Sum Seventeen

A Gintama shipbunny

By

EvilFuzzy9

Kyuubei Yagyuu looked around at her surroundings, uncertain what to think. Her one eye was a little wide, eyebrow raised in slight amazement. When Otae had invited her over to help inspect the dojo, she had not been expecting anything like this.

Cool, clean air wafted freely through Kodokan dojo, bringing with it the scent of honeydew and freshly cut grass. Golden beams of sunlight streamed in through open shoji style sliding doors, illuminating stiff, tightly woven tatami mats arranged in neat rows on the floor.

They felt nice beneath her feet.

Clean.

She glanced aside. Along the inner walls of the dojo, Kyuubei saw symmetrically arranged weapon racks laden with finely carved and polished wasters. In the middle of the innermost wall, in a place of spatial honor, was hung the dojo banner which proclaimed this the Kodokan school of Tendo Mushin Ryuu.

Everything looked clean and as good as new, giving the place an appearance of most fastidious upkeep. Which worried Kyuubei, a little. Perhaps to an amateur, such a clean dojo might seem like a good place to learn. Maybe, to someone who didn't know any better, the sight of this place looking brand new and virtually untouched, equipment and facilities alike seemingly pristine and unused, this would seem like a good thing.

Another person may have looked at the state of the gym and thought that its appearance was simply the result of good upkeep, and not think any more on the matter than that. But to a dojo master and kenjutsu expert like Kyuubei, the appearance of Kodokan dojo was worrysome.

Because while an affluent, celebrated dojo teaching such a famed style as that used by the Yagyuu may have been able to afford to maintain such a pristine appearance, a school as small as this, which taught the obscure and situationally useful Tendo Mushin Ryuu should look worn down and lived in. That Otae and her brother could keep the place looking this tidy, on their limited budget, only betrayed the sheer dearth of students.

Someone else might not have read so much into the dojo's appearance, but Kyuubei knew better. A dojo like Kodokan, no matter how well it was tended or maintained, should never look this clean and idyllic. The wooden training swords looked nearly untouched, no chips or cracks on the blunted edges, no grooves worn into the handles. The weapons showed hardly any signs of the stress or damage you should expect from bokuto being used by mere learners.

Kyuubei could have shaken her head sadly at the sight. If people really trained and sparred here, the equipment would look more broken in, you would see some indication of wear in the mats from the feet of the students as they practiced their footwork. Yet everything here looked nearly brand new, appearing to be all but untouched.

Otae smiled expectantly at Kyuubei, clearly waiting to hear her friend's opinion.

"Well?" she said. "What do you think, Kyuu-chan?"

Kyuubei bit back a grimace. She knew very well how much this dojo was struggling – more than once, she'd wished there was something she could do to help without compromising the standing of her own school – but still it really struck her like a blow to the gut to come here and see just how empty it was.

It made her feel like a complete heel just for being the next in line to inherit her own Yagyuu family's dojo. She wished she could do something for Otae, but the only realistic option – a marriage to unite the two schools and assimilate Kodokan teachings into the Yagyuu dojo – was tragically unlikely after that whole fiasco she had caused in trying to take Otae as her wife.

And it still hurt Kyuubei a little to know that her friend would probably never reciprocate the feelings she had for her. It was the pain of being stuck in the friend zone, one of the most humbling experiences for man or woman.

Quietly, Kyuubei spoke.

"...it looks pristine,' she said slowly, the tone of her voice and the look in her eye betraying the swordsman's concern. "Clean. Untouched."

Otae smiled unworriedly.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Isn't it nice? Shin-chan put a lot of effort into tidying the place up." Her eyes twinkled, and Kyuubei fought the urge to let out a sigh. "He's becoming a very reliable young man, even if he does still hang around with those good-for-nothing Odd Jobs characters~"

"Well, that's... nice..." said Kyuubei, her cheeks a little flushed. It exasperated her, to hear Otae go on about her brother. Especially nowadays.

The eye-patched swordsman could not help but look back wistfully on the days when Otae would complain to her about Shinpachi. It had irked Kyuubei a little at the time, but now she found herself wishing things could go back to how they were then. Ever since she and Otae had gone out drinking, and she'd drunkenly spilled the contents of that most unfortunate dream to her friend...

