So, call off the doxxing. Please.
She and the guy who called to her kneel down next to a man who doesn't look like he's waking as well as the guy said he was. He's still got his eyes closed and everything! His friend keeps going on about how it's thanks to Kikyou he's alive and able to go back to his village now, though. He himself mumbles about how he'll finally be able to meet his child too, a little bit of sweetness that's undercut by a weird little lump forming up above his head on his sick mat.
Kikyou looks a little alarmed at the lump, which has become a tiny little imp and climbed onto the injured man's face and head, squeaking. Her eyelids lower while she contemplates how the tiny creature is still after the man's life. With the flick of her finger, the imp is dislodged and begins to dissolve. The man's excitable friend, confused by why Kikyou would flick his buddy like that because he apparently couldn't see the parasite on him, says Kikyou's name with some uncertainty.
She assures him that it's nothing with a smile, and says everything will be alright now. Yeah, if another one of those imps doesn't latch onto him. If that DOES happen, he's screwed, because someone has just arrived shouting about this being the priestess Kikyou's temple of residence, and all the recovering soldiers gape at the man who looks like he means some time-consuming BUSINESS. He's wearing fancy duds, and an accusatory tone when he describes Kikyou as someone who treats war's wounded regardless of sides. He says he wants her to come and treat a man who has fallen under some strange spell of illness as best she can.
Kikyou stares speechlessly for a moment before telling him she only has a little experience with strange spells and the like. Not exactly a lie, but it's not the TRUTH, either. The pushy noble insists she'll hear more at the castle that he offers to travel to together with her. That sounds sketch as hell, girl.
Elsewhere, there are some nasty storm clouds are hanging over some unhealthy looking fields. A couple of men kneel next to the withering crops, fretting about what they'll do when so many of their food is dying. One of them begins to mutter about the suddenness of this field condition in the past month when he's interrupted by the beginnings of a shower. At first they speculate that it's rain, but red tracks run down their faces and hands that look an awful lot like blood. A clattering sounds from above, accompanied by the sight of a black mass of something falling through the clouds. The men stare.
Ew.
Time skip to when someone is asking about this story, and someone else responds that they feel bad about it. Whether it's because it was so horrible or because it was true isn't quite clear. Regardless, Miroku asks how everyone ELSE has been feeling lately as well, revealing that he's interviewing a headman while the rest of the gang mills around watching. The headman says that both old and very young, as well as the weaker members of his village have been dropping like flies. Inuyasha glares silently, while Miroku says this isn't surprising, since it must have something to do with a strong evil in the area.
Inuyasha leaves his butthurt comments until they're heading out of the village at least, complaining that they're saving people again, and implying that they don't really have time for this. Kagome asks him if he has something ELSE to do, and looking for Naraku is his snappy answer. Miroku drawls that Naraku probably won't recover for a good long while yet, because of how thoroughly Kagome OWNED his ass with that arrow of hers. Just in case you guys forgot, RT dedicates a panel to his shocked face when that and his shoulders are pretty much all that's left of him from a few chapters back.
In a strange follow-up to this, Miroku offers Inuyasha a string of coins for helping to save him. Kagome blinks in surprise at him, beginning to ask when he managed to get so much money, and Inuyasha cuts her off to accuse Miroku of TAKING them.
Kagome looks over to notice that Sango is being awfully quiet, but also somewhat intent on something. She asks what it is she's thinking about.
Cut to where a procession is proceeding across a plain, where the topic of conversation is their lord named Kagewaki, who was born with a weak body, and who recently gained rulership from the previous lord's passing. The only problem is that Kagewaki has deteriorated even FURTHER, and refuses to see any doctors or retainers on top of that. At a castle, someone states that no one is allowed to pass, even as someone else yells at them to move their ass. That rhymed.
It's the pushy nobleman from before, with Kikyou standing demurely behind him, as he barks at the insolent guard denying him passage that he's come with a priestess to cure Kagewaki of his illness. The guard insists that Kagewaki won't see ANYONE. As they bicker, Kikyou is evaluating the castle, which seems to have regular human staff, but a strange evil hanging over it. She walks right on by the guards, ignoring their protests, and rips aside a hanging curtain to enter the room of a man sitting up from his mat on the floor. She has determined that the evil she senses is coming from this man.
