here's to the misfits
Because identity crises are doubly difficult when you're the child of a fierce Shinsengumi captain and a Yato girl.
/./
As the tale is told by her parents, her mother (in a blearily post-birth haze of hormones) had cheerfully attempted to try and scrawl "Mega-Mutilator Sadaharu the Twenty-Fourth" on her birth certificate while interred in the maternity ward.
She thinks that she will always be indebted to her father and Gin-jii-chan for swooping in and saving her from such a hideous fate (and name).
/./
It is said that she is her mother's miniature in appearance, having inherited the same porcelain quality of skin that suffers from the sun, the same aqua eyes, the same preternatural shade of coral hair.
Her father often deplores that of course it wasn't enough to be wed to a vicious China girl, but he had to be gifted with an exact replica that would aid and abet her mother's efforts at turning his hair gray.
(Of course, there are some definite benefits to essentially being her mother's clone. Upon her mother's mischievous advice, it takes only one little pout and a plaintive tilt to her eyebrows and her grumbling father buys her that stick of dango or toy while muttering about subversive feminine wiles).
But while her mother may claim responsibility for her outer characteristics, the temperament she displays is undeniably that of her Papa's—inscrutable, calm, and with a deadpan voice that often initiates some form of mischief.
The only real difference between their personalities is that she unconditionally loves her Hijikata-jii-chan, and can only suspect that this dates back to one fateful babysitting adventure wherein her parents had returned to discover her contentedly sucking on a mayonnaise bottle situated in her chubby baby hands. They had bonded over a mutual adoration over the gooey condiment, laughter wracking her body as her Mama and Papa had given chase to a fleeing Hijikata as he shouted that there was absolutely no reason for them to be angry—he'd read that babies benefited from mayonnaise.
/./
Her world is tiny, composed only of contentment and love and an amalgam of people and aliens who eagerly take up the task of playing family to her.
Her world is a joyous one—but as any creature can attest, happiness is rarely a perpetuating state and succumbs easily enough to sadness when confronted.
/./
She reaches her sixth year of life. And suddenly, things so well hidden from her childish eyes and kept far from her ears become clearer somehow….
But clarity was not always a good thing.
Clarity means catching snippets of derisive conversation—unnatural spawn of unnatural unions, they whisper. A human and an Amanto—they've taken over the whole world, practically, and now some choose to mate with them? Disgusting. Hideous.
Clarity means watching parents ferry their children away from her at the playground, pity and wariness flashing in their gaze and a stiff human pride driving them ever further away.
One afternoon after shopping with Otae-baa-chan, she innocently asks her Papa what abomination and atrocity means. And why, she wonders to him, did some of the shopkeepers mutter that around her especially?
Her Papa's lips grow thin, his red eyes mimicking them as they narrow into slits. She squeaks with surprise as he gathers her close, pressing a soft kiss against her mess of curly coral hair, and then takes her to stay at Gintoki-jii-chan's for the rest of the day.
She doesn't mind—Gintoki-jii's son Shou was a year older than she and lots of fun when he allowed her to use paint on his bland silver hair.
But she still doesn't like it when her Papa gets such an unhappy look on his face. She likes the Papa who smirks and teases and makes her Mama chase after him with her umbrella, who allows her to try and lift his glinting silver sword while proclaiming she would be a fine fighter one day (that usually made Mama bonk him on the head too).
No, she doesn't like that sad expression at all.
/./
When she is ten years old, it becomes apparent that it is not only humans who are stricken with repulsion at the fact of her birth.
No—her very being had somehow managed to insultingly resonate within those who shared her Yato blood as well.
While her mother had always been tersely tight-lipped about the brutal race of creatures whose will and lineage coursed not only through her veins, but also a curious little daughter's, it was evident that it was a subject of discomfiture for her.
Which was silly, because nothing ever frightened her brave, brash mother.
(But later she'll learn that the Yato are a breed of elitist, purity-concerned warriors who dislike humans, and dislike the idea of a human-Yato hybrid even more.
And the prospect of retaliation against her family, of punishment for daring to 'sully' the Yato bloodline by marrying a human, frightens her brave, brash mother like nothing else could.)
They come for her one day, as she traipses home from a long day at school.
Shock stymies any screams or cries as steely fingers yank her into an alley. Rough hands pinch her mouth closed, preventing her sharp little teeth from bestowing upon her sudden assaulters a well-deserved bite, and a nasty-smelling gag gets pushed into her mouth. She's hauled onto someone's broad shoulder, and they take her to an unfamiliar spaceport in a dank, unfamiliar place.
Sorry kid, one of them tells her as they dump her onto the ground. The higher-ups can't afford to have someone like you existing. But you should fetch a nice price on the black market—most people'd pay a damn lot to parade a hybrid as their slave.
The speaker might have said more regarding her bleak-looking future, but the words are instead replaced by a bubble of red blood that eeks from the corner of his mouth, courtesy of the sharp knife suddenly protruding from his chest.
