Sarutobi Hiruzen, Third Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaf . -"
"In conclusion, the Uchiha Clan's so-called 'Curse of Hatred' as coined by the Second Hokage has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Though founded by Tobirama Senju and ostensibly given entirely to the Uchiha as a sign of trust and good faith between the Senju and themselves, the Konoha Military Police has instead become the white elephant through which the Uchiha Clan is being alienated.
This is further exacerbated by a variety of ancillary factors: building the police station next to a prison, the lack of involvement by the Uchiha clan in countering the Nine Tails' attack, moving the Uchiha Clan grounds to the outskirts of the village instead of inward during the rebuilding, and the visceral fight or flight response experienced by humans to the threat of mind control – which the Uchiha habitually resort to, even outside those rare cases where they have to act against other shinobi. This is coupled with the perceived lack of mechanisms for appeal in case of police overstep, as those handling the appeals are the same, either literally or figuratively, as those committing the perceived abuses to begin with.
Based on the statistical trends laid out previously, an irreversible breakdown of Konoha-Uchiha relations will most likely reach the tipping point in as little as a year. Therefore, a fundamental change in policy and practice is urgently required, both to break the 'abuse privileges' narrative that has resulted from this monopoly on punitive force, as well as to provide alternative vectors of interaction through which the optics of the Uchiha Clan may be rehabilitated.
The following are the scenarios most likely to occur according to current projections, with recommendations given to hopefully prevent them, or failing that mitigate the consequences. "
At his signal, Crow paused the video that Hiruzen and this expanded version of his council were still not done picking apart despite having already watched it eight different times during their closed-room discussions, with abundant pauses and rewinds during each. His old teammates Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu, Root Commander Shimura Danzo, Jonin Commander Nara Shikaku, even the head of the Konoha Torture and Interrogation Force was present, Morino Ibiki.
Hiruzen had also chosen to always have Uchiha Shisui among the Anbu on duty for these past four days, as an unofficial liaison with the Uchiha Clan head. Uchiha Fugaku's attendance during the first day had almost devolved into a screaming match between him and Danzo, before the former stormed out in disgust.
Sarutobi was honestly surprised Fugaku had requested to be present for this 'final' 'evaluation' of Masanari Hanzo's 'scientific thesis,' despite his so very personal stake in the issue.
Shikaku sighed gustily and rested his chin in his hand. "That this man is not a shinobi is a damned tragedy.
"
"Are we still sure he isn't?" Fugaku grunted, pointedly not looking at Danzo.
"We've investigated thoroughly. If he's a ninja, he's both the best and least effective damn spy in all of written history," Ibiki replied.
"Also, I disguised myself and 'ran into' him the evening after. Said I saw him coming out of the Hokage Tower and asked him what it was like to be a civilian inside.
The man looked at me like I was insane for thinking he wouldn't make me – even though I fooled experienced ninja with the same trick and half the effort. He then told me, very seriously over his armful of copper thread, magnets and rubber bands, that he wouldn't know because he was too busy potentially signing his own death warrant in service of 'defending his doctoral thesis in political science.
' I didn't even have to fake my laughter, I thought him seeing through me was just a lucky shot in the dark, that his self-awareness was an act, after all, what kind of doctor is that?"
"Isn't he though?" Homura mused. "He identified the symptoms, diagnosed the disease, investigated the subject's medical history and provided treatment recommendations.
"
"Quite," Ibiki agreed. "Seeing as the man has literally invented an entire new scientific field just for this, I figure he can title himself whatever he wants.
"
'Entire new scientific field' was putting it mildly. It had taken three hours for Masanari Hanzo to finish 'defending his thesis', five more for him to flag under their questions about his methodology (which came with a stack of papers even thicker than the thesis itself, and that wasn't even counting the appendices, whose collective volume exceeded everything else combined), a night-long closed door Council session just to understand the procedures used, three days for them to go over it individually, an entire week for them to discuss it in council, and now they were trying to figure out where to go from here.
Not very successfully.
The introduction of the 'thesis' amounted to just over ten thousand words all on its own. The man then provided 'background' in the form of an extensive 'literature review' covering every fact about the Uchiha Clan history and Konoha Military Police that wasn't restricted or classified.
The man then dedicated fifteen thousand words just to the description of his methodology, the scope of which even Danzo found, quite frankly, intimidating. A 'quantitative research of police action trends' using pragmatist philosophy' based on a 'statistical analysis of verdicts and appeal outcomes between the 745 - 739 AS period.
' Except that statistical analysis was actually six different kinds of statistical analysis, four of which nobody in that room – or elsewhere – had ever encountered before. Masanari Hanzo seemed to have come up with them himself, and even included extensive documentation on the procedures and calculations, altogether exceeding the actual final content of the thesis itself.
There was something called 'analysis of variance,' another named 'Finn rank correlation' after his odd pen name and 'explained' as 'a nonparametric measure of rank correlation showing the statistical dependence between the rankings of two variables', a positively torturous descent into Yomi called 'polynomial regression analysis' (that came with almost as many pages as everything else combined just to illustrate the mathematics involved), and a four procedure called a 'prescriptive analysis' full of more graphs and charts than all the others combined 'in service of guiding fture decision-making.