Chiyo

was a retired counsellor of Sunagakure and a famed puppeteer. Chiyo was also the paternal 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 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 Princess" in the English translations. During the war, she also fought Hanzō's 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, though she admits that she discussed it at length with him before performing the jutsu, but to no avail. 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. When Sasori left Sunagakure he abandoned the 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.

Unlike the rest of the ninja in Sunagakure, who believed that completing missions is more important than comrades' lives, which led them to suppress and eradicate sentiments, Chiyo is rather emotional and moral. She showed great love for her grandson, Sasori, no matter how much he has 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 bore 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. 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.

One of Chiyo's favourite past-times was to pretend to be dead in order to fool her brother, and then wake up to surprise him.

Abilities
Despite her age, Chiyo was still a powerful ninja, being well respected throughout Sunagakure. Even her rival, Tsunade, has great respect for her. With Sakura Haruno's assistance, she was also able to defeat Sasori.

Puppet Master
Chiyo was a renowned master at the Puppet Technique, famous for her abilities in both creating and controlling them, to the point of being an invaluable icon for the Sand Village. She passed such skills on to her grandson, Sasori, claiming that the jutsu 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 in the history of Sunagakure) who was converted into a Human Puppet by Sasori. She also knew the Puppet Performance: Skilful Achievement with a Human Body, which allowed her to effectively control a human if she had no puppets left in her arsenal. 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.

Her strongest puppets, however, were the ten puppets created by the first Puppet Technique user, Monzaemon Chikamatsu. She was able to control each of them with only one finger per puppet, a skill which signified her as a master puppeteer. These puppets are extremely powerful and work together to perform powerful attacks such as Three Buddhist Treasures Vacuum Destruction.

Chiyo, like Sasori, modified 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.

Other Skills
While preferring to use puppets in battle, Chiyo demonstrated during her misjudgement towards Kakashi's identity that she was highly skilled in taijutsu from how easily she fought back Naruto and his clone. She possessed advanced knowledge of fūinjutsu as she was the one responsible for sealing Shukaku in Gaara. She was also a highly capable medical-nin, but 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. 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. She has stated that she used to fight with Hanzō and his salamander all the time; allowing her to know the antidote ingredient list to counter the poisonous gas released by the salamander.

Kazekage Rescue 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 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 a 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 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 and vice versa, seeing as 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.

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 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 the average shinobi, Sakura isn't quite dead, thus Chiyo doesn't 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 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 low on chakra, Naruto donates some of his own to help finish the resurrection. With Gaara's revival, Chiyo realizes 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.

Shinobi World War Arc
Chiyo is resurrected by Kabuto, along with other famous shinobi through the Summoning: Impure World Resurrection, to prepare for war.

When Chūkichi came to her group requesting backup, Chiyo noted on the Impure World Resurrection technique, saying that the technique has been improved since Tobirama Senju's time, and that one who resurrected them must be something to bind so many souls at once. The group later encounters the remains of Kankurō's Surprise Attack Division. Chiyo complimented Kankurō on defeating Sasori. When the Surprise Attack Division retreated, she and her group follow them. She then claimed that she will take her revenge against Akatsuki, Orochimaru, or anyone who resurrected her for playing with the dead and forcing her to do their bidding, adding that she will "play dead and embarrass them good". She soon got into an argument with Hanzō who tells her to shut up and called her "puppet hag", she retorts that he should shut his "stupid snorkel" first. Hanzō then summons his salamander and Chiyo recognized that the gas cloud is poisonous. She then informed Kankurō that Ibuse requires at least five minutes to generate and use its poison and that she knew the antidote for it having clashed with Hanzō a few times in the past. She soon engaged in combat with the samurai.

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

Trivia

 * According to the databook.
 * Chiyo's hobbies were pretending to be dead 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 "Veteran of many battles".

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."
 * "People always put themselves first."
 * (To Baki) "Don't treat me like an old lady!"
 * (To Sasori) "You think men stop to listen when a woman's talking?"
 * (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."
 * (To Naruto) "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..."
 * (Last words 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."