Hanzo of the Salamander (
Official Version)
Hanzo was the founder of the Village Hidden in the Rain and universally acknowledged as the strongest shinobi to have existed outside of the Five Great Shinobi Nations.
He was born of the Hattori Clan in the Land of Storms, a country perpetually covered by heavy clouds and suffers from rainfall nearly every day of the year. His clan lacked the military success to stand out as a powerful force in the Warring States Era and had few distinctive skills aside from their proficiency with the kusari-gama. The greatest factor behind their survival was the symbiotic relationship they developed with a powerful salamander.
The salamander was a outcast among its kind for its pitch black skin which reflected toxicity that made it a danger even to its own species. It was discovered near the Hattori Clan's settlement but instead of trying to kill each other they developed a more symbiotic relationship. The ninja provided it food and shelter and, in return, the salamander would provide protection against invaders and even entered a contract to be summoned by the best warriors in battle.
When Hanzo was a child in the early days of the hidden villages, the salamander finally died of old age and left behind only a single offspring, Ibuse. The Hattori feared for their safety with the growing power of the surrounding nations and the loss of the greatest ally, leading Hanzo to step up and request that the black salamander's venom sac to be implanted in his own body so that he could protect the clan in its stead.
Hanzo adapted to the poison from the venom sac rather than succumb to its lethality, staining his eyes black and making his flesh, his blood and even his breath became toxic enough to kill grown men without effort. His resistance to this poison made him practically immune to any kind that might be used against him.
His transplant allowed him to form a powerful bond with Ibuse as it recognized its parent through Hanzo's scent and his resistance to poison stopped the salamander from being a danger to him like it could be to his clansmen. As Hanzo couldn't safely fight alongside his clansmen on the battlefield thanks to his poison, he developed a deadly partnership with Ibuse instead. His poisonous nature and salamander summoned earned him a dangerous reputation as Hanzo of the Salamander.
Aside from Ibuse, Hanzo often operated alone due to how easily he could harm any teammates when made him all the more famous for how successful his missions were and how many enemies he killed. He learned to alter the chemical makeup of the poison to replicate the effects of neurotoxins, hallucinogens, knockout gas and even narcotics. His greatest jutsu increased his toxicity to the greatest heights so he could taint the very land and air around him with his mere presence.
The First Shinobi World War saw the Land of Storms used as a major route between the Great Hidden Villages, meaning it faced regular invasions and suffered lots of damage to its people and its land as the entire country was turned into a battlefield.
To protect his country from further threat, Hanzo gathered the scattered clans of the land to work together under his leadership to repel the warring ninja from their towns and villages and finally build their own hidden village once the war ended. They constructed their new home with metal and stone, building it to stand as tall as possible to endure the never ending rainstorms. Hanzo was chosen to become the chief of the Village Hidden in the Rain without any opposite and was considered as powerful and dangerous as any of the Five Kages.
In the Second Shinobi World War, the opposing hidden villages tried to fight through the Land of Storms once again but found themselves stymied by the Hidden Rain. Led by Hanzo, the rain ninja took advantage of their home advantage to great effect by taking down enemy forces, cutting off supply routes, disrupting intelligence networks and diverting enemies into one another's path. Even as chief of Rain, Hanzo continued to fight on the frontlines and struck fear into anyone caught on the opposite side of his battlefield.
But Hanzo actually had a remarkable reputation for mercy in spite of his deadly skills as those who earned Hanzo's respect through the strength of their arms and convictions were often spared when he defeated. Becausehe believed in bringing peace to the shinobi world, he sought a balance between pragmatism and idealism to stop Ame from being considered weak but also showing compassion rarely seen, especially by one as strong as him, in the hope that it might inspire the same in others.
The man who would become the General of the Land of Iron, Mifune, was one such individual. Hanzo provided him the antidote to his poison after Mifune not only stood firm against when all of his comrades ran away but, on the verge of death, asked that Hanzo would nevertheless let them live. But the most famous example was one of the last battles of the Second Shinobi World War where the Jiraiya, Orochimaru and Tsunade of Konoha fought against Hanzo to reinforce their dying comrades and prevent him from interfering with the rest of their army division to avoid him causing a upset ending in Konoha's loss.
