Listening to Kushina's question, Indra tilted his head, staring down at his feet and the strange sandals everyone in this clan wore. This... clan, your clan.
"My grandfather, the patriarch of my clan, came from a Western country that no longer exists. So much so that, when the clan was created, the structure and theme of the place were practically identical to this one. And from what I heard from Kabuto, there is also a great torii gate at the entrance." He said softly.
Indra took a moment to organize his thoughts, feeling the weight of that confession. He continued, though the next words felt bitter on his tongue.
"As for my..." He paused for an instant. The word was foreign, he had never called her mother in front of anyone. To him, she had been merely his progenitor, a disgusting and cunning woman who held nothing divine. "As for my mother, she was too pathetic to have anything divine within her. What might be responsible for all this is my so-called father... I heard he is just some unknown Awakened."
Kushina listened in silence, but the way she tilted her head suggested she saw right through his denial. Her maternal smile didn't fade, but it gained a note of somber understanding, as if she knew that "unknown" was the last thing that man truly was.
Kushina already knew the answer. From the moment Indra crossed the portal, her white eyes, which saw far beyond the flesh, had already discerned the layers of his existence. She had seen him, she had seen the trace of the man who shaped him, but she wanted to test if the youth before her had the honesty to face his own truth or if he would hide behind lies.
And what a beautiful surprise it was.
"An unknown Awakened, huh?" She let out a short laugh, not out of joy or irony, but in recognition of an improbable chess piece finally moving on its own. "You are honest even when you try to be vague, brat. That is a rarity."
"Your 'so-called father' might be a mystery to you, and your 'progenitor' might have been whatever you say... but blood does not lie."
She turned her back for a second, before looking at him over her shoulder with a warning glint in her white eyes.
"Now you have Uchiha blood running through your veins. And you need to understand one thing, brat: this blood is cursed. It drives nearly every member of the clan mad. It is not just an inheritance, it is a sentence to a continuous search for power and a spiral of insanity that consumes reason."
Suddenly, the gentle, almost maternal tone was tinged by an ancestral seriousness.
"It burns, Indra. It whispers promises of greatness while corroding who you are from the inside. The question is: will you be the master of this blood, or just another victim of its madness?"
Despite his mixed feelings about the mysterious Saint, Indra couldn't understand why she treated him with such goodwill. He was still processing the avalanche of information she had passed to him. In his short life, he had rarely experienced human relationships, and nearly all he had known were laden with hostility. The only ones who hadn't treated him with hate were the other cell prisoners used as test subjects for new drugs, it was from them, after all, that he had learned to curse.
But looking at this woman, he saw no malice. His attribute [Born of Pain], which should have detected any trace of hostility, remained silent, there were no signs of danger coming from her. The only thing the youth perceived in those white eyes was a mixture of apprehension and urgency.
"Before I answer whether I want this or not, why are you giving me this chance to learn from you?" Indra asked, his voice gaining a defensive firmness. "No one gives anything without expecting something in return. Why me? Why now?"
Kushina let out a long sigh, and for a brief moment, the urgency in her eyes turned into a shadow of melancholy.
"Honestly, brat? Initially, this wasn't for you. This training was designed for the true Itachi, a young genius born with 50% purified lineage who was chosen to be the leader of this clan. I intended to forge him to carry the weight of that title."
She shrugged, quickly regaining the malicious glint in her eyes as she approached him again.
"But fate is a funny thing, and now I have you, a Sleeper lost in a body that isn't yours. And you know what? I don't have time to find another candidate."
She tilted her face close to his, a perverse smile appearing on her lips.
"You know, there's going to be a tournament in a few months. A test of strength and lineage where clan members tear each other apart for the right to be called elite. And let me tell you something... unlike Itachi, who was taught from the moment he could walk, if you don't train with me and decide to go there with only what you know now, you won't just lose."
She gave a playful giggle, lightly touching Indra's forehead with her finger.
"You will be brutally beaten and humiliated in front of everyone. So, the choice is yours: either you learn to fight with me, or you become the Uchiha clan's personal punching bag. Well, what's it going to be?" Said the beautiful redhead in a provocative tone, which seemed to severely irritate the young Uchiha.
"Fine then!" The youth simply refused to be beaten by someone his own age or close to it. The thought of being beaten by someone his age ignited a flame of fury he could barely contain.
