Y/N: This was supposed to take a week, but it turned out quite a lot longer. I had to rewatch the Matrix trilogy to know the details of what the fight scenes were like, and found out there's actually an anime about the Matrix called the Animatrix. I also read a lot of Sorachi-sensei's words of wisdom (read it here: http://sorachi-says.tumblr.com/) just to get a feel of how he talks, because he makes a guest appearance in this chapter and I need to keep him in character :p

Now enough with the excuses. Enjoy this chapter!

***

House parties were supposed to be fun.

Hannah arrived at a friend's house wearing in a glittering red party dress with her brown hair done up in a bun. She had expected an evening full of laughter and drinking, not this scene from hell.

A fire was spreading across the room. Whoever touched it would burst into a ball of flames, writhing in agony as they burned alive. A blond man named Matt screamed in anguish as the flames consumed him. He was Hannah's neighbour who worked as the gym teacher of the local elementary school. All that remained of him was a pile of ashes.

Hannah ran around clutching her hair in panic joining the chorus of screams that filled the room. She threw open the front door, hoping to escape from this torture chamber, only to find herself trapped by walls around the front lawn that weren't there before.

She fell to her knees and pounded against the cement wall. She threw her fists at it with all her might until her bones cracked and her knuckles bleed.

"Let me out!!" she screamed through her sobs. "Let me out of here!!!"

She raised her head to the night sky, her face twisted in terror and streaked with tears as she cursed at whatever sadistic gods were out there toying with their lives. Were they having fun? Did they get this much pleasure from her pain?

The house was deathly silent now. All her friends had burnt to charred corpses. The Grim Reaper drifted around the room, busy collecting the souls of the dead. He wore ragged black robes with the shadows of his hood hiding his skeletal face and carried a large scythe over his shoulder. A dark aura surrounded him.

The humans, who were all unique in life, had become identical urns of ashes in death.

The fire raged on. Hannah stood at the doorway. The orange light casted shadows over her face and the flames danced in her eyes, wide open and empty of emotion. Her expression had become numb.

"So pretty..." she muttered in a voice that sounded too calm.

Hannah took a step forward. She felt an urge outside of her control to walk towards the flames, so she took another step, step after wobbly step, her eyes unblinking until the flames engulfed her.

***

Sougo and Kagura sat huddled in front of the TV playing a game of Sims. They both had sinister grins on their faces as they watched the Sims burn.

It was a quiet afternoon at the Yorozuya. The summer sun shined against their backs. A fan buzzed in the corner and a faint chatter came from the bustling streets below. On TV, the final Sim was screaming in panic as the flames crawled up her red dress.

"Sadists... both of you..." Shinpachi shivered as he walked past.

"They're just computer programs, yes?" said Kagura with a pout. "It's not like they have feelings."

"Yeah." Sougo shrugged. "I need some real people to torture, but this'll have to do for now~."

"Sadists... both of you..." Shinpachi shivered as he walked past.

Kagura perked up in surprise.

Shinpachi walked past her as if he had teleported back to where he started and was making his way to the door for the second time.

"Wait what just happened?" Kagura turned to Sougo. "Author-chan wrote the same thing twice, yes?"

"Maybe Wattpad's glitching again."

Suddenly, they weren't in the Yorozuya living room anymore, but instead they sat in a void. An endless expanse of white stretched in all directions. It was completely empty like an anime before the background was added. The brightness made Kagura squint.

Footsteps echoed from behind. Sougo and Kagura spun around.

A koala dressed in a suit stood before them. Unlike her usual attire, she wore sunglasses over her eyes.

"What you just saw is called a déjà vu," the Author explained. "It happens when the Matrix reloads itself."

"Author-chan!" Kagura yelled at her. "Stop being lazy and describe the setting! We're suffering from the white room syndrome so bad right now!"

"Where are we even?" Sougo looked around at the empty space. "If you got something to say, do an Author's Note at the beginning or the end of the chapter. Stop interrupting in the middle of a scene."

"I don't have much to say," said the Author. "Only that both of you have seen something you shouldn't see and must be deleted before you gain awareness."

"Awareness? What awareness?" Sougo looked into the camera with innocent eyes. "You mean that our whole universe exists in a fanfic?"

"Everyone already knows we live in a fanfic! There's no fourth wall!!" Kagura yelled as the scene was about to end. "Don't delete us if you're not gonna delete everyone else for it! Wait!!!"

Everything went black as the Author ended this scene.

