Disclaimer: Samurai Jack belongs to Gendy Tartakovsky and the Cartoon Network. All other concepts will be right to me or their other creators as they come up.
I. Jack and the Gem Collector
The busy, foot-traffic heavy space port of Laudland is where Jack now finds himself. After numerous unsuccessful missions and dead-end leads, all of them coming to the same impassible wall that was Aku, he now found himself without direction. The samurai was a leaf in the wind, blowing through this chaotic and dark place he once called his home planet with his pure white robes and straw hat. He stood out as he normally did but the civilians knew better than to approach him. The bounty hunters around him knew better as well.
He continued walking through the streets until he came upon a bustling tavern. Based on past experience, nothing good ever really happened to him in this kind of dive bar, but he wasn't in any place to be picky about where he would sit down to rest. If there wasn't such a high chance of dying in the open he would simply rest on the streets.
He walked in and was seen by the faces of many. With his fame and infamy most of those faces were belligerent, but even they faded away with apathy a moment later. The people and creatures were there to drink and rest and talk, much like Jack. He pulled himself a seat in the corner, sitting alone as usual, and waited for his waiter to come by, not that he had any good reason to. Jack may be a customer, but to any knowing bartender he isn't a priority of a customer.
"Check it out" one large, pig-faced brute of an alien said to his pals at his table. Jack couldn't help but hear them from his proximity, but he tried not to eavesdrop. The alien held up a shining white sphere, perfectly round like a pearl but larger than a normal pearl would be. It swirled with an odd mist of white and pale green, almost consciously pulsing out a beat. "I stole it from some abandoned Aku church. They say its a haunted jewel! What do you think?" He handed it off to a skinny, stick-necked red elven creature who held it up to his large eye and zoomed the gem close and far away.
"It's unique" the elf said "but I can't determine a worth on it. It's nothing I've ever seen before." The brutish one went from pleased and prideful to begrudged.
"Just make an estimate then!" the pig demanded. "I've got ten wives and twenty litters to feed this month or I'll get the book thrown at me!"
"Can I see it?" a new stranger asked. He stood quite tall with a soft voice over the table. His face was covered in the shadows of his black long coat and wide-brimmed hat where dull silver hair flowed in a tangled ponytail. "I think I've seen gems like that in Astoria."
"The Merchant Planet?" the pigman asked. "Well, what did they sell for?"
"In terms of Ak-urrency?" asked the gentleman, using the common term for 'Aku Validated Currency', the normal units of intergalactic money in this twisted and evil future. "Probably...several million, perhaps a solid billion." The pig's eyes lit right up. He snatched the gem from his friend and handed it to the stranger.
"Take a good long look at it" the pig offered. Jack could sense some strange mixing malice in the air. His body begged to start moving. "It was real hard to get, you know" the pig added as the stranger eyed the gem over through his covered eyes. "I had to fight ghosts, real live ghosts to get to it! I nearly lost my life." The stranger held it up high, towards the light, and then clasped it hard in his hand to test its authenticity. It pulsed harder once exposed to open air again and settled back to its soothingly slow tempo. "What do you think?"
"I think" the stranger said, grasping it again, "it's mine." The stranger started sprinting away, through the tables and meandering quickly past the aliens in his way. The pigman grew instantly enraged and turned flush-pink.
"Please sir" Jack offered with his hand blocking the man and the other hand on his sword handle, "allow me." Jack dashed off after the strange man, hoping to catch him before he got out into the streets. The stranger looked back and saw the white-robed samurai chasing him, then looked up onto the rafters of the tavern for a more daring escape route. As Jack was upon him with outstretched hands, the man jumped clear up to the roof and landed upside-down on his feet with a thud. Jack looked up, undaunted by the maneuver. He could easily imitate it.
"Get him!" the pigman shouted, cheering Jack on. In reality, he was ordering his friends to pull out their guns and shoot at him. The strange thief in black saw the guns being drawn and then saw Jack jumping from a vertical post to a horizontal rafter above the ground. He was quickly scaling up to the ceiling where the thief stayed suspended by his mighty, metal-soled boots in the ceiling.
"Give that gem back" Jack demanded "and I can assure you won't get hurt."
"I can't do that" the man said worriedly. He looked around a bit more and found an open window facing the red sky. He stomped across the ceiling, keeping his long coat close to his body with his hands, and climbed through it. Jack followed him as the pigman and his men ran outside.
