Kyuumu Riku

Riku is the Nanadaime Raikage and the leader of the Yochi branch. He is known for his all watching ravens and his fearsome combat abilities.
==Appearance==
Despite his status as the Raikage, his body isn't nearly as impressive as some of the goliaths that have graced the shinobi world from the humble land of Kumogakure. Standing at a painfully average height of 5' 10" and without a strand of visible muscle to help distinguish him from some random civilian, his build is rather unimpressive to say the least. It's probably the largest reason some people don't instantly believe him when he says he's the Raikage; and although he wasn't very pleased with his unimposing stature when he was younger, over the years he's realized that his average build makes him much more approachable and less fear inducing, allowing him to interact freely with the citizens and children of Kumogakure. Further compounding his average appearance, Riku has a light brown complexion that's rather common among people of Kumogakure descent.
As a result of belonging to the Yochi branch, Riku has always been an incredibly honest and emotive shinobi, allowing his emotions to be honestly and vividly painted on his face when he's in a social situation: a simple honest path that your typical member from the Inshi or Outai branch would never even consider without ulterior motives. To further separate himself from the reclusive branches of the Kyuumu clan, Riku prefers to be transparent with the rest of Kumogakure about his origin, intentionally making no attempts to hide the piercing yellow eyes that were plucked directly from the Yatagarasugan Raven and gifted to him as a young child.
His hair is typically feathered and unkempt in appearance; and due to growing up under a businessman, Riku prefers to keep his raven-black hair cut at a moderately short length. On the lower half of his face, Riku often wears a red beak-like mask made from leather with a golden phosphor bronze tip; and where the nostrils would normally be located on each side of the beak mask there are holes lined with phosphor bronze that allow filtered air in and out of the mask. The mask itself is held tightly over his mouth and nose by two black straps that wrap around his head; and in some instances where he pulls down his mask, perhaps to be less intimidating to children, he'll usually just let it dangle around his neck until he slides it back into place.
Part of what helps Riku stand out from most other shinobi, apart from the previously mentioned mask, is his rather particular choice of fashion compared to other ninja; having picked up a bit of fashion from his father that runs a large scale mercantile business, Riku wears a a black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a plain silver necktie held around his neck with a proper Windsor knot. The necktie itself has a small cut behind his neck, causing the tie to rip away from his neck if a large amount of pressure is applied to the tie. Although his father insists that he wear this with a full designer suit, Riku wears a custom green jacket with a black feathery plumage around the neck and baggy sleeves held in place just past his elbow with an elastic band; but the jacket is usually kept open so that people can see the designer tie and dress shirt underneath.
On the lower half of his body, Riku dons a pair of simple black slacks to match the dress shirt on the upper half of his body; and under these slacks he wears a pair of plain-black compression underwear to keep from having uncomfortable abrasion from moving too fast in them. In order to hold his pants up he wears a simple white designer belt with pouches on each hip to hold his shinobi gear. Despite the dressy nature of most of his outfit, his shoes are typical shinobi-wear: plain white shoes designed to handle both high speed and heavy impacts.
==Personality==
While he wasn't necessarily fond of Kumogakure during his early youth, almost immediately after he started performing missions for the locals as a genin he befriended many of the people that lived within the village's walls; and although not everyone is particularly fond of him, nearly all those that call his village home know who he is. Now that Riku's the Raikage, he sees the village as his family and does his best to help each and every one of them to the best of his abilities. In order to do this, repairing the damage caused by the plague and mending the relations severed by the bloodthirsty Raikage twelve years ago are among his highest priorities to improve the quality of life for everyone in village and Make Kumogakure Great Again.
Riku's basic desire to help Kumogakure and its inhabitants stems largely from the Yochi branch's core message that his mother and father ingrained in him from the moment he was born: cooperation breeds strength. For the sake of the village, he believes it's vital to the village's future welfare that he instills this value into all the children, as a bundle of sticks is much harder to break than a lone stick; and a generation willing to help one another will infinitely increase Kumogakure's strength as a major village. In order to achieve this as the Raikage, it's imperative that everyone in the village feels comfortable asking him and the village for help whenever they might need it, so Riku goes well out of his way to be as approachable and sociable as possible at all times.
