A/N: What am I doing here? So at last I have gotten over my little hiatus status, ahem. However, this is my first Gintama fic so y'all probably don't know who the heck I am. Yeah, people don't know me in any fandom actually. I'm a nobody. But yes, I wrote a thing for GinHiji because they are my love and I have lurked this fandom long enough to have read every other GinHiji fic okay. I'm in withdrawal. I need this fic to happen. I have another AU idea I'll probably poop out after I'm dried up with this one. Anyway please read and leave a comment/review because those little blurbs of your opinions motivate me!
WARNING: Lots of fucks given courtesy of two angry men...secretly in love. I'm also my own beta-reader so expect a few mistakes, whoop.
DISCLAIMER: I am not Hideaki Sorachi. I do not own Gintama. This disclaimer applies for every chapter posted hereafter.
It's Always Gintoki's Fault
"Oi, Zura?" Gintoki's voice trembles as he mutters out the terrorist's name. "I don't care what kind of joui shit you're up to, but please don't get Gin-san involved, okay? I'm a delicate man."
The sound of clothes rustling against restraining ropes halts in priority for, "Fuck your delicate shit! This is all your fucking fault to begin with. I'm so gonna arrest you for this!"
"How was it even my fault, ah?" Gintoki shouts, twisting his body to face the man tied up behind him. "I was just on my way home from buying Jump when you started poking your nicotine stained nose all over my face!"
"Your shit face was the thing poking in around my face!" Hijikata shouts, a snarl on every part of his expression.
Gintoki's mouth parts to deny the statement, but before the words could begin, a pretentious laugh rings across the empty room—the kind that are trademark of evil villains, 'muahahaha.'
A tile in the ceiling retreats and a small monitor lowers into the front of the room. The screen lights up to reveal the face of a nationally wanted man, of course, in a poorly chosen disguise.
"The brain of the Shinsengumi, Demon Vice-Commander, has finally been captured!" he gloats in a voice full of mirth. "This was all thanks to you, Gintoki. You acted as wonderful bait, as expected of my former comrade."
"Zura!" Gintoki drawls the last syllable, voice jumping, nose scrunching, and lips twitching up at the corners. His usually dead looking red eyes are glossed over with an unamused panic, darting every once in a while toward the man behind him who looks ready for murder, if the crazy look in his dilated pupils is anything to go by. "This isn't funny, oi. Gin-san has nothing to do with this. I was just a citizen passing by."
Hijikata's gaze is fixed on the screen in front, burning, threatening, and looking as if his eyes alone will be enough to kill the man laughing triumphantly through the monitor. He grinds his teeth, snarls, "Katsura. I hope you're fucking prepared for abducting an officer."
"Oh, I am prepared. For your suffering, that is," he smirks and his eyes crease, fine lines folding down the sides, with an impatient mischief. "Men, bring the gear out!"
The door swings open and two rogue jouis bring in two sets of head gear that look freakishly futuristic, complete with plastic green eyewear. On any other day, either or both Gintoki and Hijikata would jump the men first chance they got, but the thick chains on top of gritty rope tied them up useless. All they can manage to do is wiggle. The chains have been locked onto a metal beam that runs from ceiling to floor. And so Hijikata continues to glare daggers and shout profanity while Gintoki shouts for Katsura, meekly begging for freedom in exchange for three hundred yen as the two jouis snicker to each other before arranging the gear onto the two captive's head. They leave once the equipment has been settled.
"Behold, the ways of non-radical terrorists! I will allow you a chance to escape out of here, Shinsengumi!" Katsura crosses his arms and dips his head in a manner to show that, yes, he is civil and above average terrorists. Gintoki shouts something about himself that goes unheard by both Katsura and Hijikata. "If you can beat this game that I created, then I will set you free. You could say, in a way, that you are a beta player," he announces, chest puffed out and nose turned high and proud.
Gintoki groans, throwing his head back in wonder at his childhood friend's idiotic antics. "Why the fuck would you even capture your enemy and make him play a fucking game! How much free time do you have, Zura?"
"It's not Zura! It's Captain Katsura!" he shouts into the mic and folds his arms again, closing his eyes and nodding. After a moment of silence he turns toward the screen, pouts, and says, "Well, I wasn't getting much screen time in the new manga arc, and every time I did show up, it was only in flashbacks. While all of you guys were out there getting action and hogging the limelight, I was put on standby! Do you know how it feels like to be put on standby when the past arc is basically about me? No! You don't!"
Hijikata and Gintoki's faces drop into a blank is-this-dude-serious expression, both undoubtedly thinking that the man on the screen is in dire need of rehabilitation. Against their disdainful looks, Katsura coughs and regains himself.
