Children show scars like medals.
Lovers use them as secrets to reveal.
A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
- Leonard Cohen
He came to them with scabs on his knees, bruises on his arms, and a cut across one cheek still sluggishly trickling blood. Like many of the more rambunctious boys, there were thin red welts along his bare legs from running through thorns and brambles. Unlike the others, he did not smile sheepishly at Sensei and promise never to go off alone into the woods again. He didn't need to.
Upheaval is natural when something new is added to any organized system. Gintoki's discovery was no different, and as they sat out here to the side of the field, watching the others crowd around Sensei, Katsura realized that the addition of this new body, with its own distinct gravitational force, had thrown off everyone's orbits. They no longer spun in neat circles and ellipses around the sun alone. Now there was Gintoki to maneuver around as well. Would small moons gather around him one day? Would his presence be enough repel the other planets beyond their escape velocity, sending them flying out of the galaxy? Into a black hole?
Would he collide with the others, explode, go supernova?
For now, the small, scarred body continued rotating slowly along the outskirts of their solar system. Sometimes Gintoki retreated to the very edges of Sensei's reach, where he had lived before being pulled in, and where he had, in the past, grown accustomed to being buffeted by countless meteorites with no other planets to shelter him. Because it was so dangerous out there, Gintoki had grown a tough atmosphere capable of burning up most of the rocks headed his way. And this was good, Katsura thought, because the Universe needed more planets like Gintoki, who weren't afraid of meteorites.
Katsura cocked his head to the side as he contemplated the space debris in Gintoki's hair. He reached out and plucked it out of the waves.
"What?"
"You had space debris floating in your magnetic field." Katsura held it up for Gintoki to see. "I think it might be a shard from the wing of an XA-40 Starfighter. Have you been orbiting too close to the enemy fleet again?"
"That's a twig."
Katsura looked down at the brown piece of space debris in his hands. It snapped between his fingers as he gasped in surprise. "...They've perfected the Augmented Reality Technology for the optical camouflage drivers! Gintoki! You have to direct your Death Star beam at their metamaterials plant!"
Whap!
"Ow! What was that for?"
"I told you not to eat those weird mushrooms!"
"Stop that! Don't touch me with your cosmic radiation!"
Smack! Thwap!
"If anyone's got cosmic radiation, it's you, space case!"
"It's not space case, it's Katsura!"
Thud!
This shining celestial being, strong and silver and bright, pressed on top of Katsura, suffocating him in a crushing gravitational chokehold.
Crack!
Katsura gave it a new scar.