Gōzu

A rebreather masks the lower half of Gōzu's face, and his dark eyes sit beneath a mane of untamed brown hair that falls to his shoulders. His right arm carries a heavy clawed gauntlet laced with poison, and a chain runs from it to a matching gauntlet worn by his brother. He dresses in a camouflage outfit with bandages wound at the waist, dark sandals reaching the knee, and a tattered black cape, while a single horn juts from his Kirigakure headband.

Where his twin runs hot, Gōzu stays cool. Others cast him as the composed and reasoning half of the pair, level and calm against Meizu's more impulsive streak. His name, written with characters for deed and head, points to a mind fixed on the outcome of his actions.

Long before they turned rogue, Gōzu and Meizu served Kirigakure as chunin, fleeing alongside Zabuza after a botched attempt on the Mizukage's life and hiring themselves out as assassins from then on. Their real strength lies in fighting as a single unit. The shuriken chain strung between their gauntlets can wrap an opponent and cut him to pieces, and if that chain is severed, Gōzu can trigger a catch that frees him to strike alone with his venom-tipped claws. He moves well unseen, once lurking just beyond Konoha's gates without being noticed, and shares his brother's command of Water Release, letting the pair rise from puddles to ambush their targets. When Zabuza first sets them against Tazuna, they melt out of a puddle to catch Team 7 off guard, Gōzu hurling Meizu ahead and seeming to cut down Kakashi at once. They turn on Naruto Uzumaki next, but Sasuke Uchiha breaks the chain binding them, and Kakashi, who had slipped the opening strike with a substitution, subdues both brothers and ties them to a tree. A novel version hints that the two later slip away to rejoin Zabuza.