EPISODE 26: The Sharingan's True Power

Jim Namikaze and Yoninke appeared at the Uchiha village. Jim had left his sword there and other weapons, such as explosive shurikens. Yoninke was not in optimal condition, but his wounds had been cured and he was ready to fight again. They were worried about the others at the Royal Valley, so both got ready to make the jump to the Earth Realm right away. They were not thinking very clearly because it was obvious that they couldn't stop an invasion of that scale on their own.

(Dormon united all the rogue tribes and became their new leader. He convinced them about the importance of conquering and destroying the Royal Tribe; only then they would be the true rulers and kings of the Earth Realm. However, he just wanted to be the new king at the Royal Valley and had never had any real concern about the wellbeing of the other tribes. Unfortunately, the rogue tribes were wild and not very smart, so they just followed the stronger, or more powerful, leader and paid little attention to whether he was good or not. That was the main reason why they, unlike the Royal Tribe, had never advanced as a whole, and just continued their wild ways of living ad infinitum.)

Yoninke was ready for the longer trip to his realm. Jim prepared the special seal and the Earth Realm's summoning seal. Then, he grabbed Yoninke, placed the Earth Realm's seal on their bodies, and started to use the sharingan. He found a good location, not too far from the Royal Tribe, that looked safe for teleporting. However, something unexpected happened before he could use the teleportation summoning.

He felt a sharp pain in his sharingan eye that he had never experienced before. When it began, he lost control of the two seals, lost the sharingan's view from the Earth Realm, and dropped Yoninke. He had to place his hand on the sharingan because he could feel that it was hurting the eye's surrounding skin.

"Namikaze! What's going on! There is blood coming from the bottom of your eye!"

He removed his right hand from his right eye—the sharingan—and realized that his vision was blurry. He had blood on his hand too. Why was this happening? Had he used the sharingan too much? Was it the mangekyou transformation that it experienced?

He fell down and everything went dark for a while…

When he woke up he wasn't with Yoninke. Everything around him was very dark. He was at the sharingan's dark realm, the place where he had many prophetic visions years ago, after the tragic battle with Zet Otsutsuki (White Zetsu). It had not changed at all; the dark void looked just like it did two years ago.

He had no visions now, but… there was someone there.

A man with a large white cloak and strange hair was holding a black staff and facing the opposite way of Jim Namikaze, just a few meters away from him. His white cloak had nine red commas at its center that looked like the three black commas of a normal sharingan. Moreover, the cloak had a red circle right above the commas, with many other concentric circles within. What was the meaning of all those symbols? Jim Namikaze did not know. The guy's hair color was somewhat pale, so he certainly wasn't young, and it wasn't very clear whether his original hair color had been light yellow or light red. The black staff he was holding had a golden circle at the top with many small golden rings resting on it. Jim had never seen anything like it and he had never seen this man before. The man looked like some sort of holy monk with the staff of a king.

"Who are you? Why am I seeing you here? Why am I here now?"

Jim asked as if the stranger truly knew the answers to his questions—and he knew them indeed.

The mysterious man didn't turn around, so his face wasn't revealed yet, but he did answer the last question:

"This is the realm of the special sharingan, a place that only those who have it can visit. This is a place that is not bound by anything other than your special sharingan and its current level. Here there is no time and no connection to anything in the outside. However, here you can take glimpses at the future. You will have control over it if your sharingan reaches its ultimate form, like mine, but even if it doesn't you may end up here and see visions that you cannot control. That is more likely to happen after you take the sharingan to its limit. At this very moment, that is happening to you."

The man with the cloak and staff looked real and his voice explained everything clearly. He definitely didn't look like a vision of the future, like the others Jim had there. This was real, or at least, it felt like it.

"Why don't you turn around so that I can see you? Who are you and why are you here now?"

The holy-looking white cloak and this man certainly didn't give the vibes of an enemy, but everything about him and his purpose was unknown.

"You will know who I am in due time. For now, all you need to know is that you must go back to the other Uchiha stone and use your new mangekyou sharingan there. You must learn what it will show you before you go back to the other realm. That is absolutely necessary."

