Hiten seems to think that Inuyasha's assurance that this won't be entertaining for him that much more excellent, because he's grinning when he swoops down over Inuyasha, his lightening spear raised and breaking up the ground beneath him with electrical force. He tells Inuyasha to relish in its power to his heart's content.
Inuyasha jumps out of the way, but Hiten is fast when he strikes Tessaiga with his spear and knocks it out of the way, shouting at Inuyasha to defend himself properly or die. Inuyasha grits his teeth, knowing that if the spear touches him, he'll be in pretty bad shape. Shippou peeks over a nearby outcrop and stutters Inuyasha's name. He decides to leave Hiten to Inuyasha, because he's got another matter to attend to.
Shouting Inuyasha's name, Kagome is still sitting up on the cloud next to Manten as he claps at his brother's maneuvers happily. I guess we know who's winning so far, huh? Manten opens his mouth and charges up that laser, wanting to "back up" Hiten (or wants to just get a shot in while Inuyasha's already busy, rather). Kagome shouts that both of them attacking at once is unfair and shoves Manten off his cloud to stop him doing any backing up. He tips forward, shooting his attack at the ground instead before landing face first in his own self-created crater.
Kagome congratulates herself on pushing him, but earns looks of confusion from Hiten and Inuyasha as the cloud she was sitting on dissolves. She starts to fall as well, and Inuyasha yells after her, preparing to run and catch her. He's cut off by Hiten striking Tessaiga back with his spear again, and saying this is no time to be worrying about girls.
Inuyasha shouts at Kagome over his battle to hang in there until he can come, but she indignantly wonders just WHAT she's supposed to hang onto, still falling. How far in the air was she? Luckily, she doesn't splatter all over the ground, and bounces her bony ass off of Manten, still face down on the ground from his own fall. She rubs at her aching backside, but is otherwise unharmed and grateful for it. However, just as she breathes her sigh of relief, Manten rises from his prone position and begins chasing her, calling her a bitch. She's horrified that he's still alive.
Shippou tells Kagome to get over to him quickly and she climbs the hill toward him, amazed at the trick he just pulled. He tells her it ain't no thing, but Myouga jumps up to tell Kagome that it REALLY isn't, because fox magic is phony and what's happening to Manten right now is only an illusion. Well, I mean, does it actually matter? If the placebo makes you better, and it's all in your mind, does that make a difference? The point is it works.
Or, maybe I'm full of it. The top eventually slows its spinning and shrinks, popping of Manten's head and rolling along the ground in front of his nonplussed expression. Manten pushes himself up, cursing Shippou, but is distracted by that final hair from his head fluttering down in front of his face. Just as before, his face is shadowed and sweaty as he feels at his now completely bald scalp.
Manten swings his head in every direction, screaming about how Kagome and Shippou dared to take out his precious hair. Kagome says that they just threw gas on the fire as she and Shippou book it the fuck out of the way of the twisting blasts that are sending rocks and debris into the air.
After Manten has finished with the more emotional part of his tantrum, he goes searching his perimeter of destruction for them. Kagome and Shippou are hiding behind the roots of a nearby tree that was somehow unscathed, and Kagome's heart pounds as she wonders what they're going to do, since if he finds them, they'll die. Kagome peeks around the tree trunk and sees the arrow sticking through Manten's snout, giving her the idea that she can use it again. Kagome whispers to Shippou and Manten appears to hear it, shooting a fresh blast toward the where he thinks the sound is coming from.
Beyond the burning tree, Kagome lays on her belly, seemingly unconscious again. Manten smiles, walks over and snarks about how the bitch thought she could run from him. He picks her up by her hair, and her eyes pop open while she scoffs and calls him a bald, ugly bastard. Manten is taken aback, especially when shit starts getting weird.
Manten flings both fox and girl away, though. He steps on Shippou to keep him from moving, and grabs Kagome by the throat, threatening to strangle her.
Hiten thinks Inuyasha is just a big talker, and he won't be having as much fun as he had thought at first. He calls Inuyasha a coward and talks casually about taking the time to pull off his arms and legs like he's a bug of something.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? As always, I admire Kagome's ingenuity and problem solving in the field. She's a great thinker under pressure and even in low-resource environments she finds a way to act in any way she can. Sure, she wasn't very successful in this instance, because she was working with a fox kit and their enemy was a bit stronger than the both of them, but the fact that Manten was going to find them and try to kill them anyway made the unsuccessful action necessary. It was either hide and be killed, or act and risk failure. Not much wiggle room there, but Kagome took the plunge anyway.
I think the risk was that much more meaningful in this case because it DIDN'T pan out. Hiten might not have been paying proper attention if Kagome and Shippou had gotten the job done. His attention is actually quite important later, and though Inuyasha is annoyed with the detour, it'll come around full circle later.
I also liked how Shippou saving Kagome mirrored the scene where she saved him a couple of chapters ago. It was kind of a weird reversal where Kagome is the one being ordered around like the child, but at least it gave Shippou back some of his pride and took a little of the edge off his guilt at letting her get kidnapped in the first place. He has SOME ability, but still needs the help of others.
Just like everyone else in this group, to be fair.
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