A dense forest hidden by a wall of stone. A single burst of lightning touched down within. When it vanished, a young man laid it in its wake.
昔々
Ootsutsuki Indra groaned as he opened his eyes, squinting in confusion as his vision cleared. He'd expected to wake up looking up at the open sky, the tops of trees, or, by some miracle, at a ceiling. Whatever was above him was none of those. In fact, if he had to guess, he would say that he was... beneath a tree?
The prodigal son of Hagoromo slowly sat up, eyes widening slightly in surprise as a cloth fell from his forehead. The bed he was in and the blanket that had been laid on top of him both seemed to be made of leaves. Looking around, his eyes fell on a young woman leaning against the roots of the tree and sleeping. There wasn't much that he could tell about her in this light, not given the position that she was in. The only thing he could see for sure was her peculiar hair. It wasn't quite pink, but it wasn't quite red either. It was some strange color in-between the two. Her hair was long, reaching at least to her waist, and her bangs completely obscured her face, leaving him to wonder how she even managed to see. Still, he supposed that she had to have been the person who brought him here, which seemed a notable feat, because if her thin, delicate frame was anything to go by, this girl was far from strong.
The girl groaned softly as she stirred, looking over at Indra and brushing her bangs aside to look at him with vibrant hazel eyes. "Oh, you're awake!" She exclaimed, standing up and walking over to him before sitting down next to him, "I'm sorry. I meant to keep watch while you slept. How are you feeling?" She asked, attempting to brush her bangs aside again, as they had fallen back into her face the moment she released them to sit down.
"I'm fine." Indra said stiffly. He didn't want to say 'thank you', because that would imply that he had actually needed her help, and his pride refused to acknowledge that this thin, weak girl who couldn't see past her own hair had aided him any way, but he also couldn't find the gall to flat-out deny that matter either, being as she did bring him to something along the lines of a shelter.
"Um..." The girl bit her lip hesitantly, but then voiced her thoughts, "Forgive me, my lord, but... where are you from? You just... appeared out of nowhere in a bolt of lightning. I've... never seen anyone do such a thing."
Indra shifted his eyes in calculation of how to respond to her question. He wasn't entirely sure where he was, so he didn't know how to answer her. He hadn't had a particular destination in mind when he had teleported away from his father and brother. "First tell me what country I'm in..."
"Huh?" The girl seemed taken aback, but she answered him anyway, "Oh, this is the Land of Fire..."
The Land of Fire. His knowledge of world geography told him that that wasn't quite as far from his family as he would like, but... it could be worse. Besides... fire seemed... well suited to him.
"I came from a country beyond the Land of That." He answered simply.
"In a single jump?!" The girl gasped in amazement. "I didn't know that people with that kind of power existed in this world!"
Indra smirked in amusement. Clearly this girl was naive about the world beyond her homeland. "There are many who can wield such power, actually, but mine is much greater than most."
"I see..." The girl seemed thoughtful for a moment as she frowned, "Well forgive my insolence, my lord, but all that power is of little use if you exhaust yourself and wind up in a place like this. If I didn't happen to be here, you would probably be dead by now."
At this, Indra raised a brow, unsure whether to take her seriously or not. "Why? What is this place?"
"This valley is known as the Forest of Death." She explained, "It's filled with all sorts of dangerous predators. Some of them poisonous, others large enough to swallow you whole. While I have no doubt that such creatures would not pose a threat to you under normal circumstances, you were in no condition to defend yourself from them last night. You didn't even stir the entire time I dragged you here."
Indra was annoyed by this statement, but mostly because the girl before him was right. He had been utterly defenseless and in a very dangerous place. "And yet you live here?" He asked, trying to steer the conversation away from here.
"Sort of." The girl answered, "Although it's more accurate to say that I simply can't get out. I fell into the river that flows through this valley and was carried in. I finally managed to pull myself out in a spot where the water was more shallow and flowed more slowly, but by then, I was in far too deeply to find a way out. The path the river flows through is too narrow for me to simply go back the way I came." She looked up at the underside of the tree that they were sitting beneath. "I've been managing though. I've found that the spaces beneath trees like this one are too small for the most dangerous of creatures to make their way inside, and I can fend off the others."
"I see." Indra remarked, his eyes narrowed in calculation. Perhaps there was more to this girl than he originally thought. She'd been surviving on her own for a while from the looks of things, in a hostile environment that even trained warriors might lose their lives in, and she had dragged him to her shelter for safety, even though he was sure he weighed at least fifty pounds more than she did.
