"Impossible. This is absolutely impossible."
Uchiha Sasuke growled under his breath. Everything revealed in the video ran completely counter to what he had believed his entire life. His head throbbed as if it were about to split open.
First, there was the revelation that the Uchiha Clan had once planned a coup. If Uchiha Itachi had not slaughtered the clan, the coup might have actually happened.
Uchiha Shisui had tried to stop it. He planned to use Kotoamatsukami to alter his father's will, to change the course of the clan's rebellion.
But he failed.
Kotoamatsukami was taken from him. His final eye was entrusted to Uchiha Itachi.
The second shock was how completely wrong Sasuke had been about how Itachi awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan.
It was not because Itachi conspired with Shimura Danzo to assassinate Shisui.
It was the opposite.
Shisui himself had entrusted the remaining Mangekyo Sharingan to Itachi.
And Itachi awakened his Mangekyo by watching his closest friend die right in front of him. Not because he murdered Shisui, as the clan rumors had always claimed.
The "truth" Sasuke had clung to for so long suddenly became blurred.
Was what he knew ever the truth at all?
Back then, Itachi had seemed normal. He had been entrusted with the future of the village and the clan by Shisui. So why had everything changed afterward? Why had he suddenly turned around and slaughtered the entire Uchiha Clan?
"So what is the truth… really?"
Sasuke whispered to himself. Tears slid down his face as his fists clenched tightly.
"So the truth is that Uchiha Itachi bore the infamy of slaughtering his entire clan all by himself?"
Hatake Kakashi watched the moment Itachi awakened his Mangekyo Sharingan in the diary. With his sharp mind, he had already pieced together much of the puzzle.
No wonder Shimura Danzo, whenever he mentioned Itachi, treated him like a traitor who had betrayed the truth to Uchiha Sasuke.
And no wonder, after learning the truth behind the clan's destruction, Sasuke had gone after Danzo.
That, in turn, proved something else.
The annihilation of the Uchiha Clan had never been Itachi's doing alone. Shimura Danzo had been involved behind the scenes.
Root had likely taken part in the massacre as well.
That explained why, when Itachi met Kakashi later, he clearly had chances to kill him but chose not to. Instead, he spoke cryptically and even revealed the Akatsuki's objective.
He had deliberately let it slip that the Akatsuki were targeting Uzumaki Naruto, the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki.
At the time, Kakashi could not understand it at all. Why would someone from such an evil organization casually reveal their ultimate goal in conversation?
He had even thought his future self had cleverly coaxed the information out of Itachi.
Now he realized the truth.
Itachi had revealed it on purpose.
Thinking of the man who carried the curse of slaughtering his entire clan on his shoulders, Kakashi felt a swirl of conflicting emotions. He did not know what to say.
Even knowing that the Uchiha Clan had planned a coup, Kakashi found it difficult to feel genuine hatred toward them.
Not just because his closest friend, Uchiha Obito, had been an Uchiha.
More importantly, from everything he had seen, the Uchiha Clan had been pushed to that point step by step.
Back then, Kakashi had served in Anbu. He had personally monitored the Uchiha Clan for a period of time.
The Uchiha had not refused reconciliation. They had not given up on saving themselves.
People like Uchiha Shisui and Uchiha Itachi genuinely wanted peace with the village.
And how did the village respond?
Shimura Danzo forcefully stole Shisui's eye, crushing the last hope the Uchiha Clan had.
Or perhaps, as Danzo himself had said, even if Shisui had changed Uchiha Fugaku's will, what would it matter if the village itself refused to change?
And why had the village refused?
The answer was obvious.
Shimura Danzo.
He was unwilling to change.
His malice toward the Uchiha Clan was undeniable. He was not even willing to give them the slightest chance.
Danzo had cornered the Uchiha step by step, driving them toward annihilation. Even without Itachi, the destruction of the clan had been inevitable. The only difference was whose hands would carry it out.
The Uchiha Clan was indeed Konoha's strongest and largest clan.
But compared to the entire village, they never stood a chance.
"What kind of grudge does Danzo have against the Uchiha?"
Jiraiya muttered to himself.
He clearly remembered the old man mentioning that one of his teammates back in the day had been an Uchiha, someone named Uchiha Kagami.
So how had Danzo come to hate the Uchiha Clan this deeply?
