Sasuke couldn't help his soft smile as he shifted through the boxes and documents in his father's office. He never thought he would smile again in this haunted house, but many things had changed in these past few months.
He kept thinking about yesterday, and trying to unmask Kakashi-sensei. It was a failure, but a fun one. Everyone was busy again today, but Sasuke looked forward to the next time they could all be together. Haruhi-sensei was working with Mrs Nohara on something that had to do with bringing healthcare to the poorer in and around Konoha.
The Uchiha district was no longer a ghost town, but a place that sheltered the vulnerable of Konoha's population, who came down to the main house everyday to pay respects to the clan that was now sheltering them. If Sasuke moved the curtain back in the front window he would see several people in prayer.
At first, Sasuke had been unsure about letting people move in. He knew that these people needed places to go, or otherwise be homeless, but he hadn't wanted to disrespect his family. Having the main house stand empty as a reminder of the tragedy and become a monument while having the other houses occupied was a stroke of genius. It really soothed his nerves.
He and Haruhi had already gone through everything valuable from the other houses and had gathered everything into the Main house and the Naka Shrine. What Sasuke was looking for now was secret scrolls, only able to be unlocked with Uchiha blood, and only readable with the Sharingan.
He was looking for scrolls on the Mangekyo. He had unlocked it the night he had learned the truth behind why Itachi massacred their clan. A coup. It didn't make what happened okay, but the devastation Sasule felt for his deceased loved ones was enough to unlock the legendary dojutsu.
The problem with unlocking this extraordinarily powerful dojutsu was that it required chakra reserves that Sasuke as a 13 year old did not have yet. It would take at least a decade until his reserves finished growing. As of right now, he could only keep it on for less than two minutes. Even more troubling, he had noticed his vision had become fuzzy when looking at things in the distance. He needed more information.
Sasuke had begun practicing sensory jutsu he had found on Uchiha scrolls. Some Uchiha lost their vision later in life, and had to rely on them to get around. He would never be on Karin's or Haku's level, but he was already getting pretty good. He just hoped he wouldn't need it too badly.
Just when he was about to give up and call it a day, an ink stain on his father's desk caught his attention. It was always there, small, and from some of the many forms his father had to fill out as Chief of police, Clan Head, and one of the strongest in Konoha, but Sasuke something different this time. The way the ink stain dripped down…
There was a hidden drawer. Sasuke activated his base sharingan, only now noticing the previously hidden pattern. He carefully searched with his fingertips, before donating drops of his blood to the seal, and popping the lock.
Documents. Scrolls. Somehow, Sasuke knew he had found what he was looking for.
One of the documents was a summoning scroll. Sasuke gasped as he recognized the famous Hawk summons scroll passed down from clan head to clan head. He carefully pocketed it. The next document was an ancient looking scroll, the rolled up parchment yellowed and fraying, kept together by lamination and seals. He unfurled it, only to be met with detailed descriptions about the sharingan, and the secret to it's activation.
"...Many mysteries surround the Sharingan that we are still pursuing today. It is a complex and intricate bloodline, with a rich history, and many theories behind it's inception. The first ancestors of the Uchiha bloodline are thought to have lived some 2,000 years ago, who were born with a mutation in their eyes that allowed them to perceive chakra with them. The mutations built up, until the eyes split into two families, one which would lead to the Byukugan, and the other, our Sharingan. It's origins are debated, but what is ever more hotly debated is how they are activated."
Sasuke kept reading.
"...We know the Sharingan structure is a dominant trait. A certain eye structure, brain structure, and chakra pathways in the face are needed in order to activate and sustain the sharingan for long periods of time, and all of those of Uchiha descent have this structure in place. We know it is a dominant trait, as those who aren't even pure Uchiha, such as quarter and even those who are only ⅛ Uchiha, have the structure in their heads that is necessary for the Sharingan to activate. It's rare, but over the course of centuries there have been nearly a hundred incidents of those who are a quarter Uchiha and less activating the bloodline.
That is where the Sharingan differs from the Byakugan. Every Hyuga is born with it, and is capable of activating and using it with simple training. However, while every Uchiha is born with the potential, and the structure necessary to sustain a sharingan, many never activate it. Even if they are a full blooded Uchiha. As of last count, only 40 percent, less than half of the clan has an activated Sharingan. Only 10% have a Sharingan with three tomoe.
