The air in the Hokage's chamber was a vacuum, stripped of everything but the weight of Rohan's final, terrible accusation. Tsunade stood, a magnificent, shattered monument to a faith that was being systematically dismantled before her very eyes. The proof. She had demanded proof. A desperate, reflexive defense of the man who had been her sensei, the kind old man who had embodied the Will of Fire for her entire life. She could not, would not, believe him capable of such a profound, cowardly betrayal without seeing it for herself.
Rohan looked at her, his heart aching with a divine, sorrowful empathy. He saw not the formidable Godaime Hokage, but a woman being forced to watch the heroic statues of her past crumble into dust. He understood her need. To heal, the wound must first be laid bare.
"You shall have your proof, Tsunade-sama," he said, his voice a soft, steady anchor in the swirling chaos of her emotions. He closed his eyes, not to remember, but to request. He reached inward, to the silent, omniscient System that was a part of his very soul, and made his desire known. Show them. Show them the truth of that night.
As he made the request, a new, clean notification chimed in the silent interface of his mind, a gift he had not anticipated.
[System Notification: For the purpose of providing absolute, irrefutable evidence to a key strategic ally, a one-time conceptual data packet has been generated. Item Gained: [The Uncut Memory of the Nine-Tails Attack]. This is a perfect, omniscient recording of the event, from all perspectives, playable by the host.]
Rohan's eyes fluttered open, a new, profound power shimmering within them. He did not need to describe the events. He could now make them live it.
"Prepare yourselves," he whispered, his voice taking on a strange, resonant quality. He raised a single, elegant hand, palm open. "I will not tell you what happened. I will show you."
He focused his will, not on creating an illusion, but on projecting the conceptual data packet from the System directly into their minds. It was not a genjutsu to be broken, nor a memory to be questioned. It was a shared, objective experience, a perfect, uncut film of history itself.
For Tsunade and Jiraiya, the world dissolved. The quiet chamber vanished, replaced by the sights, sounds, and visceral feelings of that terrible night sixteen years ago.
They were standing in the secret chamber where Kushina Uzumaki was giving birth, the air thick with pain and love. They saw the formidable barrier seals, the ANBU guards. They saw the joy on Minato Namikaze's face as he held his newborn son for the first time. And then they saw the shadow fall. They witnessed the masked man appear from a swirling vortex, his single Sharingan burning with a cold, terrifying power. They saw him dispatch the ANBU with contemptuous ease, saw him hold the infant Naruto hostage, forcing Minato into a desperate, impossible choice.
The scene shifted. They were with Minato, racing against time, his Flying Raijin technique a blur of yellow light across the village. They felt his mounting desperation, his cold dread. Then they were with the masked man, feeling the raw, hateful power of the Sharingan as he ripped the Nine-Tails from Kushina's body, her screams of agony a sound that would haunt their souls.
Then, the rampage. They were no longer just observers; they were everywhere at once. They were in the streets with the fleeing civilians, feeling their terror. They were on the rooftops with the shinobi, feeling their desperate courage as they threw themselves at the mountain-sized beast of pure chakra. They saw the destruction, the chaos, the death, not as a distant report, but as a visceral, heartbreaking reality.
And then they saw it. The scene Rohan had described.
They saw Fugaku Uchiha, his face a grim mask of determination, his Sharingan blazing as he rallied the entire Konoha Military Police Force. They heard his commands, crisp and clear, ordering his men into formation, preparing them to engage the beast, to protect the village, to do their duty. The Uchiha were not absent. They were the first to the front line.
The memory shifted again, this time to the Hokage's emergency command center, deep beneath the mountain. They saw a younger, yet already weary, Hiruzen Sarutobi, his face illuminated by the flickering light of tactical maps. And beside him, a shadow given form, stood Danzo Shimura, his bandaged eye and stern face a portrait of cold, calculating pragmatism.
They heard the frantic reports coming in. They heard the casualty counts rising. And then they heard Danzo's voice, a low, insidious poison whispered into the ear of a desperate leader.
"Hiruzen, the beast is being controlled. Only the Sharingan has that power. It must be an Uchiha. It is the only logical conclusion."
They saw the conflict on Hiruzen's face, his trust in his people warring with the seeds of doubt his own master, Tobirama, had planted in him decades ago. He was a man caught in a hurricane, trying to navigate by a compass that had been secretly corrupted.
"The Uchiha Police are mobilizing on the front lines," an ANBU reported.
Danzo's voice was sharp, urgent. "Folly! To allow them near the beast is to risk them taking control of it themselves! They could turn it back on us, use it to seize power in this chaos. You must not allow it, Hiruzen! For the good of the village, they must be contained. Treat them as a potential threat until we know more."