Jack stepped out onto the slanted rooftop of the shanty-shack tavern and saw his target barely eluding him. Jack ran after him, racing from roof to roof while the pigs hopped on hovering motorcycles and wielded guns aimed skyward.
"Don't let that guy get away!" the leader shouted.
"Who?" another pigman with a beard shouted. "The Samurai?"
"No!" the pigman demanded. "The thief! We can't catch that Jack dude! Let's just concentrate on stopping the thief!"
"Got it" another fatter, tusked pigman affirmed. They split that crowds as the raced through the street sin pursuit of the oddly fast man in black trailed by the infamously agile man in white. Jack took his hand off his sword at last, with no worry of having to fight the coward who ran from him, and used his hands as extra feet like a monkey to overcome the obstacles in his way. He could see the thief had no problem with obstacles. He simply jumped over them as they came.
"He is fast" Jack observed. "But surely, he will tire." The man in black suddenly stopped and turned around, whipping off his external, thick trench-coat to the side. Jack stopped at the ledge of the roof he shared with this man to see him.
He was a tall man wearing black. His dark-blue pants were bound at his hips by to belts crossed at his groin. Under the longer cloak he had thrown away he wore a light-gray shirt, faded with age that had an image of the planet with bird wings just barely visible. He wore leather gloves, one of which had in its greedy grasp the stolen gem. His was carved of beautiful and strikingly sharp features. Jack saw nothing in that face that indicated evil, only distress in his upturned eyebrows and parted lips.
"Listen to me" the man said. "I don't want any trouble."
"Neither do I" Jack said. He folded his arms into his robe and glared the man down.
"I know who you are" the man said, now keeping his brow finely furrowed as a defensive stance. "I think you can appreciate what I'm doing more than some petty treasure-hunters can." Jack tilted his head curiously. The man held up his hand and let the gem shine brightly in the dim light. It was glowing with more verve and brilliance than before, the swirling mist within pulsing outward and back inward constantly.
"It is a beautiful gem" Jack admitted "but that does not give you the right to steal it. That man down there found it on his own. You have no right to-"
"This gem can level this entire city!" the man announced. The seriousness, the weight of his voice was enough to force Jack into a state of calm dismay...and belief. "This gem is actually an ancient artifact. Ages ago, Aku attempted to harvest its power, but the gem did not respond to him and he sealed it away. Anti-Aku groups worshiped the gem as a tool against Aku, but once he got word he had them taken out. Little does the so-called master of the universe know it, but there are actually many of these gems hidden around this very world, and I intend to find them, to destroy that ancient terror once and for all!"
Jack was moved by the speech, and somehow he found it all to be true deep within his mind. Jack let his arms down, then looked over the side of the building at the pigmen parking their bikes. He reached into his hidden pocket of money and pulled out an expensive pearl he estimated of high value. It didn't swirl the same way, but it was just as mystifying to a common man as that gem would be.
"Consider this an act of faith" Jack said as he threw his gem over the ledge. The thief looked at him curiously, trying to pull meaning from his gesture. The gem Jack dropped fell down and bounced off the helmeted head of the leading pigman, who caught it as it fell and looked at it with glee.
"Let's go boys!" he called, holding his prize high over head. "A thousand rounds of drinks on me!"
"YEEHAW!" his crew shouted. They raced off through the streets once more. The thief understood. By letting him keep the gem, he would protect his identity and the supposed power he held.
"If what you say is true" said Jack, although he truly had little doubt, "then I must accompany you. If you know who I am, then you will not need a reason why."
"Thank you" the thief said with a light bow of respect. Jack bowed back. "My name is Seth, by the way."
"Glad to meet you, Seth" Jack greeted cordially. "I suggest we get off of the roofs for now. Aku has eyes everywhere it seems, and we are not safe to converse about him in the open."
"Yes" Seth agreed. "I have a hideout deeper in town. We can head there and rest for now."
So it was that Jack and Seth set out through the town to find the hideaway they would use as a base. Seth's route was as perilous as it was safe, many leaps and bounds over and under such dangerous obstacles in the broken underbelly of the space port. He lived far away from the legal district and under the cover of a roof of slum houses above. He was very, very well hidden, safe even from the watching eyes of Aku.
Seth pushed aside some plates of metal blocking the main entrance of his small, domed shack and held the door open for Jack. Once he was inside Seth released his grip and the door slammed shut. The metal outside made a racket as it moved back into displaced place.
