EPISODE 25: The Escapee

Yoninke was full of blood and sweat. His ninja clothing had been teared apart. It looked like it had been the result of a furious battle. There was a long trail of blood coming from his head and going down his body, from his face to his belly. He had a serious cut on his head. He also had many traces of recent blood all over his clothes. He was holding his two bloody blades with his right hand and was also pressing his right shoulder with his other hand. It seemed like he had another big injury there. His eyes looked cloudy, as if he was about to pass out.

This sight sent a serious feeling of alarm through Jim's mind:

"Yoninke! What happened to you!?"

Yoninke noticed him, but his eyesight was blurry. He even had blood close to his eyes. He talked with the voice of a monkey that had exhausted all of his strength. This wasn't his normal self (except for his fixation with gorillas):

"Namikaze? Thank the all mighty gorilla lord that you are here… I don't think I have much time left…"

Yoninke dropped his twin blades to the ground at the Uchiha village and he began to fall down, but Jim grabbed him before he reached the ground.

"There were many ambushes like the one from two years ago… no, it was a full-fledged invasion. The Royal Tribe was taken over by all the other tribes. They came together against us… Dormon is leading them… I escaped before being executed, but I had to fight against the whole squad and their elite leader. King Enma was taken prisoner after a long battle… I think they plan to kill him… you have to help them… I was hit by a poisonous bug-dart…"

Yoninke couldn't say anything else since he was in the border of losing consciousness. He had lost a lot of blood.

Jim Namikaze quickly attempted to summon Sarzan and Enma:

"Summoning jutsu! Sarzan!

Summoning jutsu! King Enma!"

However, neither of the two summonings worked. Something was wrong.

He was really worried, but he had to forget about the others. He had to save Yoninke first. Only an experienced medical ninja could do that. He didn't even know what a "poisonous bug-dart" was.

(It was a dart that contained a tiny poisonous bug inside. The dart injected it inside the victim. Then, the bug entered the bloodstream and fed itself with blood, making the victim feel weaker as time went by. Moreover, the bug's instinct was to seek the heart and once it reached it, it injected its poison and killed the victim. This was a very lethal weapon used by the worst rogue tribes at the Earth Realm, but these bugs also existed at the Human Realm.)

Jim knew that the only place with expert medical ninjas in the nearby lands was The Leaf. However, it wasn't very close to the Uchiha village. He wasn't going to make it in time!

There was no other choice though; he had to make it! He grabbed Yoninke, made the special chakra seal from H.O.'s Uchiha stone, and, desperately, seeked The Leaf and its central hospital with the sharingan. As soon as he located a room with doctors at the Central Hospital, he didn't hesitate; he used the teleportation summon within the same realm:

"Summoning jutsu!"

He fell there, in the middle of the room, with bloody Yoninke on his arms. He almost killed the nurses from a heart attack with that sudden arrival out of nowhere.

"I need an expert medical ninja here! He needs urgent attention now. Please hurry!"

He still had The Leaf's headband—the one that Hiruzen gave him—and he was wearing it that day on his forehead. That was the only reason why the medical ninjas and nurses there trusted him. They didn't know him though.

The woman in charge of the group there stepped forward, ready to help:

"This must be your lucky day agent—she supposed that he was an Anbu ninja that she didn't know yet. My name is Shizune and I am one of the best medical experts at The Leaf's hospital. Only the Hokage surpasses my skill. You came to the right place. Let's save him now!"

Yoninke was placed on a special small bed used for children's injuries and urgencies. The whole group began to work on Yoninke with Shizune at the center leading the entire healing procedure.

Jim didn't recall seeing Shizune at The Leaf two years ago. She was certainly new there, but that didn't matter much to him now. He was too worried about Yoninke. He didn't even realize that The Leaf had a fifth and new Hokage monument at the mountain. Hiruzen was not The Leaf's Hokage anymore…

During the procedure, one of the nurses said a comment that annoyed Jim Namikaze:

"You care a lot about your pet, don't you?"

"Pet? He is not a pet, he is my best friend!"

Jim was more worried than he had ever been in the last two years. He typically didn't react to things this way, but this was an extreme situation for him.

Shizune had already cured most of Yoninke's wounds, but something else was wrong. She went to Jim:

"What happened to him? Most of the wounds are closed and healed, including the one on his head, but he is not getting better."

"He was hit with a poisonous bug-dart," said Jim.

Shizune looked concerned when she heard that.

Those things had not been used in warfare at the Human Realm for decades, but she knew about them from a medical book she read. Those bugs were a real problem. They were very hard to remove because of their unpredictability. They were also very rare at the Human Realm. Even Shizune had never done a removal of one. The worst part was that she knew there wasn't much time left.

She talked to Jim:

"Listen, there isn't much time left to save him. The poisonous bug that was injected in his bloodstream must be extracted before it reaches his heart. We have to open the correct spot where it is going to pass through and take it out as soon as it gets there. This must be done before it gets too close to his heart. The problem is that we don't have any way to know what path that thing will take for sure. If we don't pick the right path, he will die. I can't guarantee that we will be able to save him."

Yoninke began to wake up from his half-conscious state and he started to see several humans, including Jim.

"I can help you to know where this bug is and where it will go," affirmed Jim, pretty sure about what he was saying.

