As a preface, I'd like to thank anyone who's read this chapter as I'd originally posted it. However, I was very dissatisfied with where I had taken it; I felt as though I rushed things and did a really mediocre job of setting the tone. In addition, I feel like what I had written so far constrained the next chapter in a way that I felt the story wouldn't be as good as it could be. So with that, I welcome my readers, new and slightly less new, to enjoy the revised first chapter, which, I think, will serve as a much stronger foundation to the story going forward.

zyagga, 2017-05-24.

A minor edit: I have removed all references to the unnamed prince we've come to know as "Samurai Jack" as being a samurai; indeed, he was never a true samurai. He belonged to a caste above those warriors, despite himself obviously being trained in their ways. The only reference that remains is Aku's own reference to the young man as a samurai, meant to mock Jack's heroic ambitions and to insult his status as a prince.

zyagga, 2017-06-05

Long ago in a distant land, Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil. But I, the lost son of the land he pillaged, wielding a magic sword, stepped forth to oppose him. Before I struck the final blow, Aku tore open a portal in time and flung me into the future, where his evil was law! For fifty years I sought to return to the past and undo the future that was Aku. I saw great cities and conversed with beasts that spoke in the tongue of man. I made allies. I wondered the earth now beset to its four corners by beings from worlds beyond the stars.

I fell in love.

It was with her help that I returned to the past and vanquished the foul sorcerer. But without Aku to father her, my dear beloved ceased to exist, and I was alone.

For the fifty years I wandered the world under the rule of Aku, I did not age. The spell he had cast upon me at the deciding moment of our first battle made me ageless. When I returned to my home as its Prince, I still did not grow old. My father passed in his old age, and I was crowned Emperor. I fell in love again and sired a daughter, whom I named Ashi.

I still did not age, but my beloved wife and daughter did, and I lost Ashi a second time.

I sired many sons and daughters, and I had many wives for myself, and concubines. This was a matter of fulfilling the expectations of my people; my heart was cold to all love. My nation grew, and my people could count on the constancy of one thing, if nothing else: that their Emperor would never leave them. No man could conquer me, no illness could take me, and the years passed as seconds to me. A great people bowed before me on my chrysanthemum throne and the ages were mine to do with as I pleased.

And I had nothing.

Amidst a ghoulish fog lightly stepped a young warrior-prince in a simple gi upon stone pillars rising above a phosphorescent canyon. Amorphous devils cackled and twisted in the mist. The air was thick with demons; Aku was near.

The swordsman made his way into the tower and stood above a black pit upon a stone carved to resemble a flame. He howled "Aku!" and his voiced echoed through the tower, every stone flame vibrating with his cry. The vibrations grew long after the swordsman's call ceased, until the whole tower was shaking to its foundation. Up from the pit shot a pillar of shadow and smoke. When the smoke settled, the hideous form of the great wizard Aku arched over the tiny mortal, and a low noise, like millions of dark throats sustaining one note, began to sound in his presence.

"Who dares," growled Aku, his voice chilling like thunder in the distance, "to summon the Master of Masters—the Deliverer of Darkness—the Shogun of Sorrow, Aku?"

The swordsman stood in defiance of the wizard. "I am the lost son of the land that you have pillaged. I am here to reclaim it!" He drew his blade from its sheath. "For my people! For my father! For my birthright!"

Aku cackled as the prince leaped into the air. "Fool! No mortal can hurt the Great Aku!" And yet, as the warrior cut the pillar of shadow that was the dark wizard's body, it tore through it with a burning blow, and Aku shrieked! "That sword!" Aku knelt down and eyed the young man, his voice hissing with bilious hatred. "I remember that blade. I recognize your blood: you are the son of the fool who imprisoned me those many years ago."

