Disclaimer: I do not own Gintama.

Chapter 2

Shinpachi: The land of the samurai. It's been quite a while since our country has been called that. Twenty years ago, a race called the Amanto seized power and…

Gin: Oi …what do you think you're doing narrating this again. It's been done before.

Kagura: I'll say.

Shinpachi: But the readers might not know about Gintama.

Yuki: They don't need to read this; they've probably watched the show already. Now let's get on with the story.

A few days have passed since Yuki had joined the Yorozuya and his sprained ankle healed up completely. Shinpachi had kindly invited Yuki over to stay at his home, the dojo. There, Otae was more than willing to let Yuki live at the dojo with them, she stated that "It'll be like having another little brother." As he stayed there Yuki started calling Otae, Onee-san.

It was just a normal day in the Yorozuya until Gin came with a mad look.

"Oi, listen up," Gin said in a loud voice to get everyone's attention. "My huge stash of chocolate that I've been hoarding has recently disappeared. Whoever ate it, raise your hand. If you fess up, I'll only ¾ kill you."

"Three quarters is almost fully dead," Shinpachi said as he took a sip from his tea. "And you should really stop this, or you'll get diabetes."

Yuki was sitting on the floor, doodling on the table with crayons. "So you should be thankful to whoever ate you're chocolate. They probably saved your life."

Kagura wasn't paying much attention as she was reading from the newspaper. "Embassy Targeted Again. Bombings continue as officials fail to find leads…," Kagura said reading the headline, but soon after that her nose started bleeding. "This is such a violent plant. I'm scared, Poppy, Mommy-aru!" Everyone including Yuki stared at her as the blood from her nose dripped down passed her mouth.

Gin suddenly took hold of Kagura by her cheeks making some blood squatted out of her nose. "You're the scary one, bleeding from the nose with such a contented look," Gin said angrily. "Was my chocolate tasty?

"You can't get a nosebleed from eating chocolate-aru," Kagura said in her defense.

"Don't dodge the question!" Gin shouted in anger. "I can smell it on your breath!"

"Don't be ridiculous. I just picked a little too hard-aru," Kagura countered.

"And why would a girl your age pick hard enough to get a nosebleed!" Gin yelled back.

It was Shinpachi's turn to enter the argument. "I don't get you reasoning!" Gin and Kagura had started to fight. "Oi, calm down!"

Yuki just ignored the argument and continued his doodling. But he stopped and lifted up his head. Though all the yelling and fighting in the room, he heard the small sound of an engine. Then suddenly…

CRASH!

A loud sound that was heard outside got all of their attentions. Everyone walked outside to see what was going on. They saw that what made the noise was a moped that had crashed into the front of Otose's snack bar along with a man lying on the ground.

That's not to say that Otose was happy about this, in fact, she was rather furious. "OI!" Otose shouted as she lifted up the man by the front of his shirt. "What the heck are you doing, crashing into my store? You'd better be prepared to die!"

The man held both of his hands up in front of him. "I'm so sorry … I didn't get enough sleep last night," he weakly said.

Otose was really furious now. "Then I'll let you sleep for all eternity!" Otose raise her fist ready to punch him, but was interrupted when Shinpachi came running down the steps to stop her.

"Otose-san, don't do that to an injured person," Shinpachi shouted.

As Shinpachi was looking over the injuries, Yuki walked up to the moped that had crashed into the snack bar and picked up one of the envelopes that fell on the ground.

"This is terrible," Yuki heard Shinpachi say. "Kagura-chan, call for an ambulance."

"AMBULANCE!" Kagura shouted at the top of her lungs.

"He didn't mean literally!" Gin scolded Kagura.

Yuki stood up as Gin walked up to him and took the envelope from his hands.

"You're a mailman?" Gin asked. "There's no way you'll be able to deliver these."

"T-this …" The mailman weakly held out a package in his hand. "Please deliver this in my stead. Please… it looks like an important package and if I don't deliver it, I might get fired."

Gin took the package from the mailman and the mailman fainted soon after.

Yuki took a closer look at the package in Gin's hand. But since he never really learned about mailing addresses… "So where does this package go to?"

Later

The Yorozuya quartet stood outside the tall fence of a large building, an Amanto Embassy.

"This is it, right?" Gin questioned.

"Yeah …" Kagura muttered.

"What is this place anyway?" Yuki asked.

"It's the Embassy," Shinpachi answered. "And not only that, it's the Dog Star's Embassy!"

"Dog Star? What's the Dog Star," Yuki asked Shinpachi.

If I'm correct, the dogs were the first amanto to come to Earth, right?" Shinpachi said.

"Yeah, they're the scumbags who came down and took over Edo," Gin verified. "This place is no good at all."

"Oi, what the hell are you doing there?"

They all turned around to see a Dog Star guard with a spear. "You wanna have your asses kicked, woof?" the guard growled.

Shinpachi became very scared. "No, we were just asked to deliver something."

Gin turned to Kagura who was holding the package. "Oi, Kagura, we'd better…" but he stopped when he saw her and Yuki were squatting down.

"Come here doggy, I'll give you a treat-aru," Kagura said doing a 'come here' gesture as if the guard was a pet dog.

"Roll over," Yuki said as he was following Kagura's example.

"What the heck are you two doing!" Gin scolded them as he hit them on the head.

As Kagura and Yuki clutched their heads in pain, Gin picked up the package and held it out to the Dog Star guard. "Oh, this is it."

"I didn't hear about any package coming," the guard said being cautious. "We already tightened security to our limits because of the bombings. Get out of here!"

"It might be dog food, so just take it," Gin said with sarcasm.

"Who the hell would eat that!" the guard yelled in anger as he slapped the package out of Gin's hand and over the fence.

And the moment the package made contact with the ground, there was a loud explosion that blew away the fence. Everyone stared at what had just happen.

"I don't really know what just happened. But I do know what we need to do …" Gin said with a calm voice, but suddenly shouted, "RUN!"

"Stop right there!" the guard yelled angrily and grabbed hold of Shinpachi's wrist.

As a reflex, Shinpachi grabbed hold of Yuki's wrist, Yuki grabbed Gin's and Gin grabbed Kagura's

"What the heck are you doing, Yuki! Let go!" Gin yelled.

"Don't yell at me, Shinpachi grabbed me. Tell him to let go," Yuki yelled back at Gin.

"No way! I don't want to be taken in by myself!" Shinpachi yelled in panic.

"Aren't you supposed to say something like, "Don't worry about me, just go"?" Gin yelled back.

"Don't worry about me, just go to hell-aru!" Kagura swore to them as she pulled to get them to let go.

"I'm taking you with me!" Gin yelled.

Then a whole bunch of Dog Star guards come running from the Embassy towards them.

Now everyone was to really panic especially Shinpachi. "Ah! There're too many dogs!"

"What now!" Yuki asked.

Suddenly, a monk that was sitting on the sidelines stood up and jumped on one of the dogs and jumped over them by stepping on their heads until he stepped on the one holding Shinpachi causing the dog to let go and also get knocked out. The monk landed swiftly in front of them and raised his face so they could see what he looked like.

"Get out of here, Gintoki," the monk spoke as if he knew Gin.

Fortunately, he did know Gin and Gin knew him. "Zura? Zura Kotarou?"

The man that Gin called Zura suddenly gave him an uppercut punch yelling "It's not Zura, it's Katsura!"

"Oi, why'd you do that after all this time?" Gin said frustrated.

"I told you many times not to call me that nickname," the man countered.

"What are you doing here anyway?" Gin asked.

But the guards were right behind them. "Stop right there!" and the dogs charged towards them.

"I'll tell you later, Gintoki," the man said and all five of them ran away from the pursuing dogs.

Unknown to them, they had no idea they were being watched by someone.

Later at a building that Katsura lead them to, the four of them were watching the news on the bombing that they were at.

