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BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM——!!!
A deafening explosion ripped the sky in half.
A column of blue-violet light punched through the clouds and kept going, turning the black night into blinding daylight from horizon to horizon.
Asura hadn't even registered what was happening.
But Hagoromo's face went white. His Rinnegan contracted so fast the purple rings blurred, and his blood turned to ice water in a single heartbeat.
Indra had actually done it. He hadn't waited. Hadn't strategized. Hadn't even bothered with the pretense of patience.
Of all the scenarios Hagoromo had war-gad, this was the one he'd dismissed as too reckless to consider. He'd expected Indra to brood, to plot, to bide his ti, maybe move after his father's death when there'd be no one strong enough to stop him.
But no. The mask ca off the sa night. Not even twelve hours of restraint.
'You couldn't even wait for to die first?'
"Father! I'll go check!"
Asura finally snapped out of it and bolted, crashing through the ditation chamber's door before Hagoromo could get a word out, streaking toward the source of that monstrous light.
Hagoromo stood alone in the empty room.
He'd sealed his own mother. He was long past the point of letting sentintality cloud his judgnt. If Indra truly intended to burn Ninshū to the ground, then Indra would be treated the sa way Kaguya was.
Family ant nothing when the world was at stake.
Not his mother. Not his son. Not his brother.
Not even the Sage of Six Paths himself.
His chakra surged, and he vanished after Asura.
.....
A thousand ters above, hidden in the cloud layer—Manji floated in perfect stillness.
He hadn't co to take sides. He was simply watching, the way he'd watched everything for the past several centuries. The pillar of berserk chakra below. The two figures streaking out of Ninshū's compound. The beginning of sothing that would shape the next millennium.
"Fukasaku. Write this mont down. This fight decides the next thousand years of history."
Fukasaku nodded from his shoulder, then paused.
'Wait. How does the Grand Sage know that?'
But almost imdiately: Of course he knows. He's the Grand Sage. Moving on.
.....
On the plains outside Ninshū.
The Susano'o towered over the landscape like a mountain made of malice. Pale violet chakra, a blade the length of a river, and a shadow that swallowed everything underneath it.
"Brother! WHY?? Are you really going to tear apart everything we built together??"
Asura's voice cracked wide open.
Inside the Susano'o, Indra didn't even look at him.
His Sharingan burned past Asura like the boy didn't exist, locking onto the white-haired figure standing behind him.
"Hagoromo."
Not "Father." Just a na.
"Why wasn't the succession mine?"
Every word carried years of compressed bitterness.
Hagoromo said nothing for a long ti. His Rinnegan held no emotion at all.
"Indra. What exactly are you trying to do?"
"What am I trying to do?"
Indra threw his head back and laughed. It was ugly, unhinged, soaked in so much resentnt it was practically dripping.
"Exactly what it looks like! You wouldn't hand it over, so I'm TAKING it! By force! By blood! Every last piece of it!"
"I am the ONLY one worthy of ruling Ninshū! The ONLY one fit to lead this world!"
The declaration blasted through the clouds. Hagoromo felt sothing curdle in his chest.
History repeating itself...
He'd betrayed his own mother to save the world. He'd thought that sacrifice had purchased peace. And now his own son was standing before him, wearing the sa expression Kaguya used to wear.
"Brother! Don't you rember? Training together, guarding Ninshū together, all the things we promised! Have you really thrown all of that away??"
Asura was fighting tears, fighting to pull his brother back from the edge.
"Shut your MOUTH, you weakling!"
Indra's Sharingan flared. The Susano'o's presence spiked hard enough to push everyone back a step.
"All you know is clinging to other people. 'Bonds' this, 'connections' that. You don't understand the first thing about real power."
"Right now, I am the Strongest person alive. Nobody gets to lecture . NOBODY."
He raised the Susano'o's blade.
And brought it down.
"IT'S OVER!"
CRASH——!!!
The sword strike split the earth like an axe through a waterlon. Shockwave. Dust. Rubble flying in every direction. The ground opened into a chasm that seed to go all the way down.
When the smoke cleared, Ninshū's disciples stared in disbelief.
Asura was untouched. Truth-Seeking Orbs orbited his body in a slow, nacing constellation. In his hands, a black rod forged from Yin-Yang Release held the Susano'o's colossal blade at a dead stop.
His chakra wasn't just intact. It was stronger than before.
"What...??"
Indra's whole body locked up. He stared at those Truth-Seeking Orbs like he was seeing his own death certificate.
"THE OLD MAN'S SIX PATHS POWER... YOU GOT ALL OF IT??"
And then everything he'd ever buried ca roaring to the surface at once.
Why?
'Both of us are his sons. I was the prodigy. I was the genius. I was the one who revolutionized Ninshū's entire combat system.'
'But who actually trained ? Who spent years teaching hand signs, day after day, sunrise to midnight?'
Not Hagoromo.
It was the Founding Patriarch. It was always Manji.
'And Hagoromo? This so-called father? He took his most precious power, his legacy, his succession, and dumped it all on the kid who can't even tie his own shoes without soone holding his hand.'
Sa father. Sa blood. Two sons. And THIS is how you divide the inheritance?
