Sayato Yasuda

Sayato's childhood was fairly idyllic, loving parents, up until the Nine Tailed Fox's attack on Konoha ripped that all away from him, leaving him orphaned. His estranged grandfather Kohaku, refused to care for him or permit his aunt Saori to care for him either. With the only other adult available being his uncle Azusa, who did not want to care for a kid either, but Kohaku also refused to allow Sayato to be sent to an orphanage either, leaving the 8 year old to have to fend for himself with nothing but a monthly stipend.

As the grief overtook him, he isolated himself, leading to a falling out between him and his now-former friend Shiori Aragaki. He began slacking off more in class, taking things less seriously. Shiori began bullying Sayato with it starting to get physical before Hibana Uchiha cut in. Hibana and Sayato became friends soon after, and eventually formed a friend group with Hibana's friend Kaiko and young prodigy Haine Kamiya making their way into the fold soon after since he was more on the "outside" of things being younger than everyone else within their class and finding himself a target of bullying too. Eventually graduation rolled around and their little tight-knit friend group were split between three teams- with Sayato's being his worst-case scenario of being stuck on a team with Shiori and her new best friend, Akio Sanada. His sensei, was the calm, cool, and collected Romio Uchiha, who just so happened to also be Hibana's aunt.

His genin period was a rough one. While on the outside Team Romio were a functional team, Shiori's aggression to Sayato got stronger than ever before. And so the team had made it to qualify for the upcoming round of chunin exams which were to take place in Kusagakure.

Days prior to their chunin exams, they were assigned a simple D-rank mission. Romio, thinking her students could handle it all on their own, decided not to come along with the kids. Only Sayato, extremely distressed and covered in blood returned.

He claims that the three were ambushed by enemy ninjas from Kirigakure and that he was the only survivor- that the enemy had set up the mission as a trap to cull off some up-and-coming genins before they advanced onto the chunin exams. The reality, however, is that while there were Kiri-nin who did come there to sabotage the kids, Sayato was coerced into killing his teammates by the Kiri duo- but of course, not wanting to get in trouble, he put the blame solely on them. The details of this were kept very hush-hush under the orders of the Third Hokage, who, similarly to the Hyuga incident (which had only happened a few weeks prior to this new incident), wanted to avoid starting up conflict with another village as they were still recovering from the war.

After that, Romio pushed for Sayato to be allowed into the chunin exams regardless due to the tragedy, and so Sayato was allowed to solo the exams, although he did receive help from his friends during the early periods of the exams before passing during the tournament round.

Post-promotion, he continued on with going on more high-stakes missions with Romio and other skilled shinobi, and was even asked to join ANBU a few times, however he initially rejected the offers because he was striving to become a jonin instructor, his ultimate goal. However, a series of tragedies hit Konoha over the next few years. However, he was beginning to grow distant from his friends again, in a similar fashion as he did when his parents died. First came the murder of the Subaru family, next was the disappearance of his friend Hibana Uchiha, something he knew more than he was letting on about, having met with her prior to her disappearance when the two confessed secrets to one another. Shortly after was the Uchiha clan massacre. This was the catalyst for Sayato to join ANBU. Finally came the arson of Kamiya clan temple and disappearance of the head of the clan and his wife- Sayato's close friend, Haine Kamiya's parents. Despite growing distant from his friends, Haine and his younger sibling Yuno briefly stayed with Sayato at Sayato's behest.

Sayato stepped down from ANBU after a few years, getting tired of that sort of life and not being able to find any of the confidential information he was hoping to get his hands on by doing so. He heard a new class of students was graduating soon and took his leave to discuss a promotion to jonin with the Hokage and other village elders.

Shiori and Akio's families, upon hearing Sayato was wanting to be promoted, began to get enraged and stoked up their theories about Sayato being the real murderer of their respective children to the entire village. As such, Sayato was denied promotion and the investigation into Shiori and Akio's deaths was being re-opened.