"I accept." He said, the words coming through clenched teeth, his eyes fixed on Kushina's white orbs with renewed intensity. "I won't be anyone's punching bag. If you say you can turn me into something capable of crushing those mad geniuses, then teach me. I will learn everything and more."
The woman let out a vibrant laugh, the sound echoing off the obsidian walls of the cathedral. Her smile widened, no longer maternal, but filled with savage satisfaction.
"That's the answer I wanted to hear, brat! That fire... that is the mark of a true Uchiha."
She stepped back, snapping her fingers. The air around them began to vibrate with the pressure of her aura, and the embers on the floor glowed with an blinding intensity.
"Then prepare yourself. I am not a gentle teacher, and if you want to fight like a true warrior, you'll have to survive hell first." Before Indra could react, she threw a punch in his direction.
Indra felt the impact before even understanding the movement. Kushina was meters away, but the punch she threw into the void was not just a gesture. The air between them was compressed into a solid mass that hit his chest like a sledgehammer.
The blow threw him back with overwhelming violence. Indra went spinning across the obsidian floor, the world becoming a blur of black and gray. His lungs burned, the oxygen had been ripped from the space around him, leaving only a cold vacuum and a metallic taste in his mouth.
He stopped his rotation clumsily, supporting his trembling hands on the obsidian floor. His vision was blurred, but he knew he had only survived because she had controlled her strength, it was the absolute limit of what a Sleeper could endure without having his bones reduced to dust.
Kushina let out a vibrant laugh, a maniacal sound that ricocheted off the walls. She didn't give him time to recover, crossing her arms with a smile of pure mockery.
"Where is he?" Her voice was pure provocation. "Where is the brat who was going to show me what he was capable of? I didn't even touch you and you're already rolling like a ball?"
She took a step forward, the presence of a Saint making the air as dense as lead. She looked down at him, rolling her eyes with disdain.
"If a light punch from this lady leaves you in this state, how will you face what's to come?" She let out a disdainful click of her tongue. "Come on, get that chin up, boy. Or is your only talent talking and being crushed by this delicate woman?"
Indra clenched his teeth, fighting against the nausea and the pain throbbing in his chest. Kushina's blow had been a brutal reminder of his current fragility.
"I'm not ... finished yet." He hissed, forcing his aching body to rise.
A cold thought cut through the fog of agony. Since meeting this woman, he hadn't been acting like himself. Her chaotic, noisy, and strangely cheerful existence had made him lower his guard, making him forget his true origin. He was not a lost youth in a strange bodyl, he was created to be the Blade of the Leaf Clan.
Indra breathed deeply, discarding useless emotions as if they were impurities. He reaffirmed the brutal teachings of his clan, where his existence was treated as something repugnant. There, the right to raise one's head was bought with conquest, to wash away the stain made by his mother. Every day of his life had been an infernal training disguised as torture, just to prove he was worthy of breathing. What she was doing now was just another test.
His posture changed. He was no longer a lost youth, but a weapon being cocked. His eyes focused on her with an intensity devoid of humanity.
Kushina arched an eyebrow, the mockery still present, but her eyes shone with a new anticipation. She threw another punch in the air.
The impact came, but Indra didn't try to resist. He was thrown, spinning across the obsidian, but used the momentum to roll and launch himself forward. Another aerial strike hit him, slamming him against a pillar with the dry crack of a breaking bone. He didn't stop. He rose before the pain reached his brain and advanced.
"You're stubborn, brat!" She laughed, firing a sequence of air pressures that made him fly like a rag doll. "But stubbornness doesn't win wars!"
Indra didn't respond. He was being ground down, paying for every meter of advance with blood. He realized his body would reach its limit; he would fail before reaching her. He needed something more.
Indra delved into the core of his soul, seeking the root of his being, something he hadn't considered using since the Nightmare began.
The shadows around his feet trembled, but the true change occurred in his eyes. The youth's previously dark and opaque eyes changed suddenly to a brilliant crimson, deep as blood. In each iris, a single black symbol, a tomoe, emerged and began to spin slowly.
It was the crystallization of his new lineage and his Aspect. The Cursed Eyes, the Sharingan.
And at that moment, the world seemed to slow down.
