When the two opened their eyes, they found themselves traversing through Jasper's mental landscape. The travel was like a sensation of falling, then sudden weightlessness.
Without notice, they found themselves floating in an endless void of a dark expanse scattered with floating islands of memory.
"Sure is empty in here," Alex joked as his voice echoed in the psychic space.
"Dude, take it seriously," Jasper's voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere.
"I was just kidding."
"Follow the light," Alice directed.
She pulled Alex along the psychic tether. They soon drifted toward a massive, jagged cluster of recent memories and began to see as far as Jasper wanted them to.
First, the moon. There, they saw the desolate landscape, the artificial blue sky, and the eerie, beautiful palace of Toneri. They also saw their tense confrontation as the Three-Tails was summoned.
Then, the memory shifted. It went further back, or perhaps sideways, in the timeline.
The battlefield where the war was.
Alice gasped in the real world, but in the mindscape, she stared in horror at what happened when Jasper arrived.
The sky itself was choked with smoke, and the ground was littered with bodies. What was most surprising was the Uchihas and Uzumakis fighting alongside one another against the Akatsuki organization.
And in the center of it all, Arthur. He stood in a crater, looking at the chaos with a godly detachment. He didn't look like the Arthur they remembered. He looked a little older and harder and had longer hair.
Then his fight with Jasper was replayed. Alex and Alice saw Jasper, in his prime state, launch a massive assault. Yet Arthur deflected every advance—advances that shouldn't have been possible to fend against.
Now they had understood the "hacks" Jasper had mentioned. It was a slaughter.
The memory would soon end with Jasper being blasted away before the vision dissolved. The cyan light faded, and the two returned to the room.
Alice stumbled back, releasing their hands. She was breathing hard as sweat beaded on her forehead. The sheer intensity of Arthur's power was overwhelming. There was no way that he'd gotten that strong since the last time they'd met.
She looked at Alex, expecting to see fear. She expected him to slip up, to show a crack in that perfect mask and reveal an unexpected emotion like terror or hesitation. Yet to her surprise, he remained calm.
He was looking at his hands.
"What are you thinking?" she asked.
He looked up, and his eyes were bright. Dangerously bright. "Honestly, I'm pretty excited to meet him." Then he smoothed his robes. "He's surpassed the limits of any shinobi in this generation, that's for sure. But I can win. No, I will win."
Jasper slouched his shoulders. For the first time since he had crashed into the shop, he let out a smirk. It was a pained expression, but it showed his confidence was returning. He had made the right choice: Alex was the only one crazy enough to handle this.
"Alright then," Jasper said. "Get ready."
"Wait!" Alice stopped.
"What now?" Jasper wondered.
"How are you going to deal with him?"
Alex's eyes rolled to the ceiling. "Easy. I use talk-no-jutsu. Get him to stop the war and return to the Leaf Village like Naruto did with Sasuke."
"Sarcasm?" Alice knew. She could never tell with people like Alex.
Without waiting for her, Jasper formed the hand seals and placed his hand over Alex's face. "Don't go easy on him, dude. Time travel jutsu…"
Colors first bled into one another as Alex disappeared into an invisible space vortex. And when the air snapped back into place, Alice and Jasper were silent.
Jasper slumped against the bookshelf. He then let the air leave his lungs in a long, ragged rush. The tension that had held his spine rigid since the moon finally snapped. His shoulders dropped further, and the pain burning in his chakra network began to also relax.
Alex was gone. Alex would fix it.
Jasper used that moment to close his eyes, savouring the silence.
"How could you?"
The voice cut through his relief as one of his eyes opened. Soft lighting cast shadows across Alice's face, but it couldn't hide the expression she wore. Her arms were also crossed tight over her chest.
"What?" he asked.
"Don't 'what' me," she snapped. Her voice wasn't loud, but it made him click his tongue. "I was inside your head, Jasper. I saw the memories you didn't want to show."
Jasper shifted, trying to find a comfortable spot on the wall. "What do you mean? I showed you the important parts."
"The important parts?! You almost killed Jada! And Pain?" Her eyes narrowed. "I saw that conversation. You told the leader of the Akatsuki you would join them?"
"It was a bluff," Jasper tried. It came out automatically. "I was just buying time. Strategy, babe. He could have killed me if I didn't."
"Don't lie to me."
Alice's voice cracked. It wasn't anger anymore; it was horror. She looked at him as if she were seeing a stranger wearing her boyfriend's face.
"I felt everything you did," she whispered. "You didn't care if Jada lived or died…"
Jasper looked away. He couldn't hold her gaze. The shame was there, buried deep under layers of ego and survival instinct. But he refused to let it surface. He had done what he had to do. The ninja world was kill or be killed.
Arthur proved that.
"I had it under control," he muttered.
"Under control?! Why do you always do that, Jasper?! Why do you try to weasel your way out of everything? Even in front of me, you're sitting there thinking of your next excuse."
Jasper opened his mouth to argue, to tell her she was overreacting, but the look on her face stopped him. She looked exhausted. It was a soul-deep weariness.
Her tone shifted from anger to a heavy sorrow. "I want you to tell me everything."
"What do you want to know?"
