For a Friend…

Learning that Sasuke has fled the village, Kakashi calms Sakura and races after him, calling up his tracking hounds for the chase. Sasuke, meanwhile, has concluded that killing the person he considers his closest friend is an acceptable cost for awakening the Mangekyo Sharingan. When Naruto's Rasengan meets Sasuke's Chidori, neither can break the other and both are hurled apart, and Naruto weeps in silence for the friend he is losing.

Sasuke claims that ninja of sufficient skill can read one another through traded blows and taunts Naruto to try. Reaching for the edge he needs, he flares his cursed seal, unleashes a spray of fire, and beats down a Naruto who barely seems to defend himself, all while flickers of memory surface: their first meeting, their rivalry, and his own doubt over whether a real bond ever existed. He drives a Chidori toward Naruto's heart, but the strike is deflected and tears clean through his right lung instead. Believing the fight finished, Sasuke watches the Nine-Tails' chakra swell around his opponent and knit the wound shut. Asked what he has become, Naruto answers only that he is Sasuke's friend, and, filled with the fox's power, he swears to break every bone in Sasuke's body to haul him back to the village before launching his counterattack.

The episode adapts chapters 226 through 228 within the Sasuke Recovery Mission arc and marks the emotional low point of the pursuit, where the friendship at the heart of the series is nearly severed for good. It first aired in Japan on April 27, 2005, with the English broadcast following on January 19, 2008.