As easy as that. Sealed as they were, they wouldn't have felt much pain to begin with, but Obito's movements were as efficient as they could be even as blood began to soak into the packed earth, a deep burnt black in the dirty cellar light. Sasuke had been drilled in anatomy; he know how to kill to hurt as much as he know how to kill painlessly, and when he looked down to draw his sword --

If he breathed in and thought about anatomy exercises, the location of arteries, if he didn't think about the look on this man's face when he'd walked in, if he didn't think about the purpose of Obito's smooth, steady movements --

If he didn't think --

The artery in the throat, a second's cut with a well-honed blade. Blood beneath his feet, the silent passing from life to death. And the next, no face, just a point to strike, a slice of red over a white throat deep enough to ensure bleedout in seconds. Here, he could picture on an anatomy chart: here was another carotid, easily accessible, his many years of habitual sword maintenance telling in how the edge purred through flesh like shears through silk. Cut and step over to the next, just a progression of test sheets. Just blood under his feet. Just blood on his hands.

Here, a neck obscured by the tilt of a head bent awkwardly to one side; Sasuke turned the flat of the blade to pull the skull into alignment and --

Froze, the point of his sword locked just before the cut. The boy he'd sealed first was lying in front of him, face still twisted in devastation under the seals, and behind hi were -- bodies and before him was -- this and --