Emperor Go-Kōmyō sat in formal meditation within Kyoto's Imperial Palace, surrounded by court nobles in rigid ceremonial positions. At seventeen, the young Emperor had reigned for four years as a puppet of the Tokugawa shogunate, his divine status carefully preserved while actual power resided elsewhere.
Dressed in the traditional sokutai court costume with its black lacquered hat and multi-layered robes of the finest silk, Go-Kōmyō projected serene authority despite his youth. The morning ritual would soon conclude, allowing him to attend to the few governmental functions still permitted to the imperial household.
"Your Majesty," announced a chamberlain, bowing deeply at the proper distance. "The ritual offering is prepared."
Go-Kōmyō nodded slightly, the movement barely perceptible beneath his ceremonial headdress. Court etiquette dictated minimal expression, maintaining the Emperor's semi-divine mystique.
The massive doors at the chamber's end exploded inward, wood splinters flying like shrapnel into the assembled courtiers. Through the dust emerged a figure in Chinese attire—a tall man with unsettling silver eyes that seemed to glow in the shadows.
"Fascinating," remarked Sam, surveying the room as guards rushed toward him. "In every timeline, you maintain identical ceremonies."
With economical gestures, he neutralized the approaching samurai. Bodies fell with broken necks or crushed internal organs, victims of telekinetic force against which steel offered no protection. Blood spread across tatami mats, staining centuries-old floors as courtiers scrambled for escape.
"Remain seated," Sam commanded, his voice amplified by psionic projection. The fleeing nobles found themselves frozen in place, puppets whose strings he now controlled. "I've traveled considerable distance for this audience."
Emperor Go-Kōmyō maintained remarkable composure, though his surface thoughts betrayed absolute terror. His rigorous training in imperial stoicism served him well as he addressed the intruder.
"What manner of yōkai has breached the sacred imperial grounds?" he demanded, voice steady despite his youth.
Sam approached, ignoring the blood soaking into his boots. "An interesting question. I've been called many things—experiment, abomination, weapon. Perhaps 'consequence' would be most accurate."
More guards poured through secondary entrances, only to be dispatched with casual telekinetic violence. Sam never broke stride as he approached the Emperor, bodies falling around him like autumn leaves.
"The divine Emperor of Japan," Sam observed, stopping before the elevated platform where Go-Kōmyō sat. "Direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, if mythology is to be believed. Your bloodline supposedly unbroken for thousands of years."
Despite his terror, Go-Kōmyō maintained imperial dignity. "You will be destroyed for this sacrilege. The gods protect the imperial line."
"A testable hypothesis," Sam replied. With a gesture, he telekinetically lifted the Emperor from his seated position, suspending him mid-air before the horrified courtiers. "I've conducted this experiment across multiple timelines. Would you like to know the results?"
Go-Kōmyō struggled against invisible bonds, his elaborate costume twisting awkwardly around his suspended form. "The shogun's armies will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"
"They've tried," Sam said dispassionately. "In seventeen different temporal variations. The outcomes proved remarkably consistent."
With clinical precision, Sam began dismantling the Emperor's body. First the peripheral extremities—fingers splitting open bloodlessly as telekinetic force separated flesh along cellular boundaries. Go-Kōmyō's screams echoed through the imperial palace as his hands disintegrated.
"Imperial blood appears identical to peasant blood at the molecular level," Sam observed, continuing the systematic deconstruction. "No divine properties detectable."
The courtiers remained frozen in horror, forced to witness their living god reduced to component parts. Some lost consciousness, others lost control of bodily functions, but none could escape or intervene.
"Please," begged the chief minister, a elderly nobleman named Nijō Yasumichi. "Whatever grievance drives you, the Emperor is but a youth who has caused no harm!"
Sam turned his silver gaze to the minister. "Youth? My mother was twenty-six when Japanese soldiers cut me from her womb after gang-raping her. They discarded me as medical waste while she bled to death." His voice remained eerily calm despite the content. "Age did not factor into their calculations."
