Battle of Valley of Clouds and Lightning

Standing over the wrecked Uchiha Hideout, the Eight Man Squad tries to follow Sasuke's fading scent, but the trail dies out and Kakashi calls off the search, marking their hunt for Itachi a failure and turning the team back toward Konoha. Far away, Tobi finds Sasuke gazing at the full moon, which stirs recovered memories of the night his clan fell, among them the tears Itachi shed as he fled, proof to Sasuke that the story he was told is real.

Tobi tracks down Kisame, who had meant to abandon the Akatsuki after Itachi's death, and drops his clownish act to reveal himself as Madara Uchiha, the former Mizukage, persuading Kisame to return. He then offers Sasuke's team a partnership to gather the tailed beasts. Madara recounts how the First Hokage once distributed the nine beasts among the nations as a sign of alliance, and he assigns Taka to seize the Eight-Tails while the Akatsuki pursue Naruto. Speaking with Zetsu, he reads Itachi's passing of Amaterasu to Sasuke as an effort to keep his brother out of the organisation.

Using his Mangekyo Sharingan, Sasuke interrogates a captured Kumogakure shinobi and learns the Eight-Tails' host carries a shoulder tattoo and a cluster of blades at the Valley of Clouds and Lightning. There the team meets Killer B, a rapping swordsman who wrenches the Kubikiribocho from Suigetsu and uses it to put down Jugo, prompting Sasuke to face the jinchuriki himself in pursuit of the power he wants against Konoha.

Belonging to the Fated Battle Between Brothers arc, the episode confirms Tobi's claimed identity as Madara and launches Taka's mission to hunt the Eight-Tails. A line from Kisame counting three remaining tailed beasts, rather than the manga's two, adjusts the timeline to make room for a filler arc centred on the Six-Tails' jinchuriki, Utakata.