Samurai Jack and the Bounty Hunters

by Thegreatestthereeverwillbe

Samurai Jack walks into an ambush laid for him by six bounty hunters. Boris, Jujanga, The Gentleman, I and Am, and Princess Mira of the Andaluvians. The fight of steel is easy, but when he meets a foe equally driven and motivated as he is, the issue becomes far more perplexing. The validity of his quest is questioned as Jack struggles to learn what it means to be a warrior-prince.

Samurai Jack and the Bounty Hunters

A gust of wind blew down the snowy uphill road blowing away the chalky frozen water from the hundreds of trees on either side. The road cut through the obstructing trees down towards a warm, log cabin. The trees then, in a way, were still here in another form. Downhill, a man in nothing but a white robe and wooden sandals staunchly marched upwards and forwards without a moment's hesitation to complain about the weather. He could see his breath through his yellow straw hat and hear it too, though it continued unabated.

The cabin had icy shards pointing down from the porch ceiling. It dripped water every so often just as the sun shone upon them from in between the leafless trees. Everyone left these parts for the winter, except maybe the man in the cabin.

As the samurai marched closer one final fellow left these forsaken woods. A little fair-feathered bird flew overhead not a foul song flowing through him.

Jack smiled as he saw the bird fly through the chilling air. It was a fat northern cardinal. Jack identified it from its streaking orange colour and distinctively lighter beak. Such things brought him a sense of fondness nothing in this time could. They showed him that even in the bleakest future, some beauty remains untarnished. Jack seized the opportunity to admire it wholly, and to recollect some memories from years long passed. He recalled one winter where he and his father wintered in Bianjing in Emperor Song Zehnzong's hospitality. While his father would devour his breakfast with a balance of tradition and haste, eager to conduct business with his Chinese counterpart, Jack would have slower mornings; mornings he truly longed for. After drinking tea, he would spend his morning's birdwatching with the staff where they would compete over who would correctly identify three unique birds in succession first. On his last day there, Jack competed with one of the noblemen's sons and just narrowly defeated him by identifying a northern cardinal. Jack yearned for his past deeply. Mostly because it was a simple life where his biggest concern was how to pass the time before his father would return. On that day, his father came back with a man named Fan Zhongyan. They had discussed important business that day, far beyond little Jack's understanding. Upon being introduced as the heir to the Japanese throne, Zhongyan knelt to his level both as a man and intellectually.

'What have you got there?' Zhongyan said knowing very well that Jack had borrowed one of the Emperor's spyglasses. 'It is not mine.' Jack said plainly. Fan smiled at the boy's honesty and left him with a complimentary wisdom. 'Look out into the woods and find your favourite bird. Do you see it?' 'Yes.' Jack said mesmerised by the Northern Cardinal Songbird. See how it floats in the air weightlessly?' 'Yes.' Little Jack said. 'How can you know how fast it flies?' 'I do not know.' Jack said. 'Look at the earth, boy. The earth shall never lie to you. See how its shape changes with every surface it comes into contact with. How its shadow morphs and adapts over rock vs water. When you see it, you shall always know the truth of things. Trust in the earth and neither beast nor man can deceive you.' 'I see.' Jack lied. 'Thank you.' He said in a princely tone as his father called him off to the carriage that would ride with them to the port back home.

Jack looked down at the bird's shadow as it morphed over three distinct spots in the snow. Jack's smile began to sour. His grip on his sword grew tighter. The weight in his sandals grew steadier. His steps continued in a steadfast and strict march towards the cabin. His eyes peered through the straw before them over onto the icy cabin. The sun had shone since dawn today. Snow hadn't fallen since dusk yesterday. Why was there not more water on the march? Jack asked himself. Clearly someone must have cleaned up recently. But why would they clean up if they intended not to stay in the cabin? The sun is shining, but the cold is pierces still. Surely if someone was in the cabin a fire's smoke would lift through the chimney. Jack looked at the bird one final time as it flew across the road. He predicted it would fall on the branch from the tree just behind the first row of trees overlooking the road. The branch there had just enough shade, just enough thickness, and just enough sunlight for comfort. In a way unpredictable to Jack, however, the bird veered off-course and flew through the leafless trees, leaving Jack's sight. Through his straw visor Jack saw what he hoped not to see. He saw precisely what made the little bird flee. He saw a bounty hunter blended with the tree. His dark skin hid him near-perfectly. Except his crystal-blue eyes reflected the morning sky, making him invisible to the untrained eye, but not to the eye of the Samurai. It was a feline foe with whiskers three on each side they trembled with glee. Jack knew now with certainty. His mind concluded, and his sword did agree, that 'This was a trap laid surely for me.'

Jack took a step forward with his right and with his left hand he took off his hat. He took another step forward with his left, and with his right hand he dropped the hat into the snow. With his next right step he flung his sandal forward, and he did the same with his left. When his right sandal hit the snow before him, a droplet of water from the shard on the porch gathered into a fat drop and cast a round shadow on the clean porch underneath. When his left sandal imprinted its geta markings on the colourless ground immediately after, four men burst from underneath the ground with such violence that the water droplet was startled into a freefall unto the porch.

But not Jack. Jack steeled himself at their sight. He reached for his sword with his right and held it in place with his left when he heard the sound of a chain being hurled at him from behind. Jack tried to draw his sword quicker but he could not. By the time the blade had drawn itself a fifth of the way, the sheath was being pulled from him! Realising that the chain was not to subdue him, he let the sheath go, choosing to draw his blade instead. From the reflection upon it Jack could see, that 'my sheath's thief was but a white-kitty, hungry like its twin for my bounty. Had they any sense they would flee, but sense among thee is a rarity!'

Without a moment's notice one of the men blew a poison dart into the air hurling towards Jack. He had hoped that his Siamese comrade would have stolen the sword, leaving his opponent defenceless. Unfortunately for him, his opponent was Samurai Jack. Without a moment to spare Jack deflected the poison dart back at the tribal man. The African, failing to anticipate this looked ghastly when he saw the fate that he had sealed upon many men before come to greet him. He could not smile at death, but death smiled at him as he buried himself in the hole from whence he came.

