Mukūrō

"Come, as I extinguish those flames of hope you possess with nothing more than my gaze."

- Mukūrō to an unnamed opponent.

Mukūrō (無食狼, Mukūrō) is a highly dangerous element within the world of. Mukūrō holds an immensely dangerous regarded as the Curse of the Wallowing Vulture, forcing him to passively absorb chakra from the environment. Due to his power being recognized from his encounters with Arien and Kazuhide, the authorities eventually realized the potential harm in leaving him unsupervised. As a result, he would be assigned to Team Mukūrō, who would be relocated to Hōzuki Castle as a means to keep him under surveillance. Nevertheless, he is a great asset to the, specifically due to the virtual invulnerability that the Hōzuki Castle now possesses — following the death of — due to his presence. The nature of his abilities, as well as his ghastly appearance, have aptly caused rumors to be spread of a Pale Ghost (蒼白の幽霊, Sōhaku no Yūrei) within the prison, deterring both intrusions and breakouts alike, given the anonymity behind his identity.

Personality
Mukūrō was an individual who didn't grow up in the most conventional manner. His parents died upon his birth, the society he lived in feared him and he was kept locked up and isolated from almost all human contact for several years. Realistically, Mukūrō should be completely incapable of being the person he is right now. For in the present, Mukūrō is an amiable man with ambitions to rise from the pits that caused him to be regarded as a demon, without sacrificing his own abilities and traits in the process of doing so. In truth, Mukūrō is an individual who aims to validate his existence through the sincerity of his actions, this being one of the primary reasons why he abides by the suspicion that the have tacked upon him, for if he were to rebel against the trust that they placed upon him, his identity would possess no retribution.


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Appearance


To the man regarded as both the Pale Ghost and the Horned Devil, an appearance associated with humanity is far beneath him. He is an entity well and truly recognized under the echelon of the supernatural. With the power that he expresses in every confrontation, the nihility within his expression and the ornaments he has gathered through battle, one would have a hard time believing that the name Mukūrō truly belonged to a human, a.

Mukūrō is an individual whose appearance can be best described as ethereal. It was as if he was born to defy all standards known to the common man. The most apparent visualization of his reputation as a ghost comes from his skin tone. Mukūrō, upon observation, possesses a skin color that can accurately be summarized as the shade 'gray.' When reflecting the luminosity of the sunlight, it becomes even closer to white than it already is, immdediately arousing fear within weaker opponents. Given the man's height and almost skeletal figure, many find it a physical impossibility that Mukūrō can fight on the same plane as Shinobi, although they make a fatal mistake in believing this. Another distinct feature associated with Mukūrō are his eyes. A bright green in their color, they represent everything that Mukūrō isn't: natural and eternal. His eyes appear almost as if they were an aberration, forced onto Mukūrō's body as nothing more than a mockery of what Mukūrō exists as. They instinctively bring fear into the hearts of his opponents, while also making them pity him, for the results of early suppression through unsuccessful seals have permanently engraved his face with similarly colored tattoos, yet their shape - that of a tear strolling down his cheeks - do nothing more than highlight the sorrow of his situation. Yet among his facial features there exists one that truthfully represents the man: the obsidian of his hair. It frames his face, contradicting his ghost-like appearance and bringing the man down to earth. Outside of his traits, Mukūrō possesses a bone-forged helmet, with a horn-like appendage extending out of it, hence associating him even further with demon-like creatures.

Body Flicker Technique
Mukūrō is not a conventional by any means, but in particular, the nature of his abilities and specializations differ from a common Shinobi significantly. This is particularly notable with his focus on the Body Flicker Technique. Mukūrō's first true "battle", which occurred against Arien, forced him to observe and rapidly adapt to the use of high speeds within battle, thus making the Body Flicker Technique his so-called introduction to the fighting style of a Shinobi. This would later be cemented through Kazuhide's initial teachings to Mukūrō regarding chakra control, where the Uchiha observed that Mukūrō's mimicry was flawless, but the actual execution was sorely lacking in control, that is, until Mukūrō caught the nuances in the ways one actually operates their and made use of it to full effect.