Once he's actually engaged in conversation with someone, Riku is an extremely honest individual, allowing his true emotions to be freely painted across his face during a conversation. While he knows full well the value of deception, Riku simply prefers using honesty to forge stronger bonds and relationships with those around him, rather than deceiving someone once and ruining the chance to call on their aid again; and due to this, many people that form relationships with him put an almost unbreakable trust in the man. There are still some shinobi that devalue this level of honesty, but a vast majority of the civilians within Kumogakure enjoy having a Raikage that's willing to engage them directly and honestly about their concerns.
As an extension of the value he puts on cooperation and his attempts to remain honest whenever he can, Riku has an unwavering loyalty to those that he's already formed relationships with, and this remains true when it comes to political allies as well. Regardless of the benefits, Riku would never intentionally betray one of his allies or friends; and this can lead to some complex situations depending on the friends and allies he makes, but he does his best to make the most morally correct decision and attempting to do what he believes is in the best interests of Kumogakure. While this loyalty keeps him honest to any allies he may have already made, it can also lead him to the one form of deception he's willing to commit: deception done in order to aid or protect an ally.
One of the many reasons he was made Raikage, aside from his immense skill, is his ability to keep a level head in situations that would shake even the most experienced shinobi; and while he might not be at the sheer level of genius that some shinobi are gifted with, he's definitely not a moron. Due to his intelligence being just above average though means that often he can't accurately analyze a situation fully before being required to make a decision; as a result, when he's in combat he's often acting on his gut feeling rather than a complete picture of the situation. Acting more on a feeling than intelligence gives him an odd advantage over some genius shinobi in battle, as it makes him more difficult to read by traditional strategists.
Although being the Raikage is probably the ideal job for him, based solely on his personality traits and ideals, after a long day of paperwork, managing alliances, and talking to the civilians personally about their economic and personal problems, Riku sometimes needs to unwind at the end of a long day with some warm sake and the company of his close friends. If his friends aren't available, sometimes he'll settle for warm sake and a nice work of fiction: where the type of fiction he wants to read varies based on how he's feeling at the end of the day. Of course, as the Raikage his schedule doesn't always allow him time to unwind after the end of a long day, but he does his best to find an hour or so each day, otherwise his workload would drive him insane.
As far as romance is concerned, Riku very much enjoys the bachelor life, since it allows him to spend as much time as he needs on the village and himself; however, since he believes that cooperation and companionship makes an individual much stronger in the long run, Riku believes that companionship will end up making him stronger in the long run. So even though he enjoys the bacheloer life, he's constantly keeping an eye open for someone that meshes well with his personality. This doesn't really affect how he interacts with women that he's just met, prioritizing making friends over intimate relationships, but once he trusts a woman he'll consider asking them out on a date.
Last but not least, when it comes to combat Riku would much rather resolve a conflict without shedding any blood, often attempting to end a conflict with words if his opponent isn't a risk to his village or other people: his mercy is often reserved for shinobi or nukenin that aren't that powerful. Even if a weakling refuses to heed his words and deescalate a serious situation, however, he won't hesitate to neutralize the threat with force. Once Riku has begun fighting with the intent to kill or neutralize a true threat, the positive emotions usually painted across his face turn into a stare filled with killing intent. Very few people within the village have seen him glare in such a manner, and most people that have met this stare aren't alive anymore.
==History==
As a member of the Yochi Branch of the Kyuumu clan, Riku's father, Haru Kyuumu, owned one of the largest mercantile organizations in Kaminari no Kuni. At the start of the Third Shinobi War, in order to keep both his family and employees safe Haru scaled down his business, preferring to keep the people close to him safe rather than sacrificing their lives for profit. While scaling down the business did protect most of his employees during the war, it also opened up Haru's schedule and ultimately caused him to find the love of his life Akari and have children. Although they were only expecting to have one kid, Riku was born with a twin sister named Hana.
Despite growing up during the Third Shinobi War, Riku and Hana had a relatively carefree and cushy youth, having been born to one of the richest men in Kaminari no Kuni the negative effects of the war never truly hit their family. By the end of the war, both Riku and Hana were just turning 6; and this was ultimately the point in their life that the two's lives diverged. While Hana was interested in taking control of their family's business, just hearing all the heroic stories of all the Kumogakure shinobi swayed a young Riku to leave the cushy rich kid life and begin down the road of the shinobi.
With a little bit of convincing, Riku was capable of convincing his father to let him at least attend the academy; and at the young age of 7 his father sent the boy to the Kyuumu complex in Kumogakure in order to attend his first year at the Shinobi Academy. Despite the resolve Riku showed, Haru wasn't confident that his kid would stick with the shinobi program —since Riku was never very coordinated or physically capable it just didn't seem like the life for him— so he told the elders to hold off on the Yatagarasugan implant until they could guarantee that he'd stick with the program.
