Summary[]
Gintoki tells Takasugi that after Utsuro committed suicide by jumping into the Altana vein, the energy instead absorbed him and two years later, he manifested from a different dragon hole in Japan and was revived. He admitted that the personality that now dwelled within the new body wasn't Utsuro but he believed it to be Shouyou. In Gintoki's tale, the shocked silver-haired man asked the "child" if he was really Shouyou. The" child" instead answered that out of his many names and lives over the millennia, hearing that name in particular and coming from Gintoki especially, resonated with him. He again asked Gintoki to do him a favor while he was still here but before finishing, Utsuro sensed people coming and pushes Gintoki out the way. Gintoki fell off the cliff while watching the "youth" get stabbed in the chest by a familiar sword-staff before more rain down on him. The new leader of the arriving Naraku ordered the assassins to secure Utsuro and they rush down the upper cliffs to do so. The "boy" declared that the assassins won't have him before breaking the staff through his heart in half and pulling out the sword in his front. Gintoki, who was able to grab a foothold to stop his fall, sees the "boy" pull the sword out his chest along with something else, a crystal partially encased in altered metal from the sword. He tells Gintoki that this was "his" heart and by separating it from his current body, said body won't be immortal or can't be maintained. He throws the heart to Gintoki, declaring that he shouldn't exist in this world and he was entrusting everything to him. Gintoki caught the stone but lost his grip and falls. Before falling unconscious, Utsuro apologized for being a continuous burden to Gintoki but was glad to see him again.
In the present, Gintoki and Takasugi finish their conversation in one of the ship's cabins. Gintoki reveals to the one-eyed man the crystal heart. Gintoki learned that thanks to Utsuro's own Altana merging with the Dragon Veins' Altana, it resulted in Utsuro's consciousness residing in the resulting crystal and causing his recent revival. Gintoki believed that as long as he had the heart, the immortal won't revive but noted that the Naraku had been searching for him too, with their clash resulting in this present state. He insists that his decisions for the past two years was to save him but instead Utsuro saved him again. Takasugi then wonders what "saving" Gintoki was doing: if he had wanted to destroy Utsuro, why had he carried around the heart all this time instead of finding a way to get rid of it. Unless his wandering was the point, then he should return the heart to Utsuro. Takasugi ignores Gintoki's enraged shout, continuing that it would be a gamble not knowing which personality will surface before telling the other man he was joking but revealing that Utsuro's body was still alive. After the Naraku captured Utsuro's heartless body, somebody had found a way to maintain it without the heart, but it would be in suspended animation to said somebody's benefit. Gintoki thought that they went after him to get the heart back to revive the immortal but Takasugi counters that the people controlling the Naraku weren't interested, though he wasn't sure about the assassin group themselves.
Before Gintoki confronts Takasugi on who he suspects is behind this, Takasugi begins to cough blood. Gintoki instead asks why did he made himself semi-immortal and what he experienced after his disappearance. Takasugi responds that Utsuro had watched humans repeat the same mistakes so many times in his long life that he got sick of it and tried to destroy the world. They may have stopped him but the world wasn't saved; it was about to repeat its mistakes again. And since he believed it was both their duty to stop these events too, he had resolved himself to take their teacher back from them.
Characters[]
- Sakata Gintoki
- Utsuro (flashback)
- Yoshida Shouyou (referenced)
- Tenshouin Naraku (flashback)
- Takasugi Shinsuke