This, or course, brings up the question why? Why is it so hard to activate? With that, I lead you to my next work, "The Curse of Hatred".
He inhaled sharply. The next scroll was titled "the curse of hatred." Written by the same author as the first. He recognized the author as one of the few medical Uchiha to ever exist, Sumire Uchiha, who lived at the founding of the village and was also half Uchiha like his cousin Izumi. She had used her sharingan in order to do extremely precise and accurate surgeries. She was an accomplished scientist as well.
"The Curse of Hatred is a pervasive idea that has existed for as long as our feud with the Senju has. It is the idea that in order to unlock the Sharingan, a Uchiha needs to feel a strong, Tragic, loss. Because the negative emotion/situation gives them power, it starts a positive feedback loop, a cycle where they get consumed by negative emotions and act out in hate and selfishness in order to get stronger and eventually going insane.
This is, of course, Bullshit. And I am going to tell you why."
Sasuke blinked. Quite the strong stance to take. She sounded very confident though. The jarring shift from a formal academic tone to swearing was rather amusing.
The so-called "curse of hatred" is an unfounded, unproven, and untested theory that is the product of bigotry and propaganda against the Uchiha clan. The first time the Curse of Hatred is mentioned is in recordings that first appeared 600 years ago in scrolls written by the Senju as a way to discredit the Uchiha and make them look insane and mentally unstable so the Senju would be able to scoop more missions out from under the Uchiha and be hired instead of them. That is directly stated by the Senju clan elders in Senju documents as their strategy, as seen below in the attached scrolls."
Sasuke paused in his readings, carefully shuffling through the document to see the Senju scroll they were talking about. Sasuke flicked on his Sharingan, noting the ancient texture of the paper and the long dried ink. Indeed, it was exactly as the paper described, with the Senju clan describing their strategy by peddling the Curse of Hatred.
"It was a way for the Senju to both earn money and impoverish the Uchiha. The whole idea of "the curse of hatred" first started out as Senju propaganda.
"The Curse of Hatred", which we will now be referring to as COH, has never been scientifically proven, and has in fact been disproven by me and various other scientists. (I know Tobirama Senju fancies himself an academic and a scientist, but until he has gone to university for years, has gotten his masters degree in the sciences, and until he learns how to run actual unbiased experiments, whatever he says will hold no bearing in this conversation.)
First, we will look into how the Sharingan is unlocked. Each time the Sharingan has been unlocked, the unlockee has been under significant duress, or feeling extreme emotion. As a shinobi clan, those emotions are far too often negative ones, such as watching a family member being struck down in battle. This is where the COH comes in. It states that the Sharingan is unlocked with NEGATIVE emotions only. While it is true that the Sharingan can be unlocked through negative emotions, that is not the only way. Notice I said "extreme emotions." Those emotions can be positive as well.
I unlocked my sharingan when I got my doctors degree after a decade and a half of studying. I felt overwhelming pride and happiness in my accomplishments-extreme emotions. My great aunt unlocked her sharingan when she gave birth to a healthy baby girl after 4 miscarriages. She said it was the happiest she had ever been. My father unlocked his sharingan when my mother agreed to marry him after years of dating. He reported feeling "the most love I had even felt until you were born." My third cousin unlocked his when the second shinobi war ended, stating "I felt an overwhelming hope for the future." These are just a few examples of Positive emotion being the trigger to the Sharingan, blowing the Idea that the Dojutsu comes only from loss, and therefore the theory of the COH right out of the water.
We have established that the Sharingan is unlocked through extreme emotion- both positive and negative. And those Uchiha who unlock their Sharingan through Negative emotion aren't worth any less than those who unlock it through positive emotion.
Now that we know how the Sharingan is unlocked, let's look at scientific evidence that disproves COH. Let's take into account the psychological effects of unlocking the Sharingan.
The Sharingan itself gives the user the ability of a photographic memory. A photographic memory is when the person has the ability to recall something they only saw briefly in perfect clarity even years later. This can be a blessing and a curse. A double edged sword if you will. It is perfect clarity for remembering those answers on your math test.
And perfect recall for watching your family die.
