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The man who calls himself Yoshida Shoyo is walking through the remains of another pillaged town. His shoulders are broad and his head is high beneath the brim of his wide hat. This kind of carnage is something he's seen thousands of times before, and he simply steps over the corpses of people and butchered animals alike as though they're little more than obstacles. Which is true, to an extent. After death, the man called Yoshida Shoyo figures, there's little difference between a body and an object. It may be that the only difference is, in fact, the reactions of other people.
Either way, the remnants of invading amanto and humans in this town have been made indistinguishable from one another by fire, by gore, by rot-- the sun is high and hot this mid-afternoon, and the place has returned to life with the sheer amount of bugs and birds that all this death has attracted. Some of the dead are more recent than others; survivors killed by looters and the like. Ahead of Yoshida Shoyo, a crossroads leads upward and out, framed by the burnt foundations of houses like strange, black trees. His feet kick up ash as he walks.
A beetle with a beautiful emerald-green carapace lands on the lapel of his kimono and Yoshida Shoyo lifts it gently with his index finger, bringing the chirping insect to his ear. Hearing what it has to say, he smiles gently.
"Why, thank you for telling me."
--
The boy is still alive. Barely. His position at the base of a grand pile of the rotting dead tells Yoshida Shoyo that the boy was probably picking the rags, when, from the looks of it, more dangerous looters arrived and took what little the boy had pilfered, too. He's been hit in the head quite badly-- bad enough to crack his skull and the bone below his eye, and the right eye itself is bulging strangely outwards, strained and red. One of his legs is broken and badly crushed, the small foot at the end of it facing the wrong direction completely, and there's a slash through his gut sending rivers of fresh, red blood down the hillock and across the over-trampled grass. The boy's still breathing raggedly, but he'll die any second, if he knows what's good for him. The fact he hasn't succumbed to shock or blood loss already is astounding.
There's a crow sitting on the boy's chest. Like it's waiting for permission to start picking at him. It doesn't flee when Yoshida Shoyo crouches down beside him.
The boy's eye flicks to him. When his lips part, he doesn't ask for Yoshida Shoyo to help him, or to save him, or anything like that.
"There's... on your..."
Yoshida Shoyo leans in to better listen.
"There's poop on your shoulder."
He looks down at the offending shoulder and, sure enough, there's a large blob of crow shit on the front of his nice white coat, leaving a terrible brown smear there as it slides downwards.
"So there is," Yoshida Shoyo answers with a laugh, and then reaches into his sleeve to produce a wickedly sharp knife, like something for occult rituals or for paring fruit. There's no fear on the boy's face as he looks at it, and there still isn't when Yoshida Shoyo puts the knife to his own wrist. He lets the black blood dribble onto the boy's face, up his nose and onto the dead grass but mostly into his mouth, where it really counts. He splutters weakly, and the blood froths up around his nose and mouth.
When the cut on his wrist has turned into little but a gooey scab, Yoshida Shoyo sits on top of a mostly-intact corpse, trying to minimize the amount of gunk he'll have to scrub from his robes in the river later this evening. Out of his spilt blood, the grass lengthens and turns green and bright. He watches the boy's blood slowly start to wobble and crawl back up the dirt of the hillside and then suck itself back into his ruptured gut, watches as the bones in his leg untwist as the sun gradually grows lower and lower on the horizon. The ruined village and the pile of bodies are bathed in gold and the shadows of circling crows. When the boy sits up, the bird still on his chest startles and flies away in a flurry of black feathers.
The man called Yoshida Shoyo looks him over. He has white hair and red eyes. The kind of thing they would've called him cursed for, not even ten years ago-- but the arrival of the amanto has thrown most of the land's customs and preconceived notions to the wind. He expects the boy to be scared, or shocked-- instead, he just tests his newly-healed leg, staring curiously as he bends his knee and wiggles his toes, and then prods at the tear in his clothes where his guts were just hanging out, smoothing his fingers over the unblemished skin there. His eyes are only about half as wide as they should be.
The boy turns to him with those strange eyes.
"You got anything to eat?"
The man who calls himself Yoshida Shoyo blinks once, twice-- and then he laughs again, softly. "I have some manju back home," he says, though they were meant as offerings for graves more than anything else. "If you'd like to come with me, that is."
--
The next time he gets hurt, he's living with his strange new sensei at his strange new school and his name is Gintoki, now, instead of that brat, that fucking dirty brat or corpse-eating demon and he's catching bugs with Zura in the yard. He's climbing a half-rotten tree out of some stupid display of masculinity compared to that prissy little Zura, who's scared of getting his clothes dirty. There's a huge rhinocerous beetle at his fingertips, and if he could just stretch them out a little bit further-- just a little bit, fuck, come on--!