"Oh, forgive me." The girl said suddenly, "I've been babbling on and on and I haven't even told you my name. I am Haruka."
Haruka. The name suited her somehow. She reminded Indra of a fragile flower in the springtime. "I am Ootsutsuki Indra." He replied.
Haruka nodded in acknowledgment and tried yet again to brush her bangs aside. "Um, are you thirsty? I... I only have one water container, so... we'll have to..." She turned a bit pink at the ears and Indra realized that she was embarrassed about having to drink from the same container as him and suspected that if she had a choice, she would sooner just give him the container and drink from something else, but there wasn't anything.
"Yeah..." Indra replied. Haruka shyly handed over the bamboo drinking container and then moved away from Indra to check on something. When he had finished drinking, he found that she had turned back to him, holding a bowl made of leaves and filled with berries.
"If... If... you're hungry, well... I'm afraid this all I have on hand." She said shyly.
Indra nodded and accepted the bowl, "Have you not had any meat since you came here?" He asked.
"I have..." She said awkwardly, and Indra wondered just how many times she planned on trying to push back her uncooperative bangs, "I've learned to catch fish from the river, but... well, drying them isn't easy, so I only catch them when I plan to eat them right away."
"Hm." Indra said in acknowledgement. When he had his fill of the berries, he stood up. "Wait here. I'm going to check out the landscape a bit."
"Oh. All right."
Haruka did as Indra had said, fiddling around with things in her little shelter while she waited for him to return, which he did at about midday, carrying a bag of some kind in one hand and carrying something much smaller in the other.
"Here." He said as he sat beside Haruka, holding out a water container to her, "I found some bamboo and made a second one."
Haruka blushed. "Oh... thank you." She said while shyly accepting the container.
"Do you have a cooking fire?" He asked her.
"Um... smoke doesn't flow out from under the tree very well, but... sometimes I'll start one in the open space over there." She said while pointing in response to his question. Indra nodded and walked over to the place she had pointed out. He set down the bundle he'd been carrying and gathered various pieces of wood from nearby, piling it together and then, to Haruka's amazement, lighting it on fire using only his breath. He ignored her flabbergasted expression as he reached over and undid the bundle, revealing several pieces of raw meat within, and Haruka belatedly realized that the bundle itself had been a fresh animal skin.
"I caught some wild game while I was exploring." Indra explained, "We'll cook some now and save the rest for later. I'm sure we can use the skin for something once it's been properly tanned."
"Um, right." Haruka nodded as she walked over and sat down on the other side of the fire, watching as Indra prepared to roast some of the meat.
"I also decided to survey the area." He told her, not even looking at her as he finished preparing the meat, "This 'Forest of Death' isn't quite as vast as you believed it to be. Farther out, the trees are smaller. They're still tall, of course, but not as massive as the ones around here. I imagine that the large predators that you spoke of prefer to live among these larger trees, so we should head over in that direction."
"All right." Haruka said, fruitlessly trying to brush her bangs aside once more.
Indra sighed in exasperation when he saw this and moved closer to her. "Close your eyes and hold still." From what he could see of her face, Haruka looked moderately confused, but she obeyed him without asking. Indra retrieved a kunai from within his clothes and carefully gripped Haruka's bangs, pulling firmly enough that they were taut, but not so much that it would hurt her. He activated the Sharingan to improve his accuracy and then carefully cut her bangs straight across in a single motion, so that they fell just between her eyebrows and her eyes. "There." He said in satisfaction, throwing the hair that he had cut off into the fire. Haruka opened her eyes and blinked in shock when she realized what he had done. "I'm no expert in cutting hair, so I can't guarantee it looks good, but at least now you won't have to keep trying to hold it aside to see." Haruka looked down at her lap quietly, blushing lightly, and Indra quirked a brow, trying to determine whether she was somehow embarrassed about her appearance or just afraid to speak her mind. Maybe both? "Since it's unlikely that you would've survived winter out here, you must've been trimming them before you wound up here, given that your hair is significantly longer. Is there a reason that you allowed them to grow right over your eyes like that?"
Haruka looked away slightly, blushing further. "My forehead..." She said almost too quietly to hear. Indra raised a brow.
"What about it?" He asked bluntly.
"It's big..." Haruka replied, "Everybody makes fun of it... Makes fun of me."
