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.
X. Jack and the Lightning Demon
Jack and Seth were eating heartily of the deliciously lightning-roasted meat while the demon's danced around the throne of their king. A giant of a demon with a whole dress of long, aged feathers sat before the, a bald head and sagging eyes that still had a glow of ageless cheer within them. Their fear was dissipated as Jack and Seth found themselves in the first completely friendly environment they could remember.
"O-HOOOOO!!!!!" the jovial old deity hooted with joy. "So you are Samurai Jack! What a wonderful coincidence, yes, wonderful, yes, what, yes..." His senile trailing only made his otherwise terrifying image more passive and to Jack fatherly. He had seen plenty of elders in his youth with the wisdom of countless ages held with very little respect because of their thoughtless nature. The following this particular demon had amassed gave Jack the comfort of his culture that such an ancient being was respected by so many creatures.
Seth, on the other hand, had his mind set squarely on the mission. He scanned the cave all around, mentally photographing each of the cracks and lines high above in search of some feint sign of the Gem which he had endured intense, almost deadly hunger and which he dodged lightning to find. He ate with a rather uneasy disposition and the waves of his discomfort somehow reached the mighty Demon before him.
"You seek something here, yes?" the giant asked. Seth looked up in shock, but before he could neatly set his meat down Jack threw down a bare bone and stood up.
"We are on a quest" he said, wiping his mouth with a spare cloth form within his robe "to seek out a collection of magical Gems in hoping of uniting their power to defeat Aku."
"Aku?" the demon repeated with a hint of stern curiosity. "Who is that?"
"You do not know!?" Jack said in utter disbelief.
"Aku" Seth began, jumping to his feet "is the most inexcusably evil being in all the universe! He is the tyrannical overlord of the entire cosmos, the entirety of worldly power at his beck and call! He is pure, living, smoke-spouting evil!"
"Ooooooh my!" the demon hooted. "I would be glad to assist you...but I cannot simply hand over my riches to you." From its long, withered finger it drew out a brightly glowing orb. Jack and Seth took intent notice at it and watched the ancient arm covered in long feathers lower it down past the arms of the throne. The Gem they sought crackled with the elemental lightning, glowing bright-green within its swirling center. "This was entrusted to me by far greater forces...yes, greater forces, yes."
"We have already proved ourselves to be righteous" Jack said "in the face of one of the other guardians." Jack took out the flickering fire Gem, hot to the touch, and clutched it hard, kicking up flames that licked at hi skin then flared away into vapor, simply heating his furious hand. "What must we prove to you?"
"Oooooo!" the demon hooted in excitement, drawing it shand back up. "You defeated Ifrit! I'm impressed! Yes! Very! Very impressed! He was always such a hot-head..." A silence flowed through the cave, the demon seeming to cut out in the middle of his speech. It was as if he had died in mid-sentence, and Jack cringed at the thought of prying the Gem out of such huge fingers. "HEEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEE!!!!" the demon suddenly cackled in a piercing falsetto. "I made a hilarious joke!"
"Actually" Seth began, holding his hears, "it wasn't all that great."
"I am Ramuh Dajeen the Demon of Lightning" Ramuh said in a proper old voice. "I was asked by much greater forces, yes, to guard his sacred object not to keep it out of the hands of evil but to properly place it into the hands of the wise."
"That would be us" Seth said.
"No no!" Ramuh said, shaking his fingers in a conducting style. "You have certainly proven that you are strong. Yes, VERY strong indeed, but wise? I must have you prove your wisdom to me, for while fire is a gift for all humans to control, lightning is not something that can be taken lightly..." Another pause, and Jack and Seth braced their ears for the next onslaught of high-pitched laughter. "No" Ramuh growled, sinking back into his darkness with glowing eyes, "that joke wasn't funny..."
"I agree" Seth said.
"You must show me" Ramuh continued as if uninterrupted "that you posses inhuman wisdom, and can take care of this power beyond the abilities of any living thing. Lightning cannot be contained, you know, nor can it be controlled."
"Should I tell him" Seth whispered aside to Jack "about 'electronics'?"
"In order to wield lightning" Ramuh said "prove to me your intellect! I will only allow those with wit faster than this power to wield the power itself!"
"However can we appease such a request?" Jack asked.
"Tell me a joke!" Ramuh demanded. Jack and Seth looked worriedly at each other.
After a while the rules were reset. Telling jokes seemed to arbitrary of a task for saviors of the world to do to prove their worth intellectually to a mighty thunder spirit. Instead, Ramuh began crafting brilliant brain-teasing riddles for the heroes to answer. Jack stood on the firm ground, surrounded by crouching bird-men who watched him with their hawk-like eyes and constantly probed at his stance for a sign of weakness. His hands were folded inside his sleeves and his head was hung in deep thought. Seth had his arms crossed and held his head high, prepared with a wit as sharp as his sword and a cataloged intellect more dazzling than his long sliver hair.
