Gatō

Small round black spectacles perch on his face, with shaggy brown hair sitting above them. His usual outfit is a black suit paired with a purple tie, a yellow shirt worn beneath the jacket, and plain closed-toe shoes.

Greed and cruelty drive nearly everything Gato does. The faintest promise of profit is enough to move him, and he places money above every loyalty, emotion, or promise, tearing up his own agreements the moment doing so saves him a coin. He treats enemies without mercy, killing anyone who stands in his way, and he thinks nothing of hurting the innocent, ordering Tsunami seized as a hostage to pressure Tazuna. For all that menace, he is a coward at heart who nurses petty grudges, kicking Haku's corpse over an earlier injury and then shrinking back in terror when Zabuza turned on him.

Behind the respectable face of his shipping empire, Gato ran contraband and dealt drugs, and he seized the Land of Waves' sea lanes to build a stranglehold on trade. By sealing the country off from the outside world he ground it into poverty and hunger. When a man named Kaiza dared to defy him, Gato had him humiliated and executed in front of everyone, crushing the spirit of Wave so thoroughly that no one else dared resist. Two bodyguards, Zori and Waraji, shadowed him wherever he went.

Because Tazuna's bridge threatened his grip on the region's economy, Gato paid Zabuza Momochi and his followers to kill the builder. After Kakashi Hatake and the newly formed Team 7 turned back Zabuza's first attempt, Gato paid the swordsman a visit and warned, as Haku caught his arm, that another failure would cost them their place in his organization. During the rematch, once Zabuza's arms had been broken, Gato showed up with a mob of hired thugs, meaning to finish the assassin himself and dodge the bill for his services. That scheme ended his life. Zabuza gripped a kunai in his teeth and cut Gato's head from his shoulders. The swordsman soon died of his wounds, and the leaderless thugs who tried to plunder Wave were chased off by Kakashi, Naruto, and the assembled villagers.