HEY! Back from a stressful weekend. For now, some fun facts!
Ch. 5: Back in chapter 5, Zenshi says "I'd prefer not to." A little reflection from "Bartleby, the Scrivener" by American writer Herman Melville. (we were reading it in class, haha)
Ch. 5: Also in chapter 5, Abuto's "old sport" is inspired by The Great Gatsby...(I saw the movie during break, while I was sick, and now we're reading it class, lol)
Ch. 8: Zenshi makes a joke and says he's from the "Planet Pheromones". He is indirectly channeling Usui Takumi from Kaichou wa Maid-sama. (one of my favorite shoujo series because it's cute and perfectly cliche in every way ~ and it has an ADORABLE ENDING OMG)
Ch. 9: The two Yato crewmen, Petty Officer Jenhao and Ensign Delong, have Chinese names based off of my cousin and uncle, respectively! (how funny...fun facts x 2: My cousin is this extremely muscular athlete, while my uncle is the epitome of swag lol)
ALL RIGHT
STORY TIME
Disclaimer: Gintama's not mine, but I love the fact that MUTSU IS A PIRATE! SakaMutsu ftw.
Eyes of Wolves
- 11 -
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
It suddenly occurred to him that the silver-haired samurai was uncannily cognizant of everything around him, yet oddly oblivious.
"When I met you," Zenshi began, "you told me to say hello to Tsukuyo."
Gin, feet propped up on his desk, nodded. "Yeah?"
"But you asked everyone how they knew me after the explosion."
"Yeah?" came the same, starkly flat reply.
"Which is true?"
"You tell me."
Zenshi studied the other man's languid idleness, his purposefully lacking movements and calculated lethargy. The man was his own polar opposite.
"You are not a regular human," was all Zenshi managed.
"I'll take that as a compliment," snorted Gin, swinging so that his feet came down flat on the ground loudly.
"How much do you know?"
Gin twirled a pen between his fingers.
"Enough."
Zenshi strode up to the man's desk, looking him square in the eye.
"And enough means observing people beyond your welcome?"
"No," the samurai answered. He was not at all ashamed, but not at all defensive. The logic that poured from his tone and his expression was so full of past and reason and relation that Zenshi had no reason to deny him credit.
"It means," Gin said, "that I know how to protect my friends. I know when I should watch them, and when I should not. I know when I should tell them, and when I should not. I am, after all, Yorozuya Gin-san."
For the rest of the day, the name Sakata Gintoki, echoed in Zenshi's mind, synonymous with a creature who gave every penny and every ounce to the bonds he did not regret establishing.
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
The explosions are deafening, and Zenshi discovers that his focus is spiraling away every time he trips over another corpse. The bodies spill across the ground, and to his horror, by the time he reaches the end of the hall, he realizes that his gun is empty and that he has dropped it several meters behind him.
Cannon one.
He wrenches the shears from his belt, where they hang loosely and thud dully against his thigh when he runs. His fingers fumble for the latches, opening the back of the cannon's operator and digging past the controls. He rips out a main hardware component and snips efficiently at the green wires despite the visible trembling throughout his entire forearm.
He is not afraid, he is not afraid, he is not afraid…
He repeats this mantra until all the green wires are split, until cannon two is also disabled, until Abuto appears out of thin air and takes the shears from his hands. He is led in a blur up to deck five, where Abuto pushes open a jammed sliding door and hurls the wire cutters down to the planet. He tears the half-ripped ski mask from Zenshi's face and confiscates his dark outer robe.
"Be in cabin one in five," orders the older Yato. "I'm counting on you to not mess up. Gravity core will be up in six."
"Your knee," Zenshi says, blankly. Indeed, Abuto's knee is torn up, causing a detrimental limp.
"I was attacked by the attacker, bud," laughs the co-captain loudly. "What else do you think happened?"
But Zenshi is concerned. The man who sliced through Abuto's tendons will remember.
