Inuyasha looks to the side where a glow has caught his eye. He's surprised the light is shining there, and absently reaches out to touch the flesh it's showing through. Inuyasha yelps and pulls his hand away from the acid-lined stomach, then curses, muttering that his ordeal is going to start getting a hell of a lot more painful pretty soon.
Outside the Peach Man's distended belly, where the Shikon fragment is glowing from his button, the Peach Man himself reclines on his side while he swings Tessaiga thoughtfully. His servant weasels wordlessly keep him company as he states that no matter how he looks at it, Tessaiga is just a rusty garbage sword. He goes from examining to swinging it up and down again, recalling Tessaiga's transformation when that brat Inuyasha held it.
Back inside the Peach Man's stomach, Inuyasha has removed his scabbard from his belt and holds it out in front of him, planning to punch a hole right through the flesh in front of him with it. He shoves the scabbard into the stomach lining toward the jewel's light with a grunt, and it's enough to get the Peach Man's attention. He looks down at his stinging navel with concern, then slaps it, bidding that it settle down.
Inuyasha is flung back by the force of the slap, sent screaming into the acid pool at the bottom of the Peach Man's stomach. He curses at the pain in his fist holding the scabbard for making contact with the stuff, and uses the sheath as a crutch to pull himself out of the acid again, even as more drops of the caustic substance drip from above. Inuyasha is alarmed to find that his sleeve is full of growing holes being eaten through the material when he takes a good look at it. Never mind that the fire-rat fur is supposed to be separate from him and his human transformation once a month so it shouldn't be so vulnerable to digestion as he is, nothing to see here, move along.
His eyelids droop much like his weakened body over the Tessaiga's sheath, and he wonders if this is really it for him. Pssssst, Inuyasha: 500 chapters left to gooooooo... Suddenly the scabbard pulses.
Inuyasha is stoked that Tessaiga is nearby, because this means he could be saved. Outside the Peach Man, the Tessaiga twitches from the floor where he discarded it, causing him to stare in question while one of his rodent servants pours him a drink. Inuyasha screams for Tessaiga to come to him, and...
Tessaiga doesn't actually penetrate the skin, though, bouncing off and clattering to the side. The Peach Man still looks down at his smoking navel with some horror, however, just as Inuyasha gapes at the in-pierced flesh in front of him for how the sword must have rebounded again. The Peach Man covers his mouth with a hand, starting to appear ill. The soup of acid around Inuyasha begins to roil and churn, alarming him. The Peach Man grunts behind his hand before vomit explodes from his mouth violently, as well as something else.
Don't answer that.
The Peach Man thrashes around in agony after his sick-fit, and Inuyasha spends a split moment groaning himself before grasping the Tessaiga again. He swings the blade sideways at the Peach Man, cursing him, but again, the Peach Man's belly just pops back out without a scratch on it, flinging Inuyasha back into the steps behind him.
Rage consuming him, the Peach Man's eyes become bloodshot while he curses Inuyasha, jumping up to do the world's most threatening belly-flop of all time. For real, the Peach Man is all shadowed and sinister as he dives right on top of Inuyasha. Then he just looks like a gigantic balloon as he makes contact with the floor under him, and Inuyasha, whose eyes bulge and mouth trails blood.
After a brief moment of silence in which the Peach Man lays on top of Inuyasha, he clambers out of the crater he caused and is confused when he looks down at his unconscious victim. Taking hold of Inuyasha by the hair, he pulls Inuyasha's head out of the crack in the stair it made and looks closer at him, tentatively identifying him as the same youkai he ate before. Well who the hell else would he be? Didn't eat anyone else within the last chapter, did you?
Did you??
The Peach Man looks over his shoulder to ask Inuyasha if it's because he's a hanyou that he looks different now. Inuyasha doesn't answer, so the Peach Man continues as he hauls a giant pot over next to his victim. He tells Inuyasha that since hanyou meat is so rare, the Peach Man plans to drain him of his blood, pickle him, and save him for snacking later. Inuyasha groans, possibly because the Peach Man is just ripping off Urasue at this point. He strains against his binding thorns, trying to take a swing at the Peach Man, growling that all that dude seems to think about is eating.
Of course, the Peach Man encourages him to fight all he wants, because it'll dig the thorns into him more and he'll drain all the faster. It's not because of this that Inuyasha pauses, though. He actually sees the Shikon shard Kagome lost shining from the Peach Man's belly button clearer now, and stutters out a jumble of words at a confused Peach Man before finally asking coherently who he got the fragment from. The Peach Man repeats the question, then calls Inuyasha stupid, because he just found it in his house and that makes it his, duh.
Inuyasha falls speechless, thinking that Kagome must be here in this den if the Shikon fragment is here.
Miroku approaches Kagome to tell her that he too has been trying to call out to the denizens of this box, but they don't respond, like they're just empty shells. Shippou says that it's more like they're under some kind of spell, to which Kagome responds that they're just fine. Miroku looks down and sees the pit of a peach near one of the men's hands, then looks over to some still moving men who are picking fruit off the trees and kneeling at the river to drink from it and says he understands now. And that's why he's knocking the fruit from these poor men's hands and yanking them away from the river, right?
Nope, he just speculates that eating and drinking here takes away the ability to think. Freaking USELESS. Kagome isn't trying any harder, though, just saying that she gets it now as she holds onto Shippou. Shippou says happily that as long as they don't eat or drink, they should be fine, and Kagome agrees. Miroku makes the off-hand comment as he walks away that they'll starve eventually and Shippou squeals his dismay, Kagome agreeing with that as well. You're such a big help, Kagome.
She looks up at the sky, so like the real one, and thinks that they have to get out of there somehow. Just then, the atmosphere starts to churn in the center, both Miroku and Kagome pausing to stare in wide-eyed shock.
Kagome rushes TOWARD the Peach Man's hand, suggesting to Miroku that they grab onto it, and Miroku agrees that it's now or never. Meanwhile, Inuyasha mentally begs Kagome not to get captured, hoping she'll wait until his powers return. Not really an option for either of you, dude, but okay.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm always glad when characters use old rules in new ways to remind the audience of character and plot ingenuity. Tessaiga's sheath and its call to the sword isn't new, but it's come-back in this new situation puts a twist on how it's used. This combined with the NEW rule stating that the Peach Man can't be cut gives us something of a hilarious result, at least as far as I'm concerned. It could have become something of a corner RT wrote herself into, but she went with the flow and came out of it with something a little unconventional.
How she put all her characters into danger so there was no way some of them could just sit around while just one of them had an adventure is always something I'm going to praise, too. I mentioned this back in Sesshoumaru's second appearance, how RT could easily have forgotten that the other characters existed for a time while she focused solely on Inuyasha and his brother, but she didn't take the easy route. Same with this arc. Everyone is getting themselves into trouble, as people are prone to do, and it really brings out their potential within the story.
As much as tournament-style story lines are popular in manga (not just Yu-Gi-Oh, mind you), that format leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to simultaneous development of various characters while they all deal with their own shit. Inuyasha is good at making use of all its characters at the same time, so that there are things happening everywhere in the story rather than just in one central area, and it gives the illusion of the story being a little bigger in scope because it involves so many more people.
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