Yahiko

Yahiko wore his orange hair short and spiky above blue eyes, which the anime rendered brown. Under Jiraiya's mentorship he favoured a short black robe with green trim, dark trousers, and mesh armour beneath a black-and-white belt. Leading Akatsuki, he switched to a long black robe marked by a red central stripe, torso armour, a small pouch, and a large sword slung at his side. Reborn as the Deva Path, his corpse kept those features, notably the spiky orange hair, but now carried Nagato's Rinnegan, a spread of facial and wrist piercings, a distinctive necklace, and an expressionless, faintly pale face that read far older than his true fifteen years.

Yahiko's spirit mirrored Naruto's: he dreamed of leading his village and refused to quit, yet he held harsher convictions, an eye-for-an-eye outlook and a belief in survival of the strongest. He loathed how the world regarded Amegakure and ached to end its ceaseless rain, which he likened to weeping, and to shield its people; that ambition carried a streak of god complex. Among the orphans he was the natural leader, the first to approach the Sannin, and a gruff older-brother figure to Nagato and Konan. Fiercely loyal, he would sooner die than let Konan be harmed, and his feelings for her were returned. He was sharp as well, seeing through the masked man's false Madara identity and warning the others off.

Left an orphan by the Second Shinobi World War, Yahiko survived by stealing food before joining Konan and, with some reluctance at first, Nagato. Jiraiya took the three in and taught them the basics of ninjutsu, and once he departed they grew into a respected shinobi team still bent on a peaceful world. They later crossed the masked man posing as Madara, whom Yahiko distrusted at once, urging his friends to keep their distance.

Gathering others who shared their ideals, he built the Akatsuki as a movement to halt war without bloodshed. That vision alarmed Hanzō, who conspired with Danzō to trap the trio; cornered, Hanzō forced Nagato to choose between Konan's life and Yahiko's, and Yahiko ended it himself, driving his body onto the kunai in Nagato's grip and charging his friend with carrying the dream of peace forward. Nagato afterward wove the corpse into his Six Paths of Pain, and in time Konan laid Yahiko to rest on a bed of paper flowers in Amegakure.