Iruka's Decision

Chasing after Naruto through the woods, Iruka pushes the boy to return to the Academy, mindful that enemy spies still lurk nearby. Naruto snaps that Iruka could never grasp a life spent shunned and treated as worthless, insisting the mischief is his only path to friends and acceptance. When his teacher will not relent, Naruto flusters him with the Sexy Technique and bolts. Hungry, he raids a bird's nest and finds a dropped kunai, never realising a hidden intel report is bound to it.

Three kunoichi ambush Naruto and demand the kunai, but he refuses and flees, springing traps to slow them until he tumbles off a cliff. Iruka scoops him up and tries to run, and the two are rescued when Kakashi, tipped off by Shikamaru, cuts the kunoichi down with his Lightning Cutter. Back home, the Third Hokage notes that the report held Konoha's patrol routes and that Naruto, by recovering it, saved the village without knowing. Iruka thanks the Third for the teaching post, saying it rekindled his love of the work and his wish to pass the Will of Fire to children like Naruto. When told how the Fourth Hokage once shielded the village from the Nine-Tails, Naruto vows to claim the title himself, and Iruka scratches a line high on a tree to mark the height he must reach.

In the present, Iruka smiles at that same mark, aware Naruto has grown into it. Yamato, alerted to Naruto's eight-tailed transformation, races back to find Konoha in ruins, and Shikaku explains it was Pain's doing and that Naruto beat him single-handedly while mastering his own change. An Anbu then summons Shikaku to an emergency council. Elsewhere, Suigetsu rejoins Sasuke with the recovered Kubikiribōchō, prompting Sasuke to send Taka toward Konoha, while Tobi orders Kisame to capture the Eight-Tails as he pursues the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path. This one hundred seventy-eighth Shippūden episode belongs to the Past Arc: The Locus of Konoha and adapts chapters 449 and 450.