Rikouru Ura

Birth and Childhood

Ura was born into the Rikouru clan. During the first years of his childhood, Ura was raised as part of the monk-like clan. During his early years he was taught the ways of the monks. While monks are generally pacifists, as a shinobi this is sometimes more difficult. Instead, the Rikouru were more defensive-minded; fight to protect, not to conquer. He was taught to always seek balance between mind, spirit and body. Living a humble lifestyle, Ura learned to appreciate the smaller things in life.

As a child, Ura was generally very solitary and introvert. He preferred to stick to himself and read while the other children played with each other. As the youngest of four brothers, he was often teased by his older brothers about how antisocial he was. Ura never cared much. While his parents loved him as much as any parent loves their child, they were concerned for Ura’s lack of passion and emotion. This lead them to force Ura out of his shell and into the world, often sending him to play with others against his will.

In the beginning he was generally treated as an outcast. He was shy, antisocial and generally the type of kid to be picked on. As he observed, however, he began learning the basics of interaction and became more social and outgoing when the situation required for it. Due to being generally calm and composed, he was in a way quite mature for his age as he didn’t easily get worked up over things. As such, he was usually the voice of reason within his childhood group, often preventing them from getting in trouble.

Academy Years

Ura was sent to the academy at the age of six. He was mostly an ordinary student. He was talented and got good grades, but not so much that he was regarded as some super prodigy that attracted the attention of all the teachers. It was the same with social groups. No one hated him and he was always welcome to join in games, but at the same time he never really displayed any really definitive personality traits other than being friendly. He was always just sort of was there, being present but never really drawing attention.

He began developing as a shinobi, developing basic techniques at the academy and practicing his clan techniques at the temple with the rest of the monks. As per tradition, upon entering the academy he could choose to begin practicing either Taijutsu or staff-based Kenjutsu. He chose the former and began training outside of academy as well, leading to an increased development. He began developing his first element and began preparing to unlock his Tenbungan for when he became a genin.

All things considered, he was a well-behaved student who, while not possessing genius-level talent, worked hard to get good grades and showed steady development. He was still in the shadow of his three brothers, each of which were geniuses in their own right, but his parents didn’t love Ura less for it. He was living a decent and carefree, but also unspectacular life. Not that it mattered, after all you didn’t need to have a spectacular roller-coaster of a life to be happy, right?

Genin Years

Ura became a genin at the age of twelve, and awakened his Tenbungan shortly after. He was placed under the jonin Myazaki, a respected Doton master. His two teammates were Otah, a young kenjutsu user, and the genjutsu-using kunoichi Satsuki. The three formed a good team, their individual abilities complementing each other well. Otah was the main close-range attacker while Satsuki backed him up with genjutsu. Ura’s skill at both fuuton techniques and taijutsu meant he could switch between fighting at Otah’s side or blasting enemies from afar.

Myazaki, noticing that Ura’s Tenbungan gave him an affinity for elemental ninjutsu, began introducing Ura to earth techniques hoping to shape the young monk into an even more versatile shinobi. Ura slowly began showing his potential, stepping out of the shadows of his brother and becoming a promising shinobi in his own right. His team had a high success rate, being among the most successful genin teams of its generation despite the fact that all three genin used to be quite average in the academy.

Then, things changed.

It was team Myazaki’s first A-rank mission. One with a very real risk of death. However, if the mission was successful Myazaki would ensure that Otah, Satsuki and Ura would enter the Chuunin Exams. Ura, fourteen at the time, was glad at the prospect of becoming a chuunin earlier than his brothers had been promoted, each of them only making the rank when they were fifteen. Their objective was to locate and kill a missing-nin. Arugi Kanten was a treacherous jonin who had been leaking information to Iwa’s enemies for a while. Team Myazaki was ordered to track him to his hiding place and kill him.

They found his hiding place alright. He had concealed himself in a cave system in the outskirts of the Earth Country. Upon finding him, Myazaki ordered his team to stand back and cover him while he tackled the treacherous jonin. Just as they were about to engage in combat, however, something unexpected happened. Otah, once a young, promising shinobi, revealed his true colors as Kanten’s spy and apprentice. Betraying the team, he killed Suzuki before the kunoichi could create a genjutsu and then moved on to Ura. Myazaki had no choice but to trust Ura to defeat Otah while he focused on Kanten.

Part of Kanten’s strategy had been based on the idea that the two genin, green as they were, would hesitate against their former ally. Otah, on the other hand, had been trained to be a killer for a while by Kanten and had even been taught some of Kanten’s own sword techniques. But he was sorely mistaken on that part. Ura, once considered by Otah to be a friendly but soft genin, showed absolutely no mercy, no hesitation. He seemed completely unaffected by Satsuki’s death and Otah’s betrayal.

On the contrary.

