Ryūzetsu

Ryūzetsu's grey eyes carry faint concentric rings that echo the Rinnegan's pattern. Pale-skinned, she lets white hair grow to her waist and drapes a green bandana over it, one bearing a long curving white stripe that once belonged to Muku. Her outfit pairs a sleeveless kimono with a green undergarment whose single long sleeve covers only her left arm, and bandages wind up both forearms to the elbow. Black trousers and shinobi sandals finish the look. To slip into Hōzuki Castle she passed herself off as a man, and no one around her guessed otherwise until she shed the kimono to dry it in Naruto's presence.

Losing her friend in childhood hardened Ryūzetsu into a reserved young woman, seldom given to laughter. Sharp of mind and firm of will, she is anchored by a strong moral compass and a fierce sense of loyalty. Those traits show in her refusal to sacrifice Naruto so the relic would stay shut, in throwing herself between him and Muku's claw to be impaled at his side, and finally in pouring the last of her own vitality into his body to spare his life.

Ryūzetsu grew up in the Grass Flower Group of the Hidden Grass, where she and Muku, the son of Mui, shared a dream of restoring their village's former greatness. That dream shattered when she watched Mui offer up his own son in a doomed bid to unlock the Box of Ultimate Bliss, an act that left behind nothing of Muku but his green scarf. Years later she tied that scarf around her head and pushed into Hōzuki Castle, determined both to stop Mui from prying the Box open again and to settle the debt owed for Muku's death. Muku himself had judged her a prodigy, and she carried the credentials to match: an Anbu's gift for infiltration that let her roam the fortress almost freely, capable taijutsu, and Fire Release that could conjure flame-like phantoms even while a technique dampened her chakra. She also bore a rare clan gift, a life-transferring kekkei genkai able to mend or restore another at the price of the user's own, backed by a life force so stubborn she kept moving and casting jutsu after a wound tore clean through her body.

She first crossed paths with Naruto inside the prison, cautioning the fellow captive against inviting more trouble. When he flung himself off a cliff into churning surf during an escape, she dove after him and dragged him out, then slapped him and set the record straight about her sex after he mistook her for a man. The two joined forces against Mui and the Box. A later attempt to kill Mui in his sleep turned out to strike Maroi wearing his face, which knitted a second alliance; during a riot she lunged at Mui again only to find Kazan transformed in his place, while the true Mui hauled the Box into the yard and used Naruto's chakra to open it. To her shock, Mui's wish was simply to see his son once more rather than to revive the village, and to her horror the returning Muku, warped by the beast Satori, ran his own father through. Because Satori fed on fear and bloodlust and found neither in her, Ryūzetsu kept pleading with Muku even as the creature rampaged; when its claw drove toward Naruto she leapt to shield him and both were impaled. Naruto finished Satori and Muku with a wind-charged Rasenshuriken, and father and son died together. With Naruto's wound beyond Sakura's healing, Ryūzetsu stepped in and spent her Dragon Life Reincarnation to pull him back, giving her own life away. She kissed him, charged him to carry her will forward, and was laid to rest beside Mui outside the castle, Muku's bandana knotted around her grave.