FADE IN:

EXT. PERSIA

The PRINCE (of PERSIA) is being chased down NARROW STREETS by the DAHAKA, a big SMOKE MONSTER that looks like a WRESTLER crossed with an IBEX, while UNBELIEVABLY SHITTY BUTTROCK blares in the background.

PRINCE

Okay, whatever the hell you’re supposed to be, why are you trying to kill me exactly?

DAHAKA

I’m some kind of guardian of the timeline! Last game you fucked around with the Sands of Time and messed up causality, and I’m here to fix things!

PRINCE

How does that work exactly? I wound up rewriting history so an entire city full of murders didn’t happen, but now if you just eat me that makes it all sort of even out?

DAHAKA

Don’t look at me, I neither make nor understand the rules!

The PRINCE runs into a DEAD END.

PRINCE

Shit! Cornered and completely cut off by this unkillable demon beast! The only way I can possibly survive this is to use one of my lesser-known time powers: the power of FLASHFORWARD!

EXT. OCEAN

Suddenly it’s like SIX MONTHS LATER or something and the PRINCE is captaining a SHIP.

PRINCE

Works every time.

(checks map)

Okay, so the plan is to go to the Island of Time, so that I can stop the Empress of Time from making the Sands of Time, which will then mean I never open the Hourglass of Time with the Dagger of Time, and WOW we need to speak to whoever’s in charge of naming these things.

But then ANOTHER SHIP emerges from the fog, and they are boarded by a horde of DEMON WARRIORS led by SWORD-WIELDING WARRIOR LADY SHAHDEE.

SHAHDEE

Prince! I have come to stop you from -- hey, is it just me or is it surprisingly cold out today?

(looks down)

Aw fuck, I forgot to put on my armor! Something must have distracted me once I was done putting my battle underwear on! Maaan, I must look ridiculous.

PRINCE

You’re not wrong. I mean, a metal thong? Seriously?

SHAHDEE

You may laugh, but the day somebody tries to stab me in the sphincter I’ll damn well be ready for it. Besides, you’re one to talk, with the whole Robert Smith lookalike thing you’ve got going on.

PRINCE

So I’m going through my goth phase a little late, sue me.

SHAHDEE and her GOONS are able to SINK THE PRINCE’S SHIP. The PRINCE drifts down towards the OCEAN FLOOR.

PRINCE

Damnit, didn’t want to have to do this again so soon, but --

EXT. ISLAND OF TIME

The PRINCE is on the BEACH of the ISLAND, completely unharmed.

PRINCE

-- FLASHFORWARD! Seriously, is there anything this power can’t lazily gloss over?

He gets up and heads into, oh for the love of, THE FORTRESS OF TIME. Naming guy, you could at least pretend to try.

PRINCE

I need to find a portal back to a time before the sands were created. Unfortunately this place is huge and labyrinthine, so I have no idea where these portals are, what they look like or how they work.

SHAHDEE

Well then, in my determination to stop you from reaching the Empress, why don’t I lead the way directly to a portal and all but drag you through with me!

The PRINCE follows SHAHDEE centuries back in time. He tries to keep following her to the THRONE ROOM, but she stalls him with a horde of SAND CREATURES.

SAND CREATURE

DIE, PRINCE!

PRINCE

Wait, since when can sand creatures talk? Aren’t you meant to be slavering zombies?

SAND CREATURE

Oh consistency shmonsistency. If we were sticking with any of the first game’s rules, you wouldn’t be able to kill us without absorbing our sands with the legendary Dagger of Time. Instead you can just lop our heads off and hey presto.

PRINCE

Well I had to return that unique time-altering artefact, didn’t I, so we could hardly --

(stabbed through lungs, rewinds time)

Cut it out!

SAND CREATURE

Hang on, how are you manipulating time if you don’t have the dagger?

PRINCE

Oh, I have this chestplate thing that happens to have the exact same powers as the dagger.

