No matter how many times she goes to the hospital, the mental image of this normal girl getting really quirky characters visiting her never fails to make me chuckle
I was just thinking about this. Aku will probably shapeshift into a “normal human” nurse or doctor until he gets to the hospital room. Then he’ll freak her the fuck out with his actual appearance.
So this was what his daughter had to listen to every second of every day? Aku was enraged before but now he was infuriated.
“SHUT UP!”
he screamed at the hat’s voice. While it might have been right about him—he was certainly brimming with hatred and rage right now—it was dead wrong about Azura.
His attention snapped back to his daughter who now wielded a sword against her will. Despite all the hatred he felt for Black Hat, Aku was quickly beginning to realize that hatred would not help him accomplish anything here. All it would do was destabilize his connection to Azura and get him booted from her mind.
“Azura…” he spoke, willing calm back into his voice. Despite the weapon leveled at him, Aku made no effort to arm or shield himself from an attack.
“I know that he is loud and I know you are exhausted. When this is all over, I will take you back to your new bed and you can rest there for as long as you desire. And I will be there watching over you. But first, you must kick him aside and take back what is yours. Tell him he is NOT your master. The only master you have is you.”
The girl lunged at the demonic shogun, attempting to slash her gooey black sword across his chest. Aku could see her closing her eyes shut, grimacing as she made the attack. Was it out of grief? Or pain? Was it that she couldn’t bear to see her father figure to be defeated by the monster who had took over her body? To witness it first hand by her own two eyes?
No… it was his words she heard that plunged across her heart. He could see it. He could see that her attack barely missed him, her arms shaking. She was trying to fight back. Black Hat’s voice echoed through the space around the two figures, though it was the loudest in Azura’s mind, blasting in full volume.
“What’s this? Aku, making an attempt to be heroic? Don’t make me laugh! He’s just trying to make you weak with words of LOVE and AFFECTION, and I know better than anyone that you don’t need that, my dear. You’re far more stronger than that. Stronger than him, even. Listen to me instead~” A shadowy figure sporting a top hat loomed and leaned behind her, as if he was whispering directly into her ear, just to spite Aku more. She was flinching away, trying to reclaim the inner voice that she had lost in the abyss of the Hat’s own.
As a reflex to having swords brandished at him, Aku moved quickly away from the blade in Azura’s hands. He couldn’t be certain if it would do him actual harm here in the mindscape. Surely his physical being could mend itself but his physical being wasn’t here right now…
As the wicked voices swirled around them, the demon locked eyes with the shadowy figure of Black Hat that loomed behind Azura.
“I refuse to fight my daughter,” he spoke, glaring daggers at the fiend. But as he turned to Azura, his expression softened.
With a bow of his head, he knelt silently before her, surrendering himself to her blade. For a lingering moment, his eyes connected with hers. There was concern in his expression for her but there was also an unwavering confidence, both in her and in the decision he was making.
Then, lowering his head, he closed his eyes and waited.
Plunging his hand into the thick black slime that covered most of her, Aku would suddenly be bombarded with echoes of Black Hat’s voice, commanding the poor girl to stay submissive and accepting her fate as the host.
“You are weak and vulnerable at best, pathetic excuse even for a human being, you are the absolute worst without me,” was one.
“Give in give in give in give in-”
“I WILL MAKE YOU SUFFER FOR THE REST OF YOUR INSIGNIFICANT LIFE. Fancy fighting against me? This is what you’re getting.”
“You’re a burden to everyone you meet, isn’t it easier to just disappear into the darkest depths so you couldn’t bother anyone~?”
There were a thousand voices, all Black Hat’s, attacking her mentally, destroying her spirit. It was crushing her thoughts and was getting louder and stronger each second, it was a miracle that she was even still standing despite this exhausting battle.
The voices garbled as Aku disrupts their flow of thoughts, but a laughter erupted from it’s abyss. It sounded like as if he was everywhere from every corner of her mind.
