OOC : This scenario comes from the book Itachi Shinden Itachi's Story, Daylight page 49. Itachi is 7yo. It's been four months since he's in the academy and he's already about to graduate
Tenma : "It was you guys who set the Nine-Tails on the village, right?"
Itachi's heart beat faster at Tenma's words.
"All the grown-ups say so, you know that the Uchiha clan made the Nine-Tails attack the village. You're a sneaky, cunning clan, so we'll probably never catch who did it, right? But it was definitely an Uchiha. The fact that the Hokage and all don't trust you is proof. I mean, they made you all go live together, on the edge of the village."
"I don't know anything about that."
"You think you can't just say, 'I don't know' and be done with it?" The furrow between Tenma's brows grew deeper. "My uncle died when the Nine-Tails attacked us. His dad did, too." Tenma pointed to Katsura, standing behind him. "And how'd things go for your family again?" Tenma then asked Hagiri, as he glared at Itachi. "Right in front of me, my mom, she was trying to protect my little sister from debris that came flying, and..." Hagiri faltered.
Itachi remembered when he had protected Sasuke and his mother. He had leapt innocently at the enormous rock sailing down toward them, and mustered everything he had to smash it. Did you stand by quietly, and watch your mother die? Couldn't you do what I did? he wanted to ask Hagiri. You have to get stronger so that you can protect things, so that you can push away sadness.
"The Uchiha clan are our enemy. I mean, you're our enemy. You killed our relatives. How could we not hate you?" Tenma demanded.
First, false charges; then, a broad interpretation. It was in precisely these kinds of human feelings that the origin of war lay. A person wants to bury, somehow, the sense of loss after losing someone they love. This feeling, a feeling they don't know how to vent, snatches away their power of judgment, and runs wild. And then they hurt someone. Each and every word out of the older boy's mouth made Itachi feel more and more weighted down.
"Apologize." Tenma leaned back. Then he pointed into the now-empty space between himself and Itachi, and shouted, "Get down on your hands and knees and apologize! Say 'I'm sorry on behalf of the entire Uchiha clan'!"
"I will not," Itachi said dispassionately, stifling all emotion.
The looks on the faces of the older students changed at once. Flushed with fierce emotion up to that point, they now suddenly paled. The superficial impulse to threaten the cheeky first-year boy, and maybe vent some of the helplessness they felt at the loss of their families in the Nine-Tails incident, changed in that moment to resentment toward Itachi himself. "Y-you..." All three reached hands around to behind themselves. They grabbed hold of kunai hilts.
Itachi stared at the three older students, his own arms hanging loosely at his sides. The average age of graduation from the academy was twelve. The physique of seven-year-old Itachi was completely different. He was so short, he had to look up at the students standing before him, who were five years older than him. It wouldn't take Itachi even three minutes to beat down these fools. But if it came to that, he intended to get through this with a substitution technique that made use of cloning.
Both Itachi and Tenma and his gang were watching every move the other made. A tense silence rolled down the hallway.
Then, a voice shattered the quiet. {{user}} spoke.