Epilogue

Kagura ran full tilt at the large white dog bristling dangerously, hind paws almost touching the cold shallows of the lake behind it. She let out a primal scream, burying her fist into the soft earth. The force of the impact echoed through the ground, sending jets of soil upwards, and ripping the calm surface of the water beyond into agitated waves. Had Sadaharu been any slower, she would have crushed his skull. As it was, he jumped to the side, already angling his body for a counterattack.

"Shinpachi, now!" Kagura shouted. She needn't have, for Shinpachi was already burying his shoulder into Sadaharu's side. Full American football gear, complete with caged helmet and assorted pads, made him seem bigger and more powerful than he really was but Sadaharu was not fooled. His feet found the ground, and he pushed against Shinpachi, forcing their tug-of-war to a tense halt.

"Kaguraaaaa!" Shinpachi called, teeth working against his jaw.

"Yeah," Kagura grunted in response and, before Sadaharu could react, swiped the dog's hind legs from beneath him. Sadaharu shuffled gracelessly for a moment, trying to regain his footing, but Shinpachi switched gears. Head low and leg muscles working, he took advantage of Sadaharu's stumble, finally pushing the dog into the lake. The water muddied beneath his large paws, as he looked for a way around his two pursuers. Kagura and Shinpachi had chosen their battleground well – Sadaharu was surrounded by a stone wall of the bridge on one side, and a thicket of willows and reeds on the other side. He could only charge them or retreat further into the lake.

"Quickly, get him into deeper water!" Shinpachi ordered.

Barefoot, Kagura jumped into the shallows and attacked, describing violent half-moons with her umbrella as she aimed for the dog. Sadaharu eyed the strange weapon, dodging it, but refusing to give ground. Kagura feigned a swipe for his head, then thrust the tip of the umbrella forwards as though it was a fencer's foil. She stopped it mere inches from Sadaharu's forehead, popping it open right in front of his face.

Momentarily blinded, Sadaharu was broadsided by Shinpachi once more and, in a spectacular tackle, they both flew a few feet backwards. The sloping bottom of the lake gave way under their limbs, and boy and dog were suddenly submerged to their waists.

While Shinpachi spluttered, Sadaharu was already gearing for vengeance. "Kag-," he called when a large paw dunked him into the water mercilessly.

In the meanwhile, Kagura grabbed a bucket of shampoo and, screaming, launched it at the two struggling figures in the lake. Sadaharu released Shinpachi long enough to fend off the projectile but the bucket flipped, spilling slimy contents all over his fur.

"Mrrrh," he protested, closing his eyes against the cherry-scented chemicals.

Kagura seized the chance and mounted the dog, rubbing his back and sides forcefully. A few metres away, Shinpachi surfaced, coughing. After some heavy breathing, he pattered to the shore, shedding cumbersome football gear. Sighing, he swam back to Kagura to assist her in giving Sadaharu a bath. The dog struggled for a few moments more, but his resistance was weakening. Once they succeeded in shampooing him, Sadaharu knew he had little choice but to let them wash it out. Grumbling, he settled while Kagura and Shinpachi splashed around him, working through the kinks in his fur, massaging his haunches, and cleaning the grime on his belly. It wasn't all that bad, actually…

"There has to be an easier way to do this," Shinpachi mumbled unhappily.

"It would be easier if Ginchan helped," Kagura answered, rather loudly and probably for the seventh time that morning.

"Your dog, you clean his shit," an even voice called from the shore.

"He's only my dog if you're not sticking your feet in his butt when you're cold, right!" Kagura screamed back in annoyance. "He's only my dog if you're not hitching a ride on his back when you're drunk, right!"

"No, he's your dog even if I am drunk and up his butt," Gintoki answered. He was not fifteen feet away from them, lying prone on a patch of grass, and utterly disinclined to move. A copy of the Weekly Shonen Jump shielded his eyes from the sunlight. "And he's especially your dog when he chews on all my boots. And the fridge. And the sofa. And the wall in the bathroom."

