Chapter Text
Gintoki is minding his own business, being a bother to absolutely nobody at all, when the patrol car prowls up beside him and starts to roll down its passenger-side window.
He ignores it.
His scooter’s in need of repair again, and gas, and he doesn’t have the cash to spare on either of those, so he’s walking. The afternoon herd of pedestrians is pretty mellow today, parting around the vehicle with general obedience and a minimum low murmur of complaint.
“I didn’t do it,” Gintoki says, without sparing a glance, before whoever’s in there starts reading him his rights. He just keeps plodding on home with as best an air of indifference as he can pull, holding his depressingly lightweight paper bag of dinner groceries.
He doesn’t actually know if he did it or not. The statistical probability of this nebulous “it” being somehow his fault is probably an academic pass, if the teacher’s a forgiving sort and grades on a curve. But whoever’s about to start grilling him doesn’t need to know about this vague hunch of his.
“The Chief wants to talk to you about something,” some voice he doesn’t particularly recognize tells him with a definite hint of reluctance. How nice-they’re on the same page about this entire exchange, then.
“Pass. Your Chief is pretty used to being stood up already, so it shouldn’t be too hard on him. Tell him if he wants to take me on a dinner date he’s gotta ask me out himself, and cover the bill.”
The car is still blocking almost the whole road to keep crawling along beside him. People are starting to give Looks. Urrgghhhh.
“It’s about a job. He’s too busy to come chasing after a layabout like you himself, so decide if you’re interested or not already so I can get back to doing some actual work too.”
Well! Turns out this is all Gintoki’s fault after all. For being so goddamn chummy with so many of the frickin’ Shinsengumi’s top dogs lately. He’s always been more of a cat person but life sure does seem to love throwing all its rowdiest, shittiest mutts at him all covered in fleas and mud, over and over and over again. He’s starting to develop a fucking allergy.
“That’s funny,” he sneers at the prick in the car, getting a look at him for the first time. Nope- never seen this guy before in his damn life. And that’s more downright annoying than if he had.
“I don’t think I recall ever joining the same payroll as you dirtbags. Unless you’re about to tell me I’ve got a whole stack of big fat government checks to come and collect, as far as I know, none of your jobs have a damn thing to do with me.”
The grunt in the passenger seat looks flustered for a nice moment, which does something to soothe the nasty irritation Gintoki has been starting to nurse with a vengeance. His youngish features clenching in combined frustration-arrogance-affront is a very satisfying sight.
He must be new, because instead of barking at Gintoki a bit like most of his other coworkers so enjoy doing, he bites his tongue and downright sulks a “Not interested, then.”
Then he gives a nod to his buddy behind the wheel, the car starts to try moving ahead quicker through the crowd, and Gintoki realizes as he sees himself get smaller in the rearview mirror that he probably just made a huge mistake.
To say funds have been tight lately would be grossly reductive. All of Edo has been keeping perfect track of its pets, nobody has been cheating on anybody else or even worrying about the possibility, everyone’s contract labour is going without a single damn hitch, and every last local corner store, family restaurant, hole in the wall noodle shop or drag club is full to fucking bursting with competent and willing employees.
Income is in the negative, just from keeping himself, a dog the size of an elephant, and a girl with the stomach of five elephants fed enough to be capable of basic movement. Shinpachi has been cooking meals at his own house on his sister’s grocery money basically every day now. It’s shrunk the black hole in the middle of the Yorozuya’s coffers by a… not completely insignificant amount, and he’s been bringing whatever leftovers he can spare in half-full tupperware containers, but the only thing Gintoki’s had in his pantry for about a week and a half now is rice, and gambling for side dishes at the pachinko parlour has taken his stash of petty change right down to zero as of this evening.
He needs a job.
… No matter how his dignity will suffer for it.
Hell, who is he kidding. When did he ever have any of that pointless shit in the first place.
He spits out a few expletives and takes off after the car at a full sprint. It’s still close enough for him to be able to run the distance between them with long, leaping strides, and make a lunge for the closest door handle. He uses his grip on it to pull himself closer, throws it open, and dives into the back seat.
