#if it had nothing to do with countries manga wouldn’t be a category

[harbingerofsoup]

i have some notes about how Amazon categorized Heaven Official’s Blessing

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

How long would it take the volturi to solve the Kira case?

Fascinating question, anon, I like it. So much so you get answered much earlier than you normally would be.

Shinigami and the World of Twilight

In Twilight there are few supernatural creatures that remain in our world. There's vampires, children of the moon, and the shapeshifter. However, these need not be the only supernatural creatures.

There have likely been mass extinctions (seen in Children of the Moon) and there may be more creatures that are so uncommon that we just don't see any hint of them.

Death Note's Shinigami easily fall into this category.

They live in another dimension, and in the human world (which they rarely visit in person), they're invisible to the eye save for those who have touched their death note. Their methods of killing are so unobtrusive, (heart attacks by default or whatever method they please), that they're unlikely to be noticed unless someone (i.e. Light) is trying to make a point. And in the grand scheme of things, Shinigami also kill relatively infrequently, meaning that any odd death gets passed off as that: an odd death. Also being forbidden to kill for the sake of a human being means that the deaths tend to be a) random b) whatever amuses them the most. That'd be hard to pick a pattern up of.

Shinigami exist in such a manner that I doubt even the Volturi are aware of them.

Some Ground Rules For the Post

I don't see why vampires would have an innate ability to see Shinigami that humans lack. As a result, the Volturi are in the same boat everyone else is, they can't see a Shinigami unless they touch that Shinigami's notebook.

Also, per the manga, the Kira case takes place from 2003-2010, meaning that as Twilight is happening (or before if Aro and the gang somehow solve this faster than L would), the world is mired in the Kira case.

Bella would certainly have been talking about it in Twilight. As would Edward, as he once had his Kira foray as well if on a much smaller scale and with a lot more junkies.

For the sake of my nitpicky need to have everything line up, we're going to push Death Note back a few years, to the beginning of Twilight.

Also, we're taking out L. If L's there, Aro can rely on him doing most of the work for him and only show up at the end to either murder or turn Light once L's narrowed down exactly who it is. That's not really fair per the ask, we have to leave the Volturi on their own.

With that, let's start.

Kira Makes His Appearance

Light's appearance was by no means subtle, he wanted to be noticed immediately, but he also didn't want to be noticed as a human being.

He made no televised announcements, left no messages, sent in no letters saying, "I am God, tremble before me". Instead, he let his silence speak.

He killed via heart attacks those he considered having broken the law to some heinous degree and then he sat back and watch. The public dubbed him Kira first and he only became a confirmed presence, something more real than a specter and a human who could be caught and brought to justice, when he murdered Lind L. Taylor in a public spectacle.

But this is a world without L, which means no Lind L. Taylor, instead we have Volturi and company in Volterra, utterly unconcerned with the human world.

Of course, they immediately notice once an undeniable pattern becomes clear. Human criminals are dying en masse of heart attacks, someone is making a message. The question is, to what end?

Aro wouldn't immediately think this is a human. This kind of power, this kind of gift, to be able to seemingly kill any person in the world at any time no matter the distance, is something too strong for a human. It would be unheard of to have this much power as a human.

Which means Aro believes he's looking for a vampire breaking the law.

The trouble is, it's only humans. The newborn wars are raging as always, every major coven he's ever heard of remains untouched, and there's been no noticeable uptick of deaths among the vampire population.

The only difference to them is that more of them are dangerously close to breaking the law, as crime rates are now plummeting as criminals live in terror of a spiteful god who might strike them down at any moment. This makes murders performed by vampires, in certain areas, far more noticeable.

(As Light is probably killing off known gang leaders, drug lords, etc. left and right, it's probably pandemonium in certain cities/countries. So vampires are probably alright in these places as I'm sure there's a lot of murder going on as survivors try to fill the power vacuum.)

Still, the Volturi have to put their heads together and try to think why any vampire would do this? To what end would they murder all these humans, in such a noticeable manner, and not even to eat their victims?

Aro concludes he's looking for a very young vampire, likely newborn, someone who still thinks of himself as very human and beholden to human society and who isn't aware of Volterra or else does not consider them a threat.

The Volturi Investigators

I think Aro's going to take the lead on this one. There's his gift, obviously, but he'd by far have the most interest.

Caius would be upset by the nerve of Kira, but he has no patience to track him down either when it becomes exceedingly obvious that this is going to be tricky. That, and it just doesn't seem like his thing to me. He's going to mostly sit this one out.

As for Marcus, he's not up to it.

Which makes Aro our lead detective.

The Investigation

Like L, the first thing they do is try to pinpoint the first deaths. There was the immediate deluge, of course, but that screams of confidence in this assassination gift.

Kira likely needed practice to perfect his gift or even realize he had it at all. There's going to be a first victim and it will probably be messy.

Given enough investigation, this probably leads Aro to Japan, where a man taking children hostage suddenly dies in the middle of the hostage situation when televised on national TV (though not outside of Japan). Given that Kira's a vampire, he could have moved from where he started quite easily, but Aro's willing to bet he's still somewhere in Japan.

What Aro does know is that Kira's keeping close to human society. Kira will be reading human papers, watching human television constantly, and appears to be very well-informed concerning his future victims. Both locally as well as internationally. Kira is likely still in a human settlement.

So, the first thing Aro does is look for an unusual number of casualties in any city or town in Japan. Kira will probably be in the newborn phase, may truly be only a few months old, and given his actions has probably been abandoned by his sire. Even if he has unusually high control, he's got to eat sometime, and thanks to his own actions the murder rate in major cities is way down.

Except... there's no uptick.

Crime, murder, in Japan is universally on a downwards trend. Major cities like Tokyo and small rural villages it's all the same, there's nothing noticeable.

Kira either isn't in Japan or... he's not eating.

Aro wonders if, perhaps this assassination gift of his, somehow feeds Kira. He is, after all, stealing life. He does it via heart attacks but maybe, somehow, the very act of stealing life is all Kira needs. Perhaps he doesn't have to drink blood due to this.

This blows Aro's mind for a few days but eventually he decides that, no, he's never heard of this. True, he's never heard of this gift either, but all vampires drink blood. Even Carlisle, who drinks animal blood, still drinks blood and suffers great negative effects for his avoidance of a natural diet.

Kira the vampire must still eat.

Which means, in the absence of any other explanation... Kira's not a vampire. Kira is likely a very gifted human.

Aro's mind is blown again because Holy Fuck, what a gift. Kira has blown Jane and Alec, who were only immediately noticeable in their own village, completely out of the water.

Except, the trouble is, neither Aro nor anyone else in the Volturi is a detective. Aro knows enough about human society to pay his taxes, to hire secretaries, and keep on the up and up, but he doesn't actually solve human crimes.

What he's looked for for thousands of years are vampires who break the law: and they have certain patterns, motivations, etc. that are more or less easy to spot. More, the entire point of his law is that, if Aro notices then it means you broke it. There are those that can and do fly under his radar.

How is he supposed to find a gifted human who can kill anyone in the world any time he pleases? From a brief perusal of Japanese news, there's no one immediately obvious as gifted or strange by local papers.

From earlier killings, Aro notes that Kira doesn't seem to kill between 8 in the morning to 4 pm, which might make him a student but also could mean he's working those hours.

And even if he is a student? How in the world is Aro supposed to touch the hand of every student in the entire country of Japan? Aro, who makes it a point not to navigate the human world.

Aro Calls in the Expert

When you want to hang out with the humans, there's only one vampire to call: Carlisle Cullen. As we're setting this in early Twilight, neither Eclipse nor Breaking Dawn have happened. To the Cullens, and Carlisle, Aro is simply a wise king and Carlisle's old friend.

And I'm sure Carlisle has been watching the Kira case very closely and is very disturbed by the entire thing. Kira's methods are very much not Carlisle's m.o.

Aro gives Carlisle what he knows: Kira's probably a gifted human, probably somewhere in Japan, probably in school, and has access to an extensive amount of human media.

That's it.

That's all Aro's got.

As for the police at large, without L, they haven't even narrowed it down to Japan yet.

Carlisle points out that, as much as he hangs out with humans, he doesn't think he could find the needle in the haystack either. However, he definitely wants to help in any way he can.

However, they do have something. Aro can't touch the hand of everyone in Japan, however, Edward can unobtrusively listen to a much larger segment of the population.

(Alice is off the table as she's best able to see the future of those close to her. Without knowing who Kira even is, let alone being close to him, she has no idea what he's going to even do next. She's likely very frustrated by this.)

Surely, whoever Kira is, he or she will be contemplating their victims more often than not. It's a long shot, but Edward might be able to find that needle in a haystack.

How's Edward Feel About That?

Edward's extremely conflicted. On the one hand, he doesn't want to disappoint Carlisle, and this is the first time Carlisle has ever asked him for a favor of this magnitude. And, in theory, Carlisle is right, all creatures are worthy of life.

On the other hand, Edward's on Team Kira. He thinks these rapist, murderer, pigs all deserve to die and is rooting for Kira to put the fear of God into them. Emphasizing this is when Bella was nearly raped in Port Angeles, but her would be rapist suddenly remembered himself and vomited in terror at the idea that he might be next should he get caught raping her. (As it is, Edward catches him, and a few weeks later he dies of a heart attack in prison. Edward pops the champagne).

More, if Edward goes to Japan, it means he has to leave Bella. Bella has proven she cannot survive without his personal protection. More, he's not sure he can survive without her presence. He can hardly contemplate the idea of leaving Bella, though he ultimately must, but to do so soon? He though he'd have a few more years, likely until they graduate, but now he and the family would have to move all the way to Japan in a matter of days.

Not to mention this would be letting Aro know that Edward's... not technically breaking the law but not not breaking the law either. Bella clearly suspects he's not human, she just doesn't have the right word.

And then to give Kira up to the Volturi? To have his activities stopped, to be turned and placed into the guard, or else murdered? Edward feels like he'd be selling out the brother he never knew.

But also Carlisle and imagining Carlisle's sad, disappointed, face.

Edward says yes but he really wants to say no.

He sneaks into Bella's room in the middle of the night, and for the first time, makes her aware of his presence. He tells her that regretfully he must leave her, he's off to do a man's work and catch Kira, and that they will never see each other again.

Then to Edward's horror and disappointment, Bella's completely on board for Edward catching Kira and thinks it's the noblest thing he could do. Charlie, being a chief of police, utterly despises Kira and Bella carries forward this sentiment. People deserve the due process of law, not being murdered off by some jackass conning people into believing he's a god.

Bella wishes him luck and tells him to return as soon as he can.

Edward just numbly says he won't be returning. This really is it. Goodbye forever.

Bella's utterly broken (though not nearly as much as canon as Edward didn't dump her for being boring).

Edward in Japan

Well, turns out, Edward's not actually that useful. There's a few problems.

First, there are a lot of people out there claiming to be Kira, or even convincing themselves that they're Kira. They do this to brag, to feel special, for any number of reasons.

None of them are Kira.

Second, Edward can only go out on cloudy days or at night, this severely limits when he can wander the streets and the people he'll run into. More, even if he starts with Tokyo, Tokyo's a big place. That's a lot of wandering to do.

Third, say that Edward does come across Light Yagami. Edward immediately dismisses him as being utterly insane. See, Light Yagami is talking to his imaginary friend, Ryuk, bickering about which apples they should buy from the store. Edward sees the giant clown demon that Light believes only he can see and goes, "Ah, another lunatic, cheerio."

Edward does not find Kira.

The Investigation Continues

Aro likely keeps Edward at it for months. It doesn't matter how long it takes, they're going to track down Kira and they're going to find him. It might take years, but dammit, they'll find him. Edward despairs that he will ever be able to go back to normal life.

Luckily for the gang, Bella saves their bacon.

Bella, ruminating on Edward's mission and on Kira, starts doing her own internet investigation. She doesn't get very far, but she does have those prophetic dreams to help her out.

Bella has a seriously weird dream about the moon, night gods, Kira, demons that look like giant crows, notebooks, and Light Yagami's face. Somehow, just as in canon with vampires, Bella's able to somehow put this together.

She calls up Edward (as they parted on more amiable terms, and so quickly, Edward did not yet disconnect his number) and tells him that Kira's name is Light Yagami, he's attending the University of Tokyo as the top student, and his murder weapon is an evil notebook.

How does she know this?

She looked it up on the internet.

Well, Edward isn't sure how to take that, but he also has nothing to lose. They find Light Yagami, Aro shakes his hand, and holy shit, Bella Swan was right. (Aro now decrees that she will be turned, much to Edward's horror and insistence that she has no idea he's a vampire, and has plans to recruit her for his guard).

What Are We Going to Do About Light?

Well, on the one hand, Aro discovered a new species today that he can do nothing about. Luckily, they seem to have their own laws that have more or less the same result as the Volturi laws: don't get noticed.

On the other hand, he's disappointed that this all-powerful gift was not a gift at all.

On the other other hand, Light does not seem to be an ordinary human. He's... lucky, for lack of a better term. No, it's more that he doesn't need luck, he somehow has such an awareness of everything around him that he assimilates it perfectly into his own plans. As if he can manipulate the very universe to his favor.

That's intriguing and useful, and in any other situation, Aro would jump on taking that chance and at least seeing what happens.

So the question becomes, does Aro turn Light or not? On the one hand, that's a useful gift, on the other hand, this kid's a loose cannon and a lunatic.

This Kira thing cannot continue, and Light, even as a vampire, would likely insist on continuing it somehow.

Luckily, there's a solution to this.

Aro burns the notebook, much to Ryuk's protesting despair. Light loses his memories of Ryuk, the notebook, and having been Kira. Before Light even knows what's happening, Aro turns him.

Three days later, Light wakes up a very confused vampire, gets the Volturi pitch with Chelsea there to help loosen bonds, and accepts a position in the guard to, oddly enough, stop those like Kira.

Aro's confused, but hey, they'll see how this Light thing works out. Aro also likely tells himself that he will watch for Ryuk trying to drop Light another notebook like a hawk.

The Kira case is never solved for humans: Kira just disappears one day as if he never existed. As for Light, I imagine he plots the destruction of the newborn armies, and Caius watches in utter fascination as this kid ruthlessly exterminates them all.

Bella is shortly turned into a vampire, much to Edward's despair, and due to the giant mess of this is also likely recruited to Volterra.

How Long Does This Take?

Given the need for the Volturi to first investigate, then Edward, I give them at least a year. Maybe a year and a half.

And really, it's Bella who saves their bacon.

[stillness-in-green]

Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Part Four and Conclusion)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front Introduction and Part One Part Two Part Three

PART FOUR: Thematic Problems

For all that portions of the Western fandom look at the MLA and see Evil Quirk Eugenicists and Hypocritical Ultra-Rich, they had legitimate complaints, and their goals, while overly radical if taken to their logical extremes—see Geten[51]—still offer a way to address a huge number of the problems this society faces. Locking them up and throwing away the key is shutting off one of the most prominent angles on addressing those issues. Consider:

The Problem of Heroics

Quirk-based prejudice is real, and a huge amount of it is based in the hero/villain dichotomy. This isn’t surprising; when you set up a group of people as “heroes,” it follows logically, linguistically, naturally that the people they fight must be villains. Villains are bad, are evil, are black-and-white figures with no motivation worth considering. Toss them in jail; who cares? They earned being in there with their Bad Actions. But that kind of thinking is insidious—it spreads.

If someone looks like a villain, if someone has a bad quirk, they may well be a Bad Seed. And if they aren’t, well, the responsibility is on them to rise above that prejudice, to become better than the people around them think they can be—but no one asks the people around them to maybe stop being so damn prejudicial all the time.