"Isn't it, though?" said Otae cheerfully, her demeanor warm and friendly. "He'll make a very good husband, one day," remarked the Shimura daughter, making it sound like an offhanded comment.

But Kyuubei knew better. She could sense her friend's ulterior motive.

"I'm sure he will..." she said stoically, doing a very good job at sounding dismissive. Dearly, Kyuubei wished for that damnable warmth to depart from her cheeks. Even more, though, she wished that she had never told Otae-chan about that dream...

"Especially if he happened to marry a nice young woman who was in line to inherit a particular swordfighting dojo..." added Otae, pretty much everything BUT subtle. "He's become a very good swordsman, lately."

Kyuubei scoffed a little quietly at this remark, the blush leaving her cheeks as a bit of indignation set in.

"I find that hard to believe, Otae-chan," she said. "I mean no disrespect to you, but that brother of yours has never had any talent for swordfighting."

Otae hummed.

"Mm, maybe not," she said, unperturbed. "But then, talent and ability are two very different things. Even someone with none of the former can still acquire the latter, with enough hard work."

Kyuubei frowned slightly. "Perhaps so," she said. "But whatever you call it... well, Shinpachi-kun doesn't really have much of either, does he?"

Otae giggled, her eyes twinkling cutely.

Kyuubei blushed again, and discreetly averted her gaze just a little. Her friend could be dangerously attractive, when she wanted to. No matter what the one-eyed swordsman's dreams might have had to say on the matter, Kyuubei at least knew that in the here and now it was Otae whom she liked.

No matter how much her friend tried to convince her that she was just projecting.

"Ahh, Kyuu-chan..." said Otae, sounding a touch wistful. "I suppose it's been a while since you've seen him fight seriously, hasn't it...? Shin-chan has seriously improved since back then, you know. He even managed to get ippon on Obi..."

Kyuubei was respectfully silent for a moment, knowing how much that man had meant to the Shimura daughter. She could see the pain, briefly, in her friend's eyes.

She envied that Hajime, and for more than just one reason.

"Did he really?" said Kyuubei dubiously. "That Obi One... they called him the Galaxy Swordsman, didn't they? He was incredibly strong, and skilled too." She sighed. "Shinpachi-kun, on the other hand..."

"He's grown a lot," Otae said simply, smiling at Kyuubei. Despite the topic of discussion, the expression actually looked to meet the woman's eyes. "Worthless as he may be in most things, that Gin-san my brother hangs out with does have at least one thing going for him..."

Kyuubei nodded wordlessly, knowing where her friend was going.

Gintoki Sakata... well, Kyuubei knew quite assuredly that Gin-san was strong. Damned strong. He may have been a bitter, petty, unreliable old neet nowadays, but Gintoki's limbs had clearly never forgotten the days when he was called Shiroyasha.

As far as strength of arms went, Gin was probably at or near the very pinnacle of human ability. In terms of his abilities as a swordsman, Sakata was well into the ninety-ninth percentile.

But, still.

He just did not strike Kyuubei as the teacher type. No, he seemed far too unreliable and unmotivated, too preoccupied with petty, insignificant matters. How could he have been teaching Shinpachi anything?

It just didn't add up.

"Yes..." said Kyuubei slowly, pensive. "...He is indeed a swordsman of virtually unparalleled skill. But..." She shook her head. "Well, Gintoki-san just doesn't strike me as the sort of person responsible or reliable enough to pass on what he knows to the next generation."

"Oh, maybe not formally," said Otae. "But there's more than one way to skin a stalker, as they say~"

Kyuubei sweatdropped slightly.

Y-you might be the only one who says that, actually... she thought, mentally filling in as the straight man.

Out loud, though she said, "By example, you mean?" venturing a shrewd guess as to Tae Shimura's meaning.

The pony-tailed brunette nodded.

"Yes, I think that's how he probably does it," said Otae. "Ever since joining up with Gin-san and Kagura-chan, Shin-chan's swordsmanship has improved by leaps and bounds. Although I suppose it still might not seem like much, to someone of your skill, Kyuu-chan~❤"

Kyuubei's blush deepened, she being incredibly weak to flattery from Otae.