And then, of course, the branch breaks and there's ants and dirt and squirmy little larvae everywhere and Gintoki's falling and a splinter of wood from the decrepit yard fence has gone in one side of his neck and out the other and he's spitting blood and chunks of something worrying all over himself. Zura screams like a girl, falling to his knees in the wet, overgrown grass. It's probably the first time he's seen this much blood.
"S-Sensei..." he tries to call out, watching Gin convulse, and then scrambles back onto his feet. "Sensei--!"
Gintoki grabs his ankle and trips him again, sending him face-first into the mud this time. He'd laugh at how dirty the other boy is now, if, you know, he didn't currently have a stick through a very important part of his body and it didn't hurt like hell-- Gin tries to take hold of it and pull, fingers scrambling weakly at the damp wood, but it's like the fall or the wound or something has messed with his head and his brainwaves are getting read all wrong and he's just flailing around like a useless idiot.
"G-get it--" Gintoki splutters out, barely making a sound other than a wheeze of air. "Zura--"
Zura, because he's stupid as anything but also braver than anyone, swallows his fear, squeezes his eyes shut and takes hold of the splintered fencepost with both hands. He pulls it out of Gin's neck with a squelch. Then he throws it as far as it can go and kneels over Gintoki on his hands and knees, making this gross, teary face. After a few moments, Gin sits up and almost knocks their foreheads together. Blood is pouring out of the sides of his throat and his mouth like he's become some kind of demented water feature. He cricks his neck back into the right spot, rolling his shoulder, and Zura looks like he's about to throw up, watching Gin's tendons knit themselves back together one-by-one.
"W-what--"
Gin gives him a huge grin. Where his blood has soaked into the earth, swathes of small, colorful wildflowers have started blooming. "Pretty cool, right?"
When their sensei appears, he seems more put out about the stains in their clothes than anything else. Gintoki makes him pinky-promise not to tell anyone about what just happened. Zura thinks that even if he did tell, no-one would believe him anyway.
--
Sakamoto Tatsuma, not yet known as the Dragon of Katsurahama, or really known as anything but a rich boy with a hick accent come to prove himself a man on the front lines, has just gotten the Shiroyasha killed. A projectile meant for him has lodged into the white-haired man's chest, four nasty prongs anchoring it into his flesh, and it's just started to beep. Once, twice, three times-- and then it explodes, obviously, because this is war, and beeping means explosion, and not that you've forgotten your TV dinner in the microwave again. Not even the boom can drown out the sound of the Shiroyasha's blood and guts hitting his helmet, not even the hundreds of people he's seen die already can dull the impact of watching the man's headless body tower over him, motionless for a moment, before falling.
Later, amidst their squadron's mourning for the day's losses, for what it will mean if word of the strongest rebel's death gets out, Sakamoto Tatsuma takes responsibility and volunteers himself to haul the cart of their mangled dead downwind and burn them. By the time he deems himself far enough from the camp to not smoke them all out with the smell of barbecue, Sakamoto is dirty and sweaty anew. He strips off his chainmail helmet and tries to ruffle some life into his wet, limp hair, tossing the thing aside with a clang. He tries not to look too closely at the faces of his dead comrades as he tips the cart on end and lets the stiff corpses and stray dismembered chunks roll out across the mud of the former battlefield. He douses the pile in the dwindling supply of kerosene imported by Sakamoto's own, and then strikes a match against the wooden side of the cart--
A bloody hand shoots out from the bottom of the pile, pinned underneath several other bodies, and wraps around Sakamoto's ankle. The body attached to it then crawls out, using Sakamoto as leverage-- his white hair has gone red and brown all over, and he's been stripped of any useful armor, but his raggedy grey kimono is blown apart in a semi-circle around his neck and chest, only kept secure by the belt. It's the same Shiroyasha he saw blown to chunks in front of him just hours ago, gasping for air as he pulls himself from the stinking pyre.
The zombie blinks up at him in surprise.
Sakamoto blinks back.
Then he screams.
The zombie screams too.
And then Sakamoto drops the still-burning match when it scorches his fingertips. Right onto the fuel-wet ground. The pile roars to life in a matter of seconds, catching the ends of Gintoki's kimono as he tries to kick himself free. Sakamoto grabs him under the armpits and pulls, the flames licking up his body. Sakamoto reaches for his canteen flask as the other man tries to roll back and forth through the mud to extinguish himself--
Thoroughly drenched but no longer actively on fire, the Shiroyasha wipes his dirty hair from his eyes. "Thanks," he says, grimly, before rolling onto his back to watch their former companions burn. Sakamoto sits heavily beside him. Tiny golden wicks of flame travel up from the peak of the pyre, floating away on the wind. The souls of men passing on. The best rites a war like this can offer them.
"That--" starts Sakamoto, feeling weirdly like he's going to throw up. The smell is really something. "That's one hell of a party trick you got there, Shiroyasha."
