Okay, there's a very long story behind this one. And by story I mean rant.

First and foremost, I'm all for female Shinobi, and for the most part, Naruto does a very good job of portraying them as such. Hinata, Tenten, Temari, even Ino, they aren't just filler characters to be paired with someone. They do something, or have a special ability that makes them useful. And then there's Sakura.

While I clearly see where they may be leading her character in the future scheme of things, for the most part she has done absolutely...nothing...useful. She tags along and acts as cannon fodder or some sort of motivation for another character. This is usually accomplished by her getting herself into a stupid situation...see the fight with Gaara. That, plus while the characters of Sasuke and Naruto seem to have grown and evolved as the series goes on, Sakura has remained virtually the same. She still pines for Sasuke, which I really don't have an issue with, but she's still the tag along, and THAT irks me to no end.

So where does this pic come in? Well, I like messing with the mythos of the fandoms I frequent. Given the opportunity, I would gladly muck about with the characters and scenarios in Greek Mythology and twist those around. This is a sort of 'What If' picture of Sakura after Sasuke knocks her out and leaves Konoha. For the most part, just a concept design in my ongoing saga of "How to Make Sakura a Badass". And more playing with perspective, because I suck at perspective, especially on backgrounds.

Whew....that was long. Yeah, drawn and then scanned and colored in photoshop.