Indra Ōtsutsuki

Brown hair, trimmed short across the crown and longer at the back, defined Indra's look, with two bandage-wrapped locks hanging beside a dark-eyed face. His short brows marked him as nobility. In later years he bound the hair into a tall cylinder and gained blue markings that swept upward at the outer corners of his eyes. He dressed in a pale, high-collared kimono closed by a dark sash and trimmed at the collar with magatama, worn over a full black bodysuit; for his duel with Asura he donned complete armour and let his hair fall loose. Age left faint creases at his mouth's corners, and his hair, growing flatter, came to veil his left eye.

As a boy Indra was warm and easygoing, doting on his younger brother and grasping early the value of patience and careful thought. Even after others recognised him as a prodigy, he wore the praise modestly, wanting only to help, and he fretted over the future of Ninshū when people began chasing physical strength over spiritual growth. Black Zetsu's constant flattery corroded all of that. Convinced of his own vast potential, Indra grew proud of standing apart and demanded perfection of himself and everyone else. He came to prize independence above all, certain that raw power could secure anything, even peace, a conviction he unknowingly shared with his grandmother Kaguya, and he enforced rules without mercy or exception. For a time he kept his envy in check and still loved his father and brother, but the sting of rejection let Black Zetsu persuade him that the succession was his birthright. That love curdled into hatred, and his resentment would burden his Uchiha descendants as the Curse of Hatred. Judging Ninshū a cowardly, half-finished path, he resolved to replace it with ninjutsu, and his hunger for power ran so deep that he was willing to slay the two friends he held dearest to reach it, weeping even as he did.

Under Hagoromo's teaching, the brothers studied Ninshū in the hope one might succeed the great sage. Indra dazzled everyone with his gifts and realised chakra could be reshaped for countless purposes, an innovation others eagerly copied, though he grew uneasy as it drew people toward material rather than spiritual pursuits. After awakening his Sharingan, he drank in Black Zetsu's whispers and pulled away from those around him. To decide his successor, Hagoromo sent each son to revive a struggling land; Indra turned his Sharingan on the inhabitants, compelling them to tear down a sickening God Tree sapling, and came home quickly, only to find his father waiting on Asura before choosing. When Hagoromo named Asura, citing how his eldest could never truly acknowledge those around him, jealousy and rage consumed Indra. Rejecting his father's reasoning, he sacrificed the two friends closest to him and awoke the Mangekyō Sharingan, then struck at the village during the celebration marking Asura's succession, unleashing his Complete Body Susanoo. Asura, empowered by Hagoromo's Six Paths chakra, shared strength from the whole village and answered with Wood Release, driving Indra into retreat. He withdrew into hiding, founded a sect devoted to ninjutsu, and told his dying father that a cowardly peace would only breed greater wars, vowing to oppose Ninshū through as many rebirths as it took. Indra's legacy proved enormous: his invention of hand seals and early techniques like the Clone and Body Replacement helped launch the age of the shinobi, though history credited Hagoromo instead. His chakra passed down through reincarnation, and his will fuelled centuries of bloodshed between his Uchiha descendants and Asura's Senju line. Madara Uchiha carried his chakra during the Warring States Period, and Sasuke Uchiha inherited it in the modern age; only when Naruto, bearing Asura's will, finally reached Sasuke did the ancient feud between the brothers' lines at last come to an end.