Iruka's Ordeal

Shut out of a classmates' Test of Courage, Naruto decides to scare them instead. While eyeing masks at a shop, he is shoved out the door and struck with a hurled mask, ordered never to come back. Stung, he grabs the mask and runs as passersby glare, unaware that Shikamaru and Chōji watch, the former puzzled by the boy's harsh treatment. Naruto slips on the mask at the Konoha Cemetery and spooks his bully Hibachi. Iruka, seeing the terrified children scatter, closes in with a kunai, but sheathes it once the mask comes off, memories surfacing of the parents the Nine-Tailed Fox took from him, the same beast now sealed within Naruto.

Reading his teacher's expression, Naruto asks why everyone looks at him that way and runs off swearing never to return to the Academy. The next day Kakashi notices the light has gone out of Iruka's eyes and recalls a mission he once led, one imperilled by Iruka's mercy toward enemy shinobi. That same compassion drove Iruka to ask the Third Hokage for a teaching post so he could hand down the Will of Fire. Iruka admits he cannot bear Naruto despite knowing the boy is blameless for what he houses, yet Kakashi insists Iruka is the only one who can touch that heart, and that doing so will be his personal trial.

That evening Iruka watches a mother scold her child for playing with Naruto, and the boy sinks into loneliness over having no parents to return to. Shikamaru later asks why the village shuns Naruto, and Shikaku, unable to share the truth, simply tells his son to treat the boy however he pleases. The following day Hibachi lures Naruto to the back hills where enemy corpses lie, dangling friendship as bait, and the eager child dashes off. When Iruka notices the empty seat, Hibachi lies, but Shikamaru exposes the trick and Iruka races out to head Naruto off. This is the one hundred seventy-seventh episode of Naruto: Shippūden, part of the Past Arc: The Locus of Konoha.