About his Naruto verse: Since he is a missing-nin, why doesn't he have a slash through his forehead protector as is custom? Why a blank one?
I chose to put it as blank because I didn’t give his little village a symbol. He’s not from one of the big and his family is basically the only prominent ninjas from his town.
Although they practice the ninja arts - it’s more for their own practical purposes (of releasing blood) rather than to fight. Thus they usually stay out of wars and have never really needed to show other ninjas where they come from.
I’m not quite sure if this makes sense.
As for the slash - when he left his village, no one’s going to track him down as a deserter and try to kill him and such. If I remember correctly, the slash is used to indicate that they deserted but they also were able to evade/defeat the ninjas/anbu sent after them.
For Shiva, his case is just different. He has a forehead protector for the sole purpose of showing he is a ninja in all technical senses of the word but it’s blank because he’s not from any renown village.
I know in the series there were smaller villages that had their own symbol but since his family is the only ninjas in the village, they just chose to keep it blank. Well, I hope my explanation made sense/is okay with you c: