The Misadventures of an Early Morning

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Lesson 4: Revenge, Like Ice Cream, Is a Dish Best Served Cold

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"That hurts like hell, damn you," Katsura hissed, his teeth clenched flush around the terse, breathy syllables even as the coarse words fumbled across his tongue and trailed a bitter taste in their wake. His fingers clawed at the pillow beneath him, seeking an anchor against a fresh wave of pain.

"Mmph! You idiot perm-head, you promised it'd be relatively painless! . . .shi—!"

Katsura froze, muscles flexed taut as bowstrings, when his well-attuned ears caught snatches of an inexpertly stifled chuckle sounding from somewhere over his own shoulder.

"'Relatively' being the operative word there. You're too tense, Zura! Lighten up, I'll be gentle," the voice snickered in a smug pantomime of reassurance.

Katsura grimaced and exercised a commendable dose of self-restraint, clamping a hand over his mouth and biting his tongue to smother a string of nasty epithets that could have been quite aptly applied to the blasted, effervescent perm-head who had dissolved into laughter again behind him.

Internally, however, Katsura soundly cursed himself for cursing—forgive me, Shouyou-sensei—hypocritically swearing at himself all the while for yielding to the discomfort. Pain is ephemeral, merely a distraction from the present, he mumbled, attempting to channel a Jedi. If I center my attention elsewhere—oh! The Famicom is ever my stalwart ally.

Midway through humming the first stanza of the Super Mario Bros. theme aloud, Katsura reeled as he felt a tug, a brutal pull, and finally a full-blown yank. He abandoned all prospects of clinging to noble pretenses (i.e., Plan A) and instead resolved to cut his losses with Plan B, which entailed coolly screwing his eyes shut, stoically bearing the pain with minimal Mario vocalization, and duly refusing his tormenter the satisfaction of witnessing Katsura's fragilely metered composure splinter into a billion tiny, microscopic, absolutely infinitesimal pieces.

Katsura consoled himself with the knowledge that the perpetual perm would be the unfortunate soul quite rightly inconvenienced with the task of collecting said miniscule fragments and sloppily gluing them back together once more (possibly at the mercy of Eligo 13's sign point) should Katsura surrender to his baser urges and ultimately happen to snap. His internal space pirate cackled maniacally in approval.

A calloused hand scrabbling for leverage fisted harshly at the sensitive nape of Katsura's neck, physically jerking him from his musings.

"Oops, so sorry, my hand slipped."

The smirk of sweet revenge was infuriatingly audible. Katsura, his space pirate alter-ego now fuming and ranting and raving, consequently toyed with the option of resorting to Plan C.

"You bastard, you're acting—ow. . .pretty high and mighty for someone who practically had a cow over a nightmare about parfait-snatching Zombrows. I've told you time and again that a samurai should only eat simple f—"

Yaaank.

Plan C immediately ratcheted to an entirely unprecedented level of appeal, and the ensuing temptation was just too astronomically great for Katsura to bear, as if someone had swirled a steaming bowl of Ikumatsu-dono's soba right under his nose. With nary an ounce of hesitation or reserve remaining in his arsenal, he surmised that Gintoki made a well-deserving target for a vicious elbow jab square in the stomach. Katsura therefore acted on this supposition without further ado.

"Oomph—!"

"Serves you right," Katsura huffed.

Gintoki audibly choked and doubled over with the force of the near one-hit knockout, his reflexes dulled by the combined lack of sleep and sweets. Unfortunately for Katsura, the man seemed to possess the hack regenerative powers of one of his revered Jump antiheroes, possibly an Espada, and was soon rearing for round two.

"For the love of. . .strawberry milk—! I'm doing my best, Zura! Would it kill you to sit still?"

"Not 'Zura', it's—ouch, Gintoki! Would it kill you to watch what you're doing?!"

"You know, I wish it would! And then where would you be?" Gintoki's frustration cut a sharp retort accented by the staccato beat of a wide-toothed comb clattering away across the wooden floorboards. "I kindly suggest you recall that you're the one who came barging through my door at three in the damn morning! And then had the nerve to order me to the convenience store for peanut butter like some pissy, pregnant wife!"

"Shove it, Gintoki!" Katsura spat back, the admittedly late hour having failed to spare his patience in its scorched-earth blitzkrieg through formerly unshakeable sensibilities. "I only 'recall' asking a friend for help—I never asked you to be so damn rough."

