The Maeda stopped moving at once. There was no spray of familiar spray of blood to accompany the beheading. Rather a writhing, semifluid mass of worms oozed out from the man’s neck, puddling around him like a melting gelatin. After a moment even the maggots stopped twitching and fell still. As the infestation lost its grip on its hosts, the remaining dogs began to fall one by one. Some stumbled and managed to remain upright as their waking nightmare ended. Others plopped over completely dead as the Maeda’s disease could no longer animate corpses. Junko herself, despite the gore which dripped from her body, looked completely unaffected by the Maeda’s passing. Despite it’s horrific power, the Maeda parasites could only affect the weakened or deceased. An exceedingly healthy specimen like Junko, or like that Garion boy, couldn’t be controlled so rapidly. Certainly not anymore, at least.

Satisfied that the foul Maeda was down for good, Junko tentatively searched the headless body for anything of value. This was just her payment, okay? Her payment! After snatching a few heavy objects wrapped in cloth from the body Junko hurried back to her discarded human cargo. A few disgusted grunts later the soggy, bloody child was once again stowed away on her back. Junko resumed her flight from Camp Monog right as the moon began to rise.

A proper honorable warrior would have buried their opponent but, well, nothing about this situation had been proper or honorable. The Maeda was left to rot in the open. Served him right!

Hours passed. The weakened dogs dispersed, while the dead ones festered. By the time anyone discovered the bodies the crows were sure to have their way with the battlefield, or perhaps some monstrous beast would be drawn out from the jungle by the scent of blood. After a period of absolute stillness, a few weak noises punctuated the abandoned camp. Something stumbled out of the midnight darkness, something with a ravenous, inhuman hunger. It moved on four limbs but with an uneven and misshapen gait. More than once the serene quiet of the camp was interrupted as the beast bumped into or stumbled over some obstacle, then had to flail and struggle to free itself. It moved as if blind and deaf, completely unaware of its surroundings apart from what it touched. It did not move as a predator, nor as anything as intelligent as a human. Instead its clumsy and uneven movement seemed more reminiscent of a newborn animal blindly searching for its mother.

Its path was aimless and seemingly without purpose. When it came upon the body of an animal by chance, it’s jaws quickly tore into it as if starving. Yet it found no sustenance nor satisfaction in those corpses and after only a few moments of feasting it spat out the meat and resumed its futile search. Despite its incompetence and disorientation the creature clearly had a target it was looking for. The night was long. It would have plenty of time to look.

Consciousness returned very slowly, slower than usual in fact. Each time such drastic measures had to be taken it took longer and longer to crawl back into reality. Bit by bit the world painfully seared its way back into his mind. First he felt warmth on his fingertips. Then the periphery of his vision came back, fuzzy and indistinct in the night’s darkness.

Then came the pain. Immense and destructive, aimless and causeless, it roared through him strong enough to drive one mad. Every piece of his decomposing body wanted to tear itself away at once. It was a complete rejection of flesh- but it could be endured. It would be endured. His mind hadn’t surrendered to that weakness yet, and tonight wouldn’t be the night either. Holding onto his sense of self was the most important as another crashing wave of instinct boiled up within him. Hunger, deep and unending, churned within his dying body. Feed, his blood seemed to say. Feed, and spread.

Good. Hearing the voice again meant his mind escaped total consumption by the parasite yet again. The Maeda rose on two foreign legs. They were shorter than his last pair, but they would have to do for now.

Jinchi was no stranger to the usual dregs that inhabited every human settlement since the dawn of time. Those without even a shack in the slums to call home huddled on the side streets next to the largest buildings they could find to shield them from the cold. Filthy rags and sacks covered the bodies of these destitute souls and it could be difficult to tell which ones were resting, and which might have finally passed in their horrible state.

It was here the Maeda finally found rest. Pulling himself into a dark space behind an empty fuel barrel he curled himself up and shivered. A few other similarly weakened bodies were scattered unevenly along the length of the tall unlit structure they used for cover. No heads turned or paid any attention to the newcomer. Minding one’s own business was the first rule when you hit rock bottom.

It would have been an excellent time to sleep had the bitter rage of defeat not roiled through the Maeda’s veins. It all seemed too obvious now, despite his careful preparations. The whole time that woman had been testing to see what the Maeda could see- and could not see- from his hiding spot. Despite the immense control that his infestation gave him over the bodies of those afflicted, all his nominal senses remained unaffected. It was like trying to herd cattle with your eyes closed, as the Maeda simply wasn’t aware of what his extensions were doing if he couldn’t see or hear them. He might have years and years of experience with his affliction but when push came to shove there was no getting around that weakness.

