Chapter 10: Why would ghosts need feet?
Somewhere in the back of Gintoki's mind a little voice was telling him to get up. It almost might have been Shinpachi, shouting from the other room that he had overslept; in a few minutes he would come in and open the curtains and let the piercing sunlight sear Gintoki into hung-over awareness.
Or it might have been Kagura, whining that she was hungry and it was Gin-chan's turn to make breakfast and if he didn't get to it soon she was going to eat his last pudding cup instead.
Only it couldn't be either of them, and he hadn't overslept; but still there was that little faraway voice, telling him all the things he ought to do now. How he ought to take off his boots, if he were going to be walking on the floor. How he ought to scoot back so he wasn't kneeling in blood, which stains were always so difficult to get out of white cotton.
The phone had been knocked off the desk. He ought to pick it up. Call the police. Call Otose. Call Otae.
Get a mop. Get a towel. Get a sheet to lay over them.
Go over and close their staring eyes.
Stand up.
He didn't want to do any of it. Too much effort, when he could just stay kneeling here and all he had to do was remember how to breathe.
The blood under his knees was cooling—maybe an hour, maybe less. If he'd walked faster, if he'd decided to drop by sooner, if the rainstorm had been more threatening, if that stand hadn't been selling sakura soft-serve.
Shinpachi shouldn't have even come by today. Not until tomorrow, at least. It must have been Kagura who convinced him to come. Why hadn't she just stayed over at the dojo? Her stomach could manage even Otae's lunches.
I'm sorry, Gin-chan.
"No," Gintoki said, shaking his head. He kept looking straight ahead, out the window, rather than risk glancing down and catching sight of her slack, empty face. "No, it wasn't your—"
I tried—I tried so hard, Gin-chan, but you weren't here—
I'm sorry, Gin-san, I tried my best, but you weren't—
"No," Gintoki said again. His breath rasped in his ears, grating, like his lungs were full of sand. Outside the rainclouds were gathering, flattening the sky to featureless gray. "I should have been—I should have—"
No, Gin-chan, don't—
It wasn't your fault, Gin-san—
"If there was anything I could have—"
"There's still something you can do, Gin-chan."
"We can't do anything, Gin-san, not anymore, but you still can."
Their voices were faint and far away, but becoming clearer, the words more distinct. "I tried, Gin-chan, I tried to fight them, but I wasn't ready, not in time, I couldn't kick their damn tails, not before—"
"I tried, Gin-san, I tried to protect her, but I couldn't do it, I wasn't strong enough to stop them, not in time, not before—"
"But it's not too late for you, Gin-chan, it's not too late for you to beat them into the ground, for me—"
"It's not too late for you, Gin-san, it's not too late for you to stop them, for me—"
"Is that what you want?" For a moment his gaze fell—blank blue eyes, blank brown eyes, staring past him with neither accusation nor understanding nor anything else. He couldn't look at them; he looked down instead, at the sword on the floor beside his knees, the glinting diamond in its blade brighter than their glassy eyes. "Vengeance...is that what this would be? Is that really what you want?"
"I don't want vengeance, Gin-chan, I don't want any dumb noble thing like that—I just want those asshole lizards defeated; I want them to lose, completely and totally and for always!"
"I don't know if I want revenge—but wouldn't it mean something, if they were stopped? If they were stopped once and for all, if the one who sent them was stopped, so they'd never do this again, to anyone else's family—that's what I want, Gin-san."
"All right." Gintoki reached out, wrapped his hand around the hilt of the sword and climbed to his feet. The sword was heavier than he was used to, but weighted decently for its straight blade. When he tested one of its rippled razor curves on his little finger, it cut the flesh with barely a brush of pressure, drawing blood long before pain, as the sharpest blades do.
It felt as if he were moving slowly, as if the air were as thick as water; but he knew it was an illusion, the way everything slows in combat, an hour stretching between each beat of his heart. He knew as well they couldn't hear him, and yet he knew that they were listening. "All right," Gintoki said. "Then I'll give you that. I'll do that for you."
o o o
"And you're sure there's no one on the premises who shouldn't be," Hijikata said.