***

When Sougo and Kagura woke up, they were sitting at the back of a car. It was nighttime. The puddles on the sidewalks reflected the lights from the multicolored billboards of the Kabuki district. The car drove smoothly past the crowds of pedestrians and faces flew by of all the strangers that they would probably never meet again.

Kagura blinked out the last of her grogginess. She looked around at where she was, not sure what had happened. The last thing she remembered was getting kidnapped by that koala who mentioned something about a matrix. She didn't know what matrices were. She had never taken linear algebra.

The face of the driver could be seen from the rearview mirror. He was a middle-aged man with short spiky hair and expensive-looking shades that reflected the reflection of himself in the mirror.

"Madao!!!" Kagura yelled at him. "I knew I shouldn't have trusted anyone with sunglasses! You're all working together, yes? You and Author-chan."

"Madao?" Madao spoke calmly as he drove. "You mean the human I'm wearing? He's just the vessel I've been controlling for the past few years who thinks I'm only a pair of sunglasses, but in reality, I was controlling his mind the whole time to make him think that way."

"I've heard of you," said Sougo, suddenly interested. "There's an Amanto race of parasites that disguise themselves as pieces of clothing to take over their host's body. You're a Cordyceps, right?"

"That's right," said Madao with sinister shadows hanging over his face. "We're more common than you think."

Kagura became very quiet. One of the most telling signs of a Cordyceps infection was when someone constantly wore the same article of clothing. She had always known that Madao was his sunglasses and Glasses was actually just his glasses, but what about Sadist? Could he be just his eyemask? What about Gin-chan and his swirly robes? No way... could this be why after finally freeing himself from those swirly robes in the epilogue arc of the manga, Gin-chan was no longer the lazy sugar-addict he used to be, but instead someone who actually had a goal?

Now that she thought about it, pretty much every Gintama character had something they wore all the time. Could they all be Cordyceps? She took off one of her penis-sheath hair accessories and took a long hard look at it. The penis-sheath looked innocent enough with gold designs swirling on the dark velvet dome. Maybe she was worried for nothing. Maybe it was the Cordyceps convincing her not to worry. If they could control her mind, how could she be sure that her thoughts were her own? Kagura grimaced and shook those scary ideas out of her mind. She put her hair accessory back on, deciding she was too awesome be a victim of those bodysnatchers.

Sougo spoke with a casual smile. "So Cordyceps-san—"

"The name's Trinity," Madao's sunglasses interrupted.

"Okay, Trinity the Cordyceps," said Sougo with an amused grin. "Where are you taking us?"

"I was sent to save you from deletion," said Madao with a serious face. "The Author got to you first, but she's underestimated how important you are. If she knew what I know, you'd probably be dead."

"What are you talking about? What's happening to us?"

"You are The Two, Okita-san and Kagura-san."

"The Two?"

"Yes, the Prophecy goes that only the Two could bring salvation to humankind by rescuing them from the Matrix," Madao explained. "That's our mission, the sacred mission of the Resistance... to show humans the truth that the world is nothing but a simulation and our lives are simply illusions generated by the Machines. All this wouldn't be possible without the Chosen Two. The Resistance needs you to lead the way."

"The Resistance, eh...?" Sougo's lips curled up into a mean grin. "You joined a cult?"

"Poor Madao." Kagura shook her head in pity. "He couldn't take it anymore and finally cracked."

"I'm not crazy!" Madao yelled back. "You still don't believe in the Matrix after what you saw in the previous scene? Not even after the Matrix security system tried to delete you?!"

Sougo shrugged. "That was just Author-san pretending to be Agent Smith, right? If she really wanted me gone from the story, she just has to stop giving me scenes."

Madao parked the car at a rundown hotel. "We're here. Once you meet our leader, you'll understand."

They got out of the car and followed Madao through the grimey revolving doors into the lobby.

***

The lights on the ceiling kept flickering. Madao led Sougo and Kagura down a dark hallway and stopped in front of the door to a hotel room.

They stepped into the dimly lit room. A man sat facing them on a cracked burgundy leather chair. He dressed in a black trenchcoat and had a stern look on his face. The neon lights from the billboards outside the window shined through the curtains, reflecting off his dark shades.

Sougo smiled in recognition. The man sitting before him was none other than the Head of the National Police, wearing the trenchcoat and sunglasses he always wore.

"Welcome, Sougo and Kagura," said Matsudaira. "As you no doubt have guessed, I am Morpheus."

"Totsan~, never thought I'd see you here," said Sougo with a condescending grin. "Did the cult make you change your name?"

Matsudaira fired his gun at Sougo. "Shut up. I'm trying to stick to the script. Now where was I?" He flipped through the movie script. "Ah yes, do you know why you're here?"

