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"Founding Patriarch, the two of us know that your lifespan stretches beyond measure. You're the only person in this world who can witness a contest that spans a thousand years."
Indra and Asura spoke together, their voices overlapping with an eerie synchronicity that only lifelong rivals could produce.
"..." Manji's eyes flickered. A quiet sigh escaped him before he finally nodded.
Once these two were gone, the next thousand years would be a long, empty stretch. No familiar faces. No one he'd personally taught or raised or watched grow up.
After Asura's death, the next batch of people he'd recognize wouldn't arrive until the era of Uchiha Tajima, Senju Butsuma, and their generation. A long wait.
Might as well play referee. He was genuinely curious, too. Over a thousand years of reincarnated grudge matches, who would actually come out ahead? Indra's line or Asura's?
Canon had glossed over the whole thing. A brief mention that the cycle continued, then it skipped straight to Hashirama and Madara, then Naruto and Sasuke. All the reincarnations in between? Never shown. Never explored.
"If your minds are made up, then follow me."
Manji turned and walked. His silhouette drifted through the Sage mist like ink dissolving in water.
Indra and Asura fell in behind him without hesitation. Up moss-covered stone stairs, through ancient groves where the trees were older than most nations, until they reached the innermost platform at the very summit of Longevity Peak.
Here, the ambient Sage chakra was so dense it was almost visible. The air itself felt thick, charged, alive. The spiritual heart of Mount Myōboku.
"We're here."
Manji stopped. Closed his eyes. His aura dropped to absolute zero, as if every trace of his existence had been withdrawn into a single point.
Then his eyes snapped open.
The Rinnegan blazed to life. Concentric violet rings pulsing with ancient, terrible authority. The pressure rolled outward across the entire peak like a slow-motion avalanche.
"I'm going to use the Rinnegan to extract a portion of each of your souls. The remainder will enter the reincarnation cycle on its own."
His voice was matter-of-fact. Like a doctor explaining a routine procedure.
Indra and Asura looked at each other one last time. Whatever turbulence they felt, they swallowed it. Both closed their eyes. Both let their bodies go slack.
Manji vanished.
An afterimage hung in the air where he'd been standing. By the time it faded, he was already behind them, one palm resting on each brother's head.
The Rinnegan flared. What he performed next was the spiritual equivalent of what the Human Path of Pain would one day be feared for: direct soul extraction.
Two blue-white silhouettes began rising from the brothers' skulls, pulled upward by invisible threads. Wispy. Translucent. The distilled essence of their obsession and their power, separated strand by strand from the whole.
"Seal."
An ancient sake gourd materialized in his free hand. The same vessel that housed the Sword of Totsuka. Its mouth yawned open, and an irresistible vacuum dragged both soul fragments inside, sealing them in an instant.
The agony hit both brothers at the same time.
Their legs gave out. They dropped to their knees on the stone platform, faces chalk-white, breathing in shallow, ragged gasps. Having a piece of your soul physically removed wasn't the kind of thing you walked off.
"Done."
Manji withdrew his hands. The Rinnegan faded back to his normal eyes.
He looked down at the two kneeling figures.
"Your sealed soul fragments will sleep inside this vessel for a thousand years. When the time is up, I'll release them, and we'll meet again. Right here. Longevity Peak."
Half of each soul would cycle through reincarnation, fighting the same fight across lifetime after lifetime. The other half would remain frozen in the Sword of Totsuka, preserved in dreamless suspension.
When the millennium ended, Manji would wake them both, and they'd see the scoreboard for themselves.
"THANK YOU, FOUNDING PATRIARCH!"
The brothers forced themselves upright, managed shaky bows, then began the long walk down the mountain.
At the edge of the peak, Asura stopped. Turned to face his brother.
"Indra... see you in a thousand years."
His voice was soft.
Indra glanced sideways at him. Cold eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Your reincarnations won't all be as lucky as you."
No warmth. No farewell. Just that, and then Indra turned his back and disappeared into the mist without looking back once.
Asura watched the empty space where his brother had been, and something heavy settled in his chest. "You couldn't even call me 'brother' one last time..."
Just then, Fukasaku and Black Zetsu appeared on the path behind him.
"Lord Asura. What needs to be released should be released."
Fukasaku sat perched on Black Zetsu's shoulder, palms pressed together.
Asura considered the words. Nodded slowly.
"Thank you both for the wisdom." He bowed to the two sages, then turned and walked away from Longevity Peak. His footsteps grew fainter until the mountain swallowed them entirely.
"Setting aside their ideological differences, Indra really is exceptional. But Asura's something else entirely," Fukasaku mused.
Black Zetsu nodded. By the standards of conventional leadership, Indra was the more natural ruler. Decisive. Commanding. Efficient. Asura was more of a... figurehead. The kind of leader people followed because they wanted to, not because they were afraid of what happened if they didn't.
"The late bloomer ends up growing taller than the early riser. Funny how that works," Black Zetsu observed.
Fukasaku's expression tightened. He stroked his own eyebrows thoughtfully. "Crude way to put it... but not wrong."
..............
Atop the peak, Manji stood alone, hands behind his back, watching the direction both brothers had vanished.
He said nothing for a long time.
Hagoromo had been dead for decades. Indra and Asura were both deep into middle age now, with limited years remaining. And far away on the moon, Hamura Ōtsutsuki was approaching the end of his road as well.
That last piece of intelligence wasn't guesswork. Mount Myōboku's network had quietly extended its reach to the lunar surface years ago. When Hamura first led his followers to the moon, Manji had already planted a toad operative among them. Reports on Hamura's declining health had been trickling back for some time.
"Come to think of it, that branch of descendants on the moon might still prove useful."
Manji murmured to himself, then closed his eyes and activated the Reverse Summoning Technique.
His mastery of the jutsu had reached a level where it required nothing from the other end. No cooperation. No preparation. No signal. He could pull it off unilaterally, anywhere, anytime.
On the moon's surface, inside a dwelling belonging to one of Hamura's descendants, a sleeping clan member's mouth suddenly stretched wide open.
A palm-sized green toad scrambled out from between his teeth, dropped to the cold lunar ground, and immediately opened its own mouth as wide as it would go.
Sage-infused mist billowed outward in a thick, rolling cloud. And from within that cloud, a figure took shape.
Manji set foot on the moon.
"Made it."
He swept his perception outward, blanketing the entire lunar surface in a single pulse.
A few seconds was all it took. Nearly several thousand life signatures. All carrying traces of Hamura's bloodline.
"Impressive. They've been busy up here."
Manji registered the sheer number of Hamura's descendants populating the moon and let out a low whistle.
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