Gintoki just huffs out a laugh, and when they trudge back upwind to camp, Katsura Kotaro hands the man that fancy sword of his back without a word.
--
Gintoki sits on the cliff for hours, watching the sun sink and rise again and inch across the ground. Like a kid watching a clock. Waiting. The sun kisses his sensei's hair, barely even dirty despite his captivity. When it touches his skin, it carves him in half all over again. A line across his pale face just like the one Gintoki's left between his head and shoulders.
The blood runs in tiny rivers down the cold surface of the cliff, forming a delta down to where Gintoki is sat, waiting. Waiting for it to wobble and start the hike back up into Shoyo's body. Waiting to hear his sensei laugh gently, in that way of his, and poke fun at Gintoki for wearing such a worried expression. Waiting to look up at him, whole again. It wouldn't make sense, he thinks, for Shoyo not to be like him, when he's the one doling out this shitty power in the first place. It wouldn't be fair.
Nothing happens, and life isn't fair. Yoshida Shoyo's head is still and cold and dead and his eyes are open a little and his mouth is halfway to a smile and no-one comes to pull Gintoki away.
--
Ikeda Yaemon, the bakufu executioner, sends away the prison guards and kills him in his cell.
As it always has-- just like Shoyo's couldn't-- Gintoki's head, still connected by that tiny strip of flesh at his neck, his cells almost still in place at a molecular level, reattaches itself with a squelch. The few drops of blood that leak from his slit throat down his chest tickle as they crawl back up. He's been killed several times over, in this stinking cell-- his keepers just don't know it.
When Gin's eyes, much to his own dismay, open again, the old killer is sat cross-legged on the floor of the cell beside him.
"What are you?" the man spits out, noticing the breath of life returning to Gin's body. "Some kind of demon?"
Gintoki rolls his shoulders, trying to crick his neck with tied hands. "Beats me," he answers.
"Why are you still here then?" Ikeda Yaemon huffs. "Why not escape, if no-one here can truly hurt you?"
"I told your brat this before. I did something I gotta atone for."
"So it's punishment? Flagellation?"
Gintoki wants to quip something about never expecting his executioner to choose death by 20 Questions, but he doesn't really have it in him. Just because he can't die, doesn't mean the constant beatings don't exhaust him. "I don't know about all that," goes Gin, falling onto his side on the dusty floor with a wheeze. "I guess I just wanna feel human again."
That might be the truth, he guesses. Or maybe he was just hoping that if he did it properly, it might finally stick. He was trying to find any explanation for Shoyo's death. Any excuse, aside from the obvious fact that he killed his own sensei. Killed the most important person to all of them-- blew up the fucking sun. When he swung his sword, Gintoki truly believed that Shoyo would come back, just like he has, hundreds of times. The choice was an easy one to make, with that in mind. But now he's taken everything from them, and Gin's lost something he didn't even know he could-- he wondered if it was the dignity, the finality of Shoyo's death, that did it. He wondered if a clean-cut execution was the only thing that could put them down. If Gin died at the bakufu's hands, for good-- he had his answer, and his peace. But now, not even the grim reaper himself can take his head off for long, and Gintoki is a patricide no matter how you swing it. The man known as Yoshida Shoyo was mortal, and Gintoki killed him without hesitation.
"They say," starts the old man, sounding like this is going to be a spiel. "When people sin and turn into demons, the only beings capable of turning them human again are other humans. A demon like me--"
If that's true, then what of Shoyo? If he turned Gin into a demon, was he a demon himself? It didn't feel that way. But Gin supposes that he doesn't really feel much like a demon either, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Does it mean that Shoyo was human, then, if Gin-- a demon, surely-- could cut him? Does it mean--
"-- can't cut another demon."
Did they turn him human?
Now that he thinks about it, Shoyo had said something similar, a long time ago. The memory was locked away to time somewhere, but hearing the words out of the old executioner's mouth brings it back like it was just yesterday. Gin, a beat-up kid sulking on the engawa, and Shoyo refusing to teach him his sword style, because he was a monster and monsters couldn't cut other monsters. Hearing it like that... it sounds a little like he expected all this to happen.
Ikeda Yaemon stands with a grunt and exits the cell. He leaves the door open, with the keys still in it, and looks at Gintoki's crumpled form through the bars.
"And even if I could," he says. "It's not in my job description to kill you twice."
--
Otose huffs out a breath thats half cigarette smoke and half frost, hanging in the air in a stinking white cloud. She's starting to feel the age in her knees, shaking as she grips her sandals pigeon-toed to stop from slipping in the ice. Damn her, coming up here every week, like she's a more tragic widow than she really is--
She sets her small pile of offerings atop another headstone. She figures the occupant won't mind, and if they do, she dares them to try and complain.
