Chiyo

was a retired counsellor of Sunagakure. She was also a famed puppeteer, the leader of Sunagakure's Puppet Brigade, and a medical-nin.

Background
Chiyo, often called by the Sunagakure villagers, was the village's poison, and puppet expert. She and her brother Ebizō were highly revered in Sunagakure and were known as the. Chiyo was very knowledgeable when it came to handling poisons and used her skills often during the Second Shinobi World War, only to be countered numerous times by Tsunade's medical expertise. This caused Chiyo to hold a grudge against Tsunade, who she came to call, or the "Slug Queen" in the English dub. During the war, she also fought Hanzō and his salamander numerous times, learning how frequently it can use its venom and eventually developing an antidote against it.

Chiyo was responsible for sealing the One-Tailed Shukaku inside of Gaara under the orders of the Fourth Kazekage, noting that of the Kazekage's three children, Gaara was the only compatible one. Some time after this, Chiyo and her brother removed themselves from the affairs of Sunagakure and spent their time fishing together, where Chiyo would play jokes on her brother by pretending she had died just to scare him.

Chiyo also expressed a desire to kill Sakumo Hatake to avenge the killing of her son and daughter-in-law, which left her grandson Sasori orphaned. After that Chiyo tried to help Sasori ease the pain by caring for him and teaching him the Puppet Technique. Chiyo would later watch Sasori create his first puppets that would resemble his own parents. This was meant to fill the void of his parents dying. In the anime, while still a child, Sasori became very instrumental in the development of puppets and poisons for the village, regularly filling orders from Chiyo herself. As Chiyo watched Sasori continue to immerse himself in puppets, Chiyo became increasingly concerned for her grandson. However, she instead chose to remain indifferent, focusing most of her attention on helping the village. One day, Komushi, a young shinobi and one of Sasori's only friends, was badly injured during a mission, costing him his right arm. Demonstrating a new style of puppet ninjutsu, Sasori replaced Komushi's arm with a fully movable puppet arm as a prosthetic limb, coated with Sasori's newest poison. Later, Komushi died from accidentally ingesting the very poison. As Chiyo's concerns continued to grow, she began noticing a pattern with Sasori and decided to investigate. To her horror, she discovered that Sasori has taken Komushi's corpse and turned it into a human puppet.

Later, to Chiyo's dismay, Sasori left Sunagakure and abandoned his parent puppets, showing that he gave up on them.

Personality
As a veteran, Chiyo and her brother Ebizō possess great wisdom, such that Baki requested their assistance in the village's greatest danger. However, they had little motivation to serve Sunagakure any longer, as they retired and felt that the next generation should look out for themselves. The siblings were rather disappointed when the village was showing to be so reliant on others. She was also pessimistic because she believed Konoha would send a lower-class medical shinobi to heal Kankurō's poison, only to be proven wrong when Sakura, one of the top-notch medical shinobi in Konoha was sent. After spending time with Team 7, her views quickly changed and with her last breath, she prayed Naruto and Gaara could lead their villages to a better relationship with a true alliance, not one for show.

Chiyo could be very mischievous, as she enjoyed playing dead or acting senile to fool others. Chiyo would often also jump to conclusions as seen when she attacked Kakashi Hatake because she mistook him for his father Sakumo.

Chiyo loved her grandson, Sasori, a great deal despite how much he had fallen, and was fully willing to grant life to the puppets that he created, at the cost of her own; this was said to be her dream. In fact, it was only Sasori's involvement in Akatsuki that she was willing to grant Baki's request for assistance. This love also led her to bear a grudge against Sakumo Hatake for killing Sasori's parents, and as such, she initially tried to kill his son Kakashi, mistaking him for his father. However, in the anime, it was shown that Chiyo's love for her family was also split between it as well as her devotion to the village and her views as a ninja being detached. This was seen from her hesitance to take a simple family picture.

Chiyo showed care and respect for Sakura Haruno, despite the latter being a disciple of Chiyo's rival. She also showed regret and remorse for sealing the One-Tailed Shukaku into Gaara, and gave her life to revive the latter as a way of repentance. While retirement led Chiyo to become detached from the outside world, she admitted to Sasori she had too many regrets in life that she cannot die in peace.

