Introduction/Author's Note:
I rewatched Samurai Jack a while ago, and decided I appreciated the series far more now than I did in the past. Faced with an urge to write- especially after having read "Dancing with the Devil" by Ansuz- I present to you my humble offering.
This is my take on a love-hate Jaku (Jack x Aku) relationship. The way I'm looking at it now, it's rated M for language, violence, gore, blood, manipulation and other assorted offensive goodies. Tags will be updated as necessary. Fair warning for those of you who have come to expect smut from fanfictions, I do not intend on smutting with this one. But, that might change. We'll see. ;)
I ask that you forgive me for any cultural/language errors. I tried my best to research things before I wrote about them.
Cheers,
~Cobalt
Warnings for this chapter: Pretty violent stuff. Blood and gore. Also, there's references to maiming and hints of manipulation to come. c:
This Chapter was first published September 21st, 2015 and last updated June 16th, 2016.
Terrible curved talons cut deep into the already age-old gouges of the throne's stone armrest as Aku gritted his teeth in frustration. He glared daggers at the magical screen he had summoned, his fierce gaze never leaving the accursed Samurai whose image suspended itself before him. That man, whose mere mention could leave entire armies cowering in fear, had been the sole focus of a grossly-unsuccessful campaign for far too long.
For a time, the campaign had been exciting in a warped kind of way, Aku reflected quietly to himself with a sip from his favorite mug. The thrill of the chase and the familiar smell of blood in the air had called forth his most basic demonic instincts from the very beginning, and for a time the rush had reminded him of his earlier years when he was but a young demon— when his only objective had been the prompt delivery of bloody, indiscriminate Hell.
But lately, this trouble with the Samurai had become more than just an idle distraction with which to occupy his passing interest, and had assembled itself into something closely resembling a clinical obsession. Indeed, his interest had become so acute that it bordered on the psychotic, for virtually every waking thought was consumed with daydreams of the Samurai's demise and the harebrained plans to go about it. Even when he went to bed,— if only to pass the time sleeping, not because he actually needed the rest or felt tired— Aku would dream of the Samurai, his defeat, and the many wrongs the man had committed, on a regular basis. He would go to bed thinking of it, and when the sun would rise in the morning the Samurai would be the first thing on his mind as he cursed the infernal light shining in his eyes.
Of course, if asked about it, Aku would never admit out loud that he liked this game of cat-and-mouse. But in the privacy of his own mind there was no lying to himself. He did not just like it; if anything, he loved it. This game of wits had lasted for far longer than he had ever expected it to, and as time went on Aku found he craved and rather enjoyed the challenge that the Samurai presented. And so, it went without saying that if the outcome of their little conflict did not directly threaten his position as supreme ruler of his pitiful rock, he would surely seek the means to prolong it. But… of course, that was information he kept to himself.
The man had first opposed his Empire several millennia ago, only a few years after Aku had stolen it, and consequently had been sent into the future as punishment. Since then, the so-called "Samurai Jack", as he was dubbed by the people of this time, had been quite the nuisance for the future that Aku had spent those many millennia carefully sculpting in his absence. Of course, in hindsight, Aku figured he probably shouldn't have been surprised that the young Prince who lost his promised kingdom had grown up to become such a headstrong little insect.
This treason was a good portion of what led Aku to hate Jack so viciously, and with the unswerving dedication of every fibre of his essence, but that certainly was not all that the former Prince had done to incite his wrath.
Put simply, the Samurai did nothing but cause all sorts of trouble wherever he went. He just could not leave well enough alone, and it became increasingly apparent to Aku that freeing the oppressed and liberating the world's maggots were all that the infernal mortal would do with his time. It was always "run over here and help this worthless person", then "jump over there to help that one", and quite frankly Aku was getting sick of hearing about it. No matter where he was, fresh tales of Jack's disgusting "princely" humility and selfless sacrifice seemed to reach him on an hourly basis. He just could not seem to escape them.
And as time went by, Aku began to notice that each tale followed a similar pattern: improbable acts of athleticism were always interwoven seamlessly with the off-handed way in which Jack single-handedly leveled an entire army. In the end the whole creation would, nine times out of ten, be topped with a healthy sprinkling of side-quests in the name of "honor", "humility", "sympathy" and a slew of other perfectly infantile human concepts. Every tale stunk to the high Heavens and left Aku with the not-at-all exaggerated urge to retch.
Aku dared to glance at the portal hovering before him, and his lips curled subconsciously in contempt at the image that greeted him.
In the one-sided portal, the man lay with his back against a wind-stripped tree trunk, his woven straw hat covering his face as he dozed. Before him lay a smoldering camp fire, long since doused by sand, while overhead, in the darkening night sky, the stars twinkled gently as if betraying the turbulent times upon which they overlooked. In the distance, the gentle, ever-present flicker of a village signal fire signified the samurai's next destination like a star that had fallen in the valley.