There's a man slumped against Tatsugoro's grave. Snow has gathered along the lines of his shoulders, his hair, dusting his cheeks and eyelashes, forming a pile in the space between his crossed legs. He's in little more than some thin rags, his bones showing at the neckline like a starving dog. Looking closer, Otose reckons he probably isn't even old enough to be called a man. Just a poor kid, barefoot in the snow.
"Oi, brat," she snaps. "You're in the way."
There's no response. The boy doesn't so much as twitch. She notices his breath isn't clouding the air-- Otose leans down and tests her hand below his nose, and confirms her suspicions. He isn't breathing, and checking the pulse at his throat rewards her with nothing but two fingers colder than the others.
Otose supposes she'll have to call someone about the body.
--
Shimura Tae barges through the door to the Snack Bar with little tact, slamming the thing aside hard enough to tear the paper and splinter some of the wooden dividers. Shinpachi has just called her, distraught from the bar phone, and told her that Gin-san is badly hurt, Kagura-chan is missing, and the boy himself is at the station with Elizabeth, having to explain the death of a member of the local magistrate to his coworkers.
Otae doesn't know the Yorozuya's landlady that well, but she figured Otose would at least have the tact to pretend she cared about Gintoki. From the looks of it, though, she's already got someone lined up to sign a new lease upstairs-- the silver-haired Yorozuya is laid out on one of the bench seats with a towel beneath him, dripping with blood and filthy water. His normally-white kimono has turned a ruddy brown color, and his skin is ghostly pale.
Tae runs over to him and sets the Shimura household's first aid kit down heavily on the floor. Her voice comes out pitchy as she addresses the old woman--
"Are you insane?!" she yells. "Leaving him like this--"
Otose just takes another long drag, her bored eyes scanning over the bloody scene her bar's become. "He'll be fine."
Tae feels her face turn red with anger, and then again with embarrasment over how angry she is. She kneels down and quickly holds Gintoki's cold face between her hands and then slapping his cheek lightly, hoping at least for a woozy response. When she doesn't receive one, she brings her hand lower, to the pulse in his throat...
No, she thinks. There's no way. She must've just missed it-- she's not very good at these things, after all. A man like him, he couldn't die like this--
Perservering, she starts to strip the limp, lifeless man of his wet clothes, and she couldn't care less about the state of Otose's cheap furniture as she takes the towel from below him and wipes the blood from his skin. The wounds in Gin's shoulder and stomach-- the sight of it makes her want to gag, but she manages to grit her teeth and hold it down enough to carefully clean and pack the wounds with gauze and antiseptic. She's winding a bandage carefully around his cut-up hand and wondering if she's going to try and stitch him up herself, when the samurai sits up with a massive gasp, gone white as a ghost all over and ruining half of Otae's hard work.
His hand is gripping Otae's tightly as he takes slow breaths, as his wide eyes take stock of where he is and who he's with.
Otose just huffs at them.
"See?"
When Tae goes to resume her work, the cuts on his hands have closed.
--
Kamui is sat on top of the Night King's rabbit statue with his legs crossed daintily, like one of the many whores that are currently running and stumbling and falling and getting crushed and burning to death throughout Housen's grand estate at the head of Yoshiwara. Below him, blows from the Night King himself are racking the ground, sending dust and splinters down from the rafters like rain. That white-haired man takes a hit directly to the stomach, catching the umbrella with both hands and grit teeth. Kamui whistles, impressed, and crosses his legs in the other direction. He's really something.
The thing is, though-- Kamui's fought thousands of battles against thousands of men, and he knows that what makes the Yato race so superior in combat is their potential for both versatility and brute strength. In most species that can deflect bullets, there's a trade-off that makes them weaker in terms of speed and flexibility or a great number of many things for that amount of raw power. Kamui has learnt through recent observations that Earthlings aren't particularly strong and they aren't particularly versatile, and they're usually all-in on skill, if they're good for anything at all. In the end, all that training and honor doesn't amount to much on the intergalactic stage-- like putting Yamcha in a fight between Saiyans, you know? They're just totally outclassed. Most of the time, Kamui thinks of humans as a pest more than a threat. Particularly nasty cockroaches, with strength in numbers and pure dedication-- billions and billions of 'em. They're kind of fun, that way.
This, though-- this is like watching a fight between Yato.
That man-- the power differential between him and Housen should be like an ant trying to kill an elephant. He's skilled, sure, with his body and his reflexes and that pissy wooden sword, but skill alone can't take down a Yato like Housen. Kamui doesn't understand how he's holding his own, and he's sure Housen doesn't either. A single blow from the Night King should be enough to break the little toy samurai in half, and he's taken at least ten. He's blundering left and right, throwing himself at the old Yato relentlessly, without a thought for the consequences or his own safety. It's like--
Gosh, thinks Kamui. It's like he just doesn't know he can die. Doesn't believe in it, maybe--
Kamui's eyes zero in on the point of connection of the Night King's vicious kick. Through the smoke and debris, blood spurts from the samurai's side-- just like Kamui's attack on his own earlier, Housen's kick tears through the man like he's made of soft tofu. In slow motion, Kamui gets a peek of ruptured guts spilling out amongst the blood, and then-- and then, it's like the clock ticks backwards, and the samurai's insides suck back inwards, leaving nothing behind but a tear in his clothes. The impact of the attack still throws him through a support pillar, cracking the thing in two, but the samurai's back up before Kamui can even blink.
