Naruto : Monsters: Chapter 63

Looks like owed Sasuke an apology, turned out he was right all along.

Konoha did murder his clan.

Oops, I'll be sure to send him flowers if I ever drop by his grave for a visit.

...

Looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised. All the clues were there, the signs laid out before my eyes for me to see. If only I had bothered to stop and think, to puzzle on the holes and wonder rather than gloss over it all as I had I might have realised it sooner.

I, at twelve, could see any inch of the village I choose to so long as I stood within its walls, and I knew I was not the only one who could. So that brought up the question, 'how had Itachi managed to murder his entire clan without anyone noticing?'

He couldn't have murdered them all in silence, not when they numbered over a hundred in total. Not when they had veteran Chūnin and Jōnin among them.

There must have been a battle, a clash of steel, an exchange of jutsu, no matter how brief it may have been, so why hadn't anyone noticed? In an entire village full of ninjas, who had all sorts of abilities from super-hearing to chakra sensors to eyes that could see for miles and pierce through walls, how had he gotten away with it without a single person noticing?

Simple, he didn't.

They had all chosen to look the other way.

On the day of the Uchiha Massacre, they made sure that Konoha was empty. That the majority of the ninjas who were responsible for patrolling the section of the village where the Uchiha compound lay received emergency missions and were assigned elsewhere, to the borders of the Land of Fire where 'reports' of increased activity of foreign ninjas had been sighted. 

While other people, who like me had the ability to sense what was happening from a distance, were either sent outside of the village on random missions or assigned to a location within the village that would place the Uchiha compound outside of the range of their respective senses.

All of which was done to make sure that no one would catch sight of something they shouldn't have and try to interfere. Due to this, the village was almost entirely barren of ninjas, holding only a small fraction of the usual population it usually had available.

The true irony of it all was that because the village was so empty, the Uchiha had decided to attempt their Coupe sooner than they had planned. With the village so barren of forces they had a golden opportunity to act, one that they had no intentions of letting slip from their fingers.

For a clan that prided themselves on their eyes, they were so painfully blind.

Perhaps if it had been in another time, under different circumstances, the Uchiha would have found it suspicious to discover the village so empty, but instead all they saw was the opportunity it presented. 

To them, to those who wanted to overthrow Konoha, it must have appeared to be a sign from the heavens. A perfect opportunity to strike had been granted to them and, given another day to prepare, they probably would have. It was nothing but pure karma that the very night before they intended to betray the village, they were betrayed instead.

And so, Itachi slaughtered his clan, and when the time came for him to make his escape they left a large hole in the village's security for him to do so. S Rank or not, there was no way he could have gotten past all guards patrolling the village undetected, not without being forced to kill some of them. And yet, other than the Uchiha that died that day, Itachi hadn't killed a single Konoha Shinobi during his escape.

If I had only bothered to think on it then I would have realised that the only way that could have been possible was if he had help getting away.

Everything made sense, even why the Hokage would bring the other clans into the fold when the time came to execute the Uchiha rather than try and carry it out in secret. The risks were too great not to. If he had attempted to exterminate the Uchiha in secret and the truth was later revealed, it would have been a disaster even worse than the Uchiha attempting a coup.

Had the other major clans in Konoha Ever found out that Hokage had allowed an entire clan to be exterminated, a noble one that co-founded the Village at that, it would have sparked a civil war at worst or have him imprisoned at best. There was no way that would let the matter lie.

And besides, it would have been stupid to try. With the eyes of the Hyuuga, the swarms of the Aburame, and hounds of the Inuzuka, the other clans would have noticed and figured it all out eventually, they would have had to be willfully blind not to.

The Uchiha steadily secluding themselves over the years from the rest of the village behind their compound walls, shutting everyone out as all the while rumours of their rising discontent and dark muttering continued to grow. Only to wake up one day and discover that the Uchiha, a trouble-making but extremely powerful Clan, had been wiped out overnight by a single Shinobi, one who had no motive other than insanity to do so.

No, it wouldn't take much to realise there was something else going on beneath the surface – and with the resources some of the clans had at their disposal, it wouldn't take much for one among them to put the pieces together.

But if they were brought in on it, well, then things would be different.

They – every single one of the clans – had agreed, none would be spared. Not even the youngest children. Should any of the survivors ever discover the truth, that it was their village that was responsible for their clan's demise, they would seek out revenge. It would have been strange for them not to.

For all of their callousness to life and death, within the Shinobi world duty to one's clan was an exalted trait. It was a rather common tale in the Elemental Nations for children of fallen clans to dedicate their lives avenging it.

They were duty-bound to; avenge their clan or die trying, no other option was acceptable.

So no, there would be no survivors, no children that would grow older and stronger in their midst, trained by the village's own resources, fed by its food, protected by its power, only for them to betray it in the end.

All would be killed, down to the last, for the good of the village.

All, but for one reluctant exception.

Uchiha Sasuke, only he was to be spared. That was the price for Itachi's loyalty.

His clan he would slaughter without hesitation; his cousins, uncles and aunts, his father and even his own mother, he would kill them all, if not gladly then reluctantly to fulfil his duty. But not his brother, never him. He was the only one who he would not forsake for the safety of the village.

Reluctantly the clans all agreed he would be spared. They all swore that they would not seek retribution upon him for the actions of his clan and that he would be treated as any other member of the village.

To secure Itachi's loyalty, they would allow Sasuke to live.

Even so, they were uneasy. They all understood the risk that Sasuke represented. Right now he was harmless, nothing more than a cub. But time had a way of changing that, and as the years go by he would grow, both wiser and stronger. And one day, should he ever discover the truth, Konoha may find itself with an anger tiger within its walls.

But they had no choice. It was a price they had to pay, and so they paid it.

They agreed with Itachi's demands but they were apprehensive. For they all knew that so long as Sasuke lived, the business of the Uchiha clan would never be truly finished.

Then a miracle happened.

Uchiha Sasuke had vanished.

Someone had taken care of that last unfinished business.

Only now that I had all the pieces in front of me did I realise how unbelievably lucky I had been that night.

To give room for Itachi's escape, security in Konoha had been lowered significantly. Guards normally patrolling the streets were sent to the borders instead, ninjas relaxing on their downtime in the village were sent away on sudden emergency missions, while many of those that still remained were sent to track down and capture Itachi. And perhaps most important of all, the Uchiha, the Village Police Force, no longer existed.

Over a hundred ninjas whose duty was to patrol Konoha's streets and guard the inner city were gone.

While the clans and the Hokage had anticipated it, they could not act on that knowledge, not without giving themselves away. It would have looked far too suspicious to have a newly trained police-force ready to take the streets the same day the last one died. 

To make the Uchiha's demise appear like the actions of a single mad man rather than the mechanisms of the village, they needed to appear as blindsided by the incident as everyone else. So they allowed the natural chaos and confusion that would follow such an event to reign for a time before they reestablished order.

...

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