Miyako Asai - The Cat-Scratch Killer One of the AWC’s most prominent and prolific monsters, the Bake

Miyako Asai - The Cat-Scratch Killer One of the AWC’s most prominent and prolific monsters, the Bakeneko known as Miyako Asai stalked the highways and backroads of the South Western Region between 1976 and 1989. Over the course of those 13 years, it is believed that the creature killed and devoured no less than 60 and perhaps as many as 230 Muggles, preying largely on migrant workers, hitchhikers, and undocumented immigrant families. At that time, magical law enforcement barely tracked patterns in the crime rates amongst Muggles on the whole, much less those specifically belonging to minority and at risk populations, and many believe that Asai could have gone on killing for many more years, if not decades, had she not made the fatal mistake of attacking and killing the younger sister of Mesa Academy graduate Joaquin Bugbee. Bugbee, who majored in the study of magical creatures, recognized the signs of a shape-shifted attack when he saw one, despite the coroner’s insistence that the girl’s mauling had been due to a mountain lion attack. After year-long investigation investigation, the intrepid young mage eventually led Aurors right to the Bakenko’s lair, and was instrumental in her capture. According to the shapeshifter, she came to the United States in the hand-basket of an elderly Japanese immigrant in the late 1960s, having been inherited by that woman from her deceased sister. Little did the immigrant know the pet left to her was no ordinary cat, and in the full course of time Miyako grew into into her enchanted pedigree. Without a mage or another bakeneko to guide her, she fell back on her instincts and murdered her keeper before fleeing into the wilds to hunt human flesh for which she acquired a strong predilection. Miyako was kept in Blackstone Penitentiary until her execution in 1991, but the lessons of her murder spree remained hot topics for many years.First, Miyako sparked a fear amongst the magical population that it had grown lax in protecting its own borders against external, magical threats. New protocols were put in place to ensure magical beasts and threats were not unwittingly smuggled into the AWC by ignorant muggles. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the capture of the bakeneko opened a conversation about the distance with which American Magical Law-Enforcement held itself from both Muggle Crime and, more importantly, the indignities suffered by poor and disenfranchised populations of non-magical peoples. Once, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Aurors had paid a great deal of attention to the suffering of poor immigrant families, knowing that they were the favored prey of vampires, hags, werewolves, ogres, and other magical predators who could hide their monstrous nature behind mundane faces. After WWII, however, when attention turned to more political concerns and monster attacks dropped to an all-time low, those tactics were forgotten. The victims of Miyako Asai, including young Ell Bugbee, refocused the Aurors Board on the importance of protecting Muggles as well as Mages from magical crime, and started a new initiative to track poor and immigrant communities to ensure no new horrors were evading AB-DENs scrutiny. -- source link

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