The three remaining foes charged at him swiftly. One of them, a man with a neatly trimmed moustache and a pair of daggers, ran up to him slower than the others. The remaining two were a fully armoured man with a sword, and the other was a gigantic behemoth with a moustache thicker than a tree branch. The dapper gentlemen took off his cloak for the battle, and caught Jack unawares when he eclipsed the sun with it. He hurled the cloak at the Samurai and through it he pierced his daggers. They cut through the air with the thistly speed of sirens. Their song like their targets raced towards his heart. Jack twisted his body to the side, keeping his sword arm outstretched. His left arm tensed against his left hip as the daggers cut across the superficial muscles on his back and just underneath his collarbone in parallel. Blood dripped from the vessels there instantly and stained the snow underneath.

Before the crimson inside of the cloak could rest upon his shoulders, Jack heard a wild snarl from behind him. It was something out of the amalgamation of a tornado and a blaster. He looked and there was the albino Siamese cat, pouncing at him from the white of the snow. Instantly, Jack brought the blade to his left, held it at a downwards angle, and as the cloak fell onto his shoulder blades tangentially, he jumped into the sky tearing the cat's belly open with the sword. The cat fell face-down into the snow just as Jack would have had those daggers found his heart as they had found the cats. The remaining three men, save for the gentleman, charged at Jack's position. They set upon the body underneath the cloak and beat it until its blood mixed with its puss and soaked the colourless blanketing snow a bright red. Just then, the black body of its twin fell from the sky in two parts disjointed at the hip. The two remaining men looked behind them to find that the gentleman was lying face down in the snow, a stream of blood pouring towards them from his regal chest cavity. Over him stood-tall the man in the slightly torn white robe. Nothing moved on him except his topknot in parallel with his robe's flutter at the ankle with the wind. His sword was lowered, but he had not yet reclaimed the sheath with which to unequip it. The Russian Mammoth and his thick moustache shivered and croaked as he looked back onto the carcass of the deformed black cat. On his black skin were tiny black explosive pellets. The same pellets designed to kill Samurai Jack. In a magnificent blast of light, Boris the Russian melted as the snow melts under the sun. The man in the set of armour was hurled towards the tree from which the red bird crossed the road. His armour cracked and broken in a hundred different spots. His helmet broken to reveal part of the face of a beautiful woman of noble features. Her hair which had been done up into a neat bun unfurled into a fiery auburn and escaped where there were crevices in the redundant helmet. Her face which had the beauty of princes and queens was bruised and broken. Teeth had fallen from their spots and air could no longer pass through her nose. She breathed mechanically as she drank oxygen through her blood. Through it all she stood from where she had fallen, cuts, bruises, scrapes, fractures, and all.

The fat water droplet ended its freefall onto the wooden porch. The battle had ended.

'Samurai Jack!' she spat out through the bloody pain. He stood across from her, basking the sun of victory triumphantly silent and motionless. 'Prepare to die!' she cried out in a sobbing desperation through tears, sweat and snivels valiantly bidding farewell to her fool-proof plan. 'I have no desire to fight you, princess.' He said to her calmly. 'For Andalouvia!' she cried as she charged at him with whatever strength she had left. In her wake was the destruction of her comrades and the blood that escaped her jaw and ribs. Jack let out a sigh before turning to face the princess with a fell swoop of his sword across the cold air. He opened his eyes only to find that the pained princess hurling the blood he had let loose in her mouth directly onto him. With her left foot she kicked the freezing frost into his eyes. In his daze she fully flicked her dagger with her left thumb at him just has her left foot fastened in the snow. The whistle of the dagger was not unfamiliar to the samurai. In his blindness he tilted away from the knife, but the knife cut against his cheek underneath his left eye. From within his soul he let out a grunt forcefully and involuntarily. He opened his eyes to see her standing in the snow, her fiery passion fuelling the desire to fight and vigorously lighting the flame inside her heart, mind, and atop her skull in wavy strands.

They stared each other down, sizing each other arithmetically. He was barefoot and cut once on the face and twice on the body, but otherwise he was unhurt. His back was hunched forth and his knees were bent towards. His jaw was locked and his teeth were clenched. His eyes were narrowed and in his pupils only she could be seen between two stray strands of his otherwise neatly kempt hair that served to marginally obscure the cut she had dealt him. She stood tall and strong. Her breastplate was out, and her legs were stood long and slightly parted. Her boots were planted firmly in the snow. Her right leg showed burns glistening in blood though her left leg was still encased by armour. Her left ribcage was visible, and it too was burnt and scorched red with blood and puss. The smoke Jack thought absent from the chimney entered his nostrils through the flame in her heart and on her broken breastplate. The armour was scratched and cracked where it was intact. Her helmet which had pointed ends and a voice-enhancing ventilator could no longer provide neither the function of defence nor the awesome function of intimidation. She realised that as she pulled the mask off her face to reveal her scorned beauty. She had long eyelashes decorating her tilted blue eyes and thick, curved eyebrows crossing underneath her royal princely circlet landing just over her small pointed nose. The whiteness of the sun made her tanned skin glow as brightly as silver. Her plump lips parted themselves and the allure of royalty for air and for the necessity of excusing the blood seeping into her mouth. Once again, her lips were smothered in crimson blood rather than crimson lipstick. Her face was bruised, but had not been cut. Her hair blew with the southern wind, but her sword arm remained strong and firm.

They waited patiently. Each one of them examined the other intensely waiting for the moment of weakness. Just then, her bottom lip quivered as sweat mixed into her open wound on her left leg. For an instant she looked down to assess the damage and in an instant he let out a forceful yell as he charged at her. The duel of the fates had begun.