He resumed his methodical work, telekinetically unraveling the Emperor's internal organs while keeping him conscious through psionic intervention. Go-Kōmyō's screams gradually weakened as his bodily systems failed despite Sam's forced maintenance of vital functions.
"No divine intervention detected," Sam noted, addressing the room at large. "Perhaps your goddess requires more substantial provocation?"
News of the attack had spread. Throughout Kyoto, temple bells rang in alarm as samurai mobilized. Sam detected their movements telepathically while completing his grisly demonstration.
"Do you know," he remarked conversationally to the assembled nobles as the Emperor's remains dropped to the floor, "that I've performed this exact experiment on your Emperor in twenty-three different timelines? The results remain consistent—death occurs, divinity fails to manifest, and reality continues unperturbed."
The palace trembled as explosions rocked its foundations—Sam's telekinetic abilities demolishing structural supports throughout the complex. Outside, the approaching samurai found themselves facing an invisible wall of force, their weapons and bodies repelled with bone-crushing impact.
"Next," Sam announced, "the Shogun himself."
---
Edo Castle stood as the ultimate expression of Tokugawa power—massive stone walls surrounding an intricate complex of gardens, residences, and administrative buildings. Over one hundred thousand people lived within its extended precincts, serving the military government that controlled Japan while maintaining the Emperor as a ceremonial figurehead.
Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third Tokugawa shogun, sat in council with his senior advisors when the first reports arrived from Kyoto. His powerful build, now running to corpulence in middle age, was clothed in formal kamishimo appropriate to governmental functions. A lifetime of martial training and absolute authority had shaped his bearing and expression.
"Impossible," he declared after the messenger finished describing the imperial palace's destruction. "No force could penetrate imperial defenses so completely."
"The reports are consistent, Lord Shogun," insisted Sakai Tadakatsu, one of his most trusted advisors. The elderly samurai's face remained composed despite the horrifying news. "The Emperor has been killed by a foreign sorcerer who appeared without warning."
Iemitsu's hand moved instinctively to his sword. "Prepare full mobilization. Every available warrior will hunt down this—"
"Hunt?" interrupted a voice from the chamber's entrance. "How does one hunt what finds you first?"
Sam stood in the doorway, his clothes still stained with imperial blood. Behind him lay the bodies of guards who had attempted to prevent his entry—dozens of elite samurai dispatched without visible weapons.
"Chinese dog!" roared Iemitsu, drawing his sword with impressive speed for a man his size. "You will die screaming for this insult to Japan!"
The assembled advisors likewise drew weapons, decades of martial training evident in their fluid movements and perfect stances. These were not ceremonial warriors but battle-hardened veterans who had unified Japan through force of arms.
Sam observed them with scientific detachment. "Physical combat skills developed to peak human potential. Admirable, yet ultimately irrelevant against evolutionary advancement."
Iemitsu charged with surprising speed, his sword technique flawless—a horizontal cut that would have decapitated most opponents. The blade stopped inches from Sam's neck, caught in telekinetic suspension.
"In every timeline," Sam noted, "you attack directly rather than retreat to safety. Predictable behavioral consistency despite situational awareness indicating certain failure."
With minimal effort, he reversed the blade's direction and accelerated it through Iemitsu's abdomen, the shogun's own momentum adding to the devastating impact. The ruler of Japan looked down in shock at his family sword protruding from his back, having passed completely through his substantial torso.
"Impossible," Iemitsu gasped, blood bubbling from his lips. "No man can—"
"Correct," Sam interrupted. "No man could. I exist beyond your limiting definition."
The remaining advisors attacked simultaneously, their coordinated assault demonstrating lifetime training in group tactics. Sam dispatched them methodically, using their own weapons against them with telekinetic precision. Bodies fell in sprays of arterial blood, limbs separated from torsos, heads from necks.
When only Sakai Tadakatsu remained, the elderly samurai dropped his sword and knelt formally.
"I have witnessed the death of my lord," he stated with dignity. "I require no further demonstration before joining him. Grant me proper death."
