Anyway, Shippou suggests that maybe Inuyasha was crushed beneath the Peach Man's bulky body, and Kagome utters a disbelieving stutter at this. Miroku sticks the end of his staff under the Peach Man, shouting that they have to get Inuyasha out from under there. He kneels to put all his weight on the end of his makeshift crowbar as Shippou tries to just throw all HIS weight into trying to roll over the Peach Man, whom he complains is awfully heavy. Kagome just desperately calls Inuyasha's name, because she couldn't try to help out Shippou's efforts or anything. No, she's being super helpful by sitting there, heart hammering, praying that Inuyasha's okay.
Meanwhile...
Inuyasha sits up, rotating his shoulder with little more than a look of annoyance on his face, though that was the same arm that the Peach Man broke before. Those youkai powers work FAST to heal serious injuries, don't they? He thinks about what a pain it is that his powers don't return more quickly than they do when he hears a wail from below him.
It's Shippou, a fountain coming from both his eyes as he cries about how Inuyasha is dead. Kagome is in denial about this interpretation, saying it can't possibly be. Shippou's weeping continues while he defends his outburst, pointing to how Inuyasha had all those horrible wounds and then fell from that cliff in his human body, so there was no way he survived. Kagome hangs her head, looking too scared to say anything in response.
Miroku implores Shippou not to cry, telling him they'll hold a memorial service, and Kagome finds her voice again to begin complaining that they still don't know if Inuyasha is dead, but is cut off by Miroku's impromptu eulogy. He says that Inuyasha surely accomplished his goal, which was protecting Kagome even if he had to die doing it. Inuyasha rests his chin on his hand, looking bored at his own funeral, and Kagome hangs her head again, clutching at her chest. She says she's not at all happy Inuyasha would do such a thing, a suddenly Inuyasha is alert and flabbergasted at how she's not crying. HE WANTS TO SEE YOU WEEP, DAMMIT!!
Instead, Kagome begins to rant about how his powers were gone and he was still a reckless idiot, looking more angry than sad. Though Miroku and Shippou are more somber and tearful about it, they agree that Inuyasha is a big moron.
Kagome's eyes widen at hearing Inuyasha's voice, but she doesn't immediately jump up and latch onto Inuyasha like Shippou does, who bawls that Inuyasha is alive. Inuyasha casually apologizes for disappointing them, prompting a somewhat annoyed Miroku to ask what the hell he's so sour about anyway. No shit, he's being awfully pissy for someone who only narrowly escaped death. I would be pretty damn grateful to still be alive, but then again, I'm not a douchebag. Inuyasha snarks that he doesn't die so easily, so worrying over him is pointless, all while eying Kagome's back as she's hunched in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, the Peach Man's body has randomly decided to start disintegrating. Why now? Fuck if I know. Miroku and Shippou observe this with some awe, Shippou trying to put it into words and trailing off as he clings to Miroku's shoulder. In the next panel Shippou has disappeared from Miroku's shoulder as he looks to the tree, which hisses much like its creepy gardner's corpse. The heads on it begin to reform, transforming into actual peaches in a stream of ethereal light. And Shippou's back again to trail off once more in a comment about the ninmenka fruit. Miroku explains that the souls of those men can now move on to Heaven because the Peach Man's spell is broken and the people in the box garden should be freed by now as well. I guess those spells were less important to break than the one keeping Miroku and Shippou small, because we can't have two of the mains stuck tiny for an inconvenient amount of time or anything.
Back in Tokyo, Kagome is sitting at her desk with a pencil in her hand, sighing. She's having some trouble studying, leaning her desk chair back absently and wondering if it was alright for her to come back home. A single panel cuts to the Feudal Era again in order to show Shippou insisting Inuyasha rest while Kagome's gone while clinging to his arm, Inuyasha downplaying his injury to just a little pain in his right arm, and Miroku informing Inuyasha that his arm was actually broken pretty badly. Awkward placement of panel is awkward. Back with Kagome, she considers how hard it must be to be a hanyou like Inuyasha, then picks up the piece of the Shikon no Tama around her neck to examine it. She recalls how Inuyasha told her when they met that he planned to use the jewel to become a full youkai, but also remembers how Kikyou once suggested he become human instead, and he had planned on it for Kikyou's sake. Kagome wonders how he feels now.
