Fugaku almost idly flicked a piece of chalk at a student who was trying to communicate with one of his classmates in some sort of improvised tap code that the students had apparently made up before turning back to his grading. The way things were going, his students would be testing out of their Second or possibly even Third years by year's end. He personally thought the new curriculum was coddling the students at a seriously bad time, considering how depleted the shinobi forces were due to the recent war and the Kyuubi attack. Based on the complaints he'd been receiving, his colleagues and his students' families didn't seem to agree with him.
Not that he cared.
As he gave Hyuuga Ko's impeccable work a near-perfect score, a familiar individual who could occasionally be seen wandering around the Academy poked his head into the room. An instant later, he Hokage was standing in front of his desk glaring down at him.
"Fugaku!" snapped the Hokage, who'd apparently turned up for a surprise inspection. "What is the meaning of this?!"
"What's the meaning of what?" Fugaku asked as he looked around trying to spot whatever it was that could've upset the Hokage. He honestly didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The room was in order, the students were all being quiet with their heads down and their noses in their books, and IT was quietly playing in the corner where the containment seals were holding it in place.
"That!" the Hokage snapped with a voice as cold as arctic ice as he pointed to IT.
He turned to IT to see if there was anything out of the ordinary that should spark such a reaction in the Hokage. There wasn't. The boy was quietly playing with the educational toys he'd been playing with since he'd taken over the class, and appeared to be reasonably content if his chatter, which included the occasional word and complete sentence, was any indication.
"The meaning of what?" he asked again, wondering what the hell it was about the quietly playing toddler that had made the Hokage so mad.
"The Prisoner Containment Seal on Naruto!" the Hokage practically roared.
He blinked, trying to process this. What was so upsetting about using a containment seal on a toddler in order to keep it in place and out of harm's way?
"He outgrew the playpen." he replied.
The Hokage paused, froze for a moment, turned to him, and searched his face as if he was looking for something. He either found it or didn't find it, because his expression grew inscrutable a moment later.
"You use Prisoner Containment Seals on your children?" the Hokage asked in a tone of voice that expressed that he was trying to remain calm.
"We don't use the full set." he replied, wondering why this fact was so shocking. Containment seals had been the primary method of corralling toddlers who couldn't be kept in a playpen and keeping them out from underfoot for generations. He himself had been kept behind one until he was four.
"...Don't...Use...The...Full...Set." the Hokage said, taking breaths between each word as if he were trying to keep his breathing under control.
"Exactly how long has your clan been using Prisoner Containment Seals on the children?" the Hokage asked once his breathing was apparently under control.
"Since before the founding of Konoha." he replied honestly, wondering what was so upsetting about the Uchiha using containment seals to keep their children in place when the Hyuuga had something like the Caged Bird Seal, which caused little to no comment despite how barbaric it was.
"You and your clan are ordered to stop forthwith." the Hokage said as he moved over to IT and removed the containment seal from him, erasing the barrier line which marked out the rather generous amount of space that he'd allowed the boy as he did so.
"Why would you do something like that?!" he asked, horrified that the Hokage would attempt to abolish a clan tradition that had a beneficial purpose for all involved without even considering the potential consequences. "The last time a toddler was let loose before it knew not to get into trouble, it got into a cabinet full of cleaning supplies and poisoned itself!"
"Be grateful that I'm being this lenient." the Hokage said as he picked IT up. "If you or yours had used 'The full set' on any child, there wouldn't be enough of you to be identified."
Mikoto paused in the doorway to her husband's study, wondering if she should leave him to his foul mood or not. Fugaku had had retreated to his study immediately upon his return from the Academy and had spent a good deal of the afternoon destroying things and ranting about the injustice of it all and how the Hokage shouldn't be allowed to destroy longstanding traditions. Her husband had been rather out of sorts since the Kyuubi attack, and had felt that the Hokage shouldn't have been allowed to retake his position after it had been passed on. But, despite that, she'd never heard him use such language in reference to the Sandaime before.
"What's wrong?" she asked when she finally decided on a course of action.
"The Hokage!" Fugaku replied. "He just came in and stomped on a useful tradition that actually has a discernible benefit. Not only that, but his lot are going to be doing some sort of "Child Welfare" check on our clan and, if anyone is found to be using containment seals on their children, they're going to be arrested and have their children taken from them."
"Why would he do something like that?" she asked, horrified by this revelation.
"Why would any Senju trained bastard do anything to us? I'll tell you why, it's because we're Uchiha!" Fugaku practically roared. "If the Hokage really cared about children, he'd be taking the Hyuuga children before they could apply the Caged Bird Seal to them, or disbanding that lot of Stepford Brats we keep running into. But no, he has to go and single us out and call us child abusers for using containment seals to keep our children safe!"
"What has he got against the containment seals?" she asked, honestly wondering what anyone would find wong with them, especially considering the fact that shortly after she'd turned Itachi loose from his for what should've been the last time, he'd gone and wandered out onto a battlefield.
"I have no idea!" Fugaku replied. "It's not like any of us are dumb enough to fully charge the barrier. A couple small shocks, and the kids quickly learn to stay within bounds."
"Night, night Naruto." The Hokage said as he tucked the small boy into the small bed that had once belonged to his own children, having decided to keep the boy close-by at his own residence for the time being. Naruto, being exceedingly welcoming of the attention, latched onto his hand and refused to let go.
"I'm going to need that hand Naruto." he said as he reached up and ruffled the boy's messy blond hair with the other one. The boy just giggled in response and clung to his hand more tightly.
He was glad to see the child so happy. He'd had the child examined by several of the hospital's best medics earlier that day and, as far as they could tell, the boy was none the worse for wear due to the casual cruelty that the Uchiha Clan Head had heaped upon him. A casual cruelty that had been heaped upon every child in the Uchiha clan apparently since time immemorial. A cruelty that would be ending now.
When he had first seen Naruto behind that prisoner containment barrier, he had almost killed Fugaku there and then despite the potential consequences. How the man could not understand how horrific what he'd done was, he didn't know. Prisoner Containment Seals were Prisoner Containment Seals for a reason, and if they were safe for children, they would've been used to contain them by everyone who could make them.
He'd know, he'd been trapped in one when he was a much younger man, and studied them extensively since then so he could learn any and every weakness they possessed, so he wouldn't have to depend on his teammates risking their lives to free him should he be trapped behind another one again.
Edited 7-18-15. Edited 9-5-16.