In a fury over being denied his one dream goal and the threat of potential prison looming over him, Sayato had took off to see a rival of his he met in the chunin exams and had fought against numerous times after, Satoshi of Kirigakure- who had recently been in league with Orochimaru. Satoshi offered to introduce Sayato to Orochimaru, a decision Satoshi ultimately would end up regretting in the future. Sayato joined up with Orochimaru, denouncing Konohagakure and scratching out the symbol on his headband, wanting nothing more than to see it's destruction. He later helps infiltrate a chunin exam to manipulate Yuno into joining with Orochimaru as well, wanting to use the Kamiya clan's spirit summoning technique to communicate with his deceased parents, as well as getting very close to Orochimaru and getting on Kabuto's nerves.

Most of what Sayato tends to do is being Orochimaru's arm candy, espionage and other busy work for Orochimaru, as well as trying to get Yuno's spirit summoning powers to kick in. He has a brief clash with childhood friend Haine around the time of the Sasuke Recovery Mission.

With Sasuke joining the fold, Orochimaru is too busy for Sayato most days anymore and has essentially throw him off to the side, something he grows increasingly bitter about. Eventually, left alone with just Kabuto for company, the two became close and became entangled in a messy situationship despite Sayato and Orochimaru technically still being together. In the meantime, Sayato’s ally Satoshi had gotten himself involved with Jiraiya, and the two of them basically had a mutual destruction pact to prevent one another from blowing up the other’s illicit actions.

As time passes, both Satoshi and Yuno eventually end up leaving Otogakure. Sayato asks Kabuto to go along with him, but Kabuto refuses, not wanting to lose his purpose as Orochimaru’s right hand man.

Sayato, having taken his leave just before Orochimaru got killed, fled to the one safe place he would be able to hide at- Tsukino Peak, domain of giant rabbits. He lived amongst the bunnies for a while, going through his own training arc to unlock Rabbit Sage Mode, all the while beginning to find some semblance of inner peace after all the turmoil he’d been through.

Kabuto tells Sayato his plans and that he wants Sayato to join him, an offer which Sayato refuses. Kabuto, not taking no for an answer, not only threatens to slaughter all the rabbits in Tsukino Peak, but that he’d also target Yuno next if Sayato didn’t comply. Begrudgingly, Sayato went along with Kabuto.
Sayato then follows Kabuto around like a lovesick puppy- a stark contrast from his initial refusal, but not only did he still have some lingering feelings for Kabuto, but he is kinda into Kabuto’s new appearance too. In some messed up way, he was trying to see some sort of positive out of being in an untenable situation like this.

The war kicks off and Sayato is sent on the battlefield every now and again to take care of issues. At some point, he discovers Kabuto (accidentally/not intentionally) revived his parents and was using them to fight, angered, he runs off to blow off steam. Sayato eventually runs into Yuno on the battlefield. At first, he does not want to fight, but Yuno won’t stop attacking, saying he needs to snap Sayato out of whatever he’s doing with this nonsense war and the only way of accomplishing that is kicking his ass. Sayato, left with no choice but to defend himself, notices a bone in his shoulder jutting out very oddly. He pulls at it, revealing a very pointed short-sword-like bone and stabs Yuno with it without thinking. He realizes what he’s done and starts freaking the fuck out once again. Yuno’s still alive, but it’s not looking that good. Sayato immediately goes to start patching him up and mentally kicking his own ass for not knowing a lick of medical ninjutsu, Haine, who had been tracking Yuno down, comes upon the current mess and is beyond pissed.

Haine goes in to start fighting Sayato, who isn’t putting up much of a struggle himself now, only working to piss Haine off more. During the fight, Haine asks him why he’s doing all this, why everything was so important to the point he hurt Yuno and this sets Sayato off on a major breakdown, wherein he’s let everything he’s been bottling up out and begging for Haine to just kill him already by the end of it. Before anything else can happen, Kabuto, who’d been keeping an eye on this through a proxy (similar to how he used the Second Tsuchikage Mū’s body to communicate with Madara), summons a snake to take Sayato back to base, comforting and healing him up.

