Naruto : Monsters

One day, my father told me a secret.

And on that day, I learned how little I knew.

I thought I understood.

Back when I first awakened into this world, twelve long years ago, I thought I knew what it meant to be born in such a place, in this world of shinobi - of liars, of killers. Of Ninjas. A world full of lies, where every shadow could hide a silent killer and even the kindness smiles could be nothing but empty masks to hide a heart cold as stone.

I thought I understood that this world was one where only the strong survived and the weak perished, and that kindness was nothing but a liability.

I thought I understood all of that.

I didn't.

Back then I truly believed I knew what it meant to live in a world full of monsters.

I was wrong.

I hadn't understood a thing.

With a single sentence, my father taught me how little I knew.

The Uchiha Clan was slaughtered by Konoha.

Shadows danced across my father's face, turning familiar features strange. I didn't recognize this man sitting across from me, his face blank and hard as stone under the flickering light of the single candle set between us.

We were alone, so only I would ever remember the words he spoke.

That morning, the day following my twelve birthday and my last as an Academy student, my father called for me. He had brought me here, down to this dark empty room in the heart of the compound. Nothing but the worn tatami mats beneath our feet and a single lit candle between us.

Around us seals lined the walls, engraved into the wood by skilled hands long ago and were filled so densely packed with Chakra that I could sense them without my eyes. Fūinjutsu.

It was like standing next to an open stove, the power held in those seals lapping on my skin like waves of scorching heat, so dense was the chakra in them. They even managed to hold back the power of my eyes – my all-seeing Byakugan – so that even my vision could not pierce beyond those walls.

No. No, that wasn't precisely true. I could see through the walls, despite the seals best attempts to do otherwise, my sight still managed to pierce through them as they did everything else. Even surrounded by them I could, with but a single glance, see where everyone in the compound stood. 

From my mother, who was tending to the flowers in her garden, to Hanabi, who tried her best to help our mother but failed to do anything other than dirty her clothes with her efforts - though neither seemed to mind- to Naruto, who snoozed contently in the bedroom next to my own, dreaming who knows what.

I could see them all, but not clearly.

The walls distorted my sight, mudding my vision. It felt as if looking through a pair of old lenses that no longer matched, throwing everything slightly out of focus. I could still see everything that surrounded us but now all the small tiny details escaped me.

The chakra running the wall from the runes in a constant but fluctuating stream assured that.

In a single moment of comprehension, I understood their purpose. The seals were not meant to protect us from the ears of outsiders trying to listen in, but from the prying eyes of our own clan.

The Byakugan did not let us hear with our eyes but we did not need to hear to know the words that were spoken in the dark. Lip reading, a difficult skill to master due to the precision needed to focus one's eyes on a person's lips and lungs from afar, was not a skill possessed by me alone.

Whatever secrets my father was about to tell me, he wanted no one in our family to know.

And he had a lot of secrets to share. Not one or two but many. Dozens. Hundreds. In a room that no one would ever learn the words spoken between the two of us, my father told me all the secrets of my clan.

Shinobi were not good people.

We were not kind nor honest nor fair.

We all had our secrets, our own dirty laundry. Skeletons in our closets, both literally and metaphorical. An entire Clan of Shinobi that was centuries old? Our share of secrets could have filled a graveyard. And yet, we could not allow them to be forgotten. Each secret, every dirty deed, needed to be kept track of and accounted for least they returned to bite us in the ass one day. Secrets had a tendency to that. So we kept a careful watch.

As the future leader, I was expected to lead the Clan one day, which meant I had to know and manage all of its secrets. As I had graduated from the Academy and had become a shinobi in truth and in name, it was decided that the time had come for me to be inducted into the dirtier aspects of being a Clan Heir.

And so from the centuries of secrets that my father held in his head, the knowledge of which he had received from his own father, who in turn had been given from his own father and so on for who knew how many generations, he chose to begin with the most recent.

He told me the truth behind the Uchiha massacre.

How all of Konoha played a hand in it.

Leaders from three of the four Noble Clans of Konoha; Aburame, Akimichi and Hyuuga.

Leaders from the five largest Clans not among the noble four; Inuzuka, Nara, Sarutobi, Shimura and Yamanaka.

The Anbu Commander.

And of course the Hokage.

All of them had played a part in the extermination of the Uchiha.

They all saw the signs. How could they not? It was obvious to anybody watching that the Uchiha had become unhappy. They had all noticed their discontent, how unsatisfied they were with their position in the village, and when the entire clan had begun to withdraw into themselves, alienating themselves further from the rest of the villagers, they had all watched and took note of it.

The discontent of the Uchiha was an old grievance, as old as Konoha itself, there from the time of the village's founding. They had been passed over not once, not twice, not even thrice but on four separate times when it came to choosing who would lead the village. Though they were widely considered by many to be the most powerful Clan in the Elemental Nations, not once had any of their members bore the title of Hokage.

The discontent had been there for decades, long before the Kyuubi incident; the Kyuubi's rampage and the rumours that an Uchiha was behind the attack only helped fuel the embers of what was already there. Their resentment over slights, real and imagined, built over the years until it began to fester like a diseased wound, poisoning their hearts against the very village they had sworn to protect.

The other Clans, they saw the signs, they knew which direction the wind would blow and that trouble was brewing just beyond the horizon. They had all gathered together, in secret, to deal with the matter before it became too big to stop. And after months of meeting, discussions and planning, a decision was made.

The Uchiha had become a festering limb that would poison the rest of the body.

So, like the metaphoric diseased limb, they chose to amputate the problem.

It didn't take much convincing. At first they had wanted to reconcile with the Uchiha, to mend the rift that grew between the village and its oldest clan, but once they discovered that the Uchiha were planning to perform a coup of their own and overthrow Konoha's leaders, all talks of reconciliation were thrown out the window.

The decision was made that very night. It was unanimous.

The Uchiha were sentenced to death for treason.

Traitors deserved no mercy.

That was the truth behind the Uchiha massacre.

Every member of the clan, every man, woman, child, every mother, father, son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister, young and old alike, all were to be executed – none were to be spared.

I listened as my father told me with clear and passionless words the role he played in it as if he were speaking of the weather rather than the slaughter of an entire clan that he had once called comrades. From the oldest half-blind crones to the crying babes still clenched to their mother's breast, all butchered to the last. And not only did he support it, he helped make it happen.

Really, these ninjas made me look normal.

It was then, as I lay stunned by the revelation, that a stay thought crossed my mind and I had to stifle the urge to laugh.

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.

...

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