It was raining bullets. Saturated wind came slashing down the faces of buildings as thunder bounced off the concrete walls, and the glare of neon was everywhere around them. It reflected off puddles and plated windows in bright, foreign tongues, giving the dark strip an eerie, artificial glow. Despite the lack of people, the roadway felt cramped and narrow, and the sky was near invisible above. The rain didn't help, filling the air like a basin to drown something in. The sound was incredible.

One lone soul was out in the soup, looking out on the street from a dark alleyway. Cold and soaked to the bone, Jack sat hunched over on his motorcycle and stared across the way, pelted by wind and rain and exhausted by the chaos of the city. It was four in the morning.

Jack choked back a yawn and rubbed his eyes, trying to keep rain from running into them. He hadn't slept the night before, either. Really, he couldn't remember the last time he had slept longer than a few hours at a time. His head nodded, and he crossed his arms over the handlebars and rested it there for a moment, continuing to stare through the downpour at his target against the harsh fluorescent light.

It was no remarkable structure; a boarded up brick building that was dwarfed by a leviathan black steel building that had been constructed directly above it. Massive support beams rose up the sides of the brick like the roots of a huge, parasitic tree; one of the newer high rises that made up part of the upper levels of the city, and dwarfed those below it. This building sat at ground level; the lowest.

A few letters hung on the top of the building's façade, rusted and scattered where nearly all of them had fallen off, leaving only 'O LO Y AL' in its place. Jack cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow, wondering passively what it may have said before.

This target may have been nothing spectacular, but he kept his vision trained on it nonetheless. Doubt swirled in his stomach, fogged by exhaustion, but he shook it off. There had been certain matters weighing on him for long enough, and he hadn't seen anybody come or go from the building in the four hours he had been sitting there. At least that was somewhat of a comfort. He shifted, resting the side of his head against his arms. The rain was droning static, and his eyes fell shut on their own as soon as there was a break in Jack's racing mind.

A cold raindrop slithered down his back and he sat up straight, shivering. He couldn't sleep now.

Jack brushed the hair out of his eyes and scanned the street again, frowning when it only fell back in front of his face, but movement suddenly caught his attention and he froze. Someone was walking down the sidewalk across the road. He squinted through the rain, the old fear of being recognized crawling up his spine. It was a squatty biped creature in a trenchcoat, that much was clear, but Jack couldn't make out much else than a vaguely reptilian appearance.

Don't look up, he silently willed it. Don't go in that building. Both of them would have serious regrets if it caught his eye, and he was in no mood for a confrontation, much less anything that could gain the attention of any higher authority. He tensed, risking a glance behind him as if scores of drones were going to pour out of the alley walls. Turning back to the street, he saw the creature turn and duck into a bar without a second glance. While holding the door, a clap of thunder ripped through the air and rattled windows up and down the street, and it turned in shock. Jack's heart jumped, but he also blinked incredulously. The creature had no eyes.

As he watched the door shut behind it, Jack groaned and rubbed his face, leaning forward again on the handlebars. He was getting worked up over nothing. Still, lingering worry and personal experience told him that the thing could still come storming out of the bar with a kangaroo court of bounty hunters at its back. But, as the seconds ticked by all the worry devolved into exasperation. He was being ridiculous.

Jack hunched forward and wiped water off the speedometer with his thumb, squinting through the rain at the digital clock. 4:23 AM. He had seven minutes.

Heaving a huge sigh, Jack begrudgingly stood, wincing at the pins and needles in his legs from sitting for so long. Dragging a tarp over the motorcycle, he took a wary step forward and looked from one end of the street to the other. Nothing.

Puddles splashed all over his legs as he ran from the alley, across the street, around the corner of the building, and right into a narrow walkway that cut between the bar and the building. The rain felt even more merciless now that he had been out in it, and he regretted bringing his beat-up coat. It had proven completely useless at keeping the rain out, but he had been colder without it. This didn't change the fact that he was soaked, and the garment weighed heavy on his shoulders with water.