The Sharingan offers battle prowess unseen in anyone else, but it comes at a cost that is not just physical. Imagine seeing your family, your friends, or your comrades die in horrifically brutal ways, and never being able to forget it no matter what you do. That is not hypothetical for anyone with the Sharingan. Having all those permanent, traumatizing memories that refresh themselves every time the dojutsu is activated takes a gigantic mental toll on the user. The Uchiha cannot go to bars to drink it away, or take drugs to forget it.
While the Uchiha clan does have techniques that allow for relief, most consider them too risky, and they require too much training. I'll have more on that in another article.
Sasuke thinks of Tsunade's drinking problem. He then realizes he will need to look for those "relief techniques".
The person often gets protective of the people they have left, and often suffer mental breakdowns and severe panic attacks after a battle.
That is not unique to the Uchiha. Trauma and violence is the rule of shinobi and Uchiha aren't the only one to get protective of those left or to suffer mental breakdown. To single this clan out is to ignore the very nature of the shinobi world and the problems inherent in it. It is to pin the problems of this world onto a single clan. Surely you can see how that is dangerous.
Instead of stigmatizing and discriminating against those who suffer mental illness from the violent shinobi life with rhetoric like COH, we should be providing mental health care, support, and working to shift our economic structure so that it does not depend on the violence the shinobi villages export.
The talk of mental illness brings me to my next point. Mental illness is something that plagues everyone who is a part of the shinobi world. You cannot be trained as a killer from birth and come away unscarred.
There are certain factors that make this mental illness worse, as we have established. Inbreeding is one. Many clans suffer from inbreeding side effects, Such as the Inuzuka and their low birth rate, and the Sarutobi, with their heightened risk of Dementia. Noble families often suffer defects as well from inbreeding, such as mental instability.
Uchiha who inbreed run the risk of inheriting mental instability as well. Mental illness is the result of both environmental factors(such as war, abuse, and poverty) and genetic factors. It is a well known fact that if you have relatives with mental illnesses your chance of getting them is increased. It's becoming more uncommon as the Uchiha clan gets larger and more diversified, but relatives who are too close and who marry can have children who inherit the mental illnesses that plague the Uchiha, such as depression, ptsd, paranoia, and severe anxiety. (I would like to clarify again that mental instability is a staple of the Shinobi lifestyle that should be corrected. Uchiha are far from the only people who suffer from it.)
Now to my final point. Self fulfilling prophecies. This is when a person predicts that something will happen simple because they believe it will, and then they adjust their behavior in a way that ensures it happens, because they think it will anyway.
For example, you believe that you will fail your math test, so you think "why bother studying?" and then when you go and take it, you fail, as you predicted, but not because it was set in stone, but because you didn't study. You ensured that you would fail by not studying.
That is a simple example. Let's take a self fulfilling prophecy and apply it to the COH and the Uchiha clan. Say that you believe in the COH, so you decide to take precautions. You discriminate against the Uchiha, limit their power so that if they do fall to the COH, the harm they cause is limited, and you spread warnings among the community to watch out. The community is now on guard against the Uchiha. They deny the Uchiha respect and dignity, and discriminate against them. Mental illness becomes stigmatized because of its association with the COH and research into treating mental illness falters. Now when an Uchiha suffers a mental breakdown, there is no one they can go to for help, and no one who can treat them .They are effectively isolated, alone, and bitter at their circumstances. They have been hearing all their life that they are doomed to fall to insanity and evil, and that no one can help them and there is no point fighting it. Everyone looks at them like they are a wild beast, no love in their eyes. So what can they do other than give up? So what do they do? They fall.
Uchiha are not born "evil" or "insane" or "power hungry" but the circumstances of discrimination and their enviroment can lead to individuals like that. Again, not just in the Uchiha clan, but throughout the elemental nations.
You need to understand, the Uchiha clan isn't just a clan, it's an entire ethnic group, a whole culture. To say an entire ethnic group is naturally vulnerable to being genetically evil is nothing short of eugenics. The theory of COH also discriminates against those with predispositions to mental illnesses, which is also eugenics. Please stop with that.
There is then the cultural aspect. The Elemental nations all have rich, vibrant cultures filled with myths and stories to tell their children and families. The COH has become one of them. A sort of warning to people not to step out of line, or the insane Madara Uchiha who eats babies will come and get them.