The enchanted katana laid within an arm's reach of the slumbering warrior— an ever-present reminder of his lethal abilities and his threat to the empire. Aku's scowl deepened instinctively with distaste as his eyes absently traced the sheath, remembering all too clearly the excruciating pain that the unique weapon within could inflict on his person. The sword alone made the samurai even more of a nuisance, if that were possible.
Yes, this was an ordinary image. One that he was quite used to seeing, actually, but it did not dull the bitter hatred that churned restlessly in his soul. Just once, Aku thought wistfully, I'd like to turn to this channel and see something worthwhile. Like a good old-fashioned Vlad-Dracula-style impaling, perhaps.
Aku relaxed his grip on the armrest as he willed the flames to swallow the offensive image once more, and he slumped, beyond exasperated, in his chair as foolhardy plans cavorted through his mind. Strike now, while he's unawares.. his demonic instincts urged in their unearthly silken whisper, but ill-bought experience pleaded its case equally as well; the samurai was a notoriously light sleeper with masterfully-honed reflexes. Surprising him would be extraordinarily difficult if not outright impossible, and that knowledge easily silenced the nagging urging of his instincts.
The demon sighed and rubbed his face with one gnarled paw as he weighed his options. With the largely incompetent minions he had, his odds of victory without a surprise attack might as well have been zero.
If only there were some way to engineer the perfect soldier, he thought wistfully as he rose from his great flaming chair, at once growing restless as he eyed his eternally flaming surroundings with a sense of detachment and racked his brain for a creative idea as he began to pace.
Briefly, he found himself recalling the so-called "WarBugs™" that were at present the bulk of his army. For any other target, the robotic insects were the epitome of ruthlessness, tactical prowess, and competence, but it was apparent to Aku that they were mere playthings to the Samurai— indeed, their industrial-grade exoskeletons were equal in worth to whetting stones against that blasted katana he wielded— and this had continually proven itself a great disappointment to Aku, although he supposed he should have known that it was a fool's dream and a coward's way out, sending robots to do his dirty work. He found himself distantly wishing that the deadline for the insects' mass upgrades would hurry up and get here, for perhaps then it would be enough... The thought trailed off on its own. The idea that any machine would be enough to overcome the Samurai was hopelessly juvenile, and yet Aku knew he would send the bugs out again and again in the future despite knowing it was all in vain.
"Perhaps brute force isn't practical," he spoke aloud before he could stop himself, and immediately questioned the thought's origin. Brute force had long been the traditional method of demons. But then again, other demons were failures in ways that only he had succeeded. This fact, too, was in his credit. Perhaps the key to victory would be found in a method not quite as physical.
Aku's eyes once again found the blistering Hellfire which surrounded him, and he looked through its eternally writhing tendrils without seeing them. A distant memory began to form at the edge of his consciousness, and Aku reached for it blindly. It had involved a disguise, a clever one, naturally, that Jack hadn't seen through right away. Something about long black garments and a jagged blade dark as a starless night sky. The thought solidified abruptly, and he grabbed at it feverishly before it could disintegrate once more.
Here was the beginnings of an idea:
Ikra, his female disguise. The green-skinned warrior woman had somehow managed to carry him closer to victory than any other disguise ever had before, but what was it exactly about Ikra that had made everything work so flawlessly well? He frowned deeper and resumed his pacing. He recalled the foolish, childlike trust and something (else) resembling fondness that seemed to lurk quietly in the endless depths of Jack's dark, ebony eyes whenever Ikra had been around. The nights that they had camped together in the desert, it was true that Aku had wanted nothing more than simply to kill him, and yet… Why hadn't he sprung at his chance? Here, Aku's stride hesitated momentarily as though his body as a whole had registered the implications, but it simply was not so. It was not the novelty of friendship, nor had it been the strange mutual trust, nor was it the alien expression of fondness that Aku had seen in Jack's eyes in the later part of their time together.. No. He refused to believe that he had spared the Samurai as a result of Jack's benevolence reaching him in some strange way— like the creeping fingers of decay that one might witness in diseased tissue. It had simply been the great desire to avoid a confrontation and the bite of that damned katana. That was all, really.
Again, he wondered what it was about Ikra that had made her foolproof. Jack's expression had been carefully guarded throughout much of his and "Ikra's" acquaintance, but Aku had noticed early on that Jack seemed to look at "her" with deeper meaning hidden in his eyes than he had ever seemed to look at anyone else before or since. It was troubling, to say the least, that Aku did not recognize the alien emotion that Jack had harbored towards Ikra, but all the same Aku put aside his red flags and vague sense of discomfort and had seen her use through to the very end.