As he slogged through the crawl space, the wall of the bar suddenly shrank away, and the walkway widened into a cavernous alcove. The rain was even more deafening in the chamber, and Jack jumped at a light that flicked on over the back door of the bar. He ducked around a dumpster and out of sight, but heard nothing; no door opening or slamming. Motion-activated, he thought, trying to shake the jumpiness that had come over him since he had arrived in the city. The seconds ticked by and he cautiously edged around the dumpster, sweeping the wall of the other building until his eyes found the ladder.

As promised, the rickety thing hung bolted to the brickwork, rusty and precarious-looking. Jack couldn't honestly believe that anybody had climbed it in years, but he crossed the alcove nonetheless, steeling his judgement.

The rust bit his hands as he took the rungs and climbed. As he went further upward, the wind shifted, sending rain lashing against the side of his face instead of his back. He hadn't gotten too far when the light above the back door of the bar timed out, and Jack stopped short as the alcove was plunged into darkness. The wind howled around him and the ladder groaned and shuddered on its bearings. The sensation made his lungs seize up with panic, and he looked from side to side in the dark, remaining frozen in place as if the whole thing would come unbolted from the wall and send him spinning toward the pavement below. He risked a glance and squinted through the mess up toward the sky. Lightning flickered from somewhere above and revealed the silhouette of a fire escape, hanging barely twenty feet above his head like a wrought iron promised land.

The sight urged his arms back into movement, and he scrambled up the rest of the ladder, feeling his way up blindly or by lightning. When he finally did manage to clamber onto the fire escape, he nearly shook with relief, peering down the sheer wall into the gloom below.

The ground- or what he could assume was the ground- looked much farther away than four stories. He gulped, and managed to force himself to stand against the blustering wind, hanging onto the railing for dear life. The windblown rain tricked his eyes, creating false depth and making a dizzying effect on the downward view. He blinked hard- forcing himself to find his bearings and feeling the iron quake underfoot. He was stronger than rusted steel and a storm. Turning his back to the drop, he crept slowly over to the wall as the instructions– relayed to him from the other end of a payphone– returned to him.

Look for the window on the right side. Sure enough, there it was, plastered in wooden planks. Jack looked closer, barely able to see the shape of the window. Remembering what had been told him, he jiggled on one of the boards. It didn't move, and Jack smirked. With both hands, he pried the board- and all the other boards- out of the window in one fluid movement. The cluster of planks was in fact, not a cluster at all, but a false door. The boards had all been nailed haphazardly to a wooden pallet and wedged into the window frame, giving the decrepit illusion to any happening glances from below.

Jack swung his legs over the rotted sill and cautiously angled himself into the building, turning to restore the pallet to its rightful place. At his feet was a makeshift welcome mat, covered in spidery permanent marker. The unease that had been coiled in his lungs skyrocketed. It had been decades since any Norwegian had passed his ears– be had barely been twenty when he had learned the ways of life dictated by ice and sea– but 'The Slakter is In' wasn't the most reassuring phrase for him to be greeted with.

The smell of mildew was thick in the air, and underneath it the sharper, colder aroma of chemicals. He had landed himself in a dim room, empty except for a fallen ceiling panel and a few chairs against the far wall. There was one door across from the window, steel and shut tight. A large bulletin board hung next to it, crammed to the hilt with papers. Faces, names, words looked scrutinously on at him like he was an intruder. A lone fluorescent light flickered meekly in the corner, washing the room in an eerie greenish glow. Lightning flickered through the slats in the window, followed by close thunder that seeped through his skin and bounced around in his ribcage. Jack couldn't discern whether or not it was his heart.

Go inside. Sit down. Talk to no one in the lobby. Wait.

Jack looked around at the decrepit room. 'Lobby' was a generous overstatement. The given demands floated through his mind, but there was nobody else in the waiting room except for him; he had made sure of that when keeping watch earlier. If he had seen someone go in, there was a good chance he would never have set foot in the place.

The room was silent except for the sound of rainwater dripping into a bucket somewhere, and the wind shoring rain up against the window behind him. He looked down at the water also running off of his clothes, and shrugged the sopping coat off of his shoulders and onto the tile. It had been somewhat chilly outside, despite being spring in this part of the world, and Jack shivered now that he was out of the rain. He could only hope he would dry off faster without the coat, but even then, Jack was wearing another layer under the black long-sleeved shirt.

