the water, and drifted, like a mindless jellyfish:*
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>  *Her ears rang with their screams, even in the quiet.*
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After that, Kurage returns to taking solo missions and missions with Kifu for a while until Danzo obligates her to take another ANBU team, which she will put much more effort into, determined not to allow the past to repeat itself.

It was also shown that Kurage bought Orochimaru's property, remodelling it with the help of her team, and that she was also involved with the sannin on a mission of dubious nature. Kurage was also the person who captured Nara Satoshi after years of his evading the authorities.

## Relationships

Kurage has a good relationship with the members of her second team, Team Kurage, also called team *Cutie Pie* and *the Cuties* by the members of the team Ro captained by Yamato/Tenzo.

Kurage relationship with Waya was perhaps the most turbulent between her and someone from her team, but it improved notably since the inception of Team Kurage, with her even appointing Waya as her second.

> *“Well… I don’t know. What do you want?” She smiled mockingly at him. “House with a picket fence, was it?”*
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> *That knocked the breath out of him. Suddenly, he could picture it: a nice, regal house where he could grow old and spend lazy mornings in bed with some mystery wife, and worry about nothing other than how to clean wine stains on his fancy rug. It sounded like a far-away dream, something he only dared to address in mockery because otherwise it was too painful to even consider. He’d die before he ever got such a house, he’d always thought. He’d die before he met the retirement quote, he just knew it.*
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> *But… the captain was just up and buying an entire estate because she felt like it – heck, she’d already bought propery a while back and was as chill as anything about it. She was younger than him. She wasn’t retired yet. What if he…?*
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> *“Waya?” she was looking at him more attentively now, placing her canteen carefully on the ground, next to her. “Everything alright?”*
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> *“I’m fucking sick of it,” he heard himself growl.*
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> *“I– wh–?”*
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> *The woman made a confused noise, but he’d already stood from his rock and kicked her canteen so furiously, so far back it disappeared from sight.*
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> *“Waya! What–?”*
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> *“I’m fucking sick of you mocking me!”*
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> *“Mocking you? What are you–?”*
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> *“What if I fucking want the house with the picket fence, huh? What then? Are you gonna laugh and call me a coward!?”*
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> *She stared at him in obvious astonishment, which only made him angrier.*
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> *“What if I fucking want the house with the picket fence, huh? What then? Are you gonna laugh and call me a coward!?”*
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> *She stared at him in obvious astonishment, which only made him angrier.*
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> *“Don’t just gape at me like a damned trout!”*
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> *She swallowed, then her lip twitched oddly and she began to snigger.*
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> *“How is this funny?!”*
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> *She only started laughing harder, and somehow his fury and frustration were replaced by embarrassment.*
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> *“I said stop laughing, you stupid trout!”*
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>  *Kurage was only laughing more in earnest now, so earnestly that she just up and slid off her rock in her amusement, plummeting into the grass – and coincidentally landing on a snake, ass first. What happened next was something Waya would probably never forget. Before Kurage could react, the snake proceeded to bite her posterior.*
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> *At this, she yelped, jumping at least three meters into the air, a hand on her ass while she stared at the snake, and now it was Waya’s turn to lose his shit even while his captain flushed like he’d never seen before.*
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> *He laughed for a long time, continuing to lose it even after Kurage had put a shuriken through the snake’s neck and extracted poison from her rear. Waya would only lose it more and more each time he saw her yelp as she pulled some sort of purplish goo out of her ass.*
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> *“I see you find my predicament hilarious,” she remarked dryly, a good twenty minutes after they’d first gotten waylaid and her ass was poison free.*
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Her relationship with Shimura Danzo is one of mutual respect, if not without a healthy dose of suspicion. As for her former team captain, Kifu / Eizen, Kurage is known to often taunt him and get on his nerves, calling him *Diseased One,* but their teamwork is notoriously good. Her relationship with his twin brother, Shingo / Hikaru, is cordial from their few interactions, but she doesn't yet know that he was involved in her torture.

Kurage is also shown to be the side Sakura resorts to to express herself sexually, sleeping with numerous people while under her desguise, such as for instance Seijuro the lawyer.

## Trivia

Kurage as a name shares two syllables with Sakura, and *kura* can also mean shadow.

> *“I know now. Isn’t that the extraordinarily deadly one that fits in a contact lenses case?” Danzou asked, opening another huge door.*
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> *Sakura followed him into the next corridor easily. “Yes. That’s the one! My aunt got stung by it once and she had the scars for the rest of her life… that’s why it is the jellyfish that made the biggest impact on me, I guess.”*
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> *“Ah, yes. It’s coming to me. Causes several deaths a year in the Ryukyu Islands, even shinobi are advised caution when crossing that stretch of water, if I’m not mistaken.”*
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> *“No, that’s the one,” said Sakura. She could still remember how her aunt had described being stung to her when she’d asked her as a small child, curious about the whip-like scars everywhere around her left arm and part of her back.*
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> *“Bah. Hard to explain. The tiny asshole gives you incredible lower back pain that you would think of as similar to an electric drill drilling into your skin. The nurses had to wring out my bed sheets every fifteen minutes. I had so much difficulty in breathing, I couldn’t stop twitching, and every muscle hurt so damn bad. But worst is that… that feeling it gives you after the poison sets in. I was so sure I would die – so certain of it, Sakura, that I actually begged my doctor to kill me just to get it over with. Luckily, the guy wasn’t as far gone as I was. And all of this… from this tiny, invisible jellyfish.”*
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> *“Hm, the reference to the viper jellyfish is a good name,” Danzo concluded. “I can see why you picked it. That species is small, unassuming and hard to spot before it’s much too late.*
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> This is actually a real account of what a sting by a box jellyfish would do to a person.
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Kurage as described by Ka:

> *Kurage’s eyes narrowed at them much like a cat who found a recently-caught mouse not to her tastes. She then took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, closing her glaring eyes. By the time she reopened them, the chatter in the corridor had died down to nothing, all of the agents around her staring at her. The anticipation was palpable in the air.*
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## Quotes

“No, this is not a genin team,” she replied stonily. “But it is a team. So take your masks off and introduce yourselves.”

“I’m Kurage. My hobbies are… Drinking orange juice. I like to watch the sunrise and the pain during stretches. I dislike… watching the sunset and the pain during stretches. I… my resolution for this team is that… It’s not a resolution – it’s a promise. Or maybe…  a warning. No one will die. I will do anything in my power to make that come true. Meaning, if you get in the way of that, I will deal with you.”

*‘His heart leapt in his chest again. Running across the street, sleeping under a bridge for three days until a police officer found him and forced him to go back… He had a faint memory of trying to run away from the orphanage, but it was all blurry and hurt to think about. Some part of him seemed to clench at the mere whisper of the recollection. Somehow, he had known what was coming… even then.’*

“That is not a goal. Strength is a means to an end.”

*NEW TEAM KURAGE TRIALS HELD NEXT WEEK ON MONDAY, NINE O’CLOCK, LOCKER ROOM 7. IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN CERTAIN DEATH, BE SURE TO DROP BY! -* Kurage's notice about open team trials.

*'Sound is Sakura’s concern. Calm down. You’re not her, you don’t care. You don’t care . That’s the fucking point of Kurage. So get your fucking shit together.'*

“Yes, emo. You’re a bit too angry pomeranian-like to truly fit the profile, but let’s just leave it at that anyway.” -Kurage to Waya right before getting their first haircut.

“I’ll take that into consideration when the rules come and scold me. Anything else you wanted?”