He lunged at her capably, but she was quick to react. Before steel met flesh her blade broke contact with an echoing 'KLANG!' Jack stepped back to lunge again, and he did with bravado and zeal, but he was met with her right, steel, shoulder blade at the chest. 'Ungh!' he grunted as the air was thudded from his throat. The watery residue on the armour splashed into the density of the dry, dreary, bitterly cold air, choking the samurai's gulp of breath. That did not stop him from slashing at his foe. The blade came swooping down from porch which had stood just five meters from them. She saw the deathly dirk descend upon her, but when she issued the order to her legs to move, they failed to comply. The burns and pains there were too much to bear. The small sword did not wait. Its wings fluttered in its wielder's soul as it came down upon her ready to claim her as she stood. She had to react lest she be buried with her associates. Cleverly she eluded the sword with a tight pull of the lower back, but the sword found another way. With its own tip it cut beneath her eye perpendicularly, reddening the road downwards for her tears of blood. 'Angh!' she muttered as the sword saw the snow below. The samurai reopened his eyes again, fuller with intensity and ardour. The passion of the Samurai burned through him, and his honour dictated that she be dead.

Jack seized the moment, and again he struck across her breastplate. In her award stance she parried the strike and regained footing hunched and anchored into the snow. Jack swung at her exposed neck, so she fell into the snowy trappings underneath. The thick blanket of crispy ice covered her thighs, and her feet were stuck inside the layers of blizzardy molten sleet from the collected snowfall of the past week. In her stooping squat the flame atop her skull flew upwards where the blade levelled all her loose ends. Buried again in the snow, the hot molten lava that had been dressed and decorated for many a monarchical occasion fell around her in tatters. Reeling from her predicament, knowing there was no place to go, she hunkered down into the snow and prepared to fight. She spun into a rock of steel and tumbled past the samurai, whose blade found nothing but snow as it pierced her shadow.

Dazed and disoriented she stood behind the warrior, who had the upper hand and pressed the attack. He needn't have leapt to bring her down again, but he hopped for velocity and added power. He struck at her other eye, to blind her tears of direction and sight. Dizzy and confused, she knew one hand would not defend her. With her left she supported the blade held with her right, as Jack's sword cut her down again into the snow all the same. She declined into the snow, and disorderly dishevelled into a log timbering and tumbling away from the Samurai. He stood at the ready, blade clasped with two hands and waited for her to rise again for the last time.

She stood there shaking and trembling from fear and frost against her foe. Her eyes were red from trauma and pain. Her tears were bloody, and her waist-length hair unevenly ended at her shoulder and the middle of her spine. Her lips parted to pour a cup of blood for the Samurai. The blood was so plentiful that it stained the Samurai's runic. With her right hand, she raised her sword to the samurai, standing again solidly struggling for her realm and birth-right. With utmost calm Jack stepped forth to end it. He spun around to strike at her cracked armour and she stood as still as a stone ready to embrace it. The blade came supremely and KLANGED forcefully onto her right ribcage made perfectly of steel. The armour had not given way. Both combatants' eyes swelled in surprise. Jack's sword had failed. The moment had come. In his dumbfounded exclamation, she pushed Jack's blade against her own ribcage. He look at her oppressive suicidality, flabbergasted at her actions. The blade cracked the armour further, and her blood oozed through the cracks. He looked up with bewildered astonishment to find the gaze of a bloodthirsty queen staring back at him. With her sword she slit the air horizontally, intended to slit her enemy's throat with it. With this brave and bestial gambit the queen had hoped to save herself by sacrificing a rook to kill a threatening knight. Jack saw the scheme hardly too soon, narrowly escaping death by just a whisker. He let go of the ensnared blade and clung on for dear life by loosening his footing and catapulting himself backwards. Though he might have escaped certain death, the fury of Princess Mira's discharge was not to be contained. The blade cut forcefully, and truly across Jack's chest, leaving him with a new, fresh, scar. Jack yelped in anguish as he stood across from her again. This time it was he who has hunched down on the ground, and she who stood tall and firm. Jack had his right hand in the snow, his knees covering the bright red cut that stretched across from shoulder to shoulder underneath the cut on his collarbone. His face appeared stern and his eyes appeared wide and intent. The boldness there was black and evident and the intent proved blacker still. The two stray hairs that had waved sweaty over the cut underneath his left eye had developed into an intricately scruffy disordered traditional topknot. Stray hairs had sprung up from behind his bun, and locks of hair pulled from their natural position drooped downwards across either eye, leaving him just the gaps to see from. Through that and his own frustration he could see with total clarity that he was at a disadvantageous position for the first time in this encounter. He saw her standing across from him cautious and blades at the ready, and with that it became utterly clear that for the first time in this battle, the field of battle had been levelled.

'It is useless now Samurai!' she called out to him. 'You are disarmed and defeated. Surrender and I will give you the honour of seppuku.'

Jack remained still as a summit with all its eminence. 'I have only begun to fight!' he declared. Before he could act on it she interrupted his thoughts pleading 'You haven't a sword with which to fight! Accept that you are beaten and we can end this.' 'I shall not be beaten until my blood spills upon the wood of this porch.' He said to her. 'You have chosen poorly.' Jack narrowed his plenteously large and piercingly sharp eyes into an undersized slit in a threatening daring glare and said to her defiantly 'Come and get me!' Princess Mira scolded him all the same, and obliged him.

Once more she stepped forth, this time armed dually with unerring mortal blades pale in the bitterly pallid snow. Through the pain she pulled them behind her back and like lighting they came down with a flash of severing sunder to end the Samurai where he stood, but all that came from that was a heap of snow on the otherwise dry porch. She looked to her left and here was the agile Samurai dashing way from her. 'Coward!' she called out to him as she made after him. He was quicker than she was. Her armour was heavy and her injuries slowed her, but she persisted nonetheless.