A horrifyingly stark example shows up in Chapter 310, in which a woman is being attacked by a group of three men for no reason save that they think she looks like a villain, so they assume she must be a villain. Her obvious villain trait? She’s a heteromorph—unusually tall, with a vulpine face. That’s it. She’s not dressed in a threatening or antisocial style; she’s not aggressive or angry. She’s just a heteromorph who didn’t go to a shelter right away because she thought things would calm down if she waited it out.

Love Midoriya following this up with, “I bet they were just scared too.” Way to chase an aggression with a micro-aggression there, hero. (Chapter 310)

Of course, tensions are running high right now, higher than would ever be the case under normal circumstances, but even in “normal circumstances,” this uncomfortable bias persists. Consider Class 1-A’s Shoji: Shoji wears a mask because he's a gentle soul who doesn’t want to scare small children, but maybe instead, people should be teaching their kids not to judge by appearances? Then maybe their kids wouldn’t grow up to be the kinds of people who attack others for looking a little scary and not going to sufficient pains to hide it?

As far as bad quirks go, meanwhile, Shinsou is the classic example on the hero side. He was told by classmates, laughingly, that he had a good quirk for a villain; he carries himself at all times like he’s got something to prove. I suspect the only reason he’s at U.A. and not running with the League of Villains is a supportive home life,[52] but either way, people are all too ready to apply a villain label to him based on an ability that was nothing but genetic lottery, and that’s because the existence of heroes defines itself by the existence of villains.

Of course, the otherization of villains and people-who-kind-of-seem-like-they-might-be-villains is only part of the problem. The other and frankly larger issue is the effect that limiting quirk use to heroes-only has on the cultural mindset—heroes, villains, and civilians alike.

Japan in real life fosters a sense of community support so profound that children as young as four can be sent on small errands[53] around the neighborhood, safe in the knowledge that if they need help, they will be able to get that help. It’s far more common for young children to walk or take public transit to school than it is in the U.S. Another example is the country’s enthusiastic embrace of publicly available AED machines, complete with easy-to-understand printed and audio instructions about how to use them on people suffering heart attacks, a movement that has saved the lives of many who might not have otherwise survived long enough for an ambulance to arrive.

In My Hero Academia’s Japan, though?

You wind up with people who don't even particularly want to become heroes enrolling in hero schools anyway because it's the only way they can imagine contributing to society. Uraraka and Gran Torino are obvious examples—Uraraka becoming a hero less because she felt a calling to and more because it seemed like the best way to ameliorate her family’s hardscrabble lot in life; Torino getting a hero license not because he cared about being a hero at all, but because he was in on the One For All situation and needed to be able to use his quirk freely to help fight that secret war.

An even more telling case is that of the main character himself. Midoriya desperately wanted to “save” people, and from all the evidence we have in the early manga, as far as he was concerned, the only way for him to do that was to become a hero. He never even considered e.g. signing up for any volunteer programs around his neighborhood or joining the police. It’s like he never even considered the possibility of helping people via other channels.

And this is a consistent issue! People who don't think that they can become heroes train themselves (and are trained by society) into believing that they are powerless, that it isn’t their responsibility to help when they see trouble, leading to things like Shimura Tenko's “long walk,” where countless people look at a child of five, bloody and alone, and then make the conscious decision to look away, because “a hero will help.”

Hell, it even spills over onto actual heroes, who in the first chapter stand around like chumps waiting for “someone with a better quirk” to come and do something about the sludge villain, because they don’t have the perfect quirk to solve the problem themselves, so they don’t even try.

Of course, even if they did try, it might not be welcomed. Consider cases where people wanted to do good, like Gentle Criminal or Vigilantes' Koichi, but had their road to heroism blocked—this led them to villainy or vigilantism, which in turn can lead to arrest and possible prison time, with all the attendant stigma.

Restricting quirk use to heroes-only has impacts beyond just how it distorts people’s desire to help, too. Evidence in the manga suggests that some people feel a stronger biological drive to use their quirks than others. What options do those people have, then, if their quirks—or their personalities—don’t seem naturally cut out for heroism?

In Tamaki Amajiki’s flashback in Chapter 140, a teacher tells his class, “People make fine use of their quirks at any number of jobs. Being a hero’s not the only option. How will you be useful to society in the future? That’s what we’re here to explore in quirk training.” This is the scene in the manga that most explicitly tells us that other avenues for quirk use exist, but we’re never once shown what those avenues might be. At best, this suggests that those avenues are drastically limited (e.g. only available to those whose quirks are deemed “useful to society”) and/or poorly explained to people in-universe—else why would Uraraka have chosen heroism despite her lack of interest in it if she could have just gotten some kind of job license for her quirk? At worst, it’s an example of Horikoshi throwing in a line that contradicts the surrounding canon. Either way, we’re left with people who feel a strong drive to use their quirks being pressured into heroism or straying into villainy for lack of other acceptable outlets.

All of these issues could be mitigated by less draconian restrictions on quirks—which Destro's followers are the only characters in the manga we've actively seen pushing for, rather than just heard about second-hand—and by not using an ideologically charged word like “heroes” to describe a glorified independent police force. Allowing people to freely use their quirks[54] means fewer people being pushed into a heroics job they're unsuited for, means fewer people being pushed into villainy, means a more rounded view on how quirks can be used, leading to less quirk-based prejudice and less—well, let’s talk some about false dichotomies.

All For Nothing, Nothing For All

Shigaraki stands as a fundamental accusation of the way the hero/civilian dynamic exacerbates the Bystander Effect, making people think of themselves as powerless, while at the same time putting untenable pressure on heroes to be perfect victory machines who don't experience pain or doubt or weakness. He further attests that this dynamic pushes out people who don't fit either category—victim or hero—making them villains. This is one of the fundamental thematic conflicts of the series—is one hero enough? Are heroes themselves enough? What are heroes, what do they fight, and what should they be fighting? Who deserves to be “saved” and what does it mean, anyway, to “save” someone? What happens to the people who aren’t saved? How will the world grapple with the consequences, the resentment, that stem from that failure?

In his work Underground, written to grapple with and criticize the way Japanese media covered the sarin gas attacks, author Murakami Haruki talked about the response to the incident being to call the members of Aum Shinrikyo evil, insane, diseased, other. They were spoken of as a monstrous fringe that could not have been predicted, about which nothing could have been done, rather than examined as bright, well-educated young people who by all accounts ought to have had good futures ahead of them but instead spiraled down into a doomsday cult. Murakami asserted that, because the Japanese public was unwilling to ask how and why that happened, was unwilling to self-examine, the country was locking itself into a repeating cycle. Memorably, he wrote, “Most Japanese seem ready to pack up the whole incident in a trunk labeled THINGS OVER AND DONE WITH,” to describe this resolute incuriosity, the strong aversion to looking into the face of evil and trying to find the humanity within it.

In this post and its follow-up, tumblr user @robotlesbianjavert discusses the problems that stem from that exact tendency as portrayed in My Hero Academia. She says, “Only making decisions that benefit the greater good is not the real solution that the narrative is rooting for. Not so long as it fails to recognize and address the needs of the victims that still come of it.” Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

I would also like to highlight her point—which I hope she one day posts her own full essay on—about the way All For One and One For All serve as two extreme poles of equally unsustainable visions for society. This dynamic is all over the manga.

There are the characters of AFO and his younger brother themselves, each forever locked in battle to prove the correctness of his own way of thinking, and forever talking past the other even when they’re face to face.

There’s the contrast of heroes, giving their all to help strangers even when it hurts the people they love, with villains, giving their all to help the people they love even when it hurts strangers.

The flaws in the One For All model can be seen in the multilayered ravages it inflicted on All Might physically, emotionally, and socially. Thus, one for all is not always ideal.

The strengths of the All For One model can be seen in a team of heroes and police combining their efforts and will to help one single person—Eri. Nighteye even highlights this with his speech about everyone’s efforts coalescing into Midoriya and helping him to “twist fate.” Thus, all for one is not always about selfishness.

Once you start looking for it, this duality shows up everywhere, and I think—I hope—it’s an angle Horikoshi is conscious of. The obvious solution is that the extremes of this society are all undesirable—that total selflessness and total selfishness are equally unsustainable, and both are, ultimately, damaging. A more holistic approach is needed, yet if a holistic approach is what the manga ultimately proves to be seeking, it makes the mass arrest of the PLF particularly problematic, if it’s allowed to stand unchallenged. You cannot just choose not to see 115,000 dissatisfied people—some way or another, you have to reckon with them, and if you don’t do it in a way that actually helps them address whatever their core problem is, you’re just setting yourself up for more of the same further down the line.

The MLA believed that they were fighting for a just cause, for freedom, for the future. They absolutely had issues—Geten’s words indicate that much—but they were issues that would have been much better addressed by actually challenging them openly, rather than suppressing them. If they couldn’t get society to agree right away that the use of one’s quirk should be as unregulated as the use of one’s hands, maybe they would have accepted a tiered license approach to quirk use as a good starting compromise. If they wanted totally unhindered quirk use, such that people could murder with impunity? Well, that would never have gotten past the House of Representatives, but maybe a bill declaring that crimes committed by quirks should be treated no differently than crimes committed via any other means would have. A weeklong debate on the Diet floor would have stood a much greater chance of e.g. addressing the needs of the quirkless than the MLA alone would have bothered with.

The MLA didn’t get to have that kind of debate. Instead, they ran headfirst into Shigaraki Tomura, who made them far more dangerous. And yet… For all that Shigaraki twisted them, he didn’t change them so much that Re-Destro couldn’t still see the light of his ideals within them. Furthermore, even though the PLF didn’t win the battle we call the War Arc, it may be that they’re well on their way to winning the actual war.

“The Seeds Are Already Sown”

So what did the PLF actually want? Well, we have a few sources on that—Shigaraki’s desire to destroy “everything,” the cloned Re-Destro’s vision of liberation through “order without order,” and so forth. But a very instructive place to look is Hawks’ doomsaying in Chapter 258. While the PLF is a bit too scattered or imprisoned to appreciate it, a shocking number of the things Hawks laid out for the audience have actually come about, even if they didn’t happen exactly as the PLF planned. Consider:

Bring down the status quo by annihilating all heroes. Heroes—a number of whom died the day of the raid—are retiring in mass numbers. As the manga describes it, they are “being put through a sieve.” They certainly haven’t all been annihilated, but the ones remaining are having to do the work with little in the way of thanks or glory—the false heroes Stain spoke of have left the table.

They plan to attack all major cities at once throughout the nation. Gigantomachia stampeded over more than twenty cities in the space of less than an hour. A bunch of them were surely not major cities, but all the same, it was a rampage that caught the heroes almost completely off-guard (because they were all tied up arresting the PLF and didn’t think Machia would be an issue), leading to massive collateral damage and unspeakable loss of life.

With society brought to a lawless standstill… Thanks to AFO’s prison breaks, a bunch of villains are now out there raising hell to their hearts’ content, and there aren’t enough heroes around to always respond in a timely fashion. They’re having to open up schools as shelter zones, evacuating entire cities, which the common people respond to predictably poorly, leading to groups of people who were not previously villainous deciding to take the law into their own hands.

…Re-Destro and the Hearts & Minds Party will storm the political world. In Chapter 297, the less openly fascist guard worries that the remaining factions of the HMP[55] will still be stirring up trouble on the political front, especially given the enormous wave of brand-new complaints about human rights violations that he doubtlessly figured were incoming.

They will distribute weapons and extol the virtues of self-defense, calling it true freedom. Whether Detnerat picked up the pace of its black-market support goods sales, bankrolled Giran doing the same, or some other groups—yakuza, perhaps—stepped up, we already know that there are weapons and support goods circulating throughout society, and that people are using them for self-defense.

These people will throw the world into chaos and enthrone Shigaraki atop the rubble. The second coming of All For One. Far more so than anyone in the PLF would have wanted, this one has come horribly true with the AFO vestige’s possession of Shigaraki.[56]

While it is perhaps karmic that the PLF is in no position to enjoy the fruits of their villainous efforts, it’s striking how much of what they wanted has come about anyway. And how much of this can really be undone or wound back? Complete societal breakdown isn’t the kind of genie you can easily rebottle, and this, I think, is particularly illustrated by the civilians Yo and Tatami encounter in Chapter 307.

I’d like to wind this essay down by zooming in on that encounter somewhat.

The group of people the Ketsubutsu pair encounter in 307 are not nice, but neither are they violent. Having, like so many others, lost faith in heroes to protect them, they want only to protect their hometown and for heroes to leave them be. They’ve fended off a few small-time villain attacks and are bluntly uninterested in cooperating with condescending heroes (an impression Yo is not helping to mitigate) who have done nothing but disappoint them.

The spokesman in particular feels to me like someone who’s suffered a significant personal loss. The shadow over his eyes here is telling. (Chapter 307)

When Muscular shows up, they are 100% ready to put their lives where their mouths are. They are all in the process of charging outside, first to stop their town from suffering more damage, then to back up a hero kid they just got done telling to buzz off. And you know? It’s possible—probable, even!—that Muscular would have murdered every last one of them, and them charging in to fight him would have led to a horrific tragedy, one more to stack atop the pile.

And yet, while the narrative doesn’t allow them to actually assist,[57] neither does it entirely rebuke them, in the end. When all is said and done, the civilians agree to hear Tatami and Yo out, and they help Tatami get Yo inside for medical attention. The leader is a little abashed, but he doesn’t bow his head and admit to being wrong; his group doesn’t meekly submit to being herded to shelter. And that’s because the narrative is—wisely—unwilling to say that they’re wrong.

After all, how could it?

Midoriya Izuku and the jaded civilian's instincts. (Chapters 1 and 307)

For a last comparison, remember that in the first chapter, Midoriya Izuku—quirkless, untrained Midoriya Izuku—dove into a fight he had no way of winning, no way of even affecting. All he was doing was endangering himself and making the sludge villain even harder to target. Still, All Might and the narrative alike praised him for his action, because it was driven by a “desire to save.” In Chapter 307, a group of undertrained civilians witnesses a high school boy being attacked by the highest tier of villain their society knows, a Tartarus escapee, a gleeful and unrepentant serial killer with a devastatingly powerful quirk. Their response is to gather up their weapons and numbers and dive in to try and help. Regardless of the weakness of their quirks, regardless of their lack of training, regardless of the danger to their lives, their instinct is the same as Midoriya’s was back then—“the desire to save.”

How could the narrative possibly tell us that they're wrong?

And if they aren’t wrong, this group of people who are so very close to the vision the PLF had for the world after their revolution, the narrative simply cannot expect to retain the slightest hint of credibility if it tries to tell us that the PLF are worth nothing more than an authorial handwave and the slamming of a cell door.

Conclusion

What we are seeing in the manga now is a society that is fumbling towards a new way. It isn’t perfect; it has a lot of wrinkles to iron out. Yet in some ways, if this is a society that has gone back in time, it is also a society that has a chance to chart a different path forward than it did before, a more inclusive path, a more balanced one. Heroes can still exist in the same way that surgeons and emergency responders exist, but that doesn't mean people throw their first aid kits in the garbage.

People protest that untrained civilians using their quirks leads to collateral damage, and that's true. The same would be true, however, if a nation that relied solely on public transit suddenly faced the total breakdown of that system and found that, if they wanted to get anywhere farther than walking distance, they had to get behind the wheel of a car and drive there themselves with no previous experience handling a motor vehicle. With some basic training, or perhaps a test and associated license that is as ubiquitous as a driver's license, how much of the collateral damage caused by civilians fighting might be reduced? How might people feel more empowered to act when necessary?

I very much want to see that future in the manga. It will feel terribly bitter, however, if the people who always believed in that future the most don’t get to see it themselves.