“You FOOL! You cannot come to care for anyone but yourself, you are a being of pure hatred and darkness, you cannot afford to LOVE,” the voice spat with a mocking tone, dripped with malice. “You’ve always been a poor excuse for a villain, I should just kill you here and now and put and end to your miserable EXISTENCE!”
Azura’s body dropped to the ground like a puppet, as the tendrils detached itself halfway from the webby hat, letting her partially free. She rose up to face Aku, vacant eyes still staring at him.
“But not without having a little heart to heart with your precious daughter first~”
A sword manifests in the girl’s hand, and the Hat made her gave a lanky bow at her forced opponent.
So this was what his daughter had to listen to every second of every day? Aku was enraged before but now he was infuriated.
“SHUT UP!”
he screamed at the hat’s voice. While it might have been right about him—he was certainly brimming with hatred and rage right now—it was dead wrong about Azura.
His attention snapped back to his daughter who now wielded a sword against her will. Despite all the hatred he felt for Black Hat, Aku was quickly beginning to realize that hatred would not help him accomplish anything here. All it would do was destabilize his connection to Azura and get him booted from her mind.
“Azura…” he spoke, willing calm back into his voice. Despite the weapon leveled at him, Aku made no effort to arm or shield himself from an attack.
“I know that he is loud and I know you are exhausted. When this is all over, I will take you back to your new bed and you can rest there for as long as you desire. And I will be there watching over you. But first, you must kick him aside and take back what is yours. Tell him he is NOT your master. The only master you have is you.”
The flinch did not escape his notice but Aku continued to hold and stroke Azura’s tired face. Despite the circumstances, it was so good to see a part of her that was still her true self but Aku knew that time was limited, especially when a tendril began to tighten around her throat.
“Do not worry about that now,” he soothed. “We must free you from his grip before it’s too late.” As the demon spoke, his clawed hands began to pull and tug and tear at the dark binds covering her throat and body.
Azura watched as Aku tore the dark pieces off her, vacant eyes stared as he attempts to free most parts of her body from the hat demon’s grip. Yet the most stubborn part that held onto was her head, oozing like wretched, living oil that seeped directly into her brain. It was how Black Hat was controlling her no doubt, leaving the host limp from how much pain she had to endure in the midst of this hostile takeover. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think for herself. It was as if Black Hat was trying to erase her mind, freeing up space so he could move over. It was exhausting. Every great evil thought crossed her mind, malicious ideas mixed around her subconscious, and Azura started to wonder if it was his or her own at this point.
“It’s hopeless. Hopeless…” She repeated, doing absolutely nothing to even try to break free from the Hat’s grip. “I’m… nothing without him… my existence means… nothing without him…” They may be words that came out of her mouth, but there was no question it didn’t belong to her. It sounded like a broken record, repeating itself.
Once Azura’s body was free, Aku wrapped his arms around her and tried to tug her away from the mass of darkness, but her head was still too stuck and he didn’t want to risk harming her further. It was frustrating, especially when those wretched words kept pouring form her mouth like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Had Azura truly begun to believe such lies?
“Nonsense!” the yokai growled. “If your existence did not matter— If I did not love you, I would not be here!”
Determined to free her from the disgusting slime, Aku coiled part of his body around Azura like a giant tendril and slid higher up to face the monstrosity sprouting from her head. His first inclination was to slice through it but once again, he feared harming the host beneath. Steeling himself, he plunged his hand into the offending substance in some attempt to grab part of it and disrupt its flow into her mind.
Azura flinched slightly at the Shogun’s gentle touch, her face was pale and her eyes were sunken with dark circles. She didn’t look like cheerful self, as if she was left with fatigue and drained of her life’s essense.
“How… did you even get here?” Her breathing was heavy, as if she was doing her best to remain conscious. It was so tempting to fall back to sleep.
