Introduction
Isaburo continues his plan of rebellion while the alliance retreat from the battlefield. But both plans go south with the arrival of a certain Tendoushuu.
Plot
Hijikata watches the Mimawarigumi and the Naraku airships fight each other, surprised that Isaburo was betraying the government. Matsudaira, injured from the bombing along with others like Saito, corrects him; the commissioner was never on their side to begin with. The older man reveals his awareness of Isaburo's plan to wipe out the government, police and himself. The elite policeman merely responds that he had been desperately trying to send an email to someone (implied to be his wife) with little success; maybe he'll get better reception on top of the ruins of corpses and country.
Meanwhile, the Naraku bombard the battlefield with laser-fire along with disembarking and attacking the alliance and the Mimawarigumi. As Gintoki and Oboro continue their fight, the Naraku leader mocks both him and Isaburo for their fruitless struggle to change the country. But amusingly admits that their rebellion had finally caught the attention of one of the Tendoushuu, who was on one of the ship which fired a blast at Gintoki's location. At another part of the cliff, Okita demands why Kagura stopped his fight with Nobume. She answers that the two have become too conflicted to fight properly and that right now they must work together to save everyone. She also adds that Nobume was a good person despite Nobume claiming otherwise. Kagura tells the Mimawarigumi Vice-chief about her belief in how Earth was a planet of freedom and that thanks to the people she met, she had changed for the better. Nobume herself remembered how both Shouyou and Isaburo had changed her from a thoughtless killing machine to who she is now. Suddenly she snaps out of her thoughts and pushes Kagura out the way, leading to her being stabbed in the stomach by a thrown sword.
Okita and Kagura rush to her side, just to see the young woman command the entire Mimawarigumi force to retreat with her radio. The two wonder way until she pleas they should flee as well before someone arrives. Unfortunately, this someone, the Tendoushuu member, appears with his powerful and deadly aura, reprimanding Nobume for betraying both the Naraku and Isaburo for refusing to kill Isaburo. She responds that she will no longer follow anyone's orders but will fight under her own will. The disappointed member attacks the three and easily defeats them. Okita realizes that they can't defeat the figure and demands who he was. Nobume answers that the man was the former leader of the Naraku before earning a place as a member of the Tendoushuu, named Utsuro.
In the forests, Hijikata searches for Kondou and Isaburo while fighting the Naraku. Katsura and Elizabeth arrive to meet him, confused with the present state of affairs. Matsudaira tells them this was going according to Isaburo's plans, both allies and enemies have split up due to the chaos. Katsura worries that they will be unable to escape this island but Hijikata had forewarned the waiting alliance in the ocean. The Vice-chief had set things up so that after a certain amount of time, a signal flare should be sent, indicating the order to retreat. He tells Matsudaira and his group to escape while he searches for Kondo and they should leave without they two leaders.
Shinpachi, carrying an injured Yamazaki, sees the flare and they along with the Mimawarigumi start retreating. But they stop in horror when a badly injured Okita falls to the ground from the cliff along with Utsuro landing next to him. Oboro tells his boss to not bother with the others and let the Naraku handle this, killing some of the white-clothed policemen. The person Utsuro was really interested in, Gintoki, unfortunately was killed by Utsuro's bombardment. Enraged, Shinpachi attacks the Tendoushuu member but is barely saved by Okita before being stabbed in the head. More assassins arrive to attack while Utsuro continues to "play" with the combined forces of Kagura, Nobume, and Okita. Meanwhile, the injured Isaburo rushes to Nobume's location, wondering about both his and his second-in-command's "strange" behavior of refusing to leave each other. Back to the fight, Nobume is stabbed in the shoulder and pushed into the cliff face. She grabs Utsuro's sword and stabs hers in his foot, holding him in place. He wonders why she did so as both Kagura and Okita were too injured to fight. The answer came in the form of Gintoki, who had hid himself in the rubble and used a dead assassin to pretend he died, jumping down the cliff and attacking.
Utsuro blocks the attack and the two men fight, Gintoki wielding his bokutou and Nobume's sword. Okita watches the fight and comment on how Gintoki was fighting slightly evenly with Utsuro. But the first captain notices that this "evenness" was due to Gintoki being subconsciously knowledgeable of Utsuro's fighting style and wonders if they ever met. As Gintoki loses his swords and Utsuro loses his mask and hat, Utsuro wonders the same thing, before striking at Gintoki's neck. The fact that Utsuro shows a striking resemblance to Shouyou causes Gintoki to freeze in place and suffer a breakdown. He is saved by Kagura holding back Utsuro's sword with her bare hands and calling out to him, snapping him out of it. Okita attacks Utsuro from behind but is hit and Okita holds the man's arm in place. Gintoki grabs Okita's thrown sword and slashes Utsuro across the chest, finishing it off with grabbing his own wooden sword and striking him into the wall. Oboro mocks Gintoki for his suffering in being responsible for consistently hurting his teacher as Utsuro rises from the rubble unfazed, and with his wound healed under the horrified eyes of Kagura, Gintoki and Okita. A Naraku ship explodes between them and the alliance uses that chance to flee. While fleeing, Gintoki rhetorically asks who was Utsuro. Nobume answers that he both was and wasn't Shouyou yet regardless, he was the one truly responsible for killing Shouyou.
Characters
- Shinsengumi
- Mimawarigumi
- Tenshouin Naraku
- Matsudaira Katakuriko
- Sakata Gintoki
- Kagura
- Jouishishi
- Shimura Shinpachi
- Utsuro (debut)
- Yoshida Shouyou (flashback)