Yūkimaru

A long fall of pale green hair and a faintly androgynous look define Yūkimaru, whose eyes gleam a vivid magenta. He dresses in a kimono, jade-green within and grey without, over cadet-blue trousers wrapped in bandages to the ankle. Rather than the standard shinobi sandals he wears low-cut brown ones, and a blue cloak covers him while he travels with Kabuto, and afterward Guren, toward the Three-Tails' lake.

For reasons no one can explain, Yūkimaru holds partial sway over the Three-Tails. Pills supplied by Kabuto let him call the beast forth, at first only as a faint apparition, then, with a heavier dose paired to Guren's Crystal Release, as the full creature he cannot yet command. He can also restrain it briefly on his own, as he does to shield Guren from harm. His power answers to his feelings: when he believes Guren has died saving him, he loses himself entirely, and the surge drives the beast into a rampage strong enough to shatter the Four-Corner Sealing Barrier. Apart from the beast, he can raise a dense mist that blankets an area, covering his escape and letting allies strike unseen.

When Yūkimaru is small, Orochimaru's followers raid the village where he lives with his mother. His mother nurses the wounded Guren, who spares her in thanks but is later ordered to kill her; the woman's blood stains nearby white camellias red. Years on, Kabuto draws out Yūkimaru's power in a run of experiments and, along the way, the boy crosses paths with Naruto and talks with him about where one truly belongs. Sent off with Guren, he grows close to her, and she gives him a crystal camellia that will last as long as she lives, so he turns down Naruto's offer to bring him to Konoha. A second, harsher experiment forces the whole Three-Tails into being; Guren fights to protect him, and Rinji, in truth Kabuto in disguise, later reveals that Guren was the one who killed his mother. Guren, now full of regret, swears to guard him always, and he accepts. When she seems to perish sealing Rinji away in crystal, grief tears Yūkimaru's power loose, wrecking the seal that Konoha's shinobi had all but completed and burning out his control over the beast. He wakes to find her crystal whole and glowing and slips away to seek her, last glimpsed walking off hand in hand with Guren and Gozu.