The young Yato leans back on his hands and laughs.
He almost can't wait his turn.
--
They're at the Edo terminal, seeing Umibozu off after he came to bury Housen, back to wherever the fuck it is that the baldy goes when he's not plot relevant. His flight's delayed, and Kagura and Shinpachi are across the way emptying the vending machine on the old man's dime. Gin's manspreading across three of those shitty airport lobby chairs, and Umibozu's got his umbrella up indoors.
Gin's exhausted, and it feels like he hasn't seen the sun in days, and with the amount of energy he's spent rapidly healing the butchery that crazy old pimp dealt out, he can barely walk in a straight line. Normally, he'd be quicker than the Flash to snatch Pappy's wallet out of Kagura's hand and A-line it to the airport lounge, but instead he's sitting here watching infomercials at a 75-degree angle. It's only because Gin's so bored that he even notices.
Umibozu leans over and sniffs him.
Gintoki baulks away and makes a face at the old coot. "Seriously?"
"This smell--" he mutters. The look on his face is half shock and half confusion, with wide, round eyes. "I can't believe I didn't notice."
"The hell are you talking about?"
"You smell like my wife."
It's Gin's turn to look shocked. He leans even further away, like Umibozu's got cooties. "Eh? Sorry, pops, but I'm not into bald guys," he answers, waving a hand dismissively. "What kind of pick-up line is that, anyway? Besides, even if I was into you that way, I'd look like a total gold-digger--"
"Pick-up--?" Umibozu's raised eyebrow quickly lowers itself into a frown. "Idiot! I'm not flirting with you!" he yells. "You smell like altana! Like the Terminal!"
Curiously, Gin sniffs the air. "Kinda smells like feet in here," he answers, and then-- "Ah! You sayin' I smell like feet, old man?!"
"You can't smell that? At all?"
Gintoki shrugs a sore shoulder. "Nah. People can't smell their own BO, y'know. That's why you should always wear deodorant--"
--
It's the annual Snack Smile holiday party. As usual, the Shinsengumi have been called in and ordered to party at threat of seppuku by their gorilla commander. It was awkward at first, but add a little alcohol for lubrication and the cops and cabaret girls actually get along pretty well in their commiseration. Kagura's standing by the non-alcoholic punch bowl, and Gin's standing by the alcoholic punch bowl, and Shinpachi is standing by the vat of ominous black liquid that Otae made. The gorilla commander is passed out on the floor in a puddle of ominous black vomit, and the Shinsengumi's remaining tsukkomi-boke duo are fucking around with the lines of pre-doled red solo cups. Kagura's just leaned over and spat in Gin's drink, because she's mad she has to drink the kiddy punch and he doesn't. Gintoki, in turn, leans quietly over and swaps his drink with Hijikata's. He's surprised there's no mayo in it when he brings it up to his mouth and drinks.
"Ah, danna," says that horrible monotone voice from beside him. He looks over and locks red eyes with Okita Sogo. "I wouldn't drink that, if I were you."
Gintoki looks once more into the drink he's just stolen. From the bubbling surface, a skull-shaped cloud rises into the air.
"Ah," Gin says back.
--
The Courtesan of Death is tied up in her master's web. From his position, lurking over the underground city, she watches her home burn and the women of her Hyakka dart around like ants, far below. It's ironic, that Yoshiwara once again burns like a second sun, buried beneath the earth. She thought she'd given up. And then that curly-haired idiot broke through the window screens with a look on his face like a wild animal, and hope fluttered in her chest--
Jiraiya's strings went taut and immobilized him a few seconds later, still perched mid-air like he's about to strike out with his sword. Hope was pulled away from her like a cat toy, built to tease and never be truly caught. The silvery webs glint around Gintoki's body. The one around his neck starts to gush blood first, with no fabric to stop it from cutting. The stubborn bastard doesn't stop in his assault forwards, gritting his teeth against the pain and force holding him back.
"Stop it!" Tsukuyo yells, uselessly. She squeezes her eyes shut and turns her head away. "Please!"
A laugh rises, low in her master's chest. For a laugh, it has little humor in it at all. His hand shoots up to grip Tsukuyo by her cheeks, forcing her to face forward, to watch her friend being torn apart. "Keep your eyes open," he exclaims-- no, orders. "Look at what you've made me do, Tsukuyo."
