"Gin-san."

"Hmm?" came a muffled grunt from the couch in the room, where Gintoki laid with his JUMP in hand and his clothes askew.

"Have you seen Kagura-chan today?"

"Hm? Oh. She said she was going to the park."

"She's been going to the park more often recently, don't you think?"

Shinpachi abruptly stopped dusting the table.

"And staying there longer than usual. Sometimes until late into the night."

An affirmative noise came from Gintoki with the shuffle of pages turning.

"I heard from the Gorilla that Okita-san has been coming in later than usual too."

Shinpachi slowly continued his unnecessary dusting of the shiny surface.

An expectant silence followed.

Gintoki sat up suddenly, he and Shinpachi turning their heads to look at each other with matching, horrified expressions.

"Kagura-chan has grown, hasn't she-"?

"She always fights with Soichiro-kun at the park-"

"-she's at that age where people get curious about some things-"

"-if she's spending all that time with that sadistic little shit, and-"

"-and she's been paying more attention to her appearance than usual so-"

"-that can only mean one thing!" they said simultaneously.

They stared at each other. Gintoki let out a nervous laugh, scratching the back of his head.

"Hahaha… ha… That was dumb, Patsuan. Just because she spends some time with that boy, disappears for hours at times and comes home at ridiculous hours doesn't mean… it doesn't mean…"

Gintoki dropped his JUMP on the ground the same moment Shinpachi let his duster drop on the table, and shot up straight.

"Shinpachi! She's doing the hanky-panky with that Shinsengumi bastard! What do we do?"

"Calm down, Gin-san! Maybe them getting together will stop their fighting and we won't have to pay half the bill of the destruction they cause."

They tried to imagine Kagura and Sougo in a relationship and all they could come up with was a little argument about toilet paper being hung wrong escalating to full out war with Shinsengumi against the Harusame where Edo got destroyed by Kagura's maniac of a brother and bald father and Kagura made a carpet out of Sougo's skin as a trophy like a black widow and went with his brother to conquer the galaxy, eventually succeeding and having everyone with blonde(ish) hair or red(ish) eyes executed and adding their skins to her collection of carpets.

Or even worse, them combining their awful, sadistic and inhumanly strong genes to form a creature they would call a baby, raise it to be the Killer of Hijikata and Conqueror of the Galaxy in their stead.

Gintoki could see it, a young, orange haired and red eyed girl wielding a Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon laughing amidst the remains of Edo with flames roaring around her, reflecting on her face while she imagined the destruction of the rest of the universe.

"We should just ask her." said Shinpachi.

"Are you crazy? Can you imagine what will happen when we even suggest such a thing? She'll deny it even if there is something going on, and shove that umbrella up our asses as a bonus."

They paused, thinking of ways to stop such a catastrophe from taking place.

"Shinpachi."

"What, Gin-san?"

Gintoki looked Shinpachi in the eyes, a rare, grim expression on his face.

"Call for a meeting. Say it's a level eight emergency."

Hijikata burst into the room, his sword out of its sheath and chest heaving with his rapid breathing. His legs hurt from the exertion of running all the way from the Shinsengumi compound to the Yorozuya, no cars being available at that moment.

His eyes scanned the room quickly, looking for the attackers that surely must have been there. His stance poised to fight, arm tense to swing his sword at any moment, he only saw two of the useless Yorozuya trio sitting on a table, that glasses boy's sister fending off Kondo's advances on the opposite side. Tea cups with wisps of steam rising from the top were on the table in front of each of them. Yamazaki nervously trailed in after him.

"Oh, Mayora. Finally. What took you so long?" said Gintoki, wiping snot on the bottom of the table.

Hijikata felt blood rush to his head, hand itching to run his sword through the silver haired bastard leaning nonchalantly in his seat.

"What the hell, you bastard! Level eight can only be used for extremely dangerous situations, and you ring it up just to gather us up for tea time? Are you a fucking idiot?"

Yamazaki wanted to calm him down, but being familiar the Demon Vice-Chief, he knew there was nothing he could do but wait for him to run out of steam.