Aside from coughing a little conspicuously, Kyuubei was silent for a moment. She briefly mulled over her friend's words.

She wondered.

Could what Otae said actually be true? Intellectually, Kyuubei could admit that there was a remote possibility, of course, but... Shinpachi?

No.

No matter how she looked at it, her brain refused to accept it. It just did not compute. The very notion seemed patently absurd to Kyuubei, the idea that Otae could honestly say her brother had become a skilled swordsman. As far as the Yagyuu heiress was concerned, that was plainly impossible.

However much she may have warmed up to Shinpachi, with the passage of time, still Kyuubei refused to acknowledge what her friend was suggesting. Maybe Shinpachi was good around the house, and maybe he actually had developed some modicum of leadership ability and organizational skills running that Otsu-chan fanclub of his, but still the boy had no really outstanding qualities.

Kyuubei stubbornly refused to accept that Shinpachi could be anywhere near her equal. The boy was too passive and weak-willed to ever excel in something like swordfighting. Sure, perhaps he wasn't particularly stupid or incompetent, heck, maybe he DID have some degree of ability, but it took more than that to make a samurai.

Maybe she did not have the same disdain for Shinpachi as she once did – honestly, she really did think of him as a friend, nowadays. She had warmed up to him a lot, and she really did like him, for what it was worth.

But that didn't mean she respected him.

No, Kyuubei was too stubborn. The obstinate spirit which had led her to persevere and do her damnedest to prove herself as a true samurai in a country where women nearly may as well have been second class citizens also prevented her from entirely letting go of certain old grudges.

No matter WHAT certain late night dreams might have to say on the matter, Kyuubei was not that cozy with Otae's brother. She could treat him civilly, and trust him as a friend, but some things simply ran deeper.

It was not at ALL a matter of Kyuubei subconsciously covering up certain kinds of feelings she may or may not have had for the boy in an attempt to cling to an old crush. Most assuredly not!

Kyuubei sighed, her cheeks a little pink, her face feeling a little warm. Trying to tear her mind away from that dangerous train of thought, she spoke at last.

"I... just can't believe that," she murmured. "No matter how I look at it, Shinpachi-kun is just Shinpachi-kun. No more, and no less. Nothing can change that."

Otae gave Kyuubei a piercing, knowing look, the smallest of smiles curling the corners of her mouth.

"Is that supposed to be a bad thing, Kyuu-chan?" she wondered aloud, shrewdly cutting to the point. "I think you may be underselling his worth..."

Her eyes twinkled, making Kyuubei shiver.

"...especially when you take your own feelings into consideration," Otae added a second later, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder.

Kyuubei's expression became visibly strained.

"It was just a dream, Otae-chan," she weakly insisted. "Nothing more. In the end, still the only one for me is..."

She blushed, then. Flustered, Shinpachi's visage flashed abruptly before Kyuubei's mind's eye, making her stumble over her tongue. She felt like the muscle was tied into knots, stymieing her attempts to enunciate Otae's name.

"We both know who it is, Kyuu-chan," said Otae pleasantly, patting Kyuubei on the shoulder. "Even if one of us doesn't see it, yet."

Kyuubei's cheeks became a shade of red normally reserved for tomatoes and chili peppers.

"I d-do NOT like your brother...!" she protested, sounding quite thoroughly abashed.

Otae giggled.

"Really?" she said brightly, cheerfully skeptical.

Kyuubei gulped. Utterly nonplussed, there was nothing she could say. Not while the snatches of remembered images and moments from that freaking, thrice-accursed dream flashed through her head.

Blushing furiously, she turned tail and ran out of the dojo. Her face felt like someone had dumped burning ash on her head, it was just so hot.

Otae watched her friend go, shaking her head and smiling.

"Oh, Kyuu-chan..." she said. "It's so obvious."

Kyuubei hurried blindly down the streets of Kabukicho, discountenanced and embarrassed. Her cheeks were still bright scarlet, and the swordsman could feel her heart pounding within her breast. Despite herself, she could feel the butterflies in her gut, fluttering around and making her intestines contort themselves in ways that sent shivers up her spine.

