Kabuto Yakushi Husbando

Kabuto Yakushi spent most of his life as a spy working for many different individuals, organisations, and countries. His natural talents in intelligence-gathering and medicine attracted the attention of Orochimaru when he was younger, who made Kabuto his right-hand man. Although Kabuto learns much about the world under Orochimaru, he eventually decides that his life of serving others has prevented him from making an identity for himself. He thereafter seeks power and becomes a major factor in the Fourth Shinobi World War, using his higher place in the world so that he can find where in it he belongs. After finally finding himself in the world, Kabuto returns to Konohagakure to run the orphanage there, helping others such as himself to find their own way. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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". Kabuto feels indebted to Itachi for restoring to him the knowledge of who he is and where in the world he most belongs; he later returns the favour to Itachi by saving Sasuke's life. After the war, Kabuto returns to the orphanage where he was raised - his long-neglected true home - and resumes the life he once had there. He believes it is vital that the orphans have identities of their own and not allow themselves to be defined by their past associations.[24] In the anime, Orochimaru expressed his confidence that Kabuto's chance of slipping back to his old days are even lower than himself.