Hawk members

Hawk

The members of Hawk. From left to right: Suigetsu, Sasuke, Jugo, and Karin.

Hawk (鷹 ,Taka) is a group formed by Sasuke Uchiha that consists of Orochimaru's former subordinates. When first formed it goes by the name "the Hebi" (蛇 ,Hebi, lit. "snake"), with its mission being to find and kill Sasuke's brother, Itachi Uchiha, to avenge the latter's slaughter of the Uchiha clan. After Itachi's death and Sasuke's discovery that the Uchiha were wiped out under the orders of Konohagakure, Sasuke renames their group "Hawk" and changes its mission to the destruction of Konoha. In the meantime, Sasuke has agreed to work with Akatsuki to help them capture the eight-tailed beast; the members of Hawk are later seen wearing Akatsuki cloaks to signify this.

Sasuke Uchiha

Sasuke Uchiha (うちは サスケ ,Uchiha Sasuke) is originally one of the members of Team 7 and is the founder and leader of Hawk. He was created to be a rival to Naruto Uzumaki, as well as a "cool genius", which Kishimoto believed was an integral part of an ideal rivalry. He is one of the few remaining members of the Uchiha clan along with his brother, Itachi Uchiha. Sasuke's sole desire is to kill his brother, and he develops a cold and withdrawn personality. His interactions with his fellow teammates, especially Naruto, make him focus less on revenge at the start of the series. During an encounter with his brother in Part I, Sasuke is easily beaten, which leads him to leave the village to seek more power from the criminal Orochimaru. His teammates' attempts to recover him from Orochimaru form a major component of the Part II plot. In the Japanese anime, Sasuke's seiyū is Noriaki Sugiyama, and his English voice actor is Yuri Lowenthal.

Suigetsu Hozuki

Suigetsu Hozuki (鬼灯 水月 ,Hōzuki Suigetsu), a former test subject of Orochimaru, is the first character to be recruited for Hawk. He is not afraid to speak his mind and always does as he pleases. When he is first introduced this results in frequent clashes with Hawk's leader, Sasuke Uchiha, but he later comes to accept Sasuke's position and even put himself in harm's way to protect him. Suigetsu is able to reduce himself to liquid form and return to bodily form at will. Although this gives him an easy way to avoid physical attacks, it also makes him very susceptible to electricity. In addition, upon reforming himself, Suigetsu can change the size of his limbs, proportionally increasing his strength in the process. Sometime before being introduced, Suigetsu trained to be one of Kirigakure's Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, an organization of particularly violent swordsmen. Having been unable to become a member, Suigetsu has begun collecting all of the swords of the Seven Swordsmen for himself instead. To this end, he takes Zabuza's Kubikiri Bōchō from its burial site, soon after joining the group, and hopes to be able to take Kisame Hoshigaki's Samehada by working with Sasuke.

Karin

Karin (香燐), a former assistant to Orochimaru during his experimentations, is the second character to be recruited for Hawk. Karin has red eyes, matching hair color and an unusual hairstyle; her hair is short and unkempt on one side, and long and combed on the other. She tends to fluctuate between two dynamic personalities, appearing tough and in control when Suigetsu or Jugo are present and highly flirtatious when she is with Sasuke. Karin has an unhealthy obsession with Sasuke; she goes so far as to keep one of his battered, sweat-drenched shirts for herself and plans to "ravage" him after the rest of the team has fallen asleep. Karin's special ability allows her to find and track specific individuals through chakra. She is able to do so over long distances and can even notice subtle changes in an individual's chakra. Kakashi Hatake surmises that Karin is a particularly skilled chakra-sensing ninja, as she is not only able to tell that his eight-man team is approaching her location, but also that one of them is a dog. Additionally, she can heal others by letting them bite into her skin and suck on her chakra, repairing even the most fatal wounds. As a result, some parts of her body are lined with bite scars from individuals she has healed.

Jugo

Jugo (重吾 ,Jūgo) is the final character to be recruited for Hawk. He is mentally unstable, sporadically fluctuating between a bloodthirsty and a docile personality. While in the former mindset, Jugo kills anyone around him without remorse until he somehow returns to his senses, at which point he seeks confinement or solitude to protect others from himself. It is only through Sasuke Uchiha's promise to keep him in check and the fact that Sasuke reminds him of Kimimaro that Jugo agrees to join Hawk. Sometime in the past, Jugo sought out Orochimaru in the hopes that he could find a cure for his impulses. While examining him, Orochimaru isolated enzymes in Jugo's blood that caused him to radically transform the appearance and capabilities of his body. By extracting these enzymes, Orochimaru was able to reproduce the transformation in his own subordinates, making the cursed seal. Though Orochimaru's refined transformations are more controllable, his subordinates are limited to using only one form. Jugo is able to alter his transformed state to suit the situation, and can even isolate the transformation to a single part of his body. He can also fuse some of his own flesh to someone who has, or has had, the cursed seal in order to heal their injuries, but he regresses to a younger age as a side-effect.