Jada was a little shocked to hear his initial response. She honestly thought he would have declined to speak with her or outright ignored her presence. If he had, she might have tried a threat, knowing full well it wouldn't work on a guy like him.
"Why're you so willing to—"
"Help you?" he answered, cutting her off. "Were you not the one that called me first?"
Jada closed her mouth. He was right; he got her right where he wanted her. He always did.
"Besides," he continued, looking down at his own semi-transparent hands, "I'm still under your Totsuka Blade's seal."
He not only read the situation fast, but he reminded Jada that he was far wiser than his age suggested.
Jada gripped the rim of the gourd tightly. She wanted to dig deeper into the core of the man. She wanted to understand the extreme contradictions that made up Arthur's mind.
"I… I thought you believed in Christianity," she said, trying to understand. "So why didn't you use your beliefs to help us? Why didn't you try to make this world a better place instead?"
It's here that he reminded her that he wasn't into 'Christianity' as an institution but that he was solely a Christian. The two concepts were completely different. The former was a religion built by men, full of rituals, politics, and worldly compromises.
Jada remembered Alice saying that once. Because Arthur hated the ninja world, standard morality didn't apply to him, allowing his absolute devotion to remain intact.
"I still don't understand," Jada protested.
"1 Corinthians 11:1-2. Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ."
When she heard him say that, she was lost for words once again. It made her look down before softly asking, "You really take it seriously, huh?"
"Nothing in life matters except Christ…"
Jada felt a sudden, painful lump form in her throat. The sheer detachment of his worldview made her feel incredibly small. When she looked up at him, the vulnerability cracked her defenses.
"But I wanted us to be friends!" she suddenly blurted out. The words echoed through the quiet forest. As soon as they left her lips, she regretted them because he didn't react. "Say something. You're making me sound corny right now."
Yet he remained quiet, purposefully giving her the silent treatment.
Now she was upset because she knew exactly what he was doing.
"Fine, don't respond," she snapped, crossing her arms defensively. "Your real body's sealed anyway."
Hoshikaze tilted his head. This was news to him. The clone that made up this specific chakra imprint had been sealed into the Totsuka Blade before the climax of the war, so he had no knowledge of Alexander using the Infinite Tsukuyomi orb to trap Arthur's true body.
"I see…" he softly murmured.
That was not the reaction Jada was expecting from him. She wanted him to be angry, or shocked, or at least beg for more information. Such a flat response infuriated her further.
So she pouted and raised the gourd up as the suction of the Totsuka Blade activated, causing his ethereal form to be sucked inside.
The forest was empty again.
"Okay, Jada… Just relax," she whispered. Then she massaged her temples. "Think and relax. I can call on Arthur whenever I want now." The silence of the woods suddenly felt very isolating. "Great, now I'm talking to myself."
Forcing a breath to steady her nerves, she held the gourd down again, causing Hoshikaze to reform.
"What is it now?" he wondered.
Yet the way he asked it—the condescension in his tone—was rude enough to grate on her last nerve.
So she stomped her feet on the ground like a child. "Jerk!"
Then she returned him to the gourd again.
A quiet moment later, Jada sat down on a moss-covered root jutting out from a nearby tree. She rested the gourd in her lap, unsure of what to say to him.
The most dangerous man in the world was trapped in a bottle, and she was treating him like a toy because she didn't know how to handle the emotional weight of his presence.
What did she even know about Arthur as a person? It honestly wasn't much.
So she tried to recall the trail of bodies he had left behind. Arthur had killed a lot of ninjas. He had slaughtered without hesitation from the very beginning of their journey in this world.
This at least allowed her to bring up some sort of objective topic.
After drawing out Hoshikaze again, he remained silent, clearly waiting for her to finish her temper tantrums and get to the point.
"Say, Arthur," she began, leaning forward on the tree root. "Why did you kill them?"
He remained quiet, simply staring her down. Not out of contempt, but because her question was too broad. "Them" could mean a lot of ninjas. It could mean Shikamaru, or Ino, or an entire village of primates.
"I mean, Raiga and Ranmaru," she clarified. "I know you killed them because of how your eyes glow red sometimes. Before, we didn't know what that was. We thought it was just a side effect of your chakra. But it was Ranmaru's KG. So why'd you do it?"