Mortified by her outburst at the dojo, Kyuubei was shamefacedly speed walking through Edo's red light district. She couldn't believe that she had let her friend's words get to her like that!

She shook her head anxiously, forcefully clearing it of any inappropriate images.

That damned frigging dream. If Kyuubei had never had it, or if she had never told Otae about it, then surely things would not have become this frustrating, this complicated. In hindsight she felt simply embarrassed at how distraught she had been upon waking, that unfortunate morn. With the perspective of one in the present looking back to the past, Kyuubei felt certain that if she had left it alone, she would have forgotten it soon enough.

It wasn't like dreams really MEANT anything, after all. They were just the result of random neurons firing in the brain during the rapid eye movement stages of sleep. Having a wet dream about somebody didn't mean you liked them, right? She had just been tired and frustrated when she went to sleep, that night, and her subconscious had just randomly pulled a face from her memories to put on the shoulders of the person embracing her in dreamland, making her her forget all her troubles, at least for the duration of that particular REM phase.

That it was Shinpachi, in hindsight, should not have perturbed Kyuubei nearly as much as the fact that it was a MAN. But for one reason or another, she had gotten hung up on that detail, out of all the others. It had simply fazed her more than anything else, the idea that she should dream of Otae's brother rather than Otae-chan herself.

Because it was the LATTER whom Kyuubei liked.

...right?

Kyuubei shook her head, anxious and jumpy.

No, no. Now was not the time for that. She knew who she liked, and her conviction in the reality of those feelings was surely not so halfhearted as to be shaken by something as small as a single, solitary dream! It had been months since it happened, since she had that dream, shortly after being turned back into a woman by a second dose of the Dekobokkoist's gender-altering virus.

Certainly, it had to have been an isolated incident, Kyuubei's hormones simply frazzled, her subconscious mind merely temporarily confounded by the sudden transition back to her original gender. Shinpachi and Otae were brother and sister, after all. The sudden change in her body's estrogen and testosterone levels simply causing the more primitive parts of her mind to briefly transfer the feelings she had for Otae onto the nearest, most biologically similar male.

That was it, she was sure. It had been nothing more than that. If she had left well enough alone, Kyuubei was now certain, things would have readily gone back to normal on there own.

But she didn't. She just HAD to mention the dream to Otae, being so worried about what it might mean. And so Otae-chan had gotten it into her head that Kyuubei must have secret feelings for her brother. Thus, ever since then, Tae Shimura had repeatedly tried to nudge her friend towards getting together with Shinpachi, perhaps feeling that such a coupling would be more proper, maybe believing that Kyuubei had always had feelings for Shinpachi, and simply had transferred them onto her for some arcane reason.

Which bothered Kyuubei. Chiefly, because she was beginning to wonder.

The more Otae expounded on her brother's virtues, the more Kyuubei began to be aware of Shinpachi's good side. And the more she understood of the boy's positive qualities, and the more Otae tried to make Kyuubei "see" her true feelings for the boy, the more she began to question what had once been an unshakeable absolute of her existence.

Did she really love Otae? At least, in the way she had so long believed? Because either way, Kyuubei DID love her friend.

But whether that love was Philia or Eros, she began to be unsure. Did she love Otae as a lover? Or just as a dear friend? Certainly, they were young, and perhaps in her youthful naievety Kyuubei mistook one kind of love for another, maybe seeking some way subconsciously to legitimize herself as a male, regardless of what she was born.

Kyuubei shook her head, then.

No. She would not let herself go down that avenue of thought any further. She loved Otae, and only Otae. That was that. No one else was in her heart. No one else could make Kyuubei feel things the way Otae could.

Otae was the only one for her. That was that, and Kyuubei would not let anyone tell her otherwise. Not Otae, not herself, not even—

BUMP

Rounding a corner, staring intently at her feet, Kyuubei did not see it coming. Lost in thought as she was, she never even had a chance to avoid it.

Which perhaps only threw her further off kilter.

Because the second Kyuubei rounded that corner, she crashed into someone. Their body felt firm and lean, lithe and wiry. They were solid enough to make Kyuubei to lose her balance, yet they also yielded just readily enough to topple backwards upon impact, limbs becoming entangle with Kyuubei's in the brief flailing of a pratfall.