Due to his lack of physicality, Riku did about as well as his father expected him to at first, being incapable of throwing a shuriken with any reliability or keeping up with the other kids when it came to running laps. Unlike most kids though, as a member of the Yochi branch Riku was more than willing to ask the students and teachers that were good at bukijutsu and taijutsu for help, which is one of the big things that helped him make it through the academy, despite his physical shortcomings.
To the teacher's surprise, however, even with no previous shinobi training from his parents Riku was incredibly skilled when it came to controlling and shaping his chakra. With extensive studying on the matter, Riku had to make the decision of whether he would specialize in ninjutsu, genjutsu, or perhaps both of them: a decision that would shape the type of shinobi he'd become. Since the Yochi branch weren't particularly known for their shinobi, he asked the elders of the Inshi and the Outai their opinions on what his focus should be as a shinobi.
Both elders recommended that, in order to make up for his honesty and arrogance that stemmed from the Yochi branch's teachings, Genjutsu might serve as an incredible tool for him —offering the direct and honest child a method of deception befitting a shinobi. Despite the branches often being at each other's throats for their individual philosophies, Riku heeded the Inshi and Outai Elders' words and decided to focus his mind and time towards perfecting the art of Genjutsu.
As a result of Riku focusing most of his time on learning the core concepts of Genjutsu, it ended up taking him a bit longer than some students to learn the necessary ninjutsu required to graduate from the Academy. It wasn't until after Riku turned 12 that he managed to finally graduate; but before his clan would allow him to be placed on a team with other children his age, he had to go through the surgery most Kyuumu go through just after birth —having his eyes plucked from his skull and replaced with the Yatagarasugan Raven's eyes. Although he had already been assigned to a team, his squad was delayed for a little over a week as Riku got acclimated to his new sight.
Even though he hadn't developed his sight to the height of what other Kyuumu children of the same age had, it was slightly better than the vision he had prior to the surgery; and it was more than good enough for him to join up with his genin team and start doing missions. During missions he was tasked with providing support for the two close range fighters of his group; when it came to tasks like catching cats and cleaning up litter that meant largely his skillset wasn't that useful during his teams early missions. As his team trained together, improving both their synergy and their individual talents, their Jounin sensei finally decided they were ready for their first big mission.
Their first big mission his team was sent on was protecting a merchant from a Kyuumu mercantile company, Riku's father's company; and although they weren't expecting shinobi to attack the man, bandits were still a large concern after the Third Shinobi war —where many people still hadn't recovered and needed to steal and pillage to make ends meet. While they did run into Bandits on the way to Konohagakure, Riku's team easily dispatched of the group without much effort. With Riku's murder of crows the team as a whole was aware of the bandit ambush well in advance, and common bandits were no match for the well oiled machine that Riku's team had become.
As their sensei took the time nurturing their individual and team skills, they began taking on C rank missions much more frequently; and eventually after a couple months of training and C rank missions, they eventually worked their way up to doing the occasional B rank mission. Due to the lack of shinobi specializing in Genjutsu, there was rarely ever an enemy capable enough to notice his carefully crafted genjutsu and break out of it, even on his team's B rank missions.  After about a year of performing C and B rank missions, Riku turned 14 just before the start of the Chuunin exams.
In order to prepare the team for the Chuunin Exam, their sensei instructed them on which areas each of them should improve on individually, as the exam would test both their skills as a team and individually. Riku was tasked with improving his ability to handle enemies by himself: having relied on his team to neutralize the targets on all of their missions, he had almost no experience when it came to neutralizing opponents on his own. Although Riku's sensei thought that his advice would lead Riku to practice his ninjutsu or taijutsu, instead Riku chose to put all his eggs in one basket, continue focusing on genjutsu, and learn some that would be particularly strong in a 1v1 exchange.
By the time the Chuunin exam actually came around, Riku's team breezed through them and wiped the floor with most of the other teams participating. Unlike the other teams, their sensei had completely over-prepared them. The gap between them and the rest of the genin teams during this particular exam was so immense that they probably would have had more of a challenge participating in the previous Chuunin exam: the exam the future Kazekage, Takato, participated in. Although Riku didn't put on as grand of a show as his teammates, the kage were particularly impressed by how calmly he approached combat, a demeanor out of reach of most of the genin that were more interested in exchanging blows.
