Hana Kaka

Slender and pale, Hana stands at a middling height with striking red eyes. Her straight black hair falls to her waist and fades to red at the tips, swept into a side-ponytail that drapes over her right shoulder. Day to day she wears a Konoha headband, a cropped top and long purple skirt layered over grey mesh and leggings, finished with dark kunoichi sandals.

When the assassin within surfaces in her mind, the colours of her hair reverse, black now tipping red locks. For missions she wraps her frame in bandages beneath a hooded purple robe and black gloves, concealing her face with an ornate purple mask marked by deep-purple lips and shadow ringing the right eye.

Two minds inhabit Hana. The original is a mild, soft-voiced woman weighed down by timidity and self-doubt, forever wishing she could command a classroom yet caring so deeply for her pupils that she learns their interests and throws herself into their troubles, even at risk to her own safety. Her earnestness wins people over despite her constant fumbling, and Anko notes she aced the teaching aptitude tests.

Forged in a brutal childhood, her dominant second self is the opposite: patient, fearless, coldly tactical, and attached to no one, tossing aside a gift from her students without a thought. This side carries a sadistic streak, feeding false hope to victims only to crush it and savouring the anguish it inflicts on its gentler half. When the original discovers the killer's deeds, guilt drives her to surrender herself, but the assassin, judging her a liability, tries to erase her outright.

Even so, Hana refuses to hate her counterpart, viewing her as a child who only ever learned to live for the mission. Grateful to her for their survival, she hopes one day to teach that darker self to be more than a weapon and to one day call her a friend.

A decade after the Fourth Shinobi World War, still a child herself, Hana is planted in Konohagakure to pose as a teacher. Her natural shyness makes her early classes a struggle, and Anko Mitarashi steps in to help her settle. When she brings in Team 7 as guest instructors, she frets that her students prize flashy jutsu over substance, and she works to mend the rivalries that surface among them. Beneath the surface, her assassin self begins probing Kawaki, whom she learns is a hired guard for the visiting princess Kae Yukiwari, manipulating rogue ninja into a hostage scheme and later leaking Kawaki's true identity to the class.

During a school festival she rigs the grounds with paper bombs, and the resulting blast lands her in the hospital, though she cannot recall her own actions. To close out her mission she stages the assassin's death using a disguised corpse. As fragments of her battles with Kawaki return, Hana uncovers a hidden room stocked with assassin gear and realises she is the culprit, resolving to confess before her darker half seizes full control and locks her consciousness away.

Masquerading as the kind teacher, the killer arranges survival training on a remote island, abducts Kae, and feigns stabbing her to lure off her pursuers. Cornered at last by Kawaki and Himawari, and with her Bamboo allies rounded up by the Anbu, the assassin moves to take her own life, but the cheers of her students let the true Hana surge back and reclaim her body. Offered the chance to have her counterpart erased, she refuses, choosing instead to suppress and slowly reform her, and she later sees Kae off at the train station.