Inuyasha says that if he met an enemy who was stronger, it would be all over for him. Isn't that true for full youkai as well? Miroku points out what I just did about Inuyasha defeating the Peach Man while he was human, asking if that wasn't enough for him. Inuyasha is up in arms, asking if he even realizes how much trouble that was for the hapless hanyou, so Miroku supposes that no, no it was NOT enough for him. Miroku decides to change the subject to this hypothetical future in which Inuyasha HAS turned into a full youkai, questioning whether Inuyasha would still be himself. This appears to shock Inuyasha somewhat, driving him to ask Miroku what it is he means incredulously. As if he doesn't already know.
Miroku poses the query of whether Inuyasha has ever heard of anyone using the Shikon no Tama for good. Inuyasha answers with some hesitation that no, he has not. So, Miroku proposes a hypothesis that those who use the jewel end up losing themselves, which makes Inuyasha scoff, incredulous again. He says he never said he wanted to be a nice youkai, but Miroku brings up the obvious fact that Inuyasha wants to protect Kagome, and wants strength for that reason as well as for its own sake.
Shippou has latched onto Miroku's arm again by the next panel, tearfully asking why it would be him and Kagome, and not Miroku too that Inuyasha would dine on. Miroku loftily answers that he would have run away LONG before that point. Inuyasha glares across the fire at him, speechless a moment, probably thinking about how best to broach what a weird combination of shrewd and dickish Miroku is. At least, that's what I'm thinking.
Instead, Inuyasha turns his gaze to the ground and mentally declares that all this is a bunch of crap. He rationalizes that all the youkai after the jewel he's met so far were rotten from the beginning, hesitantly telling himself his heart won't change. Whatever helps you sleep at night, sweetie.
Cut to daylight over a village, where someone is screaming about something coming from the forest. You thought I was going to say "somewhere," didn't you? Think again! Someone asks the exterminator to take care of it, a giant centipede, for them.
The boomerang the exterminator throws cuts straight through the body of the centipede and returns for her to catch, as boomerangs do. As the two halves of the body collapse to the ground with a thud, a shining speck detaches from the wound and the exterminator picks it from the ground where it falls, identifying it as a Shikon fragment. A villager with a bandage around his head is astonished by it while the exterminator explains that it was this little fragment that turned the centipede into a giant monster. Then she borrows a shed for a bit to shed her black suit and cool mask.
When she emerges...
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The end in particular is super exciting for me because I'm fangirl squealing over the new character introduction. It was short, sweet, and incredibly intriguing because of how much information we're getting out of just three pages. We now know that this person makes a living exterminating youkai, she has an incredibly specialized weapon that doesn't appear to operate on magic like Kagome's, and the Shikon no Tama came from her birthplace. We get just enough of a taste of who she is that it makes us want to take another bite. If there's one thing RT knows how to do, it's introductions.
And it's a good thing, because she sure as hell didn't do the rest of the chapter very well, mechanics-wise. I don't understand her decision to change Miroku and Shippou back to their original sizes so prematurely. I suppose it could have revolved around how Kagome was supposed to get down the cliff without Shippou being a regular size, but I'm not sure why she couldn't have just gone down the way the guy from the first chapter tried to descend in the first chapter of the arc. It looked like he would have made it down the mountain if the Peach Man hadn't gotten him first.
It's not like Miroku and Shippou had to be normal size for the beginning of the chapter. Miroku didn't manage to get the Peach Man overturned to check beneath him anyway, so it's not as though Kagome couldn't have tried and failed to do it herself at Miroku's tiny instruction. Then the rest of the chapter could have played out more or less the way it had before, except with Miroku and Shippou transforming back to themselves along with everyone else, when it made sense.
Sure, I still would have been asking why it had to be so long after the Peach Man died, but it would have been a more ironic question. We all know the other characters HAD to think Inuyasha was smashed by the Peach Man in order to start eulogizing and Inuyasha to get mad that Kagome wasn't crying over him until she was. There wasn't any other way to pull that crap off, so we don't have to pretend there's any other reason for it.
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