Three Minutes Between Life and Death

Drawing on her monstrous strength, Sakura pounds the Third Kazekage marionette into rubble, then heaves a fallen boulder off Chiyo and mends the elder's crushed arm with her medical training. Sasori cannot fathom why the young woman is still on her feet. He replays the moment he abandoned Kankuro to succumb to his venom, certain that nobody in Sunagakure, not even Chiyo, could have brewed a counter. Watching her work, though, he recalls that she hails from the Leaf, home to Tsunade, the finest healer alive. The truth lands: Sakura distilled the antidote herself. Unwilling to forfeit more of his collection, Sasori sheds his cloak and exposes the secret of his agelessness, that he too is a living puppet, bristling with blades and his signature poison, and he opens his assault on the pair.

Beyond the rock, Naruto keeps furiously hounding Deidara, who molds crickets from explosive clay to finish Kakashi and split him from the boy. A shadow clone absorbs the blast, and Deidara, believing his pursuer dead, wheels around to face Naruto only for the real Kakashi to reappear. Cut off before he can give chase again, Naruto listens as Kakashi lays out the mismatch: Deidara strikes from a distance while Naruto trades blows up close, and the artist single-handedly felled Gaara inside Suna. Victory, Kakashi argues, would require a ranged specialist, ranged ninjutsu, or a mind like Shikamaru's, and he happens to qualify on every count. As the two renew the tail, Deidara spots Kakashi behind him, Sharingan narrowing.

The twenty-fifth entry of the Shippuden run adapts chapters 270 and 271 inside the Kazekage Rescue Mission. It first aired in Japan on August 16, 2007, and reached English viewers on March 3, 2010, framed by the opening theme "Hero's Come Back!!" and the closing "The Way ~ to you all."