Kushina continued moving in a deliberately slow manner, her fist indicating the general direction of the blow, but now Indra's perception was on another level. He still couldn't track the mass of compressed air itself, that invisible distortion traveling like the fastest projectile, but he could see the instant it was fired.
Simultaneously, his body filled with an unknown force. It was a latent energy that had always belonged to him, but that the youth, through pure ignorance, had ignored until that moment of desperation. His muscles stopped trembling and the weight of the woman's aura no longer seemed like a death sentence, but a physical challenge.
The Matriarch stopped laughing, the mockery on her face vanished, replaced by a genuine and dangerous interest.
"So that's it." She murmured, observing the crimson glow in his eyes. "Finally stopped fighting like a blind man."
Indra didn't respond. He fixed his gaze on her fist. The moment she finished the slow movement, he didn't wait for the impact to arrive. He threw himself to the side, feeling the mass of air pass millimeters from his shoulder, tearing the fabric of his clothes.
Indra ran. He wasn't graceful; he was a bullet of flesh and bone moved by pure stubbornness and madness.
Kushina didn't stop punching the air. Her movements continued to be slow, but the air projectiles were relentless. The single-tomoe Sharingan spun frantically, processing the trigger of each blow. Indra saw her fist close and, before the mass of air came out, he was already twisting his body.
He couldn't dodge everything. An impact hit him in the side of the ribs with the dry sound of a cracking bone. Blood sprayed from his mouth, but he didn't stop. Another blow hit his shoulder, dislocating his left arm, which hung uselessly by his side.
Indra only growled, using his own pain as fuel to continue. He ignored the collapse of his body, focused only on the figure in front of him. He was paying for every meter with blood, but the distance was constantly decreasing.
Kushina watched in silence, the mockery fading from her face as the brat refused to fall.
Indra finally invaded her personal space. Covered in blood and with failing breath, he was a forearm's length away.
Indra prepared his right arm, the only one that still responded, concentrating all his remaining strength for this single punch. The Sharingan pulsed, the tomoe spinning in a desperate effort to locate the best angle for the attack.
But before he could strike, the world spun.
Through the sharpened perception of his crimson eyes, he saw Kushina's leg move. It wasn't a slow movement like the punches; it was a low kick, precise and fast as a whip.
The impact hit his base with perfect technical force. Indra's balance was broken instantly.
Indra felt the cold impact of the obsidian against his face. His consciousness wavered, each breath sending waves of agony through his broken ribs. The Sharingan still pulsed, but the image it captured was that of his own defeat.
He stared at the ceiling of the cathedral, a bitter understanding emerging amidst the pain. In the end, the result was obvious. Understandable, even. How could a mere Sleeper dare to believe he would land a blow on a Saint?
The distance between them was not measured in meters, but in abysses of existence. He was just a human who had just awakened to the horror of the world, even with this lineage, while she was a calamity in the form of a woman, an entity who had already transcended the laws of the flesh and possessed a lineage even more refined than his. Getting close to her was not a failure; it was a miracle paid with blood.
Kushina stopped above him, her shadow covering Indra's fallen body. She no longer seemed maniacal. There was a heavy silence as she watched the bruised youth on the black floor.
Indra, in a slow and mechanical movement, did not try to defend himself or beg for anything. Instead, he turned on the cold obsidian floor and exposed his back to Kushina.
It was a purely instinctive gesture, a muscle memory carved into his soul by Kabuto. That was the posture of one who accepts punishment, the ritual he followed whenever he failed the brutal tests or reached the end of the day. To Indra, pain was not a consequence of something,it was the price of existence.
There, fallen and bleeding, he did not expect comfort. He expected the blow, the steel, or the boot that would mark him.
Kushina, who was about to let out a sharp joke to end the test, froze. The silence in the cathedral became suffocating, heavy as the vacuum she herself had created. She observed not Itachi's body, but Indra's soul manifested in that fragility.
Her Saint eyes read the truth on the youth's exposed back: the rigidity of one who expects pain, the thinness of one who never knew comfort, and the scars that told the story of an infernal childhood. The mockery that had returned to her face vanished at that moment, as if it had never existed, replaced by a dark and deep melancholy.
Before Indra could process the silence, what came was not the impact of a boot or the snap of a whip.