Jack ran towards where he had ended her comrades. That graveyard of lost, broken souls that he had created. Jack looked frantically as his hands scurried across the battlefield looking for a weapon he might use. First he thought of Junjanga the Aboriginal's poison. He ran to his naked body to find that the flute had but one dart and that dart had fed its poison to its master. Frustrated, Jack turned to the Gentleman's corpse. Surely he would have a rapier or a longsword? Alas, this gentleman relied exclusively on those daggers that lay buried in the feline's bosom. Jack's sweat began to drip from his forehead onto his wounds causing him great irritation. He looked behind to see Mira walking menacingly towards him, twirling her blades across the snow as if it were heated butter. The fire within had begun to burn without as the man in the torn tunic felt warm in the middle of the snow. His heart sucked his stratagem as he began to search frantically for anything he could use to fend her off. Then, his mind conjured up a fearful memory. He remembered that Boris the Russian came at him with two great maces with edges sharper than either Mithrill or Admantium. This was the only thing that could have survived the blast. Jack ran towards what was left of Boris the Russian sparing not a sole moment. His soul depended on each second spent. Mira bided her time as she closed in on her prey. Boris' corpse was fresh and burnt. Blackened by fire and stinking of flaming urine. It was crispy like charcoal, but his warmth melted the snow around him, giving Jack some needed respite and cooling. The frictionless water slicked across his knees and slipped them into a stinging skid through the snow until his kneecaps crashed and clanged against Boris' steel breastplate. Jack fell belly first onto Boris' burnt back, absorbing the ashy blackness into his blood and heart. Next to its charred owner, there they were just barely damaged. Jack opened his eyes to see those magnificent maces before him. He picked himself up and immediately pushed himself onto the maces. He pulled them with whatever strength he could muster, but they would not budge from underneath the snow. With anxious trepidation he tried again, but the maces remained as inanimate as its immovable owner. Jack looked back with Alarm to see Princess Mira just seven meters away. One last time he moved his muscles to pull just one mace off the ground, and he did for a moment, but their weight was too much as they fell to rest again. Paralysed and perplexed Jack looked back with eyes wider than the sun to find that his estimation was terribly inaccurate. Mira had mustered the mute desire to charge at his foe. Blades at the ready she swung at Jack as a scissor cuts paper. With dreaded terror, Jack abandoned the maces and leapt right towards the trees with the rhythmic precession of an acrobat, but it was in vain. The blades were many, and he was too optimistic. They found their mark in the dramatic opening passing through the air and penetrating flesh and cleavage like a butcher chops and carves a carcass. That stroke of gymnastic finesse ended with an out pouring of blood from two deep fissures raining down from Jack's back onto the snow. His body smashed into the snow ungracefully and pathetically slammed thrice down the way and then twice in place. The samurai muted himself preferring the stoic sanctity of silence. From where he was downed Jack opened his teary eyes to find an iron hope. The albino cat's chain was right there for the taking. Just then a plan had hatched in his mind.

Jack gathered himself from beneath the snow, coughing wheezily as he did it. Mira stood at duellist's length from him. Jack struggled to stand tall, but eventually he did. Mira did not attack him desperately, after all she had the advantage. Jack stood in a pool of frozen blood and looked at her with that same daring look from moments ago. She looked right through him and saw him for what he physically was. A colourless, anaemic, faded man. Indeed, his hair had grown more unkempt and unruly as the strands that covered his eyes thinned but grew in number. Now there were six of them dashing across his rectangular face, each of them arched from some root on his head. The stiffness of his bun had come into question as the little hairs that sprang up from there grew in number and the bun itself loosened in composure and widened in diameter. What was a diamond shaped small ponytail now exploded into a trapezium of strands and curls all emanating from that once elegant and dignified spot. Stray hairs fell onto his ears and neck, and some found their way back into the flock. Through it all, his eyebrows remained thick and bushy as they tilted towards his straight nose. His piercing gaze cut through the cold into her heart as his pupils dilated until they consumed the whites of his eyes. Underneath them were marks of unrest and tiredness, bags weighing down his thoughts on timelessness and despair. His mouth moved to frown as the muscles on his cheek grew stiffer. His jaw locked and his intent was loaded. His back dripped red and his robe was cut in three places. One where the dagger struck, and two where the swords carved. His collar bone peeked from through from the tears in his robe, and the woman's blade cut lower than that at the chest. The robe, was of little utility now. Jack stood armed with nothing but his hands. With his left hand he took to the corner of the dagger's entry point and with easy peeled his garb off his body revealing his wounds in all their terrible misery. An artistic tapestry of suffering availed itself from his body. Scars both old and new greeted her from their home on his toned muscles. She read him like a book, his wounds told her the story of a miserable man leading a horrible life. He brought forward his right hand which was wrapped in the iron chain he had found in the snow and put his left fist behind it. He stood poised to fight in the martial style and looked at his opponent dead in the eyes. Without saying a word to her he opened his left hand and beckoned her into the fray. 'Come and get me!' his fingers said to her and she obliged.

She charged at him in silence, swords in hand. She carried her off-hand blade, her original runite sword, across her breast and away from her she extended Jack's katana. Jack was poised and ready. He closed his eyes and listened to the silent sound of snowflakes landing onto the melted snow. In between he felt a vibration coming through the sleet, up his ankles, and into his trap. She raised her swords above her head, but before she could cut the Samurai down, Jack brought his left foot and leg forward and jumped backwards, vaulting into the air in a backwards spin into the tree behind him, the same tree the blast had shot her to just a few minutes ago. Indeed, pieces of glass cut Jack's feet and contributed to that pool of blood he stood in. Now she stood in that pool looking up at him as he stood on the branch above. She looked at him, he looked at her. He couldn't stay there forever and he needn't to. He just had to wait for-

'Come down here and fight me cow-'

Jack interrupted her tantrum with the flailing of his chain wrapping around his sword from above. With a yank of the metal the sword would be his again, and so he pulled it mightily and tore the blade from her grasp. Realising the climactic moment, she struck the chain powerfully with her runite sword disintegrating it into nothing. Jack looked at her from his vantage point with disdainful exasperation. She looked at him like a lion looks at a gazelle, with executive authority she began to allow her anger to seethe through her. She paced to and fro waiting for him to come down. He thought for a while until another idea came to him.