"Calm down, Hijikata-san!" said Shinpachi, "This really is a level eight situation."

"I can't see any aliens bursting in here to kill you." said Hijikata sheathing his sword.

Shinpachi got up and separated the Gorilla from his sister by punching him in the face and pulling a chair between them.

"Please sit down, Hijikata-san." he said.

Shinpachi pulled a chair next to himself for Yamazaki to sit, waving the young spy over. He set two cups of tea in front of his seat and Yamazaki, who had already sat down.

Hijikata sat down too, waiting for Shinpachi to sit down on the other side and explain what the problem was. 'It must be something big for them to need to use level eight,' he thought, 'maybe they heard something about the space pirates planning an attack on Edo and decided to share the information.'

"I'll cut to the chase."

Gintoki cleared his throat, sitting up straighter and looking at each of them gravely. Only seeing that expression once or twice on the usually airheaded man, Hijikata unconsciously sat up straighter too. He was the infamous Shiroyasha, after all. 'It really must be important.'

"What you will hear in this room will stay in this room."

Hijikata nodded and gripped the edge of the table. All the others nodded in confirmation.

Gintoki took a deep breath. The suspense was killing Hijikata, but all the years he spent in the Shinsengumi had taught him to be patient.

After an expectant silence, Gintoki finally spoke.

"We think Kagura and Soichiro might be doing the hanky-panky."

Hijikata felt blood rushing to his head again, his vision going red. He jumped across the table, knocking the teacups over and closed his hands on the curly haired man's throat.

"You fucking called us here, level eight emergency, eight, because you think Sougo and your girl are going out? I'll kill you, you piece of shit!"

In the end it took Kondo, Yamazaki and Shinpachi to pull him off Gintoki, that bastard. After gathering their cups from where they had fallen and getting their refills, they sat in an uneasy silence.

Still pissed off and wanting to know what Sougo and Kagura dating necessitated this much alarm, he spoke.

"So, what makes you say that they are doing what you're thinking?"

"Well, Kagura has been going to the park where she usually meets Okita-san a lot more and staying there longer, coming home in the middle of the night and Go- Kondo-san said that Okita-san has been spending a lot more time outside than he does normally, right?"

"What part of this says they're dating, damn it!"

"Well, Sougo left the compound with a bouquet two days ago. Though I think I saw him hide a blade inside it. I'm not sure, thought." said Kondo.

"And every time they argue, the Captain gets upset and takes it out on us. I still have blisters in my hand from the last training session." said Yamazaki from his spot.

"She bought a nice dress last week, with money we don't have and went to the park with it, for God's sake! She was wearing lipstick! Don't you know there are no such things as coincidences, you damn Mayora!"

Otae clapped her hands, tears gathering in her eyes.

"Little Kagura-chan has finally become a woman!" she said, wiping her eyes with her thumbs. "Oh, they grow up so fast!"

Ignoring both Kondo's wailings of 'Our boy has finally grown up, Toushiro!' and Gintoki's nickname for him, he said;

"Shut up, all of you! So what if they are dating? What part of all this is an emergency?"

This time, it was Gintoki who leapt across the table, holding Hijikata's shoulders and shaking them.

"How can you not see it's a top-level emergency! Think, Mayora, if all that shit you eat hasn't killed all your brain cells, what will happen if they really are dating!"

Knocking Gintoki's hands off his shoulders, he decided to humor the idiot.

He saw them fighting as usual with some disgustingly lovey-dovey moments sprinkled in between. He saw them getting married with a reception that ended up in mayhem and chaos, and finally, a child. A cute little child that Sougo would raise with that violent, equally sadistic girl.

He saw that child, 7 years old and dancing on a grave marked, 'Here lies Hijikata Toushiro, Friend, Brother, Mayonnaise obsessed freak,' while cackling maniacally and running towards his parents.

His face blanched. He took a shaky breath to dispel the images.

"Alright," he said, "Alright. What do we do?"

They sent Yamazaki to gauge the situation.