Bit characters are bit characters, I know. Terrorists in fiction don’t typically get to walk away scot-free. But numbers aren’t just numbers, even in fiction, even when they’re villains. If all Horikoshi wanted was a sufficiently large, scary threat to throw his heroes up against, he should have stuck with mindless Noumu or maniacal robots. He didn’t. He chose to make that threat human. He cannot now choose to dehumanize the threat, just because those humans are no longer convenient to his story.

Or at least, he can’t make me look at his doing so as anything other than appalling—ahistorical, absurd, and unsustainable.

Come back next time for sources and further reading.

-----------------------------------------------------

[51] And yes, as always, I do think that Geten-whose-name-means-Apocrypha is a radical, not a reliable barometer for the MLA norm.

[52] Contrasting Toga, the standard-bearer for bad quirks on the villain side.

[53] We don’t know if that practice—so widespread it became the subject of a long-running TV program—survived the Advent and raised crime rate, but if it didn’t, that only further suggests that kids wandering the streets unattended are probably in need of assistance.

[54] Within the same bounds other freedoms exist, e.g. they’re not unduly burdening others.

[55] Small political parties in Japan merge and fragment all the time, particularly in times of crisis, so it’s not surprising that the HMP has some sub-groups. I am somewhat surprised that these factions themselves weren’t dissolved as well, given the heavy-handedness on display everywhere else. This is about the only thing that suggests that the arrests might not be as totally over-the-top as is otherwise implied, though really, if that’s the case, it just brings us back to the problem of all the people who probably slipped the net if the HPSC did opt to undercompensate.

[56] Another enormous thematic issue I have with tossing away the PLF like this is that it renders Shigaraki and the League’s hard-fought victories in My Villain Academia all but meaningless—worse than meaningless, since settling into the villa instead of staying on the run or bunking up with Ujiko wound up losing them Twice—but that’s more a problem with the writing of Shigaraki’s arc than the themes of the series as a whole. Certainly, fumbling Shigaraki’s arc will have a nigh-incomparable impact on the themes of the series as a whole, but there’s time to salvage his situation yet, so I’m crossing my fingers and reserving judgement on that for now.

[57] It should have.

[gear-project]

The TRUTH

I suppose with everything that has happened, everyone wants to hear the Truth from me.

The Truth is, I was born and raised on the South Side of Milwaukee, in a mixed hotpot of cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Everything from Hispanic to Greek to Hmong to Afro-American to Polish to German, Canadian, and everything in-between.

I was raised by my parents not to categorize people by what they looked like, not to call them by any specific color or race or category or label. Not out of some twisted sense of disrespect for their ethnicity or background history, but as a means of treating everyone EQUALLY, as friends, neighbors, and family.

The South Side (my own "South Town") was where I met many friends of all types, some of whom have stayed my friends throughout the years fortunately.  I even have family who married in to roots from Haiti and had kids.

I've even had close friends in college open up to me about being Gay, even had a Gay roommate, and I accepted all of them.  Because People are PEOPLE. They're living beings, each with Souls of their own.

--But, I suppose that's not the Truth you're here for.

The truth is, back in 2000 or so when I first bought Guilty Gear X for the first time, I knew absolutely nothing about the series back then.  All I heard were head-canons and rumors. People treated Ky Kiske like a gender-swapped girl, or they treated characters like Dizzy, Millia, and Jam like sex objects.

None of this misinformation matched what I found in the GGX Instruction Manual that was included with the PS2 disc I had bought.  Nor did I question the accuracy of the manual's translation, or if the localization team behind the game manuals of GG1 and GGX (thanks to Atlus/Sega) had some kind of twisted "ulterior motive" when they presented the game's story to me.  Nope.  I just accepted every aspect of what was officially presented to me.  They had no reason to lie, of course.

And, at the time, I had no idea expanded content like the Guilty Gear Bible even existed... because it was Japanese exclusive content, so of course I wouldn't know, not knowing the language at the time.

On the other hand, I came to grow frustrated with the game's fanbase community who loved to perpetuate their head-canons and "fan lies".

I swore to myself that I would get to the TRUTH behind Guilty Gear's story... as the honest, humble, naive gamer that I was.  This was before I learned of Ed Chang's GameFAQs guides or anything else that had ever been written.

--But, I guess that's not the Truth you're looking for.

The truth is, around May 2012 when I first created my Blog, while I had some experience translating and consulting with friends on the accuracy of translation for the Night of Knives Drama CDs and working on a script for GG Judgement, I was never the first person to call myself "Lore Expert" or Lore Master", or anything of the sort.

It was other people who called me this, don't ask me why, they just did.  I adopted the idea of being a "Lore Expert" mainly as a beacon to help anyone looking to know about Guilty Gear to find it... it wasn't out of some twisted means to brag about what I knew, or to say I'm a Know-it-All, or that I'm hording knowledge over others.

My sole intention was to share information on Guilty Gear.  Nothing more, nothing less.

This was not out of some twisted desire to spin my own "narrative" on GG.  Even with regard to obscure character backgrounds like that of Raven's, the story left a ton of hints to peripheral information that one only need look up on the internet to learn more about, like Raven's connection to the Original Crusades.

And even if you left out the peripheral tidbits, much less side story content, the overall narrative of GG remains unchanged.  Even the recent Manga released by Sumeragi contains enough bare-bones information for anyone to pick up on the story.  Whether you want to learn more, that's entirely up to you as a fan.

--But, I guess that's not the Truth you want to hear.

The truth is, I grew very TIRED of the abuse I had received from the community.  Anonymous potshots on Twitter, reflexive insults with no willingness to communicate, "Kill Yourself" death threats, disassociations, and endless rumors about the "twisted villainous icon" of whom I supposedly was, constantly discrediting me.

No one knew who I really am, not as a person, not as an individual.  Nor did they care about my feelings or true intentions.

As a result of my depression and anxiety from all this, I went completely off-grid for several days, nearly a week.

I needed time to re-evaluate myself, my motivations towards this game series, along with trying to come to terms with a fanbase that has somehow been gripped by endless fear, suspicion, blind hatred, and in particular, selfish SPITE.

People who consume and beg for roster characters without giving back to the community, while constantly demanding unreasonable perfection on the developers; people who criticize translations and translators without even trying to sympathize or understand how hard the work is themselves; people who have the talent but not the willingness to share their knowledge or content in other languages besides their native country; people who project their own agendas and perpetuate false rumors of others, heartless and hateful, setting traps for every good intention.

In truth, I cried myself to sleep over the anxiety and fear of having to face such a community ever again.  

I lamented my fear, questioned myself, consulted with family and even God himself, and took some time away from one of the few things that I had once and still held very dear to me.

Perhaps because of the fact I had at least one person, a family member, a neighbor, in my corner to speak with... while I felt so miserable it would have broken me, I was given some pieces of wisdom:

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first." --Jesus, the Christ (John 15:18, the Bible)

"The Truth is only as big as those willing to believe in it." --Frau (07 Ghost Children)

"Death is not a choice. Death is giving up.  I choose to live, slowly and painfully. At least for now."  --"That Man" (Asuka R. Kreutz to Baiken)

----But, if, after all of this, if this wasn't the Truth you were looking for from me, then perhaps the truth you seek relates to how you perceive and interpret it.  

My inbox is still open, and I will continue to discuss and analyze GG Lore (even with my limited knowledge) as a fan, as someone who has and will continue to love this game series... But I am still a living, vulnerable, Human Being.

If you cannot acknowledge that Truth or Respect it, do not expect me to acknowledge the "truth" as you "view" it.

To Regular Readers/Followers: I'm still on Hiatus, so give me some time to recover. Thanks for always supporting/understanding! You mean the world to me.

[otapleonehalf]

The Princess Knight Anime, Gender and Disappointment

The 1967 Princess Knight anime is an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s second rendition of the manga Princess Knight. While the anime’s plot diverges from its source material, the premise remains the same: To inherit the throne of Silverland, the princess has been raised and presented to the public as a prince. Only her close family and servants know she is really a girl. However, the evil Duke Duralumin seeks to reveal the secret of the “prince”, so that his son can claim the throne instead.

Princess Knight is falsely acclaimed by many as the first shoujo manga. As academic Deborah Shamoon puts it, “to single out Tezuka alone is to ignore the work of many other artists in the 1950s and 1960s who created manga for girls such as Takahashi Makoto whose visual style is much closer to subsequent trends in shoujo manga than Tezuka’s.”

Indeed, the original Princess Knight manga shares little resemblance to modern shoujo manga, beyond the fact that it features a female lead in a fairytale setting. To solely credit Tezuka with the beginnings of shoujo manga is to commit an injustice to Junichi Nakahara, Rune Naito, the aforementioned Takahashi Makoto and many other artists whose influence on the modern shoujo genre is more direct than that of Tezuka’s. Thus, it is much more practical to examine Princess Knight as a work from the God of Manga, rather than as a precursor to any modern genres.

Another common misconception about the Princess Knight franchise is that the anime is actually about the titular character. True enough the story follows Prince(ss) Knight, as she is referred to in the English dub of the anime. (From here forth, I will be referring to her as Sapphire, name she is given in the manga.)  However, Sapphire isn’t always the focus of what’s going on and, as I will address later, her character lacks the depth one might expect. Her limelight is frequently stolen by various villains as well as her cherubic sidekick, referred to as Choppy in the English dub.

Choppy, a genital-less angel in Robin Hood attire, stars in both the opening and the ending theme of the series and has entire episodes dedicated to his antics. He serves as the child companion character, found throughout many of Tezuka’s works. (And he is just as annoying and creepy as his fellow munchkins.) Believe it or not, Choppy is crucial to the plot of Princess Knight.

The real reason behind Sapphire’s boyish mannerisms is due to Choppy causing a mix up when the princess was born. Instead of receiving a red heart meant for girls, Sapphire received an additional blue heart meant for boys. Thus, implying her masculine behavior isn’t solely a matter of nurture, but an accident on the part of heaven. Tezuka’s attempt at explaining gender with a color-coded binary, bestowed by a divine patriarch, fails to address the complexities of gender in any meaningful way.

Gender refers to the internalized social expectations for appearance and behavior that align with the societal roles associated with a person’s perceived sex. Sex is meant to dictate gender and gender is meant to portray sex. But by virtue of being comprised of two-dimensional lines, the characters of Princess Knight have no biological sex from which to derive their gender. Anime characters are described by scholar Susan Napier as “stateless” and while Napier uses this word to describe characters’ lack of national identity, I believe the same idea can be applied to describe characters’ lack of biological sex.

It is through suspension of disbelief that we believe drawings represent human beings and all the biological fanfare that comes with being human, when in reality anime characters are effectively “stateless” in regards to sex and all other genetic states. Anime characters must be portrayed performing a gender that implies their sex or have their canonical sex outright stated, else the audience is left to speculate. With no state to tether to the concept of gender, the anime characters of Princess Knight dismiss human biology almost entirely. Princess Knight makes no real attempt to suspend the audience’s disbelief that its characters have realistic biological qualities to begin with.

Aside from Sapphire being born from her mother, there are no allusions to biological sex in the series. Keeping in mind that this is a program made for television in the 1960s, Duke Duralumin cannot publicly strip Sapphire to reveal her secret to all of Silverland and the families watching at home. By extension, he cannot use the sound of her voice, her measurements, or her theoretical period as evidence against her claim to the throne. (After all this wouldn’t be a very long anime if all it took for Duralumin’s plans to succeed was a single pair of bloody tights.)

So instead of the more obvious routes for determining if Sapphire is a girl or boy, the villains of the series use more roundabout methods such as asking the opinions of ghosts and magic mirrors. There’s also things like magic pens that would make Sapphire write down that she is really a girl as well as a topical cream that turns blue when it touches a boy. Through these creative methods, Tezuka consistently portrays gender as something supernatural rather than something sociological.

If we step away from Tezuka’s interpretation of gender and instead use a more contemporary understanding of gender such as that popularized by feminist philosophers like Judith Butler, we can gain a better understanding of Sapphire’s character.

Our genders are not innate. They are the result of how we have learned to habitually react to our social environments. The gender we develop over time then informs our identities which serve to reinforce our habitual behavior. When gender is “performed” it is not a conscious act where everyone within proximity is aware of the façade. Gender is a constant series of small behaviors that are meant to go unnoticed and if ever noticed, be dismissed as inherent qualities inseparable from our sense of self, rather than the result of the rigorous teachings we absorb from birth through socialization.

Due to her circumstances Sapphire learned to present herself as either a boy or a girl depending on who she is around. She has developed two behavioral personas of conflicting gender: the Princess whom is known within the walls of the palace, and the Prince whom is shown to the outside world. When interacting with anyone outside of her private circle, Sapphire wears tights, a large brimmed hat, carries a sword and is read as masculine. (It’s important to recognize that attributes associated with any gender are highly dependent on societal context. Silverland’s setting is inspired by Medieval Europe and so within that context it’s understood that Sapphire’s daily attire is to be read as masculine within her society, even though her lack of pants and flamboyant hat would be read as feminine in a modern American context.)

While presenting her persona of the Prince to the outside world, sapphire is never unsure of her true status as a girl. She simply portrays a boy as necessity dictates, like many real-life women have had to do throughout history. It is because of her identity as a girl that Sapphire is so desperately committed to convincing others of the Prince’s masculinity. As the Prince she cannot brush off accusations of being unmanly, for they could raise suspicions and endanger her secret and by extension her kingdom. When fearful her secret could be discovered, and her country’s future could be at risk, she consciously attempts to act manlier. She competes in sports, challenges adult men to duels, and even starts bar fights in order to prove that she can perform feats that girls cannot. (Because obviously girls aren’t capable of any of those things, or at least those are things girls are not expected to do in Sapphire’s society.) It’s Sapphire’s ambition and rowdiness that successfully keep suspicion of her girlhood at bay. But by repeatedly performing the act of the Prince, Sapphire internalizes the masculine behaviors she puts on and they become a part of personality.

Ironically, Sapphire’s feats of toughness only prove to the audience that a girl can indeed do all the things she claims to others are proof that she must be a boy to her fellow countrymen. However, Sapphire’s accomplishments do nothing to challenge perceptions of women as it’s made clear to the audience that Sapphire is a very special exception and not the rule.

All the other women portrayed in the series fall neatly into the categories of: wicked witches, wise mothers, or daddy’s girls. For example, the characters of Queen Icicle, Sapphire’s mother and Zenda embody each of these categories respectively. These stereotype-based character’s do nothing to convince the audience that femininity has the capacity for competence. This unfortunate lack of depth to Princess Knight’s female characters even extends to Sapphire when she embodies her private persona of the Princess known within the palace walls as Princess Knight in the English dub.

In a hidden chamber connected to her bedroom is a wardrobe of wigs and dresses that Sapphire dresses up in when no one is around. In the anime, this hidden wardrobe is treated as an infatuation of Sapphire’s. Her servants grieve for Sapphire’s situation, wishing she could be a princess all the time, implying that Sapphire’s performance of femininity in the secret chamber is somehow a persona closer to her true self. It’s apparent that the servant’s view on Sapphire’s inner desires is shared by Tezuka himself. Tezuka wants the audience to pity a girl that has responsibilities beyond playing dress up, and that a girl who cannot be a princess destined to marry a prince is one allotted a cruel fate.

When Sapphire takes on her persona of the Princess all her personality traits fade to emphasize her beauty. As a Prince Sapphire doesn’t qualify as beautiful, but after quickly changing into a dress and a wig, she is suddenly beautiful enough to make a foreign prince, by the name of Prince Frank in the English dub, fall in love with her during a Cinderella-esque night of dancing.

Prince Frank only falls for Sapphire once he perceives her as a girl. When he initially meets her as the Prince of Silverland the two share a rivalry where they compete with one another as equals. When Frank perceives Sapphire as a boy he fights alongside her or tries to outdo her, but once he perceives Sapphire as a girl he becomes smitten and goes out of his way to discourage Sapphire from attending the battlefield, even when her own country in on the line. As her love interest, Prince Frank compliments Sapphire’s good looks above any other quality.

