My Friend

With Sora locked in his four-tailed transformation, Kazuma decides his work is finished and bolts, but Asuma refuses to let him slip away. Their chase spills into the forest, where Kazuma keeps dodging Asuma's strikes until Sai, having slipped out of the hospital at the sound of trouble, snares him with a trio of drawn ink serpents. Kazuma tears loose and lunges, and Asuma runs him through with his chakra blades. Dying, Kazuma reveals a spotless white Land of Fire sash, and Asuma remembers Sora describing that very sash as the one thing he recalled about his father.

Elsewhere, Naruto keeps trying to reach Sora even as Sora attacks him. When Sora unleashes a Tailed Beast Ball, Yamato shields himself and the others behind a Wood Locking Wall while Naruto throws his own body over Sakura. He asks her to hold back and heal him first so he can free Sora from the fox spirit. Sora's frame proves too weak to hold the borrowed chakra and expels it, the energy briefly forming a fox's head before dispersing with no host to seize. Restored to human form and unconscious, Sora stirs at Naruto's voice, recalls the time they spent together, and wakes.

Told he can finally go home, Sora answers that he has none, and Naruto insists Konoha is now his home among new friends, the surrounding shinobi smiling in agreement while Sai's request to join earns a joking refusal and a round of laughter. Once discharged, Sora announces he will leave to roam the world and make friends of his own, teasing Naruto with a name for the afterlife and asking him to pass his goodbye to Asuma. In a quieter beat, Asuma and Shikamaru play shōgi and debate who Konoha's true king is; Shikamaru says the Hokage, and Asuma hints he will one day understand the real answer. Far away, Akatsuki's Hidan and Kakuzu corner a woman in Kumogakure, Hidan's triple-bladed scythe missing as Kakuzu cautions that she is no easy mark, being the Two-Tails' jinchūriki.