Hidden Hanyou

“I said, stand up.”

“But—”

“Stand up, now.”  Naraku Takeda looked down at the elderly being who struggled to hold himself up on his hands and knees in the mud.  The rain had eased, but light sprinkles still peppered the area and caused the old hanyou’s thinning hair to cling to his head.  It was difficult for the disheveled man to remain balanced, let alone stand, as the mud was more of a swampy slush that covered the entire coast line near the construction site.  

The man’s human wife and adult hanyou daughter, stood to the side and beyond them a line of guards, purification arrows raised to attention.  The aging hanyou did not understand what was going on. One moment he had been asking to have a chance to sit down and the next he was flung to the ground before the tall and grave commander Takeda.  His wife had tried to intervene, but was sent back to their daughter with a blow to the face and a stern warning.  

Since the day they had been informed that their group had been assigned to bridge duty, the woman feared for her husband in a way she had not allowed herself to before.  He was much older than her and though he had once been one of the strongest men in his town, old age and a long-ago accident had rendered his left knee unable to keep up with the grueling work he was given.  Tears streamed down the faces of his family, but their whimpers were drowned out by the bridge construction that continued around them.  

No one dared look in their direction, save a passing soldier.  The few dozen hanyou workers kept their solemn faces bent towards their tasks, their bodies wearied by the labor and the purification cuffs clasped around their wrists.  These light copper bracelets, imbued with purification spells, sapped at their strength and powers, leaving all hanyou who wore them lethargic and out of focus.  They were fitted on each unlucky creature at the time of capture, and were only removed through human intervention or at death, when they were cut and welded onto another.  

“What is the problem?” Naraku asked, his voice full of mock sympathy.  “Do you think you are too good for manual labor?”

“No sir,” the man croaked.

Naraku made a face as though he were confused.  “Then why I am I being told you refuse to work?”

The man lifted his head up. “It’s not that.  I just needed a—”

Naraku kicked the mad hard in the side, sending him face down into the ground.  He came up sputtering only to receive a second kick to the front of his head, breaking his nose.  Blood spurted down the tattered shirt and into a murky puddle of water.  The man was nearly completely covered in blood, mud, and bits of grass and his hands shook as he held them in front of his face, his expression one of disbelief.

“Stand up, hanyou,” Naraku ordered again.

“Please,” the old man begged as he once again fell to all fours, his hands sinking deeper into the mud.  A steady rain replaced the drizzle and thunder rumbled in the distance.  

Naraku considered the scene before him: the feeble man and the two women who were now crying out for mercy.  One heavy black boot squelched deeper into the pliant earth as he raised the other and planted it squarely upon the back of the man’s neck.  Slowly, he put his weight down onto the man, while the hanyou struggled to keep his mouth and nose above the mucky terrain.  Naraku stepped harder until the face beneath completely disappeared into the mud, hands flailing as he tried futilely to pry the boot from his neck.    

Ignoring the feminine cries of anguish, Naraku flexed his leg muscles and pressed harder, pleased that the hanyou’s thrashing was growing less animated.  In fact, it took no more than a minute before all movement ceased.  Naraku took his foot from the dead man’s neck and with a little effort, lodged the toe of his boot under the carcasses’ side and turned it over.  The mixture of mud and blood made the face unrecognizable.  Naraku relished the wailings of the women as he flipped the body, but never so much as offered a glance in their direction.

“What should I do with it, sir?” a young soldier asked Naraku, referring to the dead hanyou.

“What does it matter to me?”

Naraku stepped over the body and walked back in the direction of the officer’s lodge.  It was time for lunch and to have his bags packed for his flight to Tokyo.