The air in the Hokage's chamber was thick with the dust of fallen monuments. Tsunade, the inheritor of a legacy she had just learned was built on a foundation of lies, sat in stunned, horrified silence. The heroic image of her great-uncle, the Second Hokage, had been fractured, revealed to be a man whose fear had cast a shadow long and dark enough to poison generations. Jiraiya, the worldly sage, was humbled, his understanding of his home's history irrevocably shaken. The accusation Rohan had leveled against them, that their village was ninety percent responsible for the very tragedy they laid at the Uchiha's feet, still hung in the air, a charge of treason against their entire worldview.
Tsunade had challenged him on it, her loyalty a desperate, flickering flame against the encroaching darkness of his revelations. And Rohan's response, delivered with a gentle, heartbreaking pity, had been the final blow to her defiance.
"I promise you, by the time I am finished, you will not be questioning my math. You will be wondering, with all your heart, if I was wrong. You will be wondering if it was not ninety percent Konoha's fault, but one hundred percent."
The words echoed in the tomblike silence of the room. A hundred percent. The idea was blasphemy. It was an impossible, unthinkable heresy. And yet, as Tsunade looked into the serene, sorrowful depths of Rohan's sky-blue eyes, she felt a terrifying certainty that he believed every word. And the seal on his heart guaranteed it was a truth he held.
"Continue," she finally managed, her voice a dry, hoarse whisper. The anger was gone, burned away, leaving behind only a cold, hollow dread. She had to know. She had to see the rest of this monstrous picture.
Rohan inclined his head, his expression one of a scholar forced to recount a terrible, painful lesson. "As we have established," he began, his voice a calm, steady anchor in their sea of turmoil, "the policies of the Second Hokage were a masterclass in slow, political strangulation. For five decades, the Uchiha clan, one of the two mighty pillars upon which this village was built, felt their influence wane. They were pushed to the margins, respected for their power but resented for their authority, their path to true leadership and prestige quietly, systematically bricked over. For fifty years, this dissatisfaction, this quiet, noble resentment, simmered just beneath the surface. It was a pressure cooker, the steam building with each passing generation, with each perceived slight, with each political appointment they were denied."
He paused, letting them feel the weight of that half-century of slow decay. "But a simmering pot can be managed. It was a single, catastrophic event that turned the heat up to its absolute maximum, that caused the pressure to explode into a rage that would eventually consume them. The true beginning of the end, the point of no return, was the night your successor and student, the Fourth Hokage, gave his life to save this village. The night the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked Konoha."
Jiraiya flinched as if struck. The memory of that night was a raw, open wound for everyone of his generation. The loss of his brilliant, beloved student, Minato Namikaze, and his fiery, wonderful wife, Kushina Uzumaki, was a grief he still carried every day.
Rohan's voice took on a far-off, lyrical quality, as if he were watching the events unfold on a screen within his own mind. "It was meant to be a night of joy. The birth of a son, Naruto. But a shadow fell over that joy. A man in a mask, a self-proclaimed Madara Uchiha, breached Konoha's most secret barriers. He knew the precise moment Kushina's seal would be at its weakest. He extracted the Nine-Tails from her body, and with the power of his Sharingan, he turned the great beast upon the village it was meant to protect."
He described the scene with a heartbreaking clarity. The titanic battle between Minato, the Yellow Flash, and the masked man—a battle of teleportation jutsu that warped space and time itself. He painted a picture of the village under siege, the Nine-Tails rampaging, a tsunami of raw chakra and apocalyptic rage, each sweep of its tail leveling buildings, each roar a death knell for hundreds of shinobi and civilians.
"The entire village mobilized," Rohan said, his voice now filled with a tense, tragic energy. "Your own sensei, the Third Hokage, came out of retirement to lead the defense. And on the front lines, ready to face the beast, the first and most powerful military force to rally was the Konoha Military Police. Led by its formidable captain, Fugaku Uchiha."
He looked at Tsunade and Jiraiya, his expression intense. "Forget for a moment the man he would become, the bitter leader of a planned coup. In that moment, Fugaku Uchiha was the loyal head of Konoha's police. He saw his village burning, his people dying. His Sharingan eyes, the very tool that could potentially quell the beast, were ready. His men, the elite of the Uchiha clan, were prepared to stand between the Nine-Tails and the innocent civilians of the village. They were prepared to die for Konoha."
A flicker of pride and confusion crossed Tsunade's face. This was not the narrative she had ever heard.
"They mobilized with incredible speed," Rohan continued, his voice now tight with a controlled fury. "They were about to charge into the fray, to lend their strength to the defense, when they were intercepted. A line of blank-masked shinobi appeared before them, barring their path. They were the ANBU Black Ops, but not the ones under the Hokage's direct command. They were the private army of the man who operated in the shadows. They were Root."
Jiraiya's blood ran cold. Danzo.
"At their head stood the man himself, Danzo Shimura," Rohan confirmed, his voice dripping with contempt. "Fugaku Uchiha, in the middle of a war zone with the village crumbling around him, demanded to know why he and his men were being prevented from doing their duty. He demanded to know by whose authority they were being stopped."
Rohan leaned forward, and his next words were delivered with the cold, hard finality of a judge's gavel. "Danzo Shimura informed Fugaku that the Uchiha were to stand down and remain on the outskirts of the battle. And he informed him that the order did not come from him. It came directly from the acting commander of Konoha's forces. The order came from Lord Third himself, Hiruzen Sarutobi."
