"Has your beast quieted, Takasugi?"

The voice had come with a hard gust of wind. The sounds that should have accompanied it: the scuff of sandals on wooden floorboards, the brush of fabric, and the crashing of the giant golden beads around his neck- were completely absent. Since even the staff he held, its loose parts clanging now that the intruder had announced his presence, had been silent when he'd first arrived, and sneaking up on Takasugi was no feat that could be accomplished by an amateur, he could safely assumed that he was dealing with a formidable and experienced opponent.

In an instant, he'd plucked his katana out from under his blue sash and pulled it free of its sheath, drawing it to its full height so he had it pointed at the enemy before him. It was only after he had the intruder at what he hoped was a disadvantage that he recognized its form.

"An Enmi?" Takasugi said, his tone colored with disbelief. Back at the Joui War, he'd seen Gintoki dispatch every Enmi on the battlefield. That he could have missed one was very nearly ludicrous. Gintoki didn't miss.

Still, there was no denying that what stood before him was an Enmi. Thinking back on the voice he'd heard, the possibility should have occurred to him sooner. He'd only heard that deep, soulless, mechanical voice at one other time in his life, and if he'd been thinking about the war as he'd stood on the helm of his ship today, it probably would have, but today he hadn't been thinking about past death, past destruction. He'd been thinking about all the corpses that lined the streets now.

Before the point of his katana, the Enmi didn't even flinch. It simply remarked, "I believe I asked you a question, Takasugi."

"How do you know my name? How do you know me?" As if to punctuate his words, the katana pressed into the Enmi's neck, its bandages bending at the pressue.

Despite this, there was no fear or anger he could sense. No reaction beyond a narrowing of his one crimson eye.

The Enmi responded, "How I know you doesn't matter. I was merely curious if all this," it slowly lifted its hands, encompassing the entire ruined world in his outstretched arms, "had finally satisfied your bloodlust. Do you still desire vengeance when there is no one left to suffer your wrath?"

In a moment of clarity, Takasugi decided that the Enmi did not intend to kill him and, if he were honest with himself, he'd been wondering the same thing. Did he still desire to topple a government that had already fallen? Did he still yearn to kill and burn when most of the world that had taken Shouyou-sensei from him was already dead?

Instead of saying any of that, he lowered his sword, leaving it unsheathed at his side, and replied, "I didn't do this." He covered his bandaged eye with his hand out of habit and allowed the ruined city below his floating ship to fill half his vision. It was what he'd wanted, but he'd had no part in it. More insulting still, the White Plague had taken two of his Kiheitai with it. Only Bansai lived, whether he wanted to or not. A world filled with corpses won't produce anything other than a funeral hymn for those who live in it.

Over all, his vengeance had been hollow. Yes, his beast had stopped howling, he no longer heard its murderous urgings resounding in his ears like static, but it had only stopped howling because it no longer had a reason to, not because it was satisfied. Everything that could have been destroyed had been, and he hadn't lifted a finger to either further that destruction or stop it.

The Enmi followed his gaze, wondering out loud, "Does it matter? Your beast has quieted. I can see it in your eyes. The gleam of your madness had dimmed."

Is that why he felt sorrow for the world that had been? Is that why there was a part of him that mourned the loss of his Kiheitai comrades? Because if that were the case then, "Sanity is a curse."

At his words, the Enmi's red eye narrowed, the markings streaming relentlessly through his pinkish sclera hastened their pace, and the body before Takasugi flickered out of existence, reappearing inches away from him with the staff at his neck before he could so much as lift his katana. Growling, the Enmi replied, "You know nothing of curses."

Anger welled inside Takasugi's heart. This Amanto was an enemy, a stranger, an intruder, and he dared to belittle the pain that he'd been through? Two parts of his soul fought for dominance, the part that wanted to act coolly until a weakness presented itself and the part that wanted lash out right now. It wasn't until he saw the red eye in front of him widen with surprise that he realized he'd already begun speaking, "Who are you to talk to me like that, huh?" He barely even recognized the drawl. "Just back up for a second and I'll cut your head off."

It was one of those moments where everything can go from sort of bad to head-stuck-in-a-microwave bad. He was in no position to be talking tough, and yet he'd said some provocative words without thinking. If it got him killed, Gintoki would never let him hear the end of it…

Wait, since when did he care what Gintoki thought? Or Katsura? Lately, he'd even found himself wondering how they were. Of course, he knew they were still alive. They were too stubborn to lose to some virus, after all...

A deep, throaty laugh cut off his ill timed introspection and he jerked at the noise, lip curling away from his teeth as he remembered just who was laughing. The only eye he could see was glittering with mirth, "What's so funny?!"

"It's just," Takasugi rocked back on his heels. This voice didn't belong to an Amanto. It was higher, far more natural, and infinitely more familiar, "if Zura and I had realized all we had to do was let you destroy the world and your sanity would come back, we'd have dropped you on a deserted planet and tricked you into thinking it was Earth!"

"Gintoki!" Takasugi spat, readying his blade again as it dawned on him that he'd been tricked. "How dare you dress up like that and interrogate me? I'm gonna skin you alive." Just as he began to lunge forward, the man he knew now was Gin jumped back around ten feet. He faltered. "Gin?" Usually, Gin would be shoving his gullibility in his face or engaging him in battle. Had that changed? If he was finally sane again, this was a really bad time for his former comrades to lose it.

He watched, more concern expressing itself on his face then he'd like, as Gin seemed to collapse inwards, his hands seizing the bandages wrapped around his face as though they were burning it. Gradually, his body relaxed, straightened, and he said, his voice once again mechanical, "Forgive me for that temporary lapse. The original personality of the host I'm currently possessing likes to assert itself every now and then."

"…original…personality…host?"

"Yes. The Shiroyasha tried to stop me from releasing what you humans have called the White Plague, three years ago. He failed, of course. However, it took him two months to fully succumb to the plague and, in that time, he'd done significant damage to my host body. I needed a new one, and who better to be my host than the very man who failed to save this rotten world?"

Those last two words shook him. They were his words. And now he understood why this Amanto had come to visit him, it wasn't his doing at all. It was Gin's. Gin had wanted to know if seeing his goal fulfilled had made him sane again, because even after everything he'd done, even after he'd tried to manipulate the Shinsengumi into self-destructing and sold his former comrades to the Harusame pirates, Gintoki still regarded him as someone he'd sworn to protect.

His grip tightened on his katana, the edges of his vision fading to black as his body blurred into motion. He swung his blade at the Amanto, dead set on removing its head and freeing his former friend, but it blinked out of sight.

For a moment, he stood stock still on his deck, blade still drawn, then he carefully sheathed it and calmly returned to the helm of his ship.

As he watched the sunset, blood red in the empty horizon, the beast howled once more.