(T.V)

"Yet another bombing has targeted the Amanto Embassy. Let's go to our reporter at the scene. Ketsuno-san, are you there? Ketsuno Ana?"

"Yes, this is Ketsuno at the scene where the Dog Star Embassy has again been the target of a vicious bombing. Right now, there don't seem to be any casualties, but…"

The reporter stopped and put her hand up to her ear. "I'm getting new information. A security camera has caught a picture of the suspects in this incident."

A picture of the Yorozuya quartet was shown on the screen. "Wow, there they are, as clear as day. These suspects are…"

"We really are clear as day!" Shinpachi said panicking. "What are we gonna do? My sister's gonna kill me!"

"I'm on T.V! I got to call my folks-aru!" Kagura calmly said taking a bit out of a cookie.

"Quiet, I'm trying to watch T.V," Yuki said innocently as if he didn't know what was going on.

Shinpachi turned around towards Gin. "This has got to be some kind of conspiracy. Why are we in the middle of this?" Shinpachi sighed. "But, at least we got to meet up with Katsura-san?"

Yuki turned his attention from the T.V to Gin as well. "Hey, Gin-chan, why'd you call Katsura, Zura? Do you know him?"

"Yeah, he's a friend of yours, right Gin-san? Who is he?" Shinpachi asked.

Gin was just laid there with his carefree look and answered, "A bomber."

"Eh!" Shinpachi was more than surprised from Gin's answer.

"Don't call me that, Gintoki."

They turned around to see Katsura standing in front of some other people. "We aren't bombers, we're freedom fighters."

Unknown to the "freedom fighters" their secret base has been discovered by an official.

"The alien amanto soil this fair city. In order, to reclaim our pride as samurai and protect this country, we must drive them out!" Katsura announced.

Shinpachi was quite shocked. "Drive them out!"

"What's that mean?" Kagura asked taking a bite out of the cookie.

Shinpachi explained that when the Amanto came twenty years ago, samurai banded together to fight them but was over powered and had their swords taken away.

"I didn't think that any members still lived," Shinpachi finished.

"You mean that these guys are going to try to drive out the Amanto even if Edo is now crawling with them?" Yuki said.

"Yeah, but it looks like we were blackmailed here," Gin said. "Look there's the mailman." He pointed out that the mailman who crashed into their front door was in the group behind Katsura.

Kagura pointed her finger towards him. "He's right! That's that Geji-Geji!"

"What's going on Geji-Geji-san!" Shinpachi asked him.

"Oi, you don't even know his real name," Yuki said to the two.

"So this is all your doing, Katsura?" Gin said. "The recent bombings along with this incident."

"Even if I have to use underhanded tricks, I will reach my goal." Katsura held up a real sword in his hand in front of Gin. "Gintoki, will you take up you sword once again to cleanse this nation? Lend me the strength of the fearsome White Demon once again."

"Hey, Shinpachi," Yuki whispered to him. "What's Katsura-san talking about? Why did he call Gin-chan the White Demon?"

"I'm not sure really sure, but I think that means that Gin-san fought in the war with Katsura-san," Shinpachi answered.

At that moment, Katsura was having a flashback of when he and Gintoki were surrounded aby Amanto.

(Flashback)

Gin and Katsura were on their knees, back to back, with Amanto surrounding them.

"Is this it?" Katsura questioned. "Rather than falling into enemy hands, we should just kill ourselves and die as warriors."

"Don't be stupid," Gin replied standing up. "Stand up. If you have time to think of a beautiful end, than why not live beautifully until the end?"

Katsura looked up at Gin's back and stood up.

"Let's do it, Zura," Gin said.

"It's not Zura, it's Katsura!" and with that the two charged head on towards the surrounding Amantos.

(End Flashback)

"The image of that man, with his silver hair stained with blood, was truly that of a demon." Katsura said as his flashback ended. "The man who was able to strike fear into each and every one of those Amantos' hearts. Sakata Gintoki."

"You were right, Shinpachi," Yuki said. "Gin-chan did fight in the war against Amantos."