She gave her back to the leafless trees when he jumped left towards whence he came. He jumped from branch to branch until a great distance existed between himself and his pursuer. She ran as fast as she could, but the limp in her calf failed her. Far over on the misty side of the air Jack stood atop the branch with the bird's nest. With a bird's eye view he surveyed the battlefield and drew his mark. He undid his sash and tied it onto the high branch and climbed far above the tree where he could be seen only by fat little birds. There he held together his tunic and turned it inside out where only the sun could enlighten him. From that vantage point he could see her, but she could not see him. She had slowed to survey where he had gone, but there were no footprints for her to see. Jack held his tunic in his fist, careful not to allow it to fly out with the wind. Without his sash it was loose enough to evade and expose him. He bit onto his tunic and let it flutter in the wind like the flag of his kin as he did his hair nice and tight. Then, he turned the thing inside-out and wrapped his head and torso with it, leaving a brief gap for him to see through. The stark whiteness of the interior of the garment blended perfectly with the snow of the battlefield. The bloodstains fell perfectly in line with the trails of blood both fighters had left below. The light of the sun reflected into the air around him, illuminating him into the warrior of the light. The blood on his body was still ripe, but it would take time before it would seep through his makeshift ninja robes. His legs were bare, but were uncut and unhurt, making them less of a problem for detection. From the apex of the tree, Jack dove down like a needle and fell sublimely into the snow. He covered his head in snow, and from within began to dig towards the tree, listening carefully for footsteps. He dug until his nails caught onto the bark of the tree and had bled slightly. Then he laid there in wait.

Moments passed and Jack waited patiently. He listening for the chirping of birds and the ruffling of feathers. There was neither of these for a prolonged period. Had she come and gone? Had she fled? Will she lure me with the sword? Thoughts raced past his mind but he had remembered the temperament of Bushido, the way of Samurai.

'I am Samurai Jack. I must have the courage to follow through with my plan and I must trust that it is the plan my ancestors have bestowed upon me.'

Then droplets of snow fell around the encamped Samurai. Little dandruff pieces of snow came from above. They were not snowflakes, but were grains of snow from father time. The hour has come. Jack listened intently for the footsteps to cease and when they did he counted the seconds until three steps forward were taken. The first was towards the tree. The second was towards the tree. The third was not a step, but a realignment of weight. That was the moment she grasped the Samurai's sash. With both hands she examined and looked at it with close inspection and personal scrutiny. She looked at it and saw that it had been tied into a circle at the end. She thought intently about it. Could be some form of warning sign? A cultural thing? Then her eyes widened in quivering horror. Her eye widened with a twitch of the eyelid as she pressed her weight onto the snow underneath her where the Samurai sprang his trap. He leapt up from underneath her, blended perfectly from the waist up with the whiteness surrounding him and grabbed her by the shoulders. Then with all his weight he pushed her down into the shoddy, hollow snow underneath her. Her neck was caught in the noose he had made for her and her legs fell through her shallow grave. She gave a brief, but loud wail before she fell through the air, the rope tightened around her neck before she could finish. She struggled for a moment to liberate herself, but she could not. The air was being sucked out of her, and her vision began to darken as her breathlessness was bringing an asphyxiating end to her.

Jack was content not to see more of this. He turned her back on her as she struggled to breathe at the end of his noose. As he stalwartly marched to reclaim his belongings, she dropped the runite sword into the pit as she desperately struggled to free herself of Jack's trap to no avail. Jack heard the drop of the sword and understood the finality of the battle. He placed his feet inside his geta, tied his tunic around his waist and picked up his sheathe from within the snow. Jack turned around to find that his opponent was nowhere to be found. He looked left and right, up and down, but couldn't find her. He walked closer to the scene of the trap, only to find that his sash had been slashed. Then, from within the grave he heard a voice. A moaning voice crawled up from the grave, and rolled onto the snow, gasping for air. It was Mira, barely alive and wielding his magic sword alongside her runite blade.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks looking at her as she struggled to her feet once more. 'I have never fought a foe with perseverance of your calibre. Who are you? And why do you wish to destroy me so passionately?' Mira looked at him fiercely. Her eyes narrowed for one final time. Her eyebrows sank into her spear-tipped eyes, and her tiny nose wrinkled as her jaw clenched. A stray strand of auburn waved at her from above before her profound concentration was interrupted by a felicific miscalculation from within. Her face crushed and churned itself under the weight of supressed emptions until a tear fell through the blood trodden path in her right eye. Insulted and offended at the notion she snivelled before she could say 'I am the princess Mira of the Andaluvians, rightful heir and claimant to the Empire of Andaluvia.' 'Where is that?' Jack asked 'AAARRRGH!' she cried out 'Have you no honour? How can you ask a ruler where his lands are!?' 'Forgive me, I am not from here' he said to her. She looked down sombrely at the snow, her eyes closed picturing the industrial metropolis she had left behind to fight and die in this snowy cabin. She spoke softly of her home and said to the samurai in a calmly: 'We are a warrior folk. We come from generations of fighters. We have been this way and we shall continue to be this way. Our goal is the perfection of combat in all of its forms. We subdued all of Iberia from all invaders. We domesticated her peoples and civilised them. Then came he who could not be defeated. He was the blackness that swallowed the sun.' 'Aku!' Jack said. 'Yes.' He came, and we resisted him as best we could, but we were no match for him. His power sent our cities, our weapons, our guns, our resources, all to ruin. Now my people owe him allegiance and praise, for he is our master.' Jack's eyebrows fell diametrically opposed to what they were before. His heart sank as he saw the resemblance in their stories. 'Forgive me.' He began before she continued 'But it is not so bad an arrangement.' She said 'what!?' Jack said puzzled and confused. 'I have always thought that my people could fend off any other creature. But I was wrong. Aku's galactic trade policy has revealed to me that there are many creatures in the galaxy with far superior weaponry and capabilities. We were no match for them. But they are no match for Aku. Aku keeps our people alive, though we yearn for more freedom. But what can we give to he who has taken everything from us? You. You are the only thing Aku wants. If I give him your head, Aku will give us the freedom to subjugate the lesser races of Iberia. So, Samurai you must be destroyed.'

Jack looked at her with his eyes further apart than he thought physically possible. A woman with title to her lands had just justified to him Aku's existence. 'No. This cannot be.' Jack said. 'But it is. Aku's rule has brought some good with it.' 'No! Aku is pure evil!' 'From your perspective, perhaps, but from mine Aku is necessary evil.' 'There is no necessity for evil, evil is evil and it cannot continue! Only good has the power to end this tyranny!'

