Shikamaru's guess was right. This was what Shinji had truly set out to do—this was his revenge!
After Madara Uchiha stormed out of the village and was ultimately defeated by the First Hokage in their battle at the Valley of the End, the Uchiha Clan seemed to have been branded with some kind of original sin, and the Hokage faction had remained hostile toward them ever since.
Yet the Hokage faction had forgotten that when Madara Uchiha left all those years ago, not a single Uchiha in the village followed him. They had all chosen to stay with the village.
The Uchiha Clan had made its choice through its actions, but the Hokage faction had never intended to leave them alone.
When the Second Hokage founded the Konoha Military Police Force, the village did indeed need a department to handle day-to-day law enforcement as it grew. But his deeper intention was to exploit the nature of the force's duties, along with the Uchiha Clan's peculiar arrogance, to drive a wedge between the Uchiha and the other shinobi of their own village.
In the decades after the Konoha Military Police Force was established, the Uchiha Clan not only managed to offend every ordinary shinobi in the village, but also grew increasingly arrogant and conceited because of the force's privileges. Gradually, they became the target of every Konoha Ninja's resentment.
It had to be admitted: the Second Hokage was a master at manipulating people.
With nothing more than the Konoha Military Police Force, he had made the Uchiha Clan exclude themselves from the wider Konoha family. This gave the Hokage faction a reasonable, legitimate excuse to eliminate the clan, along with the backing of public opinion.
Unfortunately, the Uchiha Clan's leaders had never realized this. They had fallen into the trap the