"Yes," Katsura interrupted. "But he disappeared after the war was lost. I could never understand what was going through his head."

"I like the thrill of a real fight, that's why I hate the underhanded tricks you're pulling." Gin replied. "Our fight is over. And yet, you came back time and time again pestering me about. What are you, my mother-in-law?"

"Are you some kind of idiot? Mothers always pester their sons," Katsura replied. "You don't have anyone to do that to you on a daily basis."

"Hey you, if I didn't have a natural perm like this; I'd kick your butt."

"You're always blaming you natural perm for you r cowardice. How pitiful."

"You're the pitiful one. You tried to trick a guy into fighting with you."

"What the hell are you talking about!" Shinpachi shouted interrupting the two's argument.

"Those two are funny," Yuki said giggling.

Outside the guards keeping a look out in front of the base are knocked out by a bunch of men wearing similar black uniforms.

Back inside the base, Gin and Katsura were in a stand off.

"Our fight is no where near finished," Katsura said. "Some will must exist within you yet, Gintoki…So many of our friends were lost in the war."

Gin stayed silent and did not say anything. Katsura held up the sword in front of Gin once again and asked him the join them.

"Our next target is the terminal. We'll destroy that tower they call home and eliminate them out of Edo," Katsura said. "But that is only the first step. We could drive off the face of the Earth if we had your strength."

"Won't destroying the terminal cause a panic," Yuki brought up.

"We're willing to make a sacrifice to protect Edo," Katsura answered. "So I ask you again Gintoki, lean us your might!"

Everyone stood in silence. But that silence was broken when a bunch of footsteps were heard and men wear black uniforms busted into the room.

"Stop right there! You're all coming with us, bombers!"

"It's the Shinsengumi."

Panic ran through everyone as Gin kick down a door behind him and they all ran for their lives.

"Who are they!" Shinpachi asked as they ran through the halls.

"The Shogunate's enforcers, the Shinsengumi," Katsura asked. "They're the special police responsible for dealing with rebellious elements."

"When you mean rebellious elements, you mean you, right!" Yuki yelled at Katsura.

"Yes, but not to worry, boss here can take care of this situation," Katsura said and when he said 'boss' he meant Gin.

Gin turned to Katsura. "Who are you calling 'boss'! You're the worse of them all!"

Kagura then ran up between Katsura and Gin. "Zura, if boss won't do it, then I will. Just leave it to me." She said. "Whether they're bad guys or bystanders, I'll take them out on your orders-aru!"

"Shut up, you! What's with that T.V drama attitude!" Gin yelled at Kagura.

"Oi!"

Gin ducked just barely dodging the blade that was aimed at his head.

"Gin-chan!" Yuki called out to him.

Shinpachi quickly grabbed Yuki by his hand. "We don't have time, we need to get outta here!"

"Shinpachi! Yuki!" Kagura called to them. "Over here!" Kagura was with Katsura and some other of his followers at a door to a room.

"OK!" Shinpachi turned around to called Gin was there was a loud explosion that stopped him and he and Yuki turned their faces away to keep the dust out of their eyes. Suddenly Shinpachi and Yuki felt themselves being pulled and the next thing they know, they're in the room with Kagura, Katsura and Gin, whose hair is now all puffed because of the explosion. The door was now barricaded to keep the Shinsengumi out.

"Hey, come out here and stop resisting!" They heard from outside the blocked door.

Kagura was poking at Gin's puffed up hair and Shinpachi was just shocked at how much hair Gin actually had.

"Come out now! There's nowhere to run!"

"Yuki looked up at Shinpachi. "They're right. What do we do?"

"I don't know," Shinpachi replied.

Katsura suddenly stood up taking what looking like a metal ball from his kimono.

"What the heck is that?" Gin asked Katsura.

"A time bomb," Katsura answered. "I was planning to use it for the Terminal attack, but it can't be helped. We'll use this to take them out, the rest make a run for it during the confusion."

Gin walked up to Katsura and grabbed the front of his kimono. "Zura, just stop this. No matter how elegant you think dying is, your death won't mean anything and it won't change anything."

