Orochimaru's mouth, gaping like a broken bellows, froze completely.
The saliva from his laughter dripped down his chin onto the bark, trailing a sticky silver thread.
He stared fixedly at that enormous brown cocoon.
His fingers scraped against the bark with sharp cracking sounds, filling the gaps beneath his nails with green sap and black bark fragments.
"Impossible."
Orochimaru swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.
A foul, bloody taste spread through his mouth.
"How could Lord First's Wood Release fail to crush him to death?"
Those vines were as thick as water vats.
They had been squeezing and contracting madly, like frenzied pythons.
Trying to crush the brat inside into a puddle of minced flesh.
But the instant Sen spoke those words.
They stopped.
Every vine was like a sick snake suddenly drained of all its strength.
Not only had they stopped constricting, they were even trembling ever so slightly, beyond their own control.
Like mice facing a cat, or commoners facing their king.
That fear and submission, rooted deep in the plants' very marrow, traveled along the grain of the vines and registered clearly in Orochimaru's senses.
"What's going on?!"
Panicking, Orochimaru rapidly formed hand seals again, trying to force Hashirama Senju's body into action.
Standing amid the ruins, Hashirama suddenly opened his hollow, dead eyes wide.
He pressed his palms firmly together, powder sifting from his ash-and-earth body under the strain.
Crack, crack, crack...
The surrounding sea of trees once again let out a teeth-grating creak.
But the portion wrapped around Sen refused to move.
As if it had crashed.
Inside the cocoon.
Sen slowly pulled his hand out of his pants pocket.
His palm was slick with sweat, a little sticky.
He shook his hand in disgust.
The surrounding vines gave off a pungent smell of