Kusuna

Fair-skinned Kusuna has long pink hair and matching pink eyes centred on black pupils, his bangs sweeping over the right eye and trailing past his chin. His white outfit carries the same hexagram badge worn across the Gang of Four, layered over a dark blue shirt, and he adds black gloves, a belt carrying a pair of shuriken holsters, plus martial-artist shoes ringed by golden anklets. Inside the left of his coat, three pockets keep a stash of scalpels.

Brimming with arrogance, Kusuna is a cruel sadist who delights in slicing and tormenting whoever he faces. Among Yomi's followers he takes on the role of the big brother, a natural leader who is nonetheless utterly cold; when his comrade Gitai falls in battle, Kusuna only berates him for dying. Described as clever and secretive, he shares Yomi's ambitions completely.

On the battlefield Kusuna serves as a medical-nin, though his job is not to mend his allies but to strengthen them, and he can also turn his medical ninjutsu into a lethal weapon. Yomi rates him as the lone member of the four able to manage the dark chakra snakes, which he directs with such ease that they even open his coat to fetch his tools and could serve as weapons in their own right. A sharp tactician and second-in-command, he reads a fight quickly, misdirects foes with combination attacks, and holds his own up close, once trading blows with a high-ranking shinobi and clashing with Neji. His arsenal includes scalpels and a twin-bladed kunai that splits in two.

Kusuna leads the team under Yomi in their bid to slay the priestess Shion and free the demon Mōryō, having first taken in Yomi's dark medical ninjutsu to act as its catalyst. He cuts through the temple's guards and moves to kill Shion, only for Naruto and a swarm of shadow clones to force the group back, prompting Kusuna to order Gitai, Setsuna, and Shizuku into a multi-element assault. When Neji, Sakura, and Lee arrive, he sets his team as a distraction and chases the escaping priestess himself, but Neji seizes him and hurls him into a wall, so he retreats. A fresh plan splits Shion from her guards, and Kusuna runs down Sakura, downs her, and strikes what he thinks is the killing blow, not realising he has slain the bodyguard Taruho wearing Shion's face. Told she still lives, the team comes back, and as they raze the forest hunting her, Neji works out that Kusuna is the source of their enemies' many-element strength. Once the dark chakra is spent, Neji ambushes him and unleashes the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, stripping that power away and ending him.