Both fell onto the ground, the flustered female landing on top of this misfortunate pedestrian. Kyuubei got the better of it, her landing cushioned by the body of the person she crashed into.

She still winced though, and took a moment to regain her bearings.

She blinked.

One good eye met four bad ones.

Kyuubei again blinked, her cheeks reddening swiftly. Her one eye widened comically at the sight of the very familiar figure lying sprawled out on their back beneath her.

She felt once more INCREDIBLY mortified.

"Sh...Sh...Shinpachi-kun...?!" she yelped, sounding remarkably girlish right then.

Of all the people she could have run into...

Jeez. Somebody up there must have had a really sadistic sense of humor.

Shinpachi squeaked, wriggling a little anxiously beneath Kyuubei. His arms were held stiffly at his sides. He looked very uncomfortable, in particular as far as with how comfortable he felt in this position.

"K-K-Kyuubei-san...!" he whimpered, sounding frightened for his life (and perhaps not without good reason). His face was beet red, and Kyuubei felt suddenly embarrassingly aware of how hard the chest of a man – even one like Shinpachi – felt against her own, the two of them mashed so tightly together in the collision.

Kyuubei spluttered anxiously, trying and failing to remove herself from Shinpachi. Their legs were tangled up, and it seemed that a tie somewhere in their clothes had gotten tied up between them as well. As a result, all her attempts to get up managed to do was rub her body against Shinpachi's.

Both of them felt a good deal more from this than was even REMOTELY appropriate to be feeling in the middle of the street, even in a part of Edo with as infamously lax a moral standard as Kabukicho, where liquor was cheap and "escorts" were cheaper. Even bound tightly down by her sarashi, the Yagyuu's bust was easily evident to Shinpachi just from the sheer proximity of their bodies. If the two of them were any closer, their bodies would be overlapping.

Feeling a twinge of jealousy at how hard Shinpachi's bosom felt in comparison to hers, Kyuubei went motionless. Silently, she tried to puzzle out how to untangle themselves without ripping their clothes. But the looped strap, or hooked loop, or whatever it was keeping them pinned together seemed to be located at the belt line.

Much too close to certain parts for either one's comfort.

Stymied, she lay there motionless for what felt like a few minutes, trying to work through the mortification and extricate her kosode from Shinpachi's hakama. It didn't help her get started that part of her body seemed to intensely dislike the thought of removing herself from this position.

While Kyuubei's brain vehemently protested such close proximity of her body to a man's, it seemed that her body itself rather liked being like this.

But still, it was not the nature of a samurai to give in to such selfish desires. Maybe it was in the nature of the samurai as a person, fallible and prone to error, but not so for the ideal of a samurai. And Kyuubei was an idealist at heart.

So despite the protests of certain parts of her body, and also the embarrassment of what she would have to do to get them unstuck from one another, Kyuubei girded her loins and stuck her hand between herself and Shinpachi

A most unmanly yelp erupted from the boy beneath her.

"K-K-K-K-Kyuubei-sannnnnn...!" squealed Shinpachi, his eyes going as wide as dinner plates, and his cheeks erubescing to the point of nigh fluorescence.

"Ah," said Kyuubei, her own cheeks feeling incredibly hot. "My apologies, Shinpachi-kun."

She removed her hand from his junk.

...or so she thought. In actuality, though, she had just grabbed another part of it.

It took her moment to realize this, however. With the way the fabric was protruding beneath her fingers, Kyuubei felt sure this was the point of the knot. So she started fiddling with it, attempting to untangle their clothes.

"AH! Kyuuubei-san! St-stop...!" Shinpachi yelped, gasping and squirming frantically beneath her.

"Hold still," Kyuubei told him, frowning a little. "You're moving it around too much for me to get a good hold on it..."

"That's kind of the ideaaaa...!" squealed Shinpachi. "That is NOT a knot!"

Kyuubei frowned a little more, perplexed by what Shinpachi was saying. But stubbornly, she soldiered on and firmly grabbed what she thought to be the point where their clothes had gotten linked.

It wasn't until she had run her fingers over every part of this, and felt the fabric shift and something harden and enlarge within her grasp, that Kyuubei finally put two and two together.

