Father... Mother...
So I had a father and mother too.
And they were... great heroes.
"Then... then why..."
Naruto choked up as he asked the question that had plagued him all this time.
"Why... did everyone in the village treat me like that..."
"Why wouldn't they give me food? Why did they throw stones at me? Why did they all call me... demon fox..."
Naruto wept his heart out, venting all his loneliness and pain in that moment.
Uchiha Yao watched Naruto quietly without interrupting him.
This child needed to let it out.
Only when Naruto's sobs gradually faded did Uchiha Yao slowly speak.
"Because they were weak, foolish, and easily incited."
"And because Hiruzen Sarutobi was vile, selfish, and hungry for power."
"He needed an outlet for hatred to divert the villagers' fear and pain from the Nine-Tails' attack."
"He needed a controllable weapon to consolidate the power he had regained."
"So, he sacrificed you."
"He reveled in the villagers' hatred for you, because that hatred made him, the Third Hokage who protected you, seem all the greater."
Uchiha Yao spoke the cruelest truth.
Naruto stopped crying.
He listened blankly.
In his mind, the image of "Grandpa Hokage," the man who always smilingly handed him his living expenses and whom he had regarded as his only family, was slowly collapsing and shattering.
So... all that "kindness" had only been a disguise.
Everything I suffered had been permitted by the Third Hokage, even... caused by him personally.
Uchiha Yao reached out and gently rested a hand on Naruto's messy blond hair.
"But from today onward, it is all over."
"The one who used you, I have already turned him... to ashes."
"From now on, no one will dare look down on you, and no one will dare hurt you."
"I