The samurai had walked another hour and a half, judging by the sun’s position in the sky, but the final location of that colored streak he had seen was still a mystery. He had not been able to get any sense of what caused it or where it went. But he had learned a few things.

The name of the destroyed city was Townsville, by the words on the large water tower that he now stood staring up at. The devastation here was the same as everywhere else. There had been massive fires which had long ago burned themselves out. The damage to the buildings bore the uneven appearance of them having been torn apart rather than blown up by weapons of war. That was a bit confusing. Some of the holes seemed rather large to have been made by some creature, though in his travels, he had met some that were very big. The ‘woolies’, as they were called by their subjugators, who he had helped to drive off; but he couldn’t imagine those gentle creatures doing anything like this. Still, with the power that Aku had, anything was possible. It could have been Aku itself, if the people here had resisted it trying to control them. Aku may have even done it for its own amusement, such was the scope of its evilness. Or, perhaps, to lure the samurai to this very spot. If that were the case, Jack had better be at his most alert, as the demon would probably not show itself but instead use other creatures until it saw the opportunity to crush him. Well, he would be ready.

He had not seen another living soul since leaving the possessed teacher and her doomed school. He sidestepped rubble in the street, looking around. He spotted something curious still attached to a building that had escaped severe damage. It was a large advertising sign of some kind and featured a sitting dog. In spite of the holes in it, he could make out the words, ‘Talking Dog says ‘It’s Good!’’

"Talking animals…hmmm." This was either a very advanced culture, if animals actually shared equal footing with humans; or a somewhat dimwitted one, if they took the advice of a dog on which products to buy. Either way, they no longer existed, and it angered him.

He had been in cities before and recognized seats of power when he saw them. They usually were large, imposing structures, set off by themselves, surrounded by manicured greenery and adorned with a banner of some sort. One to two kilometers in the distance, he saw something that looked like it could be that. If it was, inside he might find written evidence documenting who these people were. He quickened his pace. The jog would only take a few more minutes, even with the jumping over debris and stepping around ruined vehicles. As he drew closer, he saw the large white building take shape, and he knew this was that seat of power. It was a square building with imposing pillars in the front and two wings that jutted out to the sides in perfect symmetry. One of those wings was flattened and the other partially damaged. On top of the central portion of the structure sat a huge dome, though with many of the pillars that supported it broken, it had tilted forward and to one side at a crazy angle, and half of the dome was crushed inward. Sticking out from the top of it was a metal pole holding just such a banner as he expected to see. It was large and though tattered, it still flew, as if it were a symbol of hope. He had seen this one before, many times. A series of red and white horizontal stripes, and in one upper corner, white stars on a blue background. That he had seen it in so many other places told him that all of these places had, at one time in their history, been united by some common bond. With the evil that he had seen along the way, that bond had obviously been broken. It made him wonder if the banner of his homeland still flew, the beautiful red rising sun, and if his people were still one.

He dodged more debris as he climbed the building’s front steps. Inside, there was as much damage as out. In many places the ceiling had caved in. Mustiness pervaded the entire place; the smell of decay and despair. Papers were strewn about the hallways he walked. Furniture lay overturned and broken in and out of cubicles. He figured the government leaders would have been located somewhere near the dome, the symbol of power, and he climbed some stairs leading to upper floors. On the second floor, the stairs ended here, and a large open area was flooded with light from the gaping hole in the dome above his head. Ornate woodwork everywhere was covered with dust and grime. He looked back and forth along the hallway as he walked, for some sign of where the top leader may have been. He saw a small sign with an arrow pointing further ahead. It read ‘Mayor’s Office.’ Mayor was a term he had heard before. He followed the pointing arrow, and heard the low mournful wail before reaching the source of it.

Again, he found himself peering in toward a woman. This one sat in a chair at a desk, her back turned to him. She seemed very tall and Jack judged that she stood taller than he did. She had a billowing mane of gray hair, disheveled, with streaks of orange running through it. She sat hunched over, sobbing quietly. Around her was more destruction. The roof had a large hole in it. Books and papers lay everywhere. Pictures on the walls hung at crazy angles or were no longer on the walls, but face down on the rest of the debris. What looked like a child’s toy communication device lay broken in two pieces; he had learned that they were called ‘phones’. "An odd place for a toy." he thought.

