#like literally just shisui and itachi feeding stuff directly to hiruzen and danzo

[mixelation]

there are many fics out there with the plot of "character finds written documentation of the Truth behind uchiha massacre," but i've never read one where it.... made sense why records were kept? or documentation was even made at all?? this is something you would never, ever want anyone to find. why have anything to find at all?

like i can see a scenario where detailed documentation on intel of the planned coup and subsequent moves by konoha to mitigate the situation exist. you'd want that to keep track of yourself, and to pass on in the case of change of command or looping in new people, and it might suddenly become relevant again years down the line even if you solve it. so i can see that sitting in a sealed box somewhere, or if it was destroyed, maybe something was missed somewhere

but i don't see why you'd have a piece of paper just like GUESS WHAT ITACHI WAS ACTING ON ORDERS sitting in the archives or in danzo's desk or something??? you don't write down secrets that bad

ways someone could solve the mystery via snooping in paperwork (non-exhaustive, obviously):

danzo DID keep documentation out of some weird arrogance about the matter, or because he personally wanted to make the coup public. i don't spend a lot of time thinking about danzo so i can't decide if this is IC or not, but at least it's a reason

hiruzen keeps documentation, either out of guilt/regret or because he knows he's getting replaced soon and he thinks his successor should know (or, fuck, he thinks future generations should know)

there's no documentation about the massacre itself, but someone gets their hands on that misplaced file about the coup and Makes Connections, or there's a little annotation about someone suggesting extreme force

there's FAKE documentation of itachi's mental health or something along those lines to help conceptualize the massacre with the cover story, and someone recognizes forgeries/why details don't add up

the complete lack of documentation is ITSELF the clue. like please give me a scene of a character finally breaking into the hokage's personal archives and all the files labeled for the uchiha massacre are literally filled with blank paper

#if absolutely NO ONE knew about the massacre i think the intel line had to be #like literally just shisui and itachi feeding stuff directly to hiruzen and danzo #MAYBE some other people got tasked with tracking uchiha movements but nothing that would make someone go #'holy shit this sure is Suspicious' #so another bullet point (i am not organized sorry): there's just a massive amount of #intel on the uchiha in general in like the sixth months leading up to the massacre #which ARE written reports for the sake of reviewing/analyzing #i imagine if danzo/hiruzen were smart about covering their asses they'd get rid of these reports #but they'd probably be spread out and lower priority than other things they'd have to do #so maybe stuff was missed or a character realized this soon after the massacre