Jack had tried his best to keep himself from becoming reliant on things like armor, but as the years dragged on, he found it was harder and harder not to. He wasn't sure exactly when he had begun to notice the encroaching unease that crept up on him when he wasn't wearing any, but it was there. It was there, and he was ashamed of it. He had never felt the need to wear kevlar under his clothes before the mountain. Before the Rams.

Jack shook his head vigorously, trying to ward off the unpleasant memory before it could fully form in his mind, and sidestepped the doormat. The floorboards beneath the cracked tile groaned under his weight; probably rotted with water damage, and for a moment Jack considered turning back, but the chairs were suddenly in front of him.

He sat down, eyes landing on the bulletin board again. The light where it was was useless at illuminating much of anything, and he had to squint to see. All he could make out was a calendar on one side and what looked like a few more recent newspaper clippings pinned up randomly. All the photos and ink on the papers was faded and blurry, as if they had been put up long ago. Push pins littered the floor, along with a few other pages that had fallen.

The minutes dragged by, and Jack could feel the exhaustion slowly returning to him, the lull of the rainfall against the far wall helping it to seep back into the edges of his mind. There was no clock in here; only the incessant dripping of the water into the bucket and the occasional flickers of lightning.

Jack leaned back in the chair and rested his head against the wall, but some of the exhaustion fled at the sight of a wobbly line of bullet holes that staggered across the plaster. Quickly, he sat up, scanning the room for any more. He saw some spots on the far wall that could have been more, but he couldn't be sure it wasn't mildew. He noticed other things, though. The water damage and mold on the walls looked funny in some places, and Jack twisted in his chair to get a closer look at the one behind him. There was definitely grime growing on the drywall, but the dark marks beneath it were not any kind of stain. Jack frowned in thought, running a finger over where flames had licked away at the paint, up the wall and onto the ceiling where the soot had clouded and eaten away at the plaster. Fire. Now that he looked, there were several similar signs of carnage littering the room.

What happened here?

Something caught his eye by the doorframe. It was a nameplate. If he squinted he could read it, but a sound drew his attention away. He turned, dread pooling in his stomach.

A horse- a lean mare with long, ropy legs stood at the edge of where the dim light reached. It whinnied softly at him, its sable body bleeding into the gloom until it was near indistinguishable from the wall behind it. Its ears nearly brushed the ceiling and its eyes like coals seemed to carve into him with a deathly intensity. It raised a hoof sedately to step toward him, moving like a creature submerged in water, and the dread in Jack's chest suddenly flared into waking fear. He buried his head in his hands with a shiver, not wanting to look at it any longer.

"Are you alone?"

The voice shattered the quiet, and Jack had to bite down on a startled scream, jerking his head out of his hands. He gaped at where the mare had been standing, but saw nothing in the twitching, watery light. He was half relieved it was gone, but twice as disturbed that he had seen it to begin with. Once again, the gruff voice growled at him through the door, and he jumped again.

"Are you alone?" it hissed. Jack stood and faced the door, fumbling for words. It was a male voice, gruff and flinty and none too cheerful.

"Yes," he breathed. After a heartbeat of taught silence, he cleared his throat and tried again. "Yes, I'm alone." He tried taking a step forward, wincing when his boots squealed on the wet tile. So much for professionalism, he thought.

The speaker seemed to hesitate for a heartbeat before the handle jiggled, and the heavy door swung open at last. Jack's stomach lurched, and he resisted the urge to press back against the wall. He had at least hoped the street surgeon would be human.

A creature from the stars, it almost seemed to glide through the door, towering lanky and pale over Jack like a wiry building on spindly legs. It was wearing nothing but a wrinkled lab coat over what first appeared to Jack to be long fur, but the more he looked at it he realized that it was actually ribbon-fine feathers. They cascaded off its body like a gown, ivory and tawny brown down its back. Its face was bare and narrow like a crow's, curving down and ending in a sickle-like beak that was curled in a sneer. It was a species Jack had not seen before.

