Penjira

Slight and wiry, Penjira has tanned skin, blue eyes, and greying black hair swept up into a mullet-pompadour. A shaved goatee sits on his chin, and he wears the same standard-issue jumpsuit as every other prisoner held at the Astronomy Research Institute.

Gambling governs Penjira's whole life. Losing streaks kept dragging him into debt, which he would shake off by wedding a woman and slipping away with her dowry, clearing his accounts only to drift back to the tables and sink under once more. The habit finally caught up with him when he was seized in the middle of one such wedding. So deep runs his weakness that the mere prospect of a bet can coax him into risks he would otherwise turn down.

Given a one-year term far shorter than what most inmates face, Penjira volunteers to look after the Institute's archives, gambling that the good conduct will trim his sentence. He shares a cell with Jiji, Ganno, and a freshly arrived Sasuke Uchiha, and one evening he lures Sasuke into a round of Chinchirorin. Sasuke stakes a large gem and wins with a concealed puff of Wind Release; since nobody can prove the trick, which prison rules tolerate, Penjira folds and agrees to serve as a lookout, later staging a diversion for the guards rather than go anywhere near the reptilian warden Meno.

Dozing over his archive work, Penjira is roused by Sasuke, who wants help tracking down a book on astronomy. Penjira steers him toward the catalogue but cautions that the volume he wants sits in the forbidden basement, where any trespassing prisoner is executed. Sakura Haruno, newly installed as the prison's physician, catches the exchange and challenges him to a game of Hoshinarabe with the basement key as the stake. Round after round ends level until an exasperated Penjira gives up and surrenders the key, warning that valuable records were carried off decades earlier by a man named Orochimaru.

Later, when Jiji works out Meno's patrol pattern and eggs the others into petting the beast, Penjira unwittingly lets a toe cross the cell boundary, which technically counts as escaping, and Jiji hauls him clear just as Meno strikes. His thanks turn sincere once the near miss is explained to him. When reincarnated dragons burst out across the prison, Penjira joins Ganno to pin a downed one and hammer at its knees, keeping its wounds from mending until Sasuke and Sakura manage to send the dragons back to the afterlife.