"Ah," she said, remarkably calm, her fingers still curled around the bulge in Shinpachi's pants. "So that's what it is..." she said, seeming strangely unaffected and unperturbed by the realization. "Shinpachi-kun's peni—"

Blood suddenly erupted from Shinpachi's nostrils, a crimson geyser shooting just over Kyuubei's head.

It took her a moment to remember her basic primer on anime symbolism.

And that was when Kyuubei finally lost it. She punched Shinpachi in the face with her free hand, freaking out and panicked. She knocked him unconscious, breaking his glasses with the blow and getting his blood all over her knuckles.

As luck would have it, that was then when Kyuubei looked up to see that all of this had happened right in front of Snack House Otose, and by extension Odd Jobs Gin.

"Eh?" came a man's voice. "Patsuan?"

Kyuubei paled distinctly at the sound of those words.

Sweat pouring down her face, perspiration wholly unrelated to any external thermal factors, Kyuubei twisted her neck a few degrees to face in the direction Gin's voice had just come from. She was still sprawled across Shinpachi's body, the boy out cold beneath her. His glasses were cracked, and his nose was bloodied.

She was well aware of how incriminating a portrait all of this painted.

"Ah," she said, her voice sounding curiously high pitched. "Hello, Sakata-san..."

She saw the look on Gintoki's face. It was a sadist's sneer, the shit-eating grin of a born troll. Dull red eyes like the peepers of a dead, rotting fish twinkled with cruel glee at the sight before them.

A chill went down Kyuubei's spine. She paled even further.

"Um. This isn't what it looks like," she said.

Gin-san smirked.

"Kyuubei and Patsuan, sittin' in a tree~" sang Kagura tauntingly, crouching across from Kyuubei in Gin's office with an identical look to the one her boss had just been sporting in the previous scene. "K—I—S—S—I—N—G~"

Kyuubei's face was buried in her hands. She was seated in a guest chair, Shinpachi's bruised and battered form lying next to her. In a place of relative comfort, the boy's glasses, with their bent frames and cracked lenses, were resting atop a pillow on Gin-san's desk.

Gintoki himself was seated in his own chair, looking out snidely over Kyuubei, Kagura, and Shinpachi.

"First comes love, then comes marriage~" continued Kagura. "Then comes Kyuubei pushin' a ba-by carriage~!"

The Yato girl then promptly jumped back onto her feet, laughing heartily. She pointed at Kyuubei, jeering rudely and gleefully.

Gin-san had the same damned insufferable grin on his face, too.

"Hahaha," he chuckled, sounding like a complete and total ass. "Maaaan, Kyuubei-chan, I knew you were butch, but ain't this taking it to a whole other level? You completely cold cocked Shinpachi's glasses."

He sneered at her, continuing. Kyuubei kept her face buried firmly in her hands. She could not face these two.

"What is that, anyways?" Gin mused snidely. "Clocking your partner after you've had your way with them?"

"Domestic violence, aru," suggested Kagura, before returning to pointing and sniggering at Kyuubei.

"Ehhhh, I was thinking more some kind of sex play," said Gintoki. "But I suppose that could be it, too, couldn't it? Beating your partner after doing that with them in the middle of the street... I dunno whether you'd call that kinky or cold."

"Probably illegal either way, aru," said Kagura, sneering at Kyuubei. "I bet they'll throw you in the brig for domestic violence and public indecency, aru."

Gin laughed, again like an ass.

"Yeah!" he said. "She'll be lucky if she gets out of this without losing a couple of pounds. On her neck, that is!"

Kagura laughed.

"Yeah!" she said. "It'll be her neck for doing that, aru!"

Kyuubei twitched, finally removing her face from her hands.

"What that?!" she snapped. "There was no that! None of this, or that, happened between me and Shinpachi-kun!" she exclaimed. "We ran into each other, and our clothes got tangled up. That's all that happened."

"Ohhh?" Kagura smirked. "That's not what your hands were saying, aru~"

Gin nodded. "Yeah," he said snidely. "And I think there was a lot more getting tangled up than just their clothes!"

