Heir to Darkness

Seeing the seal on Hotaru's back, Naruto is filled with rage as it recalls the abuse he suffered as a child for being a jinchūriki. At Mount Katsuragi he confronts Tonbee, demanding to know how he permitted En no Gyōja to seal the Tsuchigumo clan's forbidden technique inside his own granddaughter. Hotaru counters that she asked for it herself, honoring her grandfather's wish to use the kinjutsu to restore the clan and her duty to obey her master. Utakata rebukes her, remembering being bound and struck by his own master, Harusame.

Tonbee resolves to protect both the clan and Hotaru by revealing a way to strip the seal from her back and render the kinjutsu useless, reasoning that En no Gyōja would never have sealed it without a means to undo it. When Hotaru refuses and flees after Utakata slaps her, Naruto, Utakata and Sakura give chase while Sai, on Yamato's orders, stays behind; unknown to them, the bandit leader Shiranami has overheard everything. At En no Gyōja's grave, Naruto and Utakata persuade Hotaru to come back, but she proposes another path: passing the forbidden technique to Shiranami, the gifted son of her grandfather's first pupil, Hāto. Understanding all too well what it means to carry a sealed power and be hunted for it, Naruto promises to locate Shiranami. He uses the Multiple Shadow Clone Technique to search village after village until he finds a man who knows where Shiranami lives. In Konoha, Tsunade and Shizune receive Sai's report through his ink bird, and Tsunade agrees to shelter Hotaru so the seal can be removed or handed on. Meanwhile Utakata drifts away from the mountain in a bubble to draw out Tsurugi, only for the Kiri hunter-nin to have their path blocked by one of Pain's multi-headed dogs.

The episode belongs to the Six-Tails Unleashed arc. It first aired in Japan on February 18, 2010, and in English on October 9, 2012, using the opening theme Sign and the ending theme For You.