Three-Headed Guardian Beast

At first Three-Heads takes the shape of an enormous beast built like a lion, crowned by three separate heads. Its hide runs mostly white with dark purple blotches scattered over it, including the belly, while a slab of beige armour bearing small red marks and a ridge of spikes sits above the central head, with the two flanking heads emerging from either side of it. Pale yellow-green streaks run beneath each pair of small eyes, above rows of thin, needle-like teeth. Once Gensui lets himself be absorbed, the creature transforms drastically: dark grey plating spreads across the whole body with pinkish-red accents, the original armour swells, spikes sprout at the tail, and pink plating shields the underside. The three necks thicken into cords of dense tissue and stretch far longer, the heads now sheathed in spiked purple armour and lined with even bigger fangs.

Described as a dense mass of chakra that summons catastrophe, the beast is bound to a grim legend: its first cry sears mountains and plains, the second rocks the ground, and the third undoes everything into oblivion. Long ago, well before the Great Ninja War, the seal slipped just once, and by one telling a single cry left more than a thousand dead. Ryuka's unsealing found the monster drained by its long confinement, but absorbing Gensui restored most of its former might. Against Team Kakashi it channelled chakra through its strikes to inflict harmful conditions such as poison, let loose a roar that stunned everyone nearby, and fired a searing beam of purple-pink chakra from its mouth in the manner of a Tailed Beast Ball, capable of launching one from every head at once.

The beast had lain sealed within Yumegakure until Ryuka broke the binding, though its power came out weakened after so long a sleep. Its strength was reclaimed when Gensui offered himself up to be absorbed, whereupon it turned its full fury on Team Kakashi. The design draws heavily on Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Greek myth that Hades set to guard the entrance of the Underworld.