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There were unexpected downsides to mastering ones chakra to the fullest extent that did not become evident until much later. One of such was remaining a cohesive and separate entity even after ‘death’ and joining with the Chakra of the World. It was an existence echoed in the monsters that had been born from his mother’s last desperate burst of chakra, before he and his brother had finally sealed her away. He disliked being reminded of it.
Ootsutsuki Hagoromo had inherited the longevity of both his mother’s and his father’s peoples. It had taken him many long centuries to learn the method for releasing his earthly form. Even then, his existence resembled the in-between state the bijuu occupied. At once physical while at the same time being comprised wholly of chakra. He had been the only one of his close kin to shed his mortal shell. His twin, Homura, guarded their mother’s prison still, having assumed the lofty title of Shinigami at some point over the passing centuries. His first-born, Indra, had eventually shown signs of Kaguya’s madness and had needed to be put down. His younger son, Asura, had taken responsibility for his brother before Hagoromo had needed to step in.
Hagoromo had felt pride, then. Asura’s sense of duty and righteousness had made him Hagoromo’s true heir.
Only it would seem that such madness was infectious, and Indra’s children had renounced all relation to Asura and Hagoromo both. Had rejected the authority of the Ootsutsuki Royal House and renamed themselves. After fans of all the ridiculous things! Even now, the cry of ‘kin-slayer’ rang through the chakra of every Uchiha who came within throwing distance of a Senju.
It frustrated Hagoromo to no end. Asura had acted for the good of the world! Holding grudges was petty and infantile, but even so, Asura’s own daughter had split from her brothers and her father, choosing instead to found her own Clan out on some tiny spit of an island. Kagura had turned her back on her family legacy, vowing to never allow any of her descendants to slay their own kin.
The Chakra of the World vibrated, an echo of Kaguya’s scream on the day she had lost her sense of self to a mad lust for more power.
Shaken from his solitary meditations, Hagoromo hurried to locate the source of the disturbance. The Cycle of Transmigration had been knocked awry. The lesson Hagoromo still strove to impart on his foolishly stubborn elder son was being interfered with. How? Who could do this? Who would do this? Anyone with the necessary power and knowledge followed the Way of Six Paths!
White lightning cracked across the ether. Hagoromo was struck down, shocked to the point of assuming a bodily image for the first time in over three centuries.
“Ah, the Honoured Sage. Welcome!” Grinning with fanged teeth, lightning still sparking in her chakra, the spirit of a woman watched Hagoromo struggle upright with savage glee. “What brings you to my humble riverbank?”
“You!” Unable to fully comprehend what was happening, the Sage of Six Paths stared at the ghostly kunoichi. Had she actually struck at him? “Who are you to strike at me?”
“In life, I birthed the child who hosted Asura’s chakra imprint.” Of all the things, the woman looked offended by the honour she had been granted. Asura was a strong, dutiful child. Who would not wish him for their own son? “I am Hatake Kira, and I will not allow you to waylay my son in his quest.”
“You speak nonsense, woman.” The Sage frowned, disliking the need to speak to yet another who perpetuated the Cycle of Hatred, but needing to be sure she was aware of the truth. “Asura’s chakra rests in the Pure Lands awaiting the next Cycle of Transmigration.”
“That is all well and good, for you! But Asura is not my son, and thus is no concern of mine.” The ninja woman’s glare was fierce and proud and too much a reminder of all the worst traits found in humanity. No human who had ever looked at Hagoromo like that had ever managed to listen. “I speak of my Tobirama and his quest to make amends for his ill thought choices, so that he might win the regard of his beloved.”
Hagoromo scowled, uncertain and disliking the feeling as much as ever. This was why he sought to discard the physical world. Too often the focus of effort was on petty nonsense and ridiculous notions. None of it mattered once you were connected to the energy of the world around you.
The question of how this petty spirit-woman’s matchmaking could interfere with the Cycle of Transmigration lingered at the back of Hagoromo’s mind. Asura awaited the next turn of the Cycle in the Pure Lands, as he should. Indra, as usual, was being difficult and hiding again. In time the Cycle would catch Indra’s spirit and begin anew, so Hagoromo rarely bothered to chase his eldest’s chakra down…
No. She would not. She could not have possibly meant…
“What have you done?” Obscured, and impossible to pin down, Hagoromo was nonetheless able to feel Indra’s chakra rend itself open. Like a peeled fruit, the unwanted rind discarded to be swept away into the Cycle. Asura’s Imprint was startled and confused and gone, incarnated once again as the system Hagoromo had created dutifully did what it was intended to do. Only in doing so it denied Hagoromo a chance for answers. It was too late to fix what had been broken. Hagoromo truthfully would not even know where to begin. Would the Cycle even work with Indra’s chakra so changed? The core of Indra’s chakra, now shed of any trace of Hagoromo’s influence and tethers, barely felt like Indra at all. It was the chakra core of a stranger, and only because Hagoromo had felt it change did he know it had once belonged to his son’s Imprint.
Another chakra core, cool and bright like moonlight on still water, flared up, bright as grounded lightning. The chakra that had once been Indra’s burned like a wildfire, glorious as the sun setting over mountains. A brief moment of sound and fury before both signatures were gone from his senses.
“I did what you’ve always been too much of a self-centered coward to do!” Utterly unrepentant regardless of how many of the world’s foundations her actions had destroyed, the Hatake woman held her head up high, snarling in Hagoromo’s face. “I set my son free! Your Curse can’t touch him anymore! You can’t touch any of them anymore!”
Hagoromo sputtered. “It’s not my Curse!”