After waiting for five long hours, Yamazaki appeared before the Yorozuya building and they wasted no time to drag him in and start the interrogation.

The results weren't heartening. Apparently, Sougo and Kagura just spent half an hour trading punches, and the rest was spent laying under the shade of a tree talking and, as Yamazaki said, cuddling.

He said he left after they started mooching and Sougo's hand slipped up Kagura's thigh and up her qipao's slit.

His eyes burned. He had never wanted to see his Captain in that position, and now it would forever be burnt in his eyelids.

'I don't get paid enough for this,' he thought, as the Yorozuya, his Commander and Vice-Commander hashed out the details of how they could end this terrible, doomed, kind-of romance.

"Ah… Um, Kagura-chan." Gintoki said nervously, the said girl leaning on her enormous dog and snacking on whatever she found on their constantly lacking fridge.

"What is it, Gin-chan?" she said, eyes fixed on the shitty soap opera playing on the TV.

Gintoki shuffled his feet, sat on the sofa and leaned back on the backrest, then sat up upright. Leaned back again. Fiddled with his sleeve.

"You've been meeting wi- Um. Seeing Soichiro-kun recently, right?"

"Yes? I always see him. He patrols the Kabuki district, you know that."

"Well. Yes, true. That's true."

At his choked tone, Kagura tore her eyes from the TV to look at him.

"Are you alright, Gin-chan?"

"Yes, yes! Of course," Gintoki let out a weak laugh, "I'm always alright!"

His fake laughter faded off with Kagura still looking at him like he has gone mad.

"Well… The thing is, Kagura," he said, taking a breath to calm himself, "You're a grown girl, now."

"Yes?"

"And, well… Boys, uh," Gintoki said, looking at anything but her, "Boys may start to take interest in you."

"Yeah? They've already been taking and interest in me for a while now," said Kagura, returning to her soap opera, "You don't have to worry about it. I can handle myself."

"No, no, I know. But! If you happen to take an interest in a boy, you should know that all men are pigs and they either want your money, or your body! And seeing that we don't have any money they definitely want your body so you should just crush their balls, got it? Except me and Patsuan, of course, we're your family. But crush the balls of any other men, alright? Even if you know them."

"Uh-huh, Gin-chan. Whatever you say." said Kagura, obviously not listening.

Gintoki sighed. Oh well. At least he had done his part.

"So, Sougo."

"What do you want, Hijikata-san?" Sougo said, not taking his eyes off his sword which he was oiling and polishing to get it ready for the next day.

Hijikata shuffled his feet. He fiddled with his mayonnaise lighter, turning the part with the flint stone a few times, and finally taking out a cigarette from his pack and lighting it.

He took a drag from his cigarette, the burning on the back of his throat helping him ground himself.

"That China girl sure has grown, hasn't she?"

He found himself with Sougo's sword held against his neck with its owner staring at him with cold, murderous eyes the next moment.

"Think twice about whatever you are going to say, Hijikata-san," said Sougo with a deceptively calm tone, "Because it just might be your last."

"No. No! I wasn't going to say anything untoward!" said Hijikata. "Just that you've been spending a lot of time with her, haven't you?"

Sougo seized him with cold, darkened eyes.

"What is it to you?" He pressed a little harder, calling forth a line of blood.

"Nothing! Nothing at all!" Hijikata said, a drop of sweat making its way down his forehead.

After looking at him for a few more moments, Sougo pulled his sword back and put it in its sheath.

"Good. Keep it that way. We wouldn't want our Vice-Commander's body to be found in a dumpster in a dark alley, now, would we?"

The second idea was to redirect Kagura's interest to another, nicer, kinder and more suitable boy.

"That eliminates, let's see…" Hijikata said from his spot at the table, fingers rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Absolutely no one! Everyone is nicer and kinder compared to Sougo!"

Gintoki tilted his head.

"Hmm… You're right. Anyone would be better than that little monster."

Shinpachi came into the room carrying a notepad and a pen.

"Have you come up with anything, Gin-san?"