Aku rose high above the warrior. "No matter! Neither he nor the sword had the power to slay me forever. And neither do you!" Aku twisted horribly, and his form contorted and swirled until the wizard emerged again, having assumed the form of a monstrous ape. He fell upon the prince, who jumped swiftly from one stone flame to the next, as Aku's great simian paws shattered each as the warrior leaped from it. As the warrior jumped again, Aku struck his back and store his gi bloody with his very fingers. The ape brought down his fist upon the warrior, but it was met with a strike from the sacred blade, and the fist burned off of Aku's arm.

Aku fell from his stone onto others, which impaled him. However, his inky body flowed between the stones until it began, by happenstance, to resemble the shape of a scorpion. And so Aku, the mighty shape-shifter, with arachnid legs crawled up the wall to face the prince again, a hideous grin on his face. "No matter what form you take, Aku," said the prince, "you will never defeat the side of Righteousness!"

Aku scowled and attempted to grab the swordsman with his claw. The prince dodged, and Aku stabbed his tail into the rock, missing his target. Again and again, he brought the stinger down upon the swordsman, who parried it with the blade, until at least the tail hooked itself on a stone flame. Seizing opportunity, the prince sliced the stinger off, and the tail whipped back into Aku, who contorted and twirled again and fall back into the deep, black pit.

The prince waited. There was silence. Then suddenly, a tendril grabbed hold of stone flame below. Then another tendril grabbed another such flame. Aku emerged from the darkness, a great gaping, fanged maw amidst a whirl of tentacles, climbing his way up to devour the mortal. The prince sliced each tendril as it attempted to grab him, but for one that took him by the ankle and lifted him above Aku's mouth. The blade cut through it at last, and the warrior managed to land on Aku's face, the wizard's own tentacles propelling the prince from the face up through the tower like a slingshot. As he landed, the wizard bounced upward once more, now a bull storming vertically among the stone flames. The warrior leapt from the stone just as the wizard stormed through it, smashing it to pieces. He fell upon Aku with his sword, slicing him through the middle. Each half then formed wings, and Aku was a monstrous bird.

"Now, demon!" the warrior called upon landing. He took his sword in both hands and held it vertically before his face as if in prayer. "With the blessings of Righteousness and the power of the Sacred Blade, I cast thee back to the vile pit whence thou hast come!" The bird descended upon him just as he threw the sword up into it. With a great flash of light, Aku's shadowy body was absorbed into the blade, itself now perfectly black.

The son of the Emperor caught the hilt as the sword came back down, and swung it to the ground, casting the amorphous, inky form of Aku on the floor as the wizard groaned. Gripping the hilt with both hands, the young prince raised his sword to bring it down through the heart of the fiend.

"You might have beaten me now," hissed Aku, "but I will destroy you in the future!"

"There is no future for you, Aku!" growled the mortal.

Aku grinned. "I disagree."

Aku shrieked with a thousand voices, and white rings of pale light emerged from his mouth and gathered above the prince. "What trickery is this?" he cried. The rings then fell upon him, encircling him, until a white hole opened up beneath him as he vainly swung the blade to free himself. He called Aku's name as he fell through it, and the hole closed.

"Do not worry, samurai," Aku hissed mockingly into the silence of his tower. "You will see me again. But next time, you will not be so fortunate."

Our nameless hero fell through the wizard's rip in time itself, screaming and mad as his body contorted like curling paper. His lunatic descent was halted suddenly by a stone floor. He awoke some time later, dazed, and uneasily brought himself to his feet. Looking around, he found he was in a backstreet not unlike those common outside his palatial home, and, indeed, what he could see of the buildings around him were of familiar design: post and lentil structures with curving roofs. However, his eyes strained to see these shapes, as the buildings were all eclipsed in shadow and the sky itself was a dark red. The warrior noticed that the wall against which he had steadied himself was of a material with which he was not familiar, almost like an especially thick eggshell. His head began to throb, and he looked all around him and realized there was no sign of life but for some soft indistinguishable noise in the distance.

