Chiyo

was a retired Sunagakure elder held in high esteem and the grandmother of Akatsuki member Sasori of the Red Sand.

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 Great 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.

Chiyo was responsible for sealing the One-Tailed Shukaku inside of Gaara under the orders of the Fourth Kazekage. After this, Chiyo and her brother removed themselves from the affairs of Sunagakure and spent their time 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 due to the fact that he killed her son and daughter-in-law, thus leaving 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. When Sasori left Sunagakure he abandoned the puppets, showing that he gave up on them.

Rescue Gaara arc
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. Naruto blocks the attack and Ebizō clears up the confusion, 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 Akatsuki to rescue Gaara, and Chiyo joins them as an adviser from Sunagakure.

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 favor at first, with Chiyo controlling Sakura to help her avoid Sasori's attacks and smash his "puppet armor", 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, 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 ten puppet collection of Chikamatsu. 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 due to the fact that the Chikamatsu puppets are specifically designed to work together, a trait lacking in Sasori's puppets.

Using a special chakra-sealing orb given to her by Chiyo, Sakura tries to seal Sasori, only to catch his empty puppet body. Sasori, having ditched it 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 can't be saved. Chiyo disagrees, and uses a special life force-transferring jutsu to heal her. While this would normally be fatal for her, Sakura isn't quite dead, so Chiyo doesn't kill herself by performing the technique. 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 get upset. Although Chiyo tries to calm him down, Naruto lashes out at her, blaming her for his death saying that if she hadn't sealed Shukaku within Gaara he wouldn't have died. In an attempt to apologize for what she had done, Chiyo tries to revive Gaara. Although she is initially unable to due to being too weak, Naruto donates some of his chakra to help finish the process. With Gaara's revival, Chiyo encourages Konoha and Suna to continue working together, and then dies peacefully with her view of the world changed thanks to Naruto.

Puppets
Chiyo is a renowned master at the Puppet Technique in both creating and controlling them, to the point of being well known to the Sunagakure village, and passing such skills to her grandson, Sasori. She modified two normal puppets to have intense battle capabilities, to the point of standing up against the Third Kazekage who was converted into a puppet by Sasori. She also knows the Puppet Performance: Skillful Achievement with a Human Body to control a human if she has no puppets.

Her strongest puppets, however, are the ten puppets created by the first Puppet Technique user, Monzaemon Chikamatsu. These puppets are extremely powerful and damaging and can work together to perform attacks such as Three Buddhist Treasures Vacuum Destruction.

Chiyo, like Sasori, has modified a part of her right arm into a mechanical one. She normally keeps it outfitted with a chakra shield, but can replace it with any puppet arm if something should happen to it.

Other Skills
While preferring to use puppets in battle, Chiyo had demonstrated during her misjudgment towards Kakashi's identity that she is highly skilled in taijutsu from how easily she fought back Naruto and his clone. She possesses advanced knowledge of sealing jutsu as she was the one responsible for sealing Shukaku in Gaara. She is also a highly capable medical ninja, but mainly uses her medical knowledge as a poison expert, which has allowed her to create powerful poisons that in her entire life have only been countered by Tsunade. She has also remarked to have faced Uchiha members in the past and knows how to deal with genjutsu. She created a life-giving jutsu, 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 media
Chiyo appears as a playable character in the Ultimate Ninja video game series, in two forms: with and without the puppets of Sasori's parents. Her first form, without the puppets, made her first appearance in Ultimate Ninja 4, while she debuted Sasori's parents in the sequel, Naruto Shippūden: Narutimate Accel 2. Chiyo will be playable in Naruto Shippūden: Clash of Ninja Revolution 3 for the Wii as a playable character, marking her debut in both the series and on a Nintendo console. Like Narutimate Accel 2, Chiyo wields the puppets of Sasori's parents in tandem in this game.

Trivia

 * According to the 3rd Databook:
 * Chiyo's registration number is 01-002.
 * Chiyo was Sasori's master, teaching him the puppet technique.
 * Chiyo has been the only female puppeteer in the manga so far.

Quotes

 * "Just kidding! I was playing dead!"
 * (To Kakashi, mistaking him for his father) "That day... how could you, despicable White Fang of the Hidden Leaf! Today at last, I shall get vengeance for my son!"
 * "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'll surpass your teacher as a female ninja."
 * "Naruto... a request from an old woman. You are the only one who knows Gaara's pain... Gaara also knows your pain. Please, save Gaara..."
 * (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."