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“Oi, Tatsuma, set a fire will ya?”
Tatsuma craned his head over from where he was sitting. “Aw, why me? Why not Takasugi? You know, since he’s so good at starting fires.” The night was expected to be a cold one; winter was falling upon the camp after all. Daylight was almost completely faded by now. Despite the cloud cover, Tatsuma was sitting in his normal spot staring upwards. Maybe he was looking for snow instead of stars. He also had at least two of their blankets instead of the allowed one! Hey!
“Last time Takasugi set a fire, he almost set the whole camp on fire, you dumbass!”
“Why not you? Oh, let me guess, you can’t even hold two rocks together?”
Gintoki was getting very, very annoyed. Tatsuma grinned at him in response. The wood clattered a bit, two rocks smacked against each other a few times befores sparks flew and set the wood on fire. “I’m not pyro kinetic! Ask someone else next time.”
“He doesn’t even sit near the fire,” Katsura commented, bringing by some bowls of rice. One of them floated over to Tatsuma, and he started to eat. “Or near us. Sakamoto, you need to be more social. Besides, there’re clouds tonight.”
“He’s probably still mad at Takasugi.”
Tatsuma whipped around and shot a glare at Gintoki, a pair of chopsticks sticking out of his mouth. “I am not!”
Setting down the tray, Katsura slowly smiled and crept closer. “What happened this time?” Tatsuma looked away from him, pouting. Yes, someone was mad!
“The usual,” Gintoki drawled, sitting next to the roaring fire once more. “Takasugi insulted his ships and now he’s upset.”
“They’re my ships,” Tatsuma whined. “First you burn one up, and now Takasugi says they’re just moldy! I won’t stand for this!” He crossed his arms under his blanket and huffed. Katsura patted his shoulder reassuringly. Tatsuma was grinning, though. He was ready to just throw the man into the ocean! He couldn’t try to blow anything up while soaking wet, right? “I’ll just-”
He got hit in the head with a plastic bag. Katsura avoided the bag quite easily, disappearing and immediately reappearing sitting down next to Gintoki at the fire. Tatsuma laughed and rubbed the back of his head, looking back. “Speak of the devil!”
“Bring him over here, Takasugi.”
“I dare you to set fire to his hair, Takasugi!”
Takasugi just let out a grunt and grabbed the bag, grabbing Tatsuma by his hair and dragging him closer to the fire. “Ow! Ow! Your hands are hot! Stop this! Let me go!” Tatsuma shrieked, and the others laughed. “Don’t touch my hair! Apologize for insulting my ships!” He reached up and grabbed Takasugi’s face, trying to push him away, and the plastic bag started whacking Takasugi as they started to fight.
The Four Heavenly Kings, as they were called… they were just teenagers, after all. They were a special bunch, however, revered for the strange powers they wielded.
A look back to earlier that day explains the reason for Tatsuma’s distress.
Yet another battle raged on in this unending war. A couple of bafuku soldiers felt themselves being lifted in the air right as they were about to ambush one of the younger Jouishishi. Sakamoto Tatsuma stood in the distance, a smirk on his face and his right hand high to the sky. With a flick of his wrist, the bafuku soldiers went flying. Tatsuma needed to wield no sword. At least, not with his hands. He was a wielder of telekinesis , the ability to lift anyone and anything with his mind. They both hit the ground dead for… well, unseen reasons.
Outside of battle, Tatsuma’s swindling and ability to persuade others came from his ability to plant suggestions in the minds of others. He can also read others quite easily; however, he didn’t know he had these powers.
An explosion came a few yards away from where Tatsuma stood, and his helmet flew off, though he caught it before it could fall. “Takasugi!” he yelled. “Be careful!”
A piece of wood hit his face.
“What is this!”
Takasugi slid next to him, sword sheathed, hands hovering close to each other. “That old rotting boat of yours. Put a telekinetic field around us, you shithead.”
Tatsuma shrieked. “You can’t be serious!” Before either of them could do anything, a hoard of Amanto came charging towards them. Tatsuma held his hands up right as Takasugi smacked his together, creating an explosion directed towards the Amanto. Takasugi Shinsuke could induce explosions by smacking his hands together like two rocks. It would create sparks that exploded on contact with anything and, out of the four, this power was the most dangerous of them. The telekinetic field that Tatsuma put around them prevented the sparks from hitting them and exploding on contact.
One spark did, however, light a certain someone’s hair on fire.
“Zura! You’re supposed to warn us! Aren’t you supposed to be at the east flank?”
Katsura’s hair only burned for a second. The only indication there was that Katsura had put it out was his hair suddenly swishing and the fire going out.
“East flank is gone,” he growled. “A Yato showed up. Gintoki told me to come over here as fast as possible.”
“What is he going to do?”
“I don’t know. He only told me a few seconds ago.” Katsura had superspeed . He could run far fast, and was a huge asset when it came to passing messages along the different groups and delivering mail and news. And, like Tatsuma, he had another power he didn’t know he had: animal communication. That one in particular wasn’t too handy in battles, but sometimes he could communicate with animal-like Amanto.
Debris and soldiers kept getting caught in the forcefield and sent flying. Tatsuma spoke up. “Is he going to go back?”
“If he was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Takasugi sneered.
“I’d still have my boat the-”
Takasugi kicked him in the gut. “No, that would still be ruined. Katsura, go find him. If he stopped time to fight the Yato, it should be dead by now.”
While the other three had visible powers, Gintoki’s was lowkey. People knew he had something - how else would he be one of the Heavenly Kings, and the leader no less - but no one could pinpoint what his power was. It was time travel. He couldn’t go into the future, but he could stop time and throw his soul “backwards” into a past body.
No one knew exactly how they got these powers.
But the four felt solidarity amongst each other. Not everything was about their powers, either. Sometimes, all they did was fight over boats. The winner of the scuffle was, of course, Takasugi, but Tatsuma’s hair wasn’t set on fire in the process. He was silently thankful for that.
At night, when there wasn’t a moon, the four would sit outside on the roof and look at the stars. “I wonder how far up I can go…” To which the other three had to pull Tatsuma down back to Earth before he could float too far. Gintoki held him down.
Katsura passed around tea.
“It’s a nice night, isn’t it?” He leaned back against Gintoki, who leaned against Takasugi, and Tatsuma flopped himself against all three of them, resulting in them being back-to-back-to-back. If one moved, everyone would fall, so no one dared move.
The stars were bright and twinkled softly. It was a little cold, but none of them seemed to mind it. The battlefield, and the soldiers, were quiet. The silence, however, could only last for so long.
Takasugi pointed. “Those stars look like a di-”
His mouth was quickly covered by Gintoki’s hand. “A delicious clam.” He seemed to look nervous at Takasugi’s implied comment. If Takasugi said it, if any of them said it, their bet would be lost… they’d been doing so well until now! He stuck his face in Takasugi’s. “Did you forget?”
“Listen, I-”
“Yeah, that does look like a dick.”
All three of them glanced towards Tatsuma. Silently, they all stood up and watched as Tatsuma tumbled off the roof. “You better not had broken an arm.”
“Kurokono’s probably watching us right now! And you go and say that! You traitor!”
Tatsuma’s laughter could be heard from below. They were going to pay for letting him fall off a roof.
There hadn’t been a thud… It seemed to click among the other three, and they peered over the roof and, oh. Speak of the devil… “Scatter!” The other three fled, jumping off the roof and running in different directions. Tatsuma started laughing even harder, letting himself fall completely now. Kurokono barely even cared about that bet anymore. He wasn’t even around.
“Dumbasses.”
He sure did love them regardless.