Appearance
Chiyo is an elderly woman with black eyes and lavender coloured hair tied in a bun, in her fight with Sasori she let her hair loose. She wears the traditional Sunagakure outfit which consists of a dark coloured, loose fitting outfit with a poncho-like top.

Abilities
Despite her old age, Chiyo was still a very powerful kunoichi, being well-respected throughout Suna. Even her rival, Tsunade, held great respect for her. With Sakura's assistance, she could defeat Sasori, a powerful member of Akatsuki. Her skills were great enough to be chosen for reincarnation by Kabuto Yakushi for the Fourth Shinobi World War. Chiyo was also one of the few reincarnations that was never sealed by the enemy, only being stopped after Itachi Uchiha had Kabuto release the Impure World Reincarnation.

Puppet Mastery
Chiyo was a renowned master of the Puppet Technique, famous for her abilities in both creating and controlling puppets, to the point of being an invaluable icon for Sunagakure. She passed such skills onto her grandson, Sasori, claiming that the technique was traditional in their family. She modified two normal unarmed puppets to have intense battle capabilities, to the point where they were capable of standing up against the Third Kazekage (known as the strongest Kage in the history of Sunagakure) who was converted into a Human Puppet by Sasori. These puppets were equipped with wire strings that extend from both of the puppets hands. When connected they have the ability to cut through most things, including Sasori's Thousand Hands Manipulation Force. She also could use the Puppet Performance: Skilful Achievement with a Human Body technique, which allowed her to effectively control a human if she had no puppets left in her arsenal; she was highly skilled with this tactic, as she was able to fight effectively during the Fourth Shinobi War using only samurai as a subsitute for puppets. In the anime, she also showed the ability to control up to ten living people at once with this skill, each of them with only one finger per puppet — a skill which signified her as a master puppeteer. She had great skill with chakra threads, as she could place them onto other puppets without her opponent noticing and suppressing them to the point that they became invisible, as well as using them to control and fire weapons.

Like Sasori, Chiyo modified a part of her body and turned her right arm into a mechanical one. She normally kept it outfitted with a chakra shield, and could replace it with any puppet arm if something were to happen to it. She also installed this shield on the Mother and Father puppets.

Her strongest puppets, however, were the full set of 10 puppets known as the Chikamatsu Collection, created by the first puppet user, Monzaemon Chikamatsu, and that she could control at the same time. These puppets were extremely powerful, using teamwork to perform powerful attacks, and were equipped with powerful techniques such as the Three Jewels Suction Crushing and the Sealing Technique: Lion Closing Roar. With the assistance of Sakura, Chiyo's ten puppets were able to overpower Sasori's one hundred puppets, though in the anime, most of the Chikamatsu Collection was destroyed in the process.

Medical Ninjutsu
Chiyo was a highly capable medical-nin, and while having some healing skills, she mainly used her medical knowledge as a poison expert, which allowed her to create powerful poisons that in her entire life have only been countered by Tsunade, who is herself renowned as the world's greatest medical-nin. Likewise, she has stated that she used to fight with Hanzō all the time; allowing her to know the time it takes for his salamander to produce its poison, and the antidote to counter the poisonous gas. She also created a life-giving technique, one that would result in her own death if it were used, that she wanted to use for Sasori in order to give life to his puppet parents.

Other Skills
While preferring to use her puppets in battle, Chiyo has shown to be skilled in taijutsu, as seen during her brief scuffle with Naruto and his clone, and during her battle against Kankurō and his puppet in the anime. She possessed advanced knowledge of fūinjutsu, being the one responsible for sealing Shukaku into Gaara. She also has some skill in countering genjutsu, having faced members of the Uchiha clan in the past.

Kazekage Rescue Mission
After Gaara is kidnapped and Kankurō is poisoned by Sasori, Baki requests that Chiyo help in curing the poison. Chiyo initially refuses, no longer concerned with the fate of the village, but Sasori's involvement persuades her into helping. In spite of this, Sasori's poison is beyond her expertise to cure. Much to her own dismay, she admits that Tsunade would be the only one capable of healing him. Even with such an admission, she is not willing to contact Tsunade, believing firmly that asking other villages for help makes their own look weaker.

