Your Opponent is Me!

The squad sent to reclaim Sasuke finally overtakes the Sound Four, but almost at once they find themselves ensnared in Kidōmaru's spider silk. With Kidōmaru poised to end Naruto, Neji tears loose from the strands and cuts his teammates free. Judging that only his Gentle Fist can slice through the sticky threads, Neji tells the others to press on toward their target and squares off against the Sound ninja by himself.

The two trade blows until Kidōmaru fixes Neji against a tree with fresh webbing. Recalling what Orochimaru had told him about the Gentle Fist and how Neji keeps severing his lines, Kidōmaru winds up a strike with his Sticky Spider Thread. Before it can land, Neji frees himself and reveals a crucial secret: his chakra points are not confined to his hands but spread across his entire body. Kidōmaru briefly convinces himself he holds the upper hand, only for Neji to prepare his Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms and disprove the notion.

This chapter of the Sasuke Recovery Mission narrows in on the Neji versus Kidōmaru matchup, splitting the retrieval team so each fighter can take on a member of the Sound Four. It adapts chapters 191 through 193 and aired in Japan on December 22, 2004, using Rhapsody of Youth as its opening theme and Mountain a Go Go Two as its ending.