"Got it!" Ramuh exclaimed. He sat up straight, increasing his height all the more and looked down his long beak at the two challenging young men. His finger-tips all met with deep clacks and he squinted his wrinkled old eyes, narrowing two beams of light onto the men who stood prepared. "How many months have 28 days?"
"Isn't that a trick?" Seth asked.
"All of them" Jack answered. "Going by the Gregorian calender, of course, a modernization of the lunar-phase calender which divides the year up into 365 and a quarter days, leaving one day each year in February to be a 'Leap Day' one which is passed over the other fours years to prevent a mass accumulation of inaccurate time." Jack stood up with a smile on his face and drew his hands back together. Seth was in total awe and Ramuh was shocked, so much so that his huge, heavy beak was straight up and his old gray tongue hung out of his lower jaw.
"CORRECT!" he screeched. Jack bowed and received thunderous applause. "You are indeed quite smart! Of course, now that I know that, I will only make it harder on you!" Ramuh squinted now only on Seth, leaving Jack in the darkness. "Now it falls upon you, yes, to answer this riddle."
"Wish me luck Jack" Seth said.
"You do not need it" Jack said. "I have confidence in you, my friend."
"That's good" Seth said. He started breathing slightly heavier until he was right into panting. "Right now I'm a bit too scared to think straight..."
"It cannot be seen, cannot be felt" Ramuh began, "cannot be heard cannot be smelt. It lies behind the stars and beneath the hills. It ends life and kills laughter. What is it?"
"...the dark..." Seth answered flatly. Ramuh's eyes both opened and he laughed quietly.
"Correct" he said with grinning eyes. "Yes, very correct. Wearing all black, I see, I knew that riddle would be no trouble for you, bearing the colors of a funeral march! HEEHEEHEEEEEE!!!"
"I wear black by choice" Seth said. "There's no fashion behind it."
"Continue to test us" Jack challenged. "Rest assured that you will only serve to disappoint yourself when you run out of riddles for us."
"Ooooh" Ramuh hummed, "I may just corner you yet. After all, I have existed long before your terrible 'Aku' and I have lived all those eternities in peace with my immortal children of living fire. I have amassed considerable knowledge on brain-teasing riddles and rib-tickling jokes! For example, have you heard the one about the bear?"
"Please" Jack said, "we are in a hurry. We must receive the next riddle now."
"Very well" Ramuh said. Two beacons of light were cast down. "There is an old man living in a house near a well. One day he goes to his well and brings up the bucket to drink but finds only sand in it. The well is dry, and he lives far too far away from a river and is far too old to walk to his neighbors. The sun is as hot as it ever was in the land where he lived so he went in his house and was found in the following days as a dried corpse, dead of dehydration. Where lives the man?"
Surprise and fear came through Jack and Seth. Neither of them had ever heard the riddle and neither had the quick-draw wit to answer it on the spot. Jack thought as hard as he could piecing everything together, and thought he had an answer, replying to the challenge with a slightly curious tone.
"The desert?" he said.
"Good" Ramuh said, no longer jovial but judgmental. He closed the eye of Jack and focused on Seth. It was up to him again. "In a village there are two families who are in bitter feud. One family fights with swords while the other fights with clubs. Who is the richest man in that town?" Seth was utterly stunned and shocked. Half of the information was totally irrelevant to the question. There was little to piece together from what he was given, but Seth gave it his best try and answered as confidently as he could.
"The blacksmith!" he shouted. Ramuh stayed silent for a while and closed his eye. The room was totally dark. Upon opening his eyes once more Seth found himself surrounded by hostile, growling bird-men with extended claws and lashing tongues.
"Wrong" Ramuh said. "Sorry, yes...sorry!" His last word was a gleeful chime, signaling his followers to attack Seth in full, simultaneous force!
"What are you doing!?" Jack shouted.
"It is your turn now" Ramuh hooted. "Time to answer!!!"
"Jack!" Seth shouted. "Help!" The creatures rushed in on him, ready to rip him apart with indifferent power, but they were all quickly blown back and into crackling heaps of semi-solid electricity. Seth held his long sword tightly in his left hand and drew it up with his right shoulder, gripping the butt end with his right hand and sliding his legs apart so he stared straight down the curved blade at his downed enemies. The creatures didn't stay down long, however, for as quickly as they were dispatched they were revived with the fierce blasting of static. "Get the answer right or we may not leave here alive!"