The confession, the revelation of this ultimate betrayal, sucked the very air from the room. Tsunade felt a wave of dizziness, her hand gripping the edge of the chair to steady herself. Her sensei? The kind old man who had taught her, who had mourned with her, who had always preached the Will of Fire? It was impossible.
"Why?" Jiraiya choked out, his face ashen. "Why would the old man do that? It makes no sense!"
"Oh, but it makes perfect, terrible sense, if you look at it through the eyes of a paranoid old hawk like Danzo, and a leader like Hiruzen, who was always too willing to compromise for a fragile, illusory peace," Rohan said, his voice laced with bitter irony. "Danzo's reasoning, which he fed to Hiruzen in a moment of crisis, was simple. The only power known to be able to control the Nine-Tails was the Sharingan. Therefore, the Uchiha had to be the prime suspects for the attack. To allow them near the rampaging beast was to risk them taking control of it for their own purposes. They were to be cordoned off, treated not as allies, but as a potential threat, a hostile internal element."
"So Fugaku and the entire Uchiha police force were forced to stand by, to watch from a distance as their village burned, as their neighbors were slaughtered, as the Fourth Hokage, their leader, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice," Rohan narrated, his voice a low, mournful dirge. "And when the dust settled, when Minato and Kushina were dead, when the fox was sealed within their newborn son, the official story began to take shape. And it was a story woven from lies and sealed by silence."
He looked at them, his eyes holding a universe of contempt for the men who had orchestrated this. "The whispers started immediately, fanned into a bonfire by Danzo's agents. Where were the Uchiha?The strongest clan in the village, and they were nowhere to be seen during the attack.Only their Sharingan could control the fox… it must have been one of them. The Uchiha clan's public reputation was sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. They were publicly and implicitly blamed for the greatest tragedy to ever befall the village."
"And the Third Hokage," Rohan's voice dropped to a near-inaudible, venomous whisper. "Your sensei, Tsunade-sama. Jiraiya-sama, the man you so admired. What did he do? Did he step forward and tell the truth? Did he admit that he, the acting commander, had ordered the Uchiha to stand down? Did he defend the honor of one of his village's founding clans?"
Rohan shook his head slowly, a gesture of profound disappointment. "No. He did nothing. He said nothing. He remained silent. He allowed the lie to take root. He allowed the Uchiha to become the scapegoats, to bear the hatred and suspicion of a grieving populace, all to avoid admitting his own questionable command, and to avoid confronting the dark machinations of his old rival, Danzo."
This, for Tsunade, was the most painful blow yet. Her great-uncle's actions were those of a man from a brutal, bygone era. But Hiruzen… he was the man who had inherited her grandfather's dream. He was supposed to be its guardian. And he had allowed it to be poisoned by lies out of political cowardice. The image of the kind, pipe-smoking old man she remembered was shattering, replaced by the portrait of a weak, flawed leader whose silence was a betrayal more profound than any kunai in the back.
"After this," Rohan said, his voice turning cold and hard once more, "the simmering pot boiled over. The seed of hatred that Tobirama planted, which had been slowly nurtured for fifty years, now exploded into a raging forest fire of resentment. The Uchiha were now openly reviled. They were the police force that had failed to protect the people, the clan whose mysterious eyes were likely responsible for the tragedy in the first place. The alienation was no longer subtle. It was overt."
"And this is where the Third Hokage's brilliance, as you called it, truly shines," Rohan said, his words dripping with sarcasm. "With the Uchiha already denied political power, already denied the chance to awaken their greatest strength, and now hated by the common public, he and his council hammered the final nail into their coffin."
He stood up, his graceful form radiating a righteous anger that was terrifying to behold.
"Leveraging the very public sentiment his silence had helped create, the Konoha council, with the full approval of Hiruzen Sarutobi, issued a new decree. For 'security reasons,' and to 'better consolidate the police force's headquarters,' the Uchiha clan was to be relocated. They were kicked out of their ancestral lands, the central, prestigious district they had inhabited since the village's founding. They were forcibly moved to a small, isolated compound on the absolute furthest edge of the village, walled off and watched, their every move monitored. It was not a relocation. It was a banishment. It was the creation of a ghetto. They were being treated like a disease, quarantined from the rest of the body politic."
He looked down at Tsunade, whose face was a mask of utter devastation.
"And there you have it," Rohan said softly. "A proud, founding clan, systematically disempowered, politically castrated, publicly vilified, and finally, physically exiled within their own home. It was the final, unforgivable humiliation. The coup d'état that Fugaku Uchiha would later plan was not an act of aggression. It was an act of desperation. It was the last, agonized roar of a noble lion that had been caged, starved, and beaten for half a century."
Tsunade trembled, a violent shudder running through her entire body. She looked up at Rohan, her eyes swimming with a mixture of horror, grief, and a desperate, pleading denial.
"Proof," she choked out, the word barely audible. "I… I need proof. Of the order. Of Danzo. Of my sensei's… silence. I cannot… I will not believe this of him without proof."
Rohan's expression softened once more into one of profound empathy. He understood. This was the final pillar of her world. To accept this truth was to accept that the Konoha she loved was built on a foundation of profound injustice. He knew that to truly win her, to truly have her understand the world she now commanded, he had to provide it.
He nodded slowly, his own heart aching for the pain she was enduring. He closed his eyes, his long lashes sweeping down against his cheeks, as he prepared himself to delve into the memories of the dead, to pull a confession from beyond the grave.
"Then proof is what you shall have, my love," he said softly. "Prepare yourself. For the truth is often far uglier than the lies we tell ourselves to survive."