The video only showed part of what had happened back then, but Jiraiya could easily infer everything it did not show.
The fall of the Uchiha Clan could not have reached that point without Danzo pushing things along.
No wonder Kaede Kitahara treated Danzo the way he did.
The man truly deserved to die.
And in all of this, what role had the old man played?
Based on what Jiraiya knew of Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage would not have actively pushed for something like this. But there was no way he had been unaware.
"Old man… old man. You really have grown old. Have you become so wary of the Uchiha Clan as well?"
Jiraiya recalled Orochimaru's words from before, from the footage of the Konoha Crush, when Orochimaru mocked Sarutobi Hiruzen for being old.
At the time, Jiraiya had understood that the Third Hokage had grown weaker with age. He thought that was why he had been so powerless against Orochimaru.
Only now did he realize that the effects of age went far beyond declining strength.
It also meant the fading of ambition and resolve.
When it came to handling the Uchiha Clan, a Sarutobi Hiruzen in his prime, whether in his thirties, forties, or even fifties, would never have been so afraid.
He had been called the Professor, the Ninja Hero, a man who stood at the pinnacle of Kage Level.
But now he was old.
And when someone grows old yet refuses to accept it, their actions begin to warp.
Jiraiya thought of his deceased student, the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato.
If Minato were still alive, things would never have turned out like this.
At that age, Minato would have been in his prime. He would not have feared the Uchiha Clan in the slightest.
Minato had even told Jiraiya before that he intended to resolve the ugly tensions between the Uchiha Clan and Konoha's leadership. That was part of why he had accepted Uchiha Obito as a student.
He planned to follow the Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama's strategy. The Hokage would take in Uchiha students personally, show goodwill, and gradually bring the Uchiha into the core decision-making of the village.
Even though he had not yet become Hokage at the time, that had been his intention.
But Minato died during the Nine-Tails incident.
With him gone, any chance to mend the relationship between the Uchiha and the village vanished as well.
The result was the Uchiha coup.
And Uchiha Itachi likely slaughtered his clan for that very reason, bearing the infamy and leaving the village behind.
How could Jiraiya not understand it now?
Itachi's actions had clearly been shaped by the higher-ups.
To some extent, Jiraiya could understand their reasoning. If the Uchiha coup had truly happened, it would have been a devastating blow to Konoha. Other villages would have taken advantage of the chaos, and the Fourth Great Ninja War could have erupted at any moment.
Letting Itachi bear the curse of slaughtering his clan, leaving behind a young and ignorant Uchiha Sasuke to one day rebuild the clan's honor, cutting off the legacy of the Warring States era and creating a new Uchiha that belonged to the era of ninja villages and to Konoha, was an option that could be accepted.
But his understanding stopped there.
Because there had been better choices.
If the village had been willing to lower its pride, there had been a real chance to dissolve the coup before it ever took shape.
Instead, the village did nothing.
Worse, Shimura Danzo acted out of fear of Kotoamatsukami and stole it, destroying the final opportunity to talk the Uchiha down.
And so everything reached this point.
In Jiraiya's eyes, blame lay on both sides.
A coup by the Uchiha Clan could not be tolerated.
But the Konoha leadership that pushed them to this edge was equally guilty.
"Old man… old man. What have you let Konoha become all these years?"
Jiraiya let out a long sigh.
For the first time, he even felt that Orochimaru might not have been entirely wrong.
Konoha's leadership had not changed in decades. Compared to other villages, Konoha had become rotten to the core.
There had been a brief, brilliant flash with the Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato.
Like a meteor streaking across the sky.
But it had not lasted long enough to solve the deeper problems.
Konoha needed change.
After Orochimaru's Konoha Crush.
This time, Jiraiya would not only stop Orochimaru's plan. He would push for a complete overhaul of Konoha's leadership.
Not just the old man stepping down, but the entire council that had ruled alongside him for decades.
Especially Danzo.
That man was a cancer. He could not be allowed to remain.
Everything Jiraiya had seen in Kaede Kitahara's diary, and everything Kaede hinted at between the lines, made it clear that Danzo's sins ran deep. Who knew how many inhuman acts he had committed in secret?
Jiraiya knew the old man had always hoped he would return and take over as Hokage.
But his own personality was ill-suited for the role.
Still, just because he was not fit to be Hokage did not mean there was no one who was.