“--What the hell?!?! What are you-” Gintoki’s new bestest friend sputters, trying to draw his blade and turn around with it inside the car. There’s not enough room, so all he ends up doing is flinging his elbows around ridiculously.
“Changed my mind,” Gintoki says as simply and confidently as he can between big panting breaths of air. Track and field was never his specialty. Fuck. Ahh, his throat.
The driver, another youngish looking punk he doesn’t recognize in the slightest, keeps throwing wary looks into his windshield mirror and seeming pretty unsure of whether or not he should even keep his foot on the pedal, but his partner is furious.
“Get the fuck out!! You think you can show this kinda disrespect and get away with it, you little bitch?! You’re messing with the Shinsengumi, you better be saying your fucking prayers-”
“Hang on a sec. You’re arresting me or something now, right? Then like… shouldn’t you keep me inside the car, instead of kicking me out? You’re not very good at this yet, are you.”
If the colour of the newbie’s face was red before, it’s turned positively crimson now. Or maybe scarlet. Either way, he’s so mad at this point that the speech centre of his brain has taken a little vacation, and left him with nothing to do with his mouth besides sort of impotently flap it a bit.
Gintoki flashes a big old grin to the increasingly troubled-looking driver. “Guess you two get to waste even more time on this layabout here, huh? Ain’t it your lucky day.”
He gives a hearty smack or two to the back of the driver’s seat, and gets more comfortable in his own. His bag of groceries fusses a bit about staying upright on the cushion, so he puts it on the floor instead.
“Put your seatbelt on please,” the driver asks. Awww. How nice. This one’s kinda cute.
“Heh, my bad, my bad,” Gintoki simpers at him, but does it anyways. He’s awful tempted to kick his boots off, and get his bare feet all over the lovely springy leather cushions of this fine vehicle.
Actually, nothing’s really stopping him from doing that. He leans as comfortably and casually against the window as he can and pulls his foot up over his knee.
“By the way,” he posits, to whichever of them will answer first- his money’s on the driver for now. “I don’t think I recall ever making the acquaintance of you fine gentlemen, before today. How’d you know where to find me?”
He’s halfway to wiggling his boot off as quietly and subtly as he can when he loses his bet against his own self, and the highly crabby passenger grunt answers with gleeful spite over his shoulder.
“Chief told us to just do nothing in Kabukicho as long as we could, and the deadbeat-looking white haired slob we were searching for would show up all on his own, to mimic our behaviour.”
He flicks a nasty look and a nastier smile back at Gintoki, finally deigning to make eye contact. “Looks like he was right!”
Gintoki returns the glance with a deep, laughing crinkle between his eyes. He pulls his footwear off, slouches deep into his seat, and kicks the guy in the face with his bare foot.
***
The barracks aren’t actually very far away from where the car stopped him, but from several physical fights between the front and back seat and the resulting number of near traffic accidents, it feels like a five hour road trip where nobody in the car had enough coffee in the morning.
Gintoki lost one of his shoes out the window when he threw it, so he steps through the compound’s gate with the other one in his hand- to keep up appearances, see. It would look haphazard and unprofessional if only one of his feet was bare and dusty, but if they match, then it seems intentional. A fashion statement. A political statement, about how, spiritually, he had to fucking drag himself here through the dirt for a job that he wants like he wants a rash of oozing sores on his taint.
The door of his chauffeur slams shut and it rolls away behind him, doubtless so the
occupants can go harass some other innocent person in the middle of their errands. Gintoki flips the bird at it over his shoulder and spits pettily on to the ground, before making his way inside.
He can’t really remember the last time he was here, or what he was doing, but in comparison the place seems kinda… empty. Which is probably better than it being packed like a tin of pickled herring, full of the kinda boisterous roughhousing punks the organization seems to attract, and just as smelly. But it’s weird.
“Weird” is the word he settles on, instead of “creepy” or “lonely”.