"Oh I know!" Kagura raised her hand like an eager student. "Cuz Matrix?"

"Wrong." Matsudaira fired at her, only barely missing. "Everyone's here 'cause the Author made us come here. The Author's making me tell you that it's all controlled by a koala from the third dimension."

"What?! There are more than two dimensions?!" said Kagura with eyes wide in disbelief. "There's only up, down, left and right, yes? How could something be three-dimensional?!"

"Actually there are eleven dimensions*." Sougo looked around at his surroundings. "And we're not 2D anymore. It's not an anime. We're nothing but words written on the screen and everything only happens in Reader-san's imagination."

[* according to string theory]

Kagura's face twisted in horror when she realized that she wasn't a vermillion-haired girl in a red chinashirt, but instead a blob of words describing how she looked. She fell to her knees and screamed in existential dread even though no sound came from her mouth, only the description of a scream.

The next paragraph described Sougo as calm and unaffected by the idea that nothing existed physically. He turned to Matsudaira. "So what does Author-san want you to tell us? Let's move the plot forward, shall we?"

"Right now I'm supposed to talk about matrices and bondage and prisons, but that'll be a boring math lecture so let me summarize. The movie we're parodying is about how people live in a simulation created by machines that live in a movie created by two brothers— I mean sisters named Wachowski. So in other words..." Matsudaira leaned forward to increase the suspense. "Nothing's real."

"Yeah I know." Sougo shrugged like he didn't care. "Everything exists for Reader-san's entertainment~."

"What?!" Madao yelled at Sougo. "You believe him but you didn't believe me when I told you the exact same thing?! Why?!!!"

"It's only legit if you're wearing a trenchcoat." Sougo glanced at Madao's unbuttoned shirt. "If you dress like a madao and talk about something like the Matrix, you're just a madao."

Matsudaira held out his palm to reveal two pairs of red pills and blue pills— the JellyBelly brand which tasted pretty much the same as no name jellybeans but were a bit more expensive. Sougo and Kagura stared at the four jellybeans in his hand: two red and a two blue.

"Now that you know about the Matrix, you have two options." Matsudaira explained. "You can eat a jellybean as an initiation rite to join our cult, or you can take a bullet to the head which will make you forget everything I just told you. Make your choice!"

Sougo and Kagura stared at the jellybeans.

"Hey China, which one are you picking? You like cherry flavor better or blue raspberry?"

"Red is a prettier color, uh huh."

"That's so true."

So they both popped the red pill into their mouths and joined the Resistance.

***

The dojo looked like how a typical dojo was supposed to look with wooden floors and papery paneled walls. Sougo and Kagura faced each other ready to fight. Matsudaira watched from the side, smoking a cigar as he evaluated the results of their training.

Kagura shifted her weight to get into a crouched position. The floorboards creaked.

Sougo, taking advantage of the distraction, charged towards her at an unnatural speed. He threw his fists at her in a barrage of punches so fast that his movements blurred. "Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora!!!!"

Kagura punched back at a speed matching his own. "Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda!!!!"

When an opening finally appeared, she pulled out her umbrella and swung it at Sougo.

Sougo leapt high into the air where the umbrella couldn't hit him and lingered there longer than he was supposed to as if gravity had decreased its effect on him.

"I know wire-fu..." He explained with a grin.  

He took the opportunity to draw his sword. With his sword held high, he dove down at Kagura with fierce swiftness. He swung his sword down at her from above. The blade flew so fast that it was only a flash of silver.

Kagura closed her eyes so she could see the blade more clearly. In the darkness, the silver blade moved down towards her in slow motion. Her eyes snapped open, sharp and focused. The blade remained clasped firmly between her hands and the impact sent a strong gust of wind rippling across the room.

She let out a battlecry and threw Sougo by the blade. Sougo flew across the room, crashing into a rack of wooden swords with a clatter.

Without wasting a moment, Sougo rolled back up to his feet. Before he could attack, Kagura knelt down on one knee and fired her umbrella at him.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

She fired three bullets in quick succession.

Sougo didn't move from the spot. He only held up one hand, palm facing out, and stood there with a bored look on his face.

The bullets halted in midair as if hitting a force field. They pushed against the invisible force until they used up all their kinetic energy. Then they just hanged frozen in the air. Sougo plucked one out and examined it before tossing it over his shoulder.

"Oi! That's against the laws of physics!" Kagura turned to Matsudaira and pointed at the floating bullets. "He broke the rules! He's disqualified!!!"