He looks pretty distressed upon seeing Kikyou, though, eyes beady and wide. Kikyou is focusing more on the fact that the guy seems dead from the neck down than on his expression. While she's examining his lack of life force, he manages to force out a question about who she is. When she confirms her name matches exactly who she LOOKS like, his face suddenly turns sour, though in his head he's still confused about Kikyou still being alive. Over a picture of her burning in her funeral pyre (was he present for that bit?) as she clutches the Shikon no Tama between her knuckles, Naraku reasons that Kikyou should have died. But here she sits, looking exactly the way she did way back then.
He refuses to believe that it's her, asking himself who she could be instead.
Back with Inuyasha and company, he's hiking up a mountain pass while Inuyasha carries Kagome's bike on his shoulder. Miroku follows on foot as well, but women and child are hitching a ride on Kirara's transformed back. Shippou asks if they're getting close, and Inuyasha confirms that they must be, given that no plants are growing here due to the evil in the area.
Yup, as they approach the mine shaft, Kagome describes it as a hole. She wonders what it is, but knows one thing; the evil is coming from inside. Inuyasha tells her to wait outside, and Kagome seems offended by the command when she asks him why. He cracks the knuckles on his fist with his other hand as he says that a large party of exterminators won't be able to go in there all at once. I guess he's never heard of a little thing called a LINE.
Miroku grabs Kagome's shoulders from behind, offering to stay outside and guard her. Both she and Sango shoot him dirty looks over their respective shoulders, and Inuyasha is glaring daggers at Miroku when he tells Miroku he's coming along in the passage.
Aaaaand we're back with Kikyou again. She's sitting outside of Naraku's room again with the pushy nobleman as he asks her what the diagnosis is. Kikyou haltingly tells him that this is beyond her abilities, keeping her worries about this "Kagewaki's" real form to herself. She's more concerned about the stronger evil swirling around outside the castle and in the mountains. She bows respectfully in farewell, but she's greeted by spear blades when she looks up again. The guards say "Kagewaki" ordered that she not leave the castle.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Again with the scene jumps every couple of pages. It's my habit to be annoyed by this, but in this particular case I'm not sure some of these jumps could be rearranged and stitched together like in past instances. There's a complicated interplay of events going on with several different people who don't know what the others are up to, so I think the jumping does establish a particular flow to the chapter where there were a few time skips and dramatic reveals that wouldn't have meshed well otherwise.
I don't think I realized before this reading that this indicates a short period where Kikyou was just... living. She's not actively pursuing revenge or lover's leap with Inuyasha anymore, because it's been explained to her that Naraku was actually behind her death, but she doesn't have enough information on Naraku yet to start stalking HIM yet. She's just doing what she can and what she knows in a kind of limbo. She's only managed to stumble onto Naraku here, at a point where she's settled down a bit without being actively vengeful.
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that she's establishing a pattern of moving toward performing at the life she used to have, instead of seeking revenge like Urasue insisted she would. Kikyou seems less interested in getting justice or balance for her death, and more in just getting her life BACK. Which leads me to the second reason, which is that she's so much more docile than the anime made her seem. I don't know if I've brought this up before, but the anime had a habit of trying to skew perception of Kikyou to the worse end of the spectrum (and Sesshoumaru toward the good, but that's neither here nor there at the moment). There was always a push, even when Kikyou had shown nurturing and healing qualities, to reduce her complexity and make her into a bad guy. Whether it was because they were writing the show to appeal to a wider range of ages and thought nuance would confuse a younger base, or just because they wanted to make it clear that Kagome was the one for Inuyasha because Kikyou was a big meanie-pants is unclear. Maybe it was a little of both. Still, it's constantly a shock to get such different impressions of a single character from two different source materials.
Speaking of which, Sango is quite the cunning little thinker here too, which doesn't really come through in other mediums. She's able to get everyone on the same page with a single vague statement of possibility, quiet and contemplative until that moment. While the boys are bickering over nothing, she wants to get a job done, and there's nothing more uniting for any of them than implying that Naraku might be on the other end of the problem.
I think Miroku just got replaced in the title of most logical party member.
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