Or maybe it's accidentally stumbling into a discovery that someone else already made, but you happen to be the one who others want to take the credit.
Inuyasha makes his swing, knowing Sesshoumaru will die, and a blast issues that starts to saw right into Sesshoumaru. It pushes him away despite his struggle against it, armor cracking.
Toutousai announces that the match has been decided after the blast subsides, and Inuyasha stands hunched, Tessaiga resting in its follow-through pose. Inuyasha has figured out the secret principle "Cutting Wind". Kagome is meanwhile preoccupied with the notion that she thought Sesshoumaru looked like he was enveloped in light there for a second. How was she watching while crouched behind the bull? *shrug*
Shippou clings to Miroku's shoulder, wondering out loud if Sesshoumaru is dead. Miroku speculates that it's likely, given that he was in the path of a true blow from the true power of Tessaiga. Toutousai begs to differ, though, mocking the idea that what they saw was Tessaiga's true power, all while having parked his bony ass right on top of the bull again. Miroku looks surprised, and Inuyasha looks downright pissed at the old guy's opinion. He points to the fact that EVERYONE saw what the sword did as proof of the true power, and calls Toutousai's call-out nonsense.
While Toutousai is willing to congratulate Inuyasha for figuring out Kaze no Kizu, he speculates that it's because his eyes were clouded that Inuyasha managed it. Who cares? If Inuyasha figured it out, what the fuck does it matter? Not much, as it turns out. Toutousai changes his criticism entirely to what he saw as a failure to swing entirely through on the technique. Kagome looks confused by this accusation, but Inuyasha is more on the wary end of surprised than anything, and doesn't interrupt when Toutousai speculates that no matter how much he hates him, Inuyasha just couldn't bring himself to kill his older brother. He's simply not that ruthless. Inuyasha remains silent, looking down slightly, as Kagome searches his face for confirmation.
Trying too hard, Inuyasha.
Toutousai instructs Inuyasha to hand over Tessaiga, ignoring the stupid tantrum he was throwing entirely. Inuyasha looks flabbergasted at first, before Toutousai clarifies that he's going to sharpen the sword for him. This seems to just surprise he and Kagome all the more, for some reason. I guess they forgot that Inuyasha mastering the sword meant that Toutousai wasn't going to break Tessaiga. Easy to forget with all the attempted murder going on, to be fair.
Someone remembers, though, because later Miroku is asking for some confirmation that Toutousai recognizes Inuyasha's as the sword's true owner now. Toutousai is perched on a rock near a river blowing fire on the blade and intermittently hitting it with his mallet. He pulls a "well YEAH" in between exhaling fire, and when he pauses to talk at more length, some smoke issues from the side of his mouth. He says that Tessaiga is a dangerous weapon that can mow down 100 youkai at once, and the only one he would let have it would have to be someone as soft as Inuyasha. Inuyasha scoffs from his position at the water, where he's finished washing all the poison out of his eyes.
His sense of smell is better.
He can smell the CUTTING WIND better.
Toutousai continues to spit fire at Tessaiga while Shippou, Sango and Miroku gossip about whether this means that Sesshoumaru is actually closer to being a dog. Sango concedes that Sesshoumaru IS a full youkai, after all, and Miroku says that one can't judge by appearances alone. The bottom of the page sports a little note about how the three whisperers here haven't seen Sesshoumaru's dog form, which I'm sure would bring up a whole host of NEW questions for them. I know it has for me.
Inuyasha glares at the gossipy twits and asks what they mean by all the things they're trying and failing to keep low enough. Kagome, meanwhile, brings up to Toutousai that he mentioned Sesshoumaru's sword Tenseiga, a healing sword that saves people. She asks if one wouldn't need a kind heart to hold at sword like that, but I think she may be asking the wrong dude, considering he was super surprised that Sesshoumaru even knew how to use Tessaiga's master technique. Toutousai even says this much when he tells her that's how it is, but he doesn't really have a clue. Or, at least, he starts to tell her that and she has to finish his thought because he forgot the word.
