Chapter II

Which deals with Gin Quixote's first sally (unless you count that bitch Sally from middle school, but no one does)

As he left his hometown for the first time, Gin Quixote felt like he was truly a shounen hero. He believed that he must have looked like Ash K*tchum, strolling out of town with the sun rising behind his back, fire in his eyes, and a pissy magic rat on his shoulder. He imagined that this image of him would have to at least be a full page spread in the manga that would record his feats, if not the cover of the first volume. (Of course, a fully grown man wearing a dirty kimono under the world's shittiest suit of armor and riding a giant Shi tzu looks less like a temperamental teen and more like a mental patient, but, in case you forgot, Gin Quixote was batshit crazy.)

So, Gin rode with the sun beginning to rise behind his back, the dog under him seriously considering launching the hero and a spin-off series (Sadinante and His Ninja Pals?), and a purple-haired kunoichi following the duo some distance back. However, as he continued on his way, an awful thought occurred to Gin: not only did he not have a mentor, he had not yet established himself as a lovable troublemaker with a heart of gold. "How am I supposed to appeal to the readers if I haven't shown that I'm a kind-hearted troublemaker like them?" he asked himself. "No one wants to read about a kid with a 70-30 hair part who gets good grades and respects his elders. Where's my boyish charm, dammit?!"

At this realization, Gin Quixote nearly quit right then and there. After all, he was already pretty tired and a little hungover too. In all honesty, he hadn't thought being a shounen protagonist would be so much work, since most of them just sleep, eat, and generally dick around until their first training montage. However, looking back, Kabukicho (or Edo or whichever) already looked pretty far away, and, come to think of it, considering that it was a miracle Sadinante hadn't eaten him yet, trying to make the beast turn around seemed like pushing his luck. Therefore, Gin decided he might as well keep going and go on some boyish escapades at the next stop.

Content with the thought that he didn't have to do anything at the moment (as not doing anything was what he was best at), the yorozuya laid down on Sadinante's back and began to nap, dreaming of the author-slash-artist-slash-giant yellow-shirted gorilla who would one day illustrate his adventures and sell them for a meager salary to a weekly magazine.

The manga opens with a picture of Gin when he was just a little kid with no hair on his privates. He is wearing a red leotard and riding his moped along the edge of a river in the mountain he calls home. The caption says, "A long, long time ago, deep in the mountains of La Tama, dozens of feet from the city... This is where our tale begins, I guess~"

"Oi, why's my author gotta be so low-effort?" the adorable baby Gin grumbles, now squaring off against a log twice his size. ("Hey, wasn't I riding a moped a second ago? Author-san, have you even heard of continuity?") With a couple well-placed chops and a compilation of weird martial-arts noises, he splits the log into small circles. He takes out a small bottle of gold paint and carefully paints each cylinder until its wooden texture is completely hidden. Then, with a growling stomach and a pocket full of counterfeit gold, Gin walks inside his house, bows to an altar which holds a memento of his grandfather, and begins to stroll towards town.

Meanwhile, a young Analdonza Ketsuno, or Ana for short, is shown searching the same mountain. She is sighing, scratching her head, and using appropriately abstract statements of frustration such as, "It's supposed to be around here!" and "Where is it?" while squinting at what appears to be a small, high-tech compass. There are two small blips near the center of the compass-thing, which is probably actually more of a radar-thing, if we're being technical. She climbs back into her car and begins to careen down the highway at dangerous speeds. At the same time, Gin comes out of a convenience store with a contented grin, only to find Ana barreling in his direction. She barely avoids him by swerving and braking, and comes to a stop next to him.

"You crazy bitch!" Gin yells in his cute, prepubescent voice. "What the hell do you think you're doing?! You nearly spilled my milkshake!"

At that moment, Ana climbs out of the car, and gracefully bows to Gintoki. "I apologize," she says graciously, "but I was simply looking for something and didn't realize anyone lived out this far."

"O-oh, yeah, I see," Gin stammers, blushing, upon seeing the young Ana, "you just didn't realize that people lived near the convenience store. Y-yeah, of course, my-"

Gin is interrupted by the shopkeeper, who, with a slam of the doors and a wave of his fist, yells, "Oi, you brats, this ain't gold, it's wood!"

