"Let's look back at the environment Uchiha Itachi grew up in."
Tetsuya continued.
"Although Uchiha Itachi was born into the Uchiha Clan, he was different from the other Uchiha.
By the time he was born, the Shinobi World had already entered an age of turmoil.
He went to the battlefield at just four years old, and the brutality of war left Itachi desperately longing for and loving peace."
"The Will of Fire that Hiruzen Sarutobi so strongly advocated, along with Konoha's peaceful environment, was exactly what he had hoped for.
He believed that Konoha belonged to its people, and that the Uchiha Clan should be Konoha's Uchiha.
Yet this belief ran counter to that of the vast majority of the Uchiha. They believed that the Uchiha and the Senju had founded Konoha together, and that Konoha was the Uchiha's Konoha."
"As the clan head's child, he couldn't express his own views. And because those views found no acceptance within his clan, he leaned even further toward Konoha.
But as the Uchiha Clan Head's son-and his eldest son at that-he kept trying to find a way to reconcile the village and the clan.
Yet all of it was futile, for the reason I explained at the beginning."
Tetsuya tapped the coffee table. The water stains on it had yet to dry.
"Itachi was a genius, an acknowledged genius.
He, too, saw that the conflict between the village and the clan was irreconcilable, and that it was already on the verge of erupting.
The calls to seize power within the Uchiha Clan grew louder and louder. The time to choose had arrived.
There were only two paths before him now: rebel and seize power alongside his clansmen, or abandon his clan and its people."
Izuna picked up the thread.
"So he chose