As they talked, Kagura was poking at the time bomb that Katsura dropped when Gin grabbed him.

"This will only soil you record," Gin finished.

Katsura took hold of Gin's wrist in anger. "You're the dirty one, Gintoki. You just change with the times; you never do what must be done as a warrior and as a man!"

Gin lowered his head a bit in response. "What's the use of fighting a futile fight?" he responded. "Do you intend to lose even more comrades?"

Hearing that made Katsura clutch his fist in frustration.

Gin continued. "I'll pass on that. I'll live by my own rules and protect what I hold dear."

Katsura stared at Gin in awe.

But suddenly, "Gin'chan, I was playing with this and pressed the switched," Kagura said holding up the bomb and rubbing her hand on the back of her head innocently.

"This is a nightmare," Gin muttered.

"It must be," muttered Katsura.

Outside the room

Some of the Shinsengumi officers had their bazookas out. "Oi, come out now. We seriously will fire."

"Hijikata-san, at this rate, we'll miss out soap opera reruns," said Okita.

"Oh, I forgot to set the VCR," replied Hijikata. "Alright, lets hurry this up, everyone get ready to fire."

The officers lifted their bazookas ready to fire. "Fi…" but hijikata was interrupted when Gin, Kagura, Shinpachi, and Yuki busted down the barricade and was heading towards them.

"Oi, what do you think you're doing! Stop them!" Hijikata yelled.

"If you're going to stop something, stop this bomb! Don't you have a bomb squad or something!" Gin yelled holding up the bomb for them to see.

They hoped that the Shinsengumi would be able to do something, but instead they ran away at the sight of the bomb.

Note: shiritori is a word game in which the players say words beginning with the last letter of the previous one.

"Oi, Shinpachi, didn't you say you were good with machines or somethin'?" Gin said passing the bomb to Shinpachi.

"N – No way! It wasn't me who was playing with this!" Shinpachi said passing it to Yuki.

"S – Someone else can take this!" Yuki passed it to Kagura.

"S – Someone once said that a natural perm could stop a bomb!" Kagura passed the bomb back to Gin.

"B – Bet you could do it, Shinpachi!" Gin passed it to Shinpachi.

"I – It's too bad, but I can't!" He passed it to Yuki.

"T – Too much pressure! Can't do it!" He passed Kagura.

"T – Take it!" She passed to Gin.

"I – It's ready for launch!' He passed to Shinpachi.

"H – Hot potato!" Passed it to Yuki.

"O – Oh, thanks but no thanks!" He passed to Kagura.

"S – Someone else take it!" She passed to Gin.

"T – Thanks, but you're the bomber!" He passed to Shinpachi.

"R – Right back at ya!" Shinpachi passed to Yuki.

"A – Ah! The real bomber here is Kagura!" Yuki passed to Kagura.

"A – A – Adrian!" Kagura yelled randomly before passing it back to Gin.

"Eh! Who the heck is Adrian! It's not an unusual name, but still …" Gin looked down at the bomb and was startled to see how much time was left. "AH! There's only ten seconds left!"

"Up ahead! Look!" Yuki yelled. There was a large window in front of them.

"Gin-san, Quick! Throw the bomb!" Shinpachi told Gin.

"It's no use!" Gin said.

Suddenly Kagura held her umbrella like a baseball bat. "Gin-chan, Pitch it!" and she began to swing.

Unfortunately, what she hit wasn't the bomb, it was Gin's face. And he ended up crashing through the window. But despite the situation he was able to throw the bomb far into the air and it exploded without harming anyone.

The Shinsengumi stared out the window watching the bomb go off.

Katsura was on the roof top looking down at the scene. He remembered what Gin had said to him back during the war."

"If you have time to think of a beautiful end, than why not live beautifully until the end?"

He smiled and said to himself. "What's so beautiful about that?" He looked at Gin who was hanging onto a banner trying to keep himself from falling. And he looked up to see a helicopter coming.