In a Snow White inspired episode, the mirror on the wall deems Sapphire’s Princess Persona the fairest of them all, emphasizing that Sapphire’s sole accomplishment as the Princess is her beauty. A shallow and stereotypical beauty, which is dependent on her state of dress and the opinion of those around her. What’s more, Sapphire’s beauty is purely due to her status as the heroine. Being a character on the side of good, Sapphire is spared of any imperfections that are found on the faces of the series’ various villainesses. Sapphire’s Princess persona is defined as a character solely by her looks, despite her literally being the same person and having the same face as Silverland’s Prince.

The audience is meant to sympathize more with Sapphire because she has the two traits deemed most desirable in women by patriarchal society, young and attractive. (Unfortunately, ugly female protagonists in anime are all too rare.) One of the most common mistakes made by men writing female characters is that they can forget women have their own perspective from which they look at things, as opposed to their existence revolving around being looked at.

At the halfway point of the series, Silverland’s sexist laws regarding the inheritance of the throne are changed and Sapphire’s secret is revealed to the public with no consequence. Once her secret is out, the show drops the surrounding conflict, and Sapphire finally represents a non-traditional take on gender within her own society, at least in appearances. Sapphire no longer must pretend to be a boy and begins to go by the title Princess full time, yet she doesn’t change her daily attire. When venturing into foreign countries where her reputation doesn’t precede her, she is still referred to as a boy. She doesn’t correct those around her, perhaps out of habit. But as for Sapphire’s masculine behavior, particularly her acts of heroism in combat, she finds a new persona to replace the Prince.

The Phantom Knight is a masked swordsman Sapphire developed in order to outwit a villain’s scheme. But even after the Phantom Knight is no longer needed, Sapphire continues to dress up and fight as him. Instead of consistently defying the sexism she encounters Princess Knight will humbly obey her orders to leave the battlefield on account of the fact that she is a girl and the Phantom Knight will miraculously appear to fight in her place. Indeed, Sapphire finds a type of individual freedom in seamlessly slipping from one persona to another to best fit her purposes without causing upset, but this does nothing to actually liberate Sapphire from her obligation to keep parts of herself a secret from everyone around her.

It’s no longer her country’s throne on the line but her reputation as a girl who upholds the role given to her. Sapphire’s clandestine heroism as the Phantom Knight is an outlet for when she doesn’t want to accept the social constraints of being perceived as a girl, but it’s not a remedy for the narrowminded people around her responsible for those constraints.

Sapphire continues to masquerade as a boy with the only real difference being that her two genders have traded spaces. She now presents her girl persona to the public and keeps her boy persona to herself. The Phantom Knight takes on the burdens of adventure, combat, justice and heroism so that Princess Knight can tend to her romance with Prince Frank, which she can freely pursue now that she’s perceived as a girl in the public eye. And as Sapphire displayed so adamantly in the first half of the series, girls are incapable of feats performed by a man such as the Phantom Knight.

With her new secret identity, Sapphire’s gendered personas are more cleanly split than before, and traditional depictions of gender are never really challenged by Sapphire or the series as a whole. After all, what Tezuka wants for Sapphire is not for her to have a secret identity or to lead the life of a prince/knight, but for her to ultimately take on the traditional goal of womanhood, marriage.

At the end of the series the final fight for Silverland’s future becomes dependent on a magic axe. Even during the most critical point of saving Silverland, when Sapphire is to use the axe to save her country, Prince Frank tries to take the weapon away from her as he deems it unfit for a girl to handle. Sapphire must take it back by force before she can run off and save her kingdom. Once the conflict is over, Choppy takes Sapphire’s blue boy heart with him as he returns to heaven. With her canonical source of masculine behavior gone, Sapphire marries Prince Frank. It’s heavily implied that she never takes on the persona of the Phantom Knight now that her country is at peace.

While the audience is supposed to be happy for Sapphire who has found love and can finally live the fantasy once confined to a secret chamber in the palace, it feels more like Tezuka has only made Sapphire finally submit to a traditional female gender role he always intended her for. Sapphire’s conservative ending is actually the second of the anime. It closely follows the solution to Zenda’s character.

Zenda is the daughter of Satan who after daring to show kindness toward a human boy, Zenda is punished and placed in an irreversible situation where she has lost all magical powers, cannot return to her family nor live on her own. The last we see of Zenda is her walking off in to the distance with a boy she barely knows. Sapphire’s and Zenda’s fates where they must trade power for a male partner parallel each other and make for a dissatisfying, if not depressing, ending to series.

Again, Princess Knight ultimately exemplifies a very simple view of gender, where once Sapphire trades her sword for a bouquet, all her stereotypical qualities of masculinity are discarded and the act of doing so is easy and magical.

It feels odd to compare Princess Knight, with its cliché fairytale wedding as its finale and ultimate lack of commentary on gender, to other manga and anime that properly tackle the complexities of crossdressing and gender. One such series that delves into gender as one of its main themes and is frequently brought up in conversations about Princess Knight is Rose of Versailles. The comparisons between these two specific series often feel misguided since Prince Knight is much less a story about crossdressing and gender performance as it is a story that happens to include those things. And yet many people not only compare Princess Knight to Rose of Versailles but even go as far to claim Princess Knight to be Rose of Versailles’ spiritual predecessor. This claim is most likely due to the similarities these two works share in their premises. In Rose of Versailles, the Commander of the Royal Guards fails to produce a male heir, so he decides to give his daughter the name Oscar and raise her as a boy.

Beyond their initial setups, the two series have little else in common. Oscar’s sex is not kept a secret. She was raised as a man, acts as a man, but is still indeed a woman. So all of Oscar’s accomplishments are as a woman, thus bending the gender expectations assigned to women, and ultimately defying the limitations placed on women by their social role in 18th century France. When it comes to Oscar’s masculine behaviors, Rose of Versailles argues nurture as the source while Princess Knight canonically argues nature.

Sapphire does not take on adventures and face danger because she was raised as a prince but because she was mistakenly given the heart of a boy. Tezuka’s simplistic approach to Sapphire’s identity means that her gender, despite being the crux of the story, it isn’t very crucial to Sapphire’s character. In a story like Rose of Versailles, swapping the protagonist’s gender would change the story entirely. But in Princess Knight, you could change the storyline to be about a male prince who happens to like dressing as a girl, but the secret could shame him out of the throne and the plot would play virtually the same. Sapphire doesn’t defy gender roles the way Oscar does. Sapphire is merely trying to uphold two roles at the same time.

As previously mentioned there is a distinct lack of sex and by extension sexuality in Princess Knight. Sapphire’s struggle with gender is never sexual. Where as in Rose of Versailles Oscar’s troubled relationships are dripping with sexual tension. Part of this is because Oscar’s struggle with gender is an internal one. She must struggle with her own self-image and how that image will affect the relationships she wants and the duties she must uphold. But Sapphire’s struggles in the Princess Knight anime are almost completely external. She only fears her secret being outed because of the threat of external backlash that’s presumed to follow. Sapphire is never unsure of who she is and what she wants, she just has to wait for the right time to reveal such things. Much like crediting Princess Knight as the first shoujo, crediting it as the spiritual predecessor to Rose a Versailles is a stretch at best.

Overall, I believe Princess Knight’s reputation over-hypes the anime series. I don’t think Princess Knight is a good introduction to Tezuka’s work, it’s certainly not his best, and I don’t think its aged very well to boot. (I think Black Jack in any of its iterations is a better place to start for those uninitiated to the God of Manga.)

The Princess Knight anime covers little new ground in its storytelling, especially when it comes to depictions of gender. Almost every episode’s premise is directed lifted from a classic fairytale and its conservation ending does nothing to challenge to audience’s nor society’s expectation for Sapphire as a female character conceived in the 1950s. Thankfully the decades that followed produced better anime with more to bite into when it comes to gender such as Rose of Versailles, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Ouran High School Host Club to name a few. Rather than looking backwards to Princess Knight’s depictions of gender and women, we should look forwards to the improved representations that have and will continue to be created as the landscape around such topics expands and deepens.

[chamomilehoneytea]

i just read your recent post of knt and ohmygod. oh god. i really feel like crying :') it's gonna end soon and they all are gonna part ways. can't wait to see the ending esp for the side couples!! anyway, i'm really into friends-to-lovers stories, can you recommend some animes/mangas that are based on that? i need to distract myself from knt ;-; thank you sm for bringing us updates and everything!!

Hey @chokokonhanbin​!! I’m sorry for replying so late!

I’m crying right there withyou!! Even though the story has been winding down for about a year nowthis announcement really makes the impending conclusion seem real… While I’mgoing to miss the series a ton, I really can’t wait to see how Shiina wraps everythingup for our main characters! She’s been working on this series for over tenyears, so I’m sure she’ll take great care with the ending. And hopefully we’llget that heavily foreshadowed timeskip epilogue so that we can see them allworking and married and having babies (omg!!). 

Friends-to-loversstories are the best! I’ve compiled a list for you of some anime and manga thatI think fit that category, although some of these might be a bit of a stretch.I tried to pick series in which the relationship isn’t mutually romantic fromthe very beginning (of course, sometimes one harbors secret feelings for theother, as in the case of Ryu and Chizu :D). Many of the series I’m recommending are not “romances” but they do contain romantic subplots and relationships.

Theremay be some small spoilers in here, but I’ll try not to give anything majoraway - just enough for you to see if you might be interested.

Let’stalk more under the cut…

ANIME

1. Akatsuki no Yona (Yona ofthe Dawn) 

Thisseries is a really popular shoujo about a sheltered young princess, Yona, whois forced to flee her kingdom after her father, the king, is murdered. Shenarrowly escapes with the help of her childhood friend / bodyguard, Hak,and the two set out on a long and dangerous journey…

I’veonly seen the anime adaptation, but the story is really great; Yona grows a lot and hasexcellent character development. Her relationship with Hak is also reallywell-done - if you like protective male love interests who would die for the girls they love, I think you’ll enjoy this!

(Bonus,she collects a lot of male friends throughout the story, so if you’re intoreverse harems…)

2. Gosick

Ifyou’re a fan of mysteries with a little gothic flair, you might really enjoyGosick! The story is set in the first half of the 20th century at a fancyacademy in the fictional European country of Sauville. Kazuya Kujou, a bulliedstudent at the school, meets a mysterious, doll-like girl in the library - thetwo lonely teens gradually become friends while unraveling all kinds of mysteries.

Thisseries has some dark elements, although I don’t remember it being too graphicor intense. The two main characters come to rely on each other, and theirrelationship is really sweet. 

3. Kiznaiver 

Ican’t say too much about this one without getting into spoiler territory, butit’s about a group of teenagers, all from different backgrounds and social circles, who arebrought together as part of a secret experiment. The story is literally allabout feelings (literally haha), and there’s a lot of falling in love and romantic angst. While I would say the story is primarily focused on the natureof friendship and empathy, there are a few friends to lovers pairings…

4. Shinsekai yori 

Thisis an incredible, thought-provoking story, and I highly recommend it for that.If you like dystopian / sci-fi settings and themes, this will probably appeal to you -again, I don’t want to give too much away, but there are a few friends tolovers relationships. Though I wouldn’t call this series a romance, it does explorehuman relationships, and consequently, romantic relationships do receive a fair amount of focus. 

5. Toradora! 

Toradorais, in my opinion, one of the best romance series out there. The two maincharacters are both outcasts, for different reasons; Ryuuji is a kind, gentleboy with an intimidating face, while Taiga is prickly and aggressive in spiteof her small stature. These two unlikely friends unite to help each other findlove - Ryuuji has a crush on Taiga’s best friend, Minori, and Taiga has a crushon Ryuuji’s best friend, Yuusaku. Their relationship is developed really well,and there are a lot of really emotional moments. Can’t recommend it enough!

6. The Rose of Versailles

Anoldie but such a goodie! This series from the 1970s takes place in pre-revolutionaryFrance and follows Oscar de Jarjayes, a girl from a noble family who hasbeen raised as a boy from birth. The only biologically female guard at court,Oscar is assigned to protect the newly arrived future queen of France: the verykind, but very naive, Marie Antoinette. 

Thisseries is completely amazing. Oscar is an incredible and complex character whowrestles with her gender identity while kicking ass and thwarting all kinds ofassassination plots. Plus, there’s a pretty complicated relationship with herbest friend since childhood, Andre… If you like history, drama, courtscheming, sword fights, old school bishies, sparkles, and tons of angst, I think you’ll enjoy this. I will warnyou, this is not a happy or light-hearted series (French Revolution) and it’skind of on the long side (40 episodes).

MANGA

1.Hotaru no Hikari

Hotaru is a young woman in her late 20s whose social life is practicallynonexistent; she loves nothing more than lounging around at home in casualclothes, eating junk food, reading manga, and sleeping. She finds herself living in a house that is owned and occupied by her handsome 40 year-old boss, Takano; though he likes to pick on her for being a “dried up woman”, he always helps her through the problems in her messy love life.

Hotaru and Takano are at very different points in their lives, but they become such good friends over the course of the series; they feel completely relaxed and at home when they’re together. Will this unconventional friendship blossom into something more…?

2. Omoi, Omoware, Furi, Furare

This manga is by the author of “Ao Haru Ride” and “Strobe Edge” and is currently serialized in Bessatsu Margaret, alongside “Kimi ni Todoke.” The story revolves around 4 high school students, two girls and two boys. One female protagonist, Yuna, is a shy but sweet girl who loves shoujo manga and has a very idealistic view of love. The other, Akari, is a bit more jaded and has had experience with relationships, giving her a slightly more cynical, realistic perspective. Rio is Akari’s stepbrother, and though Yuna has a crush on him, he’s secretly been in love with Akari since before their parents started dating. Kazuomi is Yuna’s childhood friend, who despite his seemingly carefree nature, has a lot going on under the surface.

Both pairings begin as friends and are still building towards romantic relationships. It’s interesting to see how the characters change through their interactions with each other - it’s a great high school shoujo, and I think the characters are fairly complex for teenagers. 

3. Koiiji

This series is a pretty mature love story. The main character, Mame, is a 30 year old woman who has harbored unrequited feelings for her childhood friend, 35 year old father and widower, Souta. Throughout her life she has confessed to him, only to be turned down; still, she continues to love him. 

The story is not sugary or idealistic - it feels very grounded in reality, even if that reality is complicated and at times disappointing. Souta doesn’t magically fall for Mame, and her love may come to nothing in the end. But the story is really interesting, and the characters are pretty well-realized - they’re always capable of surprising themselves and the reader. If you want a more realistic, bittersweet story, then I think you might enjoy this.

I hope some of these series interest you! Looking at this list I realized I don’t actually watch / read too many friends to lovers stories - but I do really enjoy them, and these in particular had relationships that stood out to me. I saw that you liked another recommendation ask I published recently - I would also recommend all of those manga series to you as well! Thank you so much for reaching out to me, and happy watching / reading!! :)

[beatricethecat2]

if/then - 7

I've been fussing over the mechanics of the next few chapters for a while now, figuring out when and where to drop clues, as some pushback will happen in the upcoming arc. I apologize for the lack of Helena in this chapter, but she'll reappear, fully formed, in chapter 8. Also, I admit I know nothing about Italian, so I hope the little I've dotted into this isn't horribly wrong. This is still clunky, but I'd rather put it out and move forward than get stuck on form. (editied 8/18).

Previously: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

Read first if you are new! gutted/sorted and wax/wane…if/then is a continuation of those two.

//////////////////////

“Nothing so far is even remotely what Mrs. Frederic’s looking for.”

