Arriving at a staging area carved into the mountainside Kiba looked back to see Akamaru catching up with him. The chain scythe had been a cunning trap for the chain tightened when Kiba tried to take it off, and when he finally had figured out how to remove it the sickle jerked and nearly sliced his hand off. Akamaru barked urgently, urging Kiba to continue up the mountain, but the ninken's voice was not foremost on Kiba's thoughts. The storm was growing ever larger by the second and the air itself took on an unnatural glow. Every movement of the sky seemed to betray a hidden anger, a terrifying motive nearly ripe with murderous intent.
Akamaru finally caught up and licked Kiba's right hand. Another growl was followed with a confident bark,
"I won't fall behind again. Let's go all out."
Letting out a sigh Kiba rubbed his dog's head and sniffed deeply, reacquiring the position of the Sage on the mountaintop. Other smells filled Kiba's senses, but an Inuzuka learns to sort through the sensory inputs of smell the way everyone else does with sight. True mastery of tracking by smell also gives knowledge of exact location, time frames, air currents that scents travel on and linger through, and very often items and other details could be ascertained. Finding Karui's scent next to the other girl, Kiba smelled no blood which meant the fight was either still in progress or Karui's sword has made no cuts.
Starting out their run to the mountain's peak Kiba realized that he would have to prioritize his actions. Fighting the Sage on his own would be near impossible, he would require both Karui and Akamaru in the fight. The Sage was obviously in the final stages of preparing his storm against Kumo and would need to be stopped. But the uncertainty of the outcome of Karui's fight ate at Kiba. A part of him knew she was a fine ninja and would be all right, but that didn't diminish the concern he felt for her.
'Don't get mushy over the girl just because you saved her life.' The thought did nothing to ease Kiba's anxiety. "Akamaru, I'm going ahead to the Sage, I want you to meet up with Karui and back me up after you find her."
Akamaru sniffed twice, barked out a "Yes" but also barked something of a laugh that Kiba didn't have the time to ask for an explanation. Their paths divided and Kiba took the path straight up to the peak. He concentrated chakra in his feet to help with the steep climb and realized that fighting on a fifty degree slope with visibility limited by the fog would be suicide. To complicate matters, the enemy was a Nature Sage, like Naruto.
'The question is, how would I beat Naruto? I've seen him fight as a sage before, so what is the weakness?' Kiba struggled to remember, but the invasion of Konoha by Pain and the subsequent Shinobi War were memories he had tried his best to forget. A few vague details were all he could recall, 'I remember the Sage mode didn't last long, that it went away after he used his powerful techniques. So if this Sage is like Naruto, his Sage mode won't last forever.'
The climb leveled off as Kiba finally found the mountain's peak. The clouds and mist were lifted around the area forming a ring of clarity surrounded by the deepening storm. In the center Kiba saw the Sage sitting in front of a pile of the bags from the mine, by the looks of their bulge the bags were still full of the fine crystal powder. Kiba drew his last kunai from his pack, and walked towards the Sage.
'He'll know I'm here. No point trying to sneak up on him.'
Kiba inhaled again searching for any scents he may have missed, any clue that his smell could uncover, but there was nothing except for an old man in his robes. The Sage stood up slowly and placed his hands on the pile of bags, a transparent chakra from his hands seemed to transfer energy from him into the sacks. Taking his chance Kiba threw his Kunai, side stepped and ran at the sage from a different angle.
Spinning around the Sage sat down to face Kiba's charge, with an upheld hand he caught the Kunai between his index and middle finger, his other hand formed a seal as he stared Kiba directly with his deep yellow eyes. Kiba felt his hand freeze right before the Sage's throat. One of his claw-like nails barely made contact with the man's skin, not even breaking it. Kiba was captured by his eyes, he knew it was a genjutsu that froze his muscles.