"He is teething," Kagura protested, scratching Sadaharu under the chin. Shinpachi noticed the dog's eyes close in what looked suspiciously like pleasure.

Gintoki thumbed the Jump higher to regard the scene dispassionately. "There ain't space for no more teeth in that head, Kagura, dear. Believe me, I've seen it up close. Not unless that thing is in fact a furry shark."

"Lazy asshole!" Kagura called over her shoulder. "You're just a lazy asshole, right!"

"Ginssan, really," Shinpachi agreed with her. "He's not my dog either but I'm helping."

"You're just a sucker for her baby blues," Gintoki surmised, letting the Jump slip back into place. "I told you what would happen if you don't learn how to say no to women, Patch Adams. But do you listen? Nope. Well, there you have it."

Irked, Shinpachi grunted, attempting to right his glasses. He only succeeded in smudging them with soapy water. "It's difficult enough with the two of us. Kagura alone could not possibly do it. And Sadaharu was really reeking. Every time I walked into the office, it was like sniffing a hot Turkish urinal. Look, his fur is all cluttered with garbage."

Gintoki shrugged. "Told you to shave the thing off."

"I can't shave it all off!" Kagura screamed in indignation. "How would that look?"

"Shave what now?" a fourth voice intruded.

Shinpachi stopped running his fingers over Sadaharu's mud-encrusted rump to look to the shore. The dog gave a small mewl of protest the moment the scratching stopped. Sneaky little bugger. Meanwhile, a young man in a black uniform was coming down from the footpath and towards them, hands in his pockets, a red sleeping mask hanging around his neck. He wore a sword at his belt, black scabbard glistening in the noon sunlight. From the nonchalant way it rolled against his hip with each step, one could almost be forgiven for thinking it was little more than decoration; a fashion statement. Shinpachi knew better.

"The dog, young Souichirou, shave the dog," Gintoki replied to Okita.

"Not a cat?"

"Nope."

"You sure?"

"Hello, Captain Okita," Shinpachi called, feeling somewhat silly under the circumstances. Then again, Okita had surely seen weirder things than two fully clothed teens bathing an enormous dog in the public park, as evidenced by his lazy nod in Shinpachi's direction.

"Hey, sadist," Kagura waved indifferently, working Sadaharu's ears while he murmured happily. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Patrolling," Okita told her. "What the hell are you doing to that poor animal?"

"Washing him, right, what's it look like?" Kagura snapped at him.

"Looks like a wet T-shirt contest," Okita stated.

"Between the two of them, you don't know who's worse equipped for it," Gintoki snorted. "All the way from the Fugly Salt Flats, presenting the Itty Bitty Titty Committee's Miss Concave and Mister Boy-band."

"What was that, Pube-head?" Kagura snapped, already lunging for the shore. Sadaharu groaned, neglected yet again. "What you said?"

"Calm down, Kagura," Shinpachi called. "Let's just finish this as quickly as possible so we can go home."

"Shut it, Boy-band!" she hissed at him.

"Hey, I'm on your side!"

"That's right, China, get to it, get to it," Okita sung out, seating himself on the grass next to Gintoki with a soft sigh. "And if you're gonna shave anything, might want to trim your pu-"

"Skipping work again, young Souichirou?" Gintoki wisely interrupted before Okita could escalate his feud with Kagura to unsafe levels.

"Not at all, Master," Okita said, removing the Jump from Gintoki's face boldly. "I was actually looking for you."

Gintoki squinted at him, searching the young face for clues. As usual, placid eyes and a vaguely upturned mouth told him little. "To what do I owe the honour?" he drawled, extending a hand for Okita to return his reading material.

