"Genjutsu: Inugami" Placing his hand on the final seals, Kiba focused his remaining chakra into the technique. Knowing the soldiers would come from a certain direction; he had to make a few details up on the fly. The first part was the easiest, the audible element which caused the genjutsu to take effect in the first place. One howl sounded, was joined by another, and the pair became many.
To the average soldier it would appear that large dogs were digging their way from out of the ground, surrounding them on all sides, and driving them into the forest. When Kiba's mother, Tsume, had taught him this technique for the first time he had been scared to go near the kennel for days afterwards. The ghostly hounds wore the shredded robes of their human masters; at least that was what it looked like.
Spearmen threw their spears, gunmen fired at air, and as the panic built they stumbled over themselves to seek shelter among the trees; but there was no shelter to be found. Moji's shadows sprang into action. The men falling behind or on the sides were wrapped up in shadow and dragged along the ground, to the frightened soldier the image would compound with the fear of the Inugami illusion. Not fifty meters into the forest and all of them were suspended in shadow cocoons or bound to the earth by what looked like dark leaves.
"Impressive genjutsu Kiba. I don't remember reading that in your file." Karui came out from the trees and offered him a hand.
"You read my file? Should I be worried that you know some embarrassing detail or secret from my past?" Rolling up his scroll, he returned it to his pouch. There was enough room on the scroll for several more techniques.
"Of course not." Kiba took her hand and stood up. "I believe in second chances. Though if you screw up when I'm around, you can count on me hounding you about it."
"Ouch. And I thought I was going to be the one to make bad dog jokes."
"Not likely 'dog breath.'" Karui gave him an akanbe, which seemed childish but he couldn't help but chuckle, it suited her style.
"Come on; let's catch up to the others." This time as they ran through the forest, Karui was keeping Kiba's slower pace. It was a small gesture, but Kiba appreciated it.
Akamaru's trail was an easy one to find, though following a group of refugees was easy as well; the musty smell of the cave was still on their clothes. The group zigzagged in a north-east/north-west route making good progress and somehow keeping their trail small despite their size. Kiba figured this was due to the leadership of the Kiri genin; any small advantage would be appreciated in this situation.
Still, the diversion had not taken long, so after half an hour they finally caught up with them. Akamaru had an elderly woman on his back, who was complaining that she could walk and didn't want to ride a dog. The Ninken was none too fond of her either, so Kiba's first act was to arrange for two of the young children to ride instead of being carried by their mothers.
Passing through the grain fields, Kiba could not shake an impression about Shinsei Island and the mural he had seen in the shrine what felt like a week ago. There was something about the three concentric circles, each one with six figures. This island was strange, if only he could figure out the reason why it had been attacked.
Time eventually caught up with the party as they arrived at a small community that appeared to be a seasonal harvest town for workers of the rice paddies, though from the look of it only a few families lived her permanently, maintaining the fields until the monsoons brought with them the planting season.
The elderly and injured were taken to the town's shrine to see to their infirmities and Kiba felt the need to follow. Again it was a two story building with the top floor blocked off. But Kiba was not deterred this time. While the shrine priest was seeing to an elderly woman, Kiba snuck up to the top floor.
The room was stark, the walls bare, and ceiling very simple. The floor however, contained the most complicated sequence of seals he had ever laid his eyes upon. Interweaving seals that seemed to pulse with Chakra, some even floated from off the ground to reset themselves down on another part of the seal.
"And I thought ANBU had a hard requirement for seal expertise." Karui came up the stairs behind him, having talked to the priest and asked for permission first. She was breathing, as though ready to give a lecture, but the sight of the floor took her breath away.
Looking up Kiba realized that in focusing on the floor he had missed a statue, no taller than one meter, standing in the center of the room. It had all appearance of bronze, but the patina shifted colors and moved across the surface seemingly in reaction to the moving seals on the floor.
"Three rings, eighteen statues." It was clear what the statues were, though what they sealed was another question entirely. "What do the rings represent?" Karui led them downstairs to look at the map again. Finding the tourist map, Karui superimposed the models and a few things became clear.
"The island doesn't look like the mural." Karui pointed out the near perfect circular shape of the mural, and how it did not match up the large cove and bay on the island. "Like small bites out of a cookie."
"Wait; look at the spacing on those two." Taking the map from her, he rotated it until the points of the outermost circle matched up. Seemingly the cove and bay were spaced at two points where shrines would be, and the port town they had arrived in was in the perfect spot for a third.
"They're facades." Taking a step back, Karui flipped through another booklet of information about Shinsei Island she had picked up. "Look. Three concentric circles surrounding a mountain. A mountain nobody goes to. On the outermost layer you have all these tourist sites and port cities, port cities which trade mostly in tropical fruit and grains from the plantations in the middle track. Then you have the circle immediately surrounding the mountain…"
"Wild plains with beasts that grow twice their normal size. There is a reason nobody travels to the mountain, nobody goes back." The Priest walked up to the mural and reverently touched a circle on the middle circle, clearly signifying the shrine they stood in. "These shrines keep the wild animals from the mountain back from the cities. They do not come out this far. It is as simple as that."
The skeptic in Kiba doubted that. There were seals in the room upstairs he didn't understand, but the explanation didn't feel right. The statue had been facing out, towards the sea. You don't have your back turned to the thing you are trying to contain. As though on cue a distant roar sounded to the north, and after a few moments another came answering from the south. There was not any animal language he understood, but Kiba's instincts moved him to action regardless.
Finding Akamaru, Kiba collected the scroll that contained their supplies. Summoning the bag Kiba found what there had been no time to get before. The medicine bag was a basic kit his sister Hana had prepared for both Ninken and Human use. Setting aside a soldier pill, Kiba found two bottles he needed to restore his strength. Prepping the air shot syringe, he gave himself a dose of muscle relaxant followed by a chondroitin-based joint serum. Hopefully those would help restart his broken down muscles, which would then be reenergized by the soldier pill.
"Let's hope this works." Kiba had never liked the taste of soldier pills, and this time it was no different. Something about being the brother of a doctor had never helped him when it came time to take medicine. It did not take but a few moments for the effects to begin, the result was slow and subtle.
"How are you feeling?" Karui knelt next to Kiba and looked at the soldier pills. "I hear Konoha's pills taste terrible."
"They're not honey cakes, but they go down easy enough." Clenching his fists, Kiba felt his arm muscles bulge and as he got up he felt his joints were stronger than they were before. "Not at my best, but I'm ready to go."
Splitting up, Kiba ran north towards the edge of the dry paddies as Karui took guard on the southern road. Akamaru ran at his side and barked a, "It smells wrong tonight Kiba." Not a kilometer ahead laid a grassland, one that stretched as far as he could see, right up to the mountain. Oddly enough the mountain seemed smaller now than it had before, another trick of the eye?
Not focusing on where he was going, Kiba found himself running through the grass suddenly. Though a fast runner, it did not feel right that he covered a kilometer of ground without even noticing it. Slowing his pace to a walk, Kiba knelt down and smelled his surroundings. A breeze came in from the west, even savage beasts know not to attack from downwind, so he only casually checked that direction.
"Kiba, watch out!" Akamaru's bark of warning was too slow.
'Fast.' Kiba thought as he was knocked to the ground by a pair of claws, staring a set of fangs in his face.