"YOU WEREN'T EVEN THERE!" Kyuubei snapped, pointing at Kagura. "AND YOU ARE A FILTHY PERVERT!" she added, pointing at Gin-san.

The trollish, Yorozuya-esque expression did not leave either of those damn smug faces. Both Gintoki and Kagura gave Kyuubei shit-eating grins, each perfectly mirroring the other's expression.

Gin-san raised his hands in a placating gesture, then, his expression very briefly becoming serious.

"Hey, hey," he said. "We ain't judgin' ya, Kyuu-chan~" And the trollface returned in full force. "A lady has her needs after all. Amirite?"

"Yeah, aru," drawled Kagura, sneering. "Even if those needs've gotta be filled by a four-eyed loser like Patsuan."

Kyuubei bristled.

"I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH HIM!" she roared in frustration, pounding her hands down on her lap furiously. Her one eye glared intensely between the two odd jobbers.

Gin-san started lazily picking his ear, flawlessly feigning disinterest.

"Ehhh?" he drawled. "Who said anything about sex? We were talking about something else entirely."

His expression then turned downright devilish, and suddenly he was right up in Kyuubei's face.

"Or do you have something you wanna confess, Kyuu-chan~?" he singsonged teasingly.

Kyuubei flushed.

"I DO NOT!" she snapped, punching Gintoki right on the kisser.

"HOLY MATRIMONY...!" Gin exclaimed in pain. His head snapped back, and he flew into the opposite wall with a thunderous CRASH.

A trail of blood marked his trajectory.

Kagura, turning her eyes from Gin once he slumped down onto the floor, looked back at Kyuubei. She had a theatrically appalled expression on her face, and she leaped to her feet to point accusingly at the older girl.

"Are you hitting on Gin-chan now, too, aru?!" she demanded melodramatically. "You skank! You whore! Isn't one man enough for you (even if that man is Shinpachi, aru)?!" she cried, likely mimicking lines she had heard from some daytime soap opera. "How could you betray our trust like that, aru?! You homewrecker!"

Kyuubei blinked.

"Um. Maybe this is a bad time..." she said slowly, getting up out of her chair.

She made to leave, only to stopped by a hand grabbing the hem of her clothes.

"Ngh..." groaned Shinpachi, opening his eyes to squint blearily at his surroundings. "My head... what happened...?"

"An unfortunate accident," said Kyuubei reflexively. "You fell down the stairs and onto my fist."

Shinpachi blinked slowly.

"Eh?" he said, squinting up at Kyuubei. "Eh? Doesn't that sound kind of suspicious...?"

Kyuubei squeaked.

Her cheeks turned bright pink, and she looked distinctly abashed.

"N-no...!" she yelped. "Not at all. It's exactly what happened, Shinpachi-kun. Cross my heart and hope to die."

Shinpachi frowned softly. For a moment, Kyuubei worried that he would figure out the truth.

But then he smiled at her, nodding weakly.

"O...okay..." he said softly. "I believe you... Kyuu...chan..."

His eyes subsequently rolled up back into his head, and he fainted dead away once more.

Kyuubei's blush went thermonuclear then, from both the way Shinpachi looked and the way he had just addressed her. It confused, to feel so pleased by this. And what was that tingling sensation in her belly?

"Hehehe..." came the evil laughter of Gintoki Sakata, standing up from where he had crashed into the wall. Blood was trickling down his face, coming from somewhere above his hairline. He was sneering at Kyuubei.

"Ufufufu..." chortled Kagura wickedly, mimicking Gin-chan's expression.

Kyuubei gulped.

Shinpachi was having a weird dream.

A really weird dream.

Now, it had started out normally enough. The specifics would be far too explicit to detail in a T-rated fanfic, mind you, so we'll just say that he was dancing with Otsu-chan.

Naked.

And let's call that dance the horizontal tango.

But, anyways, while Shinpachi was having a very nice, perfectly normal dream at first, it soon started to get kind of... well, bizarre.

For one, Kyuubei suddenly appeared on the other side of him, turning his and Otsu's duet into a threesome. Except then there was suddenly only two of them again, and apparently Otsu had been Kyuubei all along.

That was when things got really weird.

He and Kyuubei started playing ping pong. Naked.

This was not a euphemism for anything. That is literally what they were doing.

