"Yeah, yeah, let's just get a move on," Suzume said, annoyed by the night's events. And, following that, mumbling, "Not like I wanna help rebuild anything or anything like that..."

And so, bag over his shoulder, Suzume skirted the outside of the group, going around to the front and starting the long trek to what seemed like nowhere important. Besides, he wasn't part of the group technically, so it wasn't like it mattered to him where they were going, as long as it got him away from getting yelled at by a bunch of villagers.

"Either one, at this point," Shinju growled, eying the unconscious Gishou. This was probably the worst time to be delayed like this. Shinju was not impatient, but being able to follow after the Genkai human right away would have been better than following a days-old trail because one of their party was too drunk to travel.

"So are we just going to leave him there to rot, or should we drag him out back and kill him before we go?"

"WOAH-HO!!! I'm up!" Gishou gasped, suddenly springing to his feet with an almost cat-like agility, moving about the room like a whirling dervish and rambling at a million slurred miles a minute as he packed up a number of bombs, tools, bottles of sake, scrolls with strange schematics on them, and the newly charged battery into a bag slung across his shoulder. It was somewhere between difficult and impossible to make out what he was saying, and yet every female in the room suddenly felt as if they'd been verbally violated somehow.

Everything gathered, Gishou stopped in the middle of the group, swaying a little bit as he tried to maintain his balance between the amount of alcohol in his system and the weight he was carrying.

"Awright, where's the party, folks?"

Toji felt a chill in the wind and a shiver run down his spine, he slammed his hand onto the largest barrel upon his back. Thank goodness it is still there. He sighed with relief but could not shake the feeling that there was danger afoot, that someone or something desired his sake.

Something with no intent to pay.

"Ah, the benefits of perpetually having your things with you..."

With only a bit of hesitation to glance back at the village, catching a strange, ominous feel about the place, Tayuumi jotted forward ahead of the group as always, almost indicative of being the leader, but almost entirely because she wants to get to the next destination first, for whatever reason was important to her.

While the others had harassed the inventor, who had obviously imbibed too much alcohol, Maton had wandered the workshop, looking over various useless creations of little import. A small gear operated dancing girl here, a half finished chemical experiment there, some black powder and other explosives were sitting on one table--in a decidedly unsafe manner. Most likely due to the inventor having just finished dabbling with them in a less than sober state.

He eventually came upon a rather interesting invention that seemed to be a crank connected to a reel of copper wire with magnets placed near by. Maton's hand altered slightly with the sound of sliding metal and shifting gears as his wrist altered to allow his hand to spin. Grasping the crank his hand spun copper cylinder, creating an electrical charge on the other end of the machine.

Seeing the possible uses for such a machine, Maton's chest plate opened and the gears, cylinders, and other mechanical items within began to shift outward, causing the android's shoulders to broaden and leaving a gap within Maton's chest.

Lifting the creation into his chest, various gears and metallic structures shifted back down onto the machine, fusing it into Maton's chest, while leaving the cylinder plenty of space to turn, which it began to do under the power of Maton's gears, causing a bit of a spark to shoot out, which leaped to Maton's internal structures, causing the android-demon to flinch in pain as the electrical energy defused through his body, doing minor damage to various smaller gears and motors.

Looking around, Maton found the wires that Gishou had used in order to charge the battery and as the android placed his hand to him, the wires seemed to gain a life of their own, sliding their way through Maton's arm and into his chest to connect to the electrical generator. Giving the crank another try, the copper wires transmitted the electricity invisibly up to the wire ends in the palm of his hand, creating a small spark. It wasn't even as powerful as a modern day stun gun by any stretch of the imagination, but Maton was happy with it.

It was about the time he had finished with all of that when the inventor awoke with a shout, and Maton closed his chest plate back up and turned to face the group, waiting for them to leave.

Kurama rounded up his team members, all of them either having what they need on them or carrying the bags on their backs. The minotaur carried bags for some, his slow and steady trot making it easy for him to carry heavy loads.

In minutes the group was on the road, heading through the nearby forest to an unspecified clearing amidst the trees. It was a place with a high fence, almost like a fortress. Whoever lived inside was certainly a bit paranoid of trespassers. When Kurama reached the front gate, he looked up and gave out a shout.

"Surin! Let us in!"

"WHAT'S THE PASSWORD!?"

"It's...goddammit, what was the password again..."

"IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE PASSWORD, I CAN'T LET YOU IN! YOU COULD BE AN EVIL DEMON!"

"Surin, I know I'm not a demon."

"YOU MIGHT BE, AND JUST DON'T KNOW IT!"

"...alright. Someone take down the door."

Atasu moved forward, setting down the bags and his barrel.

"You just got to know how to knock Kurama" he said as he swung his fist with the force of a battering ram against the gate.

The minotaur's massive fists flew through the door, making the portal explode in a shower of splinters and broken wood. The now-broken door hung loosely from hinges of steel, the wood making patterns on the grass.

As the group walked through, they could see a large house hidden behind the wall. It had no windows, except for a single opening near the roof. There were gadgets and machines and inventions and dolls and spare pieces of wood and metal littering the outside of the house and the yard.

"MY DOOR! YOU BROKE MY DOOR!"

A tall frail-looking young man rushed from the house, a thick pair of Western spectacles resting on the ridge of his nose. His sophisticated cut rested well on his head, his body wrapped in a blue robe with an anchor print decorating it. He stared in distress at the now shattered gate, his fingers running through his hair nervously.

"NOW WHAT WILL KEEP OUT THE WOLVES AND FOXES AND EAGLES AND ANTS AND RABBITS AND DEER AND BUNGALOOS AND WHATCHAMACALLITS!?"

Kurama stared at Surin, shaking his head slowly.

Koyuki vaguely flinched inwardly upon watching Maton assimilate the lesser machine. It wasn't out of dislike for cannibalism or any other sort of thing, but the demoness simply didn't have much a way with technology. To see a machine "eat" another was simply something she'd never cared to look at before, and now seeing this, it was vaguely unsettling. To anyone who had known her very long, "vaguely unsettling" her was not an easy task.

"Come, Maton. Shinju, Gishou, all of you. All the time we waste here is time that Genkai Kurama slips further away." Her voice was... Commanding, but low. Not booming, nor barking as she often did in battle, but the low and smooth voice one used in public when they wanted to be patently serious. She didn't speak again, but merely moved to leave, before the mental map in her head began to fade.

((Transform and Roll out, Evil. If anyone wants a random encounter, feel free. We'll probably be in transit for several scenes until it's appropriate to arrive where Kurama is about to leave.))