"All of it. No more 'need to know' basis like this 'Kaguya's Legacy' thing and what you and Alex have done together."
Jasper stiffened. He hated this. He hated being exposed. Relationships, he believed, were supposed to be about fun, about having someone to watch the other's back. Not about baring your soul and spilling your darkest secrets.
If she knew everything, he'd never be allowed to do anything.
He looked at the door and then back at her. There was no way out. If he walked out, he lost her. If he lied, he'd slip up somewhere, and she'd catch on to it eventually. The facts were already half-exposed; trying to hide the rest would be like trying to hold back a flood with a paper fan.
"Fine," he relented. He let his head thump back against the shelf. "Where exactly do you want me to start?"
"Alex," she instantly said. "Start with Alex."
Jasper sighed. "Okay. Alex."
He rubbed his temples. "Remember the vote? A few months back, we all sat down—you, I, and the others. We wanted to rank ourselves on who was the strongest player based on our builds."
"I remember. We all agreed Alex was the strongest."
"Arthur got zero votes," Jasper added with a grim smile. "My vote for him was out of spite. But the Alex vote... that wasn't spite. That was anxiety."
"You voted for yourself initially," Alice recalled.
"I did… On paper. But really, I wanted to vote for Alex. I didn't because of pride. I couldn't admit that the guy living in the room next to me was better."
"Why?" she asked as she sat down on the tatami. "I know he's smart. I know he's a Hyūga prodigy. But I've seen what you could do. So why be so anxious of him?"
"Because he doesn't get hit," Jasper simply said.
Alice frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, he doesn't get hit. Ever." Jasper gestured to his own battered body. "Look at me. I get hit. I tank damage. I heal. That's my style. Alex? I fought him once, and that was all I needed." He stared at the ceiling, replaying the memory. "I thought Arthur had hacks…"
"What happened?"
"I lost in three moves… Na, I can't even remember how many movies it was. One second I was attacking, the next I was paralyzed on the ground. He didn't use a flashy jutsu or anything; he just... poked me three times. I mean, I think it was three."
"The Gentle Fist," Alice surmised.
"Beyond that," Jasper corrected. "What I use is the Gentle Fist. What he uses is… I… I dunno."
Alice couldn't quite wrap her head around his explanation. That is until she recounted that Jada had also fought Alex once; she said that she couldn't physically touch him either. Alice remembered William mentioning something similar—that even when he saw Alex's attack coming, it always landed.
"That's just the physical side," Jasper continued. "You remember the Kisame and Itachi incident?"
"When Naruto was targeted?"
"Yeah. Alex walked in and convinced two S-class monsters that Jiraiya was there. You're telling me Itachi couldn't see through that?
"And the curse mark," Alice whispered. "He reversed it."
"Exactly," Jasper said. "I hate to admit it, but he knows this world better than any of us. We play the game; Alex writes it."
"What does that mean?" Alice wondered. "Or better yet, how did he get so strong?"
"For starters, he's a hoarder."
"A hoarder?"
"The movies, of course." Alice looked confused, prompting Jasper to explain. "Remember when he suggested we go to the Gele mines?"
"Yeah."
"He only offered because he wanted the stuff from the other films."
Alice thought back. The only movie he recalled him doing was the one with William, when the two transformed the Land of Snow to the Land of Spring. And the two came back with nothing.
"He didn't stop there," Jasper said. "He's done three movies. One was Shippuden related."
Now that was troubling to know. Alice, who had never seen that arc of the story, was unaware of what technology or secret techniques those movies carried. But how and why did Jasper know all of this?
"Alex asked a favour from me," he revealed.
"What favor?"
"He needed chakra to make something, so he sent me to the Lightning Country and the Earth Country for Killer Bee and Han."
Alice's eyes widened. "Tailed Beast Chakra…"
"I got close," Jasper said. "I stole some chakra. Just a bit. Enough to give him. I didn't ask why. I mean, Alex's on our side, so I figured if he wanted a chakra cocktail, let him have it." Jasper then looked at the empty space where the vortex had been. "Who knows what that dude's thinking?"
Alice sat in silence for a moment. The information was a lot to process. Fan knowledge was one thing—knowing who was related to whom and where the hidden weapons were. But maneuvering through the world to collect power from non-canon sources? That required a level of planning that the average fan couldn't muster.
But was all that really enough to stop Arthur? At the thought of his name, she felt an itch on her neck.
Twice, Arthur had almost killed her. Such a memory still haunted her to this day. The first was when she used her telepathic techniques to their fullest, only to be beaten at her own mental game.
And the second was at the Science Building. She was practically invisible, yet he had still felt her presence, almost choking her to death.
Alice lowered her hand. "I don't get it. We know the story just as much as they do." They being Arthur and Alex. "So what's so different between them and us?"
"See," Jasper said. "That's why we stick with Alex. Between Arthur and him, he's our best bet."
"Is he?" she countered. "Or is he just another Arthur waiting to happen? You said it yourself, 'Even if Alex turns his back on us, I'll have more than enough power to take him out.'"
Jasper flinched. He had indeed said that. And if he recalled, she believed that together in numbers, they could make a difference.