There was another purpose behind all this.
Whether he graduated or not, it was ultimately a test.
He was sounding out the Third Hokage.
The Third Hokage described in the book was, after all, the man seen through someone else's eyes. How could words on a page reveal who a person truly was?
He had to meet him face-to-face.
The whole Ramen Contest affair had been a pretext for that, from beginning to end.
He had approached the Third Hokage himself. Everyone else had merely served as cover, making his approach look less deliberate.
The plan had hit every mark.
What he had not anticipated was the Third Hokage taking an interest in him and specifically ordering him to enroll at the Ninja Academy.
Everything that came afterward-earning trust, becoming a leader, spreading new ways of thinking-had served two goals: graduating early, and determining whether the Third Hokage could truly become a fallback for the Uchiha Clan.
The ideas he spread were not things he had made up off the cuff.
He had selected every one, choosing only ways of thinking that the Shinobi World could digest.
He rejected the doctrine that missions came before everything else at its very foundation.
Complete the mission by any means necessary, eliminate anyone in the way, leave no witnesses-children had to have all of that stuffed into their heads as soon as they entered the Ninja Academy at five or six.
Anything was permissible for the sake of a mission. Survival came down to luck, but hatred could only be vented in combat.
If circumstances demanded it, setting aside grudges and working together was perfectly routine.
Once people had their humanity crushed out of them, their path was crooked from the very beginning.
Children should have minds of their own to think things through.
Generation after generation was being brainwashed into cogs in a war machine. That was wrong.
They had the right to choose how they lived.
He was giving them that choice back.
He would not let their minds remain so simplistic, so rigid.
Grappling with these ideas would certainly hurt at first, but that was better than stumbling through life without understanding a thing.
Children were more receptive to new things than adults.
People who had spent half their lives steeped in war, hatred, life, and death could not bear the collision with new ideas.
Accepting them would mean slapping their past selves across the face.
Memories they had struggled so hard to bury would surface again.
The reek of blood on their hands and the old deeds they bitterly regretted could swallow them whole.
They could not embrace new possibilities.
In the end, they would drag the next generation down with them.
If someone could take all of this in without batting an eye.
Then that person's heart would have to be as vast as the sea.
Someone like that would be worth confiding in.
That was the measure he had been using.
If the Third Hokage could not tolerate what he was doing, he would, at most, let him graduate without trouble and leave.
If he could tolerate it, even if he only agreed with a small part of it or invited him to sit down for a serious discussion, he would be willing to place his trust in him.
But the facts were right there.
The Third Hokage really had grown old.
That decisiveness, that breadth of spirit that could accommodate difficult things, was all gone.
Even if he entrusted the Uchiha Clan's fallback to him, he lacked the resolve to keep the balance. He would only handle things halfheartedly.
Just as he was doing now: pretending he had seen nothing and simply removing him from the academy.
With everything coldly set aside like that, it was hardly surprising that so many tragedies would follow.
He had originally thought that perhaps the Uchiha Clan could still survive in Konoha.
All he needed was to win the Third Hokage's trust, then weed out the clan members who refused to listen.
Now, it was clear there was no chance.
He had neither the magnanimity nor the courage to treat both sides fairly.
Not to mention Danzo lurking in the shadows, never once taking his eyes off them.
The Uchiha Clan could no longer stay in Konoha.
He locked that decision firmly into place in his heart.
At the same time, those scattered remarks drifted on the wind into the Underground Snake Den.
"You're getting more and more interesting, Uchiha Satoru."
"I never imagined the Uchiha Clan could produce someone like this."
"New ideas?"
"They sound like something worth chewing over."
Knowledge was interconnected by nature.
Uchiha Satoru's words struck Orochimaru's mind and kindled quite a few new sparks.
His serpentine pupils contracted sharply, and a laugh squeezed out of his throat, edged with madness.
"Uchiha Itachi already surprised me quite a bit."
"To think his younger brother-Uchiha Satoru-would be even more entertaining."
"I truly can't wait to see him for myself."
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