The creature had barely laid eyes on Jack when it threw its head back and let out an exasperated snarl. It pinched its brow with a thin, scaled hand, and Jack saw small, sharp teeth lining the back of its mouth grit in frustration.

"Shit," it hissed, balling his fists at its side. It stood in tense silence for a moment, composing itself, Jack assumed. Its eyes, sharp and bright chestnut, blinked open and fixated on the man in a cold glare. They were the only window into its irritation as its stiff anger devolved into composed surliness, and Jack noticed that its eyes were rimmed with brown that trailed halfway down the sides of its muzzle like tear tracks. It had two long, thin feathers that stuck up off either side of its head like twin antennae, and though they didn't appear to move, they still twitched slightly backward in irritation.

Jack had his hands clasped behind him patiently as the surgeon looked him over with calculating eyes. They started at the water all over the tile, and moved slowly upward- growing increasingly disgusted- until he was staring into Jack's eyes. It was scowling at him like something that had crawled up out of a drain, and Jack felt his palms prickle uncomfortably under the scrutiny. Beneath all of it, he was somewhat offended at the blatancy of the creature's distaste for him, but he didn't let it show, and only stared awkwardly back at through in the dead air and rocked back and forth on his feet.

"You know–" it growled, speaking at last and slipping a box of cigarettes out of its lab coat pocket. Despite its glare it sounded almost pleasant. "Stalking people for hours in the rain this far north will hand you your death of cold; it will." Jack sucked air in through his teeth and stopped dead, clenching his hands behind his back so tightly they hurt. The surgeon only raised a brow. There was nothing for him to say; he had been caught.

The surgeon gingerly lit a cigarette with a zippo, behaving as if nothing had been said, though when he glanced sidelong at Jack, one of his russet eyes was crinkled in smug amusement; probably at Jack's expression. The rest of the creature still radiated venom. Smoke curled through the air, but Jack smelled nothing but mold.

"I was staring down at you for a long while, thinking– 'No. No, it can't possibly be him. He wouldn't carry himself like a terrified street person.'" Jack tried not to frown, and tensed his shoulders instead. The surgeon continued, taking periodic drags from his cigarette and leaning on one leg like they were partaking in nothing more than idle smalltalk. "'Wouldn't look like a terrified street person.'" It talked like someone would about a newspaper article. Jack breathed patiently, keeping a placid expression fixed on his face while he mentally berated himself into keeping quiet.

"But, God–" it trailed off, suddenly stretching an impossibly long arm over to the bulletin board and yanking a paper away. It shoved the leaflet in Jack's face, and he didn't need light to recognize his own eyes staring back at him in carbon print. Younger eyes, he thought agonizingly. One of the millions of wanted posters that had wallpapered the world. "Here you are." Jack blinked around the paper at him, and nodded once.

"You," he repeated. "A legend, coming to me for help." He didn't sound happy about this; rather the opposite. "I barely recognized you under that- that..." He furrowed his brow in confusion, waving a hand at Jack's head. "... mane," he sneered. Jack almost rolled his eyes.

"Of course," the creature continued, letting the paper drift lazily from his claws onto the tile. "I suppose anyone would look like this-" he waved a claw flippantly at Jack. "-after so many long, hard years of ghosting on the world." The end of the sentence dipped and curled down into a venomous growl that shuddered and filled the alien's chest like a simmering cup, and it spurred a candle of anger in Jack's and he frowned. He had lost some weight, sure, and grown a beard, but he couldn't look as terrible as the surgeon was putting it.

"You must have quite an agenda laid out for the day when you kill him." There was no questioning who the creature spoke of. Jack gripped his hands harder behind his back, sighing quietly under his breath and willing the flash fire of irritation that was growing in him to die down. He considered himself a patient man, but the surgeon's icy jabber was particularly annoying at this time of morning. Anything was annoying at this time of morning. Jack didn't take his gaze off him, staring as passively as he could manage, but he allowed his eyes to betray him, hardening like clear ice as he prayed silently that the creature would hold its tongue.

It did not.

