Honoured Sage Mode!

Determined to fight Pain in Sage Mode, Jiraiya locks his hands together to gather natural energy and cannot break the pose without ruining his preparation, so he leaves his defense to Gamaken. Pain vanishes using camouflage, and Jiraiya answers by raising a spherical barrier to pinpoint him, then Pain calls up a giant multi-headed dog. Gamaken cannot put the creature down, since every strike only makes it split and multiply, and the pack eventually surrounds him and bites deep, leaving him badly hurt. Jiraiya turns the tables with a reverse summoning that drops himself, Gamaken, and the dogs into a toad's stomach, whose walls swallow the beasts and force them to dispel.

Believing Jiraiya has fled, Pain is caught off guard when the pair reappear having located his hidden position. Gamaken lands a hit on Pain's chameleon summon, prompting Pain to send a drill-beaked bird diving at them. Jiraiya flees with his hands still clasped, then wheels around to torch the bird with a Fire Release technique once it draws close.

After using shadow clones to weather Pain's summoned ox and rhinoceros, Jiraiya at last completes his ritual and calls Fukasaku and Shima, the two great sage toads of Mount Myoboku, to his side. He tells them he summoned their aid because his foe wields the Rinnegan, the legendary eyes once held by the Sage of Six Paths. Worse still, Jiraiya suspects Pain is the Child of Prophecy the Great Toad Sage foretold, a figure destined to bring either peace or ruin. Since Pain seems bound for the latter, Jiraiya and the toads accept that it falls to him to end this foe, just as Pain summons the rest of his Paths.

This episode belongs to the Tale of Jiraiya the Gallant arc of Naruto: Shippuden and adapts chapters 375 and 376. It aired in Japan on October 15, 2009, and in English on July 10, 2012. The opening theme is Sign and the ending theme is It Was You.