Robbed of Sleep

Camping for the night on the road to the Fire Temple, Team Yamato builds a fire, and after Yamato spooks Naruto, Sakura asks why anyone would rob graves. Yamato reminds her how Sasori turned the Third Kazekage's corpse into a puppet, explaining that a dead shinobi's body carries valuable secrets prized by the wrong people. The next morning Naruto pauses to practice splitting a leaf, and Sai, watching him tremble, assumes he is still rattled by Yamato's tale that the buried dead might have clawed their way back.

At the meeting point Yamato cannot find the monks meant to greet them and heads off with Sakura, leaving Sai and Naruto to wait. When an owl startles Naruto, Sai consults a guidebook and awkwardly wraps an arm around him, then leans in for a fuller hug, prompting Naruto to shove him away and storm off to find Sakura. On his walk Naruto mistakes a rustling boar for grave robbers, flees its charge, and stumbles into one of the temple's hidden tombs, where the coffin has already been taken.

A monk-in-training named Sora arrives, each mistaking the other for a thief, and their brawl nearly wrecks the tomb. Sora shreds Naruto's shadow clones with his Beast Tearing Palm channeled through a bladed claw, and Naruto recognizes the attack as a Wind Release technique before the monks and the rest of Team Yamato break up the fight. The monk Chiriku confirms the coffin was stolen, orders tighter security on the other tombs, and tells the resistant Sora that Konoha's help is needed against robbers skilled enough to breach their seals. As the group climbs to the temple, Naruto freezes at the top, recognizing the place from a nightmare and feeling he has been there before.

The episode opens the Twelve Guardian Ninja arc storyline with the theme Blue Bird and closes with Gentle Rainbow. It aired in Japan on May 8, 2008, and in English on December 1, 2010. Trivia notes that some releases, including the DVDs and Netflix, retitle the dub as Deprived of Eternal Sleep.