Jim Namikaze was in disbelief. How could this person know all of this?! He was sure that no one saw him when he found that hidden stone. Only the monkeys knew the details about it, but they had never seen it and they didn't know where it was.

"Why should I trust you now? I don't even know who you are. I haven't even seen your face."

"I am the one that helped you to find the way to go to the other realms. I am here because if I don't warm you about what you must do now, then you and your friends will die today. I will leave you now and you will learn the sharingan's ultimate genjutsu from the stone that I wrote for you. If you leave before that both, our realm and their realm, will fall."

The unknown man turned his face and looked directly at Jim with his right eye. He had said all that he needed to know for now…

"Good luck," said the mysterious one with a minor smile on his lips.

After saying that, the vision began to disperse and the mysterious one disappeared completely.

It had been a vision too, but Jim knew that this one was very different. It was not controlled by him, but rather by that holy-looking person.

Furthermore, he saw the man's face sideways when he turned around a little to say his last words. He caught a sight of both of his eyes. He had never seen eyes like those before. Were they the sharingan's final form? The man's eyes were light violet and they had black concentric circles around their center. They were just like the circle on the back of his cloak, but they were violet, rather than red. They looked different than both the normal sharingan and the mangekyou sharingan.

There were many questions still, but Jim felt that what he heard was the truth. He had to follow the advice—he thought. This man could be "H.O."—the one that gave him the two keys to go to the Earth Realm. That was the only way to explain how he knew so much... However, why did he have to create the two Uchiha stones? Why didn't he tell him all the things he needed to know right away?

There were many questions, but none of that mattered as much as saving the ones at the Earth Realm. However, failure was not an option there. He chose to trust the advice because he truly believed that the unknown messenger was trustworthy…

When Jim opened his eyes again, at the Uchiha village, Yoninke was holding him and was somewhat desperate because he couldn't go back leaving Jim like that. Besides, he didn't know how to cancel the summoning jutsu, so he couldn't go back without Jim.

Jim Namikaze stood up right away and looked in the direction of where the other Uchiha stone was hidden.

"What's wrong with you? You were knocked out with blood in your eye and now you stand up like nothing happened! Now you are worrying me more than the ones at your hospital Namikaze."

"Calm down Yoninke. I had another one of those visions that I told you about before. There is something that I must do before we leave. It will raise our chances of saving everyone. Come with me…"

As soon as they reached the secret Uchiha stone, Jim Namikaze sat down close to it and he began to remember what helped him to awaken the mangekyou sharingan. This time it felt less intense—maybe because his friend's life wasn't on the balance—but its use was straining his eye and his mind, nonetheless. He had to hurry.

Quickly, he looked at the stone with the mangekyou and located a section of writing that was not visible before. It explained how to use the mangekyou sharingan to cast Tsukuyomi—the sharingan's most mind bending genjutsu—on someone. The enemy had to be fairly close and looking directly at the sharingan with both eyes when Tsukuyomi was used on them; otherwise, it would not be effective. Tsukuyomi was capable of changing someone's perception of reality completely, but it was also very taxing for the sharingan and for its user.

(Pure-blooded Uchihas could use Tsukuyomi for one minute and make it last, in the victim's mind, for up to 72 hours. Non-Uchihas with a sharingan, like Jim Namikaze, could only use it for a few seconds and the victim would have their reality reshaped for up to two hours.)

Anything was possible within the imaginary realm of Tsukuyomi. This was why Zet and Su wanted to revive the Ten-Tails and an Uchiha master with rinnegan eyes, like Madara, to cast Infinite Tsukuyomi for them (only the sharingan's final form could cast it and only two people in history had been able to awaken it: Madara and the Sage of Six Paths). It was the most efficient way to control the whole Human Realm; and it was not going to affect them because they weren't quite human, since the day when they became "White" and "Black" Zetsu. Genjutsu techniques didn't work on them. They didn't work on Spiral either. The battle they had with Spiral and the other guardian at the Realm of the Snakes had truly marked their lives forever…

Yoninke was with Jim close to the Uchiha stone and, all of a sudden, he was at the Earth Realm's large plains of earth, not far from the Royal Tribe. There was no one there besides him and Jim Namikaze. Jim's eye looked different, just like it did during the bug's extraction. Yoninke was looking straight at it. Before the monkey could talk, Jim closed his sharingan and Yoninke saw they were back at the stone's underground passage.