The long outdoor hall around the courtyard is where he ends up, without any prior direction, or obnoxious recruits in his way yelling at him for trespassing, or even worse any of the older hands who’ve come to recognize him beaming about catching a drink some time. Normally there’d be at least one off-duty slacker out here or in the inner garden, enjoying the air, or the sun, or whatever it is the fuzz do when they’re not making problems for decent hardworking people. But there’s nobody in this part of the building either.
Gintoki is starting to get annoyed, about what he’s even meant to be fuckin’ doing here in the first place, if there isn’t even anybody around to talk down to him about the privilege of his terms of employment.
He’s getting ready to step down into the courtyard and start tearing up plants, when there’s the slide of an opening door from further down along the corridor. The guy coming out with a hurried gait, he looks kinda familiar- yeah, it’s him isn’t it, that bald dude, higher ranking, what’s his name? Harasho?
Whatever, doesn’t matter. Still enough to work with.
Gintoki turns fully towards him as he keeps stamping down the hallway, raises his hand in a friendlier gesture than any of these jerks deserve after the evening he’s had so far.
“Hey, how’s--”
“Conference hall,” Baldie tells him, thumbing over his shoulder to the room he just came from, and keeps on walking.
Without a second glance, or even a first, he disappears around a corner at his same rushed pace.
Gintoki feels himself gain a substantial rank up, from annoyed to pissed.
He expels a frustrated, stressed out half-shout and kicks the nearest support pillar, realizes when it’s already too late that his feet are bare, and crumples to his knee to clutch at the victims of circumstance that have become his toes.
Good. This is good. This pain will become his vengeance, and he will visit it tenfold upon the bastards who’ve been having so much fun jerking him around, when he could be at home already making dinner for his bloody family at this very moment.
It will become his blade. It will be as the sword of Damocles and strike true upon the waiting necks of those fated to feel its edge for their crimes.
He limps the rest of the way down the hall and it becomes his spare boot, flung viciously towards the face of the first person he sees in the conference hall.
“Ding dong you assholes, your guest of honour for the night has arrived,” he barks into the shocked silence of the meeting space.
It’s empty, besides for the two people sat cross-legged around a mess of unfolded maps and paper documents. One of them is Kondou Isao, acting Chief of the Shinsengumi Special Police Force, with an expression of blank shock on his rough and stubbly face. The other one--
-- oh.
Uh-oh.
The other one, peeling the shin’s length of Gintoki’s leather boot off his cheek and the side of his mouth, where the momentum it slapped him with made it stick- the owner of a brand new vivid red welt covering a good 40% of his classically good looking features- the man with the pair of sharp, piercing, battle-honed eyes staring with silent fury at where Gintoki is still panting in the doorway from his outburst, is Kondou’s second-in-command, the real brains and tactical brawn of the whole outfit, the savagely thorough and ruthless Oni Vice Chief, Hijikata Toushirou.
He gets to his feet with harsh efficiency, his fingers so tight around Gintoki’s boot that the material of it audibly squeaks and crumples.
“Toushi, wait-” Kondou keeps glancing between the two of them, and starts to rise to his own feet in contained panic at the direct path Hijikata is striding with purpose towards Gintoki’s spot in the doorway.
“Smoke break,” Hijikata announces, with a grim level of control over his tone of voice.
When he’s in striking distance, he raises the fist holding Gintoki’s boot and thrusts it into its owner’s nose with the force of a full right hook.
While his senses are busy with sudden pain, the sight of nothing but black leather and the stench of his own foot odour, Gintoki feels Hijikata bodily shoulder past him through the door and keep going down the corridor. The harsh slap of some other door closing with a slam echoes through the courtyard and into the conference hall.
Gintoki peels his weapon of choice off his own face to see Kondou sat back down cross-legged over his collage of case materials. He’s got his forehead between his broad fingertips, sighing down at the top of his knee.
“Did you have to make a scene, this time?” he groans, not really asking a question.