In a strange way, he reflected, having that soft expression directed at his own person had been nice. Nicer, he supposed, than it should have been, all things considered. They were, he reminded himself, the bitterest of foes, and sentiments such as those that Jack had mistakenly harbored were things that probably did not belong in a relationship as hateful and malignant as theirs. But, as a demon it was his job to put things where they did not belong, and to warp trifling mortal sentiments in pursuit of his own means. It was just the way things had to be— the way things always had been. With that fondness had come trust, and with trust would come the Samurai's downfall.
And so, with these thoughts in mind, Aku wrote himself a mental Post-It Note to pursue later.
Satisfied with himself, he slouched back into his throne not a moment too soon.
"Excuse me, sir... May I come in...?" came a disembodied voice outside of the inferno, and Aku sighed inwardly. It just never seemed to end. He cast his eyes skyward, as if asking for strength, and reluctantly opened the gates. Claws digging into the armrests once more, he grimaced contemptuously at his visitor—a competent, yet minuscule blue demon with whom he had interacted many times before but had never cared to become acquainted with. The creature stood before him, looking more than a bit satisfied with itself, as though it had recently learned a great secret.
"For what reason do you seek my council," Aku spoke in his usual booming tone, the question coming out as more of a bored demand than anything else. He had more important things to deal with than this buffoon— like sipping his coffee, or scheming about the Samurai, or anything else really.
The underling sniffed importantly at the question, and Aku couldn't help but raise a singular flaming brow incredulously.
"Sir," The underling began with an air of victory emanating about its person, grinning despite the warning signs of an irritable mood on its master's behalf, "I have some very important news to share..."
Growing impatient, Aku was quick to interject. "I do not have time for your games," he hissed, "Speak!" His voice shook the surrounding flames, and he narrowed his eyes further as he leaned menacingly over the creature, his great flaming eyebrows blazing higher than usual. Aku noted with satisfaction how the creature's previous confidence had disintegrated.
The minion swallowed nervously as it regained its composure, "Right...Well, I thought you might like to know that..." The creature hesitated again, "Um, this might be something you should see for yourself..." With that, it turned and beckoned to the shadows. Aku's eye followed its beckoning claw, and at once all his motions— such as the paw that had already risen to swipe the demon off the outcropping while his back had been turned— abruptly came to a standstill.
Approaching from the shadows just beyond the gate was a group of demons, each pointing their respective, spear-like weapon at the man they were escorting. Each demon held a chain attached to an unfriendly steel collar around the man's neck, but nobody seemed overly keen on getting close to the man. It seemed his legacy preceded him. He had black hair, and a torn white kimono.
Although Aku seriously doubted his luck, he came to his senses with an enraged snarl and lunged forward, snatching the bound and gagged man from the middle of the approaching conglomerate of guards. Ignoring the cries of the unfortunates who were now dangling precariously by the captive's chains, he held his subject at eye level as he scrutinized his appearance.
The captive certainly looked similar to the samurai— that much was certain. However, the man's suspiciously synthetic-looking hair had been pulled into a messy topknot that would have been laughable to the emperor under different circumstances, and his kimono was a mere replica to the genuine article.
The eyes were also strikingly different. They reflected a guarded trickle of fear, and the familiar icy determination of the Warrior was gone. Waves of defiance rolled off of this man however, just as it had from the genuine article he was impersonating, and the demon couldn't help but find such arrogance intriguing where it would usually be aggravating.
Curious, thought Aku to himself as the first of the dangling guards lost their grip and plummeted Hell-ward with a screech, why is this man dressed like the Samurai?
"What is the meaning of this!?" Aku demanded aloud, his eyebrows flaring high over his horns. He regarded the man in his fist with disgust. The man had adopted a look of righteous indignation at being handled in such a way as this, Aku was keen to notice, and the emperor had a sneaking suspicion that if the man could speak he would be yelling curses. In that regard, the emperor indulged with well-concealed amusement and an alien whisper of sympathy, the human appeared to be a kindred spirit.
Further questions were silenced on the sorcerer's lips as the remaining guards who hung from the captive's chains began to whimper loudly at their predicament, and Aku's eyes flicked to light upon them with a fair degree of annoyance. Reluctantly, he swung his arm to the rocky outcropping that jutted into the abyss nearby, and set the guards upon it as gently as he could muster with his mind in such a state as it was. Of course, this was not gently enough, and many of the creatures crumbled to their knees with the rough impact. They should be thankful that their information is important, thought the demon to himself, for otherwise I would gladly have flung them into the Pit.
Meanwhile, the man remaining in Aku's fist looked upon his captors with ill-contained loathing, and Aku felt yet another rogue twinge of accordance with this strangely-dressed imposter.
"Sir..." came the timid beginnings of an explanation as the foremost minion bowed low, and Aku swiveled his gaze to focus upon the creature, "Our drones happened upon a so-called "Samurai Festival"— apparently the first of its kind— in celebration of the man who dares to defy you, oh Great One. This man is one of many who were at the festival, dressed quite like the one you seek..."
