Ryū Uzumaki

Ryū Uzumaki (うずまき龍,Uzumaki Ryū) is a young man hailing from the  from the slowly rebuilding village of Uzushiogakure. Born decades after the destruction of his village, he still considers Uzushiogakure to be his true home and dreams of some day rebuilding the village. This probably stems from the fact that he was born in the ruins of the once proud and prosperous and his destroyed village was the first and only true home he has known. Since the death of his mother he has traveled to various parts of the Shinobi world, searching for the scattered remains of the Uzumaki Clan and other survivors of Uzushiogakure. He has made a name for himself as the Crimson Dragon of Uzushiogakure (渦潮隠れの赤竜, Uzushiogakure no Akaryū).

Appearance
Ryū is a tall young man with fair skin, brown eyes and the trademark crimson hair of the, which he has grown long and keeps tied in a high ponytail. His upper body is covered in tribal tattoos, covering his entire back, much of his chest, his extremities, and even much of his forehead. His clothing consists of a white shitagi, a black kosode, a black hakama, a white hakama-himo, white tabi, and waraji. He also wears a dark bandanna covering all of the tattoos on his forehead but there is no forehead protector on it. He also wears long dark straps on each wrist with bandages over his arms.

Personality
At first glance Ryū appears to be a mature, thoughtful and slightly stoic person. He is known to sometimes over-think things and as a result often draws wrong conclusions by seeing things that are not really there. As such he displays a slightly paranoid side to his personality, a side that he tries to vanquish but cannot. He has slight trust issues and finds it difficult to open up to a new person and is prone to making instantaneous opinions of people that make even more difficult for him to make new friends. At times he can be reclusive and detached from the rest of the world, lost in his own thoughts. This is mostly due to him having spent such great parts of his life on his own, lost in the memories of his dead family.

But despite his generally serious attitude, Ryū does have a cheerful side to his personality, one that is very friendly and caring. In the company of friends he can be quite whimsical and goofy, letting go of the inhibitions that seem to hold him back in front of strangers. When he gets attached to someone and his level of comfort around them increases, he looses much of his paranoia and is not as neurotic as he can normally be. He really cares for people he befriends or admires and tries to help them. Having lost all of his family at a young age, he cares deeply for his friends and comrades. He will put the lives of his closest friends before his own, willing to put himself in harm's way to protect them.

But whether he is serious or goofy, Ryū is a very kind and generous person, well-mannered and polite. He acts as a source of support, encouragement and guidance to his friends, someone they can rely on to help deal with their problems. He has a very strong sense of duty and morals, and follows a code of honor that he has drawn up for himself. This code seems to change a lot as Ryū keeps on making modifications to account for situations he had not originally thought he would have to face. A prime example of this is that though he originally vowed never to raise hands against a woman, he changes that when encounters a rouge female ninja exploiting and torturing the inhabitants of a small settlement, defeating her to help the people she was mistreating. He is also very strong-willed and can not be easily swayed from a course of action once he has decided to do so. His not one to back down from a challenge and will put his all into any enterprise irrespective of how easy, hard, or insignificant the task may be.

What truly drives him on is his desire to reunite his scattered clan and rebuild the home that they have all lost. In order to hide form their enemies, his parents fled back to the ruins of Uzushiogakure, hiding in the one place they thought they would be safe. As a result Ryū was born and raised in the ruins of his own ancestral home, coming to love the land and its peaceful beauty. After the death of first his father and then his mother, he wandered aimlessly through the Land of Whirlpools. Though saddened by the death of his parents, a darkness he still caries hidden within himself, he slowly became aware of the beauty and serenity in the land all around him. He found signs everywhere of the life the people of Uzushiogakure once lived and how they seemed to truly have incorporated nature into their lives. He realized then how different his life would have been if he had grown in this place when it was a peaceful place and decided then to rebuild the village to what it once used to be, giving a future generation what he could not get.

Abilities
Despite starting his formal training as a shinobi much later in life than his peers, he is still an immensely skilled shinobi, possessing such natural talent that when he finally began formal training as a shinobi, he was able to make up for the years lost and catch up with and even surpass his peers in a very short period of time. The first techniques he ever learnt were the ability to and the ability to, both highly advanced techniques that should not have been possible for someone so young to learn. Upon his arrival in Kirigakure as a 9 year old, he surprised the instructors there by being able to use these techniques despite being woefully ignorant of any theoretical knowledge of or any forms of.

The fact that he had learned to use these techniques by simply following his father's example and without any extensive training was a simple example of how naturally gifted he is. His instructors have commented on a number of occasions that he is possibly the most gifted shinobi they have seen and a genius on a level rarely seen. herself stated that he possesses the potential to surpass any ninja she has known and were he to achieve his full potential he could possibly go down as one of the most gifted shinobi of all time. His power stems from the very core of his being, from his strong will power and determination. His will to go on enables him to go on pushing when others would give up and go on fighting no matter what the odds. His desire to protect his friends and his determination to not die until he has successfully rebuilt his village enable constantly drive him forward and provide the drive that allows him to push himself further than most shinobi and achieve feats that would normally be impossible for him.

Enhanced Intuition
Ryū is blessed with a unique power that instinctively allows him to pick up the basics of a technique and learn it at a highly advanced rate. In a manner similar to learning from ones body, Ryū can pick up a technique much better if he has experienced it once and has seen it being implemented. An example of this was during his fight with a Konohagakure who easily overpowered him with her  and he only managed to escape because of the aid of his companions. But when they next fought only a little over a week later, he demonstrated his understanding of the workings of the technique and was able to counter her monstrous strength with a crude imitation of the technique that he had managed to develop in that short period of time.

Thus he is a very quick learner, picking up skills much faster than expected. In combat he is able to adapt to situations very quickly and given enough time can intuitively figure out a weakness in his opponent's fighting style. He can often sense if something is amiss with an attack and can often use this to avoid traps and hidden attacks.

His intuition has tremendous potential beyond the realms of combat also, though his slightly neurotic nature sometimes makes him disregard his instincts. He is normally the first to sense a person's true intentions and he has slowly started to realize that his first impression of a person is very often true and has slowly started to trust his instincts in this regard as well.

Taijutsu
Ryū is a natural when it comes to taijutsu and having constantly pushed himself to the limit and incessant training has only amplified his natural talent. His physical abilities are well above those of an average shinobi and the fact that he is constantly pushing himself, it is most probable that his skills in this field will only improve with time. His fast reflexes and athletically conditioned-body give him a natural advantage in combat and he prefers to use taijutsu to finish all his fights, resorting to ninjutsu only if necessary.