Jasper kept his arms clutched in the spot on his belly. It burned. It felt like a hole had been punched through him.
He wheezed, forcing air into his lungs. Then he felt an itch somewhere on his skin. The White Zetsu spores. They were active and working hard to feed him chakra. It wasn't enough to get him back in the fight, but it was enough to keep him conscious.
"Do you know why you lost, Jasper?" Arthur asked. "You lost because of your high-mindedness. Not once did you consider the implications of your arrogancy. That's what inevitably led to your downfall... While you boasted yourself on luxurious power handed to you, here was me: waiting to end that pride." Then Arthur turned his back and began walking away. "You're not even worth my time anymore."
Jasper's mind felt torn. This was inconceivable to a man like him. Panic clawed at the edges of his thoughts. He had to think of something while he was still able to fight.
What could work? What was left? Kaguya's Dimensional Rift? No. It took too long to open. Arthur was too fast. He could sever Jasper's head before the portal formed.
Murderous Bone Ash? The killing projectile? No. Arthur had just crushed a Truthseeker Orb with his bare hand. He would catch the bone and shove it down Jasper's throat if he tried.
Jasper looked at the dirt and saw his own blood.
He was a deity, a being with Ōtsutsuki techniques. He was supposed tobe the end of the world.
So he looked back up at Arthur's walking figure. There had to be something. There was always something.
Jasper sucked in a breath. His lungs burned. The air felt too thin, but it was enough to clear his mind for a split second. He had one card left: the Three-Tails.
His hands moved as he brought his fingers together. But the moment he dared to place his palm on the ground, Arthur vanished. Jasper's eyes darted to the left, then to the right. Then he felt the pressure.
It wasn't beside him. It was above him.
Arthur hovered horizontally, parallel to Jasper's prone body. He was defying gravity, suspended in the air as if lying on an invisible bed. His right fist was also pulled back as black electricity crackled around his knuckles.
Jasper's mind stuttered. How? Arthur had been yards away.
Then he remembered the punch that had nearly folded him in half. Arthur hadn't just hit him; he had marked him with a Flying raijin seal!
'Black lightning: drilling hand of sage lightning…'
Arthur drove his fist down, and it connected with Jasper's spine, causing a deafening sound that boomed. A pillar of black light erupted from the impact point and shot straight up, turning the blue sky into a negative image of itself.
"Aaaaaargh!" Jasper screamed.
The sound stripped his throat from the drilling lightning that tore through his muscles and nerves.
Then it ended.
The pillar faded. Smoke rose from Jasper's back. He lay face down, twitching. Black arcs of electricity danced over his skin, biting into him with every pulse.
He coughed as blood splattered the dirt near his cheek. He thought the spores would react to his plea, but there were no more spores. The black lightning had fried them, reducing them to ash on his skin.
"I gave you a chance and you wasted it." Arthur said, standing over him again. "Now you're all out of chakra. That's too bad..."
Suddenly, a shadow fell over them. The Deva Path dropped from the sky.
"Hmph," Arthur grunted. "And what can you do?"
"You mean we," Pain corrected.
From behind the debris, another figure stepped out. It was a tall, broad man with long orange hair: The Human Path.
Arthur didn't blink. He wasn't even remotely surprised.
Throughout this war, the Human Path was the only one unaccounted for. Pain had been keeping it in reserve as a failsafe for a crumbling front line. Seeing it here meant the Akatsuki was stretched thin.
Arthur first decided to look at Jasper. The man was wheezing as his fingers clawed weakly at the dirt. Then Arthur looked back at Pain, having understood that these two had already spoken after Kaito's defeat.
"Looks like you really do plan to recruit him," Arthur probed.
Pain didn't answer. His Rinnegan eyes remained fixed on Arthur. That only made Arthur reach in front of him, causing the Blade of Chaos to shimmer into existence.
