Asura Path

The Asura Path (修羅道, Shuradō) grants its user the ability to augment their own body, summoning mechanised armour and various ballistic and mechanical weaponry.

Throughout his life, Nagato channelled the Asura Path's power through the body of a ninja puppeteer.

Through the Asura Path the user can form four additional arms and two additional faces, and carry a folded, serrated blade-like sash around the waist. These extra limbs and the user's entire body are laced with mechanical weaponry they can access at will. The user can launch their arms as long-range projectiles, or detach them to fire clusters of segmented missiles. They can also extend flexible blades and drills from their arms, or an array of mechanical tentacles, and propel themselves forward at speed by emitting chakra blasts from vents in their feet. The user can further transform a hand into a cannon, or open the crown of their head, to release a chakra blast powerful enough to destroy many buildings at once.

The body through which Nagato channelled the Asura Path displayed raw physical strength — enough to tear off Jiraiya's arm and crush his throat with basic taijutsu, and to hurl the Animal Path from outside the village into Konohagakure. Thanks to its mechanised innards, the Asura Path could also withstand damage that would normally be fatal. All of these abilities suited the "warring demon" name the Asura Path carries, while granting it serious versatility.

Influences

In Buddhism, the Asura realm is the plane of semi-divine warring demons, into which one is reborn for jealousy, struggle, conflict or rationalised behaviour in a previous life; though powerful, they live in constant violence and unresolvable conflict. In keeping with a common depiction of the Asura, this ability grants the user six arms and three faces, each displaying a different emotion. Like Devas, Asuras are a race of supernatural beings. They also appear in Hinduism as divine beings known to pursue power and to live lives of hedonism and material, bodily pleasure. Both depictions are reflected in the Asura Path's abilities. It also draws on Hinduism in that mythology describes Asuras as capable of wielding magical devices resembling today's biological missiles.