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War Of Shadows	By : TurtleNinja Category: +S through Z > Samurai Jack Views: 3353 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Samurai Jack, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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The following morning, I awoke early to find Chimitsu sitting, leaning against a tree with her wings curled around herself so that only her head peeked out from above them. Her eyes were closed, proving that she was sound asleep. I sighed with relief and stood, stretching before heading off to find food.

As I looked around for any sign of food, I also kept my eyes open for Chimitsu's dark half. Would she turn into that inelegant creature again or had I simply dreamed the encounter? I knew that if I had not dreamed it, then I knew that it was likely that I would not be able to trust her. For all I knew, she worked for Aku, just like many others that had tried to betray me, turn me over to Aku, just for the sake of their own needs.

Looking up, I spotted some fruit high above me in the branches of a tree and there was plenty of it. I climbed up and began to tuck a few pieces into the sleeves of my kimono, climbed back down, then went back up to get more. I only dared to make a small pile, knowing that we would not be able to carry very much away from here.

Slowly I carried the pile back, finding Chimitsu still asleep and safe at camp. Shortly after I had brought the last of the fruit back, she yawned and stretched, her wings extending out behind her, fluttering lightly. It was rather cute to watch her just wake up, but I had to keep in mind that she had the potential to be a dangerous foe.

"Ohayou."[1] she said with a smile.

"Good morning. Sleep well?"

"Eh, well enough. Better than I have been sleeping, put it that way. Heh."

I nodded and offered her one of the fruit, which looked like some sort of tropical fruit.

"Eat up, Chimitsu-san. We have a long day ahead of us and you know we cannot stay here much longer." I said as she took it.

"Right. Thanks."

We ate in silence and never once did I take my eyes from her, watching her every move very carefully. I did not want to turn my back on her for one moment if she could indeed turn into that creature I encountered yesterday. She watched me curiously as she ate, her eyes showing that she had noticed how I watched her.

"Is something wrong, Jack?" she asked.

"No. Why would you ask?"

"You just look like something's bothering you, that's all."

"Only the usual."

She nodded and ate the last of her fruit before getting out the leather bag from the day before and putting the rest of the small pile in. Odd how it seemed to simply come out of nowhere and her nodachi had apparently disappeared as well. She had mentioned that teleportation was a general Elemental power, but I had imagined her teleporting herself, not inanimate objects. I could only wonder where they were disappearing off to.

"Shall we?" she asked.

I only gave a nod and stood before she led the way out of the oasis. I followed behind her, watching her carefully. She acted so kindly and innocent, or as close to innocent as an immortal could come, yet that other her seemed so dark and evil. Chimitsu's aura seemed to be nothing but light and purity.

"Honestly, Jack, you look tense about something. You sure everything's all right?" she asked.

"I am fine, thank you. Really. You need not ask every five minutes."

I could see a brief look of hurt on her face out of the corner of my eye before she shook her head and smiled.

"All right. I won't ask every five minutes. How about every ten then?" she said.

I gave her a look and she paused, her expression going from a hyperactive grin to her usual cheerful expression.

"Right. Tough crowd here, samurai."

I shook my head and continued following her lead through the desert, wondering where she was leading me. This desert stretched on for miles and I did not know when the next oasis or where we would find water next. If she indeed worked for Aku, I doubted that she would kill me. I was of more value to him alive and with my sword intact. It simply did not make sense.

However, I could find out more about her and see if anything failed to add up and prove that she was not what she said she was. She did know about me, knew about Aku and his powers, and she had knowledge of the mystical sword that I carried. She was not an ordinary woman, that I knew from the moment I had met her, but that did not mean that she could not be some sort of alien. After all, when I first arrived, I encountered waitresses with three eyes, so wings would not be as strange as that.

Knowledge was power and the more I knew about her and her sisters, the more I would be able to determine whether or not she was a friend or an enemy.

"Chimitsu-san...may I ask you a question?" I asked.

"Yes?"

"Where is it that you learned to use a nodachi? I have never in my life seen a woman use one before. On rare occasions, a katana, but never a nodachi. Even among men, it takes years to master."