"What I mean is, I created this dating sims game because we joui can do anything, and I need beta players. What's a better guinea pig than the Shinsengumi dogs, I thought. And with Gintoki, we have two people, how perfect!"
"Hold up!" Hijikata barks, "Why do I have to play a dating game with this homeless perm? Go find some other fucking trash to play your third rate games or I'll blow your head out, since it's rotten anyway."
"Who did you fucking call homeless, ah? I'll have you know I actually have a home unlike some Madao."
"You can't really call it your home if you don't even pay rent."
"Is that how you talk to citizens paying for your meals—"
"Love-Love Choriss-Choriss Super is not third rate!" Katsura shouts, thumping his hands against a surface, creating a commanding thump, "No matter what you say, you have to play this game if you want to get out! That is the condition."
"So in the end it's just some botched up version of Love Choriss," Gintoki comments flippantly.
"It's not Love Choriss! It's Love-Love Choriss-Choriss Super."
"Get to it," Hijikata grits, "What are these helmet things anyway?"
"Those are what will convert the game into a virtual reality. While the game is in progress, anything that happens to you will translate to your senses in real life. Once the scan is complete, your body will go into a dreamlike state so you do not have to worry about playing hours on end. This is indeed a masterpiece. Now let's get started," Katsura holds up a disc, slides it into somewhere, and presses a few buttons that make soft beeping noises.
"W-Wait," Hijikata hesitates, eyeballing Gintoki who is throttling against the metal beam like a maniac convinced that Amanto have tied him up and want to cut his family jewels off. "How long will this take?"
"Oi! Why are you going along with what that idiot's saying?" Gintoki thumps his back against Hijikata.
"I'm not! I was just askin' because we might as well play the dumb game if this gets resolved faster," Hijikata groans, thumping back harder in return.
"Well that depends on which standard of time we're talking about. The game runs on a time format that is only twelve hours in real life, but you won't be able to feel the difference. So two days in game will equal one day in reality. But of course, everything depends on how you two want to cooperate," he hums thoughtfully, "Then I'll be starting the game now."
"No, wait, Zu—"
The green plastic eyewear flashes a bright red light that penetrates their retinas and creates a heavy, sinking feeling, pulling both consciousness and eyelids down into weightless terrain. The red invasion lingers in the moment that the scan is completing the separation between body and consciousness. In that moment, the men jolt, rattling chains, and in the next, they are standing upright, appendages hanging free. Hijikata's head whips around in search for a familiar broke-ass face as the red fades from his vision to reveal a foreign landscape around him. Gintoki, in his own bout of frantic head dance, wheels himself around to find an identical gaze of confused terror staring right back at him.
"What. The. Fuck." Hijikata enunciates each word with a breath of wonder. His hand rises to gesture at the offensive garments cladding the body of the man before him. When his gaze travels down Gintoki's black suited legs, across the cement pavement, and to his own two feet donning never-seen-before black shoes, his eyes widen and his arms flail around himself, touching every part unseen by eyes.
Gintoki watches Hijikata soak in the transformation with a dazed expression. He himself had already realized their new clothing first thing after the scanning.
"We're in school uniforms, Hijikata-kun. God this is so cliché," Gintoki sighs, "I mean seriously? High school dating sims?"
"What—How did Katsura even do this?" Hijikata makes an annoyed sound in the back of his throat, running a hand through his hair.
Gintoki looks around, noting that the street goes straight down for at least five blocks. Scratching the back of his neck, he says with an apathetic look, "I guess the only thing to do now is to walk and bump into a cute girl with bread in her mouth. C'mon, let's go otaku boy."
"Who's an otaku, you natural perm!" Hijikata bites back, but follows behind Gintoki as he walks down the one-way street.
He notices intersections and alleys on their way down, so out of curiosity, he strays a bit to explore one of the smaller streets stretching out of the main street they are walking on. Upon rounding the corner, his foot drives into a tall transparent wall-like structure. Cursing, he folds over, hands fondling his wounded foot. While hopping on his good foot, he looks up to see a bulletin tacked onto the wall, reading, "Restricted access: Level-up to unlock."
"He's putting too much effort into this, that Zura," Gintoki comments in a monotone voice from above, startling the crouched over Hijikata, who jumps, one-legged, face first into the clear wall.
"Ow! Fuck! You—" he cusses, hands flying from his foot to his nose in a fraction of a second,"—Shut the fuck up!"
Gintoki casts his gaze down at the red-faced, bug-eyed Hijikata, a taunting grin spreading across his face. "But I didn't say anything, yet?"
"Yet!" Hijikata points out, straightening himself, still mending his nose. "Ugh, forget it. I'm leavin'."