The prince followed the sound, darting as best he could through the alleyways to keep safe from enemies hidden in the shadow. As he made his way, he could more readily make out the sound of several dozens of feet treading ground quickly, and hushed voices whispering in urgency. Eventually, after perhaps an hour of unceasing movement, the prince began to see faint evidence of light among the shadows of the buildings, and, peering around a corner with his back against a wall, he saw a procession of figures like emaciated peasants treading along a path down a large hill some several yards from him, only a few faces here and there illuminated by lantern. From what he could make out from a distance, this was a procession of refugees making an escape, carrying their whole lives on their backs, little children clinging to their parents' hands.

The warrior stepped forward, and his geta stepped into what felt like a small pillow. He picked it up and found it to be some sort of child's stuffed toy, although he couldn't quite place the shape of it in the darkness. He leaped down the hillside and began to approach the procession, holding out the toy first to demonstrate his intent.

"Excuse me!" he called in a loud whisper.

There were many gasps and shadows starting back at the sound of his voice. Someone, holding a lantern at the end of a long pole, shown upon the warrior with its light, and there came a blood-chilling cry:

IT'S HIM! THE PRINCE IS UPON US!

The warrior was stunned by a cacophony of panicked shrieks, as all the people of the procession dropped their belongings and attempted to flee his presence. Many of them trampled over one another; indeed, more than one child was killed in the confusion. The prince tried to call out to them, to ask the cause of their panic and terror, to assure them he meant them no harm, but his voice could not sound over the din of the moving mass of shadows kicking up a fog of dust.

When the cloud of dust lifted from the ground by the escaping crowd had finally fallen, the warrior looked upon the remains of the procession in utter horror. There lie the tattered remains of lives of many families: clothes, vases, shoes, provisions. Worse still, as he could see by the lanterns dropped, were lifeless forms crushed underfoot by the panicked mob, and many belonged once to small children.

"No," said the warrior in a breath of sorrow as he approached the trail of corpses left behind. Then he heard some faint movement and a low groan. He turned and saw a figure attempting to rise to its feet. The confused young swordsman grabbed a lamp nearby and hurried over to the figure. He covered his mouth to keep from gasping at the sight of the man: the side of his neck seemed to open in three places, his lips were each almost as thick as a wrist, his eyes were bulging from his head, his nose seemed to have been flattened into his head. The warrior had never seen any man disfigured so badly.

"Please," he said, kneeling and extending his hand, "let me help you."

The face turned to him and opened its mouth to scream; instead, it gurgled. Our warrior gave a cry of surprise; the man's face looked like that of a fish! The man fell on his back and crawled backwards, keeping his eyes on the prince.

"No, please! Do not be afraid! I apologize for startling you!"

The prince saw something glint. The man had produced a knife, and our warrior stepped back in defense until the man brought the knife up to his own neck.

"No! What are you—"

The knife cut through the hideous man's thick neck as he gave out another horrible gurgle. The prince yelled and darted toward him as he slumped onto the ground, lifeless. The warrior took the man's hand and let it go suddenly; it was slimy! He grabbed for the lamp to examine the corpse and gave another shocked cry, for the man's hands were indeed slimy, and scaly, and his fingers were webbed.

Now breathing heavily, his heart pumping fast, the warrior stood with his lamp and cast its light all around him, turning to examine each body in a growing confusion. Yes, each of them, the children included, was slimy, scaly, piscine. The lost son of the emperor screamed and dropped his lantern, surrounded by the corpses of what appeared to be kappa. He fell to his knees and began muttering incoherently: "Child… kappa… father… Aku… curse… dead…" He put his head between his knees and moaned lowly for a long while.

At last, he stood and picked up his lantern again while crawling along on his hands on knees. In this way he hurried over to wear he had reached the procession and first, and out of the mud and dust he picked up the stuffed toy he had intended to return. By the light of the lantern, he could now discern its shape.

It was a squid.

EPISODE I