A short while after, Itachi and Sasuke find their way to Kabuto’s base with intent to fight against him. Sayato, still wounded and exhausted, gets up and plans to join the fray as well but Kabuto tells him to leave out of concern for Sayato’s safety. Sayato begrudgingly leaves, and as he does he finds his revived mother and after initial hesitancy to be face-to-face with her, the two begin talking and Ui comforts Sayato. Their time together is far too short-lived for Sayato’s liking, as Kabuto is made to undo the Edo Tensei and all those who were revived fade away. Still, Sayato goes back to the base to find an unconscious Kabuto, and Orochimaru taking his chakra back from Kabuto, as well as Sasuke, Suigetsu and Jūgo. He has an angry confrontation with Orochimaru but Sasuke tells Orochimaru to hurry his ass up and to stop antagonizing Sayato before heading out with the rest of his crew. Sayato stays behind, stating his intentions to be there for Kabuto when he snaps out of the Izanami. Lucky for Sayato, that comes sooner than later.

Sayato is there for Kabuto when he awakens, albeit sort of pushes off any attempts of Kabuto to apologize or talk about their issues and tells him they need to get going and help out the others, most importantly Yuno. At Sayato’s behest, Kabuto heals Yuno. Kabuto and Sayato go their separate ways again, with Kabuto heading out to heal Sasuke up next. Meanwhile, Sayato feels relieved that Yuno is okay now but a mysterious white-haired boy comes out of the woodwork to confront Sayato. Sayato has no clue who this clown is- but Haine seems to know who this Harin guy is, on some level. He’s not going to ask. He doesn’t care. Out of the glint of his eye he notices a sharingan in Harin’s eye as Harin fusses with his bangs, but brushes it off at first. A Zetsu springs a surprise attack onto Harin and he immediately activates his Mangekyo sharingan in response- something Sayato immediately recognized. It was the same exact design as Hibana’s Mangekyo. Despite not exactly being in any shape to fight again, Sayato launches into an attack onto Harin and it gets rough. Sayato ultimately gets the advantage and is about to rip out the sharingan from Harin, but before he does he asks him why he killed Hibana. Harin says he was forced to by Orochimaru and he didn’t have a choice otherwise. Sayato thinks back to when he was in a similar situation and pulls away from the fight, sitting down, staring at the moon. He invites Harin to come and moongaze with him, and he accepts. This is where the two remain until the Infinite Tsukuyomi kicks in.
After Kaguya is defeated, Naruto and Sasuke have their gay little fight, and everyone is freed from the Infinite Tsukuyomi, Sayato immediately goes to look for Kabuto to reunite with him again. He tries asking Kabuto to run away with him, but Kabuto refuses. Having turned over a new leaf thanks to the Izanami, he’d rather face whatever consequences sprung onto him. With a reluctant sigh, Sayato figures he’d stay too, partially sick of running from every little problem that comes his way.

To Sayato’s surprise, he isn’t punished as harshly for his part in the war as he expected to be- granted, he is still on house arrest for the first few months of his release, has to meet with a parole officer every so often, and isn’t allowed to leave Konoha without express permission by the Hokage. These far more lenient punishments are mostly due to Yuno’s influence. Haine and Yuno allow Sayato to live at their place, somewhat of a payback for when he allowed them to stay at his place when they were younger. He does a lot of handiwork for them and for the Kamiya Clan shrine in turn, not exactly wanting to get back into being a Konoha shinobi again. When he gets a little more freedom and isn’t on house arrest anymore, he helps out here and there at the orphanage with Kabuto, helping the aspiring shinobi there with training and in general taking them off of Kabuto’s busy hands.