"No, sir, no one," Yamazaki assured him. "We've checked every building, underneath, on the rooftops, in the eaves—we haven't looked into every closet, but that's because Commander Kondou told us that no one could get into some of them—"
Kondou nodded assuredly. "Some spaces just can't fit a human body, even a body molded and pressured by the unrelenting power of love."
"—and I figured he would know," Yamazaki said. "So it looks like the Gekkon ambassador's safe. Though we still don't know where the Imperial Sentries went, and they haven't come back yet, either."
"I could ask the ambassador," Kondou suggested. "He's the only one who can command them, so he should know."
"Yes, but then he might realize that we've been watching them," Hijikata said. "And they might already be suspicious—we don't want them to think our security could be compromised, or make them doubt our ability to protect them."
"Why would they doubt it?" Kondou asked. "We are protecting them—no one's gotten in here past us."
"But they could have," Hijikata said. "If anyone could get by us, it'd be that silver-haired bastard. And this is a target like no other—if we piss off the Gekkon Empire by letting their ambassador get killed, it won't just be our heads on the block..."
Kondou frowned with the blithe confusion of a man with zero grasp of intergalactic politics, then shook his head. "Do you really think the Yorozuya would take on a job like that?"
"We know he associates with the Jouishishi—"
"We've never gotten any proof. Just because Katsura's been seen near the Yorozuya's place a couple of times..."
"On his street, in his office, out to dinner with him, at a driving exam—"
"And honestly, Toushi, even if Katsura is a friend of his, do you believe Sakata would take a job as dishonorable as assassination?"
"As if that guy even knows what honor is," Hijikata growled.
Kondou folded his arms and did the waiting thing he'd been doing lately—something to do with Otae telling him he sounded wisest and most impressive when he wasn't speaking; the irony was that she was totally right. Especially when he combined it with an expectant, meaningful eyebrow-raise.
Hijikata sighed. "All right, no, he wouldn't." Sakata Gintoki was a lot of things, most of them contemptible and all of them irritating, but cold-blooded murder wasn't his style. He didn't follow any recognizable bushido code, but he had his rules. And the kids who tagged along after him, neither would have the stomach for that kind of work.
But they'd been up to something, all the same. "Whatever, something's still going on. I don't like it."
"But really, Hijikata-san, is there anything you do like?" Okita inquired from uncomfortably close behind him.
Hijikata spun around, snapped, "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be guarding the ambassador."
"Saitou's squad is handling that," Okita said. "Though nothing's going on there to be handled anyway. The ambassador wouldn't even let us into his quarters to share his lunch."
"He's an imperial ambassador; he's not expected to share his lunch—!"
"And he didn't like the collars I offered him, either, though I even gave him a choice of colors..."
"—Very well, Sougo," Kondou said hastily. "We can use you and your men to watch the grounds, right, Toushi?"
Kondou would spoil Okita, and usually Hijikata would protest it; but if something was going to go down, it was better to have Okita in plain sight, rather than off who knows where doing who knows what. And something was going down; Hijikata could feel it. Something was coming, more than the rain. "Fine," Hijikata said shortly, and didn't miss the curious look Okita gave him, that he'd acquiesced so easily.
o o o
It had been a long time since Gintoki had walked the streets of Edo with a real sword on his belt. The flambard's scabbard was longer and broader than his bokutou; with every stride it bumped his knee under the yukata, but it was mostly concealed by the cloth's folds, such that he wasn't stopped by any overly attentive cop.
The scabbard had been chewed—it hadn't occurred to him until he picked it up that Sadaharu was nowhere in the apartment, not in the bedroom or hiding in the closet. The inugami must have fled—fled far, Gintoki hoped, far enough that the lizards had spared him, at least. At least a single gram of leniency for a stupid, ridiculous, hopeless pet dog.
Later Gintoki would have to search for him. Canvas the neighborhood, put up flyers. Have you seen this giant walking appetite? Make sure Sadaharu found his way home, or somewhere else that he would be cared for, walked and fed, coddled, loved.