Myka’s annoyed, both at the man sitting in front of her and her clusterfuck of a morning, which began the minute she stepped foot in Italy.

“Scusa?” the man says as his overly smiley face droops beyond that of a practiced salesman.

“This is what I’m here to see.” Myka sets down her expresso then taps her tablet awake and slides the device across the table.

Myka stretches her neck as the man flicks through inventory then rubs the bridge of her nose in hopes of minimizing the headache she’s had since landing. Clearly, her lack of sleep is catching up with her, yet she doesn’t regret that promises of “later” were fulfilled, rather pleasantly, once her application was complete. Hence she downs the rest of her coffee and considers ordering another; if she has to wait while this guy compares their notes, she might as well be over-caffeinated.

She curses herself for believing him when he'd insisted everything was in order as she sees him now for what he is: a kid. His baby face hides under his short, sharp beard and his spotted bow tie and pocket square try a little too hard to be professional. He’s probably an intern recently promoted to sales, the only one free to meet her at such short notice.

She feels genuinely bad for Floriana, the woman she was meant to meet, as this morning her son was hit by a motorcycle on his way to school. He’s ok, they’ve learned recently, no broken bones or anything, but the painful reality of a child being hurt must be overwhelming. If that had been Christina—her heart races at the thought—Helena would be inconsolable; she’d hop on a plane and sneak into the country just to be by her side.

As she sips her empty expresso, she considers the fact she’s never worried over a child like that and imagines Helena’s day to day worry must be tenfold. She kind of checked out when she got to London, allowing work and Helena to envelop her; she assumed Christina’d be fine since responsible adults were there to care for her. She should really check in unprompted and send some photos, tonight from the hotel...

“Signora Bering,” the man says, “this is not what Signora Stukowski has given me.” He points to her tablet and hands over his.

As Myka flips through inventory, her nostrils flare: wrong period, wrong category, wrong everything. “When did you get this?”

“Questa mattina. You were in the air.” He points his eyes upward.

Myka breathes in a deep, cleansing breath and closes her eyes, telling herself to stay calm. Of course, Sally sent the wrong files, because if Sally could, she would. It’s happened before, and it's happening again. In fact, she’s beginning to think she does it on purpose just to trip her up. But this time around it doesn't make any sense. Sally needs this client to stay on Mrs. Frederic’s good side; Myka has the advantage of the private sale.

But it is possible Mrs. Frederic changed the roster last minute, while she was in the air. And while she’s checked her messages a million times, Sally's not the most communicative; she could have easily sent the files assuming Myka was already in the loop.

“Let me call Sally,” Myka says, whipping out her phone and scrolling through to her number. When the line goes straight to voicemail, she tries the front desk and learns the entire staff's in an impromptu meeting with Mrs. Frederic. No one's sure when it will end.

“Fortuna?” the man asks as Myka sets her phone on the table.

“No,” Myka says, shaking her head. She looks down at his tablet and flicks through a few pages. “Could we continue with these and see my list later?”

As he flips through Myka's images, the man's cheeks puff out comically as he slowly blows out a breath.

“I'll try Sally again later.”

“Si,” he says, nodding his head slowly as he stares at the device. “We can do."

“Grazie,” Myka says, with genuine apology: it’s not his fault they’ll be working overtime. “Let me buy you another coffee. And some lunch,” she adds, eyes wandering behind him, towards the counter.

The man looks over his shoulder and smiles at the menu on the wall. “Si, si, manga,” he says, “Let us ‘regroup,' Signora Bering.”

“Myka,” she says. “Call me, Myka."

------------------

As she stretches to her full-length on the bed, her muscles groan in relief, their release from gravity long overdue. She and Maritzo managed to view everything on both lists but didn’t finish until well after dinner. In the end, she's glad he was her guide and knows she's lucky he was young was eager to please.

Sally, when reached, confirmed Myka’s list was correct, but there was little apology in her apology over the confusion. If she had the energy, she’d have been angry, but she knew it wasn't worth her time. If this private sale works out, she most likely won’t be working with Sally any longer. In fact, Mrs. Frederic emailed her today, asking, tentatively, if she’d represent the gallery in the pre-sale showing, details to be discussed upon her arrival back in London.

The thought occurs to her she needs to go over her newest “anonymous source” email but admits to herself she’s wiped; it will have to wait until morning. She peels herself off the bed and showers, then texts Helena good night and is out like a light before Helena has a chance to respond.

-------------

Though they’ve met once before and emailed frequently, Myka's nerves surge as she enters Theodora’s gallery, as she’s learned Theodora’s not your average widowed retiree. Her anonymous source clued her into some history: back in the day, Theodora and her husband rubbed elbows with both Mrs. Frederic and James Macpherson, chasing down impossible finds like the one she’s been researching.

Theodora's space is intimate and classically European, boasting elaborate white moldings and intricate parquet floors. The front room is filled with contemporary sculpture she recognizes from Vanessa’s roster, while the back holds unique curated treasures. As she passes through to the office, she walks up to a lectern where an illuminated manuscript sits. It’s in pristine condition, which is unusual for its age, and she wonders where a self-proclaimed “humble gallerist” might stumble upon such a rare find.

She’s put at ease by Theodora’s warm welcome, and when their business is tied up sooner the expected, Theodora insists she stay for lunch. Myka’s flight isn’t until three, so gladly accepts and truthfully, she’d like to get to know Theodora better.

After a short walk down a picturesque cobblestone street, she's soon sipping wine in a charming outdoor cafe, listening intently as Theodora waxes poetic about the old days when she was partnered with Mrs. Frederic.

“What was she like back then?” Myka asks.

“The same as she is now,” Theodora answers and motions to the waiter for more wine. “Always pushing the envelope."

“I’ve only met her once. In her office. It was pretty formal.”

“I’ll tell you this: her intentions are always above board, but not everything goes to plan.” Theodora swirls the wine in her glass, studying it as it spins, then tilts her head back, downing the last swig.

“She likes you,” she says, pointing her newly empty glass at Myka.

“She does?”

“She wouldn’t have sent you here otherwise. And I’m sure she already has you working on something special.”

The waiter returns with a fresh bottle of wine and fills both glasses. Myka watches the liquid pour with reservations, already feeling tipsy.

“I think I even know what she’s got you on if the rumors are true. Henry and I chased it years ago, but never found hard proof it existed."

Myka opens her mouth to answer but hesitates; as a confidante of Mrs. Frederic, she should be able to tell Theodora what she’s researching, but it could be a test, to see what it would take to loosen her tongue.

“Oh, it’s hush-hush, I know, no need to fret. It’s just…”

Theodora stares at Myka as if sizing her up. Myka wonders if she wants to hear what she has to say.

“I seem to recall you have a daughter.”

“I, uh...." Not where Myka thought this conversation was going, but it's interesting she remembers her mentioning Christina. "Christina’s Helena’s daughter, not mine. Helena's my…girlfriend." Partner is the correct word here, and she knows it, but if Theodora knows what the private sale is for, she may very well know of Helena’s connection to Macpherson. It might be best to stay a step back until she learns where Theodora is going with this.

“Ah, yes. Now I remember,” Theodora says, siping her wine. “She’s in London because of a visa ’situation.' She and her daughter are why you’re doing all of this. Correct?”

Myka slides her hands off the table and clasps them together on her lap. How much does Theodora know beyond what she’s told her? Maybe she needs to be careful with what she says.

“Um...yeah.”

“Remember that, as you make decisions moving forward.”

“Remember what?”

“Your motivations.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

That very moment, their food arrives. Theodora thanks the waiter then turns her attentions back to Myka.

“Do you love her?” she says, pointing her fork at Myka before tucking into her meal.

“More than anything.”

“And her daughter?”

“Of course.”

“Then remember, the most important thing in life to nurture is family. Family's what’s left when everything else falls flat.”

“Why would everything fall flat?” If Theodora knows something about this sale or Helena that she doesn’t, she wants to know.

Theodora sets down her fork and straightens her posture, then dabs the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Henry and I did what you’re doing for a lot of years. When we had our kids, it complicated things. We both wanted them, but neither of us was ready to settle down. So we compromised by taking turns, one of us staying with the kids while the other was in the field.”

Does she think Helena’s still working? She must know that’s impossible after the trial. “Do you regret not settling down?”

“I regret not spending more time with the kids and Henry together. Especially when they were little.”

Myka looks on, still confused.

“How old is Helena's Christina?"

“Eight. Eight and a half if you ask her in person.” Myka smiles at the memory of the day Christina told her about her birthday. They were filling out the calendar with Helena’s schedule, but the calendar only went through December, so she wrote out the months following on the last page.

“I know you’re just starting out, and you're excited about your projects, but let me give you a piece of advice. When you’re with Helena and Christina, try to live in the moment, take stock of what you have. It seems silly at your age; you always think they’ll be time later, then suddenly, there’s no time at all.”

Theodora’s gaze drifts off into the distance, and her eyes glass over. Myka reaches across the table and places her hand on top of Theodora’s.

“A-Are you ok?"

“I'm fine," Theodora says, with a small sniff. “When the melancholy kicks in, I tend to babble; another reason why I keep to myself these days.”

“You miss him.”

“Most days.”

Henry must linger in Theodora's memories like Helena's family does in hers.

“Thank you, for the advice. I appreciate it.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll all be fine. I forget times have changed, with technology and all.”

Theodora slides her hand from underneath Myka’s and places it on top, then squeezes it slightly. Myka smiles at the gesture.

“I'll tell you, Irene only pushes those she deems worthy, but she’ll push until they break. Make sure you push back before that happens."

“I will,” Myka says, nodding as she slides her hand back across the table. She fingers the stem of her glass and takes a generous sip, wishing she felt more flattered than worried by Theodora’s words.

--------------

Her concentration’s a bust on the plane back to London; emails left unanswered as Theodora’s words swirl through her head.

Her warnings were overkill, weren’t they? As she said, she's just starting out, trying to fix what’s broken. If she looks at things logically, Helena rescued her in her time of need, and she’s returning the favor, though the stakes are higher now since they’re together. But four or five months of rocky coupledom does not add up to a family, per se, not in the sense Theodora was describing.

In fact, the word “family” leaves a sour taste in her mouth; she'd turned her nose up at the notion with Sam; having more important things to accomplish before settling down. She's aware the word is a trigger as babies and marriage were always Tracy’s domain; she’d roll her eyes when Tracy incessantly talked about both when they were teenagers. But as the oldest, she’d been expected to tie the knot first, expected to produce; luckily that bullet was dodged by Tracy taking the lead, lessening the pressure on her.

But “family” is the best word to describe Helena, Christina, and Claudia, and when applied to them it warms her heart. She’s proud to have joined them along their journey. She smiles at the memory of Christina’s drawing, scribbled in crayon, still hanging on the fridge, depicting her holding hands with Helena. Even at that early stage, she was welcomed with open arms into their fold.

And while she trails behind Claudia in the responsibility department, that dynamic will change when she, Helena and Christina live together. Once their situation stabilizes, everyone’s roles will shift towards the traditional. Is she really ready for that? She's not sure.

She’s been so focused on getting to London she hasn’t thought much about what happens after. Theodora must have seen glimmers of her own lack of vision in Myka, of starting a family but never fully embracing change. She should heed her advice and learn work with it, not fight against it. Easier said than done, but she vows to take Theodora’s words to heart.

--------------

After a quick stop to freshen up, Myka speeds off to her work mixer, coincidentally located at the same restaurant Helena had scrambled to get reservations earlier. This seemed odd to her, out of all the restaurants in London, but Helena assured her it was a popular choice with the “in" crowd.

The table is packed when she arrives, with a mass cheer rising as she approaches; it’s clear everyone’s been letting loose. When all eyes move behind her then forward to meet her own, she’s hit with a wave of awkwardness. Helena's expected to have tagged along tonight, but she's clearly not present.

She apologizes for Helena’s absence, explaining she didn’t know until she stepped off the plane Helena had to work last minute. Everyone’s been eager to meet her "black sheep” girlfriend since the day Helena met Mrs. Frederic and emerged unscathed. In fact, Helena’s reputation has even tinged Myka with an air of mystique around the office, which she thinks is quite amusing.

A coworker motions for her to sit next to them, saying they’ve saved her a seat and she does as instructed. Her heart sinks at the sight of Helena’s empty spot next to her; disappointed Helena chose to work over her. She knows sacrifices must be made to keep the weekend free for Christina and Claudia, but she was really looking forward to introducing Helena to the group, both to put an end to the rumors and to show Helena off.

Wine flows freely during every course of the meal, and as the table fills with stories and laughter, she leans back and takes stock, recognizing a lightness in her chest she hasn’t felt for ages. She’s having a really good time with these people, an even mix of folks older and younger than her, and is pleased the discussion stays on topics unrelated to kids and school. The evening feels like coworker gatherings in Chicago and Seattle, and it’s reaffirming to be reminded of who she was all those years ago on her own.

As the woman sitting next to her checks her phone, Myka stiffens as she asks the time. Helena begged her to meet for a nightcap at the bar to make up for missing dinner and Myka reluctantly agreed, but at this rate, it will close before she gets there.

“Sorry, I have to go,” she says, rising so abruptly her chair nearly topples backward. “I’ll see everyone tomorrow."

-TBC-

[tuxiedjabberwock]

The Sides of a Demon - Gintama oneshot

The Sides of a Demon

Category: Anime/Manga » Gintama

Author: Sqydd

Language: English, Rated: M

Genre: Drama/Hurt/Comfort

Published: 09-10-20, Updated: 09-10-20

Chapters: 1, Words: 10,573

Having dropped off the face of the Earth for a few weeks, Gintoki returns with no preamble or explanation to the kids. Yet both of them suspect it was more than just a regular television hiatus vacation for him. Oneshot

quotev

AO3

Fanfiction.net

"Oi, old man, lemme get anodder," Gintoki said past a partly functioning tongue, shakily offering the sakazuki to the barman.

"You're already over your tab and your limit, Sakata-san. I'd like for you to get home in one piece." He took the empty cup instead and fixed Gintoki with a level glare.

"Ah, c'mon, c'mon, Gin-san holds saké very well." The barman refused to relent and Gin clucked his tongue, rising from the seat only marginally unsteadily. "Den I'm gunna take my yen 'lsewhere, ah?"

The barman seemed highly disgruntled but made no moves to reclaim Gintoki's business. Gin noticed him picking up the phone as he pushed off in a wobbly gait, but his brain was too addled by alcohol to make sense of it. The night was dark and cold against his clammy skin, and he fought the urge to loosen his kimono and unzip his shirt; however much relief it would bring, it wouldn't be worth anyone possibly seeing the marks.

A night as cool and quiet as any other. Someone was playing the shamisen in the background, and while Gintoki would have found it soothing any other day, it only heightened the impotent rage brought on by his wallet. It was surprising how heavy an emptied piece of fabric could feel.

"Damn pachinko machines. Someone's screwin' with me, I know it." His grumbles continued as he passed a street of stalls that had long since closed and were vacant of other human life. He had his plan for the last four hours or so until daylight set: he would go home, get as little sleep as possible before the demon in his closet woke him a lá bouncing on his stomach like a springboard, soothe the inevitable exhaustion headache with Shinpachi's breakfast, pray that a client would call lest he feel two brats' wrath for blowing their savings…

Not that he called gambling "blowing their savings." It was a great investment that children who had yet to grow hair on their chests (or otherwise) would never understand.

His muttered complaints did help to shorten the long walk and he was halfway home before he knew it. He was crossing a small wooden bridge when he heard it: footsteps. Not his, clipped and heavy against the soggy wood, but softened by bamboo sandals. His hand was on Lake Toya in half a second. "Oi, I don't do moonlit strolls with ugly men, I'll have you know."