Both Gin and Ana initially panic, but Gin, being the protagonist, quickly comes up with the solution. He climbs onto his moped, and, with a chivalric look, offers his hand to Ana. "Hurry, come with me!" he says. With a glance at the shopkeeper and then a nod, she climbs onto the moped behind him and the two motor into the distance, both forgetting that Ana hadn't done anything in the first place and that her car was still parked in front of the store.

Gin pulls up in front of his house, and Ana jumps off as he parks. "Thank you, you saved me!" she says, again, forgetting that he was the counterfeiter.

"No problem," replies the young Gin, as he climbs off his moped with a boyish smile. However, that smile disappears when he looks down at his clothing, which is splattered with his forgotten strawberry milkshake. (Seriously, aren't they a little young for Alzheimer's?)

"Oh, dear, your clothes are ruined!" Ana exclaims, noticing the stain. After rooting around in the bag on her belt, she triumphantly pulls something out and hands it to him. "Here, use this," she says with a magnanimous smile.

"Thank you," he says with a blush and a grin. Smiling back, she turns and walks into his house, while he begins to clean himself up. Suddenly, he pauses and looks down at the thing in his hand. "Anyway," he mumbles to himself, "why is it a feminine pad?"

After he has finished disposing of the strawberry milkshake-soaked pad, Gin follows Ana into the house. She glances around the single room. "So, you live here alone?" she asks.

"Yeah, pretty much, ever since my grandfather died," Gin replies, calmly sticking his left pinky into his nostril. "Right, Gramps?

Ana looks at the memento on the altar and gasps. "This is..." she starts, before scrunching up her nose. "What is it?"

"A Justaway doll," Gin replies, before blowing a booger off his pinky.

"What... what is a 'Justaway'?"

"A Justaway is a Justaway. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Oh..." says Ana. The room begins to lapse into an awkward silence until Ana's high-tech compass begins to beep rapidly. "Oh, goodness! It must be here!"

"Eh? What's here?" says young Gin, looking slightly less bored than usual.

Ana smiles widely as she begins to explain. "A while ago, I found these sacred objects in my attic. At first, I had no idea what they were, but after some research, I found out that they are magic items that, when you collect all seven from across the globe in one place, will summon a dragon that will grant any wish you have. Right now I have two of them, but the scanner I invented says there are two more in this house." Then, with a more serious face, Ana asks him, "Do you know anything in this house that could be some ancient, magical artifact?"

Gin's arms cross and his eyes go to the ceiling as he mulls it over. After a long pause, he looks at her, and slowly starts, "...Do you think it could be the Justa-"

"I am absolutely certain it is not the Justaway."

Gin crosses his hands behind his head and groans. "I can't figure it out if you don't give me anything to go on!"

"Alright. The two I found are golden balls with different numbers of stars on them: four and two. I think that the rest should be similar: golden, magic balls with numbers on them."

Gin nods with sudden comprehension, and says, "Well, you're in luck, 'cause I have two 'golden balls' right here between my legs if you-"

Gin Quixote awoke as Sadinante came to a sudden stop. "Was that really the punchline…?" Gin mumbled as he forced himself up into a sitting position. Then, leaning over Sadinante's head, he asked the dog, "What're you stopping for, furball? You need to take a piss, huh?" Sadinante barked happily in response "Then just piss, don't wake me up. This adventuring stuff's a pain in the ass."

"I think he stopped because of me," came a gruff voice in reply. Gin Quixote looked up to see an old woman with thick makeup and a cigarette held loosely in one hand standing in front of a run-down inn. However, to Gin's sugar- and manga-addled brain, the woman appeared to be a wise old sage, and the inn a mountaintop dojo.

"Oi, old man, are you this dojo's sensei?" Gin asked as his pinky finger sought out his nostril.

"Who the hell are you calling 'old man,' bastard?" the old woman replied in a calm voice. The innkeeper was more than used to dealing with rude, drunk, and less-than-sane patrons. Looking Gin up and down, taking in his rusty Spanish armor, the kimono underneath, and the giant, panting cat (dog?) under him, she decided he was probably all three. "So, what do you want?"