I understand that Madara Uchiha cut a very imposing figure, but to blame an entire culture for the actions of one man is the real insanity here. That he will blow out your Will Of Fire with his deadly gunbai.
There is also Uchiha culture to consider. The Sharingan is our most prized element, and is highly revered. In our culture, it is to be treated with respect, and only activated when needed, and not for trivial matters. This means that the Sharingan and it's memorization abilities are mostly only brought out during extreme, high stress situations, therefore straining the user even further.
I have proposed a plan to counter this. Start using the Sharingan during low stress environments. Memorize how your wife smiles, your baby's first steps, or a beautiful sunset. I call it "The Positivity Objective." You cannot forget the bad, but you can't forget the good now either. I've found it to be a tremendous help so far
That brings me to my next point. We need to contrast the Curse of Hatred(COH) with the Senju Will Of Fire(WOF), and how the COH myth acts as a vessel to discredit those who have very real gripes with the shinobi system.
The WOF is the idea that every individual(senju clansmen, then Konoha Shinobi) with the WOF of fire loves, cherishes, and protects the collective(Senju clan, then Konoha) and that they are all one big family.
Now, there are many flaws with that idea besides being hopeless naive and simplistic, that I don't have the time to get into on this paper, and the WOF and its flaws could honestly be a paper of its own. But to summarize, you are supposed to protect the collective at the expense of yourself, and no matter what the collective does wrong, it is always right, and if it's not, then your insane and imagine things and making a big fuss of nothing, and if it can be indisputably proven to be wrong then you are supposed to forgive and forget, because if you don't, how could you not forgive you family? Don't you love your family? There must be something wrong with you then. You must be insane to defy the WOF. Why, you must be power hungry and evil to dare go against your family!
Stop for a moment, and think about how tantalizing the WOF would be to orphans who were neglected in the orphanage and have no family. It's extremely effective brainwashing. In fact, it's a theory of mine that Konoha's orphanages are purposefully underfunded and understaffed in order to created orphans desperate for attention and goodwill to the point where they willingly sign up for the academy and completely buy into the WOF in order to get the recognition and validation they need. But, again, another paper for another time.
The senju WOC is the idea that the collective is always above the individual, no matter how many individuals the collective harms. It's the idea of "the Greater good". That sacrifice is necessary. How many people then need to be harmed for the greatest good? If there is a "greater good" then that implies many other smaller, equally good, goods. What about them? What makes them supposedly "lesser". How many people will be hurt until the number hurt by "the greater good" outweighs the people helped by "the greater good?" The WOF erases individualism, and replaces it with a fanatic worship of a collective, which was at first the Senju clan, before becoming the village. It states that no matter what the collective does or how it harms you, you need to forgive it and protect it. At all costs.
It invalidates your trauma, and squarely pins the blame on your for any injuries you suffer under the WOF. You become a child soldier and get poisoned by an area wide toxin released onto the battlefield by Konoha? It's your fault for not loving Konoha enough to get stronger and get out of the way in time.
The WOF makes mental illness something that is the fault of individuals instead of a corrupt collective. Making mental illness a personal failing instead of the side effect of a corrupt violent society is to shift the blame away from the rich, the nobles, the prominent clans, and those responsible who profit off of conflict and traumatizing people, and to blaming the victims who are suffering the most and who hold no personal responsibility for it.
It's a way to discredit those who have real, valid criticisms of the government, and tells you to turn a blind eye. And If you don't you run the risk of being painted as insane like those dirty Uchiha with their COH.
So there you have it.
The consequences of inbreeding, the consequences of discrimination and self-fullfinning prophecies, of Propaganda, myths, and the side effects of a photographic memory granted by the Sharingan can often be enough to push Uchiha off the brink of sanity, which is where the myth of COH is borne from.
The COH is a myth, propaganda, the side effects of mental illness, discrimination, and self fullfilling prophecies, NOT a genetic predisposition to insane, power hungry, megalomaniacs. What a ridiculous notion. Uchiha are not born with a little devil on their shoulder whispering evil sweet nothings to them.
To whichever Uchiha is reading this, you aren't evil. You aren't insane. If you hate, it is for good reason, and doesn't make you wrong. Hate afflicts all of mankind, not just Uchiha. Stay strong, stand strong, you have a family who loves you."