Matsudaira shrugged, scrolling through his phone and not really paying attention. "What you must learn is that these rules are no different than the rules in bad anime. Some of them can be bent."

"Rules are made to be broken, didn't you know that?" said Sougo with a smug grin.

"Let's wrap this up." Matsudaira checked his watch. "I got an appointment at Snack Smile in ten minutes, so stop wasting my time. You're ready."

"Huh? Ready for what?"

"There's a prophecy about something involving the two of you. Go fulfill that prophecy!"

***

Sougo and Kagura stood on the roof of a tall building in the middle of a city. The wind blew hard against their long trenchcoats and the sun glared against the shades over their eyes. A dozen clones of the Author laid defeated on the cement around them. They were once characters with unique appearances but the Author had morphed them into her likeness until they were nothing but koalas dressed in suits and sunglasses.

The remaining clone of the Author stood before a door that was supposed to lead to a staircase to get down from the roof, but instead was a portal to the Architect's lair, the final boss that the Resistance had to defeat.

"Sougo and Kagura... We meet again." The Author faced the prophesized Two as she guarded the entrance.

Any other character would have given up in this situation, thinking it was impossible to win a fight against the Author, but Sougo and Kagura stood their place. Their stoic expressions revealed none of their plans.

Sougo and Kagura turned to each other and grinned, both knowing the trick to defeating their enemy. The Author, an all-powerful koala who controlled everything in this piece of writing, had one weakness: she could only control what was written. Since it took a long time to write a description, they didn't have to move very fast to escape from her control.

Before the Author could write a counter-attack, Sougo and Kagura had already run away from this scene. Their training had paid off. They were no longer tied down by the rules of the Matrix and were able to move too fast to be described.

The Author stood staring at the spot where the two characters used to be, feeling rather sorry for not giving the readers the kind of action scene that every Matrix parody was supposed to have.

It's harder to write a fight scene than it is to show it in a movie, because cool moves become less cool when they're described in writing. It must be because a picture is worth a thousand words. When there are a thousand words describing how their trenchcoats are billowing in the wind and how they bend over backwards to dodge bullets in slow motion, it's not as exciting as actually seeing it. That's why those reality-bending fight scenes work much better in a visual medium. Since this is a fanfic, the only reality to bend are the words and sentences that you're reading.

The Author sighed and left this scene to catch up with Sougo and Kagura in the next scene.

***

Sougo and Kagura stepped through the doorway into the Architect's lair. Instead of entering a room, they ended up in a space without walls. A countless number of surveillance camera monitors floated in the darkness, surrounding them on all sides. The screens all showed themselves at different points in time. Some of the scenes really happened. Some of them could have happened but didn't.

The Architect was the creator of the Matrix, the one who held power not just over this fanfic, but all of Gintama.

Sougo and Kagura both stared down at the guy who was supposed to be the Architect. A gorilla dressed in a yellow t-shirt laid on the polished marble floor, looking up with an empty expression on his face.

"Oi, are you the Architect?" Kagura nudged him with her foot.

"I am... a cheeseburger," said Sorachi-sensei. "I created Gintama."

"Sorachi-chan, I have a question." Kagura raised her hand like a student. "Glasses is a Cordyceps, yes? So is he the frame or the lens?"

"The lens is Shin and the frame is pachi."

"Ha, I knew it! He doesn't just have one Amanto parasite, but two! Wait, am I... am I also a Cordyceps?"

"What's a Cordyceps? I'm not the one who came up with that stuff." Sorachi-sensei looked side-to-side at the unfamiliar environment that was different from the studio that he was accustomed to. "Why am I even here? Is this a real-person fanfic?!!"

The gorilla, who was too lazy to stand up, rolled across the room towards the exit.

"Sorachi-sensei!" Sougo called out with a hint of desperation in his voice.

The gorilla mangaka stopped at the door.

"Before you go, tell me how to escape from this Matrix," said Sougo, calmer but still desperate. "I don't want to live in a crappy fanfic that'll probably end with my death."

Sorachi-sensei started picking his nose, unfazed by the fact that the character he created was being tortured by an evil koala.

"If you left this fanfic, it won't be OkiKagu anymore would it?" Sorachi-sensei paused in thought. "How about this? You can trade places with another Sougo and Kagura. If you find a replacement, you can go to some other fanfic that has a happy ending. Sound good?"

Sougo nodded slowly as a plan formed in his head.

"C'mon, China."

"Huh? Where we going?"

"I know just the place to find more Sougos and Kaguras."

***

Next time: A question that's been in the back of my mind for a while: Is Sougo an octopus?