Cursed Warrior

The Cursed Warrior took the form of a spectral samurai clad in pale armour, its name translating literally as the white cursed warrior. Unnervingly, the suit proved hollow whenever it was confronted: Neji's Byakugan detected no living presence inside, and after being struck it would simply collapse into empty plating.

The figure had no true character of its own, working instead as a fearsome legend. The people of the Land of Birds took it for the restless ghost of Ōwashi, their former ruler, come back to strike down the living, when in reality the armour only ever concealed people acting out a deception.

Behind the haunting lay a plot by the Watari ninja Hōki, who quietly poisoned the true daimyō Ōwashi while posing as the ruler Mōsō. The armoured phantom then terrorised the Land of Birds, and Mōsō sent Chishima to Konoha for aid, prompting Tsunade to dispatch Naruto Uzumaki, Neji Hyūga, and Tenten. Suspicion first settled on Kōmei, the country's strategist, who kept turning up near the apparition. In their opening clash the warrior simply melted away and left its armour behind, and a later fight ended when Naruto's barrage cracked it open, spilling slime as its hidden wearer, one of Hōki's henchmen, escaped at the last second. Kōmei was arrested soon afterward.

The truth unravelled once Naruto, held captive, met the Cursed Warrior again and found Sagi wearing the suit. A wounded Chishima arrived to expose Mōsō's scheme, and when Kōmei faced execution, the armoured figure swept in through a fog and carried him off. Trailing it to Sagi's palace, Neji and Tenten found Naruto sealed inside the armour, and it finally came out that Sagi was really his twin sister Toki in disguise, the actual Sagi having already died. In the end, the person wearing the Cursed Warrior armour was cornered by Mōsō's tricks and a burst of fire that knocked the mask loose, laying the whole masquerade bare.