Third Kazekage

Standing tall with a fair complexion, the Third had a mess of short dark-blue hair and thin, sharp yellow eyes. He dressed in the usual garb of his office but skipped the Kage hat, adding instead a long white cape that trailed down to his ankles.

Few doubted the Third's strength. For decades after he was gone, people still named him the greatest Kazekage, and even the Akatsuki member Sasori admitted the man had been hard to kill. His sharp mind let him study the One-Tail and reproduce a version of its sand for himself. That achievement rested on his Magnet Release, a kekkei genkai that turned his chakra into powerful magnetic force capable of moving metal at will. By binding those forces to iron powder he built the Iron Sand, a substance he shaped into whatever weapon a moment called for. Chiyo regarded it as the most dreaded armament the Sand had ever fielded. The same magnetism shielded him from metal weapons and let him jam enemy puppets by choking their joints. Anime footage underlined the raw power of his Magnet Release, since Sasori's puppet copy of it fell noticeably short of even the Third's weakened, revived self.

He arrived at Iron Sand by first examining the jinchuriki host of Shukaku, then fusing his own magnetic chakra with iron powder to mimic the sand-bending on display. At some later point Sasori abducted and slew him to convert the body into a human puppet, one the puppeteer prized above all others for the trouble its capture had taken. Sunagakure, ignorant of Sasori's crime, searched hard for their missing leader, but the ongoing war pushed them to install a Fourth Kazekage while the hunt quietly continued. Only around the rise of the Fifth did the truth surface. In the anime, Orochimaru obtained some of his genetic material and revived him through the Impure World Reincarnation, pitting him against Sasori's puppet imitation. Being dismissed as a mere pawn stirred the Kazekage's own will, and rather than serve as anyone's tool he wrenched back control and forced the reanimation to end, returning to the Pure Land. Revived, he showed a calm, unreadable temperament and a proud refusal to be used, alongside a grudge against the one who had killed him. His true fate finally came to light during the Kazekage rescue when Sasori unveiled the puppet before Chiyo and Sakura Haruno. Much later, at the close of the Fourth Shinobi World War, the Sage of the Six Paths summoned his soul with the other departed Kage to help bring Team 7 and the tailed beasts back from Kaguya's dimension before returning him to rest.