Mukūrō's Body Flicker Technique (瞬身の術, Shunshin no Jutsu), as implied from several statements, is by far his signature attribute within combat and the only form of Ninjutsu he has truthfully mastered. In terms of pure speed, Mukūrō's overall velocity is comparable to — if not entirely surpassing — the likes of. In addition, supplementary techniques such as Lightning Release Chakra Mode and Flying Thunder God Technique can also be tracked by Mukūrō's physical and sensory prowess, making almost all forms of high-speed movement advantages void against his prowess. He is capable of transporting from his chambers to anywhere within the Hōzuki Castle within a moment, the accuracy of his destination refined through his sensory prowess. His speed is such that he has no need to use smoke to cover up his tracks, for even a step allows him to disappear from the sight of conventional opponents, with only those that possess the Sharingan at its most mature phase being able to follow him, if only barely. Upon using the technique, Mukūrō's image flickers in front of an opponent momentarily before he disappears from sight, reappearing once again in a similar manner. However, the sheer speed involved in this process causes individuals to mistake the technique's employment as a localized variant of teleportation, though this isn't the case. Moreover, due to Mukūrō's impeccable control over his own chakra, he can adjust the quality and quantity of chakra he is using while employing the technique, thus strengthening the overall impact each consecutive use of his Body Flicker may possess. At the lower end of this scale, he can perform the technique with reduced speed, but absolute silence — an ideal situation for an assassination. On the other end of the spectrum, Mukūrō can rapidly increase both the speed and resulting force of the impact from the Body Flicker Technique onto the environment, causing even individual steps to form small craters in the ground from the sheer impact gathered through the momentum in his movement, an application he learned from Kazuhide directly.

Later on in his training, Mukūrō would identify the associated weaknesses with conventional movement through the technique. In particular, he regarded the one-step-one-action form to be almost useless in high-speed combat exchanges, especially against individuals who used Space–Time Ninjutsu or similar techniques. As such, he managed to conserve the quantity of chakra used within each step, thus enable him to, in a similar vein to an advanced chakra control technique, propel himself despite the lack of a foothold within the air. By refining the quantity of chakra he uses in each step even further, he can make use of several rotations within a single use of Body Flicker, advancing through an opponent's possible defenses with such ease that by the time they can potentially react, it is far too late for them to do so. Due to the advancements Mukūrō has made within this specific technique, it is his go-to approach within combat. When used in conjunction with both his swordsmanship and long-range alternatives, he becomes an almost impossible opponent to react against.

Due to the physical constraints that have been placed upon Mukūrō as a result of his curse, he had often lamented on his inability to competently engage in close combat, quickly running out of stamina or simply incapable of dealing enough damage to conclusively finish a battle. This would be a major problem in his fights against conventional Shinobi, where he was cornered several times on his initial expeditions across the world. However, this would change following his advents in chakra control and witnessing the capability to derive physical skills from basic, but precise application. He managed to achieve the level of strength commonly acquired by   using much more basic principles in comparison to the idea of Chakra Enhanced Strength. As one knows, the function of the Body Flicker's revitalization of the individual's chakra before focusing it on the legs is for movement purposes. Mukūrō fundamentally alters this purpose to his own needs by transferring this revitalized chakra to a different part of the body. In his case, given his preference to engage in Kenjutsu, it is commonly transferred to his arms. This enables him to engage in high-speed physical engagements with little to no effort, while additionally increasing the momentum behind his attacks significantly, ultimately overpowering enemies with what externally appears as raw brute force. Yet, much to their chagrin, they would find that Mukūrō is capable of repeated, precise use of this force in multiple avenues of combat to ultimately overwhelm any defensive techniques without exerting even the slightest amount of additional effort in his strikes.

