Gantetsu Escort Mission

Told across episodes 209 to 212 of the original Naruto series, this filler mission follows the Prized Artefact Escort and Yakumo Kurama Rescue stories and precedes the Menma Memory Search. Naruto, Rock Lee, and Sakura are ordered to help move Gantetsu, a wanted member of the Shinobazu gang, to the capital of the Land of Forests for interrogation and trial, working alongside a guard whose hatred for the prisoner runs unusually deep.

The head guard Todoroki wants nothing to do with the young ninja and shows a fierce, personal loathing for the captive. When the Shinobazu ambush the transfer along a river, Naruto, Todoroki, and Gantetsu are swept over a waterfall and stranded in the gang's own labyrinthine home territory. To everyone's surprise, Gantetsu offers to guide them out, explaining that his old comrades hunt him to reclaim money he stole. After the pair fend off a pursuing gang member with Gantetsu's help, the prisoner earns Naruto's trust, yet Todoroki's fury only sharpens.

The reason surfaces: Gantetsu took part in the slaughter of Todoroki's family five years earlier, which drove the survivor to join the region's police and train relentlessly for revenge. Giving in to that rage, Todoroki resolves to end Gantetsu's life, but another bandit, Monju, snares all three in steel wire and drags the prisoner off. Freeing themselves with sweat-loosened bonds, Naruto catches up and defeats Monju, only for the gang leader Shura to seize one of a group of children who supposedly knows where their treasure is hidden.

The captured boy turns out to be Akio, Todoroki's own younger brother. It emerges that Gantetsu, sickened by the gang's senseless killing, had secretly begun sheltering children orphaned by its raids, becoming a father figure to them, and that he deliberately robbed the Shinobazu and let himself be caught to lure the whole gang into the open and destroy it. Even knowing this, Todoroki cannot forgive a man who shared in his parents' murder.

The group storms the Shinobazu base to save Akio, where Shura springs a trap and sets the building ablaze. While the others rescue the boy, Naruto chases down Shura and finishes him with a Rasengan. With the gang broken, Todoroki grudgingly lets Gantetsu live on to raise the orphans, vowing to report him as dead in the fire, and allows Akio to remain and help.