Kura Kageno

Kura is a small girl who all but vanishes beneath a black, cat-eared hood that shadows her eyes, a bell dangling at her throat and a tail poking out behind. Shorts, black stockings, and plain sandals round out the outfit. Her upper teeth peek past her lip, giving her a faintly fanged look.

Reserved by nature, Kura tends to linger at the fringe of a group, watching in silence rather than joining in, though she gladly soaks up gossip about her classmates. Horror holds a genuine pull for her; she eagerly signed on to probe the Academy's Seven Mysteries, only to lose her nerve partway through and flee. She takes pride in her family's fighting style even while her execution of it stays clumsy. That heritage lies in concealed weaponry, so she carries a startling stash of hidden items on her person, enough to leave Eho puzzled over where she keeps it all, though she often fumbles to find the right one in a pinch.

Kura enrolled with a fresh Academy class in Konohagakure, placed under the new teacher Hana Kaka among classmates who included the Seventh Hokage's daughter and Kae Yukiwari, princess of the Land of Bamboo, along with the older student Kawaki. She cheered Kae on when the princess dropped her polished front, marvelled at Mitsuki's Lightning Release during a Team 7 demonstration, and threw herself into the class's contests and outings. For the group's play about the Sannin she ran the special effects, using smoke bombs to imitate a summoning. Her practical touch proved its worth during a survival exercise gone wrong on a remote island, where the students discovered their teacher was an assassin who had killed Kae. Kura produced a rope to bridge a broken crossing and dug up an old edition of the Academy paper that helped narrow the search, feeding the effort that ultimately reached Kae and restored Hana's true self. With the princess bound for home, the class finally staged its Sannin play and saw her off at the train station.