'Tell me Samurai,' she said 'did your princely states have cities have as large and prosperous as Aku's? Or did they suffer between daimios and Shoguns battling for influence? Had you continued to lead your life in the way to which you were accustomed, thousands of your own kin would be slaughtered for what? Some mistaken concept of cultural authority and honour? I spit on your broken notion of honour!'

She spat blood between herself and the man she had enraged. Fire burnt within him as a torch burns aflame. His face twisted and turned in disgust and closed-mindedness as he swung his sheath across and said 'Enough! You speak of notions you fail to grasp. I am Samurai Jack. My duty and loyalty is to my father, the emperor. I shall execute his just will until the day I am destroyed with courage and I shall act in benevolence and humility towards those who are less fortunate. I shall not deceive myself with notions of trickery and falsehood as you have. There is no justification for evil, and I shall destroy Aku and I shall return to the past and undo his wretched evil because it is my noble and just destiny. It is my mission and I shall reclaim it on my honour and on my clan's honour!'

'Give me a definition of justice and I shall give you a definition of tyranny. Give me honour and I will show you shame. Your Bushido code is a joke and your adherence to it shows narrow-mindedness and stupidity. For as long as your class existed you samurai have oppressed others, and more importantly yourselves, with impunity. You wish to enforce your rule and preconceptions, but you know not what you do.'

'It is clear then.' Jack said drawing a line in the snow with his sheath. 'We shall not find common ground. Thus, you must be destroyed.'

'I admire your fervour samurai. It is a pity that your death serves me. It is a necessary evil.'

His eyes restricted themselves into a confined slender strait, disgusted at the insult levelled at him. 'Today is the day the injustice of your kind ends. The injustice of the last of the Samurai ends today, and Imperial Andaluvia shall be reborn!' She said triggering an explosive reaction in the samurai. Armed with nothing but his sheath Jack vaulted into the sky and came down at her with tremendous vigour. The battle continues!

Jack eclipsed the sun and blinded Mira in his descend. He landed a stiff blow across her temple drawing blood. The blow was so forceful that it send Mira's head reeling rightwards. Jack stood ready to bang her head with his sheath like a drum, but Mira' twirled around from his pummelling, using his momentum against him. With two blades she cut across the Samurai aiming for the torso and neck, but Jack leaned backwards far enough to avoid the blades. She brought both blades piercing downwards, but Jack regained his posture and flicked her chin up with his sheath. She kicked him backwards, but he remained standing. She send both blades forward to stab him, but Jack stood to the side narrowly escaping their cold cuts. Then he stuck his sheath into her exposed thigh causing her to neigh in pain, just before he delivered another blow to her head sending her staggering backwards. He then swung his sheath behind his back and motioned with his fingers 'come get me.' She did not oblige. Instead, she stood calmly and spun the swords in spherical circles before her. Jack stood his ground as she began her methodical approach. He saw the blades whirl and whirl and he timed them perfectly. When she was five meters from him, he flung his sheath perpendicularly towards her, sending it flying into the air. Contact with the sheath slowed the blades just enough to allow him to make his move. He ran towards the spinning blades, and just before he was in harm's literal way he jumped parallel to the ground, knees bent, and dropkicked her belly sandals first. It caused her no damage, but she staggered back. In the instant where he stood crouched on her belly, he took her sheath and jumped back from when he came back-flipping through the air and collecting his own sheath upon his descent. She wielded the swords, he wielded the sheaths. He knew that what would come would be painful, but he also knew it was the only way.

She pressed her advantage and with both swords she fought him. First the runite sword slashed down on the left, but Jack was too quick for it. Then the katana came down from the right but Jack was too quick for that too! She placed the runite sword underneath her left armpit, and slashed down twice successively with Jack's katana. First she struck at his head, but he cleverly avoided it. Jack seized the opportunity and moved to whack the runite sword from underneath her armpit, but she swung the katana circularly as she brought it back over her head nearly severing the Samurai's arm off. He got back his arm with a new laceration, but he paid little attention to it, merely grunting through it and carrying on the fight. Without taking a moment's respite she struck down with the sword, again missing the samurai who had strafed leftwards. There, his chest was cut again for the third time, adding a new scar to his collection and sending him tumbling backwards. She lowered her swords in a spin and readied herself for his next attack.

He sat up without looking at his new wound which dripped onto the snow, and through five strands of hair which loosened and pulled his hairline down, releasing some strands into the stray when they had just recently been reorganised. He charged at her again, hoping to disorient her with his speed, but without neither bother nor chore brought her swords together and crossed her elbows inwards then outwards catching Jack as he came and cutting him away. With that she whimsically orchestrated another scar to be painted against Jack's chest, this time in the shape of an 'x'. Again he rose up, prepared to absorb more punishment, but she had become careless, just as he had suspected. She began to charge at him with a flurry of attacks while he stood motionless and defenceless with nothing but two sheathes.

Jack raised the sheathes into his own cross to obscure his wounds and prepare for battle. She came forth methodically with barrage of attacks aimed at the samurai, and he welcomed them. First she struck with an overhead left, but the samurai met it with his own wooden sheathe. He was deliberate not to stand deliberately underneath the blade, however. Timing his movements with the most precise delicacy, he did not parry the attack, but allowed his sheath to chip against her cold steel. By the time he had dodged to his own left, the right had come down to finish him. There, he did the same only chipping her sheath instead. 'Very well' well she thought changing her tactics. She spun and attacked him with rapid succession in a twirling motion. The first three cut through the samurai, but pushed him far enough so that he might be able chip the wooden ends of both his sheathes through it. She decided to afflict upon him then assaults of a horizontal slashing nature, with each blade safely hid behind her whilst the other struck at him. Between each aggression, she would confuse her foe by retracting the blade behind her in different ways. Sometimes she would recall it behind her thigh, sometimes behind her neck, other times underneath the armpit. In any case, Jack never knew where or how the blades would come at him, but each time he found a way to avoid injury and chip his wooden sheaths. This continued for hours until the sun had begun to set. Finally, the combatants took another respite.