“Lies.” Another woman stepped out of the mists. A familiar woman. One who should not have been here. One he had last seen standing at Indra’s side. “So many lies you have told, for so long, that you now believe them truth.”
“You!” It should be impossible for a being of pure spirit to have a stress headache, but Hagoromo still felt his temples throb with the memory of frustration and endless irritation. “I should have known this was your doing!”
“One is flattered by the Honoured Sage’s regard for this one.” Indra’s wife still had the same insufferable, inscrutable little smile. Her face, as always, held too still to read. Her dark eyes hiding secrets. Her chakra alien and wrong, impossible for Hagoromo to parse even after all his centuries of practice. Hagoromo had never been able to fathom Indra’s passion for this cold, unloving creature. The first Matriarch of the Uchiha Clan flicked her fan. “One wonders why such surprise? One has always intended to seek out one’s Beloved Husband once circumstances aligned in favourable fortune.”
“How is this anything like you ‘seeking out’ Indra?” Hagoromo gestured at the Hatake kunoichi. “Her son is allegedly courting Indra right now.”
“Wrong~!” The silver haired woman smirked, hands panted on her hips. “Tobirama’s courting Madara. Totally different people! Plus, now that Indra’s soul has been pulled loose once he’s a little bit more awake! Next time it’ll be even easier, and easier again the next time after that. Soon enough Aino will have her mate back in one piece and untainted!”
Indra’s wife smiled at the ghost, small and fond. “Just so.”
“You’re both mad.” Hagoromo took an unconscious step in retreat. “How dare you? How dare either of you interfere with Indra’s redemption? He is my son! What gives you the right?”
“What right, Ootsutsuki Hagoromo? This one is the reason you lived! This one was she who sacrificed for the life of her Lady! The Lady you betrayed and slew! This one only sought to love her Lady’s true heir as he deserved!” The shadow of massive wings fell over the riverbank, mantled high in anger. “That one took so long to learn this one’s new life is this one’s greatest regret! By the time this one was fledged in full, this one’s Lady was lost beyond retrieving. So this one devoted all of one’s new life to the safe-keeping of Lady Kaguya’s bloodline.”
Hagoromo stared, for once unsure of his place. “Who are you? What are you?”
“One is Aino.” With a huff, Indra’s wife smoothed back her hair, flicking her fan in dismissal. The same disrespectful chit who had appeared at Indra’s side one day, both of them smiling at one another as rain fell from a sunlit sky. The same uncaring woman who had disappeared from her rooms the day Asura brought Indra’s body home, not even reappearing for the funeral. “As one has always said.”
“What, you don’t recognize the woman who ensured that your Honourable Mother lived long enough to birth you and Homura?” Hagoromo whirled, words stuck in his throat as yet another woman he knew in life stepped down to the riverbank. “For shame, husband! You should know your own history better than this.”
“Amaterasu.” To either side of the gorgeous woman stood her brothers, solemn Tsukiyomi and savage Susanoo. Neither spoke, letting their sister lead as they glared over her shoulders. Hagoromo shook his head, reeling from the implications. “How are you a part of this? You left. You left and you never returned!”
“You bored me. Minako seemed to entertain you well enough.” Amaterasu laughed in the Sage’s flabbergasted face. “Did you think I didn’t know, Hagoromo? You forsook your father’s throne long before you took me to wife, O Venerable Sage. You had no right nor need of a concubine. You didn’t even have the decency to invite me to join in! Of course I left you. Indra understood my reasons when I explained, and he was smart enough to ask me to make a match for him when he came of appropriate age.”
“Oh, yes.” The Hatake woman gestured to Amaterasu in all her Glorious Radiance. “Guess who gave us the goddess given right to stop Indra’s punishment. Wonderful thing about being a mother, it gives you higher spiritual authority than the father when it comes to defending your children.”
Hagoromo shook his head once again, mind reeling. “But gods are just myths.”
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” The Inugami bared her fangs, the strength of Tenrou in her spirit.
“You were blind to all things but what you had decreed deserving of truth.” The Crane Wife scoffed, her spirit bound to immortality with love and loyalty that defied death.
“Three times have you offended the gods, Ootsutsuki Hagoromo. Once, when you bound the Rabbit Goddess to a stone prison, rather than seeking the cure for jubokko poisoning. Twice, when you broke your vows to me to dally between a mortal woman’s legs. Third, and most final, you trespassed on the dominion of the gods by forcing your own selfish will on the Cycle of Reincarnation. Had we not taken action, the soul of Ootsutsuki Indra, the soul of my son, would have been warped beyond recovery or any hope of enlightenment.” The Sun Goddess was terrible in her radiance, the glory of the Divine the power of her spirit. “And so you are judged! The Sage of Six Paths will be a myth. Your teachings forgotten. You shall be without power, without authority. You shall languish, and fade, unable to do aught but watch helplessly. You shall be one with the world, and removed from its conflicts. Exactly as you wished.”
The Divine Mandate crashed down over him, and Ootsutsuki Hagoromo was swept away by the River.
/…/
“At least Homura-sama lived up to his mother’s legacy.” Kira remarked, turning away from the River to grin at the fire dancing over distant mountaintops. That was her boy. Tobirama had this courting thing in the bag. “Did he argue against punishing the Sage?”
“Shi no Kami understands the Rules better than most enlightened mortals.” Tsukiyomi shook his head. “Besides, Homura says that he has managed to filter most of the Jubokko venom from his mother’s energies. We should be able to welcome our little rabbit home soon.”
“Truly? Kaguya-hime will return to us?” Aino fluttered joyfully, clasping her hands to her chest. “Oh! Tenji-sama will be so happy!”
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