"That so? What a discovery! So now Zura not only looks like a girl, but he acts like one, too. Maybe you'd rather I shove your head in the freezer? It's still not too late for option two, you know!"

Gintoki's conscience chose this moment to spontaneously grow a backbone, timidly but traitorously prodding pangs of guilt through his empty, aching stomach—now that's a low blow—until he thoroughly regretted ever allowing those words to leave his mouth.

Katsura, who somehow managed to look hurt and angry and five shades of vulnerable all at the same time, snatched the jar of peanut butter from Gintoki before any further damage could be done. Gintoki obligingly relented, throwing his hands up in defeat. He retreated a few paces to the relative sanctuary and comparative solace of the opposite sofa, whereupon he flopped down heavily and slid a weary hand over half-lidded eyes.

Gintoki sighed, knowing all too well that his normal reserve of humor-tempered sarcasm had been an early, predictable casualty of his extremely rude awakening about two hours ago. Isn't there some warped code of conduct for these situations? "Friends don't let friends go gallivanting through dumpsters"? No, that's self-incriminating. How about: "Friends don't disturb friends in the middle of well-earned beauty sleep"? It's not my fault I was born this way. . .

Gintoki rubbed absentmindedly at the base of his neck as he mulled over their predicament. He was sorely tempted to simply say, "to hell with it all", leave Zura stranded in the living room, and go stomping back to his futon and mercifully terrorist-free dreams.

However, Gintoki's resuscitated conscience immediately went to work, nagging and niggling and sowing seeds of guilt until Gintoki knew that such a selfish course of action would make him a shoe-in for the "Heartless Bastard of the Year" award at the season-end recap. He would never be able to live it down. Moreover, abandoning a friend and comrade at the height of a bubblegum-induced crisis would certainly cost Gintoki his spot at the top of the character poll. Now that was simply unacceptable.

Gintoki leveled Katsura with a miserably exhausted blank gaze that only thinly masqueraded as a no-nonsense glare.

"Look, you have three—no, wait, two options. I've changed my mind; I'm not risking running up my electricity bill while you chill your moronic head in the freezer," Gintoki hedged, the strain of the past few hours evident in his voice. "So you can either grow a pair and bear it like a man while I wrestle these knots out with the comb and peanut butter, or I go for the scissors. You'll be back to that stylish Benizakura cut in no time. It's your call."

Katsura stewed moodily for a few seconds further, analyzing his so-called "options" and attempting to ascertain a clear lesser of the two evils. Yet the lesser was not readily forthcoming, prompting Katsura to reflect upon the agonizing duration of the two entire episodes he had spent sans screen time while he grew his hair out post-Benizakura arc. A repeat performance was not desirable.

"Ding ding, time's up," Gintoki interrupted lamely, flicking a booger in Katsura's general direction. "What'll it be?"

"…peanut butter. I think."

"Is that your final answer?"

Katsura frowned, exasperated by Gintoki's relentless needling as his own non-existent patience ticked into the danger zone once more. A patented Justaway explosion lurked in the very, very near future. So Katsura laid his cards bare on the table.

"…look, I have some…traumatic memories of scissors from the last time I went to a barbershop. Some idiot with an afro decided to impersonate the master charismatic hairdresser, and I ended up being chased down the street by Kondou while sporting a haircut like Wakame-san's. Have you ever seen a space pirate try to look intimidating with such a ridiculous haircut? It doesn't work. My men had a field day."

Even in spite of the hilarious image conjured up by his overwrought mush of a five-AM brain, Gintoki commanded the iota of decency required to look mildly sheepish at Katsura's words, although Katsura remained none the wiser to Gintoki's role in that particular fiasco. Gintoki, for his part, had no qualms about taking a few secrets to the grave.

"Just get on with it already," Katsura grumbled at last, relinquishing the jar of peanut butter with all the enthusiasm of a man signing his own death warrant.

"Fine," Gintoki replied, bristling at the ungrateful response. "It's not like I care one way or the other."

"Good," Katsura bit back, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's not like I want you to." His expression instantly darkened, as if the words had slipped past his tongue of their own accord.

Gintoki feigned ignorance as he stooped to recover the discarded comb.

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Just one chapter left, guys! I'm almost finished writing it (miracle of miracles), so be sure to look for it in the next day or so.