Drive Towards Darkness

Bound for Konoha, Taka pauses at a place tied to Sasuke's past. He recalls the frustration he felt after watching Naruto summon Gamabunta during the fight with Gaara, unsettled by his rival's sudden leap in power. Venting with a Chidori that split a tree, he spotted a small girl named Naho on the verge of tumbling off a cliff and pulled her back. Not realizing she was kin to the Fire Daimyo, he treated her without the deference she was accustomed to, which only left her infatuated with him.

Naho was afterward moved to the Leaf for safekeeping. With the Naruto-Sasuke rivalry running hot, Tsunade assigned Naruto and Sakura as her guards and sent Sasuke off with Kakashi on a separate task to let tempers settle. Since the girl wanted only Sasuke, Naruto used the Transformation Technique to pass himself off as him. A bandit named Sadai soon ambushed the trio, hoping to ransom Naho. Naruto dazzled her with flashy "Sasuke" strikes and a version of his combo reworked to fit the disguise, but Sadai shrugged off the blows, and even a Rasengan failed to land as expected.

Meanwhile Sasuke and Kakashi, tasked with rounding up wanted criminals in the Land of Fire, discovered the crooks meant to seize Naho. When Sadai beat Naruto and his disguise fell away, the girl was stunned to see the fake, and cried out for Sasuke, who then arrived. Sadai recognized the Sharingan and mused about meeting Itachi and assuming the Uchiha had been wiped out, guessing Sasuke had simply not been worth killing. Enraged that Itachi had used those very words, Sasuke shattered the bandit's armor with a fireball and struck him mid-air with Chidori, beating him bloody until Kakashi's arrival spared the man. Frightened by what she saw, Naho was reassured by Naruto, who told her Sasuke was wrestling with his own troubles and was really a good person underneath.

This is episode 196 of Naruto: Shippuden, part of the anime-original Past Arc: The Locus of Konoha. It aired in Japan on January 27, 2011, and in English on July 6, 2013. Its trivia notes a continuity change in how Sakura learns Naruto saved her from Gaara, and that Sasuke is drawn with a three-tomoe Sharingan here despite not gaining the third tomoe until his later clash with Naruto at the Valley of the End. The opening theme is Diver and the ending theme is Midnight Orchestra.