She tries to shake her head. Like she's a petulant child, or something. "No! I won't--"
Jiraiya's hand comes up and brackets her eye, peeling her watery lids apart, until she couldn't close it even if she wanted to. It's a mirror of the man's own eye, open wide behind his crumbling mask. "Look!"
She's just glad her tears are there to blur what she sees, so maybe she can pretend for a second, that she hasn't just seen someone she loves' head come off his shoulders. Her master lets her drop, then, limp in his web. He's saying something about making her perfect again, perfect like he was before she came along and stole his obsession and his heart away from him--
And then he isn't saying anything. Blood sprays hot onto Tsukuyo's face, from the puncture wound in Jiraiya's gut. It's a wooden sword, stuck straight through him and glowing wet in the moon and fire-light. But that's--
"You want her to keep her eyes open," the white-haired man spits, his voice low and husky from the wound still open in his throat. Tsukuyo's never seen that look in his eyes, not even when he was fighting Housen. He pulls his weapon back out of Jiraiya cleanly, black blood from the motion forming an arc across the tatami. "But you can't even keep your eyes on your enemy, old man."
--
Later, they're in a tea room in Yoshiwara. Tsukuyo is done up to the nines, with flower-adorned pins in her hair and delicate makeup to hide the cuts and bruises and bags under her eyes. Despite all the sex jokes, she can't hide the awkwardness between them, or that weird look she's giving him. Like she can't believe he's here. Which she can't, Gin knows. He was hoping they just weren't gonna talk about it. It could just be another one of those things.
There it is. That same question again. He's been asked it over and over and over, and isn't it obvious? He's the Shiroyasha, you bastard, it's right there in the name.
"What are you?"
"Eh?" goes Gintoki, like he's stupid, bringing his little dish of sake to his mouth. "You trying to flirt with me? For the record, you're supposed to say 'what are we'--"
"I saw him," she says back. Her eyes study his face, his neck, all the places he should've been wounded by her good-for-nothing master. "I saw him-- kill you."
Gin's a little shocked, when he realizes he kind of wants to tell her the truth. He knows all the nitty gritties about her backstory now-- it'd only be fair, to go, oh, yeah, my master was a monster who made me immortal, haven't you heard? It's all the rage lately. But Gin isn't fair, and he's less honest, and he's a selfish son-of-fuck who prefers his relationships one-sided. Knowing all this about her while she knows jack about him-- it's how it should be.
"I developed a tolerance, y'know," is what he ends up saying. "From all the times you've stabbed me."
And Tsukuyo, bless her heart, doesn't bring it up again.
--
That fucker Hijikata arrested him. After everything Gin-san's done for him, too! That whole cursed sword thing, huh? Did we just forget about that? He thought they were friends! The type of friends who ignore a little history of terror against the state...
But alas, here he is, sat in a grey interrogation room with his hands chained to the table and the plastic chair hurting his ass so bad he's starting to think about confessing to stuff he didn't do just to get out of it. The pins in his stupid ponytail hairpiece are coming loose, dammit. The three stooges are across from him, trying to play some bumbling good-cop/bad-cop routine. That kind of thing would probably be more effective on him if they were regular cops, and not three men Gin has seen laugh, cry, and with their pants around their ankles.
"Really, Toshi-kun," Gin pouts in a put-on voice. "If you're that into roleplay, you could've just asked--"
Hijikata, as expected, takes the bait and bares his teeth. "Who's into roleplay, you mother--"
Gin rocks the chair back on his heels, lackadaisical. "My safeword is sumomo mo momo mo momo no--"
"That's a phrase!"
The sadistic one is against the far wall, looking like he enjoys the idea of a safeword that's also a tongue twister. The hairy one, however, raises his palms in surrender and gets between them. "Now, now, Toshi, settle down," he says, in a voice like a overbearing mother. "We just need some straight answers from you, Sakata-san--"
Before Gintoki can spit on his face for calling him Sakata-san, the door to the interrogation room slams open and almost crushes the small one. In strolls that old guy, the one that was with the Shogun all those times. He's probably someone important, right? He's also holding a gun, which is worrying, because this is a very crowded, very small space and grandpa wouldn't know trigger discipline if it bit him in the ass--
"Enough!" the old man rumbles out, like a Harley coming to life. "You have until the count of three. Are you a terrorist or not?"
At that, he leans across the table and presses the cold barrel of the gun against Gin's forehead. He only has time to blink once.
"One--"
--
Hijikata's hands are shaking around his lighter as he brings it up to the end of his cigarette. Kondo's chased the old man down the hallway, and he can still hear distant screeching and gunfire, in his ear that isn't still ringing from the shot that went off right next to it, anyway. There's blood all up the walls of the interrogation room. He's trying not to look directly at it, or the Yorozuya's body slumped back in the chair across from him. If he does, he might see his face. Turns out he doesn't want to see what that son of a bitch looks like dead, after all. What do you know? So he sits there with his unfocused eyes and shaking hands and smokes his cigarette down to just a stump. When he looks to Sogo, he finds the kid rolling up his sleeve to check his watch, staring at the passing seconds intently.