SAND CREATURE

Well where the hell did that come from? Did you just stop by Time Control MacGuffins-R-Us on your way here?

PRINCE

I don’t know, it’s never explained! Combine that with the fact that I’ve been running from the Dahaka for seven whole years apparently, all in all it kind of feels like they meant to publish a tie-in comic or something and just forgot.

The PRINCE kills all the SAND CREATURES.

PRINCE

All right, now to head on over to the throne room, so I can prevent the Sands of Time from being ever created!

(beat)

The same Sands of Time that are found in all these Sand Creatures. The Sand Creatures I was fighting just now. Before the Sands of Time exist.

(beat)

We really couldn’t give less of a fuck about continuity, could we?

The PRINCE hurries over to the ENTRANCE to the THRONE ROOM where he finds SHAHDEE is trying to murder some woman named KAILEENA.

SAND WRAITH

(shows up)

Foreshadowing!

(leaves immediately)

The PRINCE saves KAILEENA by fighting SHAHDEE to the DEATH.

PRINCE

Whoa! Kaileena, you look just like your voice actress Monica Bellucci!

KAILEENA

Yes, given the limitations of our flat, textureless 2004 graphics, they did a pretty decent job of recreating her face.

PRINCE

(looks up at her face)

Hmm? Oh sure, that too. Listen, I need to get into that throne room to face down the Empress of Time. Do you know how to unlock those huge doors? Also, do you have any idea by what logic time is an empire apparently?

KAILEENA

Just so I’m clear on your plan: some demon monster is trying to kill you because you fucked up the timeline, so you figure you can appease it by meddling around in the past and screwing the timeline up even further?

PRINCE

My hope is that eventually things will get so confused that just trying to keep track of what’s happening will give him a fatal aneurysm.

KAILEENA

Worth a try I suppose. Those locks are controlled by a water-powered mechanism that the Empress disabled. Take this sword, go out the door on the left, go all the way out to the engine room to restart the mechanism, come alll the way back, then take the door on the right and go allll the way out to the aqueducts and restore the water flow, come alllll the way back --

PRINCE

Ahhh, a backtracking party, every gamer’s idea of a fun time. Anyway thanks, you’ve been real helpful considering -- well, you know.

KAILEENA

I know what? Surely you’re not reading anything into the fact that you’re trying to defeat this mysterious Empress of Time and here I am as the only female character, in fact the only other non-monster character period, still alive in the whole game.

PRINCE

Of course not. Nobody should draw any conclusions from any of that until we tell them they’re allowed to. Got that, everyone?

The PRINCE starts heading off to the CLOCKWORK ROOM, but then the DAHAKA shows up!

PRINCE

Shit, it’s followed me here! FLEEEE!

(runs)

So wait, now I’m being chased around a mysterious island full of vague time travel magic by a monster made mostly out of tendrils of black smoke? Huh, we might have a solid lawsuit against J.J. Abrams on our hands.

The PRINCE runs into one of the PORTAL ROOMS, and the DAHAKA is stopped by the CURTAIN OF FALLING WATER that the room has as a DOOR for some damn reason.

PRINCE

Aha! The beast is allergic to water, just like that genius twist in Signs! This could come in handy hey WAIT a minute, how the hell was it able to chase me across the fucking ocean in that case?

(enters portal)

Anyway, now to begin my habit of travelling through time whenever I stumble across one of these portals, on the guess that I wouldn’t be here unless I was supposed to do this.

(TIME!)

SAND WRAITH

(appears)

I matter later!

(disappears)

INT. GIANT CLOCK

The PRINCE arrives in a room full of a nonsensical array of GIANT GEARS and COGS and WHEELS and FUCKING DOGS WHICH EXPLODE WHEN YOU KILL THEM FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE EXPLODING DOGS AARRRGH!

PRINCE

But oh no, half of this machinery is lying in ruins because I’m in the decaying future ruins of the fortress! I’ve got to go back in time again, to when this was all new and operational.