Here, the minion fiddled with its claws and looked away, "O-of course, the drones saw to the festival's destruction, and we took as many captives as we could...We think that this one you have in your fist is their leader, or at least something close to it. He was speaking to the crowd upon a makeshift stage when we overwhelmed him..."
The underling flinched away from its master upon finishing the explanation, expecting to be killed on the spot for allowing its master to be deceived into thinking the imposter was genuine. However, this motion was lost on the great demon, for Aku was in such a state of disbelief that little more than the highlights of the summary had soaked in.
A sacrilegious festival, with hundreds of Samurai look-alikes? Aku questioned himself, hoping he hadn't heard that right. To the dark emperor, it sounded like a tailor-made Hell the likes of which the Pit of Hate could hardly rival.
Quite suddenly, Aku could feel the man in his fist starting to struggle. With talons precise as tweezers, Aku pulled the gag roughly from the man's mouth, not caring in the slightest if teeth were to come with it.
"What do you have to say for yourself," Aku boomed in the man's face with no regard to personal space or etiquette, "Surely you're not stupid enough to stand against me, as well?"
The man cleared his throat, and spoke loudly enough that all in the room could hear him, "The Samurai will kill you one of these days, foul demon."
Aku grinned disarmingly despite his mounting anger. "Is that so?" He asked as sweetly as his rasping voice would allow, not missing how many of the demons in the room visibly flinched away.
The man tensed in Aku's grip. "It is so," he asserted firmly, "The Samurai will save this world, and all within it. I just know it..."
"Mm..." Aku hummed his acknowledgment, although he very obviously disagreed, "Know this, fool, if you were any less useful, I would have already killed you for treason." He growled, "However, there is something that I need from you, and so you will live— oh yes, the Great Aku is more merciful than you know— but know that from now on your days are numbered." He hissed dangerously, some inner fire reflecting hellishly in his eyes.
And with that, the Ringleader hocked and promptly spit in Aku's face.
"Do your worst, demon!" The man bellowed bravely, his expression livid with injustice. Aku's minions could only stare in stunned silence at such insubordination. This mortal was stupidly courageous.
With a roar of the utmost fury, Aku blindly swatted the guards like flies from the outcropping and brought his burden hurtling into the rock with a resounding squelch like that from an especially juicy insect. He pounded the offender repeatedly into the stone until nothing more was left of the man than a bloodied mess and a viscous pink substance looking deceptively close to hamburger meat that had been run through a grinder— and still the demon kept going until visible cracks appeared in the rock, long after the man had suffered the first mortal blow.
Breaths heaving with the now ebbing tide of his fury, the demon came to his senses not knowing where he was. When the realization struck, he felt only disappointment as he looked upon the sad little smear where his informant had learned the hard way not to cross him. From his respective outcropping on the opposite side of its master, where it cowered with its hands over its eyes, the responsible but anonymous blue demon from before stared between its claws with wide eyes at what was left. Aku barely noticed it.
Shame really, thought the great emperor to himself as he made a show of carefully scraping the man's remains from his palm and flicking it carelessly into the flaming oblivion below. He watched its descent for a moment, the frown never leaving his face. Ordinarily he might savor such a small but satisfying victory, but as of right now he felt nothing but disappointment. Upon learning the man's position of importance, he had hoped to tortur— er, "interrogate"— him, draw out his usefulness until he would, of course, kill him. But there went that idea. Aku frowned deeper as another realization struck him. Those were some of my best guards, too..
The demon grimaced as a single snaggled claw scraped the man's spit from his face. Just as well that the man is dead, the demon decided as he gazed upon the unhealthy yellowish-green substance pooled upon the tip of his claw. I don't do business with animals.
Parting Words: I hope y'all enjoyed this first chapter! Tips, recommendations, reviews, or other feedback in general will be greatly appreciated. 3
EDIT (06/16/2016): Ok guys, first of all I'm really super sorry that I haven't updated this story in so long. It's not that I've not wanted to.. I've just been super busy and distracted, what with all the stuff that's been happening in my life lately. But like I told y'all back in early January (or whenever I last bumped this fic) I have every intention of finishing this one day, you've just got to bear with me. I promise I will not abandon this.
I'm currently in the process of rewriting Chapter 2 and combining it with Chapter 3, and I tentatively hope to have that posted by the end of this month. Apologies for the exhaustive wait, and I greatly appreciate those of you who have stuck around. 3
I hope to have more chapters in the works soon enough. 3
P.S. I've decided I'll dedicate/gift this fic to my good friend AbbySomething whom I miss a great deal, haven't spoken to in a while, and still somehow feel very close to. This one's for you, kid. ;)
