Sky Hammer Orbital Laboratory – Indra's Sanctum
The sterile, humming quiet of the orbital lab was broken only by the soft rotation of holographic models. Boruto stared, open-mouthed, at the viewport showing the curved blue-and-white limb of the planet far below. Adult Sasuke remained rigid, his Rinnegan and Sharingan continuously analyzing their surroundings, searching for weaknesses in a prison with no visible doors.
Indra stood calmly before them, having just laid out his ultimatum. The sheer, casual authority in his voice left no room for debate.
Boruto: "You… you know about the Otsutsuki? How?"
Indra: "A more pertinent question is how you know about them. They are not common knowledge. Even among Kage, the name is myth, if it is known at all." He tilted his head, his gaze piercing. "Your presence, your temporal displacement, and your pursuit of one suggests a history of conflict. A history from your timeline that has not yet occurred in mine. Explain."
Sasuke: "Our reasons are our own. We are not your enemy. Our target is Urashiki. He is a threat to all timelines. He consumes chakra, destabilizes reality."
Indra: "A cosmic parasite. An apt description for his clan." He said it with a familiarity that made Sasuke's eyes narrow.
Sasuke: "You speak as if you know them personally."
Indra: "In a manner of speaking."
Indra's eyes changed. The deep crimson of the Sharingan bloomed, but it was not the standard pattern. An intricate, geometric lattice of black lines formed within the red, interlocking like the circuitry of a celestial machine. The tomoe were gone, replaced by a design that spoke of absolute order and profound, ancient power.
Boruto: "Wha—your Sharingan! It's… It's not like any I've ever seen!"
Sasuke took an involuntary step back, his Rinnegan pulsing in response. "That's… an Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan. But the pattern… It's impossible. It's not a configuration from any recorded Uchiha history."
Indra: "History is written by survivors. My eyes evolved along a different path." He deactivated them, the terrifying pattern fading. "To answer your question, Sasuke of the future… I know of the Otsutsuki because my eyes sometimes… see."
Boruto: "See? See what?"
Indra: "Fragments. Echoes. When I first awakened my Mangekyō, the connection to… deeper laws of reality was abrupt. Powerful. My abilities, which I have named Palkia and Dialga, are not merely jutsu. They are expressions of a minor authority over the fabric of space and time itself."
He walked to a console, bringing up a shimmering, abstract model of intertwining blue and silver threads. "Space and time are not separate. They are a continuum. A tapestry. My eyes grant me not just the power to manipulate threads, but to perceive the weave. Sometimes, that perception is… noisy."
Sasuke: "You see across timelines."
Indra: "Glimpses. Flashes. A battle in a ruined valley under a red moon. A silver-haired man fighting a being made of gold. A boy with whiskers is facing a pale, horned figure in another dimension. And yes… figures with white skin, horns, and the Rinnegan, descending from the stars like locusts to harvest worlds. The Otsutsuki." His voice was clinical, detached. "The visions are unsorted. Some are from the deep past of this world. Some… feel alien. From other realities entirely. They are one of the reasons I build. A storm is coming from beyond the sky. I intend for my village, my people, to be a mountain that cannot be washed away."
The admission hung in the air. This teenager wasn't just a genius inventor or a powerful shinobi. He was a seer of cosmic threats, acting on visions of apocalypse to forge an unbreakable sanctuary.
Sasuke: "Your Eternal Mangekyō… How? The only method recorded requires the transplantation of a sibling's eyes. You have no siblings."
Indra looked at him with a faint, puzzled expression, as if Sasuke had asked why water was wet. "Transplantation? A crude, barbaric workaround for a biological flaw." He gestured to a nearby medical pod, its interior glowing softly. "The degradation of the optic nerves is a result of chakra toxicity and cellular overclocking incompatible with baseline Uchiha physiology. The solution is not to steal a less-degraded part from another; it is to repair and upgrade the original system."
He spoke with the calm certainty of an engineer discussing a simple repair. "I sequenced my own DNA, combined it with Uzumaki vitality traits and regenerative samples, developed a serum, and used my healing pod to perform in-situ cellular reconstruction and chakra pathway reinforcement. I cured the flaw. My eyes are now self-sustaining. Eternal, through synthesis, not theft."
Boruto blinked, barely following the technical explanation but understanding the core mind-blowing fact: He fixed the Uchiha curse with science.