But that was later; so many things Gintoki would have to do later. He didn't have to think about them now. Now there was only one thing he had to do, the one thing he was sure he could do, the one thing that he knew his strength would not falter before it was accomplished. One purpose to walk towards, one step and then the next and then the next.
There were footsteps on either side of him, sandals on the left, slippers on the right, soles slapping on the cobblestone in tempo with his own strides, echoing every step. It would have made his spine tingle, if he'd had enough left in him to feel fear.
"Why are you still here?" he asked at last.
"Aren't you used to this, Gin-san? Aren't you used to the dead talking to you? Aren't the dead walking step-by-step beside you every day, everyone you've left behind, everyone you failed?"
"Maybe," Gintoki said, "but their footsteps aren't this loud. And whoever heard of ghosts with feet anyway, huh?"
"Maybe you need us this loud, Gin-chan. Maybe you need to hear us."
There were people looking at him, when Gintoki raised his head from the street, men and women staring at him, not one of them glancing at the figure to his left or the figure to his right. Some of them assumed he was drunk; he was familiar with those disapproving glares. But some of them knew he was crazy; they backed further away, gave him space to keep walking, keep talking to himself. "Maybe you should go bother someone else. Go haunt your sister. Go haunt your father."
"But won't it be lonely without us, Gin-chan? Won't you be lonely?"
"Yes," Gintoki said, "so lonely it'll be like dying, but no one ever dies just of loneliness, except in shoujo manga. And this is shounen, you know, shounen."
"But we want to stay with you, Gin-san."
"Do you really want us to go, Gin-chan?"
"No," Gintoki said. "No, never."
When he raised his head he saw the gates at the other end of the street, the heavy wooden doors of the auxiliary palace, closed and barred, walling the Amanto off from the world they had invaded. Six uniformed Shinsengumi stood before it, the government's loyal dogs. They wouldn't open those gates, not for him; not for a samurai too weak even to protect what he'd said he would.
That was all right; he'd brought his own key. Pushing aside his yukata, Gintoki drew the flambard and walked toward the gate, one step at a time, and two pairs of unheard footsteps keeping pace beside him.
o o o
Hijikata was on his eighth attempt in the last few weeks to explain to Kondou how influential the Gekkon were in the greater Amanto hierarchy, and why their royal ambassador was such a prime target for the expulsionists. At Yamazaki's suggestion, he was having some success comparing Amanto member races to the national baseball league teams, and was winding up to casting the Gekkon as the Yomiuri Giants of their intergalactic league, when his radio crackled. "Um, Vice-Commander, this is Harada at the front gate. We have a... sort of...situation?"
Hijikata was striding out of the guard barracks by the second syllable and was out on the white gravel promenade by the time Harada was done speaking. "Yes, what is it?" he demanded, as Kondou and Okita caught up behind him.
"There's a man here who seems to want to come in. He's...it might be the boss from the Yorozuya?"
"Curly silver hair? Eyes like a dead mackerel's? The guy's pretty unmistakable."
"Yeah, it looks like him—mostly—except I thought—he doesn't use a sword, does he?"
"He's got a bokutou," Hijikata said. "One of those infomercial deals." Barely this side of legal—probably that side, really, given how Gintoki used his, but every legal system needs some flexibility; they couldn't very well arrest half the city. Even if it would make their jobs easier.
"That's what I thought," Harada said. "Whatever he's wielding now sure the hell isn't wooden, though—"
"Wait—Sakata's got a real sword?" Hijikata's fingers clenched around the radio as he started sprinting for the gate. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kondou and Okita staring after him in confusion, but there was no time to explain. "Do not engage!" he shouted into the radio. "Do you hear me? Don't let him pass if he asks for permission, but if he challenges you, don't—"
The radio only sputtered static, but Hijikata was close enough now to be able to hear the ringing of clashing swords through the closed wooden gates. The Shinsengumi standing guard on the inside of the wall looked to their vice-commander; Hijikata only shook his head and shoved through them.
Harada was a decent swordsman and strong as an ox, but he was nowhere near Hijikata's or Okita's level, and the men below the rank of captain would be entirely outclassed. Hijikata headed for the stairs to climb up to the watchtower, only to be stopped by a crash loud enough that most of the troops looked up at the sky, expecting lightning.