Jack stood carrying his two sheathes, shirtless and exhausted. Thatches of hair crossed over from his head across his face thicker and greater in number than ever before. His face was cut and bruised, and the scars on his arms and body were more than he could care to count. He breathed and exhaled deeply. Each time moving those hairs that crossed over his face to and fro from the intensity of his breath. The dark circles underneath his eyes had grown more pronounced, though the crimson blood remained wet and plentiful. Princess Mira on the other hand looked winded, but not tired. She looked at Jack deadly and squarely. Her swords outstretched towards him keeping him at bay.

'You would have made a fine Andaluvian had the fates been kinder.' She said to him. 'I am a Samurai.' He said 'Like my father before me.' He declared as she lunged towards him motioning to separate his neck from his shoulders. The time had come. Jack ducked down and rolled underneath her parted legs. She looked over her shoulder sternly, moving her orange mane away from her back for a moment to find that Jack, without caring to look at her (or open his eyes for that matter) was already in the process of sticking her recently sharpened wooden sheathe into her fleshy leg wound. She closed her eyes as she moaned in agony. After just barely scratching that would, Jack capitalised on her distraught state and finally returned her sheathe to her by sticking it into her rib-wound and using it to vault into the air, kneeing her in the back of her conveniently placed right over her shoulder. As she came collapsing into the snow, Jack whacked her again against the head, this time with his own sheathe. She began to fall on her left side whilst Jack hovered above her. Then, in one graceful swoop, the samurai lodged his sharpened sheath between her loosening grip and the hilt of his blade and set the sword free. She came down onto her back, and he landed just above her. Realising what was about to occur, she quickly drew her sheathe from within herself whilst she was out on the snow and hurled it towards the sword. Jack moonsaulted into the air, and claimed the sword before the hilt would cast it out of the equation. Within seconds, samurai and sword stood inseparable and were reunited again. With his sword parallel to his face, and his knees bent, he stood his ground staring intently at his slow enemy to stand up once again. When she finally came to, she stood elegantly and gleefully and carried her sword with two hands, one on the hilt and the other on the blade. Her titian coloured hair swayed and wagged behind her as she smiled through the pain one last time.

'To be or not to be?' she asked in an exponential voice throughout the deathly forest and the empty cabin. 'That is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. To die- to sleep, no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream. So I say to you fellow warrior, once more unto the breach, dear friend, once more; or close the wall up with my bereaved dead. In peace nothing is so becoming of a man that a modest stillness and humility, but when the blast of war blows in our ears then immediate action of the trigger to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood to disguise fair nature with hard favoured rage- these shall lend a warrior a keen eye and a terrible aspect.'

Jack had no response but to raise his sword and say 'I came to bury Mira, not to praise her. Though the evil that she has done will live after her, the good shall be interred with her bones.'

With both duellists looking across the plain from one another, the snow around them transformed into mounds of grass and the trees blossomed with cherry blossoms. The snow stopped falling and the chill in the air turned into a warm sunny embrace. In their hour of death, Valhalla came down to greet her heroes.

'And now it begins.' Mira said.

'No. Now it ends.' Jack replied initiating battle with an overhanded strike against her. She held her blade above her head at a downward angle and parried his strike. Again he raised his sword, but before it could reach its destination she cast it aside with her own blade, twirled and stabbed at him with her back towards him. Jack stepped aside as fast as he could, but the blade was faster. What had otherwise gone through his belly now claimed his appendix. The cold steel incised through his anatomy and shaped him from within anew. The samurai groaned jarringly rupturing his vocal cords and turning his wail into a murmuring whimper. She smiled as she pulled the blade from him expecting to see him kneel, but he would not. Instead, he breathed in heavily, foaming at the mouth and pressed the attack, his tunic now dowsed both in his and her blood.

She went for his neck, but a strafe of his sword sent her blade away. She went in with her elbow and smashed his face, and turned back around to face him. Without delay, he pulled her sword into a parallel position with the ground and with the sinew of the samurai summoned in his triceps he summoned his ancestral sword down against her blade splintering into disintegrated slices of steel. The shards nestled themselves in the shallow grass. Jack pressed the advantage and stabbed through the air right at her belly. In a panic she used her good leg to kick her blue sheath up from in between the steel shards. Jack's sword cut right through the sheath, splitting it into two. She held onto to the sheaths as a victim carries onto its charging beast's antlers. With the blade coming closer to her, she took a terrifying decision. She leaned rightwards to allow the blade to cut through the left part of her armour, her motion turning the stab into a slash. The sword cut through her flesh, too, and the burns underneath had gotten a new colour. She cried as she stood again in the field of battle, Jack circling her, and herself circling Jack.

Jack stood knees bent with his eyes pointed at her as per usual. His hair was still mostly held together, though it had continued to fall apart. Now ten thick locks of hair drooped down onto and across his face, with more stray hairs jumping out from everywhere on his head and neck. The wind chimed through it causing it to dance the dance of death with him. With each slice and strike it would move too, encouraging him to strike harder and truer that he might see where he was fighting. His chonmage had withered and wilted as a flower does when it is unacknowledged. Nonetheless, his blade was sharp and its hilt were wrapped in his left hand perpendicular to his face. She meanwhile, had two sharp sticks, and she held them in an 'x' shape as he did moments ago. Her jaw was locked, and her red hair flowed in the wind parallel to her enemy's. Her circlet was all that kept her vision clear. Jack made the first move. Driving his sword with his momentum he charged at her looking to stab her again. She had tried to sharpen the wood against the blade as he did, but when she struck his sword with the half-sheath in her left, the sheath broke in two and the sword struck true. In a pivotal moment, she decided to hold onto the blade with her armoured left hand, cutting it as she did. With her right sheath she struck at the samurai, scratching him as she did. He held to his aim and pushed forward to cut her, but her stick was faster. The she stabbed again with the sheath he sharpened for her and struck his eye sending him back with his deadly weapon. Without sequential suspension and tolerating little tardiness, the samurai stood without remitting care to his bleeding eye. She looked at him decisively. He looked at her angrily. Nothing would impede either of their goals, nor would any injury or humiliation obstruct them. The fight continues.

