Alice cleared her throat as she finally said, "We need everyone on the same page. No more secrets. No more splinter groups."
"We have numbers. Me and you, babe."
"We're not enough. We need people like Will, too."
"Male-Karin?" Jasper groaned. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "No way. The guy's useless and thinks he's the protagonist or something. Last thing I need is his whining."
Alice didn't like that he said "I" instead of "we." She stood up and snapped, "You know what, Jasper, you don't have a choice here!"
"What?" he bristled. "I always have a choice."
"Do you even know how hard it was to fix everything after you did that?" she hissed.
The room temperature seemed to drop as Jasper froze. That was because she was referring to Sakura. Jasper shut his mouth and looked away.
"You almost ruined things right there," Alice continued, suppressing her rage. "You let your ego get the better of you and almost scarred a little girl. What would you have done if word got out to the rest of the village?"
"I didn't mean to—"
"You never mean to!" Alice cried. Tears welled up in her eyes, spilling over before she could stop them. "You just do things without telling me, and I follow behind you with a broom and a dustpan." She then wiped her face aggressively. "I'm tired, Jasper. I'm so tired of cleaning up after you."
"Babe..." Jasper started. He reached out a hand.
"No." Alice stepped back. "I... I want to be alone for a while."
Jasper stopped. The emotional wall had gone up before he even knew it.
"For how long?"
She didn't answer. She instead turned and walked toward the sliding door.
"Wait," he called out. "Where are you going now?"
She paused at the threshold with her back to him. "To handle your time loops… And to handle Neji."
"N… Neji?" he repeated, having not noticed the latter was spying on them with his Byakugan.
"Jasper..." she said, pausing one last time. "Please. Just don't leave the village. Don't disappear again."
Her desperation was clear in her voice. No one could tell that Jasper wanted to keep Alice by his side. She was the only person anchoring him to his sanity. And without her, he was just a monster with fancy genes.
"Okay," he softly said. "I promise. And... just don't forget that I love you, babe. I wouldn't do anything to hurt you."
For once, it wasn't a manipulation. So he waited for her to believe his words.
Alice stood there for a heartbeat. She didn't respond. She didn't turn back. She just slid the door open and stepped out into the corridor.
Jasper was alone.
Sending Alex back in time to handle Arthur felt hollow now. And perhaps Jasper had saved the present; he was losing the future.
As he stood there to think about his actions, the air changed. Then he felt a sudden weight like no other. A crushing pressure descended on the village. It hit Jasper's senses hard as the scrolls on the shelves rattled.
It was chakra, and enough of it to make him, an Ōtsutsuki, shudder.
Outside the door, he heard a gasp. Alice most certainly felt it too. Every sensor in the village would be screaming.
He stumbled toward the door, throwing it open. Alice was seen over an unconscious Neji—her work—but Alice wasn't looking at him; she was looking up, knowing that intense chakra signature was coming from the gates.
The whole village held its breath.
✟
In an unknown void, in the fabric of space and time, the world rippled around Alex.
He was seen floating in the grey space between seconds, suspended in the transit of the jutsu. He took a moment to center himself to contemplate how Arthur defied his every calculation.
"To think he was alive this whole time," Alex whispered into the void.
That only made him chuckle lightly before a vibration passed through his chest. A dense amount of chakra surged as white flames erupted across his skin, coating him in a mantle of pure power.
He then kicked off the fabric of space and took flight, soaring through the frozen atmosphere like a comet.
As he did, his expression twisted into something wild. He still didn't believe Arthur was alive. Not fully, at least. No, he needed to see such an impossible anomaly with his own eyes.
It wasn't long until he descended toward the coordinates. The battlefield came into view as he stopped mid-air.
Uchiha. Dozens of them. The fan symbols on their backs were unmistakable. They stood tall, unlike reanimated corpses with dark eyes and cracked skin; they were breathing. Arthur had actually done it; he had resurrected the dead.
Alex scanned further, and his breath caught.
To the left, black cloaks with red clouds fluttered in the wind. The Akatsuki. All of them. Pain, Itachi, Kisame, and Sasori. They fought as a unit, clashing against a wave of Arthur's shinobi. Even Kaito was in the mix.
The Akatsuki never united like this. It was a sight that shattered history.
Then, Alex saw the architect of it all. Arthur stood in the center as Hidan tried to attack him, only to be frozen by the sword he held.
"That blade," Alex recognized from Margaret's tale of John.
Hidan, an S-rank shinobi no less, was incapacitated instantly.
Alex stared. The precision. The scale. The sheer audacity. Arthur hadn't just survived that fateful night when all the other players ganged up on him; he had meticulously dismantled the rules of the ninja world and turned the narrative into his personal playground.
A grin split Alex's face. It was wide, unhinged, and genuine. He couldn't contain the surge of admiration. This was the challenge he had waited for.
"Arthur..." he breathed, watching the carnage. "You're the best!"
✟
In the current present, Itachi pivoted on his heel to deliver a kick to Kimimaro's chest. The impact was loud as Kimimaro was sent skidding backward before finally grinding to a halt.
He straightened, dusting off his chest. "For an Uchiha, you're a lot more skilled than I thought…"
Itachi remained silent with his Sharingan very much still active. His psyche was an iron fortress. Even here, surrounded by the resurrected faces of his own clan—the very blood he had slaughtered for the sake of the Leaf Village—he did not falter.
