Those words, paired with her incongruous stealth outfit and "pitiful" expression, made her look rather like a mischievous girl fooling around in the middle of the night.
At her words, the Uchiha police officers around them struggled to maintain their stern expressions, looking startled and unsure whether to laugh or cry.
A midnight date? Seeking thrills in the clan's forbidden grounds? The Hokage's daughter certainly had an unusual way of thinking.
Sasuke's cheeks burned instantly, and even his ears turned crimson, partly from embarrassment and partly from shock at Naruko's sudden "nonsense."
He could not help turning his head and snapping under his breath, "What are you talking about?"
Setsuna Uchiha, however, was not swayed in the slightest.
His wrinkled face remained impassive, but his piercing gaze grew colder, as though it could see through any disguise. He snorted, his voice like scraping cold iron:
"Sharp-tongued little girl. So what if you're the Hokage's daughter? These are Uchiha clan grounds! If you enter the Uchiha's forbidden grounds, you must obey the Uchiha's rules!"
"Konoha's Hokage has no authority over matters inside the Uchiha ancestral shrine!"
The fierce insistence on clan boundaries in those words set anger rising in Naruko's chest.
Raised on her father Minato Namikaze's optimistic, open-minded ideals, she could least tolerate this kind of rhetoric that fenced the clan off and placed it above the village.
She abandoned any pretense of looking pitiful, stepped fully out from behind Sasuke, and thrust out her small chest. Her blue eyes met Setsuna Uchiha's gaze without flinching as she countered in a clear voice:
"The Uchiha are part of Konoha too! Uchiha clan members must obey Konoha's rules! And the Uchiha's rules cannot violate Konoha's fundamental laws! That is the principle of coexistence the Fourth Hokage established for the village!"
Her