A Showdown of Truths and Lies

At Uchiha Izumi's words, the children all turned to look at her.

They still hadn't recovered from their shock and grief, and now they desperately wanted to know the truth.

"What do you want to know? I should warn you, I don't know much, and I can't piece everything together. You can ask me questions, and I'll tell you whatever I know."

Uchiha Arashi sat down on the ground. There was no dirt here anyway, so he could just as well lie down.

"Itachi... was he really the killer?"

"Yes."

"Proof!"

"Konoha will soon issue a warrant for him. He killed Shizuka's parents. I saw it with my own eyes."

If the other evidence hadn't been enough to shake Izumi's faith, this was something she simply couldn't deny.

Before bringing Uchiha Shizuka to Shadow Space, Uchiha Arashi had found the little girl hiding in a room, where she had witnessed her parents' deaths with her own eyes. She had nearly screamed, but Arashi had arrived just in time, clapped a hand over her mouth, and dragged her away. Shizuka had bitten his hand in the process.

"He... why would he do that? Why, why slaughter his own clan..."

Izumi began breathing rapidly.

Her mother was dead too. Though Izumi hadn't seen her body yet, the entire clan had been reduced to a handful of survivors. Could her mother, who wasn't even a ninja, possibly have survived?

That meant the person she had always admired was the one who had killed her mother!

"I don't know."

Uchiha Arashi shook his head.

Of course he knew everything, but for now he had to pretend he didn't.

"Fine. Then let me ask something else!"

Uchiha Izumi froze for a moment, then took several deep breaths, barely managing to calm herself.

"Who else took part besides Itachi?"

"The village, and enemies from outside it."

"The village took part? Is that true?"

"Heh. Otherwise, where do you think I got this eye? Oh, right, you don't know whose eye it is yet. Uchiha Shisui. Have you heard that name?"

Arashi raised the test tube and held it up for them to see.

"I... I know him. Uncle Shisui used to live not far from my house..." a little boy in the crowd said timidly.

His name was Uchiha Dan. He was eight years old, one year older than Sasuke.

"You mean Body Flicker Shisui? But wasn't he already...?"

Izumi had heard of Shisui, of course. He'd been very active a few years ago and was a celebrated genius in the clan. There were all sorts of rumors about how he died. Among ordinary Uchiha, some believed the village had assassinated him, while others thought Itachi had killed him. Izumi had never taken either side; she'd never even thought about it before.

Only now did she suddenly realize there was something suspicious about Shisui's death.

"He was driven to his death by Shimura Danzō, the Hokage Advisor and head of Root, a special Anbu unit. I ran into him on the outskirts of the clan district and found this eye on him.

"Just as with Uchiha Shisui, the Konoha High Command couldn't tolerate a Uchiha genius living, so they couldn't tolerate the Uchiha Clan living either. They'd just never had a chance to act before. Now that Itachi has attacked the clan himself, Konoha doesn't even need to send many people. They only need to surround the clan district and make sure no Uchiha escapes."

Uchiha Arashi's voice was calm, but his words struck the others like a thunderclap.

"But... but why? Weren't the Uchiha part of Konoha too?" another girl asked through her tears.

Her name was Uchiha Ayatsuki. She was ten years old and hadn't even graduated from the Academy.

"Because the Uchiha Clan threatened the High Command's grip on power. Some of you are young and might have forgotten, but you remember, don't you, Izumi? The Uchiha didn't used to live here."

Arashi pointed up at the ceiling.

Izumi nodded, then looked over at the younger children.

"The Uchiha used to live closer to the center of the village. They moved here gradually, over the course of seven years."

"Why did we have to move?"

"Because seven years ago, someone unleashed the Nine-Tails and attacked the village, killing the Fourth Hokage and his wife. Someone saw the pattern of the Sharingan in the Nine-Tails' eyes, so the village decided it was an Uchiha plot and began suppressing the clan.

"And the Uchiha... heh. During the last Ninja World War, the clan paid a terrible price to deal with the Mist Village. But when the war ended, the clan got nothing out of it, and the High Command continued to distrust us.

"Many people in the clan were unhappy, and their discontent became another excuse for the High Command to suspect the Uchiha. The rift between the two sides grew impossible to mend. Fugaku was too much of an idiot to silence the clan's hardliners, and that's how we ended up here. It was too easy for him to die at Itachi's hands. I wish he were still alive so I could deal with him myself."

Uchiha Arashi's voice was filled with hatred.

He didn't really care about Fugaku, but the thought of that idiot ruining the entire clan made his blood boil.

The others, Izumi included, were stunned by what he'd said.

"Arashi, how do you know all this...?"

"Of course I pieced it together bit by bit. You don't think I've spent all these years doing nothing but running a bookstore, do you? I'm not as naïve as you, Izumi. You spent every day thinking about Uchiha Itachi, while I noticed a long time ago that something was wrong with the atmosphere in the village. So I investigated in secret while trying to turn things around. But... heh, who would listen to a useless failure like me, someone who couldn't even awaken the Sharingan?

"The hardliners clamored for a coup, the moderates cowered and did nothing, and Fugaku was useless. He couldn't control either side.

"Once I was sure nothing could be changed, I started preparing to save myself. I didn't know exactly when this would happen, but I knew it would. Fortunately, I survived and saved you all too."

What he'd said was a mixture of truth and lies, but it didn't matter. They had no way to prove otherwise.

Even if many people in the world knew the truth, who could they ask? Itachi? The Konoha High Command?

Once they were strong enough, the first thing they'd probably do was grind those people to dust.

Besides, the truth didn't matter. They only needed to know who the killers were so they could take revenge.

"Arashi, thank you... And you're not a failure. This ability of yours..."

Izumi looked around. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it. Is it an ability of your Sharingan?"

"No, it's another ability of mine. I'll tell you about it later."

Arashi shook his head and pointed toward a wooden box nearby. "Have something to eat and rest for a while. Tonight's events aren't over yet."