She giggled softly and lightly swatted me with one of her wings. Oddly enough, it was only playful and did not hurt. Could it be that she had a split personality of some kind or that the other her appeared under certain circumstances? Or could it be worse, that Aku had some sort of influence over her or was controlling her?

"Silly samurai....where do you think I learned to use a nodachi? I'm an immortal, remember? I've had centuries to train in the mountains of your native Japan before Aku arrived and learned to use one. My sister, Metal, trained me, actually. No mortal man would have trained me. I was commonly told that I was too small and not strong enough to lift one." she said.

"But why her? Why would they train her and not you?"

"They respected her, Jack. She was not only the Elemental of Metal, but she was also a great warrior. Usually they would only train those men who could defeat them, and when a woman of my sister's caliber managed to do the same, they recognized her with respect to her show of strength and femininity and trained her. I could not defeat them because I am a healer, not a born warrior like you and my sister. But...that does not mean I don't need training, right?"

"Right."

"Sis got the training, she trained me. Kicked my ass every time, even once I had learned to use it. She was the embodiment of the female warrior spirit, the mother, protector, and defender, and she was always driving people to get better so they could defend like her. It was the same with me. I could not win over her, no matter how hard I tried, simply because she was meant to make the rest of us practice to get better."

"Hn. I would not have known that from the one time I saw you use it back at the village on those bounty hunters. I could never move that quick with one unless I had years of training."

She reached up and the nodachi appeared in her hand, unsheathed, glinting in the midday sun. I took a few steps back and watched as she spun it about in her hand expertly, making some very quick strikes at invisible opponents for a few seconds before teleporting it away again. If I had not known what she had told me about her being an Elemental, I would have looked at her, looked at the enormous sword, and politely try not to laugh at the idea of someone so delicate and tiny actually using it.

"All right. So where does it go when you teleport it?" I asked.

"Eh, just a pocket of what we Elementals like to call "psi-space". It's difficult to explain to a mortal. It involves a great deal of magic and psionics which few mortals understand. Just chalk it up to putting a gigantic sword into a dimensional pocket created by the owner's mind."

"And the bag with the fruit?"

"Same thing, dearie. More than one object can be stored there, depending on the strength of the owner's mind. A powerful mind can store many objects within such a pocket of subspace, a weak mind may only hold a few."

"Even though mortals do not understand such things, is it possible for them to learn how?"

"I don't know. I've never run into a mortal with the psychic capacity and strength of will necessary to do it. Like teleportation, it's natural for an Elemental, but a mortal...it would take a lifetime of training far as I know."

"I see."

She paused to get the bag out of her pocket of mental space and took out a couple pieces of fruit, handing one to me. I took it and watched as she returned the rest to the mental dimension, still in awe of such an ability. She grinned at me and nibbled at her piece as we walked along in silence towards the south, or what I assumed was the south.

The sun was hot and bright above us in the sky and I began to wish that I had brought a cloak to shelter my skin from sunburn. Chimitsu, on the other hand, as pale as she was, did not seem to be affected in the least. I would have thought that she would have been sunburned or overheated with those heavy, feather-laden wings on her back, but it appeared that she was more comfortable in the hot sun than I was.

"You are an Elemental, Chimitsu, do you need to eat and sleep or is it simply to keep up human appearances?" I asked.

"Eh, a little of both. We do need to eat and sleep, but we can go for much, much longer than any mortal if we must. I eat and sleep out of habit, just to keep my energies up to full in case I need to use them. Never know when an emergency'll arise, y'know."

I nodded and finished the last of my fruit, following it with a gulp of water from the canteen that Chimitsu had with her. I was not certain whether or not I wanted to find out what else she had stashed in that pocket dimension besides the leather backpack and a five foot long nodachi.

"So your sister of Metal was a warrior?" I asked.

"Yes. Hirame was the best warrior I'd ever seen in my long life. Aside from you, I've never seen a mortal come even close to matching her skill in battle. You would have liked her, Jack. She was a lot like you; honorable, skilled, polite. She never went looking for a fight any more than you did and usually did earn the respect she deserved from people. The only one that ever gave her any bullshit was Aku and he gives everyone crap if they don't bow down and kiss his feet...well, if he had feet, that is."