Setting down the kunai, the sage pulled a crystal from out of his robes without breaking eye contact with Kiba. Placing it between his hands he formed a seal which gave it a faint light and caused it to float in the air. Moving the rock in front of Kiba's eyes, the Sage bent down to pick up the kunai from where he had placed it, he examined the blade and nodded a sort of approval. Breaking eye contact should have ended the genjutsu, but somehow the crystal kept the flow of chakra in place. The old man walked over to his bags and began opening them with the kunai dumping the contents out onto the mountaintop.
Only able to make out the general actions of the Sage was infuriating. Kiba was less than three meters away from the man and was neither able to find any useful information nor could he move. Whenever he tried to focus his eyes on the Sage, his head throbbed until he focused his eyes back on the crystal in front of him.
'Wait,' Kiba thought to himself, 'the crystals are the key. He not only channels his chakra into them, but he can also draw chakra through them.'
Seeming exhausted, Saito the Sage sat down motionless with his hands together. Each breath he took sounded stronger than the one before. 'His energies were returning just through the act of sitting still?' The thought was foreign to Kiba.
"Konoha." Kiba recognized the voice from the radio, it was the Sage, but the man's lips were not moving. "You are no doubt wondering how you hear me. To put it simply, sound is nothing more than vibrating air, and when one has obtained mastery of one's surroundings, vibrating air to make sounds is one of the easier things to do.
"You are also curious why I have left you alive. This is for three reasons. First, I had to stop you from preventing me from accomplishing my purpose. Second, is to teach you a lesson in helplessness. You cannot stop this storm anymore than you can hold back the tides. Third, and most important, you are to be my messenger back to Konoha.
"This new world you fools are creating is destined to fail. To say hearts can change, to trust those who were once your enemies, to join together under a common ideal is all folly. For men's hearts fail them despite their own best intentions, to trust an enemy is to bring death into your house, and those who try to change the system are always destroyed by it."
From above a funnel of clouds lowered over the pile of crystal powder. Wind finally returned to the serene mountaintop as the mists finally began forming. The Sage stood up, eyes glowing yellow once again, as he vanished into the clouds.
"Kumo is but the first target Konoha, remember this and despair. My storms strike the hidden villages and your chakra will fail to save you. The wind shall break down all walls, my storm will shake the skies and pour forth thunder as rain, the air itself will choke the life from the lungs of the guilty as well as the innocent… and death, the only peace this world will ever know, shall finally be the end of it."
Tears stung the corners of his eyes, as he had not been able to close them since the start of the genjutsu, or perhaps the horror of it all finally became clear to Kiba. He could make out the small tornado that was carrying the dust and dispersing it amongst the surrounding clouds. Already his sense of smell began to fade out as the distant smells disappeared behind the clouds. His ears finally heard something through the wind, the sound of struggling and barks, only now did he make out the noise through the genjutsu.
"Kiba, I can still smell you but I can barely see a thing in this cloud. If you can hear me I'm going to use that technique."
Akamaru's howl started off quiet but quickly the air began to vibrate and shake. Soon the winds of the storm were blown back by the force coming from the ninken. Kiba's attention returned to the crystal before his eyes again as it the sound began to vibrate it differently than it had been. After a few seconds it cracked and lost its luster, and Kiba fell forward finally free from the genjutsu. Akamaru's howl faded and the clouds lingered a few hundred meters away. Kiba turned his head and saw the powder was all gone from the mountaintop, again he turned his head to see the Sage nursing a cut on his arm and across his chest. Karui was crouching down behind Akamaru who finally lowered his head.
Bending down Kiba picked up his kunai and turned to face Saito. As he prepared to attack a crack of thunder sounded so loud and with so much force, that the very rock they stood on split and cracked. The realization hit Kiba that Saito had gathered his storm, prepared it, gave it all the strength needed to destroy Kumo, but had not yet set it on its course. A storm to destroy an entire city, kept in check by the power of the man they were fighting and he, Akamaru, and Karui were trapped in the middle of it all.