"Can you defend yourself?" Jack asked. The light from Ramuh's eyes, bright yellow and blinding, brightened to the point where Jack could only raise his hands and hope to dampen it.
"It is my question" Ramuh said "that you must answer."
"What is the meaning of this!?" Jack demanded, ignoring the deity's threatening glare. "You have declared yourself that we need not prove our worth in strength. Why have you forced this attack?"
"Those are the rules" Ramuh said. "Take them or leave them, and unfortunately I doubt you can easily leave without this." He flashed the Gen to Jack and captured his attention once more. "Answer my riddle and he will be freed of this attack. Otherwise, you will both have to fend off my immortal children! Hoo-HOOOOOOO!!!!" Seth was enraged by the mad cackled and prepared to make an embarrassing spectacle of the enthusiastic blood-lusting warriors. They screeched and charged right into his range.
Seth attacked with powerful swipes, swinging his sword in powerfully long arcs. His right arm controlled the power and his left hand kept the blade steadily on its straight course of motion, cutting the feathered chests of the undying warriors open. He stabbed and drew his sword back to make a huge slash downward. With each swipe of his sword static licked the blade and charged it up with energy. Seth swung in an arc over his head and threw a bolt of lightning up to the roof of the cave, shaking the rocks loose and forcing them to tumble down. He jumped away, near the huge throne, as a short avalanche of rocks tumbled down and crushed the bird-men.
He brought his sword up with a pump of his arm and made a swipe in front for flair. The birds simply oozed through the rocks as a slithering electric goo. They reassembled, two coming together at once, and formed bigger, much more muscular bird-men with a humanoid bottom jaw that had speckles of stubbed hair. The bird-men growled with their strange, high-pitched voices and rushed him once again.
"Damn" Seth uttered. He took up his sword and began hopping away, provoking the warriors with his stylish spins and graceful gallantry. One finally jumped up reaching for Seth and was swiftly disarmed. Literally. Two swift, successive swipes and the monster's arms were off, leaving the crackling stubs of shoulders to bleed away electricity. The monster continued onward toward Seth, though it was incapacitated, allowing Seth to step on its back and use it as a spring board to jump away at Ramuh's throne. He made a grab but a disgusting sense of danger overcame him. He kicked away just as a huge serge of purple and white lightning ripped through the ground and cracked the stone of the floor all around the throne spire.
"What the hell!?" Seth shouted.
"Now now" Ramuh said, patronizing the already enraged Seth, "you lost my game and must deal with the consequences until your smart friend can bail you out. I am certain that he can answer the riddle which you could not, even though it was so very simple and somewhat childish. So Jack, let us here the answer now, yes!"
"I..." Jack hesitantly began. He had his finger to his lower lip. Even though the danger of not answering the riddle properly hung over his head the danger his friend was in was more significant to him. He probed his mind, searching for the oasis of knowledge in the desert of his unknowing, but- "The desert!" he suddenly answered. "He lives in the desert! That is why there was sand in his well!"
"That was barely a riddle" Seth complained. The monsters moved away from him defensively, though he still had his sword wielded offensively. Seth made his way back to Jack ,staying clear of the still crackling ground around the throne, and glared up at Ramuh. "Say, old demon, how are you so sure that you aren't the hot-head among the demons? You seem pretty quick to dispense us if we get one of your ridiculous riddles wrong!"
"I must agree with my friend" Jack said. "You do not practice what you preach."
"What good is a game of consequence" Ramuh asked "without the consequences, yes? In order for me to properly motivate you, I need to make sure the punishment for an intellectual failure is too great for you to face alone. For each answer you cannot get right my children will throw their powerful selves at you in the hopes of ending your quest and achieving a higher state of being! They reach to the dark clouds for enlightenment, the ultimate education, yes! Ultimate! Hoo-HOOOO!!!!"
"Jack" Seth whispered, "I think he's insane."
"Age brings many benefits" Jack said uncertainly "but only those that can be reached with a cane. He may not be fully within his right mind."
"Then let's tell him!" Seth exclaimed. "If he realizes that he isn't mentally stable enough to judge us...maybe he'll break down."
"Hoo-hoo-HOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Ramuh cackled. He kept laughing in his senile way with his long, feather-robed arms extended out to the sides of his throne, drunk on knowledge. His minions began dancing around him tribally, stomping their feet and leaping through the air, all to the tune of unseen energetic drums.
"I do not think" Jack began "that he can break down any further than this..." Now Jack and Seth must test not their mettle but their minds against this unwaveringly witty foe, a battle of intellect and quick-wit! At the end of this labyrinth of knowledge lies the legendary power of pure lightning!