Bird's chirped happily as they flew across the sky, enjoying the sunlight that also streaked through the branches of a heavily treed forest. Yet the animals that normally prowled about in the forest were nowhere to be found, for there was a strange visitor within their midst, a being that had appeared out of thin air itself and collapsed beneath the largest tree.
For many hours, the warrior lay asleep beneath the mighty oak, yet with a flicker of his eyelids his senses began to return to him. First came the tingling of his nerves, then came a pain that roared like an inferno for a brief moment before all returned to normal. Yet, with the senses came a feeling that something was not as it should be.
'W-what has happened? Where am I?" Samurai Jack asked himself as his eyelids flickered once again before he slowly creaked his eyes open, looking around at the forest while the memories of the previous day returned to him. 'That is right. That stranger used his magic to send me here, to send me to this land where supposedly I will be able to find a way home. There is no time to waste. I must...'
Jack's train of thought hurled off the rails when he looked down at his side to make sure that his sword was beside him, yet his eyes immediately fastened on his hand--or now the lack thereof. Jack slowly lifted his limb before his eyes to see that what had once been his hand was now a hoof. Very slowly he looked at the rest of his body, realizing that it wasn't just his hand that had changed. His nose was far longer now and when he looked around behind him, he saw a bit of a tail sticking out from beneath his kimono. Yet when he reached up and felt his head, he found that his hair was the same as it had been.
'Oh, not again. At least this time the mage...or wizard...was courteous enough to warn me in advance,' Jack reflected while he slowly rose to his hooves, staggering around on all fours as he struggled to learn how to move. "Yet, I must wonder if becoming a noble steed will help me to blend in with the creatures that live here. This is going to be a strange adventure."
Once Jack had spent a few minutes learning how to walk, and eventually run, he decided that it was finally time for him to start his quest once again. His first obstacle came faster than he would have believed possible, for when he went to lift the sword that could slay any evil, he found that his hooves would not lift it.
"This may be a problem," he muttered as he stared down at his scabbard, frowning while he sat down before it and reached out with both of his hooves. For ten minutes he tried to grasp the scabbard with his two hooves, but even his nearly unshakable patience quickly turned into frustration when he made no progress. "If Aku could see me now, I have no doubt that this would bring him much joy," Jack fumed as he sighed and stared down again at the scabbard, which had barely moved from where it had rested.
'Getting angry will not get me anywhere. I must relax and try to find a solution to this unforeseen problem.' Jack then turned his eyes up towards the chirping birds, noticing how they were moving branches to their nests by carrying the twigs within their beaks. He glanced back down at his weapon and decided to follow nature's advice.
He moved his now longer face towards the scabbard, gently wrapping his teeth around the sheath before he lifted his weapon into the air. With a slow and patient demeanor he moved the sheath next to his sash, before gently sliding it in with one quick motion.
The samurai let a smile cross his face now that his greatest ally was at his side again, before he turned and truly took in the forest for the first time. At first glance, it seemed like one of many forests that he had traveled through, but his heightened senses told him that there was more within the forest. Something magical...and something sinister.
'But my journey will not begin if I do not take the first step,' Jack decided as he began to walk into the foliage, keeping both eyes and ears out in case anything decided to jump out at him. 'I hope that I will come upon civilization soon. The sooner I know where I am, the easier it shall be for me to locate a way home.'
Despite having a peaceful walk for the first hour or so, Jack's first surprise came when a swarm of creatures came barreling down towards him. Upon seeing such an incredible horde of small, flying beasts he went to reach for his sword, only to knock his own hooves out from beneath him and send himself crashing to the forest floor. He shot up just in time to see one of the beasts had landed in front of him...and discovered that the swarm of monsters was nothing more than a bunch of small, puffball like insects.
"Well, hello there little one," Jack smiled kindly as he held out a hoof, which caused the puffball to buzz its wings and back away from him. "There is no need to be alarmed. I do not mean you any harm." The small creature looked up at him before hopping onto his hoof. Jack smiled as he brought the creature close to his face, looking into its two bulbous, green eyes with kindness in his.