"So your solution was to try to hide it by growing your bangs so long that you couldn't see and then get yourself lost in a deadly forest?" He asked incredulously, although it was almost more of a deadpan statement.
Haruka's ears turned even pinker, "I used to keep them shorter than that, but... I didn't really have a way to deal with them out here. You're not entirely wrong about the other part though." She hugged her knees to her chest, "I'm a servant in the Daimyo's castle. I have been since I was young. The other girls who worked there all made fun of me. Female servants in the castle basically belong to the daimyo. The only way for us to leave is if a man buys our freedom in order to marry us. They all said that would never happen to me, because I have a small chest and no curves and a big forehead. There's absolutely nothing about me that would indicate I could be a good mother, except for my wide hips, so why would any man want me? One day I'd just had enough. I wasn't thinking and I... I ran... I just wanted to get out of the capital for a while, but when I realized that the guards were looking for me, I got scared and kept running and then I dove into the river to avoid them, but the current was stronger than I anticipated and... well... here I am."
"You're rather wreckless." Indra remarked.
"I know..."
"At any rate, what does it matter if your forehead is big? Appearance is hardly important. You're a surprisingly strong girl for your size, and obviously smart and resourceful. I'd like to see any of the women who made fun of you survive out here for as long as you have. In fact, I'd like to make you my student."
At this, Haruka looked up at Indra, and for the first time, he got a clear look at her clear, hazel eyes. They were almost like gold. "Your student?" She asked in surprise.
Indra turned his attention back to the food and nodded, "I came to this land to find followers. All of the things you've seen me do, the lightning, the fire, they're things that any person can do, at least to a point. As I said before, I have significantly more power than most, but every human possesses the potential if taught. That said, my teachings are not for the faint of heart, but I would hardly consider you to be faint of heart."
"You would teach me even though I'm a girl?" She asked in surprise.
"The ability to wield this power has nothing to do with whether one is a man or a woman."
"I see. Forgive me, but... what are these teachings of yours called?"
Indra stopped to consider this, "It's a variation on my father's teaching, which was called Ninshu. However, Ninshu does not involve the things you've seen me do, which are called jutsu."
"Then... perhaps it should be called Ninjutsu?" Haruka offered, "Jutsu means 'technique', so it would be like, 'techniques of Ninshu.'"
"Hm." Indra nodded in approval before deciding that the meat was done and offering a piece of it to Haruka.
昔々
When they had finished eating, Indra led Haruka to the area he's spoken of. He used his jutsu to create a temporary shelter out of the earth, and then headed off to the nearest village that Haruka knew of to obtain supplies for building something more permanent. The young woman was rather surprised when he returned by using the Susano'o to carry it all.
"I'll work to build it as fast as I can." Indra told her. "The sooner we have a proper training hall, the sooner I can begin teaching you."
"All right." Haruka said with a nod, walking over to him with an earthen bowl that he had made, "Here. Whatever that thing was must've taken a lot energy. This mash will help you to recover from that. It probably doesn't taste very good, but... it's effective."
"You know how to make such a thing?" Indra asked, eating some of the substance and resisting the urge to grimace at the taste.
"I was a pharmacist in the Daimyo's palace." She admitted.
"A noteworthy occupation for a woman." He said with interest.
"Yes." Haruka said with a shy nod, "It's normally not even considered, but... the royal physician took note of my high intellect when I was a child and thought it would be a waste for me to be nothing more than a common maid."
"Hm." Indra nodded, feeling that the physician had been right. Perhaps that was why Haruka was more stouthearted than most women he had met. "Do you know how to make your own clothes?"
"Huh?" She looked up at him in confusion, "Yes, I do, but why?"
"I obtained some cloth from the village as well." He informed her, "Your current clothing is getting worn, and besides, it's not appropriate for learning my teachings. Make something for yourself that you can move freely in."
"Oh. All right."
昔々
That night, as Haruka slept in the temporary shelter that Indra had made, the enigmatic young man himself went off a ways to talk to the creature that had been advising him for years.
"I'm aware that it would pointless to have feelings for her." He remarked, "First I'm going to find out if she is worthy. After all, no man, no matter how powerful, can produce progeny without a woman."
This is a prelude to the Uchiha Clan series, because obviously, if Indra had descendants, then he also had a wife at some point. He didn't exactly seem like the type to screw around with various women. Also, yes, Haruka intentionally resembles Sakura to a point. Her name means "Spring Flower".