"For his eyes…"
His blunt answer made a chill run down her spine. It made her fully understand the meaning of his methods. He didn't just kill for political gain or tactical advantage. He could do eye transplants in the wilderness.
More so, he could transplant Kekkei Genkai into his own bloodstream like they were video game traits to add on to a character build.
"So you took Ranmaru's, Haku's, and Yukimi's KG's…" she softly said as she looked down at her lap.
Now was not the time to be saddened; she had already grieved for his victims long ago and was unaware for a long time of the last girl, Yukimi, who had died just to give him Smoke Release. Had her friends and the Leaf Village not pieced things together, they would have all remained in the dark.
"How did your body manage to even handle all those… No, did you take anymore?"
Little did she know, Arthur's physical body had a tremendously difficult time adapting to every Kekkei Genkai he forced into his DNA.
If he hadn't used medical ninjutsu to adjust things, it would have been a genetic warzone inside his veins. That was just one of the reasons he had gotten so sick and coughed up sand after trying to acquire the Kazekage's Magnet Release.
But Hoshikaze wasn't going to reveal his physical weaknesses to an enemy.
"Is there a reason you're asking?" he probed.
"Ugh…" Jada rubbed the back of her neck, feeling awkward under his scrutiny. "I was just trying to understand you better, was all. Like, I don't get why you would do all these terrible things and genuinely thought you could get away with them."
"I did get away with them…"
"Arthur!" she pouted, frustrated by his bulletproof logic.
Then she got quiet, looking at her lap again. The anger was replaced by an aching sadness for the state of the world they were trapped in.
"Just like us, their deaths matter too," she said. "In case you didn't know by now, the whole world's become paranoid since you broke the trust between the villages."
So Arthur broke the world. What of it? That's exactly what he was planning from the very beginning.
"Jada… You forget that you come from another world."
Hearing this made her hesitate. It was the ultimate reality check, the cold water Arthur always threw in their faces when they tried to play the heroes. And he was right to do so because they were tourists in a fictional universe.
So she clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and shouted, "That doesn't mean you have to destroy this one!"
Hoshikaze did not argue back. By the time she looked, his form was already receding into the gourd, unaware that she had pointed it at him again.
She then took a long moment to calm herself. Arthur had gotten to her again. He always knew exactly how to do that, and it was something she didn't quite enjoy about their dynamic.
But who's to say he wasn't right?
She leaned her head back against the bark of the tree.
Just because they came from earth didn't mean they could ever return. For all she and the others knew, the people that brought them here could indeed keep them trapped in the Elemental Nations for the rest of their natural life.
The thought of growing old in the ninja world began to surface. The thought of marrying, of having supernatural children born with chakra, and seeing the next generation of characters like Boruto and Sarada actually come to pass seemed interesting, like watching a story continue past the final page.
But if that were to happen, then it only meant one terrifying thing: her life on earth was officially over. Her family, her friends back home, her old future—it was all gone.
The thought was always unsettling; the existential dread threatened to crush her, so she aggressively pushed it into the back of her mind, locking it behind a mental wall.
She couldn't afford to break down now.
What she wanted to do was focus on at least correcting this world. Escaping it was never on her mind anymore; she wanted to fix the timeline at all costs and liberate the wrongs caused by the Akatsuki, by Jasper, and by Arthur.
That's who she was: someone who wanted to protect the people she had grown to love, because she had the power to do it. Even if it meant doing it her own way by defying the narrative.
Jada soon placed her hand over her chest and gripped the fabric of her uniform.
The only problem she was having was understanding why her heart hurt so much every time she talked to Arthur. She didn't understand the feeling.
It was entirely different than when she spoke with Alice, or Margaret, or William.
When she spoke to them, she felt camaraderie. But when she spoke to Arthur, she felt an agonizing pull.
She almost felt like crying now because of how mean he was to her.
He was the man who forced her to awaken her Mangekyō Sharingan, a tyrant who slaughtered without remorse, yet all she wanted in that clearing was for him to acknowledge her as a friend.
'Is that how Naruto felt about Sasuke?' she thought.
If it was, she didn't like it. It hurt too much.