Heart of Darkness
Humanity is a blight, a putrid flaw of the mind, of the body, of the spirit. Humans themselves are no better, teeming in their filthy villages, living their squalid, miserable excuses of lives. They have no true idea of how to gain power, how to use it, how to manipulate events to their own ends. My own ends. They're too distracted by their weaknesses. Hunger. Fear. Greed. Lust. I reject them all. I detach them from my spirit, tear them from my skin, rip them from my heart. Like the shikon no tama, I break humanity into fragments, and I refuse to take them back . . . except through their death. Death is a purge and a scourge before which even humanity yields, and I make it my tool.
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AN: this ficlet is dedicated to Saro for noting that there weren't that many 100-word shorts about the evil villains. I'm not entirely satisfied with the characterization here, simply because it specifies some motivations I don't entirely feel confident about; but on the whole I think it works. Any suggestions for improvements or different takes on the character would be welcome, however! The title is a reference to the novel by Joseph Conrad of the same name, where the narrator has the misfortune to be faced with a man whose evilness demonstrates a darker face to humanity. For all that Naraku despises his heritage, as a hanyou he's still half-human, and he and Kurtz aren't so far apart in terms of their vileness, so I thought the reference fitting.