In the timeless serenity of the Pure Lands, Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki sat in meditation, but peace eluded him. The anomaly in the living world—the boy named Indra who was and was not his son—demanded understanding. The chakra was Indra's, a brilliant, unmistakable lightning signature he had felt weep and rage across the centuries. But the will directing it… that was a foreign star in a familiar constellation.
He had observed the recent fury, the terrifying display of power, and the subsequent calming by the boy's bonds. He had felt the stabilization of the Mangekyō, a feat he had believed impossible without the dark exchange of sibling eyes. Curiosity, a father's lingering concern, and a scholar's need to comprehend the unprecedented overrode his usual passive observance.
Hagoromo raised a translucent hand. The Rinnegan in his forehead, the symbol of his enlightenment, glowed with a soft, opalescent light. He would not interfere, but he would see. He would trace the thread of this Indra's life not through chakra alone, but through the echoes of experience imprinted upon his very soul.
His consciousness slipped through the veil, not to the present, but to the past. He found himself a silent, unseen spectator in a small, sun-dappled clinic in the Land of Fire over a decade prior.
A young woman with dark Uchiha hair and kind eyes—Delia—hummed as she ground herbs. A boy of perhaps four, with serious dark eyes, sat at her feet, meticulously organizing medicinal vials not by label, but by the subtle chakra frequency she had just taught him to sense.
Young Indra: "Mother, this one… It's sad. Its chakra is slow and thick."
Delia: (Pausing, looking down with warm surprise) "That's the extract of the Mourning Willow, my star. It holds pain so the body can heal around it. You can feel that?"
Young Indra: (Nodding earnestly) "It feels like the grey days when father is away."
Hagoromo felt a pang so acute it vibrated his spiritual form. The scene was mundane, yet it held a universe of tenderness. He saw Delia scoop the boy into her arms, not with pity, but with shared understanding.
Delia: "He'll be back. And until then, we have our work. Would you like to learn how to make the pain-fade salve? The one that feels like sunshine?"
Young Indra: (Eyes lighting up) "Yes! So, we can make people's grey days go away!"
The vision shifted. He saw Fujian Uchiha, a man with a stern face that melted into profound, quiet love during his monthly visits. He saw him teaching the boy shurikenjutsu not with harsh drills, but as a puzzle of angles and force. He saw the father's worried eyes as he spoke of unrest in Konoha, his insistence that they memorize a secure route to Lightning. He saw the sealed scroll of techniques, not just a legacy of power, but a father's desperate lifeboat thrown across a rising storm.
And then, the catalyst. The boy, now nine, received the news of the massacre. Hagoromo witnessed the cataclysm within the child's soul—not just the grief of losing a father, but the terrifying, lonely awakening of a past life's power alongside the memories of a completely different existence. The two-Tomoe Sharingan spun in tears not of pure sorrow, but of cosmic disorientation and profound loss.
This was the critical divergence. In every past incarnation, Indra's chakra had been awakened by a loss that reinforced a worldview of betrayal and isolation—a father's perceived rejection, a clan's treachery, a world's misunderstanding. Here, the loss was paired with an immediate, visceral understanding of why it happened—the political rot of Konoha, Danzo's shadow—and, crucially, it was followed not by emptiness, but by a mother's fierce, protective presence. Delia Uzumaki Uchiha did not let her son's grief fester in solitude. She grieved with him, then she acted, calling in her life-debt to save them both.
Hagoromo watched as they arrived in Kumo, as the Raikage, A, saw not just a refugee or a weapon, but a scared child and a determined mother. He offered not exploitation, but sanctuary. A recognized strength, yes, but he offered a home first.
As he watched this foreign past, Hagoromo's own, ancient memories surged forth, unbidden and painful in their clarity. He saw his wife, Kaitō, a human woman of unimaginable compassion and gentle strength. She had been his anchor as he spread Ninshū, the bridge between his godly heritage and the mortal world. Her laughter had been like wind chimes, her wisdom deep as a still pool.
