Kushina Uzumaki

Widely regarded as a beauty, Kushina is a slim, fair-skinned woman with violet eyes and the deep red hair of her clan, worn straight down to her shins with framing strands at her cheeks and a black clip that parts it to the left. Her everyday dress is a long, loose gown over a high-collared sleeveless blouse, finished with a wristband and shinobi sandals. On duty she gathers her hair into a high ponytail beneath a blue forehead protector and layers a Konoha flak jacket over a black short-sleeved shirt and fitted black pants.

As a girl, her round face and the red hair framing it earned the tomato comparison, and she wore a yellow sleeveless kimono-style top held closed with a green obi. In adolescence she switched to a tan kimono blouse with a dark border over a short skirt and thigh-high stockings.

In her youth Kushina was headstrong, impulsive, and stubborn, a talkative tomboy who capped flustered sentences with her signature verbal tic, a habit she hoped Naruto would not inherit. Those quirks also masked her insecurities about her red hair, her foreign roots, and her burden as Kurama's host. As an adult she grew level-headed and cheerful with a sassy edge, though her childhood temper never fully left her and she would lash out when angered.

Fearless and deeply maternal, she doted on Minato's students, hugging Rin, packing lunches for Kakashi, and roughhousing with her favorite, Obito. Above all she loved her family without limit, ready to trade her own life to stop the Nine-Tails and to spend her final breath pouring love into her newborn son.

Born into the Uzumaki clan of Uzushiogakure and raised amid war, Kushina was sent to Konoha as a child after her village fell. Her boast of becoming the first female Hokage, together with her round face and wild red hair, drew taunts of Tomato that she answered with her fists, earning the nickname Red Hot-Blooded Habanero. She had come to the village to become the second host of the Nine-Tails, a fate that terrified her until the previous host, Mito Uzumaki, taught her that love alone could master the beast's hatred.

As a genin she was abducted by Kumogakure for her special chakra, leaving a trail of plucked red hairs that only Minato Namikaze noticed; his rescue, and his admiration for the very hair she despised, turned it in her eyes into a red thread of fate, and she fell in love with him. Blessed with the Uzumaki clan's immense life force, she wielded her clan's fūinjutsu and could summon Adamantine Sealing Chains strong enough to bind the Nine-Tails itself, and she helped inspire the naming of Minato's Rasengan. She married Minato, watched him rise to Fourth Hokage, and carried their son, choosing the name Naruto from Jiraiya's novel.

Because the seal weakened during childbirth, she gave birth in secret under Minato's guard, but a masked man broke in, tore the Nine-Tails from her, and set it loose on Konoha. Her clan's vitality let her survive the extraction, and rather than have Minato die alone she offered to be resealed with the beast; instead the two chose to seal it into Naruto, and both parents shielded their infant from the fox's claw with their own bodies, spending their last words filling him with love. Years later Kushina's lingering chakra met Naruto within his own mind as he fought Kurama's hatred, and she finally told him the story of his birth and thanked him for letting her be his mother before fading into peace. Her love became a foundation of Naruto's strength, and her spirit carried on through her grandchildren, Boruto and Himawari.