"I don't even know what we're supposed to be doing. We are to find another boy for Kagura, right?"

"Yes, but it won't be easy." Shinpachi said, writing down the names of every male they knew. "For one, we have to take Kagura-chan's appetite into account. The person we find should be able to keep up with her bills. Which means he has to have a good income."

Affirmative grunts came from Gintoki and Hijikata. Shinpachi crossed about half of the names off the list. He sighed. 'Why does almost everyone we know have to be so poor?'

"And he has to be a good fighter. Kagura-chan would definitely get bored otherwise." said Gintoki.

Shinpachi crossed a few more names. He stared at the list.

"Gin-san."

"What is it, Patsuan?"

"Um, should we really have included all these Joui members?"

"You said to tell you of every eligible male we know, so I did." Said Gintoki while picking his nose with undue focus.

"Wait a minute, just how many Joui members do you know? I can't promise I won't arrest whoever you take to meet China girl with the three of you if you decide on one of them."

Gintoki paused.

"Ha ha… ha… What are you talking about, Patsuan? What Joui members?" Kicking Shinpachi under the table, he waited until Hijikata averted his eyes for a moment and whispered, "Cross them off, quick!" while making throat cutting motions.

"A-ah, yes… Okay. We're left with," Shinpachi quickly counted the names on the list, "three people."

Hijikata lit a cigarette and leaned back on his chair.

"Well, who are they? Don't keep us waiting."

Shinpachi cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable and looked between the two.

"We have Gorilla, Hijikata-san and lastly, the Shogun."

Hijikata, between pushing himself away from the table, trying to stand up and untangling his legs, succeeded in tipping his chair back and crashing on the ground.

"What the hell, Shinpachi! I'm not letting my little girl get together with a zoo animal!"

"Why is my name on the damn list? Why is the Shogun's name on that list?"

Shinpachi sighed.

"Well, feeding Kagura-chan takes a small fortune, and the only people we know who can afford it are either in the Shinsengumi, or in the Edo Castle itself. So, the Shogun."

"Are you mad?" Hijikata picked himself up from the floor. He lit a new cigarette, the last one being crushed when he fell, tobacco scattered around and paper crushed beneath his chair. "We can't ask the Shogun to go out with China girl."

"Hey, are you implying my daughter isn't good enough? She may be a loud gluttonous troublemaker who picks her nose a lot, sics her giant dog on people she doesn't like and beats them to death when it doesn't work… And - her brother may be the biggest criminal in the galaxy…" Gintoki trailed off, Hijikata looking at him with a deadpan expression.

"You'll do it, Mayora."

"Wh- Hey! There's still Kondo-san on the list! Why the hell am I the one to do it?"

"Like hell I'm letting Kagura date a hairy, good for nothing stalker! You're gonna do it!"

"Sougo will kill me! He almost did when I even tried to talk to him about her!"

"You're the Demon Vice-Chief, aren't you? Deal with it."

"Hijikata-san," Shinpachi butted in. "It's only to make Kagura see there are more fish in the sea, right? Just take her attention away from Okita-san and it will be enough."

Hijikata gave an annoyed sigh, massaging his forehead. Thinking it through, dealing with a pissed off Sougo was easier than to deal with him and China girl combined with a little devil running around, trying to blow his head off with her father. He shuddered.

"Fine. I'll do it."

Nothing too bad could come out of it, right?

On retrospect, they really hadn't thought this through. How the hell was he supposed to take her away from Sougo? He didn't even know how to flirt. He was too busy chasing down criminals to make time for romance.

Well, she and Sougo always fought, didn't they? So she didn't have much experience with it either. But she was a young woman, and all young women wanted to be taken to dates, given flowers and gifts and all that shit, right? He was sure Sougo did none of that. 'Except from that thing with a bouquet with a dagger inside it. What kind of man tries to kill his girlfriend with flowers?'

