For a man too poor to have ever bought himself a mule, Hisao jumped at the chance to ride a horse, quite literally. With both feet, he sprung past the horse, hooking himself onto its large neck and swinging up and over, onto its back. His former cellmate leapt onto the horse's side, trailing for a mere second of the stampede before Hisao hoisted him to a proper seat. Hisao blindly steered the horse left, inadvertently leading their wild escape and finding himself on an empty road, sandwiched between rows of storefronts and narrow alleyways. He reflexively pulled the horse to the right, sending the two careening into yet another alleyway, kicking up clouds of dust and grime, all the while forcing a drunk that had been resting to scramble up the alley's narrow walls.

Predictably, Hisao wasn't especially worried about the collateral damage. He leaned to the side, hooking his legs around the galloping horse's chest to scoop up the man's bottle, hoisting himself up by the stallion's mane. Within moments, they burst through the alleyway's end, onto a much wider and less polished looking dirt road, lined with the trackmarks of carts. Hisao, too busy with guzzling the contents of his pilfered sake, leaned back and allowed his more mindful companion in the backseat to take the reigns. Ibiki steered them right, and the two began charging down the road once more, completely oblivious to the fact that they had lost their fellow escapees. As the horse galloped, and the shouts of the men chasing them grew feinter, Ibiki gradually began to slow the horse, turning down the road in sight of a few peasants. He began to grumble to himself about his companion's lack of subtlety and the importance of hiding in plain sight, before catching himself. Lecturing the ape leaning too far back into his chest never worked, and why would it now?

With a deep sigh, Ibiki continued down the road, growing closer to the peasants who had been staring the two down since their turning a corner. They looked suspicious. He knew it. A drunk and a samurai, sharing a horse, out in the middle of the night. For a moment, he feared one of them would take off towards wherever the accursed town kept their soldiers or guards, but the fear passed as he passed the onlooking peasants without a word. Hisao shifted a bit in front of him, pulling himself up by the whinnying horse's ears and surveying their surroundings.

"How much further you think it is 'till we reach this town's borders?"

Ibiki shrugged, reaching a corner once again, and looking around for any sign of a wall. Instead, he found the [i]lack[/i] of a wall. To the men's right, as if handed to them in the palm of the Enlightened One, was the town's unmanned, open gate. Ibiki gasped. Hisao laughed. The horse [i]bucked[/i]. Their combined weight tumbled to the side and downwards, as if the horse had decided that it had aided their criminality for long enough, and turned to leave them, trotting away at a vigorous pace. The two bounded forward, practically flipping into the cover of the thick forest surrounding the town, laughing with joy.

[hr]

"I wish our horse was still here, Ibiki-san."

"Yes, so do I."

The two had been travelling on foot for hours, though it seemed like days. Originally, they had been sprinting at full force, leaping over roots and stones, occasionally falling forward from the sheer velocity of their sprinting and tumbling to a crashing halt, before jumping up to their feet and doing the same all over again. They ran, rightfully so, like two men who had just broken out of jail, not slowing down for rivers or hills, or pausing to rest or discuss plans.

That lasted for all of thirty minutes before Hisao began to throw up. Now, Ibiki was weighted down by his friend who could barely [i]jog[/i] in intervals, leaving the two to spend the majority of their escape [i]hiking[/i] through the woods. Somehow, Ibiki found himself not especially concerned about any would-be trackers. The eerie noises of the forest were enough to worry about, after all. Every screeching owl, or howling fox made his unaccustomed ears perk, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Every twig snapped under his foot was an imperial trap triggering, and every rustle of wind in the trees was a shinobi creeping along a branch. The two were far from any [i]path[/i], foregoing any roads or clearings for fear of discovery, opting instead to creep through bushes and under the cover of low-hanging branches, in no particular direction but forward. Sometimes Hisao lagged behind, and the man was little more than a black shadow a few dozen feet away, and other times he would knuckle-walk in great bounds to catch up, finding himself leading his partner just as often as Ibiki lead him. Eventually, the two came to stop, too tired to walk any further.

Hisao collapsed, turning over onto his back like a child throwing a tantrum, and splaying his arms and legs out. "No further! I'd rather die here."

Normally, Ibiki would have chastised him for his laziness, but now he was too tired to even do that. He took a knee, promising that the two would only rest for a moment, before laying on his side. Within seconds, the two were both fast asleep.