"Do you-- think he really was the Shiroyasha?" Hijikata asks then, throwing his butt onto the floor.
"Oh, yeah," Sogo adds, monotonally. "For sure."
"So. This isn't that bad, right? We were just doing our jobs, right?"
"Mm. Probably."
"He's killed loads of people, right?"
"Mm."
"So it's for the best, then, right? This is like-- community service, right?"
"Mm."
Hijikata puts his head in his hands.
"We're fucked, aren't we?"
"Probably."
"Any chance he's still alive down there?" Hijikata grumbles, watching the blood on the floor leech towards his shoes through the gaps in his fingers.
"Probably, yeah."
It was a rhetorical question. His brains are on the ceiling. They're gonna be finding curly white hairs all over the place for months, the way his head blew off like a dandelion. The cop angrily turns to his junior coworker. "You're not even listening to me, are you?"
"I never listen to you, Hijikata-san," Sogo replies, still watching the seconds tick by. "The boss'll be fine. See?"
The kid jerks his head at the red mess up the walls, which-- seems to be getting less messy by the second, actually? The puddle by his shoes is disappearing, somehow, and Hijikata pushes his chair back a ways from the table to watch the Shiroyasha's guts wobble and recede back into his slumped-over body.
All Hijikata can do is stare, when the motherfucker jerks back upright with a gasp, with all of his hair and face and nose and back-of-his-head intact. His eyes are wide and shocked, looking around the room like he doesn't know who or where he is for a second, before Hijikata watches him tense his wrists and break the chain between his handcuffs like it's made of paper maché and not solid steel.
The Yorozuya's accusatory gaze locks on Hijikata.
"You fucking shot me?!" he yells.
Hijikata, because he's just seen something impossible happen in front of him and can't believe it, and also because he can't help himself, yells back. "It wasn't me, asshole!"
Sogo, on the other hand, gives Gintoki a thumbs up. "Sub two minutes, this time. Great work, boss."
--
Ah, shit, thinks Gintoki.
Wherever he is, it's pitch black. He tries to sit up, but he only makes it a few inches before his head collides with the ceiling. For a second, he thinks he's wound up in a coffin or something, but a coffin wouldn't make such a horrible, hollow-sounding rattling when he hits the sides of it, so it must be something else. This must be what Kagura feels like, sleeping in the cupboard every night. Maybe he'll get out the spare futon.
After trying to kick out at the bottom with his feet, the entire container slides rapidly outwards and Gin finds himself blinded by the fluorescent lighting of the room beyond. He blinks away the tears that come to his eyes. Ah, he thinks again, looking at his blurry body below him. He's naked. No underwear or nothing. Even worse, it's cold as hell in here, so his sword down there is looking more like a butter knife. If he has to do some kinda tactical espionage action to get outta this place, all the genome soldiers are gonna think he's a two-inch warrior, dammit--
There's a guy in a white coat, staring at him like he's seen a ghost. A mug's smashed all over the floor, little bits of porcelain poking out of the puddle of black coffee at the guy's feet.
Oh, he's totally in the morgue, isn't he?
Looking around confirms that Gin is, in fact, surrounded by rows of drawers containing rows of dissected corpses. He brings his hands over to cover himself and gives the doctor (or nurse, or orderly) a weak smile. "Um," he starts. "Good morning."
"G-good evening," replies the doctor-or-whatever, his voice quivering.
Gin gestures at the door with his shoulder. "You don't mind if I just..."
The man steps rapidly to the side, almost slipping on his spilt coffee. "Go ahead!"
He swings his legs over the side of the tray, the steel cold as fuck on his nuts. The doctor yelps when Gin turns back to look at him. "You don't have any spare coats, do you?"
The guy strips in a split second and holds out his lab coat to Gin. "Take mine!"
"Ah? You sure?"
"Trust me, I don't need it!"
"I can just have it? For real?"
The doctor nods his head enthusiastically, pushing the garment into Gintoki's arms. "After this," he says. "I'm handing in my resignation."
--
Gintoki strolls out of the hospital, naked except for a dirty lab coat, and it's not quite naked-except-for-an-apron, but it's still probably someone's fetish. He twirls his toe tag around his finger. Cause of death: Scooter Accident, it says. He's fought horrible monsters, cursed swords, members of the Yato clan-- he's been stabbed, shot, decapitated, poisoned, torn limb-from-limb by the strings of that glasses guy's shamisen, and punched so hard his guts have come out his mouth. As if he'd die from something stupid like crashing his bike. It'd take an extinction event to even have him worried, at this point.
