Fate

Sasuke cannot accept that Itachi was ever his protector, insisting to Tobi that his brother butchered the whole clan. Tobi answers that Itachi did not act alone, and identifies himself as Madara Uchiha. Prompting Sasuke to revisit childhood memories, he stirs a recollection of the boy asking why the Konoha Military Police Force wore the Uchiha crest. Overwhelmed, Sasuke lashes out before collapsing, and wakes to find himself restrained.

Madara frames Itachi's massacre as a mission handed down by Konoha's leadership, a truth Itachi tried to keep from Sasuke by sealing away the Amaterasu. He then recounts the Warring States era, when the Uchiha and the Senju towered above rival clans. Hashirama Senju, whom Madara battled repeatedly, eventually brokered peace, and together the two founded Konohagakure despite Madara's objections. When the village chose Hashirama as Hokage over him, Madara grew bitter, was rebuffed by his own kin for courting fresh conflict, and clashed with Hashirama at what became the Valley of the End, a fight most believed had killed him.

Under the Second Hokage Tobirama, the Uchiha were folded into the police force, a supposed gesture of trust that shut them out of real power and let Madara's resentment take root among them. Suspicion after the Nine-Tails attack pushed the clan to the village edge and toward plotting a coup. Madara reveals that all but the Third Hokage on the council endorsed watching the Uchiha, and that Itachi served as the Anbu spy later ordered to wipe out his family, with only Koharu, Homura, Danzo, and the Third aware of the whole scheme. The episode adapts chapters 397 through 400.