Oh yeah, because the price Naraku charges for this valuable service is soul and servitude. Just BARELY too expensive.
Inuyasha growls about Kagura and her army of bastards using Kohaku to get at Kohaku, but Kagura fires back that they should be worrying about their own lives before ordering her still strongly-numbered horde to rip them apart. Miroku curses as he rips the beads from his right fist, against Sango's shocked call to him from her perch on Kirara.
Kagura looks on at Miroku's risky move with the kind of mild astonishment that you afford a kid with a lemonade stand in this day and age - surprising, somewhat admirable, but ultimately ineffectual at its purpose. Inuyasha shouts Miroku's name while fretting about all those poisonous wasps he's taking in along with the horde. Miroku yells back at Inuyasha to just go after Kagome and Kohaku, and Inuyasha at least has the decency to look a little ashamed that he needed the diversion spelled out for him, stammering an apology and his understanding.
Of course Kagura doesn't have cotton in her ears; her expression has morphed to downright pissed as she curses and brandishes her fan in preparation to cut Miroku down from behind. He knows what she's up to, though, and warns her not to move. He's rotating on the spot after all, and she might get sucked in just as easily as her army if she isn't careful. I can't say why this would stop her, as her wind blades should be able to reach him before he can turn all the way around. Still, Kagura pulls one of her feathers from her hair, says she'd rather NOT get sucked in, and fucks off straight into the sky. Not taking ANY kind of risk, that one.
Sweating and shaking, Miroku closes his fist and begins to wind the beads around it once more, grumbling about Kagura escaping. Sango and Kirara come shooting down to his side, the former calling out to him. As Miroku drops to his backside, clutching his agonized arm, Shippou runs up to him from one side shouting his name, and Sango from the other asking if he's alright. He just haltingly says that they should also hurry after Inuyasha. He's running through the woods wondering in a panic where Kagome is.
Kid forgets his nose has super-human sniffing ability all the time, I SWEAR.
Somewhere in the midst of the trees...
Kagome says that since the saimyoushou are still looking for them, they should keep lying low in their little hidey-hole until Inuyasha and the others come. Or until whatever freaking badger that lives there kicks your sorry asses out of its home. Whichever comes first. Kohaku mutters about "that girl", to which Kagome responds with a questioning noise. While he looks out at the surrounding woods, he wonders aloud if she's okay. Kagome assures him that she probably is, being that Sango is very strong, telling him not to worry.
Speaking of Sango, Kagome asks Kohaku if he still doesn't remember that Sango is his elder sister. He says that he still doesn't, but she...
Speeding over the landscape on Kirara, half-conscious Miroku hanging on to the flying cat behind her because that seems like the safest idea ever, Sango is looking stony-faced. She thinks that if it turns out Kohaku has been deceiving them, and gone as far as hurting Kagome, then Sango has made a resolute and rather ominous resolution about what to do about it. It might be a dangling thread of a thought, but there's only one real way exterminators know how to solve problems, isn't there?
Elsewhere, Inuyasha oscillates nervously on a rocky outcrop, cursing to himself about how Kagome's scent got dispersed and he's lost it. Of course you have - plot couldn't happen if your nose actually WORKED, now could it?? Oh, and also because a nearby voice in the fog surrounding him claims responsibility, telling him he's trapped inside a barrier.
Naraku (or more likely some facsimile given he would have to be an enormous dumbshit to confine himself with Inuyasha for any amount of time) tells Inuyasha that he won't be able to find Kagome's location. Inuyasha, several steps behind, accuses that bastard of targeting Kagome from the beginning. How out of shape do you have to be to trail behind a guy who's sallow and sickly? Naraku chuckles some more, admitting that this is exactly why he sent Kohaku into their midst; to kill Kagome and take her Shikon shards. While Inuyasha sweats and glares, he curses Kohaku, whom he thought looked as though he couldn't hurt a fly. Because Inuyasha is just that easy to read, Naraku expresses all the more amusement at how thoroughly Kohaku seems to have fooled Inuyasha. In Kohaku's defense, though, Naraku does have to point out how easy it is to act innocent when you in fact don't have to act at all, not even aware that there's a deception he's leading. Inuyasha makes a questioning noise and wonders just what the hell is going on here.
Back in their hidey-hole, Kagome is regaling Kohaku with information about his sister - how Sango was always worried about him while they were apart, always seeming strong, but occasionally wearing a fundamentally sad expression. You know, the kind of deeply personal emotional things Sango maybe might feel a tad uncomfortable with other people blabbing about. Kohaku just stares through the whole reveal, silently taking it all in, as Kagome concludes that this is why it's really great that he's come back and all.
Kohaku haltingly asks if it's really okay that he stays with Sango, and Kagome assures him that it is. In fact she's quite certain that he'll start recalling things about Sango if he decides to hang out. Kohaku utters a trailing affirmative, knowing that he wants to remember things about his sister, and about himself too, but the idea also terrifies him, as if there's something he absolutely MUSTN'T remember.
Switching to Naraku and Inuyasha in their bubble again, the former asks the latter why he thinks Kohaku lost his memory in the first place. Inuyasha suggests that it was because Naraku manipulated the poor kid's mind, and Naraku doesn't deny doing that, but states that part of Kohaku's amnesia is him REFUSING to remember that one abominable memory - the one in which he sliced up his father and fellow exterminators with his