gaara, GENIN

• Fuuton

Gaara is a little shorter than the average males of his age, which is mainly due to the fact that he was born prematurely. He has fair skin and short, spiky, auburn hair which was sometimes appears as red in certain light. He has green eyes the pupils of which, are mostly invisible. Gaara has no distinctive eyebrows either. He has two very notable traits in his appearance: firstly, he has tanuki-like black eye rings, having them since his birth. Secondly, he carved the kanji "love" (愛, ai) on the left side of his forehead, having it since Yashamaru's betrayal. Gaara's forelocks are parted from the left side, making the kanji more visible.

A black full body suit with t-shirt-like sleeves, ¾-length legs, and an open neck. With this, he also wears a white cloth over his right shoulder and the left side of his hips, and a wide leather band system over the left shoulder and right side of his hips. With this leather band, he carries his gourd that contains his sand. His black forehead protector is also wrapped over the band. The attire is very simple yet useful for Gaara, not limiting movement and not flashy enough to draw attention if not for the immense gourd of sand on his back.

Once a kind and gentle soul, Gaara was forever changed by the actions of his uncle Yashamaru which twisted his personality into a dark amalgamation of fear, greed and bloodlust. The belief that no one loved him led to his current psychological state, going so far as to etch the kanji for love into his forehead in order to exemplify the idea of a “demon loving only itself”, living up to the name which his mother gave him. Gaara is emotionally withdrawn and silent, consumed with a loathing for everyone but himself and the “Mother” which resides in his mind, a name for the voice of Shukaku which he always hears. Gaara gains pleasure and a reason to live from annihilating anything that poses a threat to his existence leading to an extreme form of existentialism. Shukaku makes this side of Gaara worse as it demands blood in order to satiate its own bloodlust, resulting in Gaara’s remorselessness. A side effect of being the container of the Shukaku, Gaara suffers from an extreme case of insomnia due to the fact that if he were to sleep the demon within would begin to take over and eat away at his soul, a fear that has pervaded his life since he was born. A more extreme hatred is extended towards his father due to the multiple assassination attempts, all of them failed of course, but his misanthropic nature extends to his elder siblings who he sees as mere strangers of tools, not as his family, despite the fact that they have never offended him directly.

Gaara and Naruto Uzumaki grew up in a similar fashion, both longed for the day in which they would be loved and understood by the people of their village. Both had to live with the unbearable loneliness that was consuming them day in and day out. They both longed for the day in which they would be free of the prejudices of other to be seen as human beings and not the demons which lived inside of them and they were both driven to separate states of desperation and depression. While Naruto developed the idea that it was pranks and other kinds of mischief that would bring him the attention he sought, Gaara came to the abrupt conclusion that the only way to affirm his existence was to kill any and all things that challenged that very concept. Gaara came to believe that in the absence of outside recognition, he could compensate by valuing himself above every other person.

Born the premature youngest son of the Fourth Kazekage, Gaara was entrusted with responsibility before he was even born, his father forcing Chiyo to seal Shukaku within him before he was born with the hope that his unborn son would become the ultimate weapon of Sunagakure due to the fact that the unborn Gaara was the only one of his three children compatible with the beast. Due to the fact that he was premature he was unusually small and frail, before her death his mother vowed to always protect him because of that fact. From an incredibly young age the only contact Gaara had with his father was during Ninjutsu training, most of his true parenting coming from his maternal uncle, Yashamaru.

His status as the vessel of Shukaku led the villagers to be afraid of young Gaara despite his efforts to attempt to gain any kind of friendship he could. They feared him, seeing him as the monster sealed within him rather than Gaara as a person in and of himself. Yashamaru was the only person who seemed to care about Gaara and on the occasions when Gaara would unintentionally harm others subconsciously with the power of Shukaku it was Yashamaru who understood it wasn’t his intention to harm anyone at all and come to his aid. The frequent attacks by Gaara due to the power of Shukaku however was cause for alarm in the Sunagakure council which led to his father attempting to test him by having Yashamaru attack and subsequently tell Gaara that his mother never loved him in an attempt to test not only Gaaras control over the Shukaku but also his psyche.

At first Gaara was convinced that the attack by Yashamaru was the direct order of his father, Yashamaru lied to him and told Gaara that he willingly accepted the mission in order to avenge the death of his sister. A second lie coming into play when Yashamaru told Gaara that his mother named him after the phrase “a self-loving carnage” (我を愛する修羅, Ware o aisuru shura), a sign for the intense hatred that she felt for Suna and not out of the love for her son. Yashamaru tried to sacrifice himself, detonating a large number of explosive tags that were covering his body in a last ditch effort to kill Gaara asking him to “please die”. Gaara survive however due to his shield of sand and the only thing that was lost was the person whom he thought had cared for him. This was the event that caused Gaara to etch the kanji for love onto his forehead, as well as forcing Gaara to go berserk and transform into Shukaku before his father stopped him with his Gold Dust.

It was this event that caused Gaara to become the aloof and cruel person he is today, willing to kill anyone or anything in order to affirm his own existence. This was the event that caused the once innocent boy who wanted only friendship to turn to the dark and truly embrace what was inside of him, a demon. His father deeming his son as a failed container for the Shukaku then attempted to assassinate the young boy but every attempt failed. Gaaras hatred for his father grew but at the same time seeing Gaaras new psychological state being an asset in the control of Shukaku called off all assassination attempts finally seeing once and for all that Gaara had become what his father had always dreamed: a perfect human weapon.