Sasuke was stunned into silence. The tragedy of the Uchiha—the inevitable blindness, the brother-against-brother horror that defined his own relationship with Itachi—was rendered here as a mere engineering problem. And this boy had solved it. The implications were staggering.
Sasuke: "The knowledge… the research… how did you even know where to begin?"
Indra's expression shifted, a shadow of old, tempered grief passing through his eyes. "My father. Fujin Uchiha."
The name hit Sasuke like a physical blow. Memories, long buried under layers of trauma and vengeance, surfaced with painful clarity. A kind, stern-faced man with a gentle smile, who would sneak candies to a young, brooding Sasuke when his own father was too harsh. Who would pat his head and tell him, "Protect your brother, Sasuke. Family is your true strength." Who had helped him with basic shuriken drills when Fugaku was too busy?.
Sasuke: (His voice was barely a whisper) "…Uncle Fujin."
Indra caught the term of relation, his analytical gaze sharpening. "You knew him."
Sasuke: "He was my father's cousin. A good man. He… he gave me candy." The admission sounded absurd, childish, but it carried the weight of a stolen, innocent past.
Indra nodded slowly, a thread of connection weaving between them, thin but tangible. "He was. A good man. And a prudent one. Before the Massacre, he sensed the danger. The political rot in Konoha. He sent a message via summon, telling my mother and me to flee the Land of Fire immediately. He included a sealed scroll. It contained his life's work: all his notes on Uchiha kenjutsu, history, chakra theory, and… every scrap of non-classified research he had quietly compiled on the Sharingan's biology and the clan's archived legends, including fragments about the Mangekyō's toll."
He looked away, at the stars. "That scroll was my foundation. My father's last gift was not just our lives, but the keys to understanding my own power so I would not be destroyed by it. I owe my sanity, and my eyes, to his foresight."
The story unfolded with calm precision. Indra spoke of their flight, their sanctuary in Kumo, his rapid rise, and his inventions. He spoke of finding the Uzumaki survivors in the Land of Snow—"summoned them, to be precise, but 'found' is the public story"—and integrating them. He spoke of Rias, not with teenage melodrama, but with the solid respect of one sovereign for his equal. He spoke of the Raikage's trust, the Daimyo's support, and his vision for Kumo as a self-sufficient, impregnable fortress.
It was the biography of a nation-builder, recited by its architect. There was pride, but it was a cold, fierce pride in what had been built, not in personal glory.
Sasuke listened, his mind reeling. This was a Uchiha who had taken the clan's genius for analysis and strategy and applied it on a civilizational scale. He had channeled the potential for obsessive love into protecting a whole people. He had taken the Uchiha's tragic legacy and, through a combination of foreign memory, paternal sacrifice, and sheer transcendent intellect, had redeemed it.
Indra: "Your turn. Your future. Your conflict with the Otsutsuki. And this is Urashiki's specific goal here."
Compelled by Indra's honesty and overwhelming position, Sasuke began to talk. He gave a concise, brutal summary: the Fourth Great War, Kaguya, the formation of Team 7, the later threats from Momoshiki and Kinshiki, and Urashiki's chaotic, self-serving nature. He explained their battle, the temporal trap, and their accidental translation to this branch reality.
Indra absorbed it all without visible shock, only intense focus. He cross-referenced the names with his vague visions. "Kaguya. The Rabbit Goddess. The progenitor of chakra on this planet. It fits the oldest, most chaotic visions. Momoshiki… a consolidator. Urashiki… a scavenger." He looked at Boruto. "And you. The vessel of Momoshiki's karma. Carrying an Otsutsuki's genetic blueprint within you. A walking time bomb."
Boruto flinched. "I've got it under control!"
Indra: "For now. The Otsutsuki are a cancer. They metastasize. Your very presence is a risk." His gaze turned back to Sasuke. "You hunt him with one arm. A tactical disadvantage against a dimension-hopping foe."
Sasuke: "It is a handicap I have learned to compensate for."
Indra: "Compensation is not optimization. You are a weapon from a future war, dulled. Inefficient." He gestured to his lab. "I could fix that."
A heavy silence fell.
Boruto: "Fix… his arm? You can do that?"
Indra: "My healing pods can regenerate tissue from a genetic sample. You have the original arm, or a viable sample of your own DNA from before the loss?"
