Kabuto Yakushi

Personality

At times, Kabuto can seem quite open, more than willing to approach people and always confident in his own words and actions. By his own admission, he is an introvert who doesn't like to be looked at and who wants to stick to the background. He can be very critical of others, dismissing their personal desires and outlining all the flaws he perceives them to be making. To those he feels are deserving, he is nothing but polite, regarding them with deference, using the appropriate honourifics, and chastising those who don't do the same. He can be cruel, preying on sensitive topics in order to rile someone up and punctuating his comments with sarcasm. Other times he is kind, putting himself at risk and being helpful for no immediate benefit to himself. The many contradictions of Kabuto's personality are a result of his frequent role as a spy, having spent most of his life changing identities and loyalties in order to gather information for some organisation. Although he's been serving Orochimaru for the longest period of time, even Orochimaru isn't always sure what Kabuto's true feelings are: he trusts Kabuto implicitly, yet secretly suspects that Kabuto might intentionally undermine him. When Kabuto begins working with Tobi, Tobi is careful to be on guard with Kabuto and keep him on a short leash, aware that Kabuto does not always act for the reasons he claims to; even so, Kabuto is able to make himself simultaneously so valuable yet so dangerous that Tobi can't really do anything about it.

Personality

Kabuto appears to take his shifting allegiances in stride, but in truth he suffers an ongoing identity crisis. Because of the head injury he experienced when he was younger, Kabuto's early past is unknown to him and he has been having to construct an identity for himself ever since. While he was recruiting Kabuto, Orochimaru encouraged him to follow his own example and quite literally build who he wants to be out of whatever knowledge and abilities he can gather. Kabuto latched on to this idea at the time, but eventually realised that this was no different than what he did as a spy: aligning himself under some larger entity and then defining himself according to that. Kabuto decides it is better to follow Naruto Uzumaki's example and establish his own identity by becoming even greater than those under whose shadows he's lived under, namely Orochimaru. Kabuto sets out to become stronger, perfecting all the skills that Orochimaru could not, and use the resulting power so that he would never need to be answerable to anyone ever again.

Personality

In his quest to surpass Orochimaru, Kabuto convinces himself that he has become the "perfect" being. He uses this believed distinction in order to ally with Tobi during the Fourth Shinobi World War, pitting Tobi against the Allied Shinobi Forces so that they will destroy themselves and enable Kabuto to capitalise in the aftermath. But when his plans see continued setbacks, especially in his repeated failure to defeat Sasuke and Itachi Uchiha in battle, Kabuto's self-image as "perfect" starts to crack and he begins desperately trying to defend his final attempt at being recognised. Itachi tries to explain the misstep that Kabuto has been making, but it isn't until he is subjected to Izanami that Kabuto accepts it: in the act of making an identity for himself, he has only been burying who he truly is. When he peels away all his false personas, Kabuto again becomes the adoptive son of Nonō Yakushi, one who could be trusted to do things on his own and who was valued by the entire orphanage because of it. Despite having claimed to have surpassed Orochimaru, Kabuto still held great respect for Orochimaru, still referring to him with the honourific "-sama".

Appearance

Kabuto has onyx eyes and ash-grey hair, which he normally keeps in a ponytail. His most consistent feature are his black rimmed circular glasses, given to him by Nonō. During Part I and for much of Part II, Kabuto wears a dark purple shirt with a high collar, a white under-shirt, and dark purple pants with a white cloth waistband. In Part I he wears also dark purple fingerless gloves with armoured plates on the back of the hand and a blue forehead protector. During Part II, he infuses himself with Orochimaru's remains, causing his skin to turn white and scaly around the point of application on his left arm; this gradually spreads its influence across the rest of his body. In the anime's Power arc, set before his body is fully covered by Orochimaru's remains, Kabuto wears a black robe with red lining and he starts allowing his hair to grow long and unkempt, all of which help to hide the changes to his body.

Appearance

Once his body is fully converted, his appearance becomes starkly similar to Orochimaru's, so much so that Sasuke Uchiha initially mistakes Kabuto for him. In addition to the changes to his skin, Kabuto's eyes become yellow with slitted pupils, around which are Orochimaru's characteristic purple markings. A long, white snake also fuses with his abdomen, which he wraps around his waist and which sometimes slithers under or behind him like a tail. His mostly human appearance is actually a shell, as his true form is much more serpentine, having a long body, comparatively short legs and arms, and an elongated face. During the Fourth Shinobi World War, Kabuto wears a maroon-coloured cloak with a hood designed to resemble a serpent's head, with white, red, and yellow markings that resemble eyes. Many years later, after returning to the orphanage, he starts wearing the staff's typical garb and once again ties his hair in a ponytail, although the effects of infusing himself with Orochimaru's remains appear to be permanent, as Kabuto's body continues to resemble Orochimaru's.

Abilities

While Kabuto was just a child he possessed a natural talent in the shinobi arts, a trademark that caught the attention of Orochimaru upon first meeting Kabuto and studying his service record with Root, which ultimately led to Kabuto being his right-hand man. In Part I, Kabuto's skills are noted to be comparable to Kakashi Hatake's, and enough to defeat members of Konoha's Anbu with ease, noting that they should have readied at least ten guards for him. Tsunade even notes that his knack for ninjutsu and his sharpness surpass that of hers in her prime.[27] During Part II, Kabuto sets out to correct the talents he feels were never fully realised: he later boasts that he has surpassed Orochimaru, is the closest living person to match the power of the Sage of Six Paths, and is the single most important player in the entire Fourth Shinobi World War. Kabuto's improved prowess enabled him to overwhelm Sasuke and the reincarnated Itachi, two Uchiha clan prodigies, several times in battle.

Body Modifications

In order to achieve the "perfect being" identity he desires for himself, Kabuto makes a number of modifications to his body prior to the Fourth Shinobi World War, causing him to develop a different chakra signature and granting him a larger reserve that is strong enough to visibly effect his surroundings. The first and most notable of these modifications was infusing himself with the remains of Orochimaru's body, thus obtaining the Power of the White Snake. Over time, the remains alter his body, making his "true" appearance very snake-like, in which he can move around quickly and use his large mouth to swallow and thus capture targets. He usually disguises his appearance within a more normal-looking skin, which he can shed as needed. This outer skin has a snake embedded in its navel, which he can merge with others' bodies in order to heal them. Kabuto can in fact produce white snakes of varying sizes from his body, either to act as additional appendages or to detach from him and carry out his will. These snakes can use their heightened senses to communicate targets' locations to him, communicate on his behalf, possess his chakra signature to throw off sensor types, and share some of his other bodily modifications.

Body Modifications

From his extensive study of Orochimaru's various human test subjects, Kabuto alters his body to replicate certain others' trademark skills: he creates a version of Suigetsu Hōzuki's Hydrification Technique to escape capture by liquefying his body; he can reproduce Karin's natural Uzumaki-based rejuvenation to heal injuries he suffers; he can use Jūgo's kekkei genkai to passively absorb natural energy, allowing him to continuously use Sage Mode without the need of remaining still. While in Sage Mode, he can make further use of others' abilities through his Strange Transmission Distant Shadow technique, granting him all the skill-sets of whoever he has genetic samples of. He does this through an application of Sakon's body merging ability, generating mindless clones of others from his navel snake that can use all of their techniques. With this, he is able to access the abilities of the Sound Five, such as Kimimaro's accelerated bone production and Kidōmaru's spider web-based bindings.