She thrust herself through the air towards him, leaping fearlessly with her sharp stick at the samurai. He rushed to defend against her sudden pummelling with the stick, left and right left and right he strafed and evaded until finally she struck right where his word was. Without allowing her to contact his blade, he held her stick-arm with his left hand. Paralysing her movement he tried to force her to unequip the weapon, but he was unsuccessful. Instead he kicked her way, winding her advance and retarding it.

Jack thought intensely of what he should do next. She would not advance so long as he had the sword, and he would not advance without it. In the spring they both shared, he sweated more than she did. Finally, Jack decided. He stood up from his bent position, closed his eyes, pulled the hair away from his face and tucked it behind his ears. Then he placed the sword in his mouth and bit on it for dear life. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow over the other. He then stood in the shaolin style, fists over each other, and one leg leading the other. With his left hand leading, he opened it and beckoned her over. His teeth needn't move nor did his tongue need to straddle nor wag. The message was clear. 'Come and get me!'

The woman foolishly obliged. She pounced towards him with the stick and thrust downwards twelve times around him. Jack merely turned around, listening for where the stick might be and curved his left tricep and forearm into a hook. With her stick barely cutting through, she hopelessly pressed the attack, but Jack's elbow would ward her off. With brawn and robust burliness his elbow broke her nose and sent her reeling backwards. Blood poured down from her nostrils and mixed with the iron she tasted in her mouth. Her tear bags bled down at this development, but she would not sob. Instead she spat out the excess blood staining the samurai further, and with red teeth she laughed and smiled, eager to fight again. Without succumbing to her tricks Jack twisted her arm and tossed her into the grass. He held his blade again, this time naturally over his head as if he was about to strike at the heart of evil itself, and brought it down into the red-bearded blackness he saw in her, but she was not there to receive it. She had rolled away for dear life. Realising that this fight would not end if he would not seize the moment now, the moment where she was most vulnerable on the ground and defenceless, Jack pressed the attack against the defenceless, deadly woman. She, was quick too, however. Each strike he lodged met her cracked metal armbraces. The encounters were painful, but they saved her from certain death. With each strike on the metal she asked him 'Is this the honour of the Samurai?' to which he had no answer. In his mind he knew that had he not done this then his quest would be endangered, and that would forsake his duty to loyalty. He cared not to think about his obligation to honour. Instead, he prioritised his goal. He would not think about grey-areas, nor would he lend her arguments credence, for surely that would weaken his blade and prolong the physical battle for eternity. Already the mental battle shall take a toll on him, though he did not know that piece of information yet.

In his frustration at failing to dispatch her, Jack again motioned to stab her, this time quicker and leaner. When the sword came close to her chin, she caught the blade with her braces. Finally! She would take the sword from the fiend masquerading as a samurai! With her left leg, she kicked the samurai's belly, and held onto his hilt with her left hand, and with her right, she tossed the samurai over her leading him to fall down into the grass behind her. She paused a moment on the ground to look for the sword, but it was in vain. Her fatal error was that she grasped onto the hilt, not the blade. In that moment she knew she sacrificed a soldier for a queen.

She stood up one final time from the ground. Her thin legs were bare, burnt, and bruised. Her belly was exposed and downtrodden. All that was viably left of her armour was her cracked breastplate, her cracked armguards, and her terribly and redundantly scratched braces. Her face was cut up and bloody, but her eyes still looked forward to the fight. Her eyebrows crossed over her broken nose, and her lips were coloured bloody-red. She swallowed her blood, and made ready for battle.

She tossed her stick away drawing the Samurai's attention before she vaulted towards him and kneed him right underneath the chin. Bloody saliva ejected from within him, but he remained standing when she expected him to fall. What happened next was most predictable. In fact, it was the only option left unexhausted. Jack saw her standing immobile before him, bare and exposed. He did the needful. He squatted down and with his bloody, stained blade sliced her stomach in parallel. She smiled as she struggled to contain her small intestine, but the blood loss was too great. She fell down onto her knees with a splash. She moaned and grunted as the samurai walked behind her and placed his frigid sword against her neck. 'At long last. A warrior's death. To be killed by an Andaluvian.' 'No.' Jack said. 'I am Kaishakunin.' The stinging pain prevented her from laughing at him. She had not the time to savour her death, however. With one fell and stern stroke he severed her nerves from her brain, but left the head in place. Princess Mira of the Andaluvians had fallen.

Her body collapsed into the snow, and Jack stood above her corpse as the victor. His hair had fallen down to his neck, and his bun only barely held things from falling apart. His convoluted exterior reflected perfectly his intricately tangled, torturous interior. He wiped his sword of blood against his sheath and carried his foe back to the hole from whence she emerged. The vultures had come for Boris, the African, the cats and the gentlemen, but they would not come for Mira. Jack interred her where she had hoped to gain victory, and indeed a warrior's greatest victory is to fall in combat.

There were no markings, and there were no words. Only the least and most basic dignity one warrior could offer another. His war was still not over. What she had said spoke volumes and he was just beginning to grasp it. He would not ponder it now, however. His belly growled and so did the vulture's. Jack warded off the vultures and picked up the cleaner cat, the one that dropped the bombs on his comrades. On his way to the cabin, he cut off some leafless branches making sure no cardinal bird's nests were on them. The sun had set on today's journey, and a new dawn with tougher challenges surely lies ahead. He had to rest and recover from today's ordeal. Roasted cat would surely grant him the strength to do so. Jack purposefully left the other bodies to the vultures, both as a sort of kindness to Mother Nature and to ward off cowardly foes. He made a point, however, of cutting as many branches as possible. He wanted his enemies to know that he was there, in the cabin. He wanted the black smoke to be his signature. Let those who seek Samurai Jack know where he is, and know what he is capable of. Let them tremble at the sight of the straw hat next to the bodies of the vanquished. Those who turn away, are unworthy of his time and effort. The blood that they might spill was unworthy of his veins. But those who proceed, knowing the risk and the danger of doing so, they are the ones he had to respect, for only they are worthy of facing the might of the Samurai.

END.