The Hokage sighed and groaned when he saw the very large and very angry group of citizens standing outside the tower. He knew exactly what they were there for. He couldn't have turned Naruto's relatives away however, due to certain agreements that had been made with the Uzumaki by his predecessors generations before. Agreements that should have been kept decades ago. The fact that there was a mob outside was his fault however, for letting rumors spread and grow rather than having given an announcement regarding Naruto's relatives when they'd first showed up. As he was wondering how to get the crowd to disperse without calling in the ANBU and the reinstated KMPF and ordering them to start busting heads, he suddenly got hit with a bit of inspiration after he'd heard about the hundredth yell of "From Iwa".
It would seem that The Professor would be teaching a history lesson today. It was long past time to turn this back on the mob...
"How many of you have studied Konoha's history?" he asked the amassed crowd who were thrown for a loop by his question.
A sea of hands hesitantly raised.
"Good." Hiruzen said. "Now, how many of you know what the Red spiral on the standard Shinobi uniform is and why it is there?"
Far fewer hands rose this time, and none amongst those that could roughly be considered to be in Naruto's generation which included those less than ten years older than the boy. It seemed that he would have to be reviewing the Academy Instructors and Civilian teachers again as people had apparently left out a sizable chunk of the history of Konoha's founding which included the mutual defense treaty with Uzushiogakure as well as certain other reciprocal arrangements.
"Okay, time for an easier question." he said. "How many of you know the maiden name of the Shodai Hokage's wife?"
There were a bunch of looks of confusion at this.
"Oh, come on now. Many of you are old enough to have known Mito-sama while she was still alive. You should know this one."
"U-Uzumaki." one of the members of the crowd said hesitantly.
There were a bunch of shocked looks on the faces of the members of the mob who were under the age of twenty. He would most definitely have to review all of Konoha's teachers after the Chunin Exams were over next month. To not know something so important about the spouse of the First Hokage...
"What does that have to do with anything though?" one of the members of the crowd yelled. "That boy's relatives came from Iwa."
"A lot actually." the Hokage replied still speaking in teacher mode despite the fact that the'd dearly love to scream at the idiots below him and send them packing. "I'm not blaming anyone in particular here, but...If some of you had actually honored Konoha's agreement with its closest ally who had stood by us during the First and Second wars even when they themselves were being overrun and hadn't stood outside Konoha's gates twenty years ago chasing off refugees from Uzushiogakure, including a sizable number of descendants of blood relatives of the Shodai Hokage who had married into the Uzumaki clan, they wouldn't have had to go to Iwa in the first place. Ironic really, being taken in by your enemies because the allies you swore to stand by and who swore to stand by you chased you away. Especially considering the sacrifices Naruto's uncles made for Konoha during the war, and the sacrifices Naruto's mother herself made for the village..."
He could see dirty looks being shot at the "Konoha for the Konohans" crowd that tended to always either show up at or make this kind of trouble. A bunch of the older crowd were looking guilty now, and frankly it served them right. He knew exactly what they were thinking. Chasing off a bunch of foreigners was well and good as far as they were concerned, but chasing away Senju Hashirama's relatives? That was another kettle of fish entirely. A couple of Chunin who had ostensibly shown up as crowd control were looking at the spirals on their comrades' vests with new eyes. It seemed that word of what the spiral was had gotten around. Such things shouldn't be forgotten really. Especially since Uzushiogakure had been Konoha's sister village and the Senju and Uzumaki clans had been so intermarried at one point that it had sometimes been hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
As soon as it was clear that the history lesson was over for the day, the crowd began to rather guiltily disperse. Some of the retired shinobi who had apparently come more because Konoha's newest residents had come from Iwa were looking sick as they left. They had probably known and served alongside Uzumaki Sato, Uzumaki Ao and Uzumaki Kushina and were probably imagining what it would have been like for the three of them to have been forced to face and kill relatives on the battlefield because the place in which they had made their home had driven them into the arms of the enemy.
Haruno Kizashi had been part of the crowd more because he tended to go along with these kinds of things rather than be questioned why he hadn't participated. It mainly stemmed from his childhood where he'd picked on much like his daughter had been, but not because he'd had a "overlarge forehead". Since then, he had done his best to keep his head down, be normal, and fit in. Holding back his sharp tongue and his right hook had been a tortuous exercise in patience.
He, like his daughter, had a rather rare genetic mutation that cropped up in a particular clan. A clan he had distanced herself from when he had grown up. A clan he'd denied any relation to whatsoever after a certain incident twelve years ago...