Then, Shizune noticed his red sharingan eye. She was much more concerned about his identity now—she knew the only two owners of a sharingan at The Leaf were Sasuke Uchiha and Kakashi. However, saving her patient was more important at that moment.

Yoninke was better. The major threat left was the bug, but the rest had been healed pretty well. His life was still at the mercy of a gamble, from Shizune's point of view, and at the mercy of the sharingan's accuracy, from Jim's point of view.

Jim Namikaze walked towards Yoninke and grabbed a long thin knife.

"Let's take that killer bug out of him now!"

"Hey! HeeeY! Are you out of your mind Namikaze!?"

Yoninke definitely didn't like the way that knife and the sharingan looked, but his hands and legs had been tied to the bed.

Some of the nurses were very surprised. The monkey talked!

Shizune already knew the truth though. She knew this monkey was not like the ones at the Human Realm. His anatomy was a little different. He was a summoned habitant from one of the other realms. However, hearing the name "Namikaze" from the monkey was what truly surprised her. She knew that was the Fourth Hokage's last name, which was not common at all.

"I can see where the bug is and where it might go with my eye's power; let's do this," said Jim.

"Let's give it a try," said Shizune, giving him her approval. Then, she added:

"And we will remove it using that long sharp knife you got, as soon as you are sure about its upcoming path."

Yoninke didn't like the sound of that at all:

"You humans are crazier than us monkeys and gorillas! Where is the anesthesia!? Don't put that huge knife in me without anesthesia, you animals! You shall witness the wrath of mighty Yoninke!"

Obviously, Yoninke was back to his normal self, but as long as the bug continued advancing, his life was uncertain.

Shizune covered Yoninke's mouth with some tape to stop the monkey's commotion. Then, another medical ninja injected him with something that would knock him out for a few minutes.

Jim focused the sharingan on Yoninke's shoulder, where the dart had penetrated initially. Shizune and the others brought an apparatus that could see the bug, but the insect had to be located first—it was really tiny.

When the sharingan perceived the right location, it was already closer to the heart than expected. Next, it had two paths to take, one was a big artery and the other was a vein; both would take it directly to Yoninke's heart. That was their last chance to save him. They had to pick one and extract the bug there. If it chose the alternate path, Yoninke would die.

Jim felt that it was going to take the artery, but he was wrong. It took the vein's path.

Shizune looked sad and disappointed.

"I am sorry, there is nothing we can do now. If we try the extraction too close to his heart, it will kill him. And once it gets there, it will also kill him… we did the best we could."

Jim was not willing to accept it. The sharingan and he… neither saw Yoninke as dead. It could not end like that. He would not allow it to end that way.

He did the unthinkable, but, somehow, he already knew that it was possible. It was the instinct of an eye that had already awakened this form before—since the day when it became his.

The sharingan began to get brighter and more red. Its intensity was greater than what Jim had experienced from it so far. Then, it happened again: the three black commas of the sharingan went towards the pupil and joined it. When they came back, they looked like three dark infinity signs. They joined together around the pupil, forming a triangular perimeter around it.

Jim Namikaze experienced the sharingan's transformation to its mangekyou form, which had already been awakened by Maida Uchiha when she changed his fate and saved him. He—like Maida—changed the course of future events by saving Yoninke.

The poisonous bug changed its direction and went back to take the artery's path instead. This behavior was unheard of. Obviously, it was affected by the mangekyou sharingan.

Shizune and her team had not removed their medical equipment from that path, so they were able to remove it, thanks to Jim Namikaze.

Jim freed Yoninke from the bed, removed the tape from his mouth, and grabbed him; he had no time to lose. The Royal Tribe was in danger and they had to return.

"Thank you Shizune, without your help my friend would have died. After I help him and his tribe, I will come back to The Leaf again. I fulfilled my mission for the Hokage. Give him my greetings. I never knew that he was a master at medical techniques too. The Third is a blessing for The Leaf indeed. Tell him that Jim Namikaze became a sage, as he wanted. Good bye Shizune."

By the time he finished talking, he already had the seal and the sharingan ready for the teleportation summoning to go back to the Uchiha village. From there, he planned to go to the Earth Realm again. He couldn't stay at The Leaf now.

Shizune and the others were perplexed.

Who was this guy? Who was Jim Namikaze?

Clearly, he didn't know that Hiruzen Sarutobi was dead. Hiruzen had been killed by the evil rogue ninja Orochimaru during his clan's failed invasion against The Leaf, which happened after the Chunnin Exams. That was weeks after Jim Namikaze left The Leaf for the first time.

Shizune noticed that he wasn't aware about the changes and the difficulties that The Leaf had experienced in the last two years. He also reminded her about her childhood's friend, the gifted blonde boy, Minato, who also knew a technique to appear and disappear at other places, just like this guy. He looked different than Minato, but there was something familiar about him.

The Fifth Hokage, Tsunade, found out about what happened from Shizune. She showed a lot of interest about it and asked Shizune several questions. She wanted to know what he looked like. Shizune described his black hair, his brown eyes, and everything else that she remembered. Indeed, it was just as Tsunade remembered too. He was the same Jim Namikaze that she had met in her childhood, when she, Jiraiya, and Orochimaru were Hiruzen's first students…

NEXT- Episode 26: The Sharingan's True Power