It was the fight they would inevitably lose but the three of them held on and successfully delayed Hanzo enough that he recognized that the battle would end in Konoha's victory. And in acknowledgment of the strength they possessed to survive, Hanzo named them the Sannin of Konoha and asked for their names in exchange for sparing their lives.
But even when the major conflicts of the war came to an end, the Land of Storms still suffered from foreign agents moving through their lands for some time, refugees who travelled their in the hopes that Hanzo of the Salamander could protect them and then the monetary struggles of supporting a hidden village after the war had ended. In the meanwhile, Hanzo worked to unite the Five Great Shinobi Nations in the hopes of creating peace and preventing another war from erupting.
However events spiralled out of control and years later the Third Shinboi World War began. Few dared to trespass on his territory knowing just how dangerous Hanzo was which made the effects of the war less harrowing on the Land of Storm. But fighting in another war despite all of his efforts weakened Hanzo's conviction that peace was possible. As the war progressed and Hanzo fought in battle after battle, he lost sight of that dream of peace in the face of ninja's endless capacity for destruction, greed and betrayal.
This disillusionment made Hanzo seek to simply keep the peace in his own country and turn his back on the rest of the world. He saw himself as the only one capable of protecting the Hidden Rain, causing him to grow more and more tyrannical as he sought more control over his nation.
By the time he learned of Akatsuki who claimed to be a peacekeeping organisation, instead of seeing kindred spirits who shared the same beliefs as he once did, he only saw fools on a futile mission who could potentially threaten his power. The fact that they wore Ame's headband without actually being shinobi under his command made them usurpers in his eyes, instead of people showing respect to him and his village as they intended.
This paranoia led him to seek aid from another force to destroy Akatsuki without weakening his own power. He made a secret alliance with the Danzo of Konoha who would use his personal division of Anbu - Root - to help eradicate organisation in exchange for using the Hidden Rain's best assassins to kill the Third Hokage. Hanzo met with the leader of Akatsuki, Yahiko, with the proposal that they cooperate with one another to help launch peace negotations between Konoha, Iwa and Suna to end the Third Shinobi World War.
In truth, the intended meeting was a trap. Prior to the meeting, Hanzo's men captured one of the founding members of Akatsuki, Konan, and supposed love interest of Yahiko to force him to kill himself in exchange for her life and then use that opportunity to kill the other founders. It was a partial success in that Yahiko died but Hanzo discovered that Nagato possessed the Rinnegan and used its power to kill his and Danzo's men, causing them to retreat before the other two founders could be eliminated.
Hanzo ended the alliance with Danzo after they failed to eliminate Akatsuki's leadership and instead worked on strengthening Ame against potential retaliation. Said retaliation arrived in the form of a civil war as Akatsuki re-emerged after the end of the Third Shinobi World War with a mysterious new leader known only as Pain. He swept up those resentful of Hanzo's regime under his wing and wielded jutsu great enough for his followers to venerate him as a god rather than a man. Already paranoid after years of war, Hanzo desperately sought to preserve his authority by almost entirely closing the Land of Storms' borders and isolating himself in Ame, surrounded by bodyguards at all times and with the strictest security measures to ensure his protection.
None of which was enough to save him. After launching an invasion of rebel forces inside Ame itself to seize control of the village, Pain entered Hanzo's tower alone, slaughtered everyone inside, on the highest floor, found and killed Hanzo by himself. Weakened by the loss of his convictions and focus on self-preservation over self-improvement, Hanzo was nothing compared to how he was in his prime and ultimately suffered a miserable death without even understanding how far he had fallen.
Even his legacy was turned to ash after his death when Pain showed an awe-inspiring mercilessness when he killed everyone Hanzo had every known and cared for down to the last infant, including his parents, wife and children, burned down all of their homes and then cut down who ever had any connection to Hanzo. Everything that Hanzo once had, Pain either destroyed or took for himself until nothing was left.
There were some remnants who still believed in Hanzo after his death and continued to fight in hope of restoring the glory of old Ame but they too died out in the end.