"Or perhaps–" it growled, "–you're no closer to your goal than when you began." That did it. Jack glared vehemently at the surgeon and clenched his fists at his side, unable to hold a passive attitude any longer. He took a step forward, closing the space between them, and craned his neck until he had its gaze- unfazed as ever- locked even with his. Fear and shame slithered beneath the bloated anger in Jack's chest, but he tamped the emotions down further.

"Enough," Jack growled, speaking for the first time in as many days. His voice was hoarse from disuse, but equally raw with anger at the creature's jabs toward him- or rather, the truth in them. The surgeon stared at him stonily for a moment, and Jack wondered in the back of his mind if he had crossed a line. The worm of fear in his chest grew amid the anger, but the surgeon suddenly grinned at him snidely, baring pointed teeth in a smug smile that stretched wide.

"Aha," it crooned. "There he is." Jack blinked, and deflated when he realized he had fallen for the surgeon's egging. Stepping away from him, he sat down again, anger spent. The surgeon took another drag and spoke again.

"You know how much this is going to cost me," he said. "And you, for that matter." Jack nodded. Whether he had been avoiding the public eye or not didn't matter; he was still a wanted man, along with any cohorts he had made.

"I'll pay," Jack said quietly. "I'll pay whatever you want. I've already been turned away enough." It was true; there weren't many ways he could get medical help without complications. He hadn't even ventured to try until recently, and it had proven more difficult than he would've thought reasonable. "Official" doctors were few and far between, but what made them official was the fact that they all were in league with Aku. He had seen other street surgeons for injuries, sure, but he wasn't seeing this creature to have a wound stitched.

"Please," he continued. "I need a doctor– a real doctor." The surgeon snorted.

"'Real,'" he echoed. "I'm guessing by 'real' you mean I'm not some back-street butcher who thinks he can perform an endarterectomy just because he bought a medical textbook online, yes?" Jack blinked. He had no earthly idea what an endarterectomy was.

"… Yes… something like that. You know your field."

He nodded, standing a bit taller. "Damn right." Jack frowned at his hubris, but kept silent this time.

"I need your help," he said. "Your assistant already said you would know what to do." The surgeon barked a laugh, tossing his head and once more revealing the rows of teeth.

"Assistant? You mean Kjorn?" Kjorn must have been the husky sounding voice on the other end of the payphone. He had been the one that had given Jack the instructions to get here. He had been the one to schedule the visit. The surgeon laughed haughtily again and smiled crookedly at Jack. "Kjorn is a glorified secretary. A filter really– but yes, I cqn." Despite himself, Jack exhaled in relief.

"Now what I can't understand," he said. "-is why you would risk both our necks for something that can be remedied with a simple blood test. How did you put it? 'The problem is that there's no problem'?" Jack stared at the surgeon, and again the strange feeling snaked at the edge of his mind and trailed downward until it was sitting in the pit of his stomach like a ball of ice.

"Yes," he whispered. The surgeon's birdlike face was a mask of stone as he put out his cigarette on the tile and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. Jack wanted to wring his hands, but since he had said it, the uneasy feeling began to spread like a disease through him. Yes, there was something wrong with him, and his surety of it only grew with the silence and rain. The surgeon met his eyes, suddenly shedding the sardonic demeanor for an almost scholarly one; looking for all the world like a mathematician trying to solve a difficult equation. Jack closed his eyes, not willing to give an answer.

"Please." Jack's voice barely carried over the sound of the rain outside. More lightning flickered, casting Its shadow. "I know this is endangering your work here," Jack murmured, still not looking at the surgeon. "And your life, but–"

"Okay, stop," the surgeon interjected, waving away Jack's statement with a scaled hand. "Don't go getting all weepy on me." More silence. Painfully slowly, he pulled out another cigarette and lit it, taking his time with the first drag. He tipped his head from side to side with his eyes closed, head feathers swaying. Finally, he sighed and shook his head.

"I must be crazy," he muttered, before turning and waving a hand curtly, signaling for Jack to follow him through the door. He shuddered, letting out a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding as the surgeon turned to grab the door handle. Jack rushed to meet him.

