[color=gray]His head throbbed and his thoughts were in a haze, but Onikuma slowly grumbled to life. Understandably, his thoughts were a mess. Even with his best efforts, he could hardly recall why he was waking up so sore. He recalled something about a trade, some sort of deal between unsavory types of men, and something about the trade going wrong. The face of a merchant and imagery of Imperial soldiers flashed through his mind. As he tried lifted a gargantuan hand to rub at his temples, it occurred to him that it sounds an awful lot like the other times he's been caught. With a dismissive grunt, he decided not to think about it too much. He'd figure it out later.

The lingering smell of sake helped Onikuma come to some scraps of his senses. He felt steel tugging at his wrists, constricting around either one several times over. Some dread settled in his stomach as he kicked his feet, finding relief to hear steel jingling at his ankles as well. It wasn't like yakuza and tekiya to chain a captive by their feet. For now, he was safe, but the next thought brought a smile to his face: it all started to make sense. The scum they were trading with made a deal with the Imperials. 
[b]"Smart..."[/b] he breathed, his eyes still closed to the world. Some relief came over him; he was glad that his stake in the deal wasn't personal. He just hoped his coin would be where he left it.

Onikuma's sight followed his nose in recovery. Plain walls and an empty room, bound shut by iron bars. Just about as expected. The bamboo stick rattling on the bars did little to rouse him. The noise was comfortably distant, still an afterthought in his recovering senses. His nose, still insistent, led him to one of the men in the room. At a distorted glance, he looked like an older man as well, but the pair of them looked just about as weary as the other. He offered the rest of the room a broad and uncaring glance, settling only on what looked like three women for a moment; certainly not a second one, as he did not realize that there are only two. His expression twitched in confusion. 
[b]"Hah..."[/b] he rasped, closing his eyes a moment after as he returned to his thoughts. Three women being arrested? How odd. What exactly had he gotten himself involved with?

[hr]
Onikuma was barely compliant as they were loaded into the wagon. He tested his chains for strength as they walked to check if they could be broken, but while he was confident that he could, his wrists would be no condition to carry through. As they were sat in the wagon, where he sat crooked in order to hardly fit, he tested the walls with his weight to find they were sturdy. If he was to escape this, it wouldn't be on his merit alone. He found his glance lingering towards the other prisoners, bound as he was, and gave them a more focused look this time. At his glance, each seemed capable enough in their own way. He only hoped that he was right.

The more Okimura thought, the more the whole situation struck him as odd. For whatever reason, the lot were being transported to a prison instead of sentenced locally, and that included the women. Committing a whole wagon and escort to a lot of criminals was a luxury he rarely had. He had already decided to escape instead of bowing to the law but the more he thought, the more certain he became. He watched and he listened but nothing seemed to help him. Glancing down to his chains, he debated the worth of breaking out of them. He wouldn't need his wrists to upturn the wagon and force the door open, but he would have to count on the others to finish the work. It was a wonderful thought he was having, or at least until the wagon was upturned.

It almost happened too quick to think. The wagon was flung, upturned and thrown to the side. It left Onikuma with a daze and brewing anger in his stomach. Whatever was going on outside, he couldn't make much sense of it, or not while his senses caught up a second time. A figure slipped out of the wagon before slipping back in, where his chains loosened from his wrists shortly after. As his vision returned to him, he recognized the boy: one of the other prisoners, one that he passed off as unnoteworthy. How pleasurable it was to be proven wrong. He gave the boy a solid pat on the shoulder as he went past, reaching himself out of the wagon to work the kink out of his back.

Of course, Onikuma was familiar with the talk of demons. It was hard not to be as a man that frequented shady dens in the countrysides. Yet seeing it in the flesh, shapes of flesh that shouldn't exist with visceral gore in their wake, was an experience to a whole new degree. He chanced a glance back at the wagon before wasting no time moving for the weapons crate. He made short work of the lock: he took the poor construct in his palms and snapped the iron between them. It left his fingers raw, but it was a feeling he was familiar with. His daishō slipped into his waist comfortably, comically small when compared to his frame, but his ōdachi fit more comfortably in his fingers.

Onikuma wasn't a leader. He knew this more intimately than he cares to admit. For this reason, it brought him some relief when he looked back to find the slim boy talking with one of the women. 
[b]"So then we're leaving now?"[/b] he interrupted, with the ōdachi sat comfortably on one shoulder while he plucked coins off the mangled corpse of a guard. [b]"If we don't waste time, we can be in the hills in those couple of minutes."[/b] He wondered what sake-man had to say about this. He seemed like a wise man at a glance, or at least wise enough to drink.[/color]