"There’s sothing I’m still not getting," Margaret said, changing the subject. She then frowned, tapping her chin until Jada asked her what was wrong. "If Arthur was John... and Kaito..." She looked around the room. "Then how did I lose after trying to save Naruto?"
The room paused. They rembered the incident. Margaret had burst out of the Hokage’s office to try and find Naruto on her own. But when they found her, she had lost badly.
"How can you go from knowing your life’s at stake to talking about a fight no one rembers?" Jasper berated.
"I an, I know he’s strong," she continued. "But I’d at least like to know how I lost."
"I can always check your mories," Alice suggested. "To see if Arthur might have ssed with it or sothing."
"He could do that too?!" William yelled. "So that’s how he won against in that tournant."
"Umm," Jada said, bursting his bubble. "Weren’t there official monitors watching that fight? So how could he have had ti to ss with your mories?"
William almost dropped on his seat.
The mood seed to have lightened despite this revelation. And from how things were going thus far, it seed like everyone had accepted their fate.
What were they going to do? Fly out into space until they found an exit?
Margaret would soon approach Alice to have her check her thoughts.
"I wanna see too," Alex said.
" too," Jada added. "Out of curiosity, I an..."
Alice sighed, expecting Jasper and William to feel the sa way. "Fine. Everyone grab hands. I’ll project it."
They ford a circle in the living room, linking hands as Alice placed her palm on Margaret’s forehead.
When the technique was activated, the world dissolved and they were all pulled into her ntal landscape. There, they saw Margaret flying to where Naruto, Sasuke, and Arthur were located.
After seeing everything as if it were real-ti, the mory ended and the group snapped back to the apartnt.
There was a beat of silence. Then Jada chuckled.
"Did you hear what she said?!" Alex yelled, breaking into hysterics.
"Make feel it again!" Jasper repeated, doing a terrible impression of Margaret’s breathless voice.
"Gee, Marge!" William snorted. "I know you’re into dirty magazines, but what the heck did that even an?!"
"I ant the pain!" she shrieked before she turned bright red. Then she quickly buried herself in the couch, muffling her words. " "Uhh... s-sounded... coo...ler in... my... head...!"
"What did she say?" Alex asked.
"I think she said, ’It sounded cooler in my head,’" Alice laughed.
"That’s the cringiest thing I’ve ever heard," Jasper sniggered, wiping a tear from his eye. "Arthur probably knocked you out just to make sure ya never say that again."
"It wasn’t like that!" Margaret groaned, lifting her head. "Alice! Erase it! Erase their mories right now!"
"No way," Alice refused, grinning. "That’s staying in the vault for sure."
"Please!"
"No," Alice said, sobering up slightly. "Besides, did you see the face Sasuke made when you used his Kirin?"
"Can we please just stop talking about my dialogue?"
"Not a chance," Jada said, finding the courage to grin. "Next ti we spar, I’m going to whisper ’make feel it again’ in your ear."
"I hate you guys!"
After a bit more conversing, the topic revolved around just how Arthur survived and beca so strong in such a short ti.
William had inwardly compared Arthur to Madara Uchiha, which he was starting to regret now. Arthur, while strong, did not have Madara’s personality. And as for Arthur’s strength, everyone knew how Madara beca powerful—through years of training with things like the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan.
But to asure Arthur’s gains was unfathomable.
"He’s hacking the system," Jasper declared.
"I don’t think that’s possible," Alex stated.
"What makes you so sure?" Alice wondered.
Before he could answer, Jada rembered sothing important: Hoshikaze’s training. Since Arthur and him were the sa, she announced to the group how he would undergo a rinse and repeat cycle of growing his strength.
"That doesn’t explain his spiritual energy," William called out.
Each person here had their own thods of training to one-up the other. And thanks to their foreknowledge, as well as otherworldly background, they managed to work around the ninja world to acquire what they believed would help them.
Jada utilized her Sharingan excellently by copying the Leaf Village’s best shinobi. That in turn sped up her progress. But because she did it too fast, she didn’t have enough experience or chakra to use everything effectively.
William used his Uzumaki heritage by undergoing the Shadow Clone training thod, which multiplied his training’s efficiency. Yet because he lacked a strategic mindset, he wasn’t wise enough to be a major threat in real-world combat.
Alice surpassed everyone’s expectations on account of the rigorous life she had on earth. Such experience helped her really get in tune with the properties of chakra and its spiritual energy counterpart. Being born a Yamanaka, who were already so adept at that, boosted her inner mystic mindset to transcend what was deed impossible.
Her only issue was that she often let emotions get the better of her, a flaw from her duties on earth. In doing so, her powers ran rampant, allowing anyone to take advantage if they saw through her imperfection.
Then there was Margaret. She was literally born and gifted with the best genes this world had to offer for a ninja. Yet her issue was that she was still quite immature. Taking her anger issues into account, she didn’t have much control over her actions.
Jasper’s own power-hungry endeavours fell short because of his high-mindedness. His evil nature was what led to his downfall—believing that he was at the top of the world where no one could reach him. That made him unfit to win the psychological battle when soone t his rank.
Lastly was Alexander, whose own persona was not yet revealed fully. While he did indeed defy expectations by becoming a prodigy, there was a manipulative factor behind him that he simply couldn’t see through.
"Arthur’s really sothing, huh?" Alex secretly praised.
"Whatever," Margaret blushed, crossing her arms.