"Thank you," he wheezed. The door squealed on its hinges as the surgeon pushed it open, and Jack felt relieved to be leaving the decrepit room behind, but lightning flickered through the window slats a final time behind them, and dread sunk in his chest. The shadow of the wraithlike mare painted the burned wall out of the corner of his eye for a moment before it blinked out of sight, disappearing back into the gloom. The thunder that followed echoed the pounding in Jack's chest, and a feeling like a cold rush of water broke over him that screamed to get out of the room as quickly as possible. It was a feeling that he'd become all too familiar with.

"Wait," he said, stretching up to grab the alien's shoulder. "I need to have something else done." The creature halted halfway through the door, and turned one narrow, mahogany eye on him. Jack glanced back into the room before taking the glower as license to continue. He released the surgeon from his grip and took a step back, still not entirely sure whether he would lash out, and cleared his throat.

"I need you to look at my eyes," he stammered. It was all he could manage. The surgeon raised a brow, but still didn't turn to face Jack. "I don't know what it's called."

"You... want an eye test?" the surgeon asked. He sounded confused by the request, but Jack nodded regardless, glancing again to the wall where the horse's shadow had been cast upon and feeling anxiety crawl up his spine.

"Yes," he said. Eye test must have been the right term.

"Eye test," the surgeon repeated, throwing an arm halfheartedly in the air. "Fine. Whatever." Shaking his head, he shoved the door open the rest of the way and disappeared into an even darker place, muttering something about 'some legend...'.

Jack rushed to keep up, not looking back into the murkiness of the waiting room for the terrible feeling that prickled down his neck. He stood up straighter and focused his eyes forward into this new place. He would not be swayed by mares and shadows.

The bang of the door falling shut startled him out of his thought, and he saw that the surgeon had led them into a dark hallway. Unlike the room, with at least its one sad, flickering light and windows, this one was pitch black. It was so dark, in fact, that he had to stop and reach out until his fingers brushed the wall to get the idea that it was even a hallway. At first he thought the surgeon had disappeared, but then he heard the clicking of talons and the nearly imperceptible sighing of wispy feathers sweeping across the tile. He was moving down the corridor toward the front of the building.

"Come on," he barked. "We're burning moonlight."

"Ah- um," Jack realized he had never been given a name and stumbled over his words. "Hey! What is your name?"

The small sounds fell silent as the surgeon stopped somewhere ahead, and Jack swore he heard him scoff. "Wouldn't you like to know," he said, voice bouncing along the tile. Jack sighed in frustration. "But, I suppose you should know- my clients call me Sigg." Talons clicked on the tile again as the street surgeon continued forward, already far from Jack by some amazing means.

Jack blinked, mulling the name over in his head before taking a step toward where Sigg's voice had come from, but he found that he couldn't move. Other than the one hand he had on the wall, he could see nothing. The blackness smothered him, and the sound of thunder from somewhere outside drowned out the sound of Sigg walking. For a few moments, he was alone in there, and it scared him.

I will not be swayed by shadows, he thought, closing his eyes. He couldn't even tell they were closed. I will not be swayed by shadows. I will not be swayed by shadows.

But fear was creeping in on Jack, and even when he managed to take a few steps, he felt it coiling through his legs. What would he know about himself when this night was done? What would be different from now on?

Feeling his way through that corridor, Jack felt isolated from everything in the moments where thunder was the only sound. He didn't want to fear this– he hadn't feared it at all before. Before the rams, he thought with a shiver. But as he followed this creature through the hall, he couldn't help fearing these dark places where nothing existed, and horses could hide.

A/N: Ugggghhhhh this took forever. x-x OK but yeah, here it is! I actually have the rough draft typed out; it's unfinished right now but I figured I wouldn't make it a oneshot considering that even unfinished it was well over 17K words. Jack is indeed in what used to be Norway, and I figure that some things like language would have managed to stick around. The species that Sigg is are one of my own and the landscape on their planet is similar to Norway, so it would be natural for him to want to settle there, but more on him later ;)

This is my first fic I've posted so be gentle heheh. But this will play into Jack discovering a handful of things that he didn't want to know about himself, and at this point he's been followed by this horse for quite a long time... (It's just the horse, too; no rider... yet)

Anyway, thanks for reading, fave, follow, review, whatever and check out art for this and other Samurai Jack stuff on my tumblr, bye =D