He saw Indra as a young boy, not a prodigy yet, clinging to his mother's robes. Kaito had a way of calming the fierce, bright intensity in her firstborn. She would take his small hands, crackling with uncontrolled lightning, and guide him to weave the sparks into shapes—birds, flowers, little foxes that would scamper around the room before fading. She taught him that power could be beautiful, could be playful.
Indra had adored her. He would bring her meticulously drawn diagrams of chakra circuits, and she would listen with rapt attention, asking questions that challenged him to think of utility, of harmony, not just raw effect.
And then… the plague. A mundane, vicious human illness, his Otsutsuki physiology was busy fighting elsewhere. He, the great Sage, the subduer of the Ten-Tails, was powerless. He returned home to find Kaitō fading, her light guttering out. Little Ashura was just a babe in arms, wailing. And Indra, twelve years old, stood rigid by her bedside, his small hands clenched, lightning dancing erratically under his skin, his eyes wide with a horror that was more than just a child's fear of losing a parent.
Hagoromo remembered kneeling by the bed, taking his wife's hand. Her last words were not for him, but for their son.
Kaitō: (A whisper, her eyes on Indra) "My little lightning… don't let it burn you. Use it… to light the way for others… as you did for me…"
She had passed, and a part of Indra had passed with her. The playful light in his chakra had hardened into a cold, brilliant diamond. Hagoromo, shattered by his own grief and burdened by the endless work of a burgeoning world, had retreated into his duties. He had left Indra to his studies, to his growing power, assuming the boy's solemnity was a sign of maturity. He had doted on Ashura, the infant who needed care, whose unformed chakra was a blank slate of warm, connective potential.
He saw now, with the agonizing clarity of millennia, the moment of his great failure. The day he named Ashura his heir. He had done it out of fear. A deep, unacknowledged terror that Indra, with his staggering power and the lingering shadow of his grandmother Kaguya's lonely, consuming hunger for chakra, would follow a similar path if given the ultimate authority. He saw Indra's cold, perfect Ninshū techniques, and saw his mother's might. He saw Ashura's bumbling, collaborative efforts and saw his wife's heart.
He had chosen the heart, believing it the antidote to the might. But he had never explained. He had never sat with his grieving, brilliant firstborn and said, "I am afraid for you. I am afraid of what your power could become without your mother's heart to guide it. Help me learn how to guide it together."
He had simply chosen. And in that choice, he had confirmed every lonely fear festering in Indra's heart since his mother's death: that his power was a curse, that his father saw only a potential monster, that love was conditional and would always be withdrawn.
Hagoromo's gaze returned to the living Indra's timeline, now through the lens of his own crushing regret. He watched the boy in Kumo, not with the eyes of a Sage, but with the aching heart of a failed father.
He saw Indra in the Academy, learning with rapacious speed but not for personal glory. He saw him look at the village's infrastructure, its logistical weaknesses, its agricultural dependencies, and begin to design. He was not building a throne. He was reinforcing the foundations of the entire mountain.
He witnessed the creation of the barrier, the healing pods, and he seeds. Each invention was a puzzle solved, a vulnerability patched. They were acts of caretaking. They were the embodiment of his human mother's lesson—"make the grey days go away"—and the echo of his Otsutsuki mother's warning—"don't let it burn you, use it to light the way."
Then came the Mangekyō. Hagoromo felt the familiar, tragic surge of power, the curse activating. He braced for the descent into darkness, the frantic search for a sibling's eyes, the twisted path of theft and betrayal that had defined his son's legacy.
But it did not come.
He watched, stunned, as Indra walked calmly to his lab. He observed the serum, the Healing Pod, and the flawless, scientific reasoning applied to a spiritual curse. The boy did not rage against the dying of the light. He diagnosed the faulty wiring and installed a better power supply. He saw Indra's Eternal Mangekyō flare to life, stable, permanent, and painless. A curse, lifted not by committing a greater sin, but by transcendent understanding.