Sam studied the man with mild interest. "You accept mortality without divine intervention? Despite your lord's supposedly heavenly mandate?"
Tadakatsu maintained perfect composure. "The way of the warrior accepts death as inevitable. Gods determine the soul's journey afterward, not the moment of passage."
"Reasonable theology," Sam conceded. "Far more logical than claiming divine protection from physical harm."
He granted the old warrior's request with a clean telekinetic severing of the cervical spine—instantaneous death without unnecessary suffering. The body remained kneeling, head still attached but internally disconnected, a final dignity afforded to philosophical consistency.
Sam proceeded methodically through Edo Castle, eliminating Tokugawa family members with surgical efficiency. Wives, concubines, children—none were spared as he systematically excised the ruling bloodline from existence. Defending warriors died by the hundreds, their weapons useless against psionic power that could rupture organs from a distance.
"They die the same in every timeline," Sam observed to a surviving chamberlain who cowered among corpses. "They plead identically, bleed uniformly, expire consistently. No divine intervention materializes regardless of bloodline purity."
"Why?" the man finally dared ask. "What evil drives this slaughter? What offense did Japan commit against you?"
Sam's silver eyes flickered. "An excellent question. In approximately three hundred years, soldiers from this nation will rape a pregnant woman named Zhu Lihua in a city called Nanking. They will cut her open while still alive to extract her six-month fetus for experimentation. That fetus will be me."
The chamberlain's face contorted with confusion. "That's impossible! It hasn't happened!"
"Hasn't happened *yet*," Sam corrected. "Temporal relativity is difficult to comprehend with limited cognition."
"You're insane," whispered the chamberlain.
"Perhaps," Sam acknowledged. "Would you like to understand precisely how insane? To experience what shaped my consciousness?"
Before the man could respond, Sam placed his palm against the chamberlain's forehead, transferring a fractional portion of his accumulated trauma directly into the man's neural pathways—just enough to contextualize without immediately destroying cognitive function.
The chamberlain's eyes widened in horror as his mind filled with vivid images: A Japanese officer laughing while slicing open a pregnant woman's abdomen. Unit 731's scientists methodically disassembling a living infant for biological research. Soviet researchers testing radiation effects on regenerating tissue. American scientists documenting extreme temperature responses.
Endless pain. Endless violation. Endless objectification.
The chamberlain's sanity disintegrated instantly, his mind unable to process even this filtered fraction of Sam's existence. He collapsed into fetal position, body trembling as unintelligible sounds escaped his lips.
"That represents approximately one ten-thousandth of my conscious memory," Sam informed the broken man. "I experience the complete version during every moment of awareness."
He surveyed the destruction he'd wrought throughout the castle complex. Thousands dead, Japan's power structure decapitated in a single afternoon. The nation would descend into chaos without its leadership—a pattern he'd witnessed repeatedly across multiple timelines.
"And yet," he mused, "no divine manifestation. No heavenly retribution for slaughtering supposed celestial bloodlines."
The experiment yielded consistent results: gods remained conspicuously absent when their chosen representatives faced extinction. Cosmic justice failed to materialize regardless of how many "divine" bloodlines he terminated.
As Sam prepared to activate his Chronosphere for the next temporal jump, he considered his findings dispassionately. If no divine agency governed existence, what purpose did suffering serve? If gods wouldn't appear to protect their most exalted representatives, what might finally provoke their manifestation?
"Perhaps," he reasoned, "I've been too selective in my experimentation. Individual dynasties might be insufficient provocation."
A new hypothesis formed: What if he eliminated *all* supposed divine representatives simultaneously? A worldwide purge of every bloodline claiming celestial authority—every emperor, king, pope, high priest, and spiritual leader. Would such comprehensive sacrilege finally force divine intervention?
The Chronosphere activated, reality distorting around him as molecular structures disintegrated in preparation for temporal displacement. His destination: another timeline, another test of cosmic indifference.
"The experiment continues," Sam whispered as this version of reality faded from his perception.