Does What's on the Inside REALLY Count?
A Gintama thingy
By
EvilFuzzy9
When Gin-san woke up that morning, he noticed something very unusual.
The world was incredibly blurry. Unbelievably so. He couldn't see clearly further than a few inches from his own face. Just holding his own hand up at arm's length was enough to make his fingers vanish into an indistinct flesh-colored splotch.
"Maaaan," he groaned, squinting at his surroundings and trying to distinguish one thing from the other. "What the heck did I drink last night...? I can't see shit."
It was odd, though. Even as Gin said this, he realized that his head didn't hurt at all like it should have. In fact, if anything his body felt strangely... unremarkable.
Which was a damn weird thing to feel, by all accounts.
But he shook his head nonetheless and got up out of his futon. The walls were an usually bright and cheery mix of colors around him, but Gin shrugged that off readily enough. It wouldn't be the first time he'd woken up in a strange place. Hell, that was practically a bi-weekly occurrence.
His eyesight vexed him, though. And did the world seem a little bigger than he remembered it?
Frowning peevishly, Gin walked out the door. He had to grope through the air to find his way, but he managed well enough.
"Damn, damn, damn..." he muttered, squinting to the point that his eyes were barely slits. "I knew I shouldn't have drunk that Madao's damn home brew... of course he would've fucked something up with the recipe and made me go blind..."
Gin reached the wall of the room, and started feeling across it for the door. His hands knocked down a poster or two in their search, but he didn't really care about that. All he wanted was to get out of here and go kill Hasegawa for giving him that shoddy moonshine.
His fingers crawled across the thin walls, Gin muttering irritably to himself, until finally he found what he was looking for.
The shoji door slid open.
Gin moved to exit the room, his hands stretched out before him, groping through the air for any obstacles.
Unfortunately for him, he found two. They were small and nothing worth writing home about, but even three-quarters blind Gin could see the wrath in Otae's eyes the instant he laid hand on her bosom, flat or not.
She even seemed to literally, physically tower over him in her fury.
How odd.
Unfortunately, Gin-san didn't have much time to think on that before he felt the first blow to his face.
"Oho?" came Otae's voice as Gintoki crumpled to the ground at her feet. He could hear the fury in her tone, even if she disguised it with a layer of sugary sweetness. "What's this? Just where do you think you're putting those hands of yours, Shin-chan?"
Gintoki, lying in a heap on the floor, blinked.
Eh? he thought. What did she just call me...?
A shadow fell over his body.
"Even if you're my baby brother..." said Otae Shimura, deathly quiet. "...THAT IS STILL ABSOLUTELY UNFORGIVABLE!"
Gin-san felt a sharp pain.
Then everything went black.
When Shinpachi woke up that morning, it was to the mother of all headaches. His temples were throbbing, his sinuses whinging, stabbing pains shooting through every part of his head. He felt as though someone had lopped his head off, thrown it into a trash compactor, then sloppily glued it back onto his shoulders.
The sunlight burned his eyes, even when they were closed.
"Ugh..." he groaned miserably. "What happened last night...? Did Kagura-chan beat me over the head or something?"
He winced, clutching a hand to his forehead.
"Owowow..." he muttered, whimpering as he forced a strangely sore and weary body into an upright sitting position. His back hurt. His feet felt sore. His stomach was roiling and rumbling ominously. He felt aches and pains of the like which he had never even dreamed of, and it was all he could do just to keep from collapsing back onto his futon.
...Except this wasn't his futon, was it?
Even as he was wincing and sitting himself up, Shinpachi noticed two odd things.
One: this was not his room. And, two: he could actually see.
He actually raised a hand to his face, again, just to make sure he hadn't fallen asleep with his glasses on. And, nope. He hadn't.
He wasn't wearing glasses.
But he could still see.
Shinpachi's heart skipped a beat, as he realize two other things.
One: this was Gin-san's room. And, two: there was no way that he could ever just wake up with his terrible eyesight cured.
"Eh?" said the teen. "You can't be serious. We've already done this kind of plot twice, right?! Once in the anime, and once with that arc in the manga? Although I never actually got someone else's body... and was just put inside my glasses, instead..."
Shinpachi, in Gin's body, frowned.
"...Huh... a-actually, now that I think about it, most of the really crazy plots are like that, aren't they...? Whether it's bodies being switched... genders being switched... or even stands being switched... I'm usually the one being left on the sidelines for the sake of a cheap joke, aren't I...?"
His face fell.
"I... really wish I could say that was something meaningful..." he said, sighing. "But, probably... it's just to keep me as boring as possible, isn't it...?"
A vein became visible in Gintoki's forehead, driven by Shinpachi's irritation.
"WELL NOT THIS TIME, DAMMIT!" he shouted to the sky. "I'M GONNA BE EVERY BIT AS INTERESTING AS EVERYONE ELSE! I'LL SHOW EVERYONE THAT I CAN BE WAY MORE THAN JUST A FOUR-EYED STRAIGHT MAN, GODDAMMIT...!"
His booming voice reverberated throughout the apartment, causing Sadaharu to let out a mighty YIP from the living room, and Kagura to shout at them to shut up, aru!
Shinpachi breathed heavily for a moment, determination in Gin's eyes.
A beat.
He looked around at Gin-san's messy room.
"Ahh, but I suppose I really should tidy up in here, first..." He shook his head. "What a pigsty."
With that said, Shinpachi got out of bed and got to work.
A/N: I can't be the only one whose noticed that, wherever possible, Shinpachi seems to get left out of really participating in the crazier plots like body-swapping or gender-swapping. And he usually isn't shown as any kind of participant in most of the big, serious fights even though, by this point, he has achieved victories of one kind or another against everyone from Kyuubei, to Nizo the Butcher, to Pirako, and even Obi Hajime. So obviously you can hardly call him weak.
Personally I'd like to think there's a dramatic or literary reason for all of that, like that all of the major fights he's been in have been ones directly tied to his character development, and are part of his journey into becoming a man and a samurai. Because I do feel like one of the big overarching themes of the manga is that of apprenticeship, insofar as Shinpachi seeking bushido under Gin-san's wing. But most people seem to treat him like a secondary or even tertiary character, instead of part of the core Odd Jobs Power Trio.
Haha, poor, poor, Patsuan... I guess if nobody else cares that much for you, then I'll just have to write as wide a variety of fic with you as I can! Hohoho! Whatever it takes to make people appreciate that there are three Yorozuya!
... ... ... this author's note doesn't actually have that much to do with the contents of the fic, does it...? *sweatdrop*
Updated: 3-3-14
TTFN and R&R!
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