(beat)

And, you know, is WHEN I WANT TO OPEN THE DOOR. Opening the door to the throne room now, several centuries after the Sands are created, would be totally pointless, so that whole ruined-machinery reason for time travel is just reduntant.

The PRINCE goes BACK IN TIME again.

PRINCE

All right then, now all the gears are turning merrily and -- hold on, why are they moving at all? Aren’t they powered by water from that aqueduct that I haven’t activated yet? Isn’t that in fact the ENTIRE REASON I still have to go to the aqueduct?

SAND CREATURE

What are you talking about? Activating the clock tower takes a bar off the throne room door, activating the water tower takes the other one off. It ain’t rocket science.

(chopped vertically in half)

PRINCE

That’s not how Kaileena explained it! Her version actually did a half-decent job of obfuscating the fact that I was just turning two elaborate locks.

ANNOYING FUCKING DOG

Well, that’s just how dedicated we are to lazy storytelling. We’re actively jettisoning the one or two narrative elements we had that gave the faintest whiff of effort.

(explodes like a jerk)

The PRINCE activates the INCOMPREHENSIBLE STEAMPUNK MACHINE and heads on over to the WATER TOWER. On the way he goes FORWARD IN TIME AGAIN, then BACK AGAIN, then FORWARD, and on and on until it’s almost impossible to keep track of WHAT THE HELL TIME HE'S AT NOW.

PRINCE

Oh look, there’s the Dahaka. Guess I must be in the future after all.

DAHAKA

Nope, I’ve learned to time travel after you! Which means I could have gone killed you when you were lying barely-conscious on the beach. Or before you opened the Sands in the first place. Or when you were one year old. Huh, I haven’t made optimal use of this ability.

SAND WRAITH

(materialises)

Bet you’re intrigued as to --

(eaten by Dahaka)

DON’T WORRY THIS IS STILL GOING SOMEWHEEEERE!

EXT. WATER TOWER

The PRINCE works at activating the array of SWIVELLY CONCRETE CHANNELS that serve as the fortress’s FUCKED-UP IDEA OF PLUMBING, all the while having to fend off yet another colourful array of SAND CREATURES.

PRINCE

Argh, hyperactive stabby acrobats! Shouty guys with throwing knives who keep running away real fast! Stabby acrobats who are also fucking INVISIBLE! Goddamnit, LEAVE ME ALONE YOU ASSHOLES!

INVISIBLE LADY

WE’RE the assholes? US? Dude, this is where we LIVE. We are royal guards protecting our Empress, who just wants to be fucking left alone! But nooo, you’re slaughtering hundreds of us so you can wreck her shit, all to save your own miserable neck!

PRINCE

Well -- um.

GUY MADE OUT OF BIRDS

And thanks to all the time travel, you do it TWO. FUCKING. TIMES. Sure, for you it’s all the same day, but from our perspective, hundreds of us get murdered by this psycho who ends up killing our Empress, then after we somehow get past it, move on, rebuild, centuries later that SAME MURDERER shows up and kills everybody AGAIN, all in the name of killing that Empress HE ALREADY KILLED FOREVER AGO!

PRINCE

Oh yeah, well, it’s still years until gaming gains the kind of self-awareness necessary for me to actually consider the implications of what I’m doing, so HA HA I DON’T CARE.

He BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERS EVERYONE and ACTIVATES THE TOWER.

EXT. THRONE ROOM

Having unlocked both halves of the door to the THRONE ROOM, the PRINCE meets back up with KAILEENA.

KAILEENA

All right, let’s head in there!

PRINCE

Finally! After all the backtracking and busywork, it’ll be so cathartic to go in and actually face down the Empress! Of course, if it turns out the Empress was never actually in that room and I’ve spent the last few hours running around accomplishing precisely nothing, that might take the wind out of my sails just a smidge.

They head into the THRONE ROOM. Then KAILEENA picks up a pair of SWORDS which look like they each weigh TWICE AS MUCH AS SHE DOES.

