Return of the Kazekage

Deidara claws his way up from underground, having escaped his own Suicide Bombing Clone with only the loss of his right forearm. Relieved to be breathing at all, he sets off to recover the severed limb and the Akatsuki ring still on its finger. At the organisation's lair, Zetsu arrives with his masked companion Tobi to survey the wreckage of Sasori's defeat. Tobi finds the puppeteer's ring and begs to claim the vacant seat it represents, but a scolding from Zetsu ends with the newcomer fumbling the ring into a crack in the ground.

Outside Sunagakure, crowds led by Baki gather at the border and erupt with joy as the Sand Siblings, Konoha's rescue party, and their own unit come into view. Out of reverence, Gaara has Chiyo's body borne into the village ahead of him before taking up his duties once more. Temari and Baki urge the Leaf shinobi to rest, yet Kakashi and Sakura insist on reporting to Tsunade, sending word ahead by messenger hawk while withholding the fates of Deidara and Sasori for a face to face account. On the road home the group pauses at Chiyo's grave, and a hurried Guy hoists the wounded Kakashi onto his back to keep pace, a spectacle Lee tries and fails to repeat with an unwilling Neji.

In the Leaf, Shizune relays the mission's success and voices unease at Tsunade having risked Naruto against an organisation that hunts jinchuriki. Tsunade counters that only one jinchuriki can truly reach another and that people naturally lean on Naruto. Near the Land of Rivers, Deidara reunites with his arm and puts Tobi in a leg lock after the masked man's needling earns a third strike from Zetsu. Elsewhere a shadowy elder assigns his emotionless student to Kakashi's squad to keep watch over Naruto, christening him Sai, a name the young operative accepts with a forced smile he cannot quite make natural. The episode adapts chapters two hundred eighty and two hundred eighty-one within the Kazekage Rescue Mission.