His assailant paid no mind and Gintoki ducked in time to avoid the swing of a katana, stark and silver against the crescent moon's glow. He somersaulted backwards and lost a second in footing to the wet boards. That second gave his opponent—a middle-aged Average Joe with a hairline reaching back to Gorilla country—time to advance and thrust. Gin's kimono was slashed along his hanging sleeve; he stumbled from the unexpected force but turned it into a parry at the last second, blocking the next strike and swinging at his ribs. The assailant parried in turn and ended up in a deadlock.

"So, what's it this time?" Gintoki asked casually, though his opponent was visibly reddening. Kind of a skinny guy, he was. "Alien overlord? Government dog? Sunrise's producer?"

Again, he got no response, and he figured he wasn't going to get much motive from the guy. So he lashed out with his foot, kicking the man's sandaled feet out and launching him in the air, before striking down with his wooden sword right in his gut. His breath left in a harsh whoosh before he crashed down through the base of the bridge and into the shallow waters below. A loud splash succeeded the impact and Gintoki cringed as his hair turned to a soggy mess against his skull.

"Aah, see what you've done? Now it'll dry in an even worse perm."

The stench of alcohol surrounded him like a cloud; it was the only viable explanation as to why Otose was waiting outside the darkened bar with the butt of a cigarette lighting her dour expression. She wore a thinner kimono and a haori draped over her shoulders, and her hair was pinned at the back of her head rather than her usual elaborate wrap. "Gintoki," she began, and he could already imagine the boatloads of trouble he was in if she used his name. She took one last long drag before dropping the cigarette and ashing it under her sandal. "Unless you're planning on going up and explaining yourself to the brats, turn back to whatever shithole you went and hid yourself in."

"Yeesh. That's harsh, don'cha think, Granny?" He couldn't quite stand still without swaying slightly, and even that small motion made him feel like throwing up. God knew he already did enough of that. Chances were there was nothing but saké in his gut at that point.

"I don't want to hear your jokes, idiot. Just a confirmation." She levelled a glare at him and he fought not to cringe, fought to keep his expression at that stupid drunken content.

"You don' wanna 'pology? 'm sorry, Granny. How 'bout a hug 'n kiss?" She scowled and spun away from him.

"You know what? Forget it. You're too drunk to even make sense." She returned inside the bar and shut the sliding doors with a definitive clack. Gintoki stared at them long after the sound of her footsteps disappeared. Then came his more arduous task for the night: ascending the steps to the apartment. Even gripping the railing, he lost his footing several times, and he thought he twisted his ankle…again. He was going to feel like absolute shit come daylight. Like a night in the war, after a long day spent battling dozens upon hundreds of Amanto, forcing his body past human limits and knowing there would be hell to pay when he woke, as if having made a deal with the Devil. Have the strength now and get the consequences later. Kinda like the saké, now that he thought about it.

The sliding doors weren't locked and he wasn't drunk enough to miss it. Due to their abundance of unwanted intruders—Zura, Sacchan, Sakamoto, et cetera—he started pounding it into Kagura's head to lock it all the time. If it remained unlocked all the time he was gone, which he didn't doubt, knowing how those brats were…they never lost faith in him returning. For the first time since his battle with the prematurely balding ronin, he smiled.

"'m home," he muttered as he bent to yank off his boots. He knew the first thing he had to do was greet the kids, it had been a few weeks, maybe more, but…in a better condition. Like, after a month-long coma and a few showers. In acid rain. And a lava bath. Maybe the pain of his skin melting away will allow him to forget…

Well, he wasn't that lucky.

He sighed and straightened, slowly making his way over to his bedroom. The door was wide open to show his fluffed futon and the duvet folded neatly at the foot. Shinpachi, you stupid mother hen, he thought as he collapsed into the soft cotton. It smelled like the herbal soap stuff Shinpachi used at the dojo; Gintoki hadn't realized how accustomed he'd become to that scent until his nose was filled with the musty, acrid scent of the jail cell. That minor comparison led to a slew of memories he squeezed his eyes shut against, not that it helped.

Cold, cold and damp, reeks like mold—ever heard of a matsui stick, dipshits? Aah, now Average Joe's shoving my face right into it. Blood and mold, not a good smell combination. Just wait, wait until I get outta here, wait until I get my hands on y— Wait, hands? What's he doing with his hands? Where are they—why are they on my—

Gintoki shoved his face into the pillow a bit too aggressively and willed his mind to shut up. Not that it was very hard: exhaustion filled his body and he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore. For the first time in weeks, he felt safe.

Instincts were a funny thing. However much time passed, they would never vanish. They could be dulled, certainly—like knee-jerk reactions in response to the bigger, tougher Amanto species—but never forgotten, just buried in a place where bad issues of Shonen Jump and cheesy morning television could blind a person to their existence. But they still existed, and they still saved Gintoki's life on several occasions. This being one of them: he spun around before the water had even settled and swung his wooden sword, taking several small projectiles from the air. One survived, however, and it pierced through his collar to land cleanly in the junction of his shoulder and neck.

"There," said a new, sinister, "main villain of the arc"-type voice. "That wasn't so hard, was it, White Demon?"

"Tha' wasn'—huuuh—" The drug quickly ran through his system and dropped him to one knee before he really realized what was happening. His shaky vision focused on three new sets of sandals walking onto the bridge, and at the front was a set of fancy polished shoes. Clenching his jaw, Gintoki raised his heavy arm and prepared to smash those shoes into oblivion.

"Oh-oh," he said, and his sword was halted mid-swing. A good swing it would've been too: Gintoki's whole side jolted when the sword was grabbed by a large tough-skinned hand. He sluggishly raised his head and tried to focus on his accosters in the moonlight. All Amanto—two rhino-looking ones, an unholy caterpillar-sparrow kind of thing, and the ringleader Mr. Goodshoes, with blue skin and a lizard's long snout, topped with long, neatly-combed cerulean hair. Not a single curl in sight, as if the fates wanted a good laugh in with his bad fortune.

"L'me go." Gintoki narrowed his eyes and tugged against the rhino's grip, but the drugs sapped his strength and left him near defenseless. The lizard alien chuckled and set a clawed hand on Gintoki's head.

"I doubt you remember me, but I remember what a demon you were on the battlefield. So I calculated more than enough tranquilizer to put even you down. I'd say I'm surprised you're not comatose yet, but I expected as much." His Japanese was clipped by an accent that hardened his consonants and made his words fade in and out on their highs and lows.

The rhino did release the sword only to grab him around his forearms in a vise grip, lifting him off his knees. He was now eye-to-eye with their leader and his self-satisfied smirk. He thinks he's won, Gintoki thought as his head lolled to the side. For now, maybe, but if he thinks I'm going down without a fight—

"Let's go." He nodded to his goons and turned away in one sharp movement. "I have the V.I.P treatment prepared for you."

In the morning, there was no alien child burying her fist in his gut or the sound of breakfast cooking. The apartment was still quiet…too quiet. Gintoki yawned and winced when he realized he'd fallen asleep fully dressed. The futon would need to be aired out again.

He dragged himself out of bed and realized with a groan that his pains hadn't abated—if anything, they worsened in the five or so hours he'd been sleeping. But he would endure, he had gotten quite good at that. He pushed himself up and dragged his feet until he reached the bathroom. He stripped his clothes off, tossed them in the corner, and dropped onto the bath stool with a relieved sigh.

The quiet whooshing of warm water filled his thoughts as he worked on soaping up and washing away every trace of the last few weeks. It was only partly successful: the outward grime slid down the drain, but his bruises were as large and stark as ever, especially against his pale skin. Most of them were green and yellow, having been inflicted in the beginning; the largest ones, however, were created just before his grand exit, and their violet hue symbolized breathtaking shapes. Mostly hands, a couple truncheons, a whip they only managed to use on him once before he strangled the guy with it, and a weird curvature he instantly knew as the lizard's bite. Toothless just like an Earth lizard, but damn his jaws were strong.

"Not gonna miss that fucker," he said before dumping the bucket of water over his head. He briefly considered taking a bath to loosen his muscles but the thought made him anxious. He shook it off and grabbed the towel, swiping it through his damp curls. Every time the cotton pulled his hair he shuddered.

They didn't carry Gintoki away—either too much effort on their parts or allowed him too much dignity. Instead, they forced him to walk in his drugged state, pulling him by his collar or his hair to keep him moving. He only had the faintest clue what was happening around him; the world swam in and out of focus and faded to black more than once. They often woke him up with a punch to the gut.

"What's the matter, White Demon? They say you can cut through entire armies without even stopping to breathe. Is moving your feet so hard?" The Boss's tone reeked of sarcasm as his claws were next to grip Gintoki's scalp, drawing blood as he tugged him forward extra hard.

"Fuck…you," Gintoki said, digging his heels into the street. The boss pulled away and clicked his tongue. When the lankier caterpillar-looking subordinate went for him next, Gintoki grabbed his feathered arm and lifted him, sending him flying with a spin into one of the rhino lackeys. The motion caught the Boss's attention and Gintoki broke into a loping run. He didn't get very far before a huge weight slammed into his back, driving him into the dirt. The rhino sat his huge ass right on Gintoki's lower back and butt, completely halting his movements.

"Can't break free, can you?" The Boss crouched in front of Gintoki with a shit-eating grin, but his expression quickly turned lax and cold, a gross parody of Gintoki's notorious dead fisheyes. "It's quite a familiar sight to me, but I suppose it's terrifying for you, being on this side of the treatment now."

Gintoki growled between gritted teeth. "Hope you're…having fun…talking shit. When I b…break your teeth…"

"I have none to speak of," he said quite cheerfully, grinding Gin's last nerves to dust. The Boss's claws tangled in silver curls once again and yanked his head up with a vengeance. His breath stunk like insects and fanned over Gintoki's face. "Come on, White Demon, let's get you to your new home."

Gintoki stumbled in the process of putting on his pants. New "home"—that godforsaken place was anything but. Then again, it was surely nicer than some of the other hellholes he crashed in during and after the war. Ah, at least he could look back on the war with the same amount of disgust—his alone-time with the Boss and co. wasn't worse than all that, worse than the Tenshouin Naraku and the headless corpse on the hill, but it for sure made his top five of Worst Experiences, 2/10 Will Not Experience Again.

He heard her cry before the sound of the sliding door getting violently ripped from its tracks: "GIN-CHAN!" He quickly zipped up his shirt and turned in time to receive a foot to the gut. The force of the kick transcended human definitions of pain, and so the sound he emitted was completely nonsensical as the momentum carried him into the far wall. The wood splintered heavily but thankfully didn't explode; he didn't need to add "falling from a second story" to his lists of aches and pains. Once he stopped seeing stars, he blinked to the face of one very angry Yato.

"K-Kagura-chan, I c-can explain…"

"Save it!" She jabbed an accusing finger in his face with her pink cheeks puffed wide. "You know the rules, don't you? 'Only take an extensive vacation when we're on hiatus, uh-huh'? Don't you think I need my beauty rest to? But we all must wait in line like good people, uh-huh!" She put her hands on her hips and glared in a way that an ignorant man could see as cute. Gintoki noticed her cheongsam was all torn and dirty and she was out of breath; a Yato out of breath, it took a lot to manage that. Like, a long long long time worth of searching. He sunk to the ground in a heap and didn't bother picking himself up.

"Sorry," he said.

"You are sorry, uh-huh! I'm tired, I'm gonna bathe and let Pattsuan deal with you." She spun on her heel with a decisive humph and left his room, making sure to kick down that sliding door as well. Considering all he got were a couple of ulcers, he was getting off lightly.

The big dog came poking his head through the doorway, sniffing curiously at shipwrecked door before blinking up at Gintoki. He smiled and chuckled bitterly. "Are you pissed at me too, Sadaharu?" He whined and trotted forward, nosing into Gintoki's sore gut with ears flattened. If he didn't know any better, he would've thought Sadaharu was concerned for him. But, no, he probably just wanted to add onto Gintoki's pain.

He eventually used Sadaharu as a crutch to pull himself to his feet. He offered his fuzzy head a pat for the help and forced himself to walk unaided into the living room—no need to worry the brats further. He was also aware he would need to come up with a practicable excuse for his extended disappearance, but what he was focused on at the moment was food. And painkillers. Food would be the harder part; if Shinpachi hadn't restocked their supply, which he wouldn't have had reason to do considering how many weeks Gintoki spent M.I.A. and Shinpachi would have no reason to hang around the apartment without Odd Jobs business, then he would have to scrounge up dog food or risk a strip of pickled seaweed. Both were risky, really, but he was so overall achy he couldn't dig up the wits to care.

He checked the rice cooker and saw the empty basin. He then turned his attention to the cupboards and found half a sack of rice left. He poured it into the machine along with some water and set it to cook. When he checked the fridge, he was surprised to find two cartons of strawberry milk, their labels indicating they were bought recently.

"Heh, even if he has no reason to come, the brat still does," Gintoki said with a smile, taking a carton and popping it open. It wasn't just an average strawberry milk from the convenience store; it was, like the unlocked door and his readied futon, a show of faith. Faith that Gintoki would return or they would return him themselves. Warmth filled his chest at the thought and completely melted the icicles that had settled there since that unfortunate day. Standing there in the kitchen, chugging his milk and waiting for the rice cooker to beep, he could pretend things hadn't changed a bit. He could pretend his pains were from some stupid fight with Kagura (which they were, technically) and soon Pachi-boy would come to smooth things over, and they would bicker in front of the television until the off-chance a client would come in—

"Hello? I'm sorry, is this the Odd Jobs residence?"

The voice was female and entirely unfamiliar. Gintoki stared in the direction of the door for a second, completely floored, and it wasn't until he spotted Kagura's wet head walking past that he revived. He set the carton down and rushed over as she opened the sliding door. A woman about Gintoki's age stood in an immaculate blue furisode with her blonde hair done up by golden pins. Her eyebrows were pinched and her forehead lined despite her nice makeup.

"Yup. I'm Odd Jobs Gura-san, uh-huh. There's my useless butler." Kagura jerked her thumb over her shoulder in Gintoki's direction. There was a fluffy pink towel around her neck that she moved to her soaked hair. "Did your fiancé leave you at the altar or something?"

"What? No, I…" She shook her head and bowed a bit. "I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself yet. My name is Umeko Yamada. My sister, Tsubaki, was to be married this morning, but she never showed."

"Maybe she left her fiancé at the altar, uh-huh."

"No, you don't understand how in love those two were. She wouldn't just disappear, and she's not answering her phone either. Her apartment is locked and hadn't been opened since yesterday, so she didn't return home. I'm worried."

"Did she have any enemies? Make any shady deals? Shit in someone's toilet and didn't flush?" The women looked to Gintoki in surprise, Kagura more so. He maintained his dead fish expression as he stepped forward. "Well?"

"No… As far as I know, Tsubaki had no enemies." Gintoki hummed pensively.

"Where's this fiancé of hers? He didn't come with you?"

"He's still searching," she said. Gin yawned and stretched his arms overhead.

"Well, let's find him first, then." He stepped towards the door to put on his boots when Kagura's confused voice filled the air:

"Gin-chan, where's your sword?"

Gintoki was hauled by the neck and tossed against a damp concrete ground. He rolled once before bracing himself on hands and knees, suddenly noticing his hands were bound by the wrists. He saw a shadow approaching in the small window's light and swung his fists; the rhino caught them in one hand and swung the other, catching him across his cheek. He was knocked down with the force of the impact and felt the side of his face begin to swell.

"I'd drug you again if I didn't need you wide awake for this." The Boss's annoying voice rang through his ears. Gintoki scowled and spat blood and a tooth onto the rhino's foot. That same foot buried itself in his gut, slamming him into the back wall. While he was disoriented, he felt movement along his side.