Hagoromo's spectral form trembled. This was what his son could have been. This was the fusion of Indra's boundless creative power with a purpose of nurturing, not dominating. He had needed guidance, partnership, love—not rejection and fear.
The final revelation came with the tailed beasts. Hagoromo's vision focused on the mindscapes of Yugito and Killer Bee. He saw Indra present his idea for the avatar technique. He felt the beasts' initial, deeply ingrained distrust, a distrust he had inadvertently sown by creating them as fragments of a monster and leaving them to be feared and hunted.
He heard Indra's explanation, not as a master to a tool, but as one intelligent being to another, offering a compromise between security and autonomy. He witnessed the moment of creation—the intricate, loving Fuinjutsu that was a cage door opening inward, not breaking down.
And then, he saw them. Matatabi, in her small, elegant feline form, blinking in the real sunlight, feeling the wind through her blue flame-fur. Gyūki, a comical, spiky ball of grumpy joy, perched on Bee's shoulder, tasting the world without the filter of human fear.
A memory, older than the shinobi world, surfaced. The Ten-Tails, raging, mindless, a force of pure consumption. He and his brother, Hamura, are fighting not to destroy, but to subdue. The exhausting, heartbreaking process of wrestling that infinite malice and dividing it, hoping that in smaller pieces, consciousness, perhaps even sanity, could emerge. He had created the Biju, but he had always seen them as fragments of a problem, children of a calamity. He had hoped for peace, but he had given the world only smaller, sentient weapons.
He had never thought to give them this. A way to simply be. To exist without causing terror. To be companions, not catastrophes.
Watching Matatabi rub against Yugito's leg, watching Gyūki argue with Bee over the lyrics to a new rap, Hagoromo felt a sorrow so deep it was oceanic. He had been so focused on the grand narrative—the cycle, the reincarnations, the balance of chakra—that he had failed the individuals. His sons. The creatures he brought into being.
This boy, this new Indra, had done what he, the Sage, had not. He had seen the individual in the power, the person in the beast, and had used his genius to grant them dignity.
Hagoromo opened his eyes in his timeless realm. The visions faded, but the emotions did not. They coalesced into a profound, humbling understanding.
The cycle was not just broken. It had been rendered obsolete by a love the original cycle had never allowed to flourish.
The original Indra had been a lightning bolt seeking the highest peak to strike, alone. This Indra was a lightning rod, grounded deep in the mountain, channelling that same impossible power to protect everything below.
His fear had been wrong. Indra's power, when rooted in love and protection, did not become Kaguya's hunger. It became something new. Something better. It became a legacy of creation.
He looked toward Konoha, to Naruto, the unweakened vessel of Asura's chakra. The boy's path of connection and stubborn friendship was no longer the sole counterpoint to a destined tragedy. It could be something else—a potential ally to a different kind of strength. He looked to Sasuke, the boy living the original Indra's script of lonely vengeance for a crime he didn't understand. His entire tragic purpose had been undercut. What was he without his destined rival?
And he looked to Kumo, to the boy who had taken a cursed legacy and forged it into a cornerstone. A boy who had a mother who lived, a father who loved him enough to send him away to safety, a village that valued him, and beasts who called him friend.
For the first time in a thousand years, Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki did not feel the heavy weight of inevitable conflict. He felt the fragile, terrifying thrill of possibility. The future was unwritten. The gods and ghosts were still circling—Black Zetsu, the Otsutsuki clan slumbering in the stars, the lurking Madara in Obito's shadow. But now, there was a new power on the board. Not a pawn of the cycle, but a player who had rebuilt the board itself.
A father's regret would not change the past. But a Sage's hope could now look to the future. He would watch, not with passive inevitability, but with active, quiet vigilance. If the time came, if the shadows threatened to snuff out this new, brilliant light, he might find a way to offer not a decree, but an apology. And the tools his sons—both of them—had once needed to understand each other.