As the battle raged, Ura was smiling. Otah had never before seen the solemn Ura smile. It was a genuine smile too. Ura was clearly enjoying this battle to the death. He kept on smiling during the entire battle, even as he began overpowering Otah, forced him to the ground, and began beating his head in. As he felt the warm blood splash against his face, a small chuckle escaped his lips. The chuckle turned into a laugh. But the laugh diminished, and as Ura got up and looked over the corpse of Otah, face mauled beyond recognition, he began feeling shame. This vicious pleasure he took in killing his former friend was not part of what the monks had taught him! ”See all life as something valuable, take only what you need and take no pleasure in doing so.” That was the truth he had always learned. As a shinobi, Ura was expected to kill to preserve the village and keep the peace. But why did he enjoy this feeling so much?

In the height of his confusion, his sensei appeared besides him. He had managed to overpower Kanten, but even he, a hardened veteran, hadn’t expected to find Otah in that kind of state. After a long silence, Ura began stammering. “I.. I didn’t mean to.. I just felt..” Myazaki, for better or for worse, mistook Ura’s sadism for rage and anger over being betrayed.

After the mission, Ura performed in the Chuunin Exams several weeks later and was promoted.

Chuunin Years

As a Chuunin, Ura’s skill and experience grew. Being taught doton by Myazaki and his father in taijutsu and his Tenbungan, Ura soon became a dangerous shinobi. And as his increasingly difficult missions left him face to face with death more often, he began enjoying the dirty work of shinobi life more and more. He began to develop a thirst for blood that he hid well from his superior and allies. After all, as long as he killed those who opposed Iwa he would be regarded as a hero rather than the monster he was believing himself to become. His own success began working against him, though. Wars were ending, and missing-nin and local bandits were becoming more and more scarce due to the very success that made Iwagakure so respected.

Ura’s thirst for blood would not be subdued however. Finding it more and more difficult to balance himself between being a good monk and letting his dark side free, one day he began preying on a little village close to the temple, in a small valley. Every once in a while, whenever missions that allowed him to kill were scarce, he would descend onto the village, kidnap a villager and torture him or her in a private section of his temple; a long abandoned storage basement that he had discovered as a kid and that could only be accessed through a hidden hole in the wall. He was never discovered.

He was promoted to Jounin at the age of nineteen. By now Ura had become the pride of his family, a respected and skilled shinobi who had surpassed his initially more talented brothers and had a high success rate at missions. He was also likeable, charismatic and quite good-looking. He seemed to have it all..

Jounin Years

In the years following his promotion, Ura met a woman from his clan. Instead of having one compound, branches of the clan lived distributed over four temples scattered across the Earth Country. Said woman was the daughter of the leader of one of the temples. He met her when he was visiting said temple together with his father. Her name was Rikouru Mae, and the two soon fell in love. After being almost seven years in a relationship, Ura and Mea got married when Ura was 29. They had two children, and once again Ura appeared to have it all.

Until one day.

Ura, 34 by then, hadn’t had a mission in a while, and family life was stressful. He decided to make another trip to the little village. For all these years the village had lived in fear of the mysterious serial killer that plagued them, and had made several attempts to trap him and catch him in the act. Ura, skilled as he was, had managed to avoid them up until now. But this time, as he snuck into a farmhouse with a sleeping family, the door suddenly fell shut behind him. Through the windows several Rikouru jumped into the room. Their looks of steely determination changed into looks of horror as they saw just who had been terrorizing the villages. Ura recognized most of them. Friends, cousins, acquaintances. And naturally, the temple’s head monk was also there to personally catch the vicious killer.

The head monk. Ura’s father.

“My son..”, the old monk stammered.

“Father..”, Ura said, at a loss of words.

“What have you done?!”

Just as Ura was fumbling for a reply, a loud crash drew their attention. There were screams outside, people were running. A child was crying. Then, suddenly, a blast of roaring fire hit the fragile old farmhouse, causing it to collapse onto itself. Ura lost consciousness.

“I found a survivor!”, were the words that caused him to wake up. Ura groaned and opened his eyes. His body was in pain. His right arm was burned, and he was lying in the middle of a mess of smoldering wood and corpses. But he was alive. An Iwa-nin was standing over him, looking concerned. More of them gathered as they helped Ura to his feet. Later, he learned that a group of bandits made up of missing-nin had raided the village and the temple, killing everyone. The group of Iwa-nin had arrived in time for them to kill off the remaining bandits and to prevent the temple from being broken down, but not in time to save everyone from being butchered. Ura’s parents, brothers, cousins, wife and children were all dead.

And Ura didn’t feel a single thing.

Thus began Ura’s life of solitude. While he didn’t feel true grief, his encounter with his father reminded him of the code the monks had tried to teach him. Twisted as he was, he still felt a sense of loyalty towards his clan and family. So he meditated, and spent the following years living in the temple by himself. He still visited Iwagakure no Sato to shop, attend meetings and see friends, and he still went on missions. But he lived a humble life alone, trying to suppress the darkness within him. Trying to be a good person despite the darkness in his heart.