When Team 7 arrives after learning of Gaara's kidnapping, Chiyo instantly attacks Kakashi Hatake under the mistaken impression that he is his father: Konoha's White Fang, who had killed Sasori's parents. Naruto blocks the attack and Ebizō clears up the confusion (to Kakashi's great relief), after which Chiyo plays the attack off as senility. With that over, Sakura is able to heal Kankurō, much to Chiyo's surprise. Once Kankurō is healed, Team 7 prepares to go after the Akatsuki to rescue Gaara, and Chiyo joins them as an adviser from Sunagakure. She explained to Naruto what a tailed beast was, and confessed to sealing the One-Tail into Gaara. When Team 7 encountered Itachi Uchiha, she remained in the rear in order to cancel any genjutsu that was cast on her comrades.

After reaching the Akatsuki hideout, Team 7 splits up to pursue the only two members present; Kakashi and Naruto go after Deidara, leaving Chiyo and Sakura to fight against Sasori. The battle goes in their favour at first, with Chiyo controlling Sakura to help her avoid Sasori's attacks and smash his "puppet armour", Hiruko. The destruction of his puppet forces Sasori to reveal himself, which also reveals the fact that he hasn't aged a day since departing the village twenty years earlier. Now unmasked, Sasori brings out the first of his human puppets: the Third Kazekage. This puppet is decidedly more powerful than Hiruko, and Chiyo is forced to summon Sasori's mother and father puppets just to fend off its powerful attacks. Even with the two puppets, Chiyo is overwhelmed by the Third's Iron Sand techniques, which prove to be the puppet's biggest weakness, leaving Sakura to be the one to destroy the Kazekage puppet.

Down another puppet, Sasori reveals the secret of his youth: he has converted himself into a puppet. The only living part of him remaining is his heart, making him difficult to kill. Since neither she nor Sakura can destroy his puppet body, Chiyo summons the Chikamatsu Collection. To mock the summoning, Sasori summons one hundred of his puppets, a feat only possible thanks to his unique body. In the ensuing battle, Chiyo destroys many of Sasori's puppets and vice versa. Both collections seem to be about equal in power because, despite the fact that Sasori's overwhelm Chiyo's in numbers, the quality and teamwork of her puppets far surpass his. She is wounded and poisoned by one of Sasori's puppets that slashes her right shoulder, but the puppet was quickly disposed of by Chiyo's puppet and she continued to fight while enduring the pain.

Using a special chakra-sealing orb given to her by Chiyo, Sakura tries to seal Sasori's Chakra Pathway System, only to catch his empty puppet body. Sasori, having ditched it mere moments before, simply goes to a spare body and tries to stab Chiyo with a poisoned sword. Sakura takes the blow in her place, giving Chiyo a chance to stab Sasori through the heart with his parents' puppets in the form of a hug. Before Sasori dies, he insists that at least Sakura cannot be saved. Chiyo disagrees, and uses a special life force-transferring technique to heal her. While this would normally be fatal for the average shinobi, Sakura was not quite dead, thus Chiyo does not die in the process. After Sasori dies, Chiyo speculates that he had actually taken the attack willingly, since he simply wanted his parents to hug him.

After reuniting with Kakashi and Naruto, who have succeeded in retrieving Gaara, Sakura pronounces Gaara dead, causing Naruto to break down in tears. Although Chiyo tries to calm him down, Naruto lashes out and blames her for his death, saying that if she had not sealed Shukaku within Gaara he would not have died. Knowing that he is right, Chiyo tries to revive Gaara to atone for making him a jinchūriki. Although she initially has too little chakra left to do so, Naruto donates some of his own to help finish the resurrection. With Gaara's revival, Chiyo realises that the future of Konoha and the Sand will be much better than things were back in her day, and then dies peacefully, with her view of the world changed thanks to Naruto.