“I dunno,” Gintoki snottily counters him, pinching the bridge of his nose and sniffling, dabbing around under his nostrils for too much moisture- not bleeding, at least, that’s a relief. “Did you have to give me a fucking obstacle course to get through first, of your brattiest newbies and a whole empty labyrinth of a building, just to let me know what the hell it even is that you want from me?”
Kondou sighs again, deeper than before. “They were rude to you, weren’t they,” he says with a weary look in his eyes, again not really making a question of it. “I knew I should’ve sent someone else.”
“No arguments there,” Gintoki grumbles, entering the hall to take Hijikata’s old spot on the floor. “Doesn’t even look like you have anyone else, though. Did I forget a civic holiday, or something? Or did they all just finally quit at the same time.”
“Today’s the funeral,” Kondou informs him simply, with a humourless little smile. “We couldn’t spare much time to plan it right away, not with all the casualties and arrests and seizures we still had to work through. It wound up having to be put off for a pretty long time, until things calmed down enough that we could spare anybody who wanted to go.”
Funeral?
“I was able to drop by real quick to pay respects myself, earlier. But I can’t be away too long, not with things unfolding here the way they are.”
“Wait a second. Who-” Gintoki starts to ask, feeling a deep, heavy reminder stir into motion at the bottom of his heart, before he needs to complete the thought. Kondou’s quietly sad wrinkle at the edge of the eyes fills in the rest, needlessly, to overflowing.
He forgot, he realizes, with a dark, slow chill of disgust towards himself.
He had the privilege, for once, of being able to forget, because his own life didn’t change a whit.
He spent some time in a family restaurant, then in a rich man’s sitting room, then in a private hospital suite brighter than it had any right to be, then in a dark, empty, silent hallway. That’s the only involvement he ever had. A handful of brief encounters and conversations, and now the appropriately small amount of shame and sadness left to express to the people who lost somebody far more precious than just a casual acquaintance.
“Shit,” Gintoki sighs, feeling any last vestige of irritation shred itself neatly into pulpy, soggy regret. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Kondou urges him, with the ghost of something more firm and proud in his tired expression. “Mitsuba-san would hate it if a joker like you was walking around feeling sorry.”
“That’s true,” Gintoki agrees with a weak smirk. “I’ll have to go pay a visit sometime, and set myself straight. She’s a hard one to deal with when you’ve said something wrong.”
“Yeah,” Kondou laughs, a wry, sharp-sounding thing cracking at the sides from the weight of too many emotions. “You better put your heart into it.”
In the time he spent with the lady herself, Gintoki never found himself thinking in awed disappointment specifically towards the great big oafish man sat across from him now, when it came to the shocking oversight of her funny and charming person in general. How could anyone let her wait on the sidelines her whole life- forget her brother’s fumbling peers.
He realizes, until right this moment, in perfect view of the fragile and fully open grief in Kondou’s whole bearing, he never thought him more than another faceless silhouette outside the operating theatre late that night, while Mitsuba’s little brother held her hand and wept.
Another ignorant misconception, possible only from his own relative position of detachment. Completely, heartlessly wrong.
This man also lost a family member. And he can’t be at her funeral tonight, because he’s got a job to give to the wretch who let himself forget she even entered his life and left it only a handful of weeks ago.
With a skewering jut of self-loathing, like a corkscrew in his lung, Gintoki changes the subject. It’s not such a burden on him- he’ll keep on wishing he could have spent a bit more time with someone clever and fun, but that’s the most bereft he’s got the right to ever feel about this. The least he can do right now is spare the guy struggling not to fall apart right in front of him the cruelty of having to actively stop thinking about her at his own behest.
“So what’ve you got for me, you big ape.” He plants the palm of his hand on his knee, with a muffled but nonetheless striking smack through his clothes. All eager, confident smiles. All business. One of his easiest, well-worn disguises.
“Right.” Kondou clears his throat, flicks something away from the corner of his eye, and naturally adopts a no-nonsense posture to rival Gintoki’s own. Easy
does it.