Toutousai goes on to casually talk about the rather surprising fact that Tenseiga doesn't seem to have rejected Sesshoumaru outright; actually it protected him from Tessaiga's blast before. Kagome recalls that light she saw surrounding Sesshoumaru earlier and assumes that must have been what it was. Toutousai says that this definitely means Tenseiga has chosen Sesshoumaru as its master.
He sounds like shit too, breathing labored. He claims silently not to be able to move, but when he hears the rustling of leaves and picks up the scent of a human, he suddenly turns toward the noise and hisses threateningly. First of all: liar. Second, CATS are generally the ones that hiss at intruders. This dog is weird, guys.
Turns out he was hissing at a little girl, who shrinks back at the warning. But it's only a momentary reaction.
The Inuyasha anime disappoints me again.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The weird thing about it is there were "conveniences" that weren't really conveniences because their presence didn't actually change anything. The bull acting as a shield didn't make much sense at all, given that there's no reason to believe that it would be any better at bearing a blow from Tessaiga than any other youkai. I guess dragons aren't the only unusually hardy youkai out there? Besides, in future chapters, there will be plenty of instances when characters in close proximity won't need a shield like that again.
Also, Kagome saw the light enveloping Sesshoumaru before his disappearance, but his disappearance should have been plenty to clue Toutousai into the fact that Tenseiga had rescued Sesshoumaru. It was an unnecessary shift of observation from Toutousai to Kagome, and a little bit weird too, considering Toutousai should have been the one to REALLY take exception to that fact. He was, after all, the one who observed that Inuyasha didn't swing all the way through to kill Sesshoumaru.
Which was actually a rather clever metric to hide. Toutousai has not only met Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru's father, but he had to be familiar enough with him in order to get a good idea of what the guy wanted from these swords. He had to realize that since his sons weren't really on track to getting along really well, and the elder was kind of a psychopath, he was going to have to ensure two things: one is that the younger of his sons was well armed against the aggression of the elder, and the second thing is that the younger wasn't TOO eager to kill off the elder. The first of those was really easy, because it couldn't have taken much more than a couple of calculations to determine what was capable of overpowering Sesshoumaru.
The difficult part would be in determining if Inuyasha is willing to out-and-out murder Sesshoumaru, since daddy dearest wouldn't be around to check. Enter Toutousai, who is pulling a Myouga here. Remember back when Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru were practically LURED into going to their father's grave in order to retrieve Tessaiga? Yeah, it's kind of like that. Toutousai knows that Sesshoumaru is requesting a new sword and that Inuyasha, according to Myouga, has recently used Tessaiga's secret technique. He doesn't show too much investment in this information other than to enlist Inuyasha to "protect" him against Sesshoumaru, help it turned out he didn't even need. He was even ready to just ride off on his bull the moment Inuyasha put up the slightest resistance to the notion of Toutousai breaking Tessaiga.
This was clearly never about whether or not Inuyasha was ABLE to do Kaze no Kizu, but more about whether he WANTED to kill with it. There was something of an indication that this idea gave him pause when the previous chapter ended with him knowing that a cut to this differently scented fissure was going to kill Sesshoumaru, by the sheer fact that it was a cliffhanger. And once again, the human side he shows in this chapter, being reluctant to use this technique on his only family member, works in his favor. Funny how he's so ready to disown that part of him, viewing the mention of it immediately as some sort of slight, when it continues to be the right answer to most of his problems thus far. You'd think that at some point he'd come to take any references to his humanity and compassion as a compliment.
Regardless, it appears that Inuyasha's test was only a small part of Toutousai's proctor duties. He's still got Sesshoumaru's progress to track as well, whose sword has strangely taken a liking to him despite him being a dick. HIS test will prove to be a longer, more grueling process as well, because Sesshoumaru is going for the PhD in finding hidden compassion and reasons to give a shit.
Taking my GRE was a BREEZE compared to this hot garbage.
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