Kara's Footprints

In Amegakure, the Team 25 genin brief Sai and Sasuke on a suspected Kara hideout, a lead drawn from what Sasuke pried out of Shojoji. The site once served as a sewage treatment plant before a fatal toxic gas incident shut it down, and the genin also supply a map of the waterways. Sai praises their reconnaissance and sends them to alert the nearby Anbu that he and Sasuke will proceed on their own. Noting how little rebuilding has happened in the village, the two enter the structure under someone's watchful eye.

They spring a trap that exposes and pins their observer, a man who blames them for the deaths of his friends. Learning they are Konoha shinobi, he introduces himself as Garashi Tōno and recounts being raised alongside other war orphans by an old man who taught him ninjutsu. He recognizes the name Kara and produces a design he copied from them, explaining that he and his companions spied on the group's experiment, were discovered, and all but he died in a gas attack.

Garashi agrees to lead them to the hideout in exchange for help recovering his friends' remains, warning them to avoid side passages where the poison gas shifts with the airflow. Sasuke blasts open a blocked corridor with Chidori, and when Garashi is found on the floor, a trap floods the chamber with gas. The real Garashi then appears wearing a mask and confesses that he killed his own friends, since no one would rescue them, and that Kara gave him hope. He leaves the pair to succumb and weighs releasing more gas on their allies.

The trapped figures turn out to be clones; the true Sasuke and Sai reveal they sensed Garashi's unnatural calm near his supposedly dead friends. Garashi's escape falters as the poison takes hold, and rather than let Konoha extract anything from him, he takes his own life. As the building caves in, Sai draws a bird to carry them out. Reporting back to Naruto and Shikamaru, Sasuke notes the biological nature of Kara's experiments, familiar from his time with Orochimaru, and the group confirms both that Kara is real and that it has sympathizers. Elsewhere, Kara's leader Jigen reports the loss of the old facility.

This episode of the Boruto anime belongs to the Kara Actuation arc and adapts chapter 11. A subplot touches on Ino's finding that a third party had manipulated Katasuke, whom Naruto wants reinstated because research has stalled without him.