Although, as a shot of a decapitated wolf head shows, the party seems to have been taken right out of these animals. Kagome is shocked at the fact that there are wolves, and a disturbed-looking Sango suggests that this means these guys are with the youkai wolves they were only just dealing with. Or were.
Or... ARE. Their lifeless state seems to be changing before Inuyasha and company's eyes.
These are the modern, fast-moving zombies, though. They're quick when they lunge at the newcomers, some missing arms or a half a head. Shippou freaks about how they're seemingly alive despite their appearance before, but Inuyasha corrects him as he rushes to meet the challenge. These guys are corpses. Inuyasha punches one directly in front of him in his mutilated face, sending him flying, but another pops up right next to Kagome and Shippou, both of them screaming in terror.
Inuyasha leaps up and swings Tessaiga over their heads, slicing the assaulter in half. The crowd of zombie wolves that remain standing hiss at him, appearing to continue their push toward him, so Inuyasha realizes with some shock that they're being manipulated by someone.
Especially since that fucking wet blanket Naraku has shown up, just behind the woman, calling her Kagura. He tells her to stop her Corpse Dance and leave the rest to Kouga. Kagura begs to be the one to finish them all off, and whines that this is boring when she snaps her fan shut obediently. Out in the courtyard, the zombies lurch to a stop and collapse to the ground, much to Inuyasha's surprise. He was all ready to slice them with Tessaiga and everything.
At just this moment, Kouga leaps into the courtyard to join the chaos, landing just a short distance from Inuyasha standing, bloodied and armed, next to a falling corpse. Eyes wide, Kouga says Inuyasha's name with disbelief, but all Inuyasha can do is stare back at him with a matching look of shock, with a gaping Kagome peeking out from behind him.
Kouga looks down at all the bodies littering the ground and mutters about how cruel this is. Though he expresses doubt that Kouga will believe him, Inuyasha tries to explain that Kouga's friends had already been dead when he arrived. Kouga yells at Inuyasha not to fuck with him, pointing out the blood covering Inuyasha as quite the evidence that he's a lying sack of shit.
Inuyasha lunges toward Kouga with sword raised, apparently seeing no more point in more attempts to reason, and urges Kagome to stay back. Kagome stutters his name in response, but he's caught in his own angry thoughts, cursing the fact that they're obviously being set up by Naraku. As Inuyasha and Kouga close in on each other, Inuyasha deduces that Kouga and his youkai wolf brethren were also lured here.
Meanwhile, Kouga is just blind with rage and throws a surprising punch.
Kouga pulls his fist out of the trench he created, scoffing, while Inuyasha's eyes widen in astonishment. It doesn't last long, though, because it's only a moment before he settles back into a glare and accuses Kouga of using another Shikon fragment in its place. Kouga scoffs again, recalling that his previous shard had been stolen by Inuyasha and his lot, but lucky for him the current one seems to work better than the last anyway.
Kagome can see the shimmer of the shard in Kouga's arm as he clenches his fist menacingly, and sees a dark surge of power emanating from it. She says that it's no Shikon fragment, and when Miroku utters a questioning noise next to her, she explains that it gives off a dark, warped light. Of course, the two combatants aren't paying attention, preparing to clash once more.
Kagome appeals to Kouga instead, shouting at him to hear them out. He pauses in surprise for a moment before telling her not to cover for a guy like Inuyasha, who is currently struggling to sit up. Kagome goes ahead with her explanation, saying that this is a trap set up by the real person who killed Kouga's friends, but Kouga doesn't want to hear it. He barks at her to shut up, because he only believes what he sees with his own eyes. While that seems a reasonable policy to have, maybe he should ask some scientists how well relying exclusively on one's frequently lying senses works in ascertaining the truth for them.
Kagome is told to hush by Inuyasha too, who claims that a simple-minded dude like Kouga isn't likely to understand a complex situation like this one. Oh, I see. A guy makes a couple of elementary deductions at the beginning of a chapter and suddenly he thinks he's a damn genius. Inuyasha insists that for an idiot like this (Kouga, apparently), the only way to quiet him is by force. Projection much, Inuyasha? While Kagome mumbles a shocked disbelief that it's all come to this Shippou agrees with me; Inuyasha isn't exactly one to talk things over either.
Sango turns to Miroku and asks if they should back Inuyasha up, but Miroku says that Inuyasha is still well enough to brawl. Something about his face says otherwise though, as he's still staring intently at said brawl with his mouth hanging open. Regardless, he mentions a presence of evil surrounding the castle before shooting off in that direction, telling a somewhat confused Sango to come along with him. He suspects that whomever was controlling the corpses littering the ground all the way up to the front steps should be inside.
Meanwhile, the brawl continues. Inuyasha leaps back from a powerful punch, then lunges for his sword still stuck in the earth a ways away. Kouga lands a kick to his jaw before he can reach it.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? AWESOME! This is the kind of stuff I've always loved from Inuyasha, the creepy horror angle. My excitement might be exacerbated, like I said in my cold open, by the fortuitous timing of my reaching this particular arc, but I would have been really excited either way. Not only is there the regular old zombie and setup for a crime, but it's implied that Naraku has been watching Inuyasha and company frequently enough that he knew when Inuyasha and Kouga met and their instant dislike of one another. Now that's stalker shit.
Inuyasha may have delivered a derisive comment about Kouga being unable to understand the complexity of the situation, but he understood from the beginning that Kouga was unlikely to believe that he wasn't the one who killed his fellow wolf youkai. He knows because the trap between himself and Kikyou was so similar in its deception. He spent an awfully long time believing that Kikyou had attacked him fifty years ago out of malice, and it wasn't until he got to speak to the other victim of the plot one-on-one that he started to realize there were inconsistencies between his experience and hers.
The only problem with this one is that Kouga and Inuyasha didn't start out with a positive relationship like Inuyasha and Kikyou; they hated each other at first sight. Kouga is even LESS likely to believe anything Inuyasha says, because he's already predisposed to believe Inuyasha is a scoundrel by default.
Naraku may not have gotten to tear apart a pair of lovers this time, but pitting already bitter enemies against one another may be one of his better ideas in traps such as these. Too bad for him that fools can unravel even the best of plans...
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