Well.

Okay, so the ping pong ball was actually another kind of ball, and there were actually two. And Kyuubei was the only one paddling those. Shinpachi was paddling something more like a couple of really big and really soft basketballs.

Then suddenly Kyuubei had bent him over and was spanking Shinpachi with her paddle. And Shinpachi, for his part, was somehow bending a second Kyuubei over and spanking her, while this Kyuubei herself bent over and spanked another Shinpachi, so and so forth, ad infinitum.

It was like some kind of fractal human spank-a-pede.

Which was a LOT weirder than Patsuan's usual dreams. Those ones just involved sex. Or taking an important test in his underwear. Even though he had graduated from temple school YEARS ago.

But, anyways, at the end of Shinpachi's dream, he heard a loud whistle. Then suddenly he, Kyuubei, and the whole entire spank-a-pede was run over by a speeding train, which went into a tunnel with him and Kyuubei – somehow still alive – bent over its cow catcher.

Shinpachi was located very specifically on top of Kyuubei. Something felt very good, like he was being squeezed into a narrow tube, and then something POPPED.

Shinpachi woke up.

For some reason, his head was resting in Kyuubei's lap.

She looked down at him, hearing him moan as he awoke.

"Shinpachi-kun?" she said. "Are you okay? You suddenly passed out."

Shinpachi blinked blearily, looking up into Kyuubei's face. Even if it was just an indistinct blur of smudged colors to his terrible eyesight, the young man could nonetheless make out the element of redness in the black-topped peachy splotch.

She was blushing, he realized.

And vaguely remembering the contents of his dream, Shinpachi proceeded to blush as well. Especially with how tenderly she was cradling him, absentmindedly caressing his cheek.

He felt pleasantly warm where she touched him.

"Ah..." he said, voice a touch dreamlike. "Yes, I think I am perfectly fine, now..."

His blush deepened, the boy abashed at saying such a cheesy line.

Kyuubei seemed to appreciate it, though. He saw what might have been a smile on her face.

Her voice was unmistakeable, though.

"That's good..." she said warmly, her fingers starting to trace idle circles through Shinpachi's hair. He shivered a little, feeling all too comfortable there in Kyuu-chan's lap.

She smelled so pleasant.

Absently, though, Shinpachi's eyes fluttered aside, glancing around at the blurry and indistinct surroundings of what he believed was probably Gin-san's office. And he blinked when he saw two roughly human shape blurs of familiar colors sprawled out on the floor a few feet away from him and Kyuubei.

"Eh?" he said slowly. "Is that Gin-san and Kagura-chan, over there?"

Kyuubei glanced over at the badly bruised and bloodied pair, whose heads were covered in lumps and contusions.

She gave Shinpachi a reassuring smile.

"Yes," she said warmly. "They had a little accident. It seems the two of them fell down the stairs..."

Shinpachi smiled, unconsciously nuzzling a little deeper into Kyuubei's lap. His eyelids drooped, and he appreciated the warmth of her body.

"That's nice," he said.

They sat there for a while like that, just the two of them.

It was surprisingly nice.

A/N: Because eight plus nine... XP

Also, this is actually my second attempt at writing a Kyuupachi fic. It's a pairing for which I have a peculiar fondness, along with ShinKagu and TaeKondo (Gokibu Leader/Captain Cockroach, anyone? :P). It's hard to set up, though.

Another thing about this that's interesting, by the by, is how it was written. While I've been doing rough drafts for a couple of my multichapter fics, this is the first oneshot for which I've done one. And that really affects the overall thing, I think, because on the second go-through I really could just take my time to make things as good as I could.

And, actually, there was a considerable change in the tone and contents of the first part. Originally, it had been sorta dramatic and could be summed up as Otae telling Kyuubei that she didn't love her. Which I had been a little iffy on even at first, and after the lighter hearted later parts it was just very incongruent, and a misleading start.

So I changed it to what you have now. Which is nice, because it better sets up the idea that Kyuubei has something for Patsuan. XD

Also this whole thing took me like five or six hours to finish rewriting, so hopefully you guys will enjoy it, and review!

Updated: 2-17-14

TTFN and R&R!

– — ❤