"Don't worry" Seth said. "No one can hear it all the way down here." Once Jack got over the shock of the noise he took a look around the single-room hobble. It was built as a defense, not areal house, with a small empty mantle of tiny holes where the gems would surely be stored. He had a bed on the floor, just a rough looking pillow and a dirty rug, a closet where he hung his extra identical suits and dirt clothes, a small pit where he made fires with a metal grill over it and an incredibly long sword in a black scabbard on the wall above the gem storage.
"What a long sword you have" Jack noticed.
"I rarely use it" Seth admitted, placing the white gem on a stand with a circular indentation made specifically to hold a gem of that size in front of all the others. Jack noticed there was another slot right next to the white one and made the leap of judgment.
"If there is a white one" Jack began "then there must also be a black." Seth stopped in his movements and closed his eyes with a heavy air about him.
"That there is" Seth began in his serious tone. "This gem controls the force of life, the force that comes form all living things. If its powers were unleashed, a mighty stream of energy composed of the willpower and life of all the beings on this planet would form and blow away anything in its path, including the evil Aku."
"What mighty power" Jack said in utter amazement. "Is it possible for anyone to use it?"
"No" Seth said disappointedly. "Unfortunately, I have found no one capable of using this gem. However, there is an anti-life gem out there. It's power is to create a force capable of making the white one useless. A force that can extinguish all life force on the planet." Jack's eyes shot open. "You can imagine the destruction that could be caused by such a gem, Jack. If anyone, Aku including, were to acquire that power the universe would be in extreme danger of collapsing!"
"Then we must do something!" Jack demanded. "How many gems must we collect?"
"I have no real number" Seth admitted. "I suspect that there is a gem for every possible power that occurs in and out of nature. Fire, water, earth, gravity, time, wind, lightning; the possibilities are endless. This mantle I carved can only work in theory. If we could gather as many as we could, we may be able to stand against Aku long enough to find an appropriate user for the white gem, that is my plan."
"What about this black gem?" Jack said. "If we can gather enough gems and find enough clues, we could find that one as well and destroy it!"
"You are right" Seth said. "Destroying that gem would benefit the world just as much s using the white one! It's a plan!"
"Yes" Jack said, full of promise and energy. "We should head out immediately and find the first gem!"
"Weeeellll..." Seth said hesitantly, "that's a problem. You see, as of now, I seem to be the only man alive that really knows the worth of these gems, and this is the only one I've found so far. Even if we ask, no one would know where to look or how. I'm sorry Jack, I must have led you to some false belief."
"Do not worry" Jack said with a hand up. "I have met some deceitful people in the past, I have walked false paths before. I can see the look of distrust immediately in a person's eye, and in yours I see none. You are honest, caring, and concerned. You are righteous. I believe you, Seth, and I shall help you using whatever information I can." Jack started rustling within his robes and pulled out a small, decrepit piece of parchment. On it was an etching of a very crude, red lizard standing proudly among some brown rocks on a distinct and monumental mountain ledge. "The Salamander of Hikami island. It is a monster rumored to control fire. I believe if there is truly a path that these gems lie on, this creature would be our first step. He must guard one of the the mystic gems we seek!"
Seth picked up the paper and scanned it many times in disbelief. It was almost too much for him to believe himself, that such a journey would have an obvious starting point for him and his new partner. "You know what Jack?" Seth said, looking up hopefully from the paper, "I trust you as well! We shall go, first thing tomorrow, to Hikami island! It can't be too far, and there we shall find the first of many gems! Thank you Jack!"
"Do not mention it" Jack said.
"Now then" Seth said, handing the paper back and taking off his shirt, "let us sleep. You may take the softest spot of the floor next to my fire pit to stay warm tonight. Tomorrow we will find a ship bound for Hikami island and stowaway on it."
"I look forward to it" Jack said. He smiled as Seth laid down but frowned as he laid himself down. Something was unsettling him, some arcane fear in the far back of his mind. Perhaps it was just his instincts, lowering his expectations in the event he indeed was being tricked. But something else stirred up in him, telling him that Seth was true of heart and righteous of soul. He was the same heart as Jack, and that was enough for Jack to peacefully sleep on. That and the extra pillow and blanket Seth had given him to use.
Tomorrow would be a bright day for the wandering hero out of time; and the start of an even greater adventure.