The sun had long since set over the Leaf Village, but the lights in the girls' apartment were still on.
Jada sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the floorboards. Alice leaned against the window frame, watching the village below with a distant look. Margaret sat in the living room, waiting for the boys to show.
After a moment, the door opened to reveal all three of them: Jasper, Alex, and William.
Alex had been asked by the barrier team to explain more on the orb. Jasper lounged around his room, waiting for this meeting to commence, while William was debriefing the Rookie Nine on exactly what had happened.
Needless to say, the Genin were all shocked upon hearing things.
A war that wasn't even theirs was over, Arthur was trapped, and Alex, Jada, and Jasper came out as heroes. Yet, nobody looked like a winner.
When Alice and Jada came into the living room, Alex began. "So… From what the elders stated, Arthur'll be kept in the orb. They're also gonna layer stronger seals over it to prevent his chakra from leaking out…"
"And then?" Margaret asked.
"And then, once they manage to create a seal strong enough to neutralize him on the outside, I think they're gonna sentence him to death."
Jada flinched. "Death?"
"He revived the dead, Jada," Jasper said. "Then started a war with the Akatsuki. He even impersonated a feudal lord. Of course they're gonna want to execute him. What did you expect? Community service?"
Smack!
Alice was not pleased with Jasper's behaviour, as she was still angry at him for his past actions.
Jada argued, "It'd be better to send him to Blood Prison or the ANBU interrogation unit. Somewhere we could talk to him and find out why."
"Why does it matter?" Margaret asked aloud, almost breaking the coffee table. "We should just kill him ourselves. He's way too dangerous, and he's bat-flipping crazy."
"We can't kill him," Jada whispered.
"Why not?" William pressed.
An awkward silence followed before she answered. "Because if he dies here… he dies for real…"
The room went dead silent. Even the sounds of the village outside seemed to fade away.
"What are you talking about?" Alice asked.
Jada took a deep breath. She looked around at the faces of the people she had been having an adventure with this whole time.
To her, she was hoping it wasn't true, hoping Arthur was just manipulating her again. But after seeing the lengths he went to—the willingness in his eyes during all of their fights—she couldn't deny it.
"He told me," Jada revealed. "During the war, when I confronted him. I mean his clone; he told me the message he received from Dr. Kapoor." Not a single person had forgotten that they had all received at least one message before entering this world. "If we die in this world, we die back on earth."
Alice, William, and Margaret froze.
"You don't actually believe him, do you?" Alex asked.
His tone was skeptical, bordering on dismissive. Yet Jada remained firm.
"I do," she said. "Think about it. Think about everything he did. He was doing evil things, yes, and he didn't trust anyone. But did any of us really ask why?" No one had a concrete answer. "He knew that one mistake meant actual death, so he was fighting for his life."
Her statements stood strong. No matter how insane someone was, they could never lie about something this grand. Arthur was trying to survive because, in his mind, the others were the ones playing around while he was trying to beat a death trap.
Alice turned away slightly, having finally understood why Arthur had never trusted anyone to begin with. For so long, he had to bear the truth alone. He looked at them—at Jasper, at William, at herself—and saw liabilities.
From day one, he had tried to tell them, but no one listened. Even if he outrightly said something, they would have called him crazy and laughed things off.
"Why didn't he say something then?" William urged.
"He tried," Alice whispered.
"But he tried to kill us," Jasper countered, though his voice lacked its usual bite.
"Did he really?" Jada said. "How many chances did he have but never take?"
A cold dread settled over the group. The realization recontextualized every interaction they had ever had with Arthur.
At first he looked like a wannabe villain, but in truth he was disparately fighting for survival. If it meant taking on the role of a villain, he by all means accepted it. And they had tried to kill him. Repeatedly.
"If we had killed him..." Margaret trailed off, her face pale.
William sank onto the sofa, putting his head in his hands. "I tried to kill him. I really tried. I thought... I thought he'd just get kicked from here."
Before the atmosphere could get too heavy, Alex said, "It can't be that bad…" Everyone looked at him. He was surprisingly relaxed for someone discussing mortality. "Dr. Kapoor might have said that to raise the stakes just to make Arthur play harder."
"That explanation doesn't sit quite well with me," Alice said, rubbing her arm.
Margaret herself also wasn't buying it. Fear was a powerful motivator for test subjects, but just that alone made her terrified. "My life isn't some variable for immersion, Alex."
"Guys, just don't die here," Alex tried again, shrugging. "Treat it like a hardcore run. We're high level. We'll be fine."
"Easy for you to say," Jasper intoned, glaring at him. "You're practically invincible, dude. Some of us still take damage."