The second thud jarred the gate; with the third Hijikata saw the massive beam barring the doors bow, as the wooden planks of the gate shuddered and splintered. "Out of the way!" he ordered, gesturing, as he took position in the center of the promenade before the gate. The other Shinsengumi scrambled back, just as an arc of silver stabbed through the breaking gate and sliced through the heavy timber beam like it was a chunk of firm tofu.
The two pieces of the beam dropped to the ground separately with matching thuds; then the doors gave way under a final kick and Sakata Gintoki strode inside, long steel blade in one hand as he rubbed at his shoulder under his yukata with the other.
Hijikata already had drawn his own katana. Still, he paused for a moment to take in Gintoki's weapon, with its bizarre undulating edges and the absurd jewelry stuck on the blade. "Didn't you throw that thing out? What the hell is it? An extra-large cellphone accessory? Did it come in a box of snacks?"
Gintoki, atypically, didn't rise to the occasion; in fact he didn't even look at Hijikata, simply kept walking forward like he hadn't yet noticed anyone was in his path, the ridiculous sword in his hand at his side.
Hijikata glanced past him, through the remnants of the gate. Harada was on the ground but sitting up, and the other five men were gathering around him, so Sakata hadn't done any major damage, at least. "All right," Hijikata said, lowering his katana slightly as Gintoki approached. "What's this about? What do you want? —Oi, look at me, you bastard—"
Hijikata brought up his sword, but Gintoki was faster. He didn't attack with his own blade; instead he parried, sidestepped and ducked under Hijikata's katana to grab the folds of his uniform's cravat in his fist. Then he heaved the Shinsengumi vice-commander over his shoulder. The entire maneuver was effected with such swift certainty that Hijikata didn't work out exactly what had happened until he was already flying through the air, the white swathe of the gravel walkway spreading out before his eyes.
Something in Sakata's eyes, Hijikata thought—something there that shouldn't be; or something missing that should be there... Then he slammed into that stony swathe headfirst, and the pure white of the stones was shuttered by painful, unyielding black.
o o o
"Toushi?" Kondou hollered, two parts worried to one part baffled, as Hijikata went head over heels into the gravel path, touching down with a respectable thump. Gintoki's throw had been both neatly calculated and viciously executed; Okita rather admired it. Hijikata's nearly insensible groan into the gravel was a tasty bonus.
Still, the Shinsengumi couldn't go being shown up by any samurai with a good arm. And Kondou was looking perturbed; he didn't like his men being tossed around. Okita indicated for his commander to stay back with a polite nod, and stepped up to face Gintoki, drawing his katana. "Yo, Danna."
Gintoki didn't so much look at him as in his general direction, but that was par for the course for him, and Okita was used to people avoiding meeting his eyes anyway. "I know how much fun Hijikata-san is to play with," he said, "but you can't come in here. We're supposed to be guarding this place, you see."
"Out of my way," Gintoki said, and he made a grab, but after Hijikata's skyride Okita was ready for it and weaved out of the way, then feinted with his sword, a teasing thrust.
Gintoki countered with his own sword; the rippled edge caught against the curved blade of Okita's katana and sent it skipping up, jarring his wrist. "Oh," Okita said, raising his eyebrows as he adjusted his grip to compensate. "That's a nice toothpick after all, Danna."
In answer Gintoki brought his sword around, dropping his right hand to grasp the hilt with both. It was a two-handed weapon, to judge by its size; longer than a standard katana and probably a fair bit heavier, too, but Gintoki swung it as easily as if it were his usual wooden sword.
Okita smiled slightly. He didn't have any idea why they were going to have this fight, but it would be an interesting exercise. Kondou was bound to break it up eventually, but he'd be busy fussing over Hijikata first, and until then—"You're almost as fun to play with as Hijikata-san, Danna; do you mind substituting for him?"