"Are your otaku senses finally tingling?" Gintoki stretches his arms above his head, walking a step behind Hijikata. "Is Tosshi the one with us now?"
A fist flashes past Gintoki's right temple, but his blank face remains unfazed. He blinks.
"Whoa, whoa, let's not get violent here," Gintoki sings in a tone that does anything but soothe Hijikata's jerking nerves.
"Shut. Up." Hijikata's lips pull back into a frown, "I can't believe I'm even here in the first place. It's all your fucking fault, holy fuck. You're like a walking curse."
At that, Gintoki straightens up defensively. "Oi, oi, Hijikata-kun. If you had just let me walk along my merry way back then, we wouldn't have gotten into that argument, and you wouldn't have gotten distracted, which means we wouldn't be here right now!"
"Don't even get me started!" Hijikata warns, a vein throbbing on his temple.
He balls his fists, resisting the urge to strangle the man behind him. Gintoki simply huffs and kicks a pebble past him. On the final stretch, they see a building that looks unsurprisingly like a school up ahead. A cherry blossom tree's curvy branches spill over the stone wall enclosing the entrance of the school. A golden double-gate blocks off the rest of the entry way. Past the golden wires is a grand fountain that would have been the picture of elegance if not for the mutant duck-shaped stone statue in the centre.
"What?" Gintoki whines, "We've already arrived at school even though the heroine with bread in her mouth thing never happened?"
"Good. We don't need that cliché trash," Hijikata states, pushing the gates open.
"Are your expectations so high because you've already been through all the clichés a thousand times, Otaku-kun?"
Hijikata pointedly ignores Gintoki's snide comment because he is a mature adult who has a functioning role in society unlike one white-haired freelancer. He leads them toward the door of the main building. They enter into a shoe locker area and Gintoki wanders off to see if his name is printed onto any of the lockers, which he finds that it is not. The sound of their shoes squeaking against linoleum echoes down the hall, heightened through gameplay for dramatic effect. Gintoki follows Hijikata up the only flight of stairs, staring idly at the back of his head and noticing that the longer strands of Hijikata's dark hair flutter in the air. Gintoki wonders if the gameplay creates unnatural breezes too, to produce the celebrated shoujo romance hair-in-the-wind scenes.
"So, which classroom?" Hijikata's question brings Gintoki's train of thought back to the matter at hand.
He sidesteps Hijikata and heads toward the closest classroom.
"It's gotta be the first one," he reasons, testing the door, and sure enough, it slides open.
Gintoki enters first, scanning the room. The classroom is filled with approximately thirty seats, lined up in the standard single spaced arrangement. Around the room, students are gathered in small groups or sitting alone at their desks. There seems to be an even distribution of males to females, seeing as the game is directed at both male and female players.
"Oh, this is finally starting to feel like a dating sims," Gintoki whistles before making for the nearest girl.
Gintoki goes through the usual process of introduction with the NPC girl. Upon contact, a translucent bar with a heart underneath appears to the right of the NPC. This must be the Love Metre, he thinks.
Hijikata is heading toward Gintoki when a hologram pops up between them. On the left corner of the hologram is an icon of a face that looks strikingly like Katsura. Text then begins to appear beside his bobbing head. This catches Gintoki's attention, and he walks over to Hijikata's side.
Katsura: "Ah. I forgot to mention this before, but you guys are playing the two-player mode. This means that to complete the game, you guys must raise each other's Love Metres. Raising other NPC's Love Metres would be counterproductive, Gintoki."
What.
What.
Gintoki's back that has started to expel an abnormal amount of cold sweat somewhere after the words 'each other's' becomes rigid. Hijikata, too, tenses, his neck craning to look anywhere but the left half of his field of vision, all of a sudden very conscious of the human being with an odd white-perm beside him. In the moment after Katsura's dialogue, neither of the two men speaks nor seem to acknowledge the implications of 'two-player mode.'
No.
The shiver rippling down their necks, eliciting gooses bumps, is not caused by the dramatic-shoujo-wind-effect.
Katsura: "Oh, you might also want to hurry and fall in love. Your bodies in real life will starve if you take too long."
Yes.
"KATZUUURA!"
They both scream like, for the first time in their lives, they have realized they are actually magical girls who have long forgotten their true identities.
Thanks for reading to the end of chapter one! The ending was really meh in my opinion but I was rushing to produce this first chapter because I'm excited okay? ANYWAY I KNOW YOU PROBABLY SKIPPED MY A/N AT THE BEGINNING SO I'M SAYING THIS AGAIN NOW! ...Please review /sobs I can't get motivated to write if I think nobody reads this.
