Following the Master's Shadow

As Naruto steps out of Tsunade's office, the toad elder Fukasaku quietly hopes the boy is the prophesied child. Fukasaku reveals that before he fell, Jiraiya captured one Rain ninja and destroyed one of Pain's six bodies, which the toad now hands to the Hokage for autopsy. He also carries a coded clue that Jiraiya inscribed on his back, asking Tsunade to crack it and to remind Naruto that he can always reach him at Mount Myoboku.

Walking home, Naruto pauses at an Icha Icha poster and smiles at memories of his mentor's shameless research and their first journey together. He turns down Iruka's offer of ramen, wanting to be alone, and later breaks down in tears, wandering out at night to sit on a bench with a popsicle. Iruka finds him there and reminds the grieving boy that he is a disciple of one of the Sannin, that Jiraiya spoke of him like a grandson, and that he should keep becoming the ninja his teacher was proud of, before splitting the popsicle in two the way Jiraiya once did.

Meanwhile, Shikamaru is handed the task of decoding the message, but the cryptography team, Tsunade, and Kakashi all fail because only someone truly close to Jiraiya can unravel it. Finding Naruto still hollowed out, Shikamaru takes him to visit a pregnant Kurenai and admits that Asuma entrusted him to teach their unborn child. He tells Naruto that mourning a lost teacher must eventually give way to carrying that teacher's will forward, growing from student into mentor. The thought steadies Naruto, and Shikamaru entrusts him with Jiraiya's cipher.

Fans have flagged three small errors in Kakashi's flashback with Jiraiya: the Sannin wears a Konoha forehead protector rather than his Mount Myoboku one, Kakashi appears without his gloves, and Tsunade still wears her grandfather's necklace even though she had already given it to Naruto during the search that brought her home. The episode adapts chapters 405 and 406 within the Pain's Assault arc and first aired in Japan on March 25, 2010.