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| - The original Morinaga was the first person to touch the Totsuka Sword which had become the vessel of the demon Yamata-no-Orochi and imbued with the the demon's curse. But Morinaga was immune to the curse—the name "Morinaga" itself coming from Japanese 守永 (もりなが) which means "eternal protection." Morinaga tried to exorcise the demon from the sword, but failed, and the unintended consequence was for Yamata-no-Orochi's soul to to merge with Morinaga's and share in the eternal protection. Morinaga would ultimately have thousands of living descendants, collectively known as the Morinaga Bloodline. Every Morinaga is immune to the curse as well, but also carries part of Yamata-no-Orochi's life force inside them, keeping the demon alive as long as any of them live. After Hamato Splinter and his son Leonardo destroyed the Totsuka Sword in thePrologue, the Kusanagi Sword (created from the bodily remains of the demon Yamata-no-Orochi) turned to dust and blew away, its essence turning to the demon to prepare it for reawakening. This alerted Karai's Foot Clan that their former possession, the Totsuka Sword, had finally been destroyed. The Foot Clan mobilized their most important mission. To stop the demon from returning and rampaging on the earth again, it must be permanently killed. The only known way to permanently kill the demon is to blot out its life force—the complete extermination of all living Morinagas. The Foot Clan possessed the Yata-no-Kagami, which like the Kusanagi was one of the three objects comprising the Japanese imperial regalia. The Yata-no-Kagami had a supernatural power—people cursed by Yamata-no-Orochi could touch the mirror and learn the identities and locations of living Morinagas. However, when the mission began, the Foot Clan had no cursed members, and couldn't use the mirror. They improvised by tracking down and killing every person they could find with the surname Morinaga or who had a Morinaga ancestor. The Foot used their high connections in both the government and media of Japan to mask their operations with a cover story—that all the people who had gone missing had emigrated overseas. But finally, the Foot Clan captured Leonardo Hamato who had been sojourning in Japan. They not only discovered his curse, but learnt that it was actually Leonardo and his father Splinter who destroyed the Totsuka Sword together, setting in motion the events that motivated the Foot Clan to mobilize their mission of extermination in the first place. Karai asked Leonardo to touch the mirror and tell what he saw. He finally identified an old man he recognized—the father of the girl Sayako he had recently befriended. Leo was shocked when the Foot immediately started planning the man's assassination as Douan Morinaga, and Karai finally explained to Leo the purpose of the mirror and the Foot's mission of extermination. Leonardo tried to save Douan, but the man instead sent away his daughter Sayako and accepted his own death at the hands of the Foot. The moment Douan was killed, the effects of Leo's curse were immediately temporarily neutralized. Finally being promised with a way to permanently free himself and his family from the curse, Leonardo Hamato submitted himself to the Foot Clan and joined their mission, rising to become Karai's second-in-command. Some years later, Leonardo finally tracked down and executed his friend Sayako Morinaga in Sendai. And 17 years after the Totsuka Sword's destruction, all remaining Morinagas in Japan had been annihilated, and indeed everywhere else in the world as well, except for a few remaining survivors in the vicinity of New York City. The Foot Clan (along with Leonardo) relocated their operations to New York to finish their mission there.
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