Amaru

Amaru's long reddish-brown hair stays tucked beneath a blue bandanna, her tribute to Shinno, though hers is a different shade and cut longer than his. Earlier she tied a blue headband that left the hair uncovered, and after her mentor's faked death she received a red bandanna, worn until he snatched it back and ripped it apart. She has heavy brows, blue eyes, and a mole below her left eye, and she dresses in a cyan gi under a cream vest that hides her chest, paired with blue shorts and dark bands on her arms and legs. That getup, along with her boyish manner, led Naruto to take her for a boy at first.

A childhood spent as an outcast, orphaned and sick, left Amaru desperately lonely, so Shinno's kindness bound her to him instantly. At the start she begged him to make her a ninja so she could pay back the villagers who had mocked her, yet she came to embrace his professed belief that protecting lives came first. Her feelings for him run close to love, and when Naruto guesses as much she denies it with embarrassment. Shinno's apparent death broke her and left her open to the darkness within, and his eventual betrayal shattered her further, but each time Naruto reached her and restored her will to live. Even betrayed, she still loved him and confessed as much, worrying for him when Naruto and Sasuke brought him down. A tomboy who calls herself by the rough ore, she snaps at Naruto early on, hurling him through a window and slapping him, though she seems to grow fond of him in time.

Amaru lost her parents to unknown causes, and a strange sickness in her early years so frightened her village, afraid of catching it, that no one would help her; she grew up shunned in the way Naruto and Gaara had been. The kind doctor Shinno finally healed her, and she idolized him as the first person ever to treat her warmly, pressing him to accept her as a pupil. Trained by him for years, she became a skilled medic who patched Naruto up after venomous river fish poisoned him, and she carries a scalpel from her mentor that she uses for surgery and even to spring a lock in Ancor Vantian; her bare-handed strength can send a grown person flying.

When Land of the Sky ninja ravaged Konohagakure, Amaru came with Shinno to tend the wounded, then set out for home under escort from Naruto, Sakura, and Hinata, only to find her own village in ruins as well. A trap she stumbled into would have been fatal, but Shinno died shielding her from it, and her grief fed the sealed Zero-Tails, which spun her despair into dark chakra and lashed out until Naruto soothed her back to herself. Joining the rescue to honor her teacher, she reached the Sky ninja's mother ship and found Shinno alive but exposed as their ally, a man who had only pretended kindness while scheming to glut the Zero-Tails on misery. Naruto lifted her from that despair once more, and she freed Hinata and the captives; as the ship plunged, she leapt after Naruto rather than escape, and Jiraiya's summoned Gamabunta caught them both, leaving her holding the unconscious Naruto.