Kanu Shiryu

"My dream is to tear down this horribly racist and classist Shiryu society and build a bridge of peace and friendship to the rest of the world. Shame that means stepping over the corpses of my elders to achieve it."

At the beginning of the Onikawan Revolutionary War, Kanu Shiryu is the Princess of the Shiryu Clan and the 103th Lord of the Shiryu after the end of the conflict. At a young age, Kanu was pampered and given whatever she wanted. Her mother, Lord Ahmya, would tell her stories all the time about how she would grow up to be the most powerful Shiryu that ever lived and how she would uphold the customs of the Shiryu with every breath she would take. When she was 7, her mother began Kanu’s training to take up the throne for when her time would come; she also began rigorous training to use and master the Water element. Unfortunately, due to being spoiled near rotten, Kanu didn’t value hard work and believed that all of her strength would come to her naturally; thus, she began to slack off and put her training off constantly. Through sheer, random luck, at age 9, she awakened to the birthright of all Shiryu, the Magatama no Shiryu.

It was at this time when she met her lifelong friend and rival Chihana Shiryu, a lower class Shiryu girl trying to enter the military at a very young age. Even though Kanu had everything planned out for her to live an extravagant lifestyle, she struggled to even be a tenth as good as Chihana. Due to this, the girls had become intense rivals by their teenage years. The lower class Chihana ran circles around Princess Kanu and pushed farther ahead with her dreams while Kanu just couldn't keep up with her pace. It was through this intense rivalry that Kanu finally decided to take training seriously; it took her a few years, but by age 12, she pushed herself to the brink and finally awakened to the Hoshikage eyes. Even with this newfound look at training, she still couldn’t keep up with Chihana, as Kanu instigated many fights between the two and she would lose every time. It caused a rift between them during the Original Legacy days, but they were always able to patch things up somehow. Kanu was heavily affected when Akihito Akitoki fell to darkness and defected from the team, as she was the reason that Akiro and Locke chased after him.

When she was 20, she battled Chihana one more time in the fight that cost her the sight in her left eye and Chihana her complete eyesight. It was in this that both of them dropped the antagonism in their relationship and they finally became true best friends. Kanu had to learn a special sealing technique to seal her now permanently active Magatama eye away to avoid dying from Chaos Energy Depletion. At age 32, Kanu met and fell in love with an Onikawan man, Hikaru Onitani, and gave birth to a daughter a year later. In the societal structure of Aurorus, breeding with someone outside of one’s clan is a capital offense with the penalty of death for the family. Lord Ahmya ordered the execution of Kanu, Hikaru, and the baby, but the three of them were able to flee the country. Hikaru went into hiding and Kanu was able to cross the Coravei Mountains and enter the country of Isshin; under a disguise, she was able to give her child to an Onikawa couple for them to raise. Kanu was granted mercy when she returned home through a carefully constructed lie she told Ahmya to appease her; she told her mother that she killed the child and the man herself, chilling her heart like she was taught to do for years. Kanu has always wondered if her splintered family would ever be whole again. She also has a son that is two years older than the daughter she was forced to give up named Yumi; he is obsessed with being the Chosen Hero and trains every waking moment to be the strongest of the Shiryu.

There is an argument raging on in Shiryu society about which warrior is stronger; Kanu or Chihana. While Chihana has made a name for herself around the world for her unparalleled swordsmanship and her undefeated streak, Kanu has become known as the Blue Dragon of the Shiryu. Her hand to hand mass-based fighting style has catapulted her to the top of the list of the strongest warriors in her generation. With her style, the more mass she is carrying, the more powerful her attacks will be. Combine that with her ability to control the density of water and Kanu is a very dangerous opponent to fight. She can also summon water from anywhere and can vary the amount at will; she is truly a master of the Water Element and Water Style Shiryu Arts.