Immediately after Sasuke defeated Orochimaru, he went into one of Orochimaru's many experimentation labs and freed Suigetsu, who was sealed inside a holding tube in the form of water. After pointing out that he owed nothing to Sasuke for dealing with Orochimaru, Suigetsu agreed to join him. Once they left, Suigetsu had Sasuke take him to the Land of Waves to retrieve Zabuza's Kubikiribōchō from his grave. In the anime, the story of Suigetsu obtaining Zabuza's sword was expanded and lengthened out slightly for this episode in order to facilitate an earlier display of his abilities. The sword in question was taken from Zabuza's grave by a politician and crime boss named Tenzen Daikoku, who wanted to take the sword as a trophy, and for "revenge" after losing many men during Zabuza's attempted coup years before. They then went to the base where Karin resided, where Suigetsu was instructed to free all the prisoners. Before releasing them, however, Suigetsu told them to spread the word that Sasuke killed Orochimaru, and would bring peace to the world. As Sasuke hadn't ordered him to say these things, his motives appear to be unclear.
Once Karin was persuaded to join, they headed to meet with Jūgo. They had to fight their way through an army of people branded with the Cursed Seals to reach him, and, under Sasuke's orders, were told not to kill any of them whilst subduing them. When they found Jūgo, who promptly attacked them, Suigetsu attempted to kill him. However, Sasuke intervened, and threatened to kill both of them if they didn't stop fighting. Jūgo eventually calmed down, and, with some persuasion on Sasuke's part, was recruited. Afterwards, Sasuke told them their mission and their new team's name; they would be known as "Hebi", and their mission was to find Itachi Uchiha.
Soon afterwards the team split up, searching for information about Itachi's whereabouts. This led Suigetsu to a bank where Akatsuki member Kakuzu's banker Ginji was. Recognizing him as such, Suigetsu threatened him to talk.[4] Seeing Deidara's large suicide bomb's explosion, Suigetsu was drawn to the site of Sasuke's battle with Deidara, where he had used a special seal to summon Manda and had used the snake to escape the explosion. It had, however, been a little too late, and Manda died, making Suigetsu tell Sasuke that he should treat animals a little better.After Karin healed Sasuke, Suigetsu, together with Jūgo and Sasuke, engaged Killer Bee once more to no avail. At one point, Suigetsu succeeded in immobilizing Killer Bee providing an opportunity for Sasuke to use a lightning attack. Unfortunately, to keep Killer Bee held, Suigetsu voluntarily received Sasuke's lightning technique as well, sustaining considerable damage. After severely wounding Sasuke, Killer Bee invokes his tailed beast form in order to deal with the rest of the group. Suigetsu, thrown into the water earlier,