It is a strange man who leaps amidst the gaggle of thieves then, his head bound almost comically in pristine white bandages and an umbrella of deep purple clutched in his hand. He looks, she thinks with a hysterical giggle, akin to those funny mummy-men Gintoki-jii-chan claimed haunted crypts and tombs.
But whatever his reason for such an odd fashion, it's clear they don't hinder his movements in the least.
Like a coiled snake her Papa had once shown her at the zoo (and subsequently attempted to feed Hijikata-jii-chan to), the stranger exhibited such a slivery fluidity that he almost appeared to be dancing through the air. His umbrella, little more than a violet blur, fells most of her kidnappers. His hands complete the mortal duty where his umbrella becomes remiss.
She does not shrink away from her peculiar savior as he strides towards her—perhaps it was the glint of blue eyes that peeked out from the wrappings, some strange echo of her mother within them that lulls her into security. She is yet again picked up, although this time the hold is gentle, the encompassing arms reminiscent of her father's.
You look like her, she hears him murmur.
And then the world turns to darkness, and when she next awakens she is on her futon at home, wedged firmly between the protective figures of her parents.
But she never does see that man again.
/./
Shou slouches into dinner one night when she goes to visit the Sakata household, silver locks mottled brown with dirt, bruises on his face, and violet eyes determinedly thwarting her every attempt at catching his gaze.
He brushes off Tsukuyo's probing fingers and his father's tense questions, affectionately ruffling his younger friend's curls as he plops into the seat beside her.
He's stubbornly quiet all through the meal, but she succeeds in cornering him outside afterwards and foiling his way-too-obvious try at escape.
Sometimes, she's quite enthused at the fact that her natural strength can easily outmatch even that of a samurai's son.
Out with it, she snaps at him. What happened to make you look like that?
Like what? he grumbles. It's just my face. And you sound way too much like when Kagura-san lectures my dad for doing something dumb.
Kinda the point, Shou. Now tell me before I hang you upside-down from the railing 'til your face goes red.
Oi, now you're definitely channeling your father, he points out blandly.
I'm gonna start physically channeling him if you don't hurry up and tell me, she says with saccharine sweet tones and a smile to accompany it. But despite all of her not-in-earnest threats, the sight of her best friend's marred skin unleashes something ugly and furious within her.
Stop worrying, shorty. It was only a dumb fight. His gaze averts from hers yet again, his voice cagey. Just some neighborhood idiots spewing ridiculous crap about—
Shou immediately clamps his mouth shut, looking irritated with himself.
But it's too late—her hands fall limply away from him. She can't look at his injuries, no matter how light. She understands.
Everyone's so eager to protect her from the ugliness of the world, to sequester her away from the reality of who and what she is.
How funny that they never first ask if she wants to be protected.
/./
At fifteen years old, her mother begins the arduous process of dying.
As a stone is gradually whittled away by rain and wind, she witnesses first the persisting cough, then the blood, and then a frailty that confines her exuberant mother within the restrictive edges of her bed.
A genetic defect, the doctors say gravely. Inherited on the female chromosome…likely passing from mother to daughter…of having her tested in the hopes of preventatively catching it…and a jumble of other scientific jargon that makes little sense to her frozen brain and numb ears.
How can she concentrate, when her mother's eyes peer out from her face in that sunken way and her father's arms are tucked desperately about his wife's wasting figure, daring death to pry her loose?
There is a ceaseless blur of activity and voices, of final goodbyes and professions of love. Her grandfather, Gin-jii-chan and Shinpachi-jii-chan, Otae-baa-chan and Tsukuyo-baa-chan and Kyuubei-san and Katsura-san and Otose-baa-chan and everyone who has ever had a piece of their heart irrevocably stolen by Okita Kagura.
(There's a lot, it turns out in the end.)
She cannot stray far from her mother's side in those last days, school and obligations and the world be damned, she thinks grimly.
Mitsu, her mother croons smilingly during one such bedside vigilance, and what else can she do but grasp fingers that are far too bony and weak for such a woman? Mitsu, what's up with that look of doom and gloom, uh-huh? You'd think the world was coming to an end…either that or Gin-chan finally went bankrupt from all those sweets he buys.
Mama, she says—but not really, because the word constitutes more of a warbling sob than anything else. Mama, what's going to happen?
The reply was far too measured, far too calm. I'm going to go away for a while, Mitsu-chan. The same place Sadaharu went a few years ago, remember?
Her mother usually had the unfortunate habit of joyfully belting out whatever she wanted to communicate at the top of her lungs (a plot to deafen everyone around her so she could take over the world, Papa wryly confided in her)—she thinks that she'd gladly endure a lifetime more of such a thing if only it replaced this raspy wisp of a voice that could barely laugh without panting.
