Kyūsuke

His long black hair frames eyes with narrow, cat-like slit pupils, and dark markings ring and streak the skin beneath them. In his early days he tied on a black Amegakure forehead protector and dressed simply, a sleeveless kimono in light brown with darker sleeves, a pale scarf wound over his throat, and a sword slung across his back. Once he joined the group he took up its trademark cloak, the black zip-up robe finished with a red zipper in the anime.

Kyusuke kept mostly to himself, speaking up only when something genuinely warranted it, yet a lighter streak surfaced in the way he called Yahiko his brother. His younger self had been rougher, willing to raid a small village for supplies while still balking at needless violence. Boldness defined him on the battlefield and in matters of the heart alike, and he wasted no time confessing to Konan, which nettled Yahiko, who nursed his own feelings for her. When she turned him down, he took it in stride, keeping both their partnership and his respect for her entirely intact.

Weary of life under Hanzo, Kyusuke slipped out of Amegakure and fell in with a band that survived by robbing villages. That path led them to a settlement guarded by a fledgling group calling itself Akatsuki, whose three members turned the raiders away with ease. Suspecting they answered to Hanzo, Kyusuke pressed them, but Yahiko's insistence that they wanted only peace, and the sincerity behind it, won him over, and he and his companions signed on. Yahiko refused to treat the newcomers as underlings, calling them comrades instead. Kyusuke took charge of spreading Akatsuki's name and fielding requests for its help, and his remarkable speed, the source of his Swift Foot nickname, made him the obvious pick for reconnaissance and intelligence work. He fought chiefly with a sword and could fuse earth and fire chakra into Lava Release, hardening it into quicklime.

When Hanzo dangled a false offer of alliance, the group rejoiced, only for Kyusuke to grow wary at word of Konoha Anbu near Hanzo. Rushing toward their supposed allies, he and the others were cut off by Tobi and Zetsu, who meant to see the trap through so Nagato's Rinnegan would awaken. Determined to protect the people who had given him back a sense of purpose, Kyusuke fought on even after Tobi's intangibility rendered his strikes useless and he was run through by his own blade. In a final gambit he pinned Tobi so Daibutsu could bind him with water while his quicklime tried to petrify them both, a sacrifice he accepted would kill him. Tobi teleported clear at the last moment, and his death came to nothing.