He sent a silent, psychic whisper across the void, not to Indra, who was too potent and would sense it, but to the gentle, fiery intelligence of Matatabi and the steady, rumbling wisdom of Gyūki.
You have chosen well. Guard him. Not as a jailer guards a prisoner, nor a beast its master. Guard him as kin guards' kin. For in protecting his light, you protect the first true peace any of us has ever known.
In the blue-flamed garden and the rap coliseum, two ancient beings paused. They looked up, not with surprise, but with a slow, deep acknowledgment. They had felt the Sage's gaze before, always distant, always sorrowful. This felt different. This felt like a blessing.
Back in his realm, Hagoromo finally found a measure of peace. The storm in the human world was no longer a repeating tragedy. It was a creation. And for the first time since he held his dying wife's hand, the Sage of Six Paths dared to hope.
The silent blessing he sent was not enough. The ache in his spectral heart, the echo of Matatabi and Gyūki's quiet acknowledgment, drew him further. For millennia, he had observed his creations—the tailed beasts, his sons' legacies—from a detached, sorrowful distance. He had been a sculptor who feared his own statues, a father who abandoned his children to their fates. The scene of the two beasts in their small forms, enjoying a simple rooftop night, demanded more than a whisper. It demanded a presence. He owed them that much.
With a focused thought, Hagoromo allowed his consciousness to gently bifurcate, sending projections into the two mindscapes where his presence was least expected, and perhaps, least wanted.
In the Blue Flame Garden
Matatabi was tracing a lazy, flaming pattern in the air when the space before her shimmered. The familiar, overwhelming yet gentle pressure of the Sage's chakra filled the garden. Yugito, elsewhere in her own consciousness, felt a distant tremor but was not pulled in; this was a visit for the beast alone.
The form that coalesced was Hagoromo, clad in his simple robes, his staff in hand, a look of profound weariness and regret on his face that she had never seen before. He had always been a figure of distant, sad power.
Matatabi's flames stilled. Her dual-toned voice was cool, not hostile, but devoid of the reverence he might once have expected.
Matatabi: Sage. To what do I owe this… intrusion? Have you come to check on your scattered fragments?
Hagoromo: (He bowed his head slightly, a gesture that shocked her.) I have come to speak with you, Matatabi. Not as a creator to his creation, but as one who has failed… to one who has found a measure of peace I did not provide.
Matatabi: Peace? You gave us consciousness, then gave us to a world that saw only monsters. Peace was never part of your design. Survival was the best we could hope for.
Hagoromo: You are correct. I saw you as pieces of a problem to be managed. I hoped sentience would lead to understanding, but I gave you no tools for it, no path to coexistence except through the strength of your vessels. It was a coward's solution.
He looked around her garden, a testament to Yugito's calm and their hard-won harmony.
Hagoromo: This… this space. It is not a prison. It is a home. I can feel the respect, the partnership. It is what I envisioned for Ninshū, yet failed to build for you.
Matatabi: (Her flames flickered, a sign of agitation.) Do not praise us for what the boy did. He saw what you never did. He asked what we wanted. Not how much chakra we could provide, or how strong a bomb we could be. He asked if we would like to see the world with our own eyes. A simple question. One you never thought to ask in a thousand years.
Hagoromo: (The words were a physical blow to his spirit.) A simple question. Yes. I was so preoccupied with the grand balance, with the cycle of my sons, that I forgot the individual. I forgot the person in my son, and I forgot the people in you.
He paused, the memory of his original Indra, proud and lonely, flashing before him.
Hagoromo: Your contractor… Indra. You feel his lineage.
Matatabi: We do. The lightning is the same. The song is different. His loneliness is not a fortress. It is a foundation for others to stand upon. He did not inherit your son's wrath. He inherited his power and his mother's heart.
