( scp history )

[respring]

here's the nav for her previous game.

- For her previous game history, Sakura was in thefoundation round 3 (and made a brief appearance at the end of round 4, along with what she did in between rounds), a 6-round murdergame set in the SCP Foundation universe, with round 3 in particular being themed after the visual novel Umineko no Naku Koro ni. She initially arrived in November of 2018, and I will be pulling her right after the end of round 6 in September 2020, so she will have been in the game for about 2 years now. The rounds all share a continuity.

The setup to the game is that a particular SCP, 6350, pulls characters from their home universes and basically 3D prints copies of them in the SCP universe. Sakura was pulled into this universe 4 months prior to the start of R3, and employed as a D-Class agent, the lowest rung of the Foundation hierarchy. As an infinite amount of characters can be pulled from 6350, they are treated as expendable fodder and often sent on dangerous missions lethal to a normal human. Due to the scope of her powers, Sakura was mainly sent on containment missions to secure and/or destroy dangerous SCPs, mostly monsters. She did not enjoy this, though she did gradually get used to being sent on monster-killing assignments.

- R3, however, had Sakura and 22 others being kidnapped from Foundation custody and taken to a strange island in the middle of nowhere. They received a note from a nameless Witch saying that they were to be players in a game. A second witch, claiming to be Yuuko Ichihara, introduced herself, and explained that the players would be representing the anonymous witch against her during a series of murder cases. While the cases would be committed by the pieces themselves, "Yuuko" would claim that it was her doing and present a fantastical recreation of the scene, and it would be the pieces' jobs to prove her wrong, that it was a mystery and not a fantasy. It was eventually uncovered that "Yuuko"'s real name was Nirrti, and she was actually the Witch of Misfortune. The anonymous witch turned out to be someone who had disguised himself as a piece, Yuuko's canonmate Watanuki.

- During the first trial, the pieces were split on who the culprit could have been, and by a slight margin, one named Karen was scapegoated and executed. Sakura was one of those who believed the real culprit, Emi, committed the crime, but as she had no evidence other than a gut feeling, she was unable to help and partially blamed herself for Karen's fate. Although Karen returned the next week, it was as a demon in service of "Yuuko"--who both was and was not Karen, so it did a slight bit to diffuse Sakura's guilt. From then on, she tried to be friendly towards demon Karen.

- Of note in the plot were the the dream visions. The dream visions were given to a select few characters, Sakura being one of them, that gave them a glimpse of the various "bad ends" capable of happening in the game. Sakura's in particular was about convincing Watanuki to abandon his Witch-hood and go back to being a human, which result in Nirrti killing him and then promptly turning on Sakura and the other survivors. The vision being incredibly realistic left her shaken for several days after, though her choosing to help Watanuki to safety within the vision triggered a positive plot flag, as these visions took place in Watanuki's dreams...sort of. It was a mind thing.

- Also present were the storybooks, gained after solving riddles given by characters claiming to be demons, slowly unveiled Nirrti's backstory, presented like plays on a stage. In short, she was a girl in colonial America whose father had murdered his family while she was away, leaving her abandoned and feeling like an outcast. She possessed the ability to heal others and took up a position as her village's healer, but made a few wrong moves and angered the wrong people, resulting in being accused of witchcraft. Her fiancee chose to turn a blind eye to this, and she was burned at the stake, succumbing to hatred and despair. After her death, her remains were scattered in the village's crop field, and in the years to come, Nirrti used her warped magic to poison the crops and curse the village, resulting in many deaths.

- All of this created an eerie parallel to Sakura's life: losing her family, having been horribly mistreated, gaining immense magical power, and then lashing out in revenge, to the point that she killed unrelated bystanders. It caused her to have a minor breakdown, given that seeing Nirrti was a wakeup call to the path she could have walked down had she not been able to shake Angra Mainyu's grip on herself in canon. She later spoke to Nirrti, who agreed to listen whenever Sakura wanted to talk, as they shared similar paths. From this point on, Sakura was firmly in the "save Nirrti" camp, as she couldn't possibly feel hate towards someone so much like herself.

- During said minor breakdown, Sakura confessed that she'd used Angra Mainyu's power to kill many people and wreak havoc, and the reception was...largely accepting, actually. Some tried to reassure her, but the most helpful words she received was that no matter how close to "becoming a Witch" she did, she did not become a Witch. She was still human, and she did not follow that dark path to its conclusion, as becoming an Umineko-style Witch is as much allegorical as it is physical, and a representation of completely giving into one's pain, despair, and hatred. This helped her steel herself in the coming weeks.

- One of the "demons" presenting the puzzles was James Moriarty (Fate/ version), who Sakura became close with. Her lack of a decent fatherly figure led him to pretty much adopt her. Another one of the "demons" was a certain Homestuck character reanimated as a taxidermied zombie, who Sakura managed to shoot with a rifle. She's somewhat (comically) conflicted over this, as while he was a taxidermied zombie coming after her, he was still one of her game-mate's relatives. Two of the other game-mates she grew very close to were Ann Takamaki (who she had some romantic feelings for) and Syaoran (who she trusted enough to tell about her painful past and the Matou family's history). Syaoran was executed as a culprit and, before his death, he asked Sakura to keep Watanuki company. Sakura happily did so, as she also had the experience of spending years feeling completely alone and isolated like he had. This plus the dream vision she went through led to an eventual romantic relationship between them.

- During endgame, the survivors confronted Nirrti with the truth they had learned, and that her sensationalized version of events were less black and white than she remembered. They used this opportunity to give her birth name, Kanval, back to her, and renamed her the Witch of Fortune, after which the fantasy world shattered.

- One would assume that was the end of things, but as Watanuki escorted all of the players, survivors and resurrected victims alike, back to the Foundation headquarters, he was temporarily captured by one of the Foundation's more ruthless scientists, Mayuri Kurotsuchi. With the combined effort of (mostly) everyone around, Mayuri was pushed back and Watanuki was able to escape back to his shop, along with several of the others, Sakura being pushed into the portal by Ann. She spent several months with the shop crew before round 4 started, a televised event. The R4 characters, Moriarty and Karen among them, managed to subtly communicate with the shop crew to ask for their assistance, and at the very end of the round, they appeared to lend a hand, Sakura mostly there to guard the portal. She eventually made the decision to not go back to the Foundation and instead live in the shop.

- r5 goes here when i can brain a writeup

Personality changes:

CRAU changes: Sakura is much, much closer to the version of herself present in Heaven's Feel's True End epilogue--she is more legitimately chipper rather than fake chipper, and while she's still reserved and polite, having been given the chance to live a peaceful life (her time in the shop), the more genuine aspects of her personality have come out. A lesson that was repeated to her and that she's trying to take to heart is that while she did bad things, she can atone for it without beating herself up. This has manifested in her trying to put herself down less and generally be kinder to herself. She is also more confident, more willing to put her foot down, and more able to face her problems head-on rather than grinning and bearing it. Of course, this is not a complete change, but something she's continually working towards. Sakura has also started slowly severing her connections to the Matou family, as in light of Nirrti going back to her old name, she decided to no longer use Matou as her surname and instead use her mother's maiden name, Zenjou.

To address the elephant in the room, while Sakura is dating someone else, she still very much loves Shirou and is conflicted about her relationship with him ending, at least as far as it did in SCP.

new skills/abilities

- can speak English to a passing degree, though not fluently
- is able to operate a 2020-era PC and smartphone (for a fate/ magus yes this is an actual accomplishment)
- has basic firearm training
- more precise control over shadow giants and imaginary number sea