And that mere human had figured it out so quickly! Her quiet steps, the moments she spoke just loud enough to determine where he might be lurking- she had even caused all that chaos with the tower just to muddle his ability to hear and see while underground. The Maeda had been completely and utterly bested.

...and it likely wouldn’t be the first or last time it happened. He massaged the tender flesh along both his arms and felt the unfamiliar body of his quiver. Still hungry. The one thing Fenshingiri natives did better than anyone else was survive. The Maeda existed as a paragon of that virtue, a disease in the side of the country’s ruling power despite their repeated cleansings of the insurgent population. If an organized and motivated government couldn’t scrub the Maeda’s existence from the face of the earth then certainly a mere mercenary from a dishonored and extinct clan wouldn’t either. Always another chance, said those of the Maeda.

Those thoughts didn’t keep the sting of loss from hurting, though. Taking such drastic measures to stay alive took a toll on him every time it happened. The human side of his brain desperately wanted rest, but the driving force urged him to find food. To replenish what had been taken. Dogs wouldn’t do it for him. The Maeda parasite wanted more.

Those begrudging thoughts drove him to stand on wobbly legs once more. Would any establishment even let him in, dressed in these rags? At this late hour there might not even be anything open, or he might open himself up to other criminal elements. His entire carefully pieced together army of infected hosts was completely depleted and he had nothing left to his name but the garbage the original owner of the body had on him. Again the incessant, unignorable voice of the parasite urged him forward. Food, food is what he needed. Everything else fell to the wayside. There was plenty of garbage strewn about in these neglected side streets and the Maeda was no stranger to scooping up the refuse of others if it meant surviving one more day. As a slave the Maeda never knew the luxury of shame. You took what scraps you could get so that you could see the sun rise tomorrow. Here in front of him lay such scraps. Not the garbage on the stone roads, oh no. Pale eyes stared out at the huddled masses before him. These human scraps could suffice. Would suffice.

This too did not come to a surprise to those destitute souls. The Maeda drew too close to one and his malicious intent was immediately recognizable, causing that particular bum to scamper to his feet and retreat. He moved pretty fast for a beggar! The Maeda couldn’t even muster the strength to pursue and instead slouched down and used the side of the building to support his body. The exertion made a sopping wet cough rip out of his lungs, and a distressing amount of fluid tumbled out of the Maeda’s cracked lips. One more failure to add to the list.

The brief stir of action prompted those still awake to likewise turn their heads. The wheezing Maeda’s posture and demeanor could be understood even through the night’s shadows. When those with nothing to lose fell this far they sometimes became belligerent- or even downright murderous. The few warm bodies present saw it every day. You didn’t stay alive on these streets for long if you couldn’t recognize danger when it lurched out of nowhere, grasping at you with its bloody nails and ragged face.. Shuffling to their feet with as much speed as they could muster, each of the Maeda’s potential targets quickly fled the scene, leaving the stumbling man cold and alone.

A breathy exhale of disappointment shuddered through the Maeda’s lungs. Would he have to look for rats now? Something worse? To keep himself from falling to pieces entirely he sank back to his knees. Tomorrow, then? Would there be a tomorrow? Could he risk it? The hungry tearing at him brought his fingers up to crooked teeth. Maybe he could eat a few. Maybe he would have to.

That choice would not be his. A piercing chirp rattled his tattered ears and a bright light beamed down in his direction. “Stop right there, scum!”

“He’s already stopped, Ringo. I don’t think he can be any more stopped.” Hajime waved the lantern at the end of his spear back and forth a few times to sweep the area and confirm no other bodies were nearby. “I don’t see anyone else matching the description. Man, he looks really bad. If we shout too loud we might kill him. Try to be gentle!”

“Hey, bud!” Late-night Ringo seemed quite a bit more aggressive than the daylight version and she stomped up to the writhing, destitute bum that now lay in the cadet’s sights. “How about you tell us where all this blood on your clothes came from, huh? We just got a report of someone threatening innocent locals-”

“-I wouldn’t call those other guys innocent. They just thought there might be a reward-”

“-and right now you’re looking pretty suspicious!” Ringo glared down at the fallen form of the Maeda. She was taking not a small amount of satisfaction in it, as the girl was so small she only rarely got the chance to look down on others (in a literal sense at least). “I’m sure you heard Annitou-” she jabbed a thumb at the insignia on her uniform denoting her as a cadet of said country “-is cracking down on street urchinery! Zero tolerance! In memory of our lost comrade Cadet Gekko!”

