Temari

Temari takes strongly after her late mother Karura, with blonde hair bound into four stacked pigtails and green eyes that were once drawn as black. Through Part I she wears a single off-the-shoulder garment in pale purple that reaches mid-thigh, cinched with a scarlet sash, adding fishnet across her shoulders and legs and knotting her black headband at her throat; late in that stretch she swaps to a purple blouse over a grey top with a dark blue skirt and a bowed sash. Part II brings a shorter black kimono with side slits and a lower neckline, fingerless gloves, and her forehead protector worn properly on her brow. As an adult she settles into softer looks, adding lipstick, shifting her hair into fewer tails, and in the New Era pairing a short blue dress with a polka-dotted belt that doubles as a holder for her fan.

Level-headed, composed, and famously blunt, Temari says exactly what she thinks, a trait her son later inherits. Early on she shares her siblings' callous edge, once smiling and waving as Gaara crushed a beaten team, yet she plainly prizes peace, troubled by the cost of war and later serving as a diplomatic bridge between Suna and Konoha and as an ambassador in the Shinobi Union. She is a fiercely protective sister who once dreaded Gaara but became among the first to embrace his reformed self, rushing to his side when the Akatsuki took him. Her long rapport with Shikamaru softens her guarded manner; the two spar verbally for years before feelings surface, and after the war she is hurt enough by his secrecy to slap him in tears. Marriage, a move to Konoha, and the birth of Shikadai make her the household's stern matriarch, quick to discipline both husband and son yet deeply devoted to the Nara clan's future, with a warmer, teasing side never far beneath.

Trained under Sunagakure's harsh regimen as a Kazekage's daughter, Temari is a gifted long-range fighter who, even as a genin, cut down Tayuya of the Sound Four without taking a scratch. She fights with a massive iron fan, or tessen, marked by three purple circles she calls stars; opening it to reveal each one in turn ramps up its force, and at full spread she conjures guided, slicing whirlwinds through her Wind Release. The winds let her strike from a distance, reshape the ground, and swat aside most projectiles, and a stronger variant even doubles as a shield against sound-based genjutsu. By Part II her control has deepened enough to slice a samurai's armor without harming the man inside, and within the Fourth Division she is hailed as its top Wind Release user, wounding the durable Third Raikage and joining other fan-wielders to blunt the Ten-Tails. She can also summon the one-eyed weasel Kamatari to whip up gusts alongside her own.

Her mind is as sharp as her blade. A quick analyst, she reads an opponent's plan almost as soon as a fight opens, famously staying just clear of Shikamaru's shadow during their Chunin Exams final until he engineered a trap and then forfeited on spent chakra; the jonin Asuma still praised her as an excellent strategist. After the exams she covers Gaara's retreat during the Konoha Crush, and in the Sasuke Recovery Mission she reaches Shikamaru in time to level the forest and bury Tayuya. In the Fourth Shinobi World War she leads the charge with the Fourth Division and takes the field against the Third Raikage. Marrying into the Nara clan, she absorbs its shadow techniques and helps refine a new one, and in peacetime she is reckoned Suna's finest wind user and passes her craft to Mirai Sarutobi.