“You… you shouldn’t… be here. He’ll know. He’ll…” A tendril slithered to wrap around her throat, slowly cutting her sentence short. The world around them starts to grey out, fading ever so slowly.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed weakly.
The flinch did not escape his notice but Aku continued to hold and stroke Azura’s tired face. Despite the circumstances, it was so good to see a part of her that was still her true self but Aku knew that time was limited, especially when a tendril began to tighten around her throat.
“Do not worry about that now,” he soothed. “We must free you from his grip before it’s too late.” As the demon spoke, his clawed hands began to pull and tug and tear at the dark binds covering her throat and body.
With Azura looking worse and worse, Aku was growing increasingly frustrated with doing nothing but watch her decline. He needed to speak to her, he needed to see her and not the creature that had possessed her body and threatened to destroy her mind. So as Azura slept between bouts of fighting with the parasitic entity inside her, Aku decided to break his silence as stealthily as possible.
After several long moments of meditation, he entered a trance-like state of mind and began to weave his magic. Dream influence was not something he practiced often as being “subtle” was not one of his finer traits, but perhaps with Azura being held under the hat’s power so forcefully, she would be less likely to wake from the intrusion.
As he ventured into the darkness, the dream yokai began to call out to her, whispering her name in the hopes of finding her. ‘Azura… Azura… Azura…’
The mindscape was vast, littered with cosmic space beyond imagination of a mere human being, galaxies and planets aligned right on top of the scenery. The landscape was filled with gardens with flowers that shone like stars, humming soft music that could lull its owner in a state of calmness. It was beautiful, grandiose, it would’ve been a lovely place to visit if it wasn’t suffocated with the stench of corrupted evil.
As Aku dived deep into the girl’s subconscious, he would find the scenery beginning to be consumed by the sight of a large, dark spider web, tendrils that clung into the trees and oozing with pure, concentrated darkness. It was a mess. Upon closer inspection, the big web looked like a gigantic top hat, with heavy smoke rising from the depths. In the center of it all, Azura was trapped there, her body consumed by the darkness, yet her face was still exposed.
And when she heard a familiar voice calling her out, Azura opened her eyes to see it was.
“Aku…? Is that… really you…?”
So this was Azura’s subconscious mind. Aku was not sure what he’d find here but it was much larger and more vast than he’d expected. Following the corrupted, rotting landscape, Aku came upon an alarming sight. Trying not to be too loud in presence and voice, he approached the captive human carefully.
‘Yes, Azura, I am here,’ he spoke a softly as he was able. The darkness was all over her, consuming her and threatening to creep ever higher. He reached toward her face, the only part of her that still remained uncorrupted, and gently stroked her cheek, letting her know he was really there with her.
With Azura looking worse and worse, Aku was growing increasingly frustrated with doing nothing but watch her decline. He needed to speak to her, he needed to see her and not the creature that had possessed her body and threatened to destroy her mind. So as Azura slept between bouts of fighting with the parasitic entity inside her, Aku decided to break his silence as stealthily as possible.
After several long moments of meditation, he entered a trance-like state of mind and began to weave his magic. Dream influence was not something he practiced often as being “subtle” was not one of his finer traits, but perhaps with Azura being held under the hat’s power so forcefully, she would be less likely to wake from the intrusion.
As he ventured into the darkness, the dream yokai began to call out to her, whispering her name in the hopes of finding her. ‘Azura… Azura… Azura…’
Azura was asleep, feeling better and with Black Hat not holding as tight to her head, in less pain. She had made her request very clear, she wanted the Hat off and he was going to help her.
Carefully, very very carefully and slowly, he picked her up out of her bed holding her bridal style in the dark. Quietly, he made his way to the door of the bedroom.
Being a light sleeper, the girl stirred as she felt like she was being carried away by someone (perhaps Flug was struggling a bit with his nerdy limbs, who knows), and woke up to being in a van.