Gintoki was more challenging to provoke than Hijikata, but Okita expected some kind of reaction—denial of the comparison, or else a derisive judgment of his sadistic tendencies. He got nothing, though; Gintoki's expression didn't change, and his next lunge was no more rash, devilishly fast but deliberate. Okita dodged rather than parried, sweeping his katana up under the heavier sword to go for Gintoki's arm—just a scratch; first blood would be satisfying, better than Hijikata had gotten off the Yorozuya, in their only real duel.
But Gintoki realized the attack in time, and brought back his sword to hook Okita's blade on the wide crosspiece, twisting down at an angle that almost wrenched Okita's katana from his hands. The Shinsengumi's boots skidded on the gravel as he struggled to maintain his grip—the hilt of Gintoki's sword was long enough for substantial leverage, and the man was brutally strong besides. That, Okita had already known, and Gintoki's astonishing speed too was expected.
And yet this fight was not, somehow. Okita wasn't sure what the difference was. It wasn't that he'd anticipated facing Gintoki to be anything like facing Hijikata True, their swordplay had similar original elements, relying on raw ability more than any educated technique. But Hijikata had beaten those skills into his body over years of hard practice, and Okita had practiced with him for much of them; he knew Hijikata's habits, and half a dozen counters for each.
Gintoki, on the other hand, was unpredictable, and not only because Okita had never trained with the man, nor because he was unused to facing a European-style sword, nor because Gintoki's lightning-fast feints were as hard to read as his heavy-lidded eyes. There was no real pattern to his movements, as if he had never bothered to develop a true style, not even his own; like every attack was on a whim, invented on the spot.
But that was expected, Okita thought. He lunged forward, only to find Gintoki was not there at all—that he'd gone up instead, launching himself airborne to bring his sword slamming down like a sledgehammer. The leap should have left him wide open, but it was so absurdly unlikely that Okita only just got his katana up in time to block.
This was all expected, from what Okita knew of Sakata Gintoki and his unfocused, unmotivated, unintentional ways; and yet this was not the fight Okita had imagined. Barely minutes in, he was panting for breath like he'd been working out for an hour; it wasn't just the exertion but the frustration. Gintoki's usual indolent indifference might make him hard to read, but he was still a human being, predictable like all human beings: pain and pleasure, action and reaction, give and take.
So what was changed, to make this feel so wrong, to make this a fight Okita couldn't even enjoy?
Piqued, the Shinsengumi captain sidestepped and feinted, high and low and then he went for his triple thrust—three attacks with one strike; Okita had never met another swordsman who could quite imitate it, nor one who could block all three hits Though he pulled the thrust to the neck slightly, as he would in a practice duel, and Gintoki somehow realized it; he parried the two stabs to his shoulder and took the hit to his neck, a graze so shallow it scarcely drew blood.
Overextended from the strike, Okita hastily shifted his weight to his back foot to compensate. He was a little too slow; Gintoki took advantage of his imbalance to slip his hand past his sword and grab his wrist, trying to throw him, but a single-handed grip was easy to break, and Okita used the leverage as a pivot point to regain his footing. Still, the blunder was embarrassing, and Okita grimaced. Kondou had warned him before that the follow-through on his triple thrust was less than stellar, but since he rarely had to deal with an adversary afterwards, it usually didn't matter. With multiple opponents it was a different game, but against one man all you had to do was keep your eye on his sword—
The sword; where the hell was his sword? Gintoki had grabbed him with his left hand, but hadn't he been wielding two-handed? So where was the—
"Sougo, left side!" someone shouted behind them—poor etiquette, Kondou-san, Okita thought, to interfere with a man's fight—but he automatically flung up his katana, and just barely blocked the incoming blow, a strike hard enough to jar his shoulders in their sockets and chip his sword's blade.
Better that than his arm taken off, though, as it would have been otherwise. Then Okita's mind caught up with his reflexes, and he realized that the shout hadn't been Kondou's voice. But no, Hijikata wouldn't have—why would he—
But then, why would Gintoki strike to maim him, when this was only a duel, not a battle to the death—
"Yorozuya!" That, now, was Kondou at last. "What the hell are you doing?" the commander demanded, stomping forward to plant himself on the promenade before them.
Gintoki paused, the first moment of hesitation Okita had seen in him since he'd busted down the gate.