"How about I sever his arms and legs?" Arthur suggested, "That way, he becomes useless to your little organization…"
The blade clinked when he gripped it harder. Arthur was not kidding. He truly was going to dismember Jasper's body!
As such, both Paths moved. Arthur quickly leapt back as they closed the distance.
The Human Path was first; it lunged, aiming a palm strike at Arthur's head just as the Deva Path came low with a sweeping leg. Arthur twisted to slip through the jab, then quickly hopped over the sweep.
Fighting these two was nothing to him; he had battled against ancestors that were far faster than this level.
When the Human Path had overextended, trying to grab Arthur's person, Arthur saw an opening. He swung the blade in an upward slash as chakra surged through the Path's body, splitting it in half. The two halves then fell away from each other as ice spread across their parts until they shattered on the floor.
The Deva Path skidded back to a halt. Attacking Arthur like this was a clear mistake, one Pain was not willing to make with this specific Path.
Arthur didn't bother chasing him; he instead ignored the Akatsuki leader to look down at Jasper.
Jasper himself writhed. Those injuries of his were absolute. He could no longer fight, let alone stand anymore.
Arthur teleported by his head and pointed the tip of the sword at Jasper's face. Pain could do nothing; his technique still needed time to recharge.
"An Almighty Push won't save you this time," Arthur said.
As the weapon was raised, he heard someone scream, "Stop!"
The Deva Path and Arthur turned their heads in unison. Standing at the edge of the crater was Jada. She looked worn. Her clothes were torn, and mud streaked her face, but she stood upright.
Strapped to her back was the modified Executioner's Blade. Arthur looked at the sword, then at her eyes. He didn't need to think much on the matter. The blade was the answer: she had defeated Hoshikaze.
"Jada," he said, his voice carrying over the wind. "Did you make your choice?"
Jada didn't answer immediately. A rasping sound broke the quiet. It was the sound of air struggling to enter Jasper's damaged lungs. It took her a moment to recognize him.
"Jasper..." she whispered.
His arrogance was gone; the divine posturing was gone. He was a mess of burns and blood as his body twitched from the residual nerve damage of Arthur's black lightning.
He looked small in her eyes.
While she didn't like him due to his cruel, selfish, and dangerous attitude, seeing him like this—reduced to twitching meat—twisted something in her gut. It was almost too much.
"It seems like the three of you are quite familiar," Pain said as his Rinnegan assessed the new variable.
Arthur ignored Pain. He adjusted his grip on the Blade of Chaos. He was done with conversation, and if he needed to truly finish Jasper off, it was better that he deal with the Akatsuki leader. So he removed himself from Jasper, ignoring Jada for a moment, and steadily began walking toward Pain.
Pain readied himself until suddenly, another shadow fell from the sky. Someone dropped onto the battlefield and positioned themselves slightly to Arthur's right.
Jada blinked. The moment she recognized the face, her breath hitched. Long brown hair. A mole under the eye. The Uchiha crest on the back of her shirt. It was Izumi Uchiha.
"My lord," she said, bowing her head to Arthur. "Fugaku sent me over to you to act as your—"
"How could you?!" Jada shouted.
The blood had drained from her face as she stared at the two.
Izumi was written to have been dead in the massacre. She was Itachi's love, a symbol of the tragedy that defined the Uchiha clan. Yet here she was, breathing, standing, and serving the man who was burning the world down.
Jada hadn't quite known that Arthur had first used the Reanimation technique before restoring everyone's souls. She had only seen some of the resurrected characters, not truly knowing who they were due to her main focus having been on Jasper.
Seeing someone like Izumi clicked something in Jada's head. Because Izumi was resurrected, it meant that the person who had truly been responsible for everyone else's resurrection (Shikamaru, Ino, Kushina, and Minato) was never Orochimaru to begin with.
It was Arthur; it was all Arthur who had been steadily breaking this world.
On the ground, Jasper managed to push himself up. His arms shook violently. He coughed, spitting a clot of blood onto his own hand. As he looked up at Arthur, hate burned through the haze of pain.