I raised an eyebrow and watched her for a few moments before continuing on my way alongside her.

"Really, Jack, you would have liked her. She hated Aku as much as you do. If not for Elemental Law, she probably would have destroyed him long before you were born." she said.

"It is all right. She could not and what is done...is done. All will be set right again when he is destroyed. What of your other sisters?"

"Chame was the Elemental of Earth. She could fight, we all could, but she was always restless, couldn't stay still for very long. It irritated Hirame from time to time in training that Chame always seemed so bored with the lessons. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't a rebel who never did as she was told, she just would rather have been out having fun and she had a hard time focusing on training lessons. She was always quite the practical joker."

"A joker?"

"Heh. One of us had to have a constant sense of humor. She was the spirit of a child, always innocent and playful, even though she was as immortal as I am. Sometimes it was hard to take her seriously when she was always playing pranks and joking around, but she did have her serious moments. When Aku broke part of Elemental Law and went too far with his powers back when he broke your father's seal on him and sent you here into the future, we didn't see any pranks from her for nearly two weeks. Let's just say that's a stretch for her."

"If you knew what he had done, then why did you not intervene and bring me back?"

"We couldn't. If we could, we would have, but none of us had the power to cast a timewarp spell to send you to the future in the first place, let alone go ourselves after you. We knew when and where he had sent you, but we could only wait many, many centuries before we would catch up to where he had sent you, watching painfully as the future changed its course down the twisted path that he had set for it. It concerned us all, but until we could find you and the mystical sword you held, there was nothing we could do because of Elemental Law. He had already broken it himself, if we did so as well, the Elemental Circle would be forever thrown off it's course to where even your katana would not be able to restore it with Aku's destruction."

"What?"

"With each breech of Elemental Law, the balance of the universe deteriorates even further. We each wanted to go and destroy him without you and the sword, but we knew that to do so would forever condemn the world to darkness and we couldn't do that."

"I see. All the more reason to see Aku's reign ended."

She nodded quietly and looked off in the distance, where I was beginning to see a treeline on the horizon. It stretched out so far to each side, that I wondered if it was a mirage, or if it was the beginnings of a jungle or rainforest. Chimitsu seemed to welcome the sight, a sense of relief and safety radiating from her.

"We're close." she said.

"Close?"

"That rainforest is where we'll make camp tonight."

I nodded and kept up pace alongside her, hoping there would be water for a bath there to wash this itchy desert sand away.

"You have told me about two of your sisters, what about the others?" I asked.

"Ah, yes. Let's see...there was Asagi, the Elemental of Water. She was as isolated as I was in her home. My home resides deep within what was once the Swiss Alps, but now I don't know what the hell Aku has dubbed them. I've heard reports amongst the mountain men that he has a lair somewhere nearby, but as he has failed to locate my castle, I have failed to locate his. Something of a quirk in Elemental Law, I suppose, to keep us from outright warring on each other. Asagi, I suppose, had the same trouble in the Himalayas."

"The Himalayas?"

"Yes. Remember Mt. Fatoum?"

"Hai. I almost did not make the journey to the summit and back down again."

"Then you remember the mountain you saw from the top of it, the one that disappeared high into the clouds?"

"I remember."

"My sister's castle is up there. Aku has a problem with looking up, so even if he could find it, heh, he's too stupid to think to look up high in the clouds."

I chuckled softly at the thought of Aku hunting for Asagi's castle high up in the mountains and forgetting to look up. As intelligent as the demon was, he lacked in certain areas of common sense, which, I suppose, was part of the reason he had such a difficult time in defeating me. I was only human, I had weaknesses and breaking points as any other person did, but he had yet to discover them.

"My last sister was Himoto, the Elemental of Fire." she said when we had recovered from our laughter.

"What was she like?"

