The area was quiet. The only sound could be heard was the drops of water falling from the sewer. Then...
"I don't get it."
Indra lifted his eyebrow slightly at this. "Huh?"
Naruto: "Why do we have to cause pain to someone else?"
"They hurt you, didn't they?" Indra said coldly. "How can you make sure that they won't do it again?"
"Yeah." Naruto sighed. "It hurts."
Indra: "That's why you need to strike back hard, not just to defend yourself, but to make them fear of the consequence of their arrogance."
"But what's the whole point?"
This caused Indra to froze a little. "What?"
Naruto: "Of keep hating and hurting each other. What's the whole point?"
Indra stared down at the child, the crimson glow of his Sharingan flickering for a fraction of a second. For centuries, he had seen humanity through a single, sharp lens: power, control, and the inevitable cycle of conflict. He had fought his own brother over the very concept of peace, believing that force was the only true absolute.
Yet here was the boy-battered, bruised, and cast out by his own people-asking a question so absurdly simple it bordered on insult.
"The point," Indra said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, rhythmic purr as he took a step toward Naruto, "is survival. It is dominance. If you do not break those who strike you, they will eventually break you. Pain is the only language the weak truly understand."
Naruto didn't shrink back this time. He looked down at his own reflection in the murky water, watching the ripples distort his image.
"That sounds exhausting," Naruto muttered softly, kicking a small splash of water. "If I hit them back, then they'll hate me more and hit me harder. Then I'll have to hit them even harder. It just goes on forever. Nobody wins. Everyone just stays hurting."
A moment of silence. Naruto then continued. "If having power means that we can hurt anyone who caused us pain, we're just slowly isolating ourselves. After all, the people born with powers are destined to help those aren't as fortunate."
Indra: "Why are you saying this?"
"Because, getting hurt isn't as painful as being alone." Naruto sighed deeply. "I have lived through it. In fact, I'm still living in it. So I know that."
For a moment, Indra remained quiet. Then...
"You actually reminded me, of a brother that I used to know."
Naruto: "I do?"
Indra nodded.
"What happened to you, and that brother of yours?"
Indra sighed as he began telling the story of his time. Naruto's limbs began shaking as he heard all the horrible things that Indra did. But then, he regained his composure.
"So let me get this straight: you fought your own little brother because your father favored his ideal of love over you?" Naruto concluded.
Indra: "And you somehow reminded me of him, the person who took away the very rights that I deserved."
"Look, I'm not here to judge on whatever your father decided in your time." Naruto sighed. "But I think you and your brother, each do have a point: power without love can only cause pain and isolation, but love isn't sustainable without power to defend it as well."
Indra stared at the young boy, a rare, complete silence settling over the mindscape. For over a millennium, scholars, warriors, and even his own descendants had viewed his feud with Asura as a grand struggle between supreme power and total compassion. Yet this eight-year-old child, sitting in the mud of his own psyche, had stripped away centuries of myth and laid the core of their tragedy bare in a single sentence.
The red light of Indra's Sharingan flared, the tomoe spinning slowly before coming to a complete halt.
"Power to defend love..." Indra repeated, the words tasting strange and foreign on his tongue. "You speak with the naive optimism of a child who has never held real strength, Uzumaki Naruto. Love is a fragile, fleeting emotion. It breeds attachment, and attachment breeds weakness. When you love something, you give the world a weapon to destroy you."
"Maybe," Naruto said quietly, looking directly into those terrifying crimson eyes without flinching. "But if you don't have anything or anyone to protect, what's the point of being strong? To just stand alone at the top where nobody can reach you? That sounds pretty lonely to me."
Deep behind the massive iron bars, a colossal, fiery eye opened in the darkness. Kurama had been listening in absolute, stunned silence. The Nine-Tails shifted his massive body, the iron chains rattling heavily against the stone floor. He glared at the small back of his jinchūriki, a complex mixture of disbelief and bitter nostalgia churning in his chest.
'This kid...' Kurama thought, his fangs bared in a grimace. 'He's talking to Indra Ōtsutsuki like he's just an angry older kid. Is he completely fearless, or just an absolute idiot?'
Indra closed his eyes, taking a slow breath as he folded his hands into the wide sleeves of his white robes. When he opened them again, the intense, overwhelming pressure in the air had subtly shifted.
"You are foolish, child," Indra said, his tone no longer dripping with pure malice, but with a cold, analytical curiosity. "Yet, your resolve is... unusual. You claim power is needed to defend love. But right now, you possess neither."
Indra took a step forward, stopping directly in front of Naruto and looking down at him.
"If you truly wish to survive this world without becoming a monster or a victim, you will need power. Real power. Not the brute, undisciplined strength of a wild beast," Indra added, casting a mocking side-eye toward Kurama's cage, earning a thunderous growl from the fox. "If you wish to prove your idealism to me, show me you have the discipline to bear the weight of my heritage."