One of the pictures still on the wall was a portrait of an elderly man wearing a top hat and a sash across his chest that read, ‘Mayor’. These very same items sat on the desk in front of the sobbing woman. Obviously, the leader of this place was no more.

The woman startled him by speaking suddenly. The voice was again cracked with age, just like the teacher’s had been. "I told him, you know. I-I told him to make…the call."

She stood. "‘Call the girls’, I said."

"Girls. The teacher mentioned some girls, too." He noticed when she stood that a small stand sat on the desk, giving a name. ‘Sara Bellum’.

The woman walked to a shattered window and looked out. "CALL THE POWERPUFF GIRLS!!"

Jack jumped at the sudden screaming. The words reverberated through the empty office and street below. The woman buried her face in her hands, obscuring it from his view as she walked back to the desk and sat down.

"But they never came. Why wouldn’t they come? It doesn’t make any sense. And now it’s too late! He’s…GONE!!"

She broke into another fit of sobbing and slumped over the desk. Jack could see her hands rubbing over the departed’s personal items in front of her. She had obviously cared deeply for him, though the samurai judged from the size of the items and the portrait that she had been much younger and at least three times his height.

"Well, love knows no boundaries, or so I am told." Romance was something he hadn’t time for, though he had learned its many nuances during his days of training as a youth. One never knew when feminine wiles might be used as a weapon by an enemy under Aku’s control, and he had been taught ways of discovering the difference. He smiled at the memory of some of that training, quite pleasant it had been. It had been too many years since…

Shaking his head, he forced himself back to the task at hand. He would have to repeat the same exercise as earlier. "Excuse me, my name is Jack. Please forgive my intr-"

She whirled around. He saw that the face had been beautiful once but was now ravaged by age and grief. "Huh?" Seeing him, she snatched the dusty old hat to her chest. "Keep away! He’s mine! Don’t come any closer! He’s mine! Mine, I tell you!"

The eyes were just as dead as the teachers’, in spite of the rage. She was in the grip of the same kind of trance. Suddenly, she seemed to see him, looking right at him like the teacher had done. She stood, dropping the hat.

"Professor! Professor Utonium! What are you doing here?!"

"There is that name again! But why cannot I remember where I have heard it?"

Before he could analyze it further or even open his mouth, she screamed, her face turning even more grotesque than it already was.

"Why didn’t you send the girls?! This is YOUR fault! YOUR FAULT!"

She spun toward the desk and pulled a drawer open. When she turned back, the warrior knew he was in danger and tensed himself. She held a gun, and though she and the teacher may have been just some of Aku’s mind-tricks, that the weapon was real he had no doubt. He dodged to his left as she fired, the bullet taking a chunk of plaster out of the wall behind where he had just been standing. She reacted quickly, bearing down on him. He now had his sword out and swung it toward her eyes as a distraction as he rolled back to his right. The next two shots only narrowly missed him as she closed the distance. Now it was all up to his training and his focus let him see the next three projectiles in almost slow-motion as they left the barrel. His slashing blade turned them all aside, sending them ripping into the walls or smashing what little glass remained in one window. She kept squeezing the trigger, the hammer hitting on an empty chamber as she came toward him. The shots rang in his ears, followed by the steady ‘click-click-click’ of the empty gun.

Her eyes once again unfocused, she walked right past him, still firing until she reached the doorway where the office opened onto the great hall. There, she stopped and stood for several seconds, letting her arm drop to her side and the gun slip from her hand to the floor. She turned and walked back to the desk, never seeing him, and slowly sat once more, putting her face in her hands, down on the desk. The sobbing resumed, and she was still sobbing when he exited the building to the street, still totally clueless about what was happening.

"Well, not TOTALLY clueless." he thought grimly. "The name professor, and these girls. But why am I being recognized as he, and what connection does he and these girls of his have to anything?"

Finding them was the solution to the mystery. But where? And what about that strange light in the sky? If he saw it again, it might lead him to them…and to Aku.