"Excuse me creature, but if you do not mind me asking, I need help to get out of this forest. Do you know the way?" The creature let out a tiny noise before flittering off of his hoof and flying back the way it came. Jack smiled while he began to gallop after it, having trouble keeping it in his sight due to its speed. The creature buzzed right over a large amount of prickly vines and thorn bushes, giving Jack only a few moments until he lost sight of the creature.
"Forgive me forest, but I must get through!" Jack apologized as he prepared to reach for his sword, yet he remembered what had just happened moments before and quickly reached down with his mouth instead. In one swift motion he bit down on the handle and drew the blade in a flash of light, carving clean through the vines and bushes with ease. Yet when he landed on the ground he tripped slightly and the sword was knocked from his grasp, nearly causing him to fall over as the sword skidded away.
"That will take some getting accustomed to," Jack muttered to himself as he grabbed the sword with his teeth once again and sheathed his blade, looking up to find that he had lost track of the small insect within the trees. His brow furrowed when Jack realized that the forest seemed far more dark and menacing than it had when he first woke up within it. His eyes narrowed when dozens of sets of yellow eyes glared out at him from beneath bushes and from behind trees, the shadows preventing him from seeing what awaited him.
"It matters not. No predators will keep me from my quest," Jack decided with courage as he found the less dense part of the forest and walked in that direction. Strange screeches sounded off in the branches above the samurai, while Jack knew that no matter where he went, there were at least five different sets of eyes watching him. Yet, he did not let the thought of being watched deter him and despite numerous branches and vines trying to block his path, the samurai continued to push on.
"Ah, finally," Jack sighed with relief hours later when he at last came across something that could truly aid him: a road. Jack slid down from the top of the tree he had climbed and walked onto the dirt path that was being overrun with weeds, looking down both routes while he debated his second problem. 'This road will lead me somewhere, but I am not sure which direction to head. Perhaps I should gain some height and see if-'
Jack once again lost his train of thought when he heard the sound of hooves galloping towards him, and in an instant the samurai had spun around in the other direction, prepared to do battle. Yet to his surprise, he found that it was not a monster that charged towards him, but instead a grayish stallion in a orange vest and a work hat. The pony spotted Jack and immediately skidded to a stop in front of him, exhaling heavily before lowering his head.
"Greetings, friend," Jack greeted as the pony took in numerous deep breaths, gulping down another breath as he tried to say something only to have to inhale again. "You seem to be afraid of something. Please rest for a moment and then tell me what has you so frightened."
"What has me frightened? What has me running for my coat is a monster...an abomination that just wiped out my entire crew!" the pony yelled at Jack hysterically as he shivered in place, causing the smile to leave Jack's face. "It's bad enough we were the ones brought in to deal with it, but then we get told that there weren't enough guards to support us...I swear if the pay wasn't so good I wouldn't have taken this job, and if I knew what was in there I wouldn't have taken it anyway."
"Please slow down. What attacked your crew? What lies up ahead?" Jack asked the pony in a far more serious tone.
"Some kind of monster. It attacked us with vines as we were trying to move a rockslide and dragged us off. I barely escaped with my life," the pony exhaled with fear. Jack's eyes narrowed before he walked past the pony and towards the direction from where he had appeared, getting the worker to look at Jack as if he were insane.
"Where do you think you are going?!" the pony yelled at him.
"You have a problem. I am going to get rid of it," Jack replied calmly.
"Are you crazy?! We might not be warriors, but we had plenty of unicorns with us and it still overpowered us within seconds! Ya think because you've got a sword that you can beat it?! That thing was barely affected by our spells! How can you fight it without magic?"
Jack slowly turned to look back at the pony, before tapping his sword with his hoof. "It is as you said," Jack began as he turned back down the road and walked away. "I have my sword."
--|=====\
Jack did not need to know where he was going, to know that he was heading in the right direction. The first indicator came when he found an abandoned hard hat laying on the side of the road, yet no pony around to claim it. Jack continued onward down the road until he came to the place which the worker had mentioned, a large pile of works that had covered the road. Jack looked on both sides of the road to see two massive hills that were covered in foliage, telling him why ponies simply didn't go around.