He felt the world being enveloped by a sudden and overwhelming warmth. Kushina lifted him from the floor with disconcerting ease, as if he weighed nothing at all, and pulled him into an embrace. Indra, whose senses were still sharpened by the Sharingan, saw only a cascade of crimson hair enveloping his vision.
It was a firm embrace, but strangely gentle. The heat of her body, charged with the vitality of a Saint, began to pass to him, calming the trembling of his muscles and the instinctive dread of his soul. Even stained with blood and dirt, she did not care.
"I won't apologize for this little test." Her voice was firm, but carried a softness that Indra had never heard before. "It was necessary for you to understand that you are no longer a common human. What you are now is something much superior to that."
Still holding the youth in the embrace, feeling the fragility of the true Indra in her arms, she continued:
"But understand ... I will not use the excuse of your failure to hit me for sadistic pleasure or to impose dominance over you. I am not like him."
Kushina pulled back just enough to look at his face. To Indra's surprise, there was no mockery. She displayed the most beautiful smile he had ever seen in his entire life, a glow filled with genuine pride and a maternal affection that seemed to warm his very soul.
"You did very well, brat." She said, her voice thick with satisfaction. "Extremely well. I feel immensely proud of you. All I want is for you to grow ... to grow beautifully."
As she finished speaking, she tilted her head and touched her forehead to his. Her white eyes, once ethereal, now shone with infinite tenderness a few inches from his crimson eyes.
Upon perceiving the raw sincerity and affection of that woman, Indra's world collapsed. He, to whom everything had been denied since his first breath, he who never knew the warmth of his dead mother; who only received the hatred of his clan members and the apathetic, icy gaze of his grandfather, he, who had made pain and isolation his only armor... was completely disarmed.
For the first time in his life, the composure and behavior etched into his being to never show weakness failed. He crumbled in her arms.
The youth of only twelve years, who had grown up in the heart of hell, finally found a safe harbor, a light amidst the darkness of his existence. Indra cried. A sobbing cry, without caring about anything. He buried himself in Kushina's embrace, seeking the maternal warmth she emitted, letting the tears wash away years of accumulated agony.
Kushina remained in silence, letting time flow without rush. She did not hurry him; on the contrary, she wrapped him in her arms as if to protect him from all the past that haunted him. In that silent cathedral, the boy who had been created to be just a weapon finally allowed himself to be just a child.
When the sobs finally diminished and Indra's breathing became a bit more stable, she pulled him back with infinite tenderness, holding his face between her hands.
"What is your name, boy?"
"Indra." He replied, his eyes still red from crying, but fixed on hers.
"Just Indra? I want to know who you really are. What is your full name?"
The youth took a deep breath, feeling her warmth still on his skin. He sought the identity that had been imposed on him all his life, the only one he knew and that he carried as a burden of duty and pain.
"Indra of the Leaf."
It was at that exact moment that the atmosphere of the cathedral changed. Kushina's eyes, once ethereal white, underwent a sudden and violent mutation. The white gaze was swallowed by a deep crimson, vibrant as royal blood, and in place of the ordinary irises, a complex and eternal pattern emerged: black geometric shapes intertwined in a design of lethal beauty. It was the highest level of the Uchiha clan's shared Aspect, the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, something reserved for descendants with the purest blood.
Indra felt the air vibrate. The sight of those divine eyes seemed to burn his very soul, challenging the definition he had just given of himself, and in response, his one-tomoe Sharingan emerged again. Kushina smiled, and her voice now carried the weight of millennia, sounding like a command that echoed in the core of Indra's being.
"And these eyes you carry, Indra of the Leaf?" she asked, the reflection of her Eternal Mangekyō dancing in the youth's irises. "Are they just tools given to you by your Aspect?"
Kushina brought her face closer, touching her forehead to his, sealing the connection between their powers. "I'll ask one last time, Indra. Forget the clan that broke you. Forget the blade they wanted you to be. Look at me, feel this blood boiling in both of us and tell me."
"Who are you?"
Indra felt the maternal warmth merging with his new and terrifying strength. Under the gaze of the Matriarch of the Uchihas, the answer emerged from the depths of his soul, escaping his lips as a whisper heavy with destiny and belonging:
"Uchiha... Indra Uchiha."