Hagoromo: His mother…
Matatabi: (Her voice softened a fraction) The human woman. She lives. She loves him. She stayed. She fought for him. When his power awoke in grief, she did not fear it or try to suppress it. She gave it a direction: protect. You judged your son by the shadow of your mother. He judges himself by the light of his.
Hagoromo closed his eyes. The truth, stated so plainly by this being he had crafted from chaos, was unbearable. He had seen Kaguya in Indra's power. He had never seen Kaitō, his wife, in Indra's love for her. A love that, when she was gone, had twisted into a hunger for the recognition he, the father, had withheld.
Hagoromo: You speak with a wisdom I neglected. I… I was afraid.
Matatabi: We know fear. It is the first emotion humans project at us. You, the all-powerful Sage, let fear guide you with your own child. And you let that decision echo for a thousand years, pitting his ghost against his brother's, war after war. Do not come here seeking absolution from me. I am content now. I have a partner, a home, and a little piece of the sky. Your regrets are your own to bear.
There was no anger in her tone, only a final, cool dismissal. She had moved beyond him. Hagoromo nodded, his form already beginning to fade.
Hagoromo: Thank you, Matatabi. For your honesty. And… for guarding him. He is building the world I could only dream of, with tools I was too blind to see.
Matatabi: We are not guarding him for you. We are guarding him for us. For this peace. Now go, Sage. Your time here is done.
In the Rap Coliseum
The scene was starkly different. Gyūki was in the middle of composing a particularly complex verse about the merits of squid ink vs. octopuses' ink when the space warped and Hagoromo appeared.
Gyūki didn't startle. He stopped his beat, crossed two tentacles (in his mindscape form), and fixed the Sage with a flat, unimpressed stare.
Gyūki: Well, look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say, what the cat didn't want. Get lost, old man. We're not in the mood for a celestial guilt trip.
Hagoromo: (A faint, sad smile touched his lips) Your bluntness has not changed, Gyūki. It is… refreshing.
Gyūki: Don't try to butter me up. You made us, dumped us, and left us to get chased, captured, and hated. Now you're hovering because one of your messed-up family lines finally produced someone with a working brain and a heart? Too little, a few millennia too late.
Hagoromo: I cannot argue. I am not here to make excuses. I am here to listen.
Gyūki: Listen to what? The eight-part harmony of my disdain? You want to know about the kid? Fine. He's better than you. There, saved you the trouble. He fixed your mess. He looked at your "curse" and saw a design flaw. He looked at us and saw… people. Annoying, loud people, but people. He gave me a body I can use to kick Darui in the shins. That's more than you ever did.
Hagoromo felt the accusation, not as an insult, but as a simple statement of fact. This Indra had done what he, in his god-like remove, had never considered: solved practical problems for those he cared about.
Hagoromo: The avatar technique… it is a work of profound empathy and genius.
Gyūki: It's common sense! Have you ever been stuck in someone else's head for a century? It gets old! He asked, "Would you like to come out for a bit?" Like offering a roomie a walk outside. No big mystical revelation. Just decency.
Hagoromo: Decency. A concept I applied to the masses, but failed to apply to my own family. To my sons. To you.
Gyūki: Don't you dare lump us in with your family drama. We're the messy leftovers, remember? Though… speaking of favourite. You always had 'em, didn't you? Ashura was the golden boy. The baby. And us? I bet you liked old Shukaku the least, with his yapping, or maybe the One-Tails' constant need for order got on your nerves. Kurama, with all that power, probably scared you, too, huh? Just like Indra did.
The accusation hung in the air. Hagoromo wanted to deny it, but he couldn't. He had been closer to some fragments than others. He had found Son Goku's pride amusing, Seiken's loyalty touching. He had been wary of Kurama's immense power and Chōmei's detachment. He had never treated them equally because he had never truly seen them as individuals deserving of equal consideration.