After his entire team had been promoted to Chuunin, Riku was the only one from the team to join the Anbu, hand selected by the Raikage at the time due to his performance during the Chuunin exam; despite his choice to typically be socially transparent, his abilities lent themselves well to tracking and neutralizing threats. Also, at this age Riku was much more comfortable carrying out assassinations to help and protect Kumogakure during this stage of his life, which is the primary reason he accepted the position on the Anbu despite being a Chuunin.
Despite not having a complete Anbu squad, due to the lack of skilled shinobi available after the Third Shinobi War, Riku managed to skillfully support the Anbu with his long range tracking and genjutsu oriented around neutralizing his target. On some missions, he was even responsible for being the one to engage and assassinate the target. Although this job was a necessary one to perform, with each mission that he went on he started to gain a distaste for the type of missions the Anbu went on, primarily the idea of tracking down and killing someone just because the Raikage or Council eventually lost its appeal over time.
The straw that broke the camel's back in this regard was right around the time that he turned 18. The mission itself was a typical assassination mission where Riku was supposed to use his sensory abilities and his crows to make sure no people within the camp escaped. The group they were assassinating was a small group of Rogue shinobi that had defected from Kumogakure, and the Raikage had simply decided to assassinate the group before they became a real threat to the village. While Riku maintained the perimeter around their camp, making sure none of the targets escaped, a familiar chakra signature left the camp as the other Anbu began assassinating the other targets. After utilizing his long range genjutsu to immobilize the target he closed in to kill the target attempting to escape.
The chakra signature that had escaped the camp ended up belonging to one of his former genin teammates, Aiko; and although he hesitated slightly, Riku ultimately ended the life of his old friend that the Raikage had deemed a threat to the village. The whole situation made him feel partially to blame, as he had allowed the secrecy and workload of being an Anbu come between him and the people who were his friends. After the mission he decided that being in the Anbu wasn't for him, despite how cool they seemed when he was younger, and he finally resigned from the Anbu and applied to join one of the Operations teams.
The Raikage had something else entirely in mind for him though, suggesting that Riku become one of his bodyguards instead of joining an Ops team: not only would it provide Riku with the chance to train with one of the strongest shinobi in Kumogakure, but it'd allow him to spend much more time in Kumogakure. Just the option to spend his time in Kumogakure was enough of a perk for him to accept without giving it much thought. Riku also took the position approximately a year before the Mageruhi Raikage snapped and killed several Shimo civilians in their home country.
After about a month of training with the Raikage, the council graced him the rank of Special Jounin at the age of 20 years old. Not only did he have a wealth of experience from the three years he spent as a member of the Anbu, but the Raikage himself recommended that he receive the rank of Special Jounin, due to how well Riku was performing in their training. As the Raikage continued to personally train with him, Riku began to notice a rapid change in the leader's demeanor; although he had never been one of the nicest men, it was almost as if he was being driven mad: so much so that after about a year and a half as a guard of the Raikage, the man killed a bunch of Shimo civilians for basically no reason.
During the Shimo conflict, Riku continued to 'act' as the man's bodyguard, although it was just that: an act; due to the amount of strife and danger the Raikage was putting Kumogakure through, Riku was the one that actually gave the Mageruhi clan the chance to assassinate the Raikage. He didn't even attempt to stop the assassination attempt, even going as far as using his genjutsu on the other guard while he wasn't paying attention. By the time the other guard even got out of the genjutsu, it was too late for the Raikage. With him dead, however, the hostilities with Shimo come to a close.
After the Raikage's 'mysterious' death, the council took a bit of time deliberating on the next Raikage since they didn't want another Shimo incident on their hands in the near future. While they sorted through candidates and made their decision, Riku took the week to visit his family before returning to the great village of Kumogakure and his position as the Raikage's bodyguard. During this time of peace, Riku had plenty of time to train and become a better shinobi, even while acting as one of the Raikage's bodyguards. After a couple years as the new Raikage's bodyguard, he decided to request a position change to an ops team again. Due to the lack of conflict, Riku felt like he would begin to stagnate if he remained a bodyguard when there was almost nothing to guard the Raikage from.