Before he could think about how he would breach the subject with Kagura, he saw her with Sougo, eating ramen in Sougo's favourite restaurant. He observed them for a few minutes, and as expected their lunch abruptly became a shouting match and Kagura stormed off after bringing her umbrella down onto Sougo's head. Hijikata could hear the slam from where he stood 20 meters away.

'This is my chance,' he thought and ran to catch up to Kagura. She was walking fast, her annoyance obvious in her fast pace and her muttering under her breath.

"Hey, China girl." Hijikata called out. Kagura stopped and turned around with a frown on her face.

"What do you want, Mayora? Don't you have to intimidate your minions or something?"

"They're subordinates, not minions! And I don't intimidate them."

"Yeah, uh-huh. So what do you want?"

Hijikata paused, thinking how to go through with it. Finding nothing, he decided to deploy his only tactic.

He looked at Kagura with half lidded eyes, startling her. He pushed her back against the closest wall and pulled a flower from the bush at his side.

"Forget about that red eyed sadistic bastard and be mine instead, Kagura."

Kagura spluttered, speechless. A furious blush rose to her cheeks unbidden.

'Bingo.' Thought Hijikata, taking a hand down from the wall to take her smaller one and raising it to his lips to lay a kiss on her knuckles.

His lips met cold metal instead. Feeling a dark aura behind him, he raised his eyes and saw Sougo glaring at him with darkened eyes.

"You have three seconds to get away from her, Hijikata-san. Or I won't be responsible for my actions."

Hijikata immediately dropped Kagura's hand, drawing away a few steps. A tiny shudder travelled up his spine.

"I thought my warning had been clear, but apparently not. I'll do the mercy of letting you choose which dumpster you're going to end up in." Sougo said, raising his sword.

'God damn it.' Hijikata thought, regretting ever responding to that emergency call.

Gintoki sat across Hijikata, who had come to the Yorozuya banged up. He watched with disinterested eyes as he held an ice pack against his swollen black eye, wincing every time he moved it.

"So you're saying you flirted with Kagura-chan, Okita-san came in between and dragged you to an alley, beat you unconscious and left you there?"

"Ugh."

"It's worse than we thought. What are we going to do, Gin-san?"

They sat in thoughtful silence for a few moments. Hijikata shifted his ice pack.

"No choice. We have to get rid of Soichiro-kun. Do you know any good places to dump bodies, Patsuan?"

"Why would I know where to dump a body? And we can't kill Okita-san!"

"Why the hell not? We would be doing the mankind a favour."

"You can't kill an officer of law, bastard." said Hijikata.

"And Kagura-chan would get upset! Do you remember what happened the last time she got upset?" Shinpachi added.

She had eaten two months' worth of food in four days while bursting into tears without cause, Shinpachi making grocery runs every two hours. They couldn't pay rent for months after that.

"Okay. No killing Soichiro, then. How about Kamui? We could tell him and he would be here in no time."

"He would kill Okita-san! We said no killing!"

"Ah, true. What a siscon, that boy. He reminds me of you, Glasses."

"I'm not a siscon!"

"Whatever. What else?"

Hijikata grunted.

"How about we assign Sougo on a long mission? Preferably a lifetime."

"Again, the same outcome." said Shinpachi.

"Well, how about-"

Gintoki's sentence was interrupted by Kagura slamming the door open with tears in her eyes and running to her – Gintoki's – room without a glance at them.

The three men fell silent, looking at the direction she disappeared, then stared at each other with bemused eyes.

"No." said Shinpachi.

"Yes!" exclaimed Gintoki. "There's only one thing that can make a girl her age cry like that! All our problems have been solved. Now I just have to comfort her, give her all the food she wants and soon she'll forget all about Soichiro-kun and be back to normal in a week!"

"Doesn't this seem a little too convenient?" Hijikata stood up.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Mayora."

"That's what the Trojans did and look what happened to them!"

"Shut up and shoo! I have a daughter to comfort." Gintoki said, walking away to knock on his room's door.

Shinpachi sighed.

"This will end in tears. And probably explosions."

Notes:

So I really don't know where to go with this, hahaha!

If you have any ideas or requests, I'm open to them :)