"..."
...Except he didn't have a family who loved him. Not any more. Sasuke checked for the other papers she mentioned, but that was it. They were probably with the rest of the scrolls in the Living room.
He couldn't get up to move. Too busy digesting what he had just read. This was quite the game changer. What else was in the compartment?
He reached down to grab the other documents, this time an extremely thick packet that looked much more modern. He flipped it open.
And froze.
He recognized this forum. It was the one they filled out for criminals. If it was for criminals, then why did it have the names of all the village elders on it? Sure, they did order the massacre of his family, but this predates that.
Heart pounding he picks up the documents. And reads.
What is revealed to him in those next hours are horrific. It destroys whatever little faith he had left in Konoha's government. It's evidence compiled over decades by the Uchiha police force, evidence they couldn't bring forward because the criminals in question had too much power in the village and over the "justice system". Here is a sample of the crimes listed.
Konoha hired and worked with missing nin under the table to assassinate fire country citizens they didn't like so it couldn't be blamed on them. Considering the fact Konoha is supposed to protect those citizens this alone would be enough to seriously tank the village's credibility.
The Human trafficking was espically atricious. The elders from the Sarutobi and Shimura clans would scout orphanages for promising vulnerable youth and then sell them into Slavery for a profit. This inculded Danzo's root, and sexual slavery. This included children as young as 7. None of these people were ninja, so the village couldn't even fall back on the excuse that it was "just a mission."The ring was very profitable in the capital.
Konoha purposefully let people-Konoha and fire country citizens included-die on the battlefields of preventable and treatable injuries so their organs could be harvested and sold on the black market for a profit. Their push back against Tsunade's life saving initiatives made more sense now. They wanted more expendable people to die. There was also evidence of this happening in the hospitals to lower income and vulnerable people.
Konoha manufactured addictive drugs such as opioids and sold them to crime lords to turn a profit. Sasuke read Gato's name in shock. Konoha worked with him? No wonder they didn't help wave out until now. And they got certain groups addicted in order to control them, because they had the supply. These groups consisted of certain nobles who would do what Konoha said in order to get their next fix.
Konoha purposefully set up ninja in the village who were getting too powerful and knocked them down a peg. The ruling class didn't want any threats to their power, and often set them up on faulty missions where they would be killed, or lose all credibility. His breath caught in his throat as he saw Sakumo Hatake's name listed as one of the victims. His views were too progressive for the council, and they purposefully sent him on a mission with faulty intel. They knew the third war was coming, and wanted a scapegoat in him. When he failed to die, they started a whisper campaign and inflamed rumors surrounding him, leading to the conditions where he then took his life, and left his prodigy son vulnerable to them. Dan Kato was another name that appeared that sounded very familiar to him.
Which was the next crime. They targeted prodigies and isolated them as best as they could, by killing their parents, so the only thing they would be dependent on, loyal to, was the village. They targeted Kakashi-sensei parents this way. Orochimaru was listed as another example. A woman named Yuago was also listed. She was apparently in ANBU with legendary sword skills. Minato Namikaze, the fourth hokage himself appeared on the list. A civilian-borne, his civilian parents were killed in a bandit attack staged by the village through hiring missing nin. Sasuke gasped as Tsunade's name appeared with evidence. Her parents were sent on missions above their grade, with the excuse of using the Senju name to smooth things over. However, the village knew it wouldn't work, setting the two up to die.
He read about children kidnapped and bastard clan children stolen from orphanages and taken to be trained in something called ROOT. An underground organization run by Danzo. The children faced extreme brainwashing and torture, and a seal kept them from talking.
Sasuke froze, and his mind recalled the training session with Sai, where he punched Sai in the stomach so hard his mouth opened in shock. He remembered the dark mark on Sai's tounge. Was Sai...?
The village knew about Orochimaru's experiments. They even commissioned some of them in order to test out poisons that could be used on the battlefield. He tested them on prisoners-prisoners of war, and those taken from fire country jails. There was an aside that pointed out that the penalties for breaking laws were harshened and more laws were enacted on purpose to get as many prisoners as possible. When the Uchiha protested these new laws by minimizing arrests, they were punished by the village with heavy fines, and became resented by the "good" civilian populace for not doing their jobs, and became resented by other discriminated against group who could have been their allies who now feared them.