Fourth Shinobi World War: Confrontation
In preparation for the Fourth Shinobi World War, Chiyo is reincarnated by Kabuto Yakushi to fight against the Allied Shinobi Forces. In the anime, while he thought she was a valuable reincarnation, it was revealed that he mistakenly acquired her DNA instead of Sasori's. After being mobilised, she becomes part of the group that Chūkichi requests assistance from, alongside Kimimaro and Hanzō. With this, Chiyo notes that the technique had been improved since Tobirama Senju's time and that the one who reincarnated them must be something else, to bind so many souls at once.

Encountering the remnants of the Surprise Attack Division, where Deidara was imprisoned, Chiyo compliments Kankurō on defeating Sasori. When the opposition begins their retreat with her group in pursuit, she swears to take revenge against whoever reincarnated her, while concerned about being embarrassed if they forced her to play dead. This results in an argument with Hanzō, who calls her a "puppet hag", to which she retorts that he was a "big snorkel geezer".

After Hanzō summons his salamander and recognising the poisonous gas it exhaled, Chiyo informs Kankurō that the creature requires five minutes to generate and use the toxin, but that she knew the antidote, having fought with Hanzō before. Engaging the reinforcements from the Fifth Division with Kimimaro the following day, Chiyo takes control of a samurai to use as a puppet. In the anime, Kankurō intervened and freed the samurai from her control. By that time, learning that Kankurō has the Mother and Father puppets alongside the Scorpion puppet, Chiyo's guilt for her inability to save Sasori is brought into light. But finding good memories of her grandson along with the bad, Chiyo admits that the puppets are in good hands yet continues investing over him. Later observing the arrival of one of Naruto's shadow clones, remarking that the youth has changed in ways besides his height, Chiyo is then seemingly struck by Naruto's Wind Release: Rasenshuriken, but in the anime along with Kimimaro managed to dodge it before being struck.

Fourth Shinobi World War: Climax
When the Impure World Reincarnation was released, Chiyo — who had still been battling the Alliance's members — was enveloped in a light of sorts before beginning to deconstruct. As her spirit ascended, she asserted that she could finally die once again as her soul returned to the afterlife. In the anime, Kankurō arrives in time to see the process. While he is sad to see the elderly puppet master leave once again, Chiyo acknowledges the younger Suna-nin's skill in the same art, proudly intrusting Kankurō to carry on puppetry ninjutsu and delivers one final joke by claiming she wouldn't need to play possum any longer.

Video Games
In many of her game appearances, Chiyo uses the Mother and Father puppets.

In Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Online, her chakra nature is Earth Release.

Trivia

 * According to the databook(s):
 * Chiyo's hobbies were pretending to be dead, playing senile, and fishing.
 * Chiyo's favourite foods were dishes with beans, and potatoes. Her least favourite was sashimi.
 * Chiyo wished to fight Sakumo Hatake.
 * Chiyo's favourite phrase was . This idiom refers to a richness in experiences gained through battling through many adversities.

Quotes

 * (To Ebizō) "Just kidding! I was playing dead!"
 * (To Baki about Konoha) "Improving your own village's capability should always be top priority. They are them, and we are us! True alliances are nothing more than pipe dreams. At difficult times, when you really need them, the best you get are useless foot soldiers."
 * (To Baki) "Don't treat me like an old lady!"
 * (To Sasori) "Even retired and a foot in grave, I'll still take action. I've too many regrets to die yet."
 * (To Naruto) "I'm happy that someone like you has appeared in the world of shinobi that we foolish old people created. Everything I've ever done was a mistake. But now, at the end, it looks like I'll finally be able to do the right thing. The Sand Village and Konoha. Their future will be much different than the way things were back in my day. That strange power of yours that Kakashi mentioned… That power will have a strong influence on the future. Become a Hokage like none before you."
 * (To Sakura) "And Sakura… Next time, save the people who are dear to you, not some old hag. You and I are very similar. There aren't many girls as chivalrous as you around. You might become a kunoichi who surpasses her master."
 * (Last words to Naruto) "Naruto… a request from an old woman. You are the only one who knows Gaara's pain… Gaara also knows your pain. Help Gaara out…"