"What happened Yoninke?" asked Jim.

"What do you mean!? You took us to the training plains for five minutes and then back here. We don't have time for games Namikaze!"

It was incredible and it had worked. Jim tested Tsukuyomi on Yoninke during the blink of an eye—for less than half a second—and Yoninke perceived that he was there for much longer, even though no one moved him and, in reality, nothing happened. Tsukuyomi created reality for the one affected by it… it made Jim Namikaze wonder if Maida Uchiha knew about these things at all. She wouldn't have done such a thing to him though, and he always trusted her. It was a frightening power and the same power that Zet and Su wanted to use on the whole Human Realm. They would create a human world where everyone was very happy, but under their rule and control, at the same time…

When Yoninke and Jim went back to the surface, Yoninke was in a hurry to leave. He was ready to return. Jim was not in his best condition, due to the sharingan's use, but he was an earth sage, so he could handle it. He just had to limit the use of his sharingan in battle to a last resort.

Jim began to scan areas of the Royal Valley to pick a convenient place for their return.

"Namikaze you are delaying us. Just pick the first safe spot you see. There is nothing worse for a mighty ninja than to sit around without taking action!"

After seeing the unknown man and learning Tsukuyomi, Jim Namikaze understood why that way of thinking was not a smart path.

"Yoninke, there is nothing worse for a mighty ninja than taking action without thinking. In the worst scenario, it guarantees death. If we rush this, we will be killed and the Royal Tribe will be destroyed. We must plan this fast, but carefully as well."

Yoninke didn't say anything else. Deep down, he knew that Jim was right. (Sometimes, Yoninke sounded foolish with his "gorilla ninja" blabber, but he definitely wasn't a stupid monkey at all.)

Then, the sharingan's view of the Earth Realm—through the special seal and the Earth Realm's summoning seal—revealed a worrisome scenario at the top of the white earth mountain, where Team Namikaze had most of its training:

Sarzan was tied up on the only tree standing at the top of the mountain. Four monkeys that were about four feet tall were interrogating him. They went back a few feet and launched four different elemental jutsus at him.

(These four were Dormon's elites, four highly trained monkeys that were excellent users of four different elemental-jutsu styles. They were Dormon's personal guards. The female with the yellow headband was Lenya, the lighting-style user. She seemed very arrogant. She thought she was blessed for being one of the very few that used that style. The other three were males. Rosu was the wind-style user and had a white-headband. He looked like the type of monkey that would stab you in the back at any moment. Barion was hot-blooded and aggressive. He used a red headband and was a fire-style user. And Erion, the earth-style monkey ninja of the group, used a brown headband and was watching everything at all times. They all had clothes similar to Enma's—denoting they were elites—but with darker red and black colors.)

They were trying to get some information from Sarzan before they executed him. He was one of the king's sons—just like Dormon—so he surely had some idea of where the remaining elites from the Royal Valley were hiding.

Jim told Yoninke about it and Yoninke had an eerie realization:

"We have to go save Sarzan! The one wearing the red headband was the leader of the squad that caught me for a while. I escaped, but I had to fight him and his squad. He is the one that managed to give me the cut on the head and the other wounds. He is good with fire techniques and with twin swords, like me!"

Yoninke touched the healed cut on his head and got all fired up:

"That villain! I will leave him bald for messing up my gorilla haicut!"

Jim looked back at the scene and it became clear that they couldn't miss another second. He did not have time to reach sage mode before going back. They had to leave right away!

Barion and Rosu grabbed a sword and it looked like they were about to decapitate Sarzan!

"Let's go Yoninke! We will save Sarzan and show those four what Team Namikaze can do! I will teleport us right in front of them. Get ready!"

"Summoning jutsu!"

NEXT- Episode 27: Versus the Elites