"You won't be needing this." And the Boss held Lake Toya in his full view. Gintoki's reaction was immediate: he pushed himself up and into a forward lunge, tackling the Amanto to the ground and making a grab for his sword. One rhino seized Gintoki by his shoulders and yanked him backwards; the other punched him in the side, giving him a new distraction in the form of a few broken ribs. "Quite a decrepit sword this is—cheap too," the Boss said, calmly rising and dusting himself off. He appraised Lake Toya with a critical eye before, in one smooth movement, cracking the thing over his knee, snapping it in two uneven chunks plus hundreds of tiny splinters.

"There," he said, tossing the remnants over his shoulder and into the water. "Now, let's get bac…"

"Gin-chan?" Kagura's head tilted to one side as she observed him with remarkably shrewd eyes for a child. He turned back to the client to avoid scrutiny and mentally pummeled himself for taking too long.

"Bet it as collateral," he said offhandedly. He could actually hear Kagura's teeth grinding, but it didn't matter—the sliding door opened again.

"Kagura-chan? I've brought some Takoyaki, are you…oh…" Shinpachi's voice trailed away as he most likely spotted Gintoki's boots in the entrance. He came into the main room with barely a sound, glancing first at their client, then Kagura, and finally Gintoki. His expression was unreadable behind his glasses.

"Took ya long enough to get here, Pattsuan," Kagura said, breaking the brief veil of silence that had fallen over them. "We have a client."

"Oh. Oh, my apologies for not greeting you immediately." He turned to Umeko with a short bow. "My name is Shinpachi Shimura."

"Umeko Yamada, pleased to meet you." She returned the bow with a smile, then brought a hand to her mouth. "Oh my, you two are quite young. Starting in the family business early?"

Both flinched, Kagura less so than Shinpachi, but Gintoki noticed all the same, although he doubted Umeko did—it was part of knowing them for so long. "That's…one way to put it, Yamada-san," Shinpachi said after a moment with a bit of an awkward snicker.

"Well, to start off, could you give us the address of your sister's apartment?"

"Yes, of course." She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her waistband and bowed again after passing it to Gintoki. "Thank you so much for your help, Odd Jobs."

Shinpachi mimicked the bow, and Gintoki shoved Kagura's head down when she made a remark about craving pickled plums. "'course, ma'am. Odd Jobs will not fail."

Umeko let herself out and Gintoki looked over the small bundle to find the address scribbled in what was clearly a man's script alongside a housekey and fifty thousand yen. His eyebrows raised into his hairline. "Forward?"

Kagura snatched it from his hand before he could even smell it. "Don't blow it on strawberry milk before we buy meat, uh-huh."

"Never mind that right now, Kagura-chan, until we finish this job." Shinpachi looked over her head to meet Gintoki's eyes, his own appearing reserved. "Everything else will be discussed afterwards."

She caught on and gave him a side-eyed nod before plopping onto the floor to yank on her flats. Gintoki sighed and grabbed his boots, making his way back to the couch to pull them on—crouching down was far too painful. "Yes, everything."

The cell he woke up in was cold, damp, and very cramped; Gintoki could lie down and stretch his arms and legs out and touch both walls, and the height was barely above the top of his head. The last wall had a thick steel door, and though he deluded himself into thinking he could punch through it, all he got for his efforts were a few bloody knuckles. The only other escape option was a thin vent pumping in moldy air.

Gintoki was just figuring out how to shapeshift himself into that vent when the door swung open. The rhino Amanto bodyguards were first in, and he wasn't going to delude himself into thinking he could overtake them with his bare hands and sedative still in his system. The Boss followed behind, reptilian face as smug as ever.

"I don't suppose this is punishment for all the lizards I crippled as a kid," Gintoki said offhandedly. The Boss scoffed.

"I have no affiliation with your brainless Earth reptiles. My business is with you, White Demon."

Of course his war actions were coming back to bite him in the ass—most of the time that was the answer. He never claimed he was guiltless in the affair—he had more than enough nightmares of that time that he had to play off in front of Kagura—but he found long ago that it was much easier to atone with his head still attached to his shoulders.

"Get in line," Gintoki responded, bringing his swaying form to his feet. The Boss was taller by a few inches or so, allowing his beady eyes to look down on Gintoki.

"My friends and I have much planned for your extended stay here," he continued, ignoring the remark entirely. "It took much longer than expected to locate you and narrow down your schedule to when you're completely alone, however it gave us much more time to decide how to maximize our time together."

"And what will that be exactly? Pachinko? Drinks?" The Boss's brow twitched.

"You talk quite a bit. That is certainly a change from the war."

"So, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say your beef with me is from the war. Fine, whatever, do your worst and lemme out to drink it off and we're all happy, yeah?"

The Boss stepped aside to allow one of his bodyguards to swing a fist at Gintoki's gut. He wasn't dull enough to take the hit and dodged to his side—only to be seized by the throat. "These Certidas are, like myself, the last of their kind," he explained in a calm voice that belied an iced-over fury. "Our people were made corpses on your battlefield, and all thanks to you, White Demon."

"The war was the effort of no single species or man." The nice way of saying the Amanto dug their own graves when they first arrived on Earth sniffing blood. The Boss's eyes narrowed.

"You were no single man, White Demon. On that cursed field you fought as an army. We Amanto sought to bring enlightenment to you mud-crawlers—" Gintoki couldn't help but interrupt with a howling laugh. This earned him a rough toss down to the concrete floor, agitating his already aching ribs. He kept his face impassive even as he fought for breath through the stabbing pain. "We Amanto brought enlightenment, and though your government accepted it for what it was, the rest of you mud-crawlers wanted a fight. And when the fight was too much for you, you played dirty. Fine then, we can play dirty all the same." He knelt to get into Gintoki's face. "You will learn our power here and now, and that curse will follow you into your soon-coming grave."

"Go. Fuck. Yourself." Gintoki spat a wad of bloody saliva right in his eye. He reared back with a shrill scream, then spun quickly on his heel to march to the door.

"Teach him respect!" he called without turning. As the Certidas closed in on him, Gintoki remembered his brats. As fists and feet ground his bones to dust, he remembered he promised to be back before dawn, sure to have passed long ago.

Wait for me a little longer, Kagura, Shinpachi.

Tsubaki's apartment was up two flights of stairs, pulling uncomfortably at Gintoki's half-healed wounds and drawing upon long emptied energy stores. Kagura was bouncing up three steps at a time, and Shinpachi stayed just barely ahead, glancing back at Gintoki every few seconds or so.

"Gin-san," he began, then fell silent for a few seconds, many thoughts swimming through his eyes. Eventually he settled on, "You look tired."

That was the understatement of the century. He was so exhausted he could sleep for the next ten years straight and sleep some more on top of that.

"Been a long night," Gintoki said with a yawn. Shinpachi's eyes flashed and he turned back to the stairs.

"I thought family doesn't lie to each other. I guess I was wrong." His words were soft yet cut through Gintoki's heart like the sharpest blade.

I'm trying to protect you from how fucked-up my life is. That's what he wanted to say, but the words never left his throat, and they stopped in front of a plain wooden door marked 3F. The key provided a quiet entrance, and the door swung open to reveal an entirely unassuming flat. The furniture and decorations were neatly arranged and there any obvious human skeletons lying around at first glance.

"Looks boring so far," Kagura said, flopping onto the couch and throwing her arms over the back. Shinpachi fretted over that.

"K-Kagura-chan! You can't just do that in someone else's apartment!"

"Not only that," Gintoki said flatly, picking up an old issue of Weatherwoman Weekly, Ana Ketsuno's bikini on the cover, "this is a crime scene."

Kagura's eyes lit up and she leapt to her feet. "A crime scene, uh-huh!" As if from nowhere, she produced a detective's hat and cape. "Perfect time to carry these in hammerspace." She whipped out a comically large magnifying glass and peered into a speck of dust on an end table.

"Oh, boy…" Shinpachi sighed, then his eyes drifted to Gintoki again. Gintoki suspected Kagura knew something was out of place—she was wildly unpredictable, but her warrior's instincts were no joke—yet she wouldn't bring it up, probably because she didn't know what to make of it. Shinpachi, on the other hand, was a major mother hen and had no problem with airing any grievances he had. That was what worried Gintoki. It was one thing for the brats to have their suspicions; if they figured out what had happened…he didn't know what he'd do. But it terrified him worse than whatever the Boss could do.

Kagura's sneeze caught both their attention thankfully. "My allergies are kicking in, uh-huh," she sniffled.

"Allergies?" Shinpachi repeated suspiciously, then paused. "Although it is quite dusty in here…"

"The couch is dusty too." She pointed at the modern sofa with a fine coating of dust. "So's the television and the table."

The three of them spread out and covered the rest of the one-bedroom apartment. Though it was furnished for the average young lady, it was like a room from a catalogue. Everything was coated with dust and almost meticulously organized.

"The bathroom has never been shitted in," Kagura said, earning a scandalized look from Shinpachi.

"A woman's panties are never this clean," Gintoki said, holding up a pair. Kagura side-eyed him.

"How would you know?"

"Years of panty raiding expertise."

"Okay, okay." Shinpachi covered his face for a moment until the redness subsided. "So she hadn't been here in a long time. Days, possibly a few weeks? Yet Umeko-san has obviously interacted with her in recent times, so has Tsubaki-san simply been avoiding this place?"

"I'm thinking we should interview the neighbors," Gintoki said. "See if there's any creeps worth avoiding."

"No one would know a creep better than a creep, uh-huh," Kagura agreed. Gintoki's eyebrow twitched.

"I'm not a creep, you bun-headed black hole. I'm still a damn spring chicken."

"Chicken is only good fried! Everyone knows that!"

"Ah? You uncultured brat, it's best with miso."

"Personally, I prefer oyakodon," Shinpachi said.

"Who told you to butt in, shitty glasses?" Kagura retorted. A loud bang came from the floor below.

"Shut yer traps, shitty humans!"

There were five other units on the floor. Shinpachi and Kagura took the left side; Gin took the right side. While their attention wasn't immediately drawn to him, he let himself move a little slower than his usual feet-dragging pace. Since Gintoki's moped was being held hostage by the mechanic on account of his years unpaid tab (with Gin in no condition to grab it in run as usual), and even the forward wasn't enough to cover the bill, they had to walk the forty minutes to the apartment building; an easy feat under normal conditions, but when his whole body felt like one amalgamate bruise, it wore him down. It was a fight to keep the illusion of normalcy.

The first door he knocked on, nobody answered, though he heard footsteps within. "Oi, did you guys see any creeps coming by?" he called. The door was opened long enough for him to get a flower vase tossed in his face.

The second door, a frazzled-looking woman did answer, although he was bombarded with so much children screaming he couldn't hear a word she said. Then a plastic car was tossed in his face.

The last door, he knocked and immediately ducked. This time, however, nothing flew at his face; the door was opened by Jii and Gintoki jumped in surprise. "What? Prince Idiot lives here!?"

"No, Prince Idiot and I rented this space temporarily while he purchased another pet," Jii replied, looking a bit worn out. True to his words Gintoki could hear Hata's screaming and a bird's squawking inside. He could have pretended to care, but…no.

"Have you seen anything unusual lately? Besides the stupid running gag that imprinted itself on my face?"

"Well…" Jii glanced up the hall and adjusted his glasses. "Now that I think about it, a woman started living here not long after us, and the company she brings by is—"

"Jiiiii!" came Hata's annoying voice, and Jii ducked before a large body came flying through the door and right into Gintoki, pushing him backwards and through the hall's window. Fine, whatever, he was used to falling through windows, pain is an illusion and whatnot—

Then he took a good look at the Amanto.

The one Amanto Gintoki saw the least of was the caterpillar-sparrow thing. Every so often he could hear it and the Boss arguing outside, but Gintoki supposed it wasn't the hands-on sort.

Today was different. Today he was sane enough to give the Certidas hell and a half when they came for the usual. He had more broken ribs than working ones, a twisted ankle, one eye so swollen it was borderline useless, and seven fingers between both hands, but he managed to get one downed. He was nothing if not a persistent fighter.

"Still haven't learned about retaliation, have we?" The Boss was standing arms folded in the doorway, shiny shoe tapping an annoying pattern into the floor. Gintoki had long since been restrained and pinned but he wasn't yet down and out.

"Haven't we learned it's pointless keeping me locked up?" he growled. "I'm going to break out, and then I'll break everything here. Preferably beginning with you."

"Well, I'll give you that: it's becoming quite troublesome going through guards. The Certida don't come cheap." He came closer and bore down into Gintoki with impassive eyes.

"Why don't you chain me up then?"

"Hmph. I've seen what you do with restraints. Don't take me for a fool, White Demon. Although…" Suddenly a nasty smile crossed his face, and Gintoki felt a note of unease. "That gives me an idea. I've done all I can to break you physically, so let's try something new."

"Torture is nothing new to me," he scoffed even as the Boss was turning away.

"Not exactly." The door shut for a moment and Gintoki was caught off guard by the Amanto's high volume argument. It lasted a couple of minutes, then the door opened to allow the other Amanto inside. "Meet my associate…you can call him Sparrow."

"Him?" Gintoki repeated derisively, looking at the segmented body covered in long blue feathers. This Amanto also wore a suit—like some sort of weird Amanto host club—and looked entirely displeased with everything.

"This better be worth double the promised pay," Sparrow said, waving away the Certida pinning him. Gintoki made to get up before Sparrow took his place, and though the Amanto was smaller and half his weight, he had some strength to that form. "No hard feelings, Kid. Wasn't here for the war; this is all business to me."

Gintoki was wondering why the hell he needed a disclaimer now…then he realized. His obi and belt were being undone, and his pants were coming down. He struggled and strained but dammit that Amanto was really goddamn strong. "Get offa me!" he shouted. His pants were tangled around his knees and Sparrow grabbed his arms, twisting them back around his shoulder blades so tightly one wrong move would dislocate them. Shit, he would dislocate his neck to get out of this situation. He latched onto the Amanto's tail with his ankles and yanked hard with the intention of breaking bones. The appendage bent rather than giving the satisfying crack he expected, though Sparrow still yelped with pain.

"You little—" A clawed hand dug into the back of his skull and slammed him face-first into the concrete. Stars exploded in his vision and he fell into darkness for a minute. When he woke up, it was over.

Sparrow was just getting up when the Boss returned. "The deed is done. Pay up," Sparrow said irritably. The Boss scowled but handed over a neat stack of ten thousand-yen bills. Sparrow pushed past him to leave and the Boss knelt in front of Gintoki, tense at first and then relaxing when no attack came.

"Don't you have any vitriol for me, White Demon? You're not going to curse my name, spit at me, threaten to shove your foot so deep up my ass…oh, excuse the reminder." And he laughed. He goddamn laughed. The urge to crush his face was still there, but, dammit, Gintoki felt exhausted on a molecular level, every ache and pain was multiplied one thousand fold, blood was running down his scalp and crusting on his face, fucking gross viscous alien fluid mixed with blood was crusting on his legs, the bastard didn't have the decency to pull up his goddamn pants after he—he—

And Gintoki went quiet. Because for the first time since he was captured, he thought, really thought, perhaps this was his final penance. Perhaps…perhaps he should've been a little nicer to the kids and Otose, Madao and Sacchan, Kondo and Hijikata… Because he wasn't getting out. He was going to be there with the Boss and his guards and his f-friend and fucking die like that—

Sparrow spread his wings and turned the sharp downward descent into forward movement. Gintoki grabbed onto his wrists and gave him a sharp headbutt. Crying out in pain, Sparrow's wings folded and they crashed onto the street. His half-healed ribs jolted but he paid no attention to them; he flipped them around so Sparrow was pinned to the concrete. His whiskers flailed and he continued squawking until his eyes locked on Gintoki.