And no one will be safe.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
He touched Tsukuyo's elbow, gently, experimentally, to see if she would turn. She did. Pointing at the skyline, he threw her a curious glance.
"It's beautiful," she noted.
Zenshi shook his head and shifted his hand.
"Not the skyline of the city, but the openin'?" She glanced up at the square of sky that opened Yoshiwara to the world. Her eyes fell upon the moon, where simple shapes winked back in serene silence.
"It's beautiful, too."
She observed the tall Yato with reserved apprehension. His head was tilted up to the glowing lunar sphere in the sky, his jaw long and square, his lashes reflecting a strange bluish hue.
He was a wolf, howling at the moon.
.: Saturday, TWO DAYS AGO :.
Well enough to walk about the premises, he studied. Constantly, women dressed in black masks and armed to the teeth with hidden kunai watched him. But all he did was sit on the back porch, finding a reserve of warmth gushing from the mother and child that conversed openly in the courtyard.
"The ship was huge!" exclaimed the boy.
"How huge?" asked the woman.
"This huge!" And the boy danced, skipping circles around the woman bound in her wheelchair, the women who so freely smiled, even when she caught Zenshi's eye in the corner.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
"What is the planet of the Yato like?" inquired Seita.
"Rainy. Dreary."
"What is your house like?"
"Rainy. Dark."
"And your family?"
"Stormy. Dark."
"All of them?"
Zenshi hesitated, staring the befuddled boy in the eyes so directly that Seita unsurely twiddled his thumbs.
"All of them."
.: Sunday, ONE DAY AGO :.
It was only when he was downstairs, sitting before the foreign family that welcomed him, that he realized he did not have his umbrella.
"Ya can c'mon in, ya know."
His stomach dropped when the hand so accustomed to gripping the hilt of his parasol grabbed at empty air, closing a fist around nothing.
"Do you like hotpot?"
Smiles, so many smiles. The woman's friendly expression emanated such a magnitude of light and warmth and he was nearly blinded. Slowly, unsurely, Zenshi approached the table.
"I wouldn't know."
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
"Do you have any siblings?" Seita ticked his questions off on his fingers, but not before stuffing a thick blade of grass between his teeth, as Zenshi often did.
"No."
"What's your mom like?"
"Small."
"What's your dad like?"
"Large."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Seita, who had been impressively tolerant of Zenshi's abstract answers, crossly folded his arms. It was getting late; the night had long since unfurled across the sky in dark magnificence, the moon full in all its glory. "Then what are you, medium? I don't get it," Seita sulked.
"I am a magician from the Planet Pheromones," Zenshi deadpanned.
"I thought ya said prince before," Tsukuyo called from the doorway. She peeked her head into the kitchen, soaking in the scene of Seita interrogating (once again) Zenshi at the small table. "It's late, Seita. Zenshi's gotta start bright 'n early tomorrow."
"Well, I'm a magician, too!" Seita said, rather indignantly. He did not know in what aspect he was a magician, only that he supposed magic was what made people cower in fear and cheer in awe.
"Yes, you are," sighed Hinowa, who had been quiet at the other end of the table. "You make smiles appear out of nowhere."
At that, Seita smiled, and forgot promptly about Zenshi's bizarre replies.
.: MARCH, ONE MONTH AGO :.
He enters the officers' main meeting cabin with a feat of great acting rivaled only by the greatest. The door slams open by his palm, and his tidied demeanor is anything but. He hasn't had the time to retrieve his clothes, so his typical uniform cape is draped haphazardly across his shoulders. Blood drips from his nose and lips, and his hand comes away from his side stained with red. He had convinced Abuto to deal him several blows to the face, a few to the gut, and then he'd taken his own knife and driven it non-lethally into his own body.
"Lieutenant!" exclaims one of his immediate subordinates.
"I want intercom in the front," Zenshi orders, clutching his side very briefly before pointing at the large screen at the front of the room. "What the hell is the bridge doing?" The backup generators flickered to life within seconds of his arrival, and the low, buzzing tones of the main power cell soon return. A loud creak rights the ship, and the gravity core is on again.
