The following day, before the evening performance.
Backstage at the Capital's central square, everything was bustling yet orderly.
The stage was grand, and the lighting equipment was undergoing its final checks.
In the private dressing rooms backstage, the atmosphere held the excitement and faint tension unique to the moments before a performance.
The twelve Uchiha backup dancers had already changed into matching stage outfits.
Cropped tops paired with matching short skirts traced their youthful figures. Black thigh-high stockings hugged their straight legs, and they wore identical black high heels.
They checked one another's makeup and outfits, speaking softly, their eyes shining with anticipation.
The three lead singers, Chinatsu, Akari, and Akane, wore more elaborate outfits and were finishing their vocal warm-ups and final preparations.
At the same time, inside a sprawling estate in one of the Capital's noble districts.
Uchiha Itachi slipped silently into the shadows.
Through Genjutsu, he had already extracted the layouts, personnel locations, and even guard rotation schedules of the two doomed ministers' residences from the minds of their servants and guards.
Now, he moved.
He pushed the Sharingan's motion perception and Genjutsu abilities to their limits.
A lone guard fell into a stupor after a single glance, then had his throat silently slit with a kunai.
Servants were dragged into the darkness at corners. Sleeping women and children lost their lives without even waking from their dreams.
Every swing of Itachi's Ninja Blade was clean and decisive, killing in a single strike.
Prepared chemicals neutralized the smell of blood.
As for the family members and personal servants who happened to be out, heading toward the square to watch the performance.
Itachi easily controlled them along the way with Sharingan Genjutsu. Dazed, they followed him into deserted alleys, and then... met their end.
The entire process flowed