The Village Hidden in the Leaves, just like the rest of this world, was rotten to the core.
It had always been a nice thought for me when reading and thinking on history and the atrocities humanity committed without fault every century since their inception, to believe that we had finally reached a certain level of civility and enlightenment. I believed that we had reached a level of progress that couldn't simply be wiped out, that we would find ourselves on the correct side of things if ever in a situation to deal with the dilemmas of the past, that we would be there to correct injustices and morally push the world forward to the point our values dictated we should.
And yet, thrust into a world where power made might, where a daimyo could order any man to give him his wife, regardless of her wishes or his, where the Hokage could accept a mission to put an end to a son, to break a daughter, to genocide a whole clan, or even authorize slavery among his own citizen.
Absolutely everything about this world was completely awful as far as I was concerned, from Kumo's kidnapping attempts for a breeding program, to Hiruzen's tacit approval of Danzo's actions or the general apathy for the Hyuuga clan structure.
I hated Konoha with a passion, and would have denounced it as one of the causes of the problem rather than a symptom of the diseased minds roaming these lands.
I wasn't sure whether the village should be ashamed of its founders if this was the world they envisioned, surrendering compromise after compromise until their souls were as dark and forgiving of injustice as the Warring Clans Era was, or if instead, the Hokages would be the ones feeling shame for what their dreams of peace had turned into over the years due to human greed, bigotry and cruelty.
And yet, I was another cog in the wheel of monsters, trampling over the rights and lives of the innocent.
This was the village I was born into, the one whose' academy I would be a student of, its military, the organization I would allow to indoctrinate and use me as a child soldier.
Was there even anything I could do to change things or even absolve myself from the crimes against humanity I was an abject witness, if not a participant in, if only through benefiting from results? Was I willing to suffer or even lay my life down, even against the odds in order to protect what I believed to be the right thing to do?
Or would I instead cower back as everyone else did, accepting the world for the way it was, as most did in the semi-universal bystander effect plaguing the minds of shinobi and civilians everywhere?
Would I hide behind the notion that it was done for the greater good and in order to save more lives? How far down the rabbit hole would I allow this flawed reasoning take me to?
Would I condone the murder of a hundred innocent children if it meant saving thousands of lives and prevent a war? Would I be open to assassinating protestors to ensure a country would have access to food and timber during winter? Would I be okay with condemning a percentage of the population to servitude in order to ensure prosperity for a bigger majority? Where was the line drawn?
What kind of person would I be?
The Village Hidden in the Leaves was showing me my true colors, and for that reason alone, I despised it more than any other country in this world.