KAILEENA

That’s right, it turns out I’M the Empress! I sent you on all those errands hoping you’d get yourself killed! I even put a curse on that sword I gave you!

PRINCE

This thing?

(looks at sword)

You must really suck at curses, lady. This thing’s been working great.

KAILEENA

Yeah, I’m not real big on competence, gotta admit. I felt like SUCH an idiot when I went to so much effort to put an impenetrable lock on my door and disable the mechanisms for opening it again, then I realised I’d gone and locked the room with me OUTSIDE it. That was just embarrassing.

(sighs)

Anyway, it’s written into the timeline that you kill me. I wanted to see if you could defy your fate, because if you can, then there may be hope for me after all.

PRINCE

You wanted me to defy my fate and survive the Dahaka, and you wanted to give me a cursed sword and send me off on a fool’s errand so I’d get ultra-murdered?

KAILEENA

That’s right, I was working completely at cross-purposes to myself the whole time and I clearly don’t know what the fuck I’m doing!

PRINCE

Obviously! I mean, if I avoid the Dahaka for long enough to fight you, that proves nothing. If the timeline demands that I die and that I kill you, obviously I can’t do the former until after I’ve done the latter!

KAILEENA

(thinks, eyes cross)

Blargh, this is what happens when you bring both predestination and time travel into a narrative. Let’s just fight already.

They start SWORDFIGHTING! CLANG CLASH CLANG! DODGE PARRY THRUST!

PRINCE

I see where Shahdee learned her cheap unblockable attacks!

Finally he STABS KAILEENA DEAD!

KAILEENA

Urk! Damn, maybe I should have used some of my magical time-altering powers. Oh well, if history gets altered so that fight begins slightly differently, I’m sure I’ll remember then.

(dies)

Her body hits the GROUND and DISINTEGRATES, becoming the SANDS OF TIME.

PRINCE

AW TWIST, the Empress creates the Sands of Time by ME KILLING HER! So by coming back in time and facing her I actually caused the Sands to be created, so that they can later be discovered and brought to Azad, so that I can accidentally unleash them and have to fix it, so that I can get the Dahaka on my tail, so that I come back in time and face the Empress, so that I cause the Sands to be created, so that they can later be discovered and DO YOU SEE HOW THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.

(huffs irritably)

Well shit. The Dahaka is still after me and now I have no plan. I hope there’s some kind of sophisticated, cleverly set-up narrative element we can smoothly introduce to help me figure out a new course of action.

He leans against a RANDOM WALL, which instantly starts projecting an EXPOSITION VIDEO.

WALL

There’s a time travel mask in the building. Go get it.

The PRINCE'S JAW DROPS and he ends up STARING DUMBFOUNDED into SPACE for TEN SOLID MINUTES.

PRINCE

That. Was. The. LAZIEST. CLUMSIEST. DEUS EX MACHINEST WAY we could have POSSIBLY MOVED THE STORY FORWARD.

WALL

What else were we supposed to do? I’m the closest thing you have to another living character right now.

PRINCE

All right, I guess I’ll use that mask to go back a few hours and tell myself to never kill Kaileena so the Sands are never created and the Dahaka has no business with me.

(beat)

Or I could tackle Kaileena through a time travel portal and kill her in the future, so that the Sands are still created but too late for me to mess around with them. Sure, let’s go with the plan that still includes murder!

INT. MASK ROOM

After going through a whole bunch more CLIMBING, DECAPITATING and TIME-MANIPULATING, the PRINCE finds the TIME TRAVEL MASK. Putting it on, he jumps back like FIVE HOURS and turns into that mysterious SAND WRAITH from EARLIER.

THE SAND WRAITH FORMERLY KNOWN AS PRINCE

Oh fuck, that guy was ME? That’s why the Dahaka killed him then!

