Hidan

Hidan slicks his medium-length grey hair back and looks out through unusual violet eyes. He generally goes bare-chested, once wrapping his midriff in bandages above maroon trousers, and after enlisting in the Akatsuki he threw their cloak loosely over the same shirtless frame, letting it hang open to show the slashed Yugakure headband at his throat and the amulet of Jashin resting on his chest. He finishes the look with grey trousers, dark green nail polish, and his order's orange ring bearing the character for three on his left index finger; his Triple-Bladed Scythe rides on his back whenever he is not swinging it. His clash with Asuma cost him a piece of his left ear, and Kakuzu had to stitch his neck back together after a brief beheading.

Crude, profane, and quick to complain at friend and foe alike, Hidan made an odd sort of zealot. He rarely bothered with honorifics except to sneer, needling Deidara as "Deidara-chan," and he alone among the Akatsuki flatly refused to respect their leader, saying openly that he would gladly kill him. His only genuine reverence was reserved for Jashin, the death-god whose faith he embraced after his home of Yugakure traded its shinobi ways for tourism; enraged that killers were being tamed into peace, he butchered his neighbours and left. To him murder was a sacred duty, and he savoured drawing out an enemy's suffering, taking a masochist's delight in the pain his own rituals forced him to share. His constant mockery of Kakuzu's greed and blasphemy masked a flicker of real concern, as his panic on nearly killing his partner revealed, and he warmed genuinely to anyone who took interest in his religion, even vowing to honour one such man as a martyr.

Hidan's signature gift is a near-total inability to die, a prize won through Jashinist experiments that leaves starvation as about the only thing that can finish him. He shrugs off wounds that would kill anyone else and keeps functioning through dismemberment, still cursing aloud after decapitation, though his head must be rejoined to his body before he can move it. He heals with startling speed, mending crushed ribs, punctures, and burns within days, and his sheer durability withstands almost any blow short of being cut apart. This deathlessness is exactly why Kakuzu kept him as a partner, since fits of rage that killed off previous teammates could do Hidan no lasting harm.

In combat he is a bukijutsu specialist who wields a red Triple-Bladed Scythe on a long retractable cable, guiding it along curving, unpredictable paths that are hard to read, though he admitted the weapon's bulk made him the slowest striker in the Akatsuki. He makes up for it with remarkable agility, twisting through the air to slip past Shikamaru's shadow. His true horror, however, is his curse: after tasting an opponent's blood and marking a Jashin symbol on the ground, he binds his body to theirs and takes on a black, skeleton-patterned form, becoming a living voodoo doll so that every wound he inflicts on himself strikes his victim as well. He toys with targets using retractable spears before impaling his own heart to finish them. The ritual is slow and demanding, and the link breaks if he steps outside his mark. It was this power that let him slay Asuma Sarutobi, and it was only Shikamaru who truly stopped him, blowing him apart and burying the still-conscious pieces deep beneath the Nara clan forest, where he lingers on, slowly wasting away.