Miscalculation…!!

The effort to recover Gaara pushes forward from more than one direction at once. Temari and Kankurō leave Sunagakure behind, set on joining the fighters already committed to bringing their brother home. Somewhere else entirely, Naruto and Kakashi stay bogged down in their attempt to wrestle the captured Kazekage away from Deidara, making no easy headway.

The heart of the chapter is the running battle Sakura and Chiyo wage against the puppet built from the Third Kazekage. Weary of watching Sakura evade every strike, Sasori floods the ground with Iron Sand, and the ploy lands, dropping her with the poisoned grains having done their work. The puppet advances to finish her off, only for Sakura to spring back up at the final instant and smash it apart. She then reveals that she had quietly taken an antidote of her own making beforehand, granting a brief window of resistance, and hands the last remaining vial to Chiyo while urging her to settle the fight before that protection runs out.

The cover art for this chapter is thought to draw on the second Naruto film, Legend of the Stone of Gelel. A bespectacled Sand ninja seen beside Maki in these pages was later reused as the model for background characters in the game Ultimate Ninja Storm 4. Carrying the Japanese title Gosan, the installment first ran in the summer of 2005.