"I should think it's obvious, Kondou-san," Okita said agreeably, though he kept his katana raised—Gintoki might be still, but he hadn't yet lowered his sword. The first raindrops started to fall, pattering on the gravel; Okita felt a splash of cold on his wrist but didn't let himself twitch.
"Out of my way," Gintoki said, low enough to be a growl. His curly silver bangs curtained his eyes. "Both of you."
In the corner of his eye Okita saw Hijikata finally struggle to his feet. His nose was bloody and swelling, but he lurched after Kondou, katana drawn and his eyes narrowed—as if he were angry, but Okita was well-versed in all one hundred and eight variations of Hijikata's ire, and this wasn't any of them. The vice-commander jerked his head at the troops around him—quite a crowd had gathered, Okita noted; even some of the Gekkon soldiers had emerged from their accommodations—and the Shinsengumi jumped to attention, falling into position behind him and their commander.
Gintoki lifted his head to sweep an assessing gaze over their numbers. He wasn't even breathing hard, that Okita could see, and his face wasn't flushed but pale, gray and impassive under the clouded daylight. "All of you," he said quietly. His sword was still at ready. "Get out of my way."
"You ought to double-check the script, Danna," Okita remarked, "you said that line already."
"What's going on?" Kondou asked—not very commandingly, more bewildered. "Are you really here for the ambassador? Is that really why the others came by earlier—oh no, you haven't started training Shinpachi-kun to be an assassin, have you? Even if it pays well, Otae-san would never approve, I can't condone this—!"
"Kondou-san," Hijikata said, not impatiently—cautiously, and he stepped forward as he spoke, to stand between Kondou and Gintoki with his sword raised and ready.
Even though Gintoki hadn't moved, sword not wavering and his eyes were still on Okita—on his katana, gaze locked and steady. He might not have heard Kondou at all.
And yet Hijikata had raised his sword.
There were stains on the Yorozuya's yukata, Okita realized abruptly, more than the smattering of raindrops collecting on the white cloth. Rusty bloodstains, still fresh enough to show some dull red, a match to his eyes.
"Oi," Okita called, turning his head slightly toward the others, though not taking his eyes off Gintoki, "Harada's squad—which of you idiots was too slow and got slashed?"
"None of us, sir," Harada called back. "He didn't cut anyone."
Indeed, there was no red on the rippled blade of Gintoki's sword. Neither was he wounded, except for the scratch on his throat, and that was already closed over.
But there was blood on the trailing edge of his yukata, smeared across the blue swirls, as if he'd knelt in it.
There was something wrong with all of this. Something missing. Just as Kondou had said, the others had been here earlier, without their boss; why wouldn't they be here now, with him?
"Where's the China girl, Danna?" Okita asked. "Where's Four-eyes?"
Gintoki didn't answer and his expressionless expression didn't change, but he whipped the flame-bladed sword around fast enough that Okita had to jump back. He was ready for the next blow, though, and threw all his weight forward to parry with the force to drive the Yorozuya boss back a step, leaning in as he shouted into Gintoki's blank face, "Oi! Where's Shinpachi? Where's Kagura?"
"Ask him," Gintoki growled, so low that Okita wasn't sure he heard right.
"Ask who?"
"Ask the son of a bitch ambassador you're guarding—the son of a bitch I'm going to kill," and Gintoki tilted his sword, so the blade slid against Okita's, gliding down its length until it caught in the chip in the katana's blade. Then he rammed it forward, cracking the steel, snapping Okita's sword in two like a twig, and Okita's eyes widened as he realized he had no way to block the next swing aiming for his head.
to be continued...
Notes: Okita's triple thrust is loosely based on the historical Okita Souji's Sandanzuki (triple thrust) technique. (...Very loosely, as my entire accumulated knowledge of swordsmanship could fill about a postage stamp. A small one.)
Thanks so much, everyone who reviewed - sorry I made you wait (hope you did get some sleep, viva! ^_~) but it's a long chapter to make up for it.
With holiday busy-ness fast encroaching, the next chapters may be a bit slow to be post, but rest assured they are coming; I won't leave you hanging for too long!