Wild Side of the World Ch. 8

"I'm sure you all have plenty of questions, but this is neither the time nor place to answer them.  Whether you want to leave or not, the truth is you are both too valuable to waste here in prison."  Moji checked his wrist watch and paced the room.  Putting a radio headset on, he blew into the microphone before saying, "Commence."

Distant sounds of explosions came from further inland.  Kiba's nose placed the concentration of salt water at being on the town's southern docks, the ones not destroyed in the fire the night before.

"We're not leaving without our things."  Karui said as she helped the Captain stay on his feet.

"Yes, your supplies.  They had them locked in a closet, they were most easy to acquire."  Stepping to his side, their bags appeared on the floor as though they were hidden in his shadow.  "Take that as a gesture of my good faith.  At the moment my team is busy creating our diversion.  It is time for us to go."

Kneeling down, Moji placed his hands together in a seal Kiba was no familiar with.  Karui helped the captain onto Akamaru's back before she grabbed the bags on the floor.  As Moji sat a flame from a candle to the wall behind him began floating in the air until it came to a stop behind his head.  The fire increased in size and light, casting a great shadow in front of him.  The shadow did not seem to stop on the wooden wall, but rather looked to pass through the wall and join a greater shadow lying just beyond.

"Everyone go through now.  I can't hold this jutsu for long."  Moji snapped an impatient frustration.

As quickly as they could they followed his instruction, walking into the darkness was like sensory deprivation.  Disoriented and lost, like scrambling in the dark reaching for a door you know is there but can't find the handle.  No sooner then Kiba began to grow accustomed to the darkness did it end and he found himself of a hilltop above the city looking down on the docks and the devastation.  The wind blew and the sunlight shone just beyond the tree branches which now kept the party in shadow.  Like shadow and flame, Moji was the last to appear and he gulped air in exhaustion.

"What was that?"  Karui asked.

"I have to keep some secrets."  Moji sat back against the tree and shut his eyes.  "Follow these trees west and you'll come to a cave system.  I helped most of the town's people escape there in the chaos that went on last night.  But I still don't know what the cause was."  His breathing steadied, but it was obvious how fatigued he was.  "I'll wait here for my team.  You had best go ahead and talk to the villagers."

The caverns were easy enough to find.  But before going down, Karui insisted on going through the luggage again.  How it had been found in the abandoned blacksmith's house where they had left them was surprising, but he figured it was possible that a patrol found them by chance.  Sure enough Karui was checking on her dress, though her spare sword was the second thing she took from the bag.  Taking this opportunity for himself, Kiba found his Anbu supply pack that Moji had attached to his pack.  Also wrapped in white cloth was the knife that had been made for him.  On a whim, he put that in his pack before closing the duffel.

"Moji, he seems to be a shadow user, doesn't he?"  Karui asked what Kiba had been thinking.

"Yeah, reminds me a lot of a friend of mine.  Only I didn't think people could get grumpier than Shikamaru."  Akamaru barked a laugh at that comment, which surprised the captain sitting on his back.

Going down to the caves was easy fro a natural tracker like Kiba, but anyone not trained or familiar with the area would have difficulty getting down to the entrance.  A narrow canyon cut in dozens of different directions, forming a natural maze.  After a final right turn it opened up to a clearing where two guards stood up with bamboo spears leveled at Kiba.

Raised voices from the cowering villagers had mixed reactions to their arrival.  Several recognized Kiba and Karui from around the town the other day.  Other recognized the uniform on the captain and suspected foul play, though some argued that the captain might be a prisoner.  Eventually a man in his middle years with a bald head and a patch over his right eye quieted everyone down.

"Who helped you find us?"

"Moji busted us out of prison.  The captain here was stripped of command because he opposed the attack of the town."

The man looked over their clothes with a cautious eye.  "First we are attacked and imprisoned by the navy, then a team of Kirigakure Nin appeared to free us, and now we find that two people we thought were here on vacation are now shinobi as well.  Things were confusing enough already."

"Do you have any idea why the navy would attack?"  Karui asked, sizing up the man who had taken the role of speaker upon himself.  It was not a mantle that set well with him; upon closer look he was a man who had lived a hard life.  Scars on his arms told a tale of as many knife fights as wounds from fishing.

"Look, me and my crew helped fight the fires down on the docks for as long as we could.  Once the marines came in with rifles we ran for the hills into these caves.  We have no more idea about why this is happening than the next guy."

"There were those lights last night Goru."  A man with a ragged beard and a scar running down his jaw looked up from his seat on the floor.  He went back to rolling two misshapen stones in his left hand to pass his time.

"Yeah.  Last night, around midnight, we went up to the hill to see what was happening, imagine sending the one-eyed man to be a lookout.  But more impressive than the fires and explosions at the dock was what was happening on the east end of town.  The old shrine started glowing this sickly sea-green color, then it turned black, blacker than the night between the stars, yet it still seemed to shine even then.  After that there was this noise and an explosion.  Next thing I remember.  The shrine was gone and it was nearly dawn."

Kiba thought back to the shrine when they had visited it the day before.  Nothing had felt out of the ordinary, though he did remember that the second floor was off limits to the public.  If this Goru's description was at all accurate, then perhaps this was just a prelude.  A mural on the wall of the Shrine suggested that there were a total of eighteen shrines across the island.

"Wait a second.  Karui, did you have that tourist map of the island packed in your bag?"

"No, I pulled it out in case we needed to reference any landmarks."  Producing the map, Kiba took it and looked at the shape of the island.  It was no perfect circle as the mural on the wall of the shrine had shown.  It looked like a rice cake with a bite taken out of one side.  Kiba did find that a shrine similar to the one in Rakuen Port Town in a city halfway around the island.  Furthermore, about twenty-five kilometers inland there were six marked points on the map, indicating tourist shrines at equal positioning around the island.  It might just be coincidence, but he had to be sure.

"Does anyone know about the shrine in town or about these other shrines inland?"

An older man spoke up; he looked more a man of the earth than one of the sea.  "Yes, I used to work some of the farms inland.  Those shrines are said to be gods of good fortune and good crops.  They protect us."

"Protect you from what, what is important about them?  Are there more shrines further inland, when you get closer to the mountain?"

"Closer to the mountain?  Nobody goes closer to the mountain and lives.  Those shrines are all that protects us from the beasts that roam the center of the island."

The young girl from the Kirigakure team came into the room and announced, "Sorry to disturb your conversation but my master wishes to inform you that five squads of marines are coming up the hill.  He advises that we pack up and move inland to meet up with at the farm where the rest of the town evacuated to."

The near two hundred evacuees did not panic, but picked up their few valuables and began to leave the cave.  They did not want to run away from their town, but the consensus seemed to be that none of them wanted to die in a cave.

Helping the old man to his feet Kiba asked, "What beasts roam this island?  What do you need protection from?"

Memories of youth must have come to his mind, as he seemed lost in a daze of nostalgia.  Blinking back to this senses, the old man's look turned somber as he said.  "Dire beasts.  Monsters that grow in the shadow of that mountain grow many times their normal size.  Snakes as wide as a man, birds as large as horses that don't fly, and worst of all… the Dire Lions."