"B... Bastard," he wheezed.
Arthur didn't care about insults from a defeated enemy.
"Since you're here, Izumi," he began, vaguely gesturing at Jasper, "deal with that man."
Izumi didn't ask why. She didn't need to. From what she understood, Jasper was against Arthur, and that was all she needed to know.
Pulling a kunai from her pouch and activating her Sharingan, she sprinted forward.
When Jasper saw the weapon aimed for his throat, he thought of defending himself. But his muscles refused to obey. He was empty and could only watch as the steel came for his jugular.
Clang!
Sparks showered down on Jasper's face. He flinched, blinking against the sudden flash. When he opened his eyes, he wasn't dead.
Jada stood over him. She held the Executioner's Blade in front of her like a shield that had caught Izumi's kunai.
Jasper stared up at her, believing she had hated him. They had been reluctant allies at best. So why was she standing between him and Arthur?
Jada grunted, holding the block as Izumi was pushed against the blade. Her strength was surprising.
"Arthur!" Jada yelled, looking past her opponent. "You can't kill him!" Arthur just watched them, choosing not to intervene. "Please! Stop the fighting!"
Hearing those pleas made Arthur know that she had accepted Hoshikaze's warning: that the pain here was real and that death was permanent.
She wasn't saving Jasper the villain; she was saving Jasper the man.
But did Jasper care about her morality? No, he cared about his own survival.
Jada felt a subtle tug at her waist. When she turned her head, she saw Jasper limping away.
Izumi saw the distraction, so she retracted her kunai and spun as her leg snapped out, catching Jada in the ribs. The kick was enough to make Jada stumble sideways.
"Move," Izumi ordered, preparing to give chase.
But Jada quickly recovered and swung her weapon. The heavy steel whistled through the air, forcing Izumi to jump back.
"I won't let you," Jada said.
The sword was a tad clumsy in her hands, as it was the first time she'd wielded such a massive weapon. What more could she do on such low chakra?
Izumi narrowed her eyes. She raised her kunai again, and the two clashed.
It was a mismatch of styles. Jada deflected a stab aimed at her shoulder before swinging the sword in a wide arc, forcing Izumi to duck.
"Izumi, you don't have to do this!" she shouted. Their weapons locked again, face to face. "What happened to your love for Itachi?! He wouldn't have wanted this!"
Izumi stopped and leapt back. For a second, the blank, kunoichi-like expression cracked.
"How..." she whispered. "How do you know about that?!"
The confusion turned to anger. Right now, that memory was too painful to process in the middle of a war that wasn't finished. So her Sharingan spun as she cast a genjutsu on Jada.
The moment Jada blinked, the terrain and smell of battle were all gone. She was standing on a stone street during a full moon. Paper lanterns glowed from the eaves of houses. This was the Leaf Village, no doubt. More specifically, it was the Uchiha clan district. Before the fall.
She looked around. Shadows stretched long across the pavement. From the alleyways, she heard giggling. Two little girls ran past her blind side before merging into the shadows.
"Izumi!" she called out. "This isn't like you! What did Arthur do after he revived you? Please, just tell me so I can help undo what he did!"
The giggling stopped, and the shadows on the ground began to elongate. They twisted into two deformed monsters with hollow, bleeding sockets where their eyes should be.
When they lunged, Jada's eyes flared, forcing her Sharingan to activate. The street cracked like a mirror, the lanterns shattered, and the monsters dissolved into smoke. The real world rushed back in, returning her mind to the battlefield.
Not even a fraction of a second had passed, yet she was sweating.
Izumi furrowed her brows from the genjutsu having been broken. She looked at Jada with new recognition.
"You..." she breathed. "You're an Uchiha?"
Jada panted, gripping her sword. "Yeah… I am."
Arthur merely watched the scene with mild interest. There was no need for him to worry about their interaction. Izumi, no matter who approached her, would remain loyal to him so long as he was present.