Wow. He then saw a paper talking about how the Police force was used to oppress the Uchiha and keep them in check, and saved that for later. His mind was already spinning.
The village not only used the prisoners for experiments and to test out weapons of war, but to use them as free labor. The government purposely got the lower echelons of the village addicted to drugs, then made outrageous prison sentences for being in possession of drugs to get free labor from them. Slavery. The Village was also paid to keep these prisons running by the Daimyo, and so artificially inflated prison sentences and framed people to get more in there. Many of these arrests were made by ANBU black ops in the absence of the Uchiha's cooperation.
The village forced Kunochi, often clanless, civilian-borne, or orphans, to become pregnant with babies in order to boost the village's population. They were required to take these missions by the village and were unable to back out. Sometimes these missions were commissioned by clans who wanted new members and wanted to prevent inbreeding. The Hyuuga were the worst offenders, as no one wanted their prospective child to be enslaved. Sasuke gasped as he saw Neji's mother as one of these women forced to carry a child they didn't want.
Pregnancies with babies who had higher than average chakra could be very dangerous. Many of these Kunochi had their careers ended by this mission. Some died in childbirth. Some were saddled with children they didn't want if the child didn't appease the clan who commissioned them. This led to poverty for them.
Sasuke spat in disgust. Commissioned. A child. Like a fucking painting or portrait.
It got worse as he continued to read. Sexual assault was treated with a slap on the wrist by the government's laws. It created entire groups of Shinobi in Konoha who committed sexual assault on the regular. They wanted as many chakra capable babies as possible, and turned a blind eye to rape, which was against Konoha law. Medical care such as contreceptives and abortions were denied to women who were brave enough to come forward about their experiences, and they were force to carry to term a baby with enough chakra to very well kill them. And some of them did die.
Sasuke thought of Fumi's sexual education classes and thanked God and Haruhi for them.
When the women then had to give up the babies to orphanages those orphanages were then defunded against Konoha law in order to prop up the Academy and orphanages with more shinobi children. Creating a cycle where children had to sign up for the Academy or risk malnutrition.
Sasuke knew Konoha wasn't perfect, but the depths of the village's depravity had been unknown to him.
Until now.
His hands were quaking so hard that when he set the papers down on the floor, a sheet slid loose. If this information got out, Konoha's ruling class was done for. There was no coming back from information like this. It would destroy the village in every way that mattered. No foregin army needed to attack to take down the village.
He looked at the sheet. Read it.
"...It is this evidence, gathered over a period of decades and meticulously documented, that the Uchiha wish to release to the public, therefore ending the rot that festers in the heart of the village, and once and for all overthrowing the corrupt Konoha Leadership, and establish a new rule where the village can finally live up to its original goal-protecting its citizens.
"..."
...This was it, This right here was the coup! Not a dramatic hostile takeover, but a revelation of the crimes of Konoha. Although, at this point, Sasuke wouldn't have blamed the Uchiha clan if they wanted to stage a violent takeover. It was deserved.
THIS WAS IT! This, right here in Sasuke's hand, is what got the Uchiha executed! Why he lived the past years in silence and fear! This right here, this damning document with all the horrors Konoha has committed is what Itachi chose over his own family!
And there's no way the clan heir wouldn't have had access to this! Itachi knew what Konoha was doing and had done, and still decided they should keep their power!
Blood dripped down onto the floorboards, so much like that horrible night, and Sasuke gasped as his Mangekyo spun out of control. He needed to stop before he passed out.
He covered his eyes and staggered out. When he finally calmed down and turned off his advanced eyes, the new people praying out in front were just a bit blurrier than they were before.
Happy chapter 69! That number may be a joke, but this chapter is not! The last chapter was too nice and I needed to write this instead Lmao. Also, the dementia subplot with the Sarutobi clan and the Third Hokage hits differently with Joe Biden's whole situation.
Two chapter from now something EPIC is going to happen in this fic, I can't wait to see your reactions!
So, yeah. This chapter was a big one. What did you think of the worldbuilding? Did anything here in particular capture your attention?
Question of the chapter: What stuck out to you the most this chapter?