And then, the fatal moment. They saw Hiruzen Sarutobi, the man they called the Professor, the God of Shinobi, hesitate. They saw the weight of the world on his shoulders, the lives of thousands in his hands. And in that moment of ultimate pressure, he made a choice born not of wisdom, but of fear. A fear that had been carefully cultivated in him by his predecessor.
"He's right," they heard their sensei say, his voice heavy with a reluctance that did not absolve him. "Keep the Uchiha back. Cordon off the area. Do not let them engage. That is my order."
The memory then showed them the confrontation. They saw Danzo's Root ANBU blocking the path of the furious Uchiha Police Force. They heard Fugaku's enraged, disbelieving protests. And they felt the profound, bitter humiliation of the Uchiha as they were forced to stand down, to watch their home burn, branded as traitors by the very leader they were trying to protect.
The vision continued, showing Minato's heroic battle, his final, heartbreaking farewell to his son, the sealing of the fox, and the tragic peace that followed. The memory faded, and the quiet chamber of the Hokage Tower resolved back into view.
But it was not the same room. The very air had been changed, charged with the weight of an ugly, undeniable truth.
Tsunade was trembling violently, her face deathly pale. Tears streamed down her cheeks, not tears of grief, but tears of profound, soul-shattering disillusionment. The proof was absolute. It was not a story, not an interpretation. It was a memory. She had seen it with her own eyes, heard it with her own ears. Her sensei, the man she had loved and respected, had, in a moment of weakness, betrayed a founding clan of his village and then allowed them to be scapegoated for a tragedy he had prevented them from stopping.
Jiraiya was on his hands and knees, his head bowed to the floor, his shoulders shaking. The sound of his quiet, ragged sobs was the only sound in the room. He had just witnessed his own student's martyrdom and his own master's greatest failure in the same, terrible vision. The heroic narrative of his life, of his village, had been a lie.
"The masked man," Tsunade finally choked out, her voice a raw, broken thing. She looked at Rohan, her eyes pleading for an answer that might make some sense of the chaos. "Who was he? The man who started it all. Do you know?"
Rohan nodded slowly, his expression grim. "I do."
"Tell me!" she demanded, a spark of her old fire returning, a desperate need for a tangible enemy to direct her rage towards.
"I will," Rohan said calmly. "But not today. Knowing his name now will not help you. It will only put you in greater danger." He held up a hand to forestall her protest. "Tsunade-sama, that man's ability is not Ninjutsu as you know it. He can make himself intangible, allowing any attack to pass harmlessly through him. He can teleport himself and others into a private dimension. He is, for all intents and purposes, untouchable. A ghost."
He let that sink in before continuing. "Currently, in this world, there is only one power I know of that has a chance of harming him. A power that does not need to physically connect to do damage. A power that can crack space itself."
The realization dawned on both Tsunade and Jiraiya at the same time.
Tsunade looked down at her own hands, a new, terrifying understanding dawning in her mind. The Gura Gura no Mi. The power to create quakes.
It hadn't been a random gift.
The thought was a lightning strike that illuminated everything. Rohan hadn't just been empowering her out of love. He had been arming her. He had seen the threats on the horizon—a man who could not be touched—and had specifically sought out and gifted her the one power in the universe that could counter him. His gifts were not just acts of devotion; they were acts of profound, prescient, strategic protection. He wasn't just her consort; he was her guardian, her grandmaster strategist, seeing the entire board across all of time and making his moves decades in advance.
This understanding shifted something deep within her. The ugly truths he had revealed about her family, about her village, were painful, agonizing. But she now understood why he had revealed them. It was not to hurt her. It was to heal her, to free her from the lies so she could lead with clear eyes. A lesser man, a man who feared her power or her anger, would have hidden these truths. He would have sweet-talked her, placated her, told her the pretty lies she wanted to hear. But Rohan… Rohan loved her enough to tell her the truth, no matter how much it broke her heart. His love wasn't about comfort; it was about strength. It was the love of a true partner, one who would walk with her through the fire, not shield her from its existence.
Jiraiya, too, looked up, the same profound understanding dawning on his tear-streaked face. He saw it now. The depth of Rohan's devotion was not just in his submission, but in his foresight. He was not just a lover; he was a guardian angel, arming his chosen champion for the wars to come. The envy he had felt before was replaced by a deep, humbling awe.
Tsunade finally found her voice, her tone now devoid of anger, filled only with a weary, hollowed-out resolve. "So the village blamed them. And then we exiled them to the edge of the village."
Rohan nodded, his expression somber. He knew this part of the story was not yet over. He steeled himself, ready to deliver the final, most painful truths that would lead them from this act of betrayal to the night of the massacre itself.
"Yes," he said softly, his voice a balm on their raw souls. "And that, my love, is when the slow strangulation became a conscious, deliberate execution." He readied himself to continue, to guide them through the final, bloody chapter of Konoha's hidden history.