Chiyo

In old age Chiyo stood shorter than most, her once-dark hair turned fully grey and her face lined deeply, most heavily around the mouth and beneath her sunken lids. Age spots marked her left cheek and the upper corner of her brow. Her eyes stayed black throughout, and in her youth she pinned the top of her shoulder-length hair into a bun while side bangs framed her cheeks. Her clothing followed Suna custom: a loose, dark garment topped with a poncho-style layer.

A streak of mischief ran through Chiyo, who delighted in feigning death or senility to unsettle those around her, and she was quick to leap to conclusions, once striking at Kakashi because she took him for his late father. Decades of war had left her wise but weary, convinced the younger generation ought to fend for itself, and she initially scorned the notion of leaning on Konoha for aid. Meeting Team 7 softened her, and she grew fond of Sakura despite the girl being trained by her old rival Tsunade. Beneath the jokes lay a heavy conscience, chiefly over sealing the One-Tail inside Gaara, and she admitted she carried too many regrets to pass on quietly. Her deepest attachment was to her grandson Sasori, and her final act, surrendering her life to restore Gaara, was at once atonement and a plea that the Sand and the Leaf might one day forge a genuine alliance.

Even in her twilight years Chiyo ranked among Suna's most formidable fighters, respected even by Tsunade, and her talents were prized enough that she was later dragged back through Impure World Reincarnation for the Fourth Shinobi World War. Many hailed her as the finest puppeteer who ever lived, the craft a family tradition she handed down to Sasori. Her arsenal stretched from the two combat-rigged Mother and Father puppets to the full ten-piece Chikamatsu Collection, which she could direct all at once, and she wove invisible chakra threads capable of seizing weapons or even living bodies to serve as substitute puppets. She had replaced her right arm with a mechanical one fitted with a chakra shield. As a healer she leaned on her mastery of poisons, brews that only Tsunade ever managed to neutralise, and she knew the antidote to Hanzo's venomous salamander from clashing with him in the past. Her command of sealing arts was advanced enough that she bound the One-Tail within Gaara, and the same forbidden technique let her trade her life force to raise the dead.