The horses pulling the carts had no time to react. Without so much as a scream, they were either blown to pieces by the blast or collapsed to the ground, dead.
"Ambush!" the leader of the caravan shouted. The next second, a gust of wind from a Wind Release jutsu blew the smoke away.
*So they are ninja disguised as merchants!* the Shimura ninja thought.
A moment later, they saw the crimson, tomoe-filled eyes of the "merchants."
"It really is the Uchiha clan!" Shimura Ri drew the short katana from the small of his back and roared, "Kill them all! Leave no one alive!"
Sixty Shimura ninja swarmed down.
"Wind Release: Vacuum Wave!"
"Wind Release: Siphon Blade!"
"Earth Release: Rock Staff!"
The Shimura ninja in mid-air quickly formed hand seals, unleashing a barrage of their clan's signature Wind Release techniques.
The Uchiha below immediately recognized their attackers.
"The Shimura clan!"
"You want to go to war with the Uchiha?"
"You fools! To arms!"
The Uchiha showed no weakness. Their Sharingan blazed to life as they drew shuriken and kunai. The jonin-level ninja among them quickly formed hand seals, their jutsu clashing with those of the Shimura from above.
"Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique!"
"Lightning Release: Emotion Wave!"
Lightning and fire, the two most destructive chakra natures, combined in a massive explosion mid-air, creating a powerful shockwave that obliterated everything caught within it.
*Not a bad performance,* Izuna thought. From the very beginning, these Uchiha ninja disguised as merchants knew they would be ambushed, and that their attackers would be from the Shimura clan. But right now, they were all feigning ignorance. They were all members of the Despair Corps, the Uchiha's suicide squad.
"Aren't you going to make a move?" Shimura Ri turned to ask Izuna. The other Shimura ninja had already joined the fray, but he was still here, talking.
"We are partners. Don't treat me like one of your subordinates," Izuna replied coldly. In the next instant, he threw a kunai and flickered to the side of an Uchiha ninja. In that same moment, Izuna appeared, caught the kunai he had just thrown, and, with a reverse grip, slit the Uchiha ninja's throat.
*So... so fast!* Even Shimura Ri, a quasi-Kage level shinobi, was shocked. *What kind of jutsu is that?! No wonder he can move so freely within our clan's territory.*
"Who are you?"
"Are you with the Shimura?"
After Izuna killed the Uchiha Despair Corps member, three other Uchiha ninja surrounded him. Through the single eyehole of his spiral mask, Izuna's gaze swept over their faces one by one. He couldn't help but let out a silent sigh. These men had become Uchiha death-seekers because the war had taken from them everything they held dear.
But that didn't make it any easier for Izuna to kill them. They knew that only death awaited them in this battle, yet they had accepted the mission without hesitation. Because for them, death was the final home they yearned for.
"Let's begin," he said, his myriad emotions distilled into those two simple words.
The three Uchiha ninja, katanas in hand, charged toward Izuna at the center. With a light hop, he skimmed over the tips of their three blades, backflipping into the air to hover about five meters above their heads. When they looked up, they saw the masked man holding his specially marked kunai between the fingers of his black-gloved hands.
*Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!*
Six kunai rained down. The three men quickly raised their swords to block. The clash of steel on steel rang out. But before the kunai could hit the ground, Izuna, still in mid-air, vanished again.
A black blur zipped between the three men, a speed that even the Sharingan could not follow. If one could slow down time by a factor of ten, they might have seen it: a black shadow flitting between the six deflected kunai, retrieving them while simultaneously drawing a blade across the necks of the three Uchiha ninja.
About four seconds later, the masked man stood in the center of the three Uchiha. At the very instant he reappeared, a crimson line bloomed on their necks, and they collapsed heavily to the ground.
"So... so strong..." one of the Uchiha, an elite chunin from the Despair Corps, managed to lift his head, using the last of his strength to whisper, "With such power... you can definitely... Please... bring back... victory... Vice... Clan... Head..."
With that, his head fell to the ground, never to rise again.
Izuna, however, stepped over their corpses without a backward glance and moved toward the other Uchiha ninja. This was the cruelty of war, the cruelty of this era. To ensure the success of the plan, to achieve victory, some things had to be sacrificed. It was then that Izuna realized just how laughable the theory of "saving everyone" that the future Naruto espoused truly was.
Shimura Ri, who was engaged with an Uchiha jonin, felt a tremor of fear in his heart as he witnessed the masked man instantly kill three opponents. That jutsu was terrifying. But even without it, the man's skill was at least at the level of an elite jonin. There were only a handful of ninja that powerful in the four northwestern clans, but Shimura Ri couldn't think of a single candidate who fit. *Is he a hidden trump card?*
Izuna's kunai pierced another jonin from the Uchiha Despair Corps. The men of the corps hadn't been told by Madara that this powerful masked man was Izuna. Izuna himself hadn't even told Madara about this identity. But under the circumstances, they could guess.
"Please... bring back victory... Vice... Vice-Clan Head..." With those final words whispered in Izuna's ear, the man closed his eyes in contentment. Perhaps he believed that on the other side, he would see the loved ones he had lost.
Izuna turned to look behind him. The Shimura were nearly finished. A Shimura jonin reported to Shimura Ri, "Lord Ri, all twenty Uchiha have been eliminated. We have seven dead and twenty-six wounded."
Shimura Ri nodded. "Burn all this grain!"
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