Hagoromo: You are right. I played favourites. With my sons, and in my heart, with the pieces of the Ten-Tails. It was not malice. It was… a failure of imagination. And of heart.
Gyūki: Yeah, well. The kid doesn't. He sees a problem, he fixes it. He sees a person, he treats 'em like a person. Even a grumpy old octopus. Maybe your first Indra didn't need the great Sage of Six Paths and all his wisdom and power and stupid ghostly lectures.
Gyūki's words, crude and direct, struck the final, resonant chord.
Gyūki: Maybe he just needed his dad to sit down, listen to why he built that perfect chakra construct, and say, "Good job, son," instead of panicking about what it might mean. Maybe he needed you to be there when his mom died, instead of off playing God somewhere else. This Indra? He had a mom who stayed. He had a dad who died protecting him. He's got what yours didn't. So don't come here looking for a connection you didn't build. We're good.
Hagoromo's projection flickered, the emotional weight of the truth destabilizing it. He had come seeking… what? Understanding? A shared appreciation for this new hope? But he was an outsider. A failed architect visiting a thriving city built by another.
Hagoromo: I understand. Thank you, Gyūki. For your honesty, and for… being his friend.
Gyūki: Yeah, yeah. Now scram. You're killing the creative vibe. And tell Kurama, if you ever bother to visit that pompous furball, that I get to sit on Bee's shoulder and he's still stuck in a sewer. I win.
With a final, dismissive wave of a tentacle, Gyūki turned his back, the bassline of a new rap starting up, deliberately loud. Hagoromo's form dissolved, not out of pique, but out of a deep, humbling understanding that his presence was not a comfort, but a reminder of a painful past they had all moved beyond.
Back in his realm, the two conversations echoed in Hagoromo's being. The cool disdain of Matatabi. The brutal, truthful dismissal of Gyūki. They did not call him "Father." They called him "Sage." A title, not a relationship. Kurama, proud and bitter, might still hold enough childish anger to fling the word "Father" as an accusation. But these two… they were free of him. They had found a new centre.
"Maybe your first Indra didn't need the great Sage of Six Paths… Maybe he just needed his dad."
Gyūki's words were the key that unlocked the final chamber of his regret. He had tried to be a guide, a teacher, a sage to a world and to a son who radiated genius. He had offered philosophy and power. But what Indra had needed in his grief, in his confusion, was not a sage. He needed a father to hug him, to tell him it was okay to be angry and sad, to help him remember his mother's light without fear. He needed someone to ask, "Why did you build it that way?" and then listen to the answer.
He had given Ashura the love and patience of a father because Ashura was weak, needy. He had given Indra the distant judgment of a sage because Indra was strong, and strength, in his fear, looked like the first step towards corruption.
This new Indra proved him wrong. Strength, when rooted in love, was not a step towards corruption, but the only sure foundation for a lasting peace. This Indra had a father in Fujian, who showed love through sacrifice. He had a mentor in Bee, who showed guidance through camaraderie. He had the Raikage, who showed trust through responsibility. He had built a pantheon of father-figures where the original had only a vacant throne.
Hagoromo looked at his hands, the hands that had sealed the Ten-Tails, that had created the moon, that had bestowed the Rinnegan. They were the hands of a god, but they had failed to do the simple work of a father: to hold, to listen, to love without fear.
His penance would not be in grand, cosmic interventions. It would be in this: finally, truly, letting go. He would watch this new world unfold, not as its architect trying to correct his mistakes, but as a ghost hoping for its success. He would be ready, if called upon in ultimate extremity, but he would not impose. The cycle was over. The children—his beastly fragments and his son's brilliant heir—were finally building a home without his blueprints. And for the first time, that thought did not fill him with melancholy, but with a quiet, humble gratitude.
The Sage of Six Paths, the father who failed, finally ceased his striving. He settled into his watch, not as a ruler of destiny, but as a grandfather in the shadows, hoping the children's future would be brighter than the past he had left them.
End of Chapter – 8.