Obediently, Okita surrendered the Jump, at the same time dipping into his breast pocket to retrieve several official-looking pieces of paper. He unfolded them against his knee and offered them for inspection. Gintoki elbowed the ground and raised himself up for a cursory look. The writing was fancy, dense, old-fashioned and utterly unintelligible. The text brimmed with serious sounding phrases that spoke volumes but said very little. The seals at the bottom were, however, unmistakeably bureaucratic.

"No idea what that says," Gintoki said after a moment of staring at it.

"It's a standard confidentiality agreement," Okita explained.

Gintoki's nose furrowed. "Like when I tell you my soft limits and my hard limits? I'll say this right now, but scat-play is totally out of bounds for me."

"Yeah, exactly like that but totally different."

"Oh. Thanks for not clearing that up at all."

Okita twisted the documents in his hand and glanced over them. There was a trace of disgust as he spoke, "With this you stipulate that you will refrain from discussing with any legal person information obtained in the last month and a half which pertains to the internal structure, interpersonal relationships, and recent activities of any and all members of the Shinsengumi and the Mimawarigumi. This includes attitudes and opinions expressed in private conversation as well as your personal observations."

"I love it when you talk dirty, Shoutarou," Gintoki blinked at him.

"Master, I'm not screwing around," Okita sighed. "They are giving you the opportunity to sign it like a good boy but I should tell you they are more than willing to make this into a proper super-injunction."

"Sorry, don't speak legalese," Gintoki shrugged stubbornly.

"Higher-up's wanna be sure you're not gonna go blabbing around about the shit that went down a few weeks back," Okita translated. "In return, they forget you were there, all neat and clean like it never happened. No rooftop mambo, no broken buildings, no bad rap battles. That's as far as Commander Kondo could swing it."

"Now, now. Near or far, big or small, in the end it's all about how you swing it," Gintoki pontificated, lying back down. "Moreover, I don't need no gorilla batting in my Little League, even if he comes equipped with the Eifel Tower. Consider that another hard limit."

There was a bit of exasperation in Okita's tone now. "Please, Master. Just sign the damn thing and everybody can go home happy. Most importantly, me."

"I'm not signing shit," Gintoki went on flatly. "You could be making all this up, making me sign organ donation cards, or blank checks. Or a prenup. Shinji, a prenup I ask you? Is that the sort of woman you think I am?"

Okita snorted, his humour tickled even despite himself. "I knew you would say that."

"About the prenup?"

"I knew you wouldn't want to sign. No matter what sort of deal they threw your way."

Gintoki crossed his hands behind his head and stared into the lake, lazy eyes passing over the two teenagers still battling dog fur and foam. Okita followed his gaze. Shimura appeared to have lost his glasses and was now diving to retrieve them, while China mercilessly continued to splash water into his face every time he surfaced. He could not be sure, but it seemed to Okita that a ghost of a smile tightened Gintoki's lips and relaxed his eyebrows.

"Tell them that if they want to slap a gag order on me, they'll need Zed's red balls and all the shebang."

"I am not sure they will get that reference, Master."

"I am sure you will explain it to them. Vividly."

Okita grunted unhappily. "It's not that simple. If this was just our internal thing, I wouldn't even be asking. But the Mimawarigumi are fancy little cunts, Master, and their reputation still means something to them. They want to be sure no slumdog's gonna lift his leg against their gates."

Gintoki shifted in the grass, turning his gaze to the trees. "I'm not gonna go barking to anyone, you can tell them that as well. As long as they don't darken my kennel ever again. That good enough?"

Okita smiled, folding the documents back into their original shape carefully. "Probably not, but we'll make do. Worst case scenario, I'll fake your seal."

Gintoki chuckled. "How'd you ever become a policeman, young Souichirou?"

"Cosmic joke."

"The universe does have a rather dark sense of humour," he concluded, closing his eyes.

