At the edge of the forest, the air was thick with the tension of a standoff.
Kankuro glowered at the suddenly appearing Shino Aburame. The puppet Crow behind him had silently unfolded, several concealed launch ports aimed at Sasuke and Shikamaru not far away. To him, this sunglasses-wearing nobody was merely trying to stop a chariot with his arms.
"Move. I don't want to waste time on you." Impatience seeped through Kankuro's voice as the chakra threads around his fingers tightened.
"My companions are over there." Shino adjusted his sunglasses, his tone even. "I can't let you pass."
"Then die!" Kankuro stopped wasting words and sharply tugged his chakra threads.
The mechanism in Crow's abdomen sprang open, spewing a cloud of purple-black poison mist that rapidly spread toward Shino. It was one of Kankuro's proudest mechanisms.
Yet Shino stood still. He merely spoke calmly, his voice cutting clearly through the hiss of the spreading poison mist. "Analysis initiated. The poison mist's average diffusion speed is three meters per second. My Kikaichū can complete their encirclement before the mist fully covers this area."
Before he had finished speaking, Kankuro sensed that something was wrong.
Crow, which had been spraying poison mist, suddenly fell silent. The lethal vapor seemed to have been blocked at its source by something. Kankuro looked down in alarm and saw countless black insects somehow densely covering Crow's entire body. They had precisely crawled into every launch port, every moving joint, even completely clogging the mechanisms inside the puppet.
And that was not all.
More insects had silently circled behind him, forming a writhing black barrier that cut off his retreat.
Kankuro's expression changed drastically as he tried to immediately retract the chakra threads controlling his puppet. But when he exerted force, an unfamiliar sensation came from his