The Price of Power

After the Wind Release attack leaves Naruto collapsed, Ino hurries over to mend him while Kakashi remarks that his student has now outgrown him by pulling off what he never could. Dropping into the crater Naruto carved, Kakashi finishes the crippled Kakuzu with a Chidori, then carries the body home. Both squads report to Tsunade in Konoha, and she grants a short rest while sending Naruto to the hospital to have his damaged arm looked at.

On the walk back, Shikamaru stops at Asuma's grave and sets down his mentor's lighter. Kurenai is already there, and Shikamaru tells her he hopes to become the same kind of guide for her unborn child, quietly confirming her pregnancy. At home he plays shogi with his father Shikaku, and raises Asuma's old riddle about who the true king of the village is, answering that it is the coming generation of shinobi who will carry Konoha's safety on their backs.

Examining the corpse, Tsunade calls Kakashi and Yamato to the coroner and warns that the Rasenshuriken behaves like a toxin, shredding the body at the cellular scale. Kakuzu's entire chakra network was cut apart, and Naruto's own right arm shows a milder version of the same wound, damage her medical arts cannot repair. She brands the move a forbidden technique and orders Kakashi to make Naruto swear off it, while Yamato reflects that such destructive power carries a matching danger. At his bedside, Sakura urges Naruto to hold the jutsu back except in dire moments, but he insists he prefers this path where the two of them grow stronger together to chase down Sasuke.

Far away, Sasuke sharpens his own Chidori, using a partial burst of the Cursed Seal of Heaven to lop the heads off practice dummies without touching them. Kabuto brings Orochimaru word that Naruto's group destroyed both Hidan and Kakuzu, and Orochimaru mocks the Akatsuki for losing two members at once while noting they still hold the Two-Tails. He sends Kabuto to retrieve Guren, a Crystal Release wielder, who tests Kabuto with her crystal needles and a hexagonal shuriken barrage before he slices them apart with a Chakra Scalpel.

The episode adapts material from chapters 342 and 346, and it introduces Guren, the crystal user whose recruitment sets up the anime's Three-Tails storyline. The opening theme is Closer and the closing theme is Long Kiss Goodbye.