"I would like to slack off of training at your dojo, sensei," replied Gin, "at least until I can get a reputation for charming hijinks and youthful rebellion."

The woman paused to ash her cigarette before once again looking the adventurer over. She sighed. "Can you pay?"

"I can pay in spirit or idealism," the yorozuya replied in a tone that suggested that he had very little of either.

"You better pay in money," the innkeeper said as she turned to enter her bar. "Oi, Tama, make up a bed. We've got a guest." Suddenly, the innkeeper heard a large crash outside. She turned to see Gin Quixote, lying on his back with a bored expression still plastered on his face while his "mount" began to calmly stroll away. Gin tried for a moment to stand, but it was clear that a combination of his heavy armor and incurable laziness was keeping him stuck on his back like a sad, white-haired turtle. That still had a hangover, I might add. Sighing again, the innkeeper yelled again, "Tama, retrieve his dog instead. Cathertornes, come help the guest out of his armor."

Tama, the inn's green-haired maid, replied, "Yes, Otose-san," and, without hesitation, ran after Sadinante equipped only with a broom. Meanwhile, Cathertornes, a middle-aged cat-eared woman, began to remove Gin Quixote's armor (and simultaneously inspect his person for valuables). Gin ignored this entirely, and instead said to the innkeeper, "Oi, Otose-sensei, Sadinante's not just a dog." Then, with an extremely serious face that looked only slightly less intense upside-down, he finished, "He's my mascot."

Otose calmly blew a trail of smoke out, before replying, "Oh, is that so?"

This enraged Gin Quixote, who thrashed about in an attempt to roll onto his stomach, and succeeded quite handily in ruining Cathertornes's efforts to remove his armor. "You bastard," he yelled, "do you know how important a mascot is to a manga? As soon as my exploits become legend, there's gonna be Sadinante merchandise everywhere! You won't be able to walk into a middle school without seeing Sadinante keychains and lunchboxes! Don't underestimate the power of little boys and girls to make their parents spend money on useless shit! Don't underestimate the need of parents to buy their children's love with trinkets from a series they don't understand! Never underestimate Christmas, idiot!"

"Alright, alright, I got it," Otose replied, waving her cigarette dismissively. "Just get out of that armor and get inside already. You're driving away my sane, paying customers.

By this time, Tama had returned with Sadinante in tow and a small amount of urine on her shoes as well. After Gin stopped thrashing about, Cathertornes was able to remove his armor (and, after a glare from Otose, reluctantly not remove the pachinko money from his pocket). Finally, the great hero Gin Quixote was shown into the "dojo," which was really a run-down bar with a few patrons that looked like they'd been sea slugs in a past life. There were only a few respectable-looking patrons at the bar, including a Shinsengumi officer and a couple of Muleteers-not men that cared for mules, mind you, but Amantos that resembled mules. Ah-in case you were wondering about the whole "Amanto" thing, basically, they're creatures that came down on giant flying boats and shot a giant phallus at a castle in a Commodore Perry-esque attempt to open Earth to interstellar trade, and they're real jerks but no one really gives two shits about them so neither should you. They're what we call the "setting," and in shitty fanfiction parodies, the setting can largely be ignored.

Anyway, Gin Quixote sank down onto one of the bar stools, exhausted after a long day of doing slightly less nothing than usual. To him, the bar's patrons all appeared to be students of the martial arts at different stages in their training. The old drunkards were long-time students, the Muleteers new inductees, and the Shinsengumi officer a sage who had already achieved Anpanlightenment. The floors were shiny from the meticulous cleaning that the students gave it as part of their training. The stains were from the blood, sweat, and tears of the youthful and passionate men who had trained there in the past, and certainly not from the puke and piss of sloshed patrons. The stench was the smell of men who trained much and bathed little, not useless MADAOs whose wives no longer loved them enough to wash their clothes. And the alcoholic beverages behind the bar-actually, those were still alcoholic beverages, and Gin's hangover was wearing down enough that he figured he might as well start working on a new one.

"Sensei," Gin drawled, his head tilting to look at Otose since he was too lazy to turn his body, "give me some of your, uh, 'elixirs of power' or whatever."

