Mukai Kohinata

Mukai was a heavy drinker and a smoker who reached for both whenever he could. Sure of his own skill, he was confident enough to risk an important mission just to show off for the celebrated Itachi Uchiha, and he could be ruthless in a fight, hammering an enemy leader with a full Eight Trigrams assault when a single strike would have done. It was devotion to his family that pushed him to betray the Leaf, and as he died he owned every crime himself so his wife and children would not be made to answer for it.

Danzo Shimura rated Mukai a near equal to Itachi in raw ability, if not in natural gifts, and he was known to take on far larger groups alone and walk away untouched; his teammates simply left him to it without a word. His edge was the Byakugan hidden in his left eye, a genetic echo of his Hyuga ancestry that looked like an ordinary eye until he activated it. With it he could read chakra to strike an opponent's tenketsu, pick out hidden enemies, and, mindful of the doujutsu's blind spot, drill himself to counter instantly anything aimed there.

That sight fed a feared taijutsu game. He deflected only the kunai that would actually have struck him, split a Great Fireball cleanly in two with the Gentle Fist, and could close on a fleeing target to disembowel them barehanded. Knowing his close-range style left him exposed at distance, he was careful never to let a foe pull away. He was so confident against Itachi and Shisui that only the Mangekyo Sharingan, a power he had never heard of, brought him down.

Mukai's line had branched off the Hyuga generations before his birth, and most assumed the blood had thinned past the point of carrying the Byakugan; in fact one dwelt in his left eye, a secret he kept from all but his closest. He built a strong career, entering the Anbu the same day he made jonin and winning the Third Hokage's confidence. He also had a wife and two children, and when one son fell ill and the treatment outran his means, he began selling Konoha's secrets to Kirigakure.

His duties ranged widely. Assigned to shadow the Land of Fire's visiting daimyo, he and his fellow Anbu were caught in a masked man's genjutsu, freed only by Kakashi before Itachi drove the attacker off. On a later reconnaissance into Suna, his team spied on a secret meeting arranging a Suna-Kiri alliance that would have shattered the peace after the Third Shinobi World War. A tripped trap gave them away on the way out, and rather than run, Mukai stopped to meet the pursuers alone, calmly waiting with sake and a cigarette while his teammates steered a puzzled Itachi clear; he then cut down more than twenty Suna ninja with his Byakugan active.

His treachery finally caught up when Danzo sent Itachi and Shisui to kill him. They trailed him to a meeting with his Kiri handlers, cut the handlers down, and urged him to surrender, but he refused, certain Konoha would show him no mercy. In the fight that followed he neutralised a crow clone, brushed aside a fireball, and worked in on both prodigies, only for Shisui's Mangekyo Sharingan to snare him the instant their eyes met. Caught, he slit his own stomach with a technique meant to foil interrogation, and with the wound past saving he confessed everything to keep his family blameless. Unable to lift a final cigarette himself, he had Itachi set one to his lips and Shisui light it, then told them he would be waiting on the other side.