It took the council a few weeks to replace him as a guard; and they could have just denied his request outright, but one of the Ops team leaders was willing to become a bodyguard. Just like that, Riku's request to join an ops team was actually fulfilled by the council this time; due to all the training he had been putting himself through though, the Council decided to have him lead an Ops team despite still technically being a Special Jounin. After about a year of Ops missions with unparalleled success, the Council decided to promote Riku to Jounin at the ripe age of 25.
Riku spent approximately 5 years as the leader of an Ops team; and although he didn't officially gain a rank during this period of time, his mission success rate was among the highest in the village. After the Shimo conflict many of the missions that were done by him and his team often involved high level protection missions, although he occasionally did other missions; and after the end of one such protection mission that required him to be away from the village for over a week, he returned to Kumogakure after it had been quarantined to avoid spreading the plague that had infested the village. Being one of the shinobi on the outside of the village after the quarantine, he ended up having to go back to his childhood home outside of the village.
Despite Kumogakure being quarantined, the plague still managed to make its way to Riku's home, eventually killing his father; and after the plague killed Haru, Riku and his sister also managed to get struck by the contagion, luckily a remedy for the illness was discovered before it claimed their lives. After being given the remedy and recovering from the illness, the council ended up requesting his presence for an urgent matter, not quite giving him much time to grieve the loss of his father. Also, due to the fact that he had been away from the village for the entire quarantine, he was unaware that the current Raikage, Kyuten Aoi, had succumbed to the plague and died. Having lost many capable shinobi and a large chunk of the population, Riku was their first choice to become the Nanadaime Raikage.
Due to the quarantine keeping Riku outside of the village, however, they needed fill the position at least until the quarantine ended. Imōjin was their reluctant choice at the time. Although she was a skilled shinobi, she wasn't their first choice. Since the council had no idea how long the quarantine would last, they appointed Imōjin to be the official position of Rokudaime Raikage. Shortly after the quarantine ended, she was relieved from the position so that the council could appoint their first choice, Riku, to the position of Raikage.
During his year or so as the Raikage, he's been spending much of his time attempting to mend Kumogakure's relationship with Yukigakure. He's also been working with the council in order to meet with the Kazekage; although contact hasn't been made yet, he has just recently received the council's permission to contact Sunagakure and work towards a treatise of some sort, since adding them as an ally would only help Kumogakure out of the current slump they're in.
==Fighting style==
Despite his mediocre and underwhelming appearance, Riku was chosen to be the Nanadaime Raikage because he was without question one of the strongest shinobi in Kumogakure. As a Genjutsu specialist Riku prefers to fight from a distance, particularly specializing in medium to long range confrontations; and due to the nature of Genjutsu, his allies herald him as someone that can neutralize A and S rank shinobi without so much as breaking a sweat in the confrontation. How Riku approaches a situation largely depends on the number of shinobi that he'll end up fighting.
In a scenario with one opponent, he focuses on catching the enemy in a genjutsu as quickly as possible, either hindering their fighting capabilities or stopping them from fighting entirely. While the opponent's abilities are hindered with his Genjutsu, Riku will finish the opponent off from a range using either ninjutsu or weaponry. In confrontations with people that aren't a direct threat to Kumogakure, Riku will use the genjutsu as an opportunity to talk the opponent out of continuing the confrontation. Although trying to talk someone down isn't as guaranteed as simply striking the opponent down mercilessly, Riku would prefer sparing a life if the individual can be saved from the path they're on.
In the cases that the previous strategy doesn't work on a single target, Riku will add ninjutsu to the mix to physically hinder the opponent as well. Bringing his crows onto the battlefield opens up a wide array of possibilities for him, including tiring out the opponent and depleting their reserves without using much chakra himself. It's rare for a one-on-one confrontation to get this bad for him, but it's a solid backup strategy when Riku ends up in a confrontation with someone that's incredibly well versed in the art of genjutsu.
When a confrontation starts off with multiple parties involved his job becomes much more difficult. Genjutsu by itself isn't nearly as strong when fighting a unit of shinobi, since genjutsu is easier to be released by an ally or outside force. Rather than waste the energy on high level genjutsu, Riku is usually more cautious in this type of situation: using his ninjutsu straight out of the gate and attempting to get his opponents to deplete their reserves or capturing the visible targets in a cheap genjutsu in order to draw out any enemies that may be hiding. If Riku can guarantee that the shinobi he can see are his only enemies, he'll do his best to capture these shinobi in a mass genjutsu.