“He’s not dead.” Hajime quickly added, more for himself than anyone listening (or not listening). He approached the scene more cautiously than Ringo and waved the light around some more as if skeptical they were alone. The man remained uncommunicative and didn’t respond to Ringo’s provocations. Hajime brought the light back onto the disheveled form of the Maeda and he cringed at the sight. “Is he hurt? That might be his own blood on the clothes. Maybe we should get him to a doctor.”

“People just don’t spontaneously get hurt.” Ringo huffed and turned her frustration on Hajime. “He must have gotten in a fight and lost. Vagrants are always making poor life choices. Either way!” Ringo turned back to the crumpled body of the Maeda and thrust out her infamous accusatory finger. “Suspicious individuals are to be brought in for questioning! There is a deadly fugitive on the loose, Annitou can’t afford to take chances!”

“General Gou didn’t tell us that. He just said to patrol-”

“This is part of patrolling!” Ringo’s rapidly shifting attention snapped back to her senior officer. “If Gekko was still alive, he would be so disappointed that we weren’t doing our best to honor him! ”

“Gekko’s not dead, Ringo, you really should stop saying that.”

“If Gekko was allegedly not dead, then.” Ringo nodded in firm affirmation to her already confirmed biases, while Hajime grimaced. Taking his silence as assent Ringo continued on with her interrogation and her head whipped back down to the fallen Maeda. “Now then- hang on, is he even awake?” Pulling her finger back, Ringo leaned in and squinted. The hazy light from Hajime’s lantern did not quite illuminate enough for her to make a determination. She edged a bit closer and squinted a bit harder to see if she could detect any signs of life.

“Oh, shoot.” Ringo sighed and looked back to Hajime with disappointment. “He’s not breathing.”

“What?” Hajime’s face turned pale. “Like, he’s dead?”

“No, I didn’t say that. Why do you always assume the worst?” Ringo’s face contorted in disgust. “I just said he’s not breathing. His skin is all scabby and gross, he’s gotta be sick or dying or something. Not our fault.”

“Just, uh, poke him with a stick or something.” Hajime’s lantern wobbled a bit as he used one of his hands to search through his belongings. “Jeez, where did I put that antiseptic...”

Ringo turned her feet to completely face Hajime and her furious chirping filled the alley with indignant noise. “Sir, I need you to commit to a course of action! What are we doing with this vagrant?” She took her hands off the wooden baton at her hip to make an aggressive gesture towards the still motionless body. “Those courageous brave homeless scumbags told us he was threatening them, and he’s covered in blood. And he’s not responding to our questions! That’s resisting arrest! He’s a troublemaker!.”

“Uh, yeah. I guess that’s right.” Hajime took his turn to exhale, the long night of patrolling having taken a toll on him after the previous night’s lack of sleep. “Give him a little push with your foot then and be gentle. Confirm if he’s really not breathing.”

Taking the order with a small amount of satisfaction Ringo spun back around and glowered down at the Maeda’s unresponsive form. This bum might just be pretending to be dead as part of a ploy to get the Annitou cadets to go away, after all! It would only take a little shove to see if the man was pretending or not. After eyeing him up for a second to determine where she could plant her heel without getting any of his fluids on her freshly shined boots, Ringo carefully rose one leg and nudged the man with the tip of her toe. As with everything Ringo did her assertion of power was followed by the proper diatribe. “By the authority vested in me by the Annitou Navy, I, Cadet Ringo, order you to wake up, vagrant!”

The insatiable hunger gnawed at him relentlessly. Such easy targets- such weak, defenseless morsels. The relative safety of Annitou bred this complacency in its cadets. A Fenshingiri cadet who trusted strangers so easily wouldn’t have survived for very long. From beneath his bloodied cloak the Maeda shuddered, his sore and sickly muscles tensing up with anticipation. Eat, his mind cried. Eat and survive. His head rose up just a bit, just enough for Ringo to catch a glimpse and see that the clothes weren’t the only thing stained on the man. All around his grizzled face was the brownish-red smears of blood. Something hung from between his teeth- something clearly of flesh. Ringo’s expression twisted to a more visceral disgust as she knew what she was looking at was nasty, but her own inexperience protected her from the real revelation.

Hajime, on the other hand, immediately recognized which part of the body that soft, twisted meat between the man’s jaws originated from. His revulsion came from an entirely different direction, and the boy blinked several times just to make sure he knew what he was seeing. The Maeda opened his mouth further and remnants of his last meal dripping out of his mouth like melting ice. A long, breathy, haggard exhale gargled out from deep within those borrowed lungs.

“I know,” his body wheezed, unfamiliar with his new voice, “where your comrade, Gekko, is. Take me to your people.”