The compressed air wasn't natural wind.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
The technique hit the camp like a wall. Trees didn't bend. They sheared apart at the trunk and sent splinters the size of kunai in every direction. Supply crates came apart into clouds of wooden shrapnel. The ground tore open in long furrows.
Naroi was standing over the Senju commander's body when the wind reached him. It picked him up and threw him into an oak tree forty feet away.
CRACK!
The trunk split on impact. Naroi slid down to the base and didn't move. Blood ran from his mouth and nose into the dirt.
"Naroi!" Amanai's voice came out raw.
"Fire Style: Intelligent Hard Work!"
The fire came in behind the wind and fed on it. The flames burned white instead of orange and moved faster than any fire technique Muzan had seen. Trees exploded before the flames touched them. The heat hit like a physical force.
"Mud wall!" Miyako shouted. "Now!"
Two of her squad members slammed their palms to the ground. The wall erupted but the fire broke through it in seconds and took both of them with it. Their screams cut off fast.
Twenty shinobi dropped from the canopy and landed in a half-circle around the surviving Uchiha. The impact cracked the scorched earth and sent up clouds of ash.
Two men stood at the center of the formation. One held a war fan with seals glowing along its surface, his armor marked with the Shimura crest. The other carried a bo staff reinforced with metal bands and wore Sarutobi green.
Kenozo's voice was tight. "Shimura Kaze and Sarutobi Sasuke."
Amanai's Sharingan spun fast. "The clan heads. They were already here." His jaw locked. "We were set up."
Sarutobi Sasuke stepped forward and spun his staff in a slow, casual arc that made it whistle. "Uchiha Takeshi didn't come personally? Pity. I wanted to crack his skull myself."
Shimura Kaze didn't smile. He raised his fan and the seals flared. "Kill them all," he said quietly.
The twenty shinobi moved as one.
What followed was fast and brutal and went badly from the first exchange.
Sasuke went straight for Amanai. He didn't use complex jutsu. He used force and experience and a bo staff with enough weight behind it to crack stone. Their exchange lasted six seconds before the staff connected with Amanai's katana hard enough to shatter the blade and send him flying into the burning wreckage of a shelter.
CRASH!
Amanai came up bleeding from his mouth with his sword arm hanging wrong at the shoulder.
Kaze moved toward Kenozo. Their fight was quieter and more technical and ended the same way. Kaze's wind-coated blade shattered Kenozo's kunai and opened his cheek to the bone in a single exchange. The old man hit the ground and kept moving but one hand went to his side where blood soaked through his armor.
Muzan pulled Sayuri behind him and threw a smoke bomb into the path of two Sarutobi closing on her position.
POOF!
He moved into the smoke before it fully spread. Inside it he fought without form, using just enough of his real strength to finish each exchange quickly without revealing what he actually was. One Sarutobi went down with a crushed knee and a kunai through the armpit. The other took an elbow to the temple at an angle that dropped him instantly.
The smoke cleared.
A Shimura formed seals to Muzan's left. "Wind Style: Vacuum Palm!"
The concussion hit his chest and cracked three ribs and sent him skidding back through the dirt.
CRACK!
The ribs sealed in seconds. He stood up.
Sayuri screamed his name.
He turned and saw her backing away from a Sarutobi with her kunai raised and her single tomoe spinning uselessly. Her hands were shaking too hard to throw anything accurately.
Muzan closed the distance and hit the man from the side. Three exchanges and the Sarutobi went down. He grabbed Sayuri by the arm and pulled her back toward the center of the camp where the others were converging.
Six Uchiha remained. Naroi was dead against the broken oak. The two members of Miyako's squad were charred shapes in the dirt. Kenozo had lost all of his squad except the old man himself.
Miyako fought three opponents at once with her Sharingan tracking everything. Her hair was half burned away and blood ran from a scalp wound that showed bone underneath. A wind blade caught her thigh deep enough to expose white. Her leg nearly buckled. She grabbed Miyako's collar and hauled her back with one arm.
They pulled into a tight circle with their backs together. Fifteen enemies closed the perimeter from every direction. The flames surrounded them on all sides. The heat made it hard to breathe.
Sasuke planted his staff and the ground cracked under the impact. Kaze cleaned his blade without urgency.
"Surrender isn't an option," Kaze said.
Sasuke looked at the six surviving Uchiha with open contempt. "You came into our territory. You'll leave as ash."
Amanai stood with blood dripping from his chin and his one working hand holding the broken stub of his katana. His Sharingan still spun but it looked slower than before. "Miyako. Toshiro. Take Sayuri. If we open a path, you run and you don't stop."
"They'll catch us within a hundred meters," Miyako said flatly. She was already counting her remaining kunai.
Muzan spoke before anyone else could. "Someone has to make it back. If they knew we were coming, the intelligence network is compromised. Command needs to know before they walk other squads into the same trap."
Amanai went still. Then he nodded. "You're right."
Miyako looked at Muzan. "You're weaker than me in open combat. You should be one of the ones running."
"That's why Toshiro and Sayuri need you leading them out," Muzan said. "Not me."
Miyako held his eyes for a long moment. She couldn't argue with it and she knew it. She looked away.
Kenozo laughed. The sound was hollow and tired and completely without fear. "My sons are waiting for me anyway."
Toshiro stared at Muzan. His jaw was tight and his eyes were wet and he was doing a bad job of hiding both. He had been the one to bring Muzan into the camp that first night. He'd vouched for him when others wouldn't. Over the past month he'd stopped treating Muzan like a suspicious stranger and started treating him like a person.
Muzan gripped his shoulder once. "Go," he said. "That's all."
Toshiro wiped his face with the back of his hand and nodded.
Sayuri looked at Muzan with tears cutting through the ash on her face. He met her eyes and held them for one second.
"Survive," he said. "Make it count."
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
The fifteen enemies finished closing the circle.
Amanai looked at Kenozo. Kenozo looked back. The old man rolled his neck once and raised what was left of his kunai.
Muzan pulled two explosive tags from his chest pocket and turned to face the nearest cluster of shinobi.
"Now!" Amanai roared.