Separation

Reaching Shiranami's cabin, Naruto is snared by ropes and stunned to recognize the Magaki Group, the four raiders who had earlier gone after Hotaru. Meanwhile Hotaru meets Shiranami himself, who recounts how his father Hato fell to shinobi hunting the Tsuchigumo clan's forbidden art, and how En no Gyoja exiled him for mastering the same technique. Overjoyed to have found him, Hotaru sends a carrier pigeon bearing a note to Utakata, only for Shiranami to knock her out and send a marked kanji flying to intercept the bird.

Adrift inside his soap bubble, Utakata frees the pigeon and reads the message. Relieved to be free of Hotaru yet strangely troubled, he cannot fully let the matter go. Back in the cabin, Naruto discovers that Shiranami leads the bandits.

The raiders seal Naruto inside a chakra-draining barrier, but he taps the Nine-Tails' power to overload it, blowing the cabin apart. When they raise an even stronger barrier that knocks him out, Utakata storms in, having learned Shiranami's identity, and slips into his early jinchuriki state, driving the four off. At Mount Katsuragi, Sai reports to Yamato that Hotaru has vanished. Searching for tracks, Utakata and Naruto trade thoughts on their teachers, and Utakata recalls his own master Harusame scolding him yet being grateful he had lived. The pair reach the Tsuchigumo village to find its people under Shiranami's control, and Team 7 arrives to shield them, Yamato using Wood Release while Utakata raises a bubble dome. Told to go rescue Hotaru, they leave the villagers to the others. Inside his lair, Shiranami confesses to Hotaru that he murdered his own father to claim the forbidden technique.

This entry is part of the Six-Tails Unleashed arc of Naruto: Shippuden. It centers the parallel bonds between master and pupil, contrasting how Jiraiya grounded Naruto in the fundamentals against the gaps left in Utakata's and Hotaru's training.