'This is the area where the workers were taken,' Jack mused as he began to look around, glancing first at the rocks before examining some of the mining equipment that had been left behind. 'But that stallion was a horse, just like what I was changed into. Does that mean that the beings that live here are all horses? And if so, does that mean that there are no humans? And what of Aku? Has his vile influences spread to here as well?'
Jack was forced to abandon that thought when his eye spied something that didn't belong. He walked over to the trees near the road and crouched down, frowning when he saw numerous skid marks, almost like something had been dragged into the trees. Jack's eyes narrowed while he walked ahead into the undergrowth, following the skid marks further and further into the trees. While he was not unnerved, he did notice that the birds had stopped singing and that the eyes were gone as well.
'So, horses are not the only ones that fear this beast. I must stay on guard.' The trail eventually came to an end in the thickest part yet of the forest, where the tree branches blocked out the sun and the trunks towered high over the ground. But all Jack had to do was give the place a quick glance before he discovered the beast, spotting a creature covered in vines that was hunched over in the center and chewing on something.
"Greetings creature." The vine creature let out a grunt as it spun around to face Jack, who could only see two beady little eyes looking out at him from beneath the entanglement of vines. "I have been told that you have been attacking innocents and dragging them away? Is this true?" The creature's answer was to belch out a small piece of an orange vest, at which Jack narrowed his eyes as it landed near his hooves.
Without another word, Jack reached down with his mouth and drew forth his sword once again, focusing all of his attention on the creature as he slowly began to circle it. The vine creature did not move from its location, but it continued to spin so that Jack was always within its sights.
'I know little of what it can do, so I must make the first attack!' Jack decided as he charged forward, tilting his head slightly in preparation to swing his sword. Yet with incredible speed the vine creature hurled what looked to be its arms forward, unleashing a tidal wave of vines down upon Jack. The samurai's eyes went wide with fear while he dove to the side, just barely avoiding the vines that impaled themselves into the ground where he had been a moment before.
As Jack was rising back up to his hooves, the creature moved its arms towards him and the vines freed themselves from the earth, taking a moment to adjust their course before they lunged at Jack again. But this time the samurai was ready. In one swift motion, one that was too fast for the vine creature to see, Jack slashed at the vines with unbelievable speed. He landed on the ground with a small sigh, standing up as the vines were sliced into thousands of pieces.
Jack dug the tip of his blade into the ground while he glared at the creature, which had narrowed its beady eyes at the samurai. "I will only say this once creature. Leave this land and these beings alone," Jack ordered. Yet with a shriek the vine creature lunged towards Jack, kicking up piles of dirt while it tore towards him. Jack narrowed his eyes as he grabbed his blade once again and took up a stance, focusing all his attention onto the center of the being. Then there was a flash of movement, the sound of metal striking hard, and then the samurai came to a stop behind the vine creature.
"I am sorry it came to this," Jack said as he sheathed his blade, not turning around when the creature let out a gurgle and collapsed to the ground without another sound. Jack shook his head at it and started to walk away before noticing something that had escaped him during the fight. The creature's vines not only covered its body, they dug into the ground as well.
"Wait a moment," Jack muttered as he saw that even though the creature had lunged at him, the vines that were a part of its body were still dug into the place that it had been sitting, except that they had been extended. The pieces slowly fell into place right before the ground exploded in a shower of dirt and foliage, hurling Jack into a tree trunk and knocking his sword away from him. Rocks and dirt sprayed everywhere while trees were uprooted, only to be added to the dirt pile that was growing larger and larger.
Jack shook his head to try and clear the spots from his vision, yet when they finally vanished he looked upon something that made even the samurai feel fear. Where the smallish vine creature had been standing now stood a gargantuan beast that wasn't just made of vines, but also trees, boulders and other parts of the forest. And the small creature that Jack had just "slain" rested at the top of the beast, glaring down at Jack with its two beady eyes that seemed to be smiling now.
Jack quickly rolled over to his sword and grasped it once again, but as the colossal beast marched towards him he feared that he would need more than his blade to survive this battle. 'But I cannot let my quest end here! I cannot let Aku win!' Jack roared while he drew the blade from its scabbard in a flash of light before glaring up at the colossus.
And to the surprise of the giant, the tiny samurai charged at it.