==Special Abilities==
Kyoukou Kousai
Despite having had his Yatagarasugan eyes implanted much later in his life most members of the Kyuumu clan, his visual prowess is among the best; Riku's implanted eyes are capable of a large number of things: following speeds that even most trained shinobi eyes would perceive as blurs, discerning minute details and objects at distances far beyond what humans could see naturally, perceiving fine details and colors in pitch black conditions where human eyes would simply fail to work at all, and detecting magnetic fields as long as there is some light present, allowing Riku's eyes to act as a compass in most instances. Even with all these benefits, the largest downside is that the oscillation from artificial lighting can be rather annoying. With how acute his eyes are, minor changes caused by genjutsu are easily noticed.
On top of the incredible abilities granted by the implanted Yatagarasugan, Riku's time spent with the Kyuumu clan and the crows of Kumogakure has allowed him to learn the language of the birds, often referred to as Murder Speech due to the clan's ties to crows; and as an extension of this ability, he's incredibly proficient when it comes to communicating directly with any kind of bird. As a result of special training he received from the Kyuumu clan, he's also very capable of picking out all the relevant information when there are multiple birds relaying information at the same time, all while ignoring the caws and chirps from the other birds that are just going about their usual business. For unknown reasons, birds tend to trust and obey Riku without a second thought, making it incredibly easy to get intel from birds that live in foreign areas. Riku will often seek out crows that live in the area, since their natural intelligence tends to mean they gather better information than other birds.
Murder of Crows
Stemming largely from his ability to control and manipulate birds and the teachings of cooperation from the Yochi Branch, Riku has amassed an unimaginably large murder of crows that obey and follow him wherever he goes. Although this massive flock naturally serves as a medium for several of his crow based Ninjutsu, moderately extending their size/range and increasing their ease of use in areas that would otherwise be devoid of crows, the murder's primary benefit is that after years of training and imbuing them with his own chakra they can also serve as mediums for his Genjutsu: extending their range in the same manner as they do for his Kyuumu ninjutsu. Genjutsu delivered by his flock must have their trigger performed by one of the crows within his flock in order to take effect.
Perfect Chakra Control
As is the case with most shinobi, if you don't have massive chakra reserves, it's almost necessary to make up for it by obtaining at least some level of mastery concerning chakra control. Through excessive amounts of training, Riku has achieved a mastery over his chakra pool beyond the dreams of most shinobi, allowing him to perform jutsu at their absolute minimum cost. Also, maintaining jutsu with a concentration component are so simple that, regardless of the duress that he might be under at the time, Riku can easily maintain concentration on multiple genjutsu with ease. There is an obvious limit to the number of jutsu he can maintain, but it's difficult for him to reach that limit in a typical combat situation. This level of control is also a necessary component to channel genjutsu through his flock of crows.
Sensor
Due to his perfect chakra control, Riku has fostered the ability to sense other living creatures to its maximum potential over his lifetime; and while it's not quite on the level of the Kagura Shingan, when he's concentrating it's well within his capabilities to find the exact location and track anything with chakra up to 5km away. When he's in combat, Riku can passively use this extra sense to locate opponents within 500 meters; and within this range Riku can also sense when shinobi are building up chakra to use jutsu, which can help him predict the level of jutsu being used and the direction from which the jutsu will originate. This can be combined with his Spying Flock technique to great effect, as the crows can tell him where someone is before he starts concentrating.
Blistering Speed
Out of all the physical traits Riku could have trained, speed was easily one of the most important; as such, any time he dedicated to training his body was focused almost entirely on maximizing his physical speed. As a result, his speed is incredible for an elite jounin, making it incredibly difficult for most shinobi to even dream of keeping up with him. Granted he's not quite as fast as a Taijutsu or Bukijutsu specialists with incredible speed and the musculature to back it up, but when his blinding speed is combined with his eyes and his evasion techniques, he can generally avoid sustaining major injuries, even if a Taijutsu specialist does manage to close the distance before he has the chance to use a genjutsu.
Elite Evasionist
Due to the fact that Riku's a Genjutsu specialist, it'd normally be game over for him if anyone were to get close enough to start beating on him. In order to make up for this weakness, Riku has dedicated a lot of training to avoiding blows of all kinds; to do this, he specifically trained both his reflexes and hand eye coordination so he could more easily react and reflexively make the best choice of evasion based on the type of blow the opponent is attempting to connect. When combined with his speed and his Yatagarasugan, Riku can easily weasel his way out of situations that might otherwise spell doom for any other shinobi.