.....
Ninshū's disciples finally mobilized. Sarutobi led the charge. Dozens of practitioners ford hand signs in unison, and a storm of elental techniques crashed into the Susano'o from every direction.
Fire. Water. Wind. Lightning. Earth.
A full-spectrum bombardnt that lit up the sky.
"Ha... HAHAHA! Good! GOOD!"
Sothing in Indra broke clean in half.
He laughed. Not because anything was funny, but because the alternative was screaming until his throat bled.
"I TAUGHT you those techniques! I gave you the hand signs! I built the FOUNDATION you're standing on! And you use MY gift to attack ??"
Fine.
If that's how it is.
THEN NINSHŪ CAN BURN.
ALL of it.
The Susano'o expanded. Darkened. Its aura shifted from aggression to annihilation, ready to level everything within range.
And then a hand settled on Asura's shoulder.
Hagoromo's hand.
"Asura. Take everyone's strength. This isn't the power of one person fighting alone. This is what it looks like when hearts are connected."
Before the words finished landing, every disciple in Ninshū moved as one. Hand in hand, heart to heart. Hundreds of golden chakra streams poured out of them and converged on Asura like rivers feeding an ocean.
The feeling that flooded through him was indescribable. It wasn't his power. It was the trust and determination of every single person who'd chosen to stand behind him, wrapping around his wavering resolve and turning it into sothing unbreakable.
For them. For all of them.
Asura slamd his palms together.
Every scrap of borrowed power, Hagoromo's Sage chakra, the collective will of an entire order, all of it fused and detonated at once.
"HAAAH!!!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM——!!!
A Thousand-Ard Buddha tore itself out of the earth.
Golden light flooded the world. A serene face the size of a hillside. A thousand palms stretching across the sky like a forest of divine retribution. The thing dwarfed the Susano'o so completely that Indra's avatar looked like a toy standing in its shadow.
"IMPOSSIBLE!"
Indra felt it. A power so far beyond his ceiling that fighting it was like punching the ocean. The exact thing he'd spent his entire life chasing, born right in front of him, channeled through the brother he'd dismissed as worthless.
"BROTHER!!!"
Asura stood on the Buddha's shoulder.
"THIS is what bonds can do! This is what happens when people fight together instead of alone! THIS is what Ninshū was always supposed to be!"
He swung his hand.
A thousand golden palms ca down.
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM——!!!
WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM——!!!
The Susano'o never stood a chance. Its armor cracked like cheap pottery under every blow. Violet chakra shrapnel rained from the sky. The ground cratered, rebounded, cratered again.
"AAAAAGHH——!!!"
Indra scread until his throat shredded. Bones grinding, organs rupturing from chakra backlash, every nerve ending firing distress signals that his brain couldn't process fast enough.
Below, Hagoromo watched. Face carved from granite. Eyes dry. He did not move.
Asura kept going. He didn't want to. Every strike cost him sothing. But stopping ant the people behind him would die.
So he didn't stop.
.....
High above the battlefield, Manji watched.
He'd lived long enough that very little could reach him anymore. Joy, grief, surprise, rage, all of them had been ground down to faint background noise by centuries of repetition.
But watching Indra get hamred into the ground by those golden fists...
He felt sothing. Faint. Inconvenient. But undeniable.
This was the kid who used to fall asleep against his shoulder after training. The first student he'd ever taught from scratch. Every hand sign, every chakra exercise, every philosophical conversation at dusk in a bamboo grove. All of it had Manji's fingerprints on it.
Seeing the result of that investnt getting pounded to pulp was... unpleasant.
"Forget it..."
He shook his head. Pressed the feeling down. Reminded himself that this was Ninshū's problem, not his.
And then—
Through the chaos. Through the golden light and the flying debris and the concussive blasts that shook the mountain range.
Indra looked up.
Sohow, through eyes that were already losing focus, he found that silhouette against the sky. The one person who had ever chosen him. The one person whose approval wasn't conditional on being useful or obedient or perfectly aligned with so philosophy about bonds.
His mouth opened. Blood poured out instead of words, but he forced them through anyway.
"Grandpa... save ..."
"Grandpa, I'm going to die..."
Manji's jaw tightened.
The assault below intensified. Golden palms, each one strong enough to flatten a fortress, crashing down without rcy, without pause, without end.
"AAAAAAHH——!!!"
"It HURTS... it hurts so much——!!!"
"GRANDPA, SAVE !!!"
"FOUNDING PATRIARCH, SAVE !!!!!!"
Indra's face had gone the color of old paper. Blood gushed from his mouth in rhythmic spurts, synchronized with a heartbeat that was slowing fast. His Sharingan, those fierce crimson eyes that had once burned with absolute conviction, were dimming.
Going out.
Manji's composure cracked.
Not a lot. Not dramatically. But enough.
Enough to recognize that this wasn't the original storyline anymore. In canon, both brothers survived their fight and went their separate ways. But Asura had the collective power of all of Ninshū behind him. Hagoromo was standing right there and hadn't lifted a finger to intervene. This wasn't a duel between equals.
This was an execution.
And Indra was seconds away from a death that couldn't be reversed.
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