Only Jada was aware of that fact early on. The main thing that troubled them, however, was how he survived. When they all looked to Jada for answers, she didn’t have one, which led Alex to believe that he was simply brought back to life by mysterious ans.
"At least now we know where Jiraiya is," William revealed, breaking the topic.
The others looked at him, confused.
"One minute we’re trying to figure out Arthur," Margaret said, "and the next you bring up the Pervy Sage? Fine, Will, what is it that you wanna share?"
William adjusted his glasses to deduce that forgotten fight between Margaret and Arthur. Inside her mory, Sasuke and Naruto had also been present. For that scenario to exist, Arthur had to have been pulling the strings by orchestrating their eting, like how he did as Kaito at the Valley of the End.
"Think about it," William continued, seeing their blank stares. "The last ti anyone heard from Jiraiya, he was trying to find Orochimaru’s hideout. Then he just so happened to disappear just around the ti Naruto found Sasuke."
William began pacing as if he had figured sothing out. "If Arthur knew where Sasuke was the whole ti, he likely lured Sasuke only to ambush Jiraiya."
"So he beat a Sannin," Alice whispered.
"Exactly!" William nodded.
Now Jasper’s triumph over Orochimaru felt hollow. Everyone knew that Jiraiya was undoubtedly the strongest Sannin among the other two—thanks to his Toad Sage Mode.
"Rember," William continued, "neither Oro nor Kabuto knew where Sasuke was when we confronted them. That ans Arthur snatched both Sasuke and Jiraiya right out from under everyone’s noses. And because Naruto and Marge ca in unexpectedly, he was forced to erase their mories."
Jasper let out a low whistle. "Wow, Male-Karin, I didn’t think you were that smart. You actually used your brain for once."
William sheepishly rubbed the back of his head, unaware that Jasper’s comnt was an insult.
"But who’s to say Arthur didn’t just kill Jiraiya?" Margaret wondered.
"That’s not how Arthur works," Jada whispered, shaking her head. For soone who had spent the most ti with Arthur, she understood his psychology better than the others. "He had the power to kill anyone important after we thought he died in the Land of Tea."
"So...?" Margaret pressed.
"So," Alex answered, leaning forward, "he was using that ti to create sothing vital to his plans."
Both Alex and Jada were correct. They reminded the group of Arthur’s grim track record. Every death he had orchestrated served a specific, strategic purpose. He had killed Hayate Gekkō not out of malice, but to recorrect the tiline from the Chūnin Exams.
"What about Sakura’s parents?" William frowned. "We don’t have any proof that he did that, do we?"
It’s then that Jasper stated that it was Arthur who had visited the moon first just after those events. Knowing this information led the others to believe that his act was simply to distract them for him to find the portal.
Again, they were correct.
"So he only killed those he thought would benefit him?" Margaret asked.
"Yes," Alice answered, "and having a Sannin would most definitely benefit him..."
There was a brief mont of silence until William spoke up. "I still don’t get it. Why would he want Jiraiya if he didn’t even use him during that war, and why reveal himself at that mont?"
Both were plausible questions. Yet neither of them knew the answers. Little did they know, Arthur failed at recreating the Ti Travel jutsu, resulting in him traveling one thousand years into the past.
While they were playing out their adventures, he was dominating his.
"I don’t know how he got so strong since he last fought Marge," Alice revealed, "but I think I know why he kidnapped Jiraiya... To strengthen his own country."
The room went still. Everyone by now knew the broad strokes—Jasper had seen the evidence during his confrontation on the moon—but hearing it said aloud made it surreal.
"Since he wasn’t at the war," Alex deduced, "that ans he’s probably locked up in Arthur’s country."
This was all reasonable to believe considering Jiraiya wasn’t soone easily manipulable. So if Arthur didn’t want to kill the Sannin, he would change him to his side—an act that could take months to years.
The whole room tried their best to fathom it. Arthur Bennett, the guy who knew almost nothing about ani tropes, the one who didn’t even like the series to begin with, had managed to carve out a sovereign nation right under the noses of the Five Great Shinobi Villages.
"We have to go save Jiraiya," William said, clenching his fists. "If we know he’s alive, we have to mount a rescue."
"Even if we knew where it was," Alex announced in a final tone, "we can’t go there, you know."
"Why not?" Alice asked.
"Because if soone like Arthur made an entire country, he would have built it to survive without him. And what’s a country without hidden villages masked by barriers?"
No one could refute those claims. Entering a country was easy, but there was an obvious reason why they were called "hidden" villages. It was reasonable to believe soone as cunning as Arthur would set automated defenses, booby traps, and sealing traps that could wipe out anyone before they even stepped through the gates.
While the Bird Country was clearly on the map now, so were many other newly ford nations like it. Arthur had played both the civilization ga, the combat ga, and the political ga so well that the people here couldn’t even deduce where his country was.
Not even Jasper, who saw so of the villages from the moon, could pinpoint its exact location.
"It’s best we learn more about it and prepare before choosing to even think about going to see," Alex finished.
Everyone reluctantly agreed not to rush off to Arthur’s mysterious nation—wherever it might be. Yet William was far too invested just to leave things at that.
"I say we at least inform the elders about this nation," he suggested.
"Sa," Jada agreed. "It’ll help knowing so we can fix the ss he’s made."
Everyone agreed that this was the best call. It wasn’t the heroic, rushing-in-blind rescue they might have attempted without all this information, but they were willing to be patient until they understood the full scope of Arthur’s agendas.
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