(beat)

So why the hell did he keep chasing me after that? He’d won, he’d killed me, I was dead. What, was he thinking “Sure he’s dead NOW, but he continues to HAVE BEEN ALIVE at an earlier point of time, and I can’t have that! MUST KILL HIM AGAIN BUT SOONER!” That’s fucked up, right?

He makes his way through the FORTRESS. At one point, he passes by KAILEENA and SHAHDEE, and sees how their FIGHT started.

SHAHDEE

You Empress of Idiots, you can’t prevent yourself from getting killed by the prince! It’s in the timeline, you’re definitely, unavoidably going to die THEN and in THAT WAY! And having firmly established how much I believe that, I will now begin a FIGHT TO THE DEATH against you, because I’m an even bigger idiot than you are!

The PRINCE continues on, occasionally finding himself crossing paths with his OLD SELF, until finally he comes to the run-in with the DAHAKA where the SAND WRAITH DIED.

PRINCE

Oh crap, this is where I saw a future version of myself die! And now I am that version, with the exact same experience and memories as he had, so there’s no logical reason for this scenario to play out any differently!

He dodges the DAHAKA, who eats the EARLIER VERSION OF THE PRINCE instead.

PRINCE

Fortunately, logic has never been this franchise’s strong suit.

(beat)

So yeah, my past self just got eaten. Shouldn’t I just disappear or something? Not that I’m complaining.

(continues to exist)

His MASK comes off for some reason and he gets UN-WRAITHED. Then he heads off to face down KAILEENA again.

INT. THRONE ROOM

The PRINCE goes into the THRONE ROOM and grabs KAILEENA’S BIG-ASS SWORDS.

KAILEENA

What the hell are you doing?

PRINCE

Running into the portal room that’s like twenty feet away and tossing these swords into the abyss so that you have nothing to fight me with, of course.

(beat)

Or at least, that’s the logical thing to do considering I’m currently holding your weapons, but instead I’ll just toss them on the ground where you can easily get them.

KAILEENA

(grabbing swords)

I KILL YOU PRINCE!

PRINCE

But why, for the love of fuck? Your entire motivation here is to prevent your death. My entire motivation is to prevent the creation of the Sands of Time, otherwise known as your death. We want the EXACT. SAME. THING. You’ve known this the entire fucking time! There’s never been any reason for us to fight!

KAILEENA

(trying to kill the prince)

IRRATIONAAAAAL!

The PRINCE grabs KAILEENA and drags her through the PORTAL into the FUTURE. They SWORDFIGHT AGAIN! CLING CLANG BASH!

KAILEENA

All right, this time I’m actually gonna use my time manipulation powers against you! Watch as I SLLLOOOOWWW TIIIIIME DOOOOWWWWNNN!

PRINCE

Impressive! Although I can pull a really cheap move where if I dangle over the edge of the platform we’re fighting on you don’t attack me, so I think I’ll just do that whenever you slow time down. What other time powers you got?

KAILEENA

Oh. Uh, I think that’s it.

PRINCE

What? You can’t make yourself inhumanly fast? Or freeze me in place? Or do an area attack that we don’t even justify as to how it’s a time power?

KAILEENA

Nope, none of those.

PRINCE

I can do all that stuff with a piece of jewelry that’s not even unique! You’re the EMPRESS OF TIME, how can you have less time magic than some doofus with an unexplained gewgaw on his chest?

(stabs Kaileena)

I mean, can you at least rewind time? That’s, like, the most base power there is.

KAILEENA

Let’s see.

(dies)

Nope.

The DAHAKA shows up, grabs KAILEENA’S BODY and the PRINCE’S TIME DOODAD for sketchily-explained reasons, then leaves the PRINCE in peace.

PRINCE

Hooray, I win! I succeeded in my heroic goal of keeping myself from dying! And the only cost was the hundreds of lives I had to brutally end.

He heads home to find that in the ALTERED TIMELINE his CITY is being BURNED and his PEOPLE are being SLAUGHTERED.

PRINCE

Well I guess there’s that too. How the hell am I not the bad guy, exactly?

THE END