"Can you believe that? He just expects us to accept that boy's relatives just because one of them was married to the Shodai Hokage? I for one am going to petition my Head of Clan to call for a meeting of clans to discuss the Uzumaki Clan's removal." one of his neighbors said. "What about you Haruno-san?"
"My mother was an Uzumaki." he replied. He'd been teased all throughout his childhood because his mother had been a foreigner. Now, he wasn't going to put up with it. He was going to tell everyone to shove it like he should have done a long time ago.
From elsewhere in the crowd, he heard a yell of "Say that about my grandfather's family again, I dare you!". It seemed that he wasn't the only one to reclaim a part of their heritage that had been hidden away like a dirty secret twelve years ago...
Tazuna frowned as he listened to the Chunin from Konoha who had escorted a merchant speak after the innkeeper had asked about Naruto. The younger of the two Chunin had made a face and asked "Why do you want to hear about him?" when the innkeeper had asked. Shortly afterward, the boy had launched into a tale about an angry mob who had tried to demand that the family that had shown up a while back be evicted from Konoha earlier that week. It was then that he noticed something about the boy's shirt and vest. He could tell that he wasn't the only one.
From the darker green patch on the young Chunin's vest, it seemed that the spiral that had been the symbol of the eternal alliance between Konoha and Uzu had been picked off recently.
"I see." he said. "So that's how it is."
"That's how what is old man?" the young Chunin asked.
"Kaji." he called to one of the regulars instead of replying. "Go see if the Daimyo would be willing to restore Uzushiogakure's charter and bring the village here instead of the old island. I'm going to tell the merchants to inform any Uzumaki they might encounter that going to Konoha would be pointless since the alliance has been called off. The Senju have turned their backs on them, and they're trying to kick the Uzumaki that have already settled there out."
"And to think we actually trusted you bastards to help us." one of the exceedingly elderly patrons who had once lived in Uzu proper said. "I think the other countries would be interested to see how Konoha treated its allies. We should have taken that treaty with Kirigakure when we had the chance. Odds are that Uzushiogakure would still be standing if we did."
"Being overrun by Iwa's forces my ass. You Konoha fucktards were sitting high and dry and doing fuckall while we were being invaded by the forces of both Kiri and Kumo, and we still tried to send you troops." another elderly patron spat.
He knew exactly how the old men felt. He would be sending Naruto a letter inviting him to come back, and asking him to stay permanently this time.
"Good going Ichiro," the young Chunin's partner spat as he settled in his tree that evening after the inn mysteriously filled up in the hour after their arrival though no other customers had walked in, their rooms had suffered a mysterious "mishap", and no vacancies could be found in any of the other inns in the area. "I told you doing that to your uniform would be a bad idea."
"But my mother..." Ichiro started, trying to explain.
"Should have been told to go to hell. Do you have any idea of exactly where we are?" his partner snapped, cutting him off.
"Wave?" Ichiro replied.
"A country that was liberated from a hostile occupying force by a team that included Uzumaki Naruto and Uzumaki Zabuza." his partner angrily snapped. "A country that used to be a protectorate of Whirlpool."
"Shit." he said, as understanding sank in.
"Do you realize what happened back at the inn?" his partner snapped again.
"A bunch of old guys got angry at us?" he replied.
"No, you moron. You fucking lost Konoha a bunch of customers. A whole country full of customers in fact. Not only that, but you and every last one of the other idiots who pulled the spirals off their uniforms because they don't like the- Naruto, or because our allies had decided to go the long way around when they noticed that Konoha seemed to be closed to them and took a pit stop in Iwa may have lost Konoha several potential allies. What do you think will happen when word starts spreading that Konoha has called off an "Eternal Alliance" and tried to boot the relatives of one of their founding families out of the village? People are going to start asking questions. Especially considering the fact that Uzushiogakure is no longer standing while Konoha prospers, and the fact that refugees from Uzu were turned away from Konoha's gates despite the alliance when Uzu fell." his partner replied angrily.
When his partner put it like that, defacing his uniform just to get his mother to shut up about his wearing the symbol of the "Demon's" clan was a spectacularly bad idea. Especially considering the fact that his very next mission had been to a place that revered the "Demon" and the Uzumaki clan as a whole. Rather than spending the night in a comfy inn as he had been hoping to do, they were forced to "rough it". Not only that, but he had the distinct feeling that the townspeople were barely restraining themselves from arming themselves with torches and pitchforks and running them out of Wave.
"Goodnight Ichiro." his partner said. "Tomorrow, I'm going to be doing a great deal of damage control, and that will include distancing myself from you. Not that that'll be a great hardship as far as I'm concerned."
Edited 2-27-17.