And Papa and me? she demands, childish selfishness contorting the question into a condemnation that her mother would be so cruel as to leave them. What's going to happen to us?
You're going to take care of him, her mother assures her with the weary little grin that was all she could manage these days. Make sure he doesn't kill your Hijikata-jii, uh-huh. If he gets the vice-captain position, he'll probably stage a takeover, and then the country will really be screwed, yup.
Forever confronting misery with defiant mirth and a ready joke, forever choosing lightheartedness in lieu of pessimism. But she doesn't want such things—she wants to wallow in the unfairness and stupidity of this surreal reality in which she was about to lose her mother.
But how? comes the whisper, dread and doubt warring for dominance.
If her mother dies, she will be a lonely Yato struggling to bear the gazes that scrutinize her strangeness.
But she is also partly a weak human, and should she lose her Yato heritage along with one of her final links to that side of her, however would she manage to be a pillar upon which her Papa could lean?
Torn both ways, and yet damned in whichever side she ultimately allowed herself to belong to.
Bakaaaa, her mother trills with a grin and a cough upon hearing the frightened confession, poking one finger against her forehead. Mitsu, you're not a human or a Yato, uh-huh.
She blinks. Mischievousness splays upon her mother's wane face.
You've got your namesake's resilient will, and my weirdo-weird pink hair and completely cute looks. You've got that incorrigible sense of humor my Sadist does, and thankfully Gin-chan's sense of honor. I can see Shinpachi's determination to grow strong, and Kondo-san's unerring faith in the good. Within you dwells a part of everyone in our way-too-freakin'-big family.
Okita Kagura's breathing grows shallow, before renewing with a vengeance. You're not limited to only two options of who you can be, uh-huh.
You sound like you know from experience, she comments dully.
I do.
Who taught you all that?
A faint smirk. Just some silver-haired idiot, yup.
/./
As the tale is told by Okita Mitsu, the daughter of Okita Sougo and Kagura of the Yato Clan, her life was a relatively normal one.
She was loved (the sheer number of birthday gifts every year attested to that) —
and she grew up (perhaps a little too fast) —
and she had her adolescent crises (like someone once said, being Mitsu was enough) —
and she had her loss (but something told her Okita Kagura was cackling at everyone, perched on a cloud) —
And she had her happiness — and true to her family fighting style, she'd firmly plant her fist into the gut of anyone who argued otherwise.
/./
Well darn. That drabble came out more depressing than I intended it to.
And sorry for killing off Kagura—I'm not usually one for character death, but I thought it'd be interesting to parallel Kagura's own experience of losing her mother with her daughter's. Working under the fact that Kagura's mother died from an illness, I wondered if there was any chance that it was something genetic. We're never really given any explanation of what actually killed her mother, so….I twisted it for my own purposes.
—
—
EDIT: And because somebody already decided to give a review angrily questioning the genetic issue, here was my reasoning:
First: Yes, if the mother has a genetic defect on her X chromosome, it is statistically more likely by way of Mendelian laws that the son is far more likely to end up with the genetically-transmitted disease, due to having only one X chromosome that is given to them by their mother. However, if the female receives TWO recessive X-chromosomes for a disease (one from the father and one from the mother), then yes, it can manifest in the female. So technically, had Umibouzu had the diseased allele on HIS X-chromosome, and Kagura had received the diseased allele from her mother's X-chromosome as well, then yes-she would have had whatever unspecified disease it was.
Second: I was also thinking about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that increase cancer risk exponentially. The inherited mutations of these genes increase breast and ovarian cancer risks in women, and can be inherited from the person's mother OR the father. Kagura could have inherited the gene mutation from her mother, and possibly even passed it onto Mitsu, given that these things are often familial.
Third: this is ancient, Samurai Japan. Granted, it's a warped version of it, but given that they couldn't even treat the tuberculosis that Mitsuba was inflicted with, I'm guessing they're not exactly updated on genetic diseases-possibly, given that Kagura would have informed them that her mother had a similar disease, they were just conjecturing that it was genetic. Maybe it actually wasn't at all.
Sorry for the long spiel. I'm a Biochemistry and Pre-med major, and I like to make sure I get my facts straight.
—
—
Yes, it's utterly cliché to name the kids after dead family members but Gintoki and Okita both seem the type to honor their loved ones in that way.
I also thought it'd be a fascinating take for an Okikagu kid to be discriminated against due to her half human/half Amanto status. I don't think there's really any instance of seeing such a child in the Gintama manga or anime (correct me if I'm wrong!), so it'd be interesting from a social perspective to see how people might have reacted to it. Given that a lot of citizens were dissatisfied with the Amanto's invasion, I'm guessing there would be a lot of preformed prejudices against a human-Amanto union and a resultant child (although I still can't help but wonder what the hell the Kondo/Gorilla kid would have looked like…).
Anyways, I'd love to hear any thoughts about it. I love the diverse opinions on here!