Sasori's Real Face

With Hiruko wrecked, Sasori finally shows his face to Chiyo and Sakura, appearing exactly as young as the day he abandoned his village two decades earlier. Neither woman can accept that he has not aged at all. Far off, Temari's squad joins with Kankuro and Ebizo, pushing toward the Land of Rivers to back up the rescue team. When Kankuro urges a halt for the exhausted group, Temari initially rallies them to press past their limits for the Kazekage, but Ebizo tells them to look at where they have stopped: the very ground where Team Kakashi once battled Itachi.

Warning that charging into Akatsuki territory while worn out invites annihilation, Ebizo recounts the tale of the Third Kazekage, Suna's mightiest ninja, who vanished without a trace. Years of searching, even covert Anbu efforts, never turned up his body, and the resulting panic let a rival village invade and spark a war. He urges the Suna group never to repeat that costly mistake.

Sasori sends poisoned senbon flying from Hiruko's head, but Sakura dodges every needle, and he realizes Chiyo is manipulating her like a living puppet. He then unseals a new puppet, revealed as the Third Kazekage himself. The truth dawns on Chiyo that Sasori kidnapped and killed the Third roughly ten years ago and reworked him into a human puppet, a betrayal of his homeland she finds even more contemptible than his ties to Akatsuki. She blames him for the deaths of three Kazekage, though Sasori notes that Orochimaru, aided by one of his own spies, killed the Fourth.

The Third Kazekage puppet renews its poison assault, and Chiyo steers Sakura clear each time. When its poison blades shatter Hiruko's tail and the Thousand Hands Manipulation Force closes in, Chiyo can no longer shield her puppet-partner and instead steers Sakura's body clear of the strike. Sasori responds by flooding the space with poison gas, certain that no amount of control can stop Sakura from breathing it in. Outside, Deidara escapes with Gaara's body, drawing Naruto and then Kakashi into pursuit and leaving Sakura and Chiyo to finish Sasori alone. The episode adapts chapters 266 and 267.