Kushimaru Kuriarare

Lean and towering, Kushimaru cuts a gangly figure with long, shaggy straw-blond hair. A white porcelain mask hides his face, marked by a green triangle across its lower half, thin slits for the eyes, and Kirigakure's symbol at the top. He dresses in a sleeveless black shirt and matching trousers with a waist-guard, wears the village's striped wrist and leg guards, and, like the rest of his generation of swordsmen, keeps bandages wound around his neck.

Kushimaru delighted in killing, crucifying countless shinobi and cackling as he worked; his cruelties, which reportedly included murdering his own teacher, were legendary. He bristled at any outsider carrying one of the Seven's blades and resolved to take the Kubikiribōchō back from Kakashi. His constant squabbling with Jinpachi Munashi, paired with their shared savagery, earned the two the nickname the Heartless Pair from Kakashi Hatake.

Counted among the mightiest shinobi Kiri ever raised, in a generation said to be the strongest in the village's history, Kushimaru mastered Silent Killing beneath a curtain of concealing mist. His weapon, the unique longsword Nuibari, let him skewer several foes in rapid succession and then sew them together with a long wire fixed to the blade, catching the needle-like sword again mere moments after driving it through a victim. He also used senbon and buried his wires to build a hidden lattice that could sever an opponent's feet.

Reincarnated by Kabuto Yakushi during the Fourth Shinobi World War, he was summoned alongside the other former swordsmen to overwhelm the Third Division. Retrieving Nuibari from a scroll held by Mangetsu Hōzuki, he cut down a swath of shinobi under a thick mist until Zabuza's defeat cleared it and left him exposed. In the anime he and Jinpachi went on a fresh killing spree at dawn until Kakashi intercepted them, and the teamwork of Kakashi and Might Guy, together with his endless bickering with Jinpachi, proved his undoing. Once the Impure World Reincarnation was released, his sealed body was freed and his soul returned to the afterlife.