Making your Favorite Characters Suffer is Actually a Lot of Fun

Gintoki never thought it would end this way, him looking wearily up at the blue sky as he lay spread-eagled on the ground, sharp rocks cutting painfully into his back. His body was bruised and bloody, and he felt his left eye beginning to swell from the sharp punch that had managed to connect with his face. His knuckles were still white from the strain of swinging his bokuto, which had been long since jerked out of his hand, leaving something resembling a burning welt in a deep line along his palm, added to several deep splinters that had lodged themselves into his skin and which had no intention of ever coming out.

Actually, Gintoki had sort of expected all of that. He kind of knew that some sort of beating was being reserved for him at one point or another, him having committed mass-murder as the Shiroyasha and therefore having a lot of really powerful and really angry stalkers/enemies-- that is, assuming that the people out for revenge could ever make the connection between the white demon and the completely unmotivated Yorozuya.

So yeah, Gintoki had been waiting for a good ass-whooping for a while.

He just hadn't expected to see an Otsu-obsessed glasses freak, a pork bun-haired Chinese alien and a fat man in a duck suit to be standing above him when it happened.

And he hadn't expected them to be striking triumphant poses above him, either.

And he definitely couldn't have known that the man in the duck suit would be leering down at him with the intensity of a manga artist completing a chapter just before the midnight deadline.

And it really didn't help when Kagura began to nudge Gintoki's stomach with her umbrella to make sure he was still alive. Well, for Kagura it might have been considered a nudge, but for any sane human being, it would be more like a quick stab to the gut. "Shin-chan, is Gin-san still awake?" she asked, moving the umbrella to try and pry it under Gintoki's eyelids. "I think he went back to sleep."

"How could anyone go back to sleep after that?" sighed Shinpachi, looking down at Gintoki in exasperation. "Then again, it is Gin-san, so there's always a possibility."

Gintoki groaned feebly, stretching a shaky arm off of the ground to ward them off.

Kagura shook her head. "No, no, he went back to sleep. Can't you tell?"

"Can't you tell?" muttered Shinpachi. "Look, he's moving."

Gintoki raised his head a fraction of an inch, attempting to give both of them death glares.

"See?" Shinpachi pointed. "There, he just moved again."

Kagura gave Gintoki a swift kick to the head. "No, he didn't-aru," she said innocently, looking down at the corpse at her feet with wide eyes. "Hey, do you think maybe he just died?"

The corpse whimpered. "If he didn't," said Shinpachi, "He will." He flashed his glasses ominously. "Soon."

And dammit, Gintoki wished that Shinpachi would just stop flashing his glasses for once, all that sun was being reflected into his eyes, and it was starting to hurt.

A/N: Plot, you wonder to yourself. Where was the plot. I didn't see any plot, you think. In fact, you conclude, this is random, pointless and plotless.

Why yes, it is.