Okita huffed a soft laugh and leaned on his knees, looking at the lively scene in the lake. Shimura had found his glasses but was at present being bullied deeper and deeper into the lake by Sadaharu, finally clean, and Kagura, who was riding on his back like an ice-queen astride her trusty polar bear. Her red dress stuck to her boyish curves, splitting over her pale thighs and inciting Okita's imagination, but he stopped himself. Instead, he picked a grass flower. Stripping it of the outer layer, he put the light green end in his mouth and suckled on it.

"Master Freelancer?"

There was a short pause during which Okita suspected Gintoki had drifted off to sleep, but then the older man grunted, "Hnn?"

"I looked him up in our files," Okita spoke slowly, pretending nonchalance he did not truly feel. "The White Demon."

This time the pause was fractionally longer, Okita thought. "Archive work, Souichirou? They demoted you or what?"

Okita huffed a laugh through his nose. "It made for interesting reading," he shrugged.

Gintoki's eyes were stubbornly closed, face relaxed, and had Okita not been an accomplished swordsman himself, he would not have detected any change in his posture at all. As it was, he could see Gintoki's shoulders were very still.

"What did your files say?"

"Not much, really," Okita confided, resting backwards against his hands. "There's plenty on Katsura. Some on Takasugi and a few others. They were generals, they moved men, they took down armies. The White Demon wasn't a general, apparently."

"Oh?" Gintoki drawled. "Fascinating."

"It is," Okita addressed the treetops casually. "He was not a commander, but everybody knew his name."

"Hmm," Gintoki wondered. His breathing was slow and deep. And deliberate.

"Well, I should say, nobody knew his name," Okita amended his statement, faking nonchalance. "But everybody had heard of him. The White Demon. He worked right alongside Katsura and Takasugi, in those last days of the war." He chewed on the blade of grass, giving Gintoki time to react. Idly, Okita wondered whether 'worked' had been the right word to use. These men had bled together. They had killed together. Each day, they had been ready to die together. It wasn't as though they put in eight hours at the office and gossiped around the water-cooler. The Shinsengumi was not exactly a nine-to-five job either, but Okita knew very well that life in a Shogunate-sponsored police force – fed, clothed, housed and armed – could not compare to guerrilla warfare. No, 'worked' had not been the right word to use.

"They must not have liked him too much," Okita continued musing when Gintoki remained mute. "Sent him on all the suicidal missions. And every time, he returned, trailing behind him a mountain of corpses. Sometimes he was the only one to return. He must have liked to cut people down. Seems he was very good at it."

Gintoki slugged the left leg over the right one, and found a more comfortable position. "Sounds like a nasty cunt," he commented offhandedly.

"Yeah, very nasty," Okita agreed and fell silent.

Gintoki stole a look at him, opening one eye warily. Okita's profile was as smooth and as imperturbable as ever. He was fishing for reactions. And what would he do with them if he got them, Gintoki wondered. He knew an interrogation when he heard one, no matter under what guise it came. The only question was whether Okita was interrogating him for the sake of his own curiosity, or for the sake of somebody else's curiosity. Either way, Gintoki would not take the chance. He waited, refusing to rise to the bait.

"Hijikata thinks it was you," the boy spoke. "Claims you said so, up on the roof."

"I wouldn't believe everything that asshole says, young Souichirou," Gintoki answered lightly. "Mayonnaise's addled his brains, if he had any to begin with."

Okita sniggered. "Don't worry, I don't. And I don't think it was you."

"I'm so relieved, I could cry," Gintoki deadpanned and closed his eyes once more.

Next to him, Okita lay back. "I don't really think there was ever any such person as the White Demon. I think he was just a legend."

"How'd'you figure that?" Gintoki inquired. His shoulders were much more relaxed, Okita noticed; his breathing light and natural.