Perhaps the greatest addition to the Body Flicker Technique made by Mukūrō was the addition of his Curse of the Wallowing Vulture into its basic principles. As almost every elementary Shinobi knows, the revitalization of chakra within the body expends it rather quickly, leaving the Body Flicker Technique to be a controlled technique used only in short bursts. However, to those who use chakra as a form of feeding, such as Mukūrō, such constraints are considered to be irrelevant. Through using his curse's naturally ability to absorb chakra as well as his masterful ability to constantly reorient his position using Glide, Mukūrō has managed to devise an application of Body Flicker regarded as Tempest. Tempest is a technique achieved by using the excess of the chakra Mukūrō has absorbed as a shroud around his being, with the said chakra constantly rotating in an anti-clockwise direction through being involved in the absorption process. Due to the speed of this rotation in tandem with the levels of speed achieved by Mukūrō, the shroud enables Mukūrō to almost act as a drill of sorts as he moves, rendering the environment and all opposition null in the face of his overwhelming offensive power. To add onto this, Mukūrō can increase the raw destructive power of this technique via the addition of his chakra pulses, managing to release shockwaves of chakra at regular intervals to both disable almost any offense against Mukūrō but also simultaneously increase the damage he inflicts at any point in time. As an extension of this technique, Mukūrō can apply the same shrouding and pulsing principles to an afterimage produced by the speed of his movement. Although in this particular case, the chakra which he shrouds around his being experiences a form of lag, detaching itself from Mukūrō's being before combusting through a sudden pulsation, normally causing a large distraction for the enemy, or even quickly dispatching of weak opponent while diverting a stronger threat's attention.

Certainly, if one were to take these feats and account them to the notorious battles he has had against opponents of great caliber, they would understand that Mukūrō's usage of such a simplistic technique has gone above and beyond the expectation of almost any Shinobi known to man. After all, no Shinobi would realistically limit themselves to the enhancement and refinement of a technique that they hardly make use of in practical situations. But to a man of Mukūrō's intelligence and desperation, such luxuries cannot be found. Capitalizing on all the opportunities he can grasp, Mukūrō's growth within these common arts of a Shinobi can, realistically, only be attributed to the prodigal characteristics associated with a genius — in the case of Mukūrō, a demon.

Kenjutsu
Mukūrō is an individual who specializes within Kenjutsu, employing it as his primary method of combat above all other alternatives. Remarkably, Mukūrō's swordsmanship seems to reflect the style utilized by both Samurai and sword-wielding from villages such as  or. This would later be attributed to his mimicry of over a dozen styles of swordsmanship, among these being the styles employed by Arien, Kazuhide and Rikō. Due to his incredible eidetic and muscle memory, Mukūrō has managed to adopt and simultaneously overcome almost all forms of Kenjutsu he has encountered within his short career as a Shinobi, quickly proving himself to be extraordinarily skilled within the art.

As mentioned previously, the most distinct characteristic regarding Mukūrō's swordsmanship lies in his amalgamation of a variety of forms, stances, movements and the like through his observation of other Kenjutsu practitioners over a significant period of time. Accordingly so, Mukūrō's fighting style can be accurately summarized as an patchwork of individual styles, combined to fit any situation that Mukūrō encounters within his battles. While the style has been given no official name, Hiki initially referred to it as Satori Garyū (悟り我流, Self-Taught Style of Comprehension), a name which Mukūrō later adopted.
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Quotes

 * (Signature Saying) "I feed on the hope of chakra-filled people like you. How does it taste? Absolutely delicious!"
 * (To Arien) "You...you are strong. I must validate my powers...these demonic powers...against you!"
 * (To Kazuhide and Akiya) "Thank you...for giving me this enlightenment. For making me from a Demon...to a Human."
 * (Introducing himself to Team Mukūrō) "Normally I'd be the one showing you around the ropes, but...I have no idea what I'm doing? Sorry, not really a good Jōnin am I?"
 * (To rioters within Hōzuki Castle) "If you wanna visit a prisoner, can't you just go through the formal procedures? What happened to following the law?"
 * (To Hiduki) "Demon, huh? Don't think you have a monopoly over the title, Miss Waterworks."
 * (To Yamada Asaemon) "Who are you? Shinigami of the grave robbers?"
 * (To Zenjou) "A thief? What did I steal? The chakra that you discarded from your body? But admittedly...you're the only house I've stolen from that has an alarm."
 * (To Kazuhide and Zenjou) "Oh, it's Kazuhide-san! Wait, why are you with Zenjou-san? And why are you causing a riot?"
 * (Regarding Zenjou to Kazuhide) "You know...ambushing people with arrows isn't a nice thing to do, Kazuhide-san."

Creation and Conception
Mukūrō's concept was devised by the author after deliberating how to integrate the concept of Dark Release into a character while also making it a feasible Kekkei Genkai that doesn't seem to simply stack on abilities onto a wielder. The idea of the Curse of the Wallowing Vulture was eventually conceived and at that point, the use of Ulquiorra Cifer from  as an image source just seemed to fit the author's intentions.