"Oi, it sounds like you don't even believe your own ramblings," Otose replied. However, despite knowing that she was unlikely to get any money out of the Yorozuya, Otose stepped behind the counter and began cleaning a glass for him. "What kind of an 'elixir' do you want?"

"Junmai, please," Gin replied without hesitation.

"Sake? You realize we're supposed to be in Spain," Otose said as she filled his glass with low-quality beer.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Gin picked up his glass, which he imagined to be a ceramic sake cup filled with the highest-grade mountain sage's brew. "I'm a ninja-samurai alien high school student, and you know that ninja-samurai alien teenagers only come from Japan." With this, Gin swallowed the contents of his glass in one swift motion, before adding, "Or at least all the good ones."

"Don't trust this man, Otose-san," Cathertornes said, in a weird, unplaceable accent. "There's no way he's from Japan."

"Of course I am," Gin grunted, slamming his glass down onto the bar. He made a peace sign next to his eyes, saying, with all the enthusiasm of a high school dropout and all the charm of a dead fish, "Kawaii desu."

Otose stared at Gin for about five seconds as he remained in the pose, his face as serious as that of a man at Open Mic Night at an old folks home. And an old man was attempting to do a comedy routine. So probably pretty serious. Finally, Otose, blew out a mouthful of smoke, and once again replied, "Is that so?"

Around this time, one of the regular patrons at the bar passed out, dead drunk, and his glass shattered on the ground. To Gin Quixote, this sounded like the ringing of a gong to signal the end of training. Or maybe bedtime. Honestly, Gin only knew as much about martial arts dojos as he could learn from manga, which was to say absolutely nothing. Regardless, this thoroughly convinced Gin that he was in a legitimate dojo, where he could truly become a shounen protagonist by ignoring everything that he was told to do. Satisfied with this, and completely ignoring the efforts of the three ladies of the inn to clean up their drunk patron's mess, Gin yelled back over his shoulder, "Hey, sensei, I wanna become an apprentice here."

Otose didn't look up from trying to prevent Cathertornes from throttling the patron in her attempts to wake him when she said, "You can do whatever you want as long as you pay for it."

"Ah, sure, sure, whatever," Gin replied, as his pinky once again began digging in his nose. "When some bastard destroys this dojo looking for me, I'll do a training montage and get revenge on him for you."

"Otose-san, are we being threatened?" asked Tama, looking up from the beer and vomit mixture that she was mopping. "Should I initiate defense protocols?"

"We should throw vermin like him out right away, Otose-san. He is crazy for sure," Cathertornes said, pausing her clumsy attempts to resuscitate the patron to nod as if agreeing with her own statement.

"I~diot," Gin drolled back. "Everyone knows that the hero's hometown or family or master gets destroyed so that the hero has a dark past." Leaning forward, he then whispered, in a conspiratorial tone, "Of course, we only think that they're dead until they show up alive 500 chapters later with an evil makeover so that the hero has to make a choice between their loyalty to their master and their new friends won through boyish exploits, breathtaking fights, moralistic slogans, and-"

"Oi," interrupted Otose, for the first time legitimately annoyed. "If you shut up, I'll give you a room for tonight free of charge."

Gin gave a half salute in thanks, saying, "I promise I won't disappoint you with my youthful hijinks and charm."

Otose took another drag on her cigarette, and as smoke drifted out of her slightly-parted lips, watched as Gin walked around the bar himself to refill his glass with "elixir" (or was it "sake?") while Cathertornes and Tama hoisted the passed-out patron into the air and carried him out the door.

"I can't wait, I'm sure."

Notes for those who haven't read Don Quixote or don't understand the characters:

Gin Quixote de la Tama - Don Quixote de la Mancha + Sakata Gintoki

Sadinante - Rocinante (Don Quixote's horse) + Sadaharu

Analdonza Ketsuno - Aldonza Lorenzo (Dulcinea's real name) + Ketsuno Ana

Otose & Tama - Innkeeper and Innkeeper's daughter (both unnamed, as far as I know)

(I combined all the innkeepers in the novel into one super-innkeeper)

Cathertornes - Maritornes (Assistant of the innkeeper) + Catherine

In case you're wondering what the middle bit is based on, it's a parody of the first chapter of Dragonball (the original, not Z)