Or so he wants to think, but he can't lie-- it is a little concerning, for him to be down so long he ends up in the morgue. What if it's so long he wakes up in the ground, next time? Is he gonna have to punch his way out like Uma Thurman?
He slides the door to the snack bar across with a groan. His joints are still stiff, even after walking all the way here. He ignores the way the sign is turned to closed, and casually takes a seat at the bar. "Oi, gran," he grumbles. "Get me a drink, will you? Gin-san's had a terrible day, you hear?"
When he gets no immediate response, he glances over at the old woman, who's staring at him a little strangely. Her hands have stopped in their motion of cleaning a pint glass. Looking around the place, he sees Shinpachi and Kagura sat at the booth in the far corner with Tama. They look stunned, where they stare back at him. Pattsuan has bags under his eyes, and Kagura's gripped the table so hard the wood has splintered. Tama, though, gives him that same sunny smile as always.
"It's good to see you looking so lively, Gintoki-sama. Though you could use some pants."
"Eh?" answers Gintoki. "Complaining about a free show? Some people would pay good money to see these balls--"
There's a photo of him on the countertop, right near the register. It's in an ominous black frame, and there's a vase with 1'000 yen stuck in the top of it instead of a flower. He's got red eye in the photo, and he's picking his nose.
"Huh?"
--
"You son of a bitch!" yells Shinpachi, tears streaming down his face. He's all ugly and red, and his glasses are fogged up about it. He punches Gin square in the cheek. "I had to identify your body!"
"Sadaharu's been pulling his hair out! He's been fretting without you!" Kagura interjects, punching him square in the other cheek. She's missing several large patches of hair. "I didn't think he was gonna make it!"
"You left everything in your will to Ketsuno Ana! She had to come and sign away her rights to all your junk!"
"She took the kids, you bastard!" the Yato girl wails. "And our Dyson cleaner! And our 70-inch TV!"
"And our portable air conditioner! And our LG sound system--"
Gintoki finally puts his hands up to defend himself against their barrage of weak blows. "We didn't have any of that!"
"Soyo-chan wanted to organize a state funeral, but gran said you wouldn't want any of that and we should just tip your ashes out at the park with the Hideyoshi statue--"
"Oi!" Gin yells at the old woman, accusative. "Don't I deserve better than that?!"
The old bitch just shrugs at him. Tama's tinkling laughter echoes through the bar, fondly watching the kids hang off their boss. "See, everyone?" she says. "I told you Gintoki-sama could never be killed by something like a traffic accident."
Shinpachi has the gall to look bashful. "Well, yeah, but we thought you were in denial, Tama-san."
Kagura blows her nose on his coat and Gin lets her. He's gonna throw it out anyway. "And the doctors said that after he crashed, he got run over again by a semi-trailer and they had to wash his body off the road with a fire hose--"
Otose nods, and pretends to wipe a tear from her eye. "Not even I thought he could come back from something like that."
"It was really hard to identify you from just some limbs, but then I saw that drunk tattoo you got, and--"
Tama steps over and places a hand on Shinpachi's shoulder, like she's consoling him. She looks up at Gintoki with that fondness that's always in her eyes. "The answer is really quite simple," she explains to Shinpachi and Kagura. "It's because Gintoki-sama is immortal."
Pattsuan scrubs his hand under his nose. "Huh?"
"I said, it's because Gintoki--"
"I can't die," Gin tells them. Something he's never admitted out loud. Usually, he's content to just let people come up with their own explanations, for the things he does, for the fights he's won, for the days he's saved. Whatever they come up with, it's probably more believable than the truth, anyway. "I honestly thought you guys knew."
Instead of surprised, Shinpachi just looks angry. "Why would we know that?!" he yells, and then hides his face against Gin's chest. It's just like the three of them, using punching and yelling as a poor excuse for a hug.
"Um?" goes Gin, confused. He doesn't really know what to do with his arms, so he tentatively wraps them around both kids' waists and pulls them in. "How many times have you seen me with my insides on the outside?"
"I thought it was just the magic of animation!"
--
The world's been saved, a couple times over, people have died, and cried, and lived despite it all, and peacetime in this new Edo is something that feels like a baby deer, wobbling as it tries to stand for the first time, unsure of itself and its footing. Kagura's asleep on the couch beside him, using Sadaharu as a footrest, and Gintoki is going back through an issue of Jump he's read before. He's just cut his finger, turning the page. A bead of blood wells up at the tip of his finger, catching the light before it breaks apart, and starts to dissipate into the lines of his fingerprint. Gin watches it closely, expecting the blood to suck back in and the tiny cut to close back up into perfect, unblemished skin in a matter of seconds.
It doesn't, and the cut continues to bleed.
The man who calls himself Sakata Gintoki thinks about demons, and monsters, and humans.
And then he goes to get a band-aid.