"People like making legends in times of war. They need them, good for morale," he mused. "There were plenty of legends at the time. Loincloth Saigo, the Invulnerable Devil. Mighty Doromizu Jirouchou of Edo," he ticked off. "Takasugi Shinsuke, leader of the Kiheitai. Katsura, the Grand General. What's one more legend, even if it is not true? Gives tired men something to rally around - the undying warrior who always came back, white cape tinted red. Pretty far out stuff."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Gintoki agreed, stifling a yawn.

"More to the point, someone like that must have really hated the Amanto. Must have liked spilling their guts on the battlefield. Must have never wanted to stop doing it. Katsura and Takasugi were like that, and they never stopped. Yet after the war, there was not a peep of this White Demona character anywhere on the grapevine."

"Hmm," Gintoki murmured, one foot rocking gently back and forth, without rhythm.

Okita turned to look at his face. He sometimes forgot that Gintoki was, in fact, the same age as Kondo; older than Hijikata. Only rarely could he see them, his approaching thirty years of life. But there they were now – in the corners of his mouth, between his eyebrows, along the edges of his eyes. "Someone like that would never have quit the war," he said. "Not unless he was fighting a completely different one."

"Good point."

Okita broke into a laugh. Gintoki opened an eye to look at him, eyebrow cocked in question.

Okita sat up, dusting the back of his jacket of grass and dirt. "I didn't really expect you would tell me anything, Master Freelancer. But I am dying of curiosity."

Gintoki shrugged. "You know it all already. White Demon was probably just a legend people made up to make themselves feel better."

Okita caught his gaze and held it. There was a smile playing around his lips, and Gintoki couldn't tell whether it was victorious or resigned. "So why did you say you were him?"

"Strategic decision," Gintoki answered straight away thinking back to the night on the roof, black and white uniforms dancing a deadly dance. "I needed Mayoman to pay attention and follow my lead. I needed the little assholes behind me not to interfere."

"Now you sound like a general," Okita pointed out gently.

"There you have it. White Demon was never a general. You said so yourself."

Okita looked away, back to the lake out of which Kagura and Shinpachi were emerging to towel Sadaharu off. "Yeah. Well, that's what the files say. I never thought generals were generals just because that's what people call them. Generals are generals because people follow them."

"Apparently, the only thing that followed this character was corpses," Gintoki pointed out. "Dawn of the Dead aside, you can't really do shit with a zombie army."

"Hmm," Okita muttered and pushed himself up to stand. His hands found his pockets immediately, betraying a long-standing habit. Gintoki observed the straight curve of his back; the cock-sure stance of a man who did not know his limits. And may he never learn them, Gintoki wished upon the younger man. May he never break his head against the extent of himself.

"Well, Hijikata won't give up," Okita was saying conversationally. "He thinks he has you pinned. On the other hand... the Shogunate's got nothing to fear from a zombie army, right?"

"Right."

"So it's none of our business," he concluded.

"Good for you," Gintoki congratulated.

"One thing, though, Master..." Okita nodded to the wet trio now laughing on the coast. Kagura fluffed her hair out to dry in the sunshine while Shinpachi was trying his best to convince Sadaharu not to lie down in the dust. "The army trailing you nowadays... seems like a pretty frightening thing to me. What happens if you ever decide to take it to war with you?"

"What war?" Gintoki inquired with a snort.

"Whichever it is you are fighting," Okita answered. He turned to look him in the eyes, one brown set staring into two dark red ones.

"Don't worry," Gintoki smiled, closing them. "I am not a general."

I've had this scene in my head for a long time - Thorny made quite an impression on me, and stuck stubbornly in my mind, if you'd pardon the pun. I hope you forgive the change of tone and perspective. This chapter was originally supposed to be a beginning of something, but it never grew into it. At some point, while I was writing this story, I went back to it and saw how similar some of the themes were. Ended up rewriting it to be an epilogue, and here we all are.

Thank you for all your kind comments! See you next time something prickles my fancy (I'll stop being punny now...). In fact, if you have an idea, a plot bunny, a scene you'd like to see fanfic'ed - share it! Let's see what happens.