Chapter 7

"Follow you? What about the negotiations right now? What about the fighting?" Gintoki stammered, unsure of how the events unfolded with Catherine revealing herself.

"Do you really think that Kada has any more willing men after what you did to Oboro? She won't be able to muster up forces for quite some while. Now, do you want to see Otose or not?"

"But what about my corpse? You technically know everything that has happened to me."

"We do."

"'We?' What does that mean? More of you know that I'm dead?"

"Follow me. All your questions will be answered when you talk to Otose," Catherine as she answered Gintoki and gestured for him to leave the negotiation room. She quickly slid her hood back on, concealing herself again.

Gintoki followed her outside, where the soldiers of Kabukichou were eagerly waiting for him. A roaring applause for their savior rung through Gintoki's ears.

"What happened here?" Gintoki asked. He was greeted by an enthusiastic Shinpachi, out of breath and no doubt gleaming with excitement.

"We saw the Shinra here escape. Chin Pirako stopped one of them and interrogated them and sure enough, they surrendered!"

Another thunderous roar echoed the entire vicinity.

"Gin-to-ki! Gin-to-ki!" The soldiers of Kabukichou began to cheer!

"This is a moment to celebrate," Shinpachi declared.

"Indeed so," Zenzou followed up.

Gintoki peeked over his shoulder and saw the concealed Catherine standing behind him.

"You all get the preparations for tonight. I…um… have some personal things to take care of," Gintoki answered Shinpachi with a smile.

Shinpachi frowned for a moment, the sudden request by Gintoki took him by surprise. But soon he understood.

"Be careful, Gin-san," Shinpachi worried.

Gintoki nodded as he and Catherine walked away. Gintoki now began to follow Catherine after they disappeared from the view of Shinpachi and the others. She led him quickly through the streets of Edo, slithering through the streets and making sharp turns. Gintoki noticed that they were awfully closed to Kabukichou, why wasn't Otose in Kabukichou itself?

The surrounding areas were completely run down, in terrible condition. The dim moonlight was the only thing that lit up the streets. The streets reeked of dead fish and the stench of months old garbage. The buildings were all old, beat down apartment complexes. Why is Otose in an area like this? Gintoki also noticed the high amount of people sitting by trash cans, hobos were the word for them. But that was the suspicious part, why would such a large amount of people be chilling here? Was Catherine leading him to an ambush?

All the people here were eyeballing him, staring at him with suspicious motives, Gintoki had to prepare himself in case anything were to happen.

"Up these stairs, Otose will be waiting in the second floor," Catherine gestured.

"What about you?" Gintoki asked nervously.

"I have other duties to attend to," Catherine answered. She bowed and walked off.

Gintoki, slowly but steadily, walked up the stairs of the old apartment complex. The stairs were wooden and creaked louder with each and every step he took. After what seemed like an eternity, he reached the second floor. There was only one door, it looked like it was used for surfing at some beach because of the mold that had accumulated on the hinges of it. How should Gintoki act? Should he knock? Should he call out Otose's name?

"Granny?" Gintoki decided to call out.

No response.

"Granny?" Gintoki called out a second time.

Again, no response.

"I'm gonna walk in now, Granny."

Gintoki opened the door all the way and peeked inside. The moonlight outside lit up a small line in the room, revealing wooden floors. Gintoki saw the outline of Otose. There was a cigarette in the hand of this figure standing with their back to him.

"Granny, you really scared me. Whatcha doing in a place like this?" Gintoki casually strolled into the room.

The metallic clang of swords echoed the room as he felt the ice cold touch of a blade whisper onto his neck, someone had a blade placed on his neck.

"Do not move," a familiar voice from behind. The kiss of a cold blade was now close to his ear, a second person.

"Kyubei?" Gintoki called out to the voice behind him.

He felt the blade behind him, hesitate, confused.

"I think I know the voice of my very own tenant," Gintoki heard Otose speak.

"Stand down," she ordered.

"Yes ma'am," the two people answered and immediately went to her side. Suddenly, a light emitted from the ceiling lit up the entire room.

Gintoki was surprised of the people by the two people that stood next to Otose. He recalled the voice of Kyubei, standing to the left of Otose, and the other, was none other than Tama, the Android that served Otose loyally.

"Kyubei? Tama? What are you two doing here?" Gintoki asked.

"That matter can be discussed later. Let's have something to drink now, yes?" Otose gestured Gintoki to a table in the corner of the room.

Sitting down in the corner of the room with Otose pouring him a drink of sake, Gintoki was uneasy.

"What are you doing here? In this place?" Gintoki asked as Otose sat down next to him. Kyubei and Tama were both standing guard at the door.

"I'm here under the orders of Jirocho," Otose answered.

"Order of Jirocho? Why?"

"I am to be presumed by those outside of Kabukichou, dead."

"Dead? Why?"

"If I am thought to be that, then Kada will believe that Kabukichou is weaker than it seems. We already lost Saigou in the initial confusion. If Kada continues to undervalue the strength of Kabukichou, then we will have a much higher fighting chance against her."

Gintoki nodded, processing the theory Otose presented to him.

"But why here? In this area? It's very unsafe with all those creepy dudes lying around."

"Those creepy dudes are the former soldiers for Saigou."

"Why are they here? Shouldn't they be fighting in Kabukichou? Wouldn't Kabukichou be in a much better state of winning if they were a part of the fight?"

"I agree with you, Gintoki, but there is much movement behind the shadows. Such as, Catherine has discovered that Kada has struck a deal with the past Shogun to take out Kabukichou with the assistance of the Harusame Space Pirates."

"On the matter of that, what is Catherine doing with Kada? Is she some sort of super spy?"

"Like I said, presuming me to be dead, lead to Kada to reach out to Catherine, due to her previous involvement with Cat's Punch. Through her, we gained valuable information from Kada."