Damage! Alice thought. She quickly reminded the group about what Arthur had once mentioned: that this world feels a lot more real than they had initially been told.
When Jada backed up those claims, having felt the full force of Arthur's might, there was no more denying it: Elysium had lied.
The thought truly scared them. No one here wanted to be killed for real. One moment, they thought they were in some simulation with adapting consequences. But that was just game consequences. Losing gear. Losing progress. Not losing their heartbeat.
"We need to leave," William said, panic rising in his voice. "We need to call the programmers. There has to be an emergency exit. A safe word or something."
"There isn't," Margaret softly said. "Dr. Kapoor was clear: we can't leave this world until we finish it."
"So that means we can survive so long as we make it to the end," Jada reasoned.
"Yeah, we have to reach the end of the story."
"This is insane," Jasper muttered. He rubbed his temples aggressively. "My family's going to for sure sue them and bury their stupid tech company to the ground."
"Calm down," Alice tried.
"No, babe!" he screamed. "They can't do this. It's kidnapping and reckless endangerment."
"How're ya gonna sue them if we can't even wake up?" Alex pointed out.
"Oh, I'll find a way," Jasper vowed. "I'll just level this whole freaking place to the ground."
"You mean like how Arthur tried?" Jada said.
At that, the room went quiet again. They were trapped.
Alice looked at Jasper, then at the others. She felt a knot of anxiety in her stomach. She still hadn't told anyone—save Arthur, briefly—about her secret mission here. If death was real, then her mission was infinitely more dangerous. And if Elysium found out she was working for the government, they might just unplug her and kill her personally.
She looked at Alex. He was calm. Too calm. Yet she refrained from calling him out because she knew that they needed unity, not more suspicion.
"Okay," William said, taking a shaky breath. "So, everything's real…"
"We shouldn't let that change our initial plan," Alex added. "Things are just… more serious. Not like we wouldn't have stopped from finishing the story. I mean, just look at us. We're all talented and most certainly the strongest in this generation."
The room was only slightly moved by his attempts at injecting optimism.
"Come on, guys," he continued. "We stopped Arthur, didn't we? We can do this. We just have to be careful and not take any unnecessary risks."
After a moment, his words began sinking in. They were trapped, yes, but imagine if they hadn't known about this? Everyone was wishing to do good in this world anyway. And after making it so far, they were currently so high up that it was virtually improbable for anyone to kill them.
When that thought was registered, Margaret stood up. "He's right!"
"Excuse me?" Jasper asked.
"So what if I die here?" she began. Her voice was a little shaky but quite defiant. "I love Naruto. I love this world. I wouldn't dream of leaving even if they pulled the plug on me."
"Marge," Alice warned, "you're talking about dying."
"I'm talking about living," she corrected. "Look at us. Look at what we can do. Look at who we know. I have friends here and a life that was better than on earth anyway." Then she looked at William. "No offense, Will, but who even were you on earth?"
William went comically quiet. He looked down at his hands to really consider her question.
Since the first day he arrived here, he had gotten to actually eat a bowl of ramen with the Naruto Uzumaki. Fans were so crazy about that boy that they genuinely bought tickets to Japan just to try their ramen.
What's more was William's memory of this world's Naruto. The boy called him his cousin frequently and loved him wholeheartedly. The two had gone so far as to even pull pranks together, sleep together, and increase his reputation as the future Hokage.
Arthur may have revived Minato and Kushina for dark purposes, but that act only seemed to make the world better. It made the plot richer. Naruto had parents, blunting out the tragedy by a huge margin.
"I say we live out our lives here then!" William suddenly shouted, jumping to his feet. "Marge and Alex are right! Why are we rushing to leave? We can finish the story, sure, but let's enjoy it and live like we have been!"
"You guys are insane," Jasper said, looking at them like they had grown three heads. "This is Stockholm syndrome. Literally."
Alice bit her lip. She was with Jasper on this one. She didn't quite want to live out the rest of her days in the Edo period with supernatural powers—no matter how appealing that sounded.
"Just treat things like normal," Alex encouraged, nodding at William. "Do your best to survive, but don't let the fear paralyze you. If you hesitate, you die. So, living fully is actually the best survival strategy."
It was sound logic, even if it came from the guy who seemed the most mysterious out of them.
Jada herself was moved. All her ventures here, helping the villagers and being well-favoured among shinobi, truly highlighted her desires to continue helping everyone she could.
As for Jasper, he didn't have much of a say here. Even if he wanted to kill everyone and everything, the others would most certainly stop him. And who's to say that doing something as insane as that would bring him back to earth?
Whether anyone liked it or not, there was no leaving Naruto until the story was finished.