Ryūki

Gaunt and towering, Ryūki is little more than skin stretched over jutting bone. Spikes of blond hair rise at the sides of his head with a few strands loose across his brow, and his deep-set red eyes sit near a lone earring in the left lobe. A long dark cloak drapes him, its tall collar rising around the neck and the character for evil sewn down the back, worn above plain trousers and sandals. Where his left arm should be, a prosthetic takes its place.

Ryūki loathes how the shinobi world is built and dreams of tearing it apart to sit at its head. Immortality consumes him; convinced Jashin has already granted it, he charges the enemy beneath a downpour of falling weapons, screaming that no blade can touch a deathless man, and he keeps up the same raving even after he is chained. He idolises Hidan, guards Jashin's honour so fiercely that he forbids Mirai a single insult, and calls himself the man's second coming, sure the two would have battled side by side. Cruelty delights him, from tormenting Mirai and Tatsumi to feeling no shame at all about luring and stealing away young girls.

The quiet that followed the Fourth Shinobi World War struck Ryūki as a rot that left nations and people soft, so he resolved to walk Hidan's road to deathlessness and use it to drown the world in ruin under his rule. Winning that gift from Jashin demanded a heavy count of offerings. He and his followers took to snatching young women who crossed the Land of Hot Water, working its mountain trails as a hunting ground and baiting their victims with the promise of a reunion with the dead.

His faith opens forbidden blood arts to him: a curse rite that lets him wound a target by way of a linked puppet once their blood connects the two. He rules his cult as a respected leader and lays careful plans, though genjutsu undoes him easily and he cannot slip a thrown kunai. In his hands rests a great twin-headed scythe in Hidan's mould, which he turns to drawing blood, backed by rows of spear-like arms rigged into a cave ceiling to rain down on whoever stands below; a drug slipped to the captives leaves them open to suggestion.

In the Steam Ninja Scrolls tale, a grieving Tatsumi begs Ryūki for a word with her dead mother, and he asks that she deliver one last recruit in trade. She brings Mirai Sarutobi, who spurns his drugged water and, when the cult moves on her, reveals her Konoha colours. Ryūki admits to the kidnappings and turns to cut Tatsumi down so the two might meet beyond death, but Mirai shields her and routs the Jashinists. Falling back on his curse, he swallows blood Mirai had shed and stabs a bound puppet through its heart, seeming to fell her, only for her to rise and reveal the red liquid as spring water tinted by illusion. Out of tricks, he is beaten by her Wind Release: Whirlwind Fist and handed, with his followers, to Yugakure.