Whether Arthur and his forces knew that he was a double agent or not, Itachi not once let the ghosts of the past break his composure now.
He opened his mouth to respond, but the ground violently lurched. Huge shockwaves rattled the floor of the valley, knocking loose stones into the air. The pressure was almost suffocating. It was Arthur's chakra, vast and overwhelming, pulsating from the center of the battlefield.
Beneath that, another chakra signature was fast approaching—authoritative and familiar.
A figure landed between Itachi and Kimimaro, kicking up a cloud of dust. It was Fugaku Uchiha. He stood with his arms crossed as his eyes glowed with the Mangekyō Sharingan. Arthur had commanded Kimimaro to wait for backup, and the patriarch of the Uchiha had finally arrived.
"You don't seem to know when to give up," Fugaku declared with disappointment. "Itachi..."
There was no hesitation in Itachi's eyes, only the cold calculation of a war that was slowly falling from their grasp.
Suddenly, movement caught his peripheral vision. Pain was moving away from where they knew Arthur was. He was retreating. But as for why, they couldn't tell.
Pain glanced back, locking eyes with Itachi, and gestured subtly toward the west. "Fall back" was the message the latter understood. So Itachi shifted his stance and moved in Pain's direction.
"Get ready to pursue him," Fugaku demanded. His killing intent flared. "We can capture their leader, too."
"No," Kimimaro smoothly rejected. He stepped up beside Fugaku. "My apologies, lord First, but lord Arthur instructed me to go where lord Ryugetsu is being held captive. That is the priority."
Fugaku paused. He looked at the retreating Akatsuki members, then at Kimimaro. Then he let out a sharp breath. Anyone could tell he wanted to hunt down Itachi at all costs and kill him for what his eldest son had done. Yet going against Arthur's orders superseded revenge.
"Fine. Then I shall join you."
There was no order that Fugaku couldn't join, so Kimimaro allowed it. The two soon turned, abandoning Itachi to his retreat, and raced toward the southern ridge.
By the time they reached the area, the situation was dire. A horde of White Zetsu clones was swarming over the terrain, carrying the limp body of the Animal Path.
Fugaku's eyes narrowed. He could instantly see Ryugetsu's chakra signature compressed inside that Path.
"Out of my way," he growled.
Golden chakra erupted from his body, forming a ribcage, then muscle, then armor until his Susanoo's massive shield swept across the field.
Crash!
The White Zetsu army was demolished in a single strike as their bodies were pulverized into the dirt. Kimimaro used that opportunity to secure the Path's corpse. When he did, he wasted no time extracting the disruptive Black Rods.
As the last rod clattered to the ground, thick trails of smoke exited the Animal Path's mouth and eyes, swirling into the air and condensing into a solid form.
Ryugetsu stood tall. He rolled his neck, cracking the joints, and flexed his hands. That brief imprisonment hadn't touched his confidence. And from the looks of things, he seemed to be the only clone remaining.
"To think they could hold me," he scoffed.
Suddenly, his eyes flared. He snapped his head toward the main battlefield and sensed it—not Arthur's chakra, but someone else's. Someone extremely strong had just arrived in the area: a wild, white-hot power.
"You two," he ordered, turning to Fugaku and Kimimaro. "Tell Ashina to regroup all the members back to the village. The board has changed."
"Understood, my lord," Kimimaro said, bowing low.
Ryugetsu then placed a hand on each of their shoulders. Space warped around them, and with a swish, he teleported them away to the best rendezvous point.
Now alone, Ryugetsu focused on getting to Arthur. Yet when his senses reached out to bridge the distance, nothing happened. He was surprised; he couldn't sense a Flying raijin mark anywhere around Arthur whatsoever.
"What happened?" he hissed.
Without a second thought, he launched himself into the sky, flying at breakneck speed toward the source of that disruption.
✟
At the crater, Jada and Izumi, momentarily forgetting their own clash, looked up in stunned silence. Arthur himself was present at the edge, his eyes fixed on the new arrival.
It was Alex, slowly hovering from above them to greet them. His body was wrapped in a shroud of cyan-white flames that flickered like ethereal fire. His hair was also floating upward, but what drew the most attention were his eyes: a kaleidoscope of floral patterns, glowing with a brilliant, lotus-like luminescence.
The Tenseigan Chakra Mode.
"Friend," he said, projecting effortless power. "Long time no see…"
Arthur's grip on his sword tightened. Friend? What a sarcastic callback to their last conversation in the Leaf Village.
Before Arthur could respond, Alex brought his hands together in a sharp clap.
Snap!
A sphere of white energy expanded instantly from Alex's position, washing over the crater and locking the space in place.
Arthur's eyes narrowed. That was a smart move to make. Because now, this barrier was preventing anyone from teleporting in or out of it.
Jada stepped back as she analyzed Alex.
"Since when..." she whispered. "Since when did he get the Tenseigan?"
She knew the lore. She knew the requirements. To gain those eyes, one usually had to steal the Byakugan from a pure bloodline and mature it on the moon.
Alex lowered his gaze to her. "It's your first time seeing me like this, huh? Don't worry. I didn't steal anyone's eyes to get them. I simply—"
BANG!
The sound was like a cannon firing. One second, Alex was floating in godlike splendor. The next, Arthur's body became a blur of motion as he slammed a fist right into his face!