She jolts up in shock, looking around for the people responsible for this. “W-who?! What’s going on?! Where are you taking me?!”
Casper glanced back briefly before resetting her eyes on the road. “Hey, welcome to the land of the living. You can go back to sleep, we’re just…going for a drive. Flug has you set up with a nice little sleep area.”
Flug twiddled his fingers, looking back at her from his place on the passenger side. “An air mattress, a pillow, a fluffy blanket, some snacks…you’ll be okay. We’re going to go…um..on an impromptu trip!” He said.
Casper looked in the back to the rest of the group, Dementia and Crow with Azura.
“Everyone comfy?”
At present, Aku was laying low—which was to say he was riding high atop Casper’s head in the form of a black fez hat with a red tassel. Rather than catch Black Hat’s notice and sabotage the whole feat, he’d decided (for now) to keep silent. He and the accursed Hat weren’t on the best of terms, after all. It was hard enough not to shapeshift into a viper and fling himself viciously at the hat sitting atop Azura’s head.
However, as Azura stirred, he couldn’t help but wonder who it was that was speaking. Was it Azura or was it the hat? For now the demon simply watched her warily and fought the temptation to ask how she was feeling.
“Of course not, little one,” Aku feigned a saccharine tone of lament as he played along with the act. However, the grip of his tendrils was unrelenting as they further coiled themselves like snakes around Azura’s limbs and midsection.
Not wasting anymore time trying to pull the hat off her head, Aku raised his free hand and summoned the precise tool he would need for the job. It appeared in his hand out of thin air, silver blade glinting with its divine light in sharp contrast to the murderous glint in Aku’s eyes — the sword of Samurai Jack.
“No, I assure you this will be perfectly painless,” he went on as he drew back his arm to position the sword, “if you just… HOLD STILL.”
He swung the blade down in a diagonal arc aiming for the hat.
“M-Mr. Aku?”
Time seemed to slow down, the harsh, fiery setting soon to be muted by grey colors that crept in her vision, and Azura couldn’t tell if this was mostly fear or death that was coming, perhaps a bit of both. Blood still trickled down the rim of the hat that met her head, feeling immense pain as its teeth dug deeper into her skull as a means to make Aku suffer.
It was painful, but not as painful as witnessing her dearest father figure attempting to kill her without any hesitation.
That part hurt the most.
As the sword slowly descended onto her, she felt her vision fade along with her consciousness, and Aku would soon realize that the girl was gone from his grasp like a shadow, as if she was never there at all.
And in a blink, she was gone. Aku glared silently at the empty space before him, still holding the sword tight in his grip. That look of fear and pain on his daughter’s face was still seared into his mind. The pain had been hers but he was certain that Azura, with her purity of heart despite past hardships she’d faced, had nothing to fear of the sword.
To his dismay, Dr. Flug had been right. This would have to be done a different way.
“Mr. Aku…?” Came a soft whimper from the girl in her clutches, looking up to him with tears in her eyes, full of fear. The monocle she wore bore his raging reflection, that would’ve been enough to scare any mortal to death. She didn’t fight him, but instead she lay limp in the yokai’s grasp.
“I-I’m scared… Y-you wouldn’t hurt me, would you?”
“Of course not, little one,” Aku feigned a saccharine tone of lament as he played along with the act. However, the grip of his tendrils was unrelenting as they further coiled themselves like snakes around Azura’s limbs and midsection.
Not wasting anymore time trying to pull the hat off her head, Aku raised his free hand and summoned the precise tool he would need for the job. It appeared in his hand out of thin air, silver blade glinting with its divine light in sharp contrast to the murderous glint in Aku’s eyes — the sword of Samurai Jack.
“No, I assure you this will be perfectly painless,” he went on as he drew back his arm to position the sword, “if you just… HOLD STILL.”
He swung the blade down in a diagonal arc aiming for the hat.
The Shogun of Sorrow 