Sasuke: (After a long pause) "The arm was destroyed. But… a sample… might be possible." He thought of the few personal effects he'd kept from his old life. A lock of hair, sealed in a scroll. A long shot.
Indra: "Then regeneration is possible. More complex than fixing eyes, as it involves full limb replication and nervous system integration, but within my capabilities. Alternatively…" He walked to a storage vault, input a complex seal sequence, and retrieved a long, narrow case. He opened it.
Inside, on black velvet, lay an arm. It was not flesh. It was a masterpiece of synthetic biology and technology. The structure was a dark grey, carbon-based composite, mimicking muscle fiber. Fine channels of glowing blue chakra conductive material ran along it like veins. The hand was articulated with impossible precision, and the shoulder interface was a complex, organic-looking socket.
Indra: "A prototype bio-synthetic prosthetic. Self-powered by absorbing ambient chakra. Strength multiplier. Integrated chakra shaping and channeling matrix, capable of performing any hand-seal sequence you know, faster than flesh. It can interface directly with your nervous system via a non-invasive synaptic link graft. It would make you more than whole. It would make you enhanced."
He said it not as a salesman, but as a strategist, stating facts. "You are here to fight an Otsutsuki. Your current form is sub-optimal for that task. I am offering a tool. A significant one."
Sasuke stared at the arm. It was not the simple, powerful Hashirama-cell arm Naruto had gifted him in his own time. This was something else. A fusion of nature and art, of biology and design. It was a testament to Indra's philosophy: never just repair; improve.
The offer was immense. It was also a potential trap. Accepting it would create a dependency, a debt. It would tie him to Indra, to this timeline's Kumo, in a profound way.
Sasuke: "Why? Why offer this?"
Indra: "Two reasons. Pragmatic: A more effective hunter increases the probability of Urashiki's neutralization, removing a threat from my world. Scientific: I have never had the opportunity to study the integration of such technology with a chakra system as advanced as one bearing a Rinnegan and Eternal Mangekyō. The data would be invaluable for future designs. Perhaps for my own forces, should we face an Otsutsuki-level threat?."
He was brutally honest. There was no feigned altruism. It was a transaction. Sasuke's service and biological data in exchange for a superior weapon.
Boruto: "Uncle Sasuke… it's… It's really cool."
Sasuke ignored him, his mind racing. He looked from the prosthetic to Indra's calm, expectant face, to the stars beyond the viewport. This boy held the keys to space, time, and now, to restoring his lost power. He was Anakin Skywalker, building his own mechanical hand, with full awareness of what it meant.
To fight an Otsutsuki, he needed every advantage. His pride in his adaptation warred with the cold logic of the shinobi he was. He thought of his mission. Of Konoha. Of his family in his own time. Of the threat Urashiki posed to all realities.
Sasuke: "I… will think about it."
Indra nodded, as if he'd expected nothing else. He closed the case and returned it to the vault. "A wise answer. Do not think too long. Urashiki is active. And my patience, while considerable, is not infinite."
He turned back to his main console, pulling up a star map. "You will remain here as my guests. This lab is equipped with living quarters. You will have access to non-sensitive data regarding this world's current political and military landscape—it will help you operate. You will not attempt to leave or contact the surface. When you have made your decision regarding the arm, and when you have actionable intelligence on Urashiki's location, we will talk again."
He finally looked at Boruto, his gaze assessing. "As for you, Boruto Uzumaki. Your karma is a vulnerability. While you are here, I will run scans. Understanding an Otsutsuki implantation vector firsthand could prove useful. Consider it the price of your sanctuary."
Before Boruto could protest, Indra made a slight gesture. A section of the wall shimmered and opened, revealing a comfortable, spartan living area with two beds, a hygiene unit, and a small food synthesizer.
Indra: "Your quarters. Rest. Consider my words. The storm does not rush, but it is never idle."
With that, he turned his back on them, fully engrossed in the holographic star map, as if they were already forgotten. The message was clear: they were now assets in his calculus, to be utilized or stored as the situation demanded.
The wall sealed shut behind Boruto and Sasuke, leaving them alone in the quiet room. The only sound was the hum of the lab's systems and the pounding of their own hearts, trapped in the sky, at the mercy of a god-king who saw them as pieces on a board that spanned dimensions.
End of chapter – 43.