"Ah, well, Himoto was the beauty queen out of all of us. She was always full of fire, full of passion and usually about anything and everything she did. She made a number of appearances in the human world as a singer-dancer in clubs around the world. Aku always hated her the most out of all of us."

"Whatever for?"

"She liked to toy with him, let's put it that way."

"Toy with him?"

"The thing about Himoto was not only was she the entertainer and beauty queen, but she was also the spirit of love. Aside from our elements, we represented the spirit of something. Chame was the spirit of the child, the innocent and playful one, Hirame was the protective mother-warrior spirit, Asagi was the spirit of cool, calm intellect, and Himoto was the spirit of the lover."

"And you?"

"The spirit of the compassionate healer."

"It suits you. So what was it that Himoto did for Aku to hate her so much?"

"Himoto was the spirit of love, thusly, she knew quite well how to seduce men. Usually, she didn't play with their feelings. She wasn't ever cruel, but she was always the opposite. To mortals, that is. She enjoyed helping mortals find their true lovers. Aku, on the other hand, she had a great deal of fun tormenting and doing just the opposite to, simply because he despised love in all its forms and did what he could to crush it. Part of his job and we all knew it, but she enjoyed toying with him over it. Y'see, where Light is purity and goodness, meaning love, Aku's the opposite, meaning hate, which is what was part of his hating Himoto, but she didn't help it, I suppose, when she toyed with him."

"Why did she toy with him if this was part of his job?"

"Because of what he did to you. Sent you into the future, giving you no chance to fall in love or have a family to our knowledge. Perhaps that's not entirely true that you can't ever return, we don't know. We only know that out of the five of us, we don't have such power, so she extracted a bit of revenge on him. Even when we reached the time when and where he sent you, she still continued to extract her revenge. She would find his lair, the only one of us who ever managed it, likely because she didn't intend to kill him, only harass him."

"But I thought that was not allowed."

"Technically, not if we have war and destruction of each other in mind, but for other reasons, we can find each other. Communication, keeping in touch, yes, but usually it isn't with the Dark Elemental. Very rarely do we ever have business with him and Himoto, she only had the business of harassing and tormenting him as her business. Going over to whichever lair he was in at the time, dressing very sexy, hanging all over him, trying to seduce him."

"Why would she want to seduce him?"

"Actually, she didn't. That was how she tormented him. She tried to seduce him, get him all hot and bothered, just to piss him off. Have to say, it worked pretty damn well. The rest of us used to take bets as to how fast it took him to chase her out of there. She knew exactly how to press his buttons and I have to say, I do have some amusing memories of her."

"Oh?"

"Mmhmm. She dressed in very naughty lingerie and snuck into his lair one night while he was sleep, crept into his bed, and came very, very close to getting it on with him. Thank the Light for Elemental Law. If he could have killed her, I think he would have for that stunt."

I blushed furiously, holding back a laugh at the thought of Aku coming so close to being seduced. I did not exactly want to picture him in bed with anyone, but the image of the Fire Elemental purposely teasing him like that for the simple purpose of irritating him was rather humorous. Chimitsu giggled and stretched her wings, fluttering them for a bit before refolding them against her back.

"We're here." she finally said.

I looked up to see the jungle stretching out before us, a welcome change compared to the hot, dry desert that we had spent the last couple of days travelling through. Behind us, the sun was slowly setting, enveloping the world in increasing darkness. I followed her closely, keeping an eye on her, still not completely trusting her, even though she had shown no sign whatsoever of the twisted double I had seen the day before.

As we began to make camp, I could not help but feel that something was not quite right about her, whether it was the double or perhaps being under the control of Aku. Even though she had told me so much more about herself and her sisters, something did not sit right with me. A gut feeling told me that something was amiss, if only I could figure out what it was.

I sighed softly and leaned back against a tree after eating, watching her settle into the same sort of feathered ball I had found her in this morning, wings curled tightly around herself. Our fire had died down to barely embers, the moon high in the sky, peeking through the leaves of the thick trees in a few thin beams, illuminating the sleeping Elemental. Despite how I tried, I could not fight it forever and was soon asleep as well.
--------------- [1]ohayou= good morning
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War Of Shadows