Ryōgi

Ryōgi's eyes are grey with black pupils, his red hair reaching the shoulders. Ordinarily he dresses in a sweater-like top over a shirt, with gloves, long green trousers, and the traditional black ninja sandals.

In Byakuya Gang guise he changes into a poncho beaked at its lower hem, a long-haired black wig, and a white mask, plus black trousers, those same sandals, and gloves drawn fully over his hands to conceal the mark that identifies the gang's members.

In his early years Ryōgi was a cheerful boy who worshipped his father and hoped to grow into someone like him. The loss of both parents and a fabricated 'truth' about the world hardened him into a calm, notably mature youngster, courteous and happy to meet new people, yet utterly devoted to the Byakuya Gang, a devotion Gekkō never questioned. Like Shikadai Nara, he holds that life is seldom straightforward, seeing the world as corrupt and believing only hard choices can set it right. That conviction owed much to Gekkō's genjutsu, however; the moment it lifted, Ryōgi fell into such disillusion that he nearly gave up on living, and only Shikadai's urging to keep searching for himself pulled him through.

Ryōgi's boyhood was simple and happy until the night his father staggered home mortally wounded and died; the killer, exposed as Gekkō, then murdered his mother too. As Gekkō turned on him, raw terror awoke the boy's Ice Release and forced the man back before he blacked out. Impressed by that power, Gekkō rewrote the child's memories to pin the deaths on someone else, took him in, and claimed that both his father and Gekkō had secretly belonged to the noble-thief band called the Byakuya Gang, sworn to bring real justice to the world. Ryōgi agreed to join. Combining Water and Wind Release, he wields the Ice Release kekkei genkai to freeze things on contact, drop his body temperature, and sheet the ground to pin or cage his enemies, and he can hurl a volley of ice darts sharp enough to hurt even those who guard against them. Clever beyond his years, he plotted the gang's heists alone and routinely bested the shrewd Shikadai at shōgi.

Once the Byakuya Gang moved into Konohagakure, Ryōgi and his father cased the village to map out their robberies, and it was there he bonded with Shikadai over a shared worldview and a love of shōgi. He wriggled out of a trap laid by Team 7 during one mission and steered them toward a poor village his gang had lately helped, meaning to parade the nobility of their cause. A later heist brought Team 5 down on him, and he hurt Metal Lee while getting away. His continued shōgi meetings with Shikadai ended in a confrontation over his gang ties; Ryōgi denied it all until Shikadai baited the truth from him, then brushed aside the warning that walking a thief's path would end only in his death, snapping that Shikadai's sheltered life had never forced him to struggle, and left.

For their last job the gang branded the Kaminarimon Company as corrupt, and with genjutsu and swelling public sympathy tying up the village's ninja among the protesters, they looted the Ninjutsu Research Centre of its whole trove of ninjutsu data. A tracker Katasuke Tōno had slipped onto Gekkō let Team 10 and Boruto trail them to the border, and while the others covered the retreat, Shikadai and Boruto broke through to chase Ryōgi and Gekkō onto a moving train. There Shikadai reached out once more, but Ryōgi rejected him as a savage headache took hold. Gekkō calmed him while quietly tightening the cursed seal and spurred him on, and Ryōgi sealed the pair inside a dome of ice as Gekkō escaped. The straining seal drove his attacks wild, until Shikadai, with Boruto's help, closed in and broke it. His memory restored, Ryōgi conceded but crumpled into despair at having nothing left, and Shikadai vowed to help him find himself again. The Seventh Hokage seized Gekkō, both thieves were jailed, and Shikadai stayed in touch with him thereafter.