The screen flickers to life, and Kamui backs up from the camera because he is too close. His face is splattered with blood.
This confuses Zenshi. He had been the only attacker, not including Abuto, his sudden savior.
"Hello, my lovely crew," sings the boy with crimson hair. He has dried blood across his right eyebrow, and the way it comes down over his eye resembles a scar. "It seems there are traitors left and right."
"What happened up in the bridge?" demands Zenshi, truthfully. More traitors? Had he not been alone? How had Abuto known, in the first place?
"I was just, well," Kamui says, throwing an indicative glance over his shoulder, "decapitating a few."
The crew is ominously silent. Zenshi wipes a streak of fresh blood from his lips.
"Zen, you look pretty beaten up," Kamui says, feigning a lamenting tone. "You know, I found some guys up here trying to disable alarms and cameras. It's too bad I was nearby when the first one went off. Looks like they didn't get that one in time."
Kamui smiles, picks up another man by the collar, and hauls him over into line of sight. "This one deleted the camera footage," he explains. "I killed him right away, but I actually wanted to question him."
"But you just happened to slice him in two, right?" Zenshi stares emotionlessly into the camera, his practiced mask of blankness falling into the place.
"You got it," Kamui laughs, tossing the former crewmember aside. "Hey, look at this umbrella. It's fancy." He lifts a burgundy umbrella with an elaborate design curled around the fabric in the shape of a glistening dragon. "I didn't know we had people who could afford these things."
Kamui pauses then, and off screen, they hear a bump and a door closing.
"Danchou," comes Abuto's voice, thick over the transmission. "You know I don't like killing our own."
"Oh Abuto," sighs Kamui, sardonically. He does not offer much to his vice-captain.
"This one," Abuto announces, appearing on screen to the right. "Was at cannon one, I believe."
A corpse is towed over to where Kamui is standing; Zenshi recognizes, suddenly, that it is the man he shot. Said man had been able to strangle Zenshi and deal a few blows before a knife was driven into his chest.
"Wow," whistles Kamui. "Ouch."
"You're a funny guy, Danchou," mutters Abuto, letting the man sink to the floor. He is not particularly kind, but Abuto does not disrespect the dead; especially not his own kind. Kamui, on the other hand, feels that a smile will suffice in parting with the murdered.
"Has anyone called headquarters?" Zenshi asks tiredly. Everyone shakes their heads, no affirmatives. "Do it."
"How bad?" Abuto inquires.
Zenshi shakes his head. I don't know.
"Call the tech," Zenshi suggests. "Evaluate."
"All right, you heard the man," Kamui chirped. "There's still a mission, after all." He hums rather contentedly to himself, bloodstained hands wiping nonchalantly on his slacks. "And here I was, thinking this would be another boring trip."
The screen flickers black, and Zenshi's shoulders drop in exhaustion.
"Lieutenant," whispers his aide, a slim, tomboyish Yato woman with hair cropped close to her head. "You're bleeding quite a lot."
He looks down; his own blood has pooled at his feet. Though his self-inflicted wound may have not opened a mortal wound, it still costs him a great deal of blood. Refusing to feel lightheaded, Zenshi strides smoothly to the door.
"Thank you for noticing," he says brusquely.
"Sir, if you need help, please ask," says the woman. "We can't have you dying on us, yes?"
Zenshi raises a hand, acknowledging her concern. He leaves the room with a flutter of his cape.
.: Friday, THREE WEEKS AGO :.
Abuto grasped his shoulder, hard.
"It is high time you get out of here."
They exchanged glances, and Zenshi knew.
This one was hard to write. Kind of filler-ish.
Anyway:
NOTE: When it says "Sunday, ONE DAY AGO", it is lapsing into the "APRIL, PRESENT" from the first chapters, because about a day and a half (maybe two-ish, I believe) has passed.