"You spoke of the past Shogun?" Gintoki brought up. He knew the man that was the previous Shogun. The thought of the old fart was haunting. No one can know what that man can conjure up to assuage his thirst for power.

"I did. Catherine has snooped up a rumor that he will try to use the disorder in Kabukichou to exercise martial law over all of Edo. That is why these men are here, in case of anything that he might pull, close to the borders of Kabukichou. But I can safely make the claim that neither the previous Shogun nor Kada will be making any moves any time soon."

"That's good to hear," Gintoki let out a sigh of relief. The fighting exhausted him; he couldn't imagine it on the scope of those at Kabukichou, fighting for who knows how long.

"But you need more than ever, Gintoki. That's why we brought you here."

"Wait, what? What do you mean bringing me here?"

By the time Gintoki finished speaking his brief sentence, Otose had taken out a cigarette and began smoking it.

"This will take a long while to explain."

"Your appearance in this universe was planned. All of it. Our initial goal was to bring you into this universe from your original one to help tip the scale of the war towards our favor."

"But…how?" Gintoki stammered.

"I am not well versed enough to answer you… Tama, prepare the video file."

Tama alleviated herself from guard duty, walked back into the room, and stood ten feet from where Otose and Gintoki sat.

Instantly, her mechanic eyes blurred a bright white color, projecting a stream onto the ground. The light stream soon began to take shape and formed the figure of a human. This was a hologram.

The figure soon split into two, still just a burst of light, unidentifiable. Soon the two figures exchanged into a scuffle between each other.

"Why are we fighting over who tells him?" one of the figures asked as slaps were being thrown around at each other.

"Only one gets tell him about our distress," this figure seemed to have won the scuffle and was now preparing to speak. The holograms were still bright white, unidentifiable.

"Help me, Sakata-san. You are our only hope." The figure began. The brief speech was immediately followed by a slap to the back of the head.

"This isn't Star Wars, you bitch, we have to relay the information," The other figure brought up.

"Recording now beginning, please speak clearly," an outside voice spoke to the two. It was Tama's voice, signaling the starting of the recording. At the end of the sentence, colors began to flow through the bright figures, giving them life and character. Gintoki immediately recognized them.

Ane and Mone: The two twin sisters that were the previous owners of Sadaharu. What could they be doing here?

Mone, the younger of the two, spoke first.

"Sakata-san, if you are seeing this message now, it means that our plan to bring you into this universe was a success. Now I'm sure you have a lot of questions, like how we were able to bring you here and a bunch of other questions. We shall answer that here and now."

"Of course he has a lot of questions, idiot." It was Ane, the older of the two, who spoke. Mone, ignoring her older sister, continued on.

"As I'm sure Lady Otose would have told you, you are here to tip the scales of the war towards the side of Kabukichou. That is precisely why we have brought you here. Now how were we able to do that? Remember the Dragon's Pulse? Where the terminal built by the Amanto now stand? It is through there, where the energy of the Earth flows, that we were able to bring you here.

"The flow of energy through there allows particles from other stars to gather. With that, we were able to establish a connection with a mechanic, Gengai, from your universe. We knew that the Gengai from our present universe was building a device that would allow the user to transcend time and the universe itself, in an effort to reunite with his son who had died in the war. The struggle of Kabukichou with Kada was too much for him.

"But that was when we discovered his plan and instead hatched a plan to bring you back. He managed to establish contact but not actually travel through time to bring you here. We were told that he had a prototype installed onto your scooter for a test drive. You had taken it out and he activated it shortly before we made contact with him.

"The prototype, you see, needs a host, a checkpoint, rather, for which to start and end. As we established the situation to him, he taught the Gengai from our universe how to activate a host and deactivated his. So when you tried to go back to your universe, you couldn't, because the host wasn't there and instead, traveled to our time."

Ane and Mone soon disappeared, the video message was took this in, but there was something that they didn't know. He was the root cause of all this.

"How did you know of my death?"

"We never gave up on your return. It wasn't until Catherine saw that Kada had your corpse that we knew of your death here," Otose explained.

"So does everyone know that I'm not from this universe?"

"No, this knowledge has been kept very sealed from Kabukichou. Even your closest friend do not know the truth, only I, Tama, Kyubei, Ane, Mone, Catherine, Jirocho, Chin Pirako and Gengai and a few others."

"I'm not sure how to handle this," Gintoki thought. "How will I get back?"

"We will simply contact the Gengai from your universe and have him activate the Host on his universe while we deactivate the one on our side," it was Tama who spoke this time.

"The previous Shogun will be making his move soon. Will you be joining us, Gintoki?" Otose asked.

"I'm gonna be stuck in here for a while anyway, so hell yeah, I'll be joining you." Gintoki answered.

Shogunate Castle

"What do we have here?" Sada Sada mocked Kada. "The famous Princess Kada thwarted by the likes of one man?"

Kada did not speak, pushing away from Sacchan, who had assisted her up to now.

"Do not underestimate him, he took out my best Assassin and your right hand man as well," Kada spat in anger.

Sada Sada frowned. These insects dare pester him further? No matter, he had a way to eliminate them all.

"Unfortunately for you, Kada, I do not need you anymore," Sada Sada boldly declared much to the dismay of her.

"Need me? I am one of the Captains of the Harusame Pirates!"

"Captains can be replaced."

And with the utter of that sentence, two men appeared before Kada and dragged her away. Ignoring the screams of profanities and slurs of her, Kada summoned the next two who will help him execute his plan.

Enter, a man of a different race, a warrior race from Outer Space, a Yato to be exact. He was to take the torch of where Kada failed and execute what she hadn't, help with the takeover of Kabukichou.

Kamui had arrived.