"You! The White De—"

Gintoki punched him right in the beak. His knuckles split, but Sparrow's beak was cracked and bleeding. "I can't—" punch, "sock that stupid reptile—" punch, "so you're—" punch, crack! "a really goddamn close second—" swollen hand, don't care, gonna break his face and turn him to dust, "you damn alien, what you did to me—several times—I'll kill you!"

"Gin-chan!"

"Gin-san!"

Like a hypnotic state, Gintoki snapped from his rage-induced fugue at the sound of the brats' voices. He hadn't realized how much attention he had garnered, but several Kabuki dwellers were gathered in a circle, watching him thrash a naked and collared Amanto. Kagura and Shinpachi pushed to the front of the crowd and looked surprised for a moment before quickly jumping into action.

"What happened? What did he do to you?" Shinpachi was saying as he pulled out his wooden sword.

"Want me to blow him up?" Kagura was saying as she readied her parasol.

He looked at his bleeding hands gripping Sparrow's blue bloody face and remembered with an awful jolt that they didn't know. The kids didn't know what the Amanto had done, but they saw Gintoki punching the shit out of him and assumed Sparrow was the bad guy. Which lightened his heart, knowing they were still on his side after everything. And subsequently made his heart drop into his stomach, knowing he couldn't explain why Sparrow was the bad guy, because then he would have to explain what Sparrow did fuck no, and then explain everything else that happened in the last few weeks, and just…nononono.

"Oi, what's going on here?" The crowd disbursed at the sound of a very irate and familiar voice. Kondo and several low-ranking officers started herding the people away, while Hijikata—the speaker—came straight to Gintoki, accompanied by Sogo. "If it isn't Odd Jobs disturbing the peace. What a surprise," he said flatly, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Sogo, meanwhile, raised a hand in greeting.

"Hey, Boss." The nickname stroked Gintoki's ego once upon a time, but now just made his skin crawl.

"Well?" Hijikata caught his attention again. "Give me a reason not to cuff you right now."

"Calm your tits, Ogushi-kun," he said, raising his hands and straightening his back, but making no moves to get off Sparrow. Hijikata moved closer and unsheathed his sword the smallest bit.

"Really, I want an explanation. Do you realize how you look right now? You get into harebrained schemes all the damn time, and I am one hundred percent over you and the property damage that follows as long as I can follow that train wreck you call a thought process."

"C'mon, Toshi, relax a little." Kondo's voice of reason cut through the tension as he set a hand on Hijikata's shoulder. "Sakata-san may be an oddball, but if he's taking action, it's for a good reason."

"I believe that," Hijikata said flatly, "I'd just like to hear that reason."

"Gin-san?" Shinpachi said, his sword falling to his side. What could he say?

"Gin-chan?" Kagura said, lowering her fists. How could he explain?

"Boss?" Sogo's head inclined and even he seemed a bit confused. Then his eyes narrowed, looking between Sparrow and Gintoki, and understanding dawned. "That look in your eyes…something to do with the war." It wasn't a question. The Shinsengumi was quiet, his brats were quiet, everything was quiet save for the noise in his head.

"…It—"

Pain seared through his side. He gasped and looked down to find claws embedded deep into his gut. Sparrow's breath was heaving as he pulled back and a spray of blood splattered onto the concrete. Gintoki shot to his feet automatically but they buckled under his weight; two sets of arms came from behind to catch him. His head lolled back and Kagura and Shinpachi's faces swam in his darkening vision. There was just too much—too much pain, too many people, too much to hide—and he was just…done.

I hope I don't wake up in that shithole again. After all I did…

Gintoki's routine was static for an indeterminate amount of time before, without warning, things took a turn.

One day, he woke from a pain coma to a lot of noise and movement outside the cell. When the voices came closer, he pinpointed them as human ones, pretty angry ones at that. He used the wall to get up from his prone position on the floor, feeling like a walking train wreck, and pushed himself closer to the door. His half-healed ribs ached with every breath as he fought to listen closer.

"—check every room! Every Justaway has to be taken in, especially if you can't immediately confirm what's a bomb and what's not."

What? Was he being kept in a damn Justaway factory this whole time? Ah sh—no, no, not the point. That sounded like the Shinsengumi, albeit no one he knew personally, and if they were on the hunt for Justaways, they would have to open every room. Meaning…

The door slammed open and Gintoki was ready. Only one officer entered; Gintoki bumrushed him with a boot to the face. Not his most graceful takedown, but dammit he was a walking bag of bone shards, the animators better cut him some slack.

Ouch, dammit, even breaking the fourth wall hurt at this point. He would nap for years once he got home…home, yeah. He could go back.

The officer crumpled and Gintoki took his sword before continuing outside and down the hall. The entire building was concrete, and one side of the wall was full of windows looking out onto the industrial district. It was the dead of the night by the moon's position, and Shinsengumi cars were all over the dock. Under normal circumstances he'd gladly jump through the window, three story fall be damned, but he had something to do before he left.

He continued down the hallway away from the noise and to where the exit signs were pointing. Loud clumping footsteps were not too far ahead—the Certidas. As he grew closer he made out three forms, two of which had dealt with him earlier that day. Strong as they were, agility was not their strong suit, and they were slow to make a one-eighty; Gintoki leapt over their heads and sliced into the walls and ceiling around them, hitting the ground at a skid some feet ahead. The concrete fell around them in chunks, suffocating them under a ton or so of rubble.

He could hear more Certidas clomping about when he reached the stairwell. He glanced inside and saw two making their slow way down, and leading the proverbial herd was the Boss himself. Gritting his teeth, Gintoki pulled another flying boot on the closer Certida; it was knocked forward and sent tumbling downstairs into its friend, and the Boss turned around as the roly-poly came close. He jumped to the slanted roof and clung there to avoid being tramped, what a goddamn shame, then his eyes locked on Gintoki.

"You!" he growled.

"Yo," Gin said, raising a hand in greeting. "So, Justaway fetish? Didn't take ya for that kind of alien."

The Boss hit the ground and raced towards him, lashing out with his tail. Gintoki leapt back to avoid the swipe that left a massive gouge in the concrete stairs and struck out in a thrust. The Boss's coat was torn along the breast, but he otherwise avoided the attack and grabbed Gintoki by the neck, tossing him down the stairs headfirst. Gin caught himself with his hands and backflipped to his feet, blocking the Boss's next tail swipe with his sword.

"I was going to blow you and this place sky high when I had my fill," the Boss said through his teeth. "Getting to kill more shitty humans only adds to my pleasure."

"Not every human's a piece of shit. You Amanto, on the other hand, make up one massive deuce."

The Boss suddenly ducked and latched onto Gintoki's side with strong jaws. Gintoki bashed his skull with the hilt of the sword and he let go—not before swiping at his ankles with his tail. Gintoki fell hard to the ground and the Boss went at him with claws once more.

The stairwell's door banged open and the Boss turned his attention to the two Shinsengumi officers who just crashed their way into the worst situation. The Boss swiped across them in a shred of fabric and blood, then whirled around with his tail and slammed them into the wall hard enough to knock them out on impact. With the doorway cleared, he took off running towards the exit.

"Get back here, you overgrown gecko!" Gintoki shouted, giving chase. He was injured but still the quicker one; realizing this, the Boss ducked into a room with an open door. Gintoki followed and found himself in an empty room with a Justaway on the floor and the Boss wriggling through an air vent on the ceiling. The Justaway was already ticking at top speed when Gin came in and quickly exploded in a cloud of heat and concrete shrapnel. He was picked off his feet and slammed into the outer wall, which crumbled under his weight and left him tumbling past the docks and into the sea.

Gintoki was tired. Even more tired than at the beginning of the story. So tired, in fact, that he wanted to end the story right he

THE END

…

Bad joke. He was stalling for time.

He cracked one eye open to see the bland walls of O-Edo Hospital. At this point he was more familiar with that place than his own flat, but he didn't expect to be waking up there. With a quick glance proving the room was empty, he sat himself up with a groan, propping his back against the bed's headrest. There wasn't much skin left visible through all the bandaging he'd been covered with, and a wad of gauze was stuck where Sparrow gutted him.

"Shit," he muttered, gripping his sleeves. If the doctors saw that wound, they saw all the others, and they would have had to tell—

The door opened and Kagura was in first, three empty pudding cups stacked on her head and working on a fourth. When she saw Gintoki was awake, however, she dropped all of them and bum rushed him in a hug. "Gin-chan!" she yelled into his neck, effectively deafening him.

Behind her, Shinpachi dropped a new copy of Jump (Jump! Gin almost forgot it existed) and quickly joined her, gripping Gintoki so hard it felt like his ribs would break a second time. Then he felt their tears soaking into his sleeves and suddenly didn't feel any need to complain.

"Hey," he said quietly, resting a hand on each head. Kagura rose at the movement and gave him a wicked punch to the shoulder. "Ow, you brat! I'm already in a hospital!"

"If you weren't, I'd put you in one myself, uh-huh!" she said through the tears rolling down her cheeks. She continued punching his shoulder, surely leaving another bruise as she gasped, "You big—old—heartless—dummy!"

Shinpachi finally grabbed her wrists, stopping her, but he was just as sad, maybe even sadder. "We took you here after you passed out a few days ago," he explained quietly, avoiding eye contact. "The doctor examined you, patched up the stomach injuries…then he told us there were more, a lot more. Your scalp, your ribs, fingers, pelvis, even your, your…" He stopped to take off his glasses and wiped his eyes. "Gin-san…" he met Gintoki's eyes, sad and pleading, "what happened to you while you were gone?"

He wanted to deflect so, so badly, but while the truth would break him, lies would break the kids, and he cared too much to do that. So he did it, he told them. Shifted his eyes at everything else and ground his molars to dust and sprained his knuckles with how hard he was clenching his fists, but he told them, sparing them the grittiest details. At the end of it, Shinpachi apologized, of all things.

"I was mad at you in the beginning. I'm sorry for that," he explained. Kagura's head whipped from him to Gintoki.

"I-I'm sorry too, uh-huh! For kicking you in the gut…even if it felt good to do it."

"Eh. Could've gone without that last bit, Kagura," Gin said groggily, but with a bit of a smile.

"I did. And I'd do it again if you try lying to us again, uh-huh." She wagged a finger in his face. He was going to bite it before Shinpachi cleared his throat.

"We're here for you through everything, Gin-san, but you have to tell us. The good things, the bad things—sure, your gambling's a pain, and I could go without the fine details of every hookup," he said with a bit of a blush, "but we're family, we tell each other everything, alright?"

Family. Huh.

"As long as it's not Jump spoilers," Gin agreed. "Speaking of…"

The door slammed open again and Hijikata's boot came down on the magazine as he stepped in. "Oh, good, you're up," he said, glancing at Gintoki's horrified expression.

"Get your dirty boots off my Jump, you shitty tax thief!"

"Don't care." Hijikata picked up the dirtied Jump and tossed it over.

"Sakata-san! Sorry to interrupt your recovery." Kondo came behind the vice captain with his face pinched in worry. "We need to talk to you for a moment. The other day, we did a raid on a Justaway factory, and although we recovered all the bombs, the one we suspected of manufacturing them escaped. Then yesterday, that Amanto you attacked, he came to us and told us the suspect's whereabouts."

"Said he was more scared of the White Demon than 'the Boss,' is the direct quote," Hijikata added, giving Gin a shifty look. Gin shrugged a shoulder. "Found out the bastard was hiding in that apartment building with a human woman—"

"Um, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Hijikata-san, but the woman's name wouldn't happen to be Umeko, would it?" Shinpachi said. Hijikata turned to him with a raised brow.

"Yeah. How'd you guess?"

"Well that makes some sick sense," Gintoki scoffed. "Continue."

A vein pulsed in Hijikata's temple at being ordered, but he continued nonetheless, if in a tenser voice. "He was with a woman who later confessed to housing him in exchange for money. The Amanto's been majorly tightlipped since being incarcerated—can't get a word outta him. Well, nothing except him swearing to crush that damn White Demon."

"I'll crush him first, uh-huh!" Kagura yelled, making to rise before Shinpachi set a hand on her shoulder.

"That overgrown lizard knew me…before," Gintoki said carefully. By the Shinsengumi's expressions, they understood what he meant. "And had several bones to pick. As you can see, he got them plus change." He wiggled his bandaged fingers before dropping them atop the Jump volume. "He had me in that damn factory until all the hubbub you started gave me a chance to get out."

"Hmm…that does explain the boot print on Ishida's face," Kondo said thoughtfully. "Well, that explains that. We'll have to get a more formal statement when you recover, Sakata-san, but for now," he waved and disappeared through the door.

Hijikata hung back a bit, looking over Gintoki's prone form with an unreadable expression. For a second, Gintoki feared pity from the other man, but instead earned a minute head bow. Some sort of sympathy and admiration combo. "See ya," he said, and followed after Kondo with the click of the door.

"So," Gintoki said after a few seconds of silence, "about that money—"

Kagura picked up the fallen pudding cup and slouched into a nearby chair. "Oh, that money's long gone."

"What!?"

"Extensive hospital bills," Shinpachi explained. Gintoki was still trying to pick his jaw up.

"But—but—I didn't get to buy a single carton of milk! How are my bones gonna regrow without milk!?"

"Lots and lots of big needles, uh-huh," Kagura said. Gintoki tossed the bed's remote at her head; she caught it and tossed it back at Mach speed. He ducked to avoid being beheaded.

"That's no way to treat poor old Gin-chan!"

"Then don't make yourself an easy target!"

"Come on, you two," Shinpachi said with a sigh, but it was a smiley sort of sigh. Gin and Kagura's pointless banter continued, but it meant good things; it meant he could recover, inside and out, and put things behind him sooner than he thought. And it reminded him that although what he did during the war was reprehensible, there were small moments that could still mean something, like giving a young alien girl a home and teaching a young samurai what the title meant. It meant that while the White Demon was a relic soured by time, Gintoki Sakata could still live.

He surfaced with a gasp and fumbled towards the closest pier. At least the water washed off the blood and dust, he thought, climbing onto the soggy wood. The Shinsengumi's voices rang out from the other side of the building as they tramped in and out. He just lay there for a few minutes, catching his breath and deescalating from I'mabouttodie mode. Getting back into the building sounded like too much goddamn work; he would've been happy to simply lay there and die, but he was free. Finally-fucking-free. And as pleasant as it sounded, dying on a pier and turning into seafood, he had a home he could die at. And kids who could kill him instead for disappearing. Yup, that sound a lot nicer.

So, Gintoki dragged himself up for the billionth time and started walking.

The night stretched endlessly as Gintoki hobbled through the streets of the Kabuki district. He placed his location after a few buildings drifted past and realized he still had a few hours to go before reaching the apartment. At least he was dry at that point; the night was cold and no time for swimming.

'You'll catch a cold!' Shinpachi would've fretted.

'Idiots don't get sick!' Kagura would've scoffed with a pointed sniff.

Then he would give a garishly fake laugh, they'd banter, probably throw some punches and furniture and throwaway gags, Shinpachi would fret some more, and they'd call it a day. Such a simple life most of the time, he never thought he had been taking it for granted. No matter, the kids would kick his ass soundly when he rolled in.

Ah, Shinpachi, Kagura. He wouldn't tell them what happened, no way in hell. But they would worry, and they would be angry when he played things off—which was fine. He would laugh things off and feign normalcy until it came easy again, all the while watching them like a hawk. If the Boss or any of his goons made a return, he would be ready. He would take him down as true to his moniker as he'd ever been. He would protect his family to the last breath.

The sweet smell of sake caught Gintoki's attention. He was passing by one of his usual late-night haunts. Feeling more in need of alcohol than ever, Gin stumbled over and sat for a drink.