“Well, as you can see,” he starts, but makes no gesture towards the spread between the two of them, “I’m short on people.” His thick brow is straight and steady under the reason for what he’s saying.
“It’s not just tonight- a lot of us were injured in that mess of a sting op you caught the end of, back then, and most are still unfit for active duty. The remainder have been stretched thin on the follow-up, on helping the city’s general police divisions with all the gaps they just can’t cover with their own guys, and on preexisting cases of joui activity. There’ve been a handful of new guys in the meantime, but they don’t have the training or experience for this. We considered the Oniwabanshuu, but in the end they’re not a good fit, and we probably don’t have the budget for even one of them anyways.”
“You do have the budget, though, for one down-and-out private business owner who is visibly desperate for clientele, though, don’t you?” Ginoki interjects, with a defeated kind of humour. He is gonna get absolutely gouged on this, isn’t he.
“Right you are,” Kondou grins, with a cheesy finger-pistol. Ugh.
“Before I get into any of the details- this whole thing is highly time-sensitive, and highly secret. I don’t like it either, but, you need to know-” His gaze is level, direct, and serious. Gintoki already sees with depressing clarity were this is going.
“Don’t even bother telling me,” he sighs, feeling the beginnings of a very big, very long headache. “Until I agree to do it, you can’t tell me anything about it, can you.”
“I wish it wasn’t the case,” Kondou says, and maybe Gintoki can even believe him there, just on a professional basis. “If we go ahead with only whatever resources we can spare ourselves, it’ll be a lot more dangerous, and failure will be a lot more likely. We need some outside help on this one, and not being able to properly inform that help right off the bat is making it pretty damn hard to get any at all.”
Gintoki pretends, just for the sake of it, that he isn’t already committed to whatever this dangerous mess actually is out of pure financial necessity.
“Well, start with what you can tell me. My pay, for example.”
He braces himself for disappointment and anger.
“500,000 yen, with a partial advance, and all on-the-job expenses covered separately.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, my good fellow!! Say the word, you need only say the word, and this humble servant to the institution of civil security is at your beck and call!”
If he shakes Kondou’s hand any less vigorously he might realize just how much room he’s got to barter, here.
Five hundred thou.
Five hundred thou!!!
All he’s gotta do is coast through to the end of whatever overrated, overhyped variety of scavenger hunt he’s just agreed to, and he can finally get the Old Hag off his back about all of his overdue rent. He can get his scooter fixed and refueled. He can eat meat again.
Meat.
Fresh meat!
“Is, uh, can I take this as a sign of your non-retractable agreement, then?” Kondou seems thrown by the wild enthusiasm he’s being shown, but someone on a steady salary could never understand.
Gintoki will get to eat meat again.
“Look, if you need my signature on something then just show me where. Here’s your verbal confirmation: Yorozuya Gin-chan is on the job, one hundred and fifty percent. That number you gave me better not have changed when it’s time for the invoice, you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” Kondou laughs, with blatant relief seeping into his tone and body language. “Glad to have you aboard. You’re gonna have your money’s worth in trouble, I promise you that.”
Whatever it is, Gintoki feels certain to his very core that he can handle it with one hand tied behind his back. He gets down and dirty more than any of these coddled over-groomed show-dogs could ever even manage to have nightmares about. With the promise of all his immediate day-to-day struggles evaporating like water on the coals in a first-class health spa, in this moment, he is invincible.
“I think I can manage. Just give it to me straight, Mr. Chief- what’re we up against.”
“Give it to you straight, huh… Well, if you’re totally sure about that…”
A flurry of excited nods rattles Gintoki’s brain around a little bit. “Just spit it out already. You’re not giving away cars on a game show, here.”
Kondou’s awkward smile falters completely, and he gives a long sigh through his nose.
“Alright then.”
His eyebrows make that hard, rigid line from before.
“What do you know about the Harusame space pirates?”
Gintoki feels his stomach transmute instantly into cold, solid lead, and threaten to drop right out of his ass.