'Some will dismiss him as naive, brother - many already have. Holding the mightiest living weapons of mass destruction in his world, then giving them away just so everyone has one, so the balance of power can be maintained? Of course, those who say such things are more concerned with the distribution of power than the people being passed around as if they are nukes, and the children they are often bound to.

But try to think from his perspective, Gabriel: he has only known war since birth. Battles fought, blood spilled, family slain over old, old grudges stretching over generations. He could have been bitter, hopeless. He could have drowned his sorrows in bloodshed. And yet, he sought to make peace. Perhaps in a foolish manner; we have made plenty of mistakes, as far as many humans are concerned. Are we truly ones to talk? Maybe we are. Maybe the world would have been better off, with all Tailed Beasts in one village. Maybe not.'

-on Hashirama Senju;

'It is plain as day, we think, that he was a thinker, not a leader, not in the way his brother was. Look at all the techniques he crafted. brother: teleportation, raising the dead...just like he created the framework the Villages would still use generations later. Was he blinded by paranoia, like he thought the object of his was blinded by emotion, unable to control the power that boiled their brains when their hearts bled? Well. We doubt he would say so.'

-on Tobirama Senju;

'We know what you are not going to say, brother, what you think. We see it in your eyes, in the sad turn of your mouth. How could he nurse that viper of a man to his bosom, old friend or not? How could he allow and order the things he did? Was he foolish? Spineless? Scared? It is, perhaps, not wrong to regard him as a failure. And yet he kept his Village going, kept souls who would have otherwise been helpless in front of the world under his wing, and those of his warriors. That, at least, was not the wrong thing to do.'

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-on Hiruzen Sarutobi;

'A prodigy, even among the prodigies of his Village. He mastered the teleportation devised by the Second and honed it to a fine edge; he learned the trick of the man who walked between realms within moments of fighting; he bound the fox who had convinced himself he was a monster into his newborn son, even as he and his wife died. And then he came back, dragged from beyond the veil by the claws of the serpent-hearted warlock, and he fought again. And he made things right with his son, brother. That matters, more so when you weren't there for him. We know. They accepted each other.'

-on Minato Namikaze;

'A heir to her grandfather in more than office, brother. They were never the most cool-headed of leaders, nor the most cold-blooded. That, and all the duties such a mindset suited, fell to her great uncle. She was shattered in her youth, broken by blood until its very sight turned her stomach. But she came back to her home, when she could have stayed in her self-imposed exile, a traitor in all but name. And she led and healed, and trained a girl to walk in her footsteps. She stood against her grandfather's nemesis when he returned, a walking corpse wrought from dust and magic. She overcame her fears, and sometimes, that is all we can do.'

-on Tsunade Senju;

'He saw his father kill himself for putting friendship over duty. He saw a friend die, crushed, and was made to kill another, all when he was just a boy. Is it any surprise that he would become a bit aloof, a bit distant, when he grew into a man? But do not be fooled by the mask of the scatterbrained fool he affects, brother. He is a man of masks, physical and spiritual, but they do not define him. The way he arrives late, like his childhood friend did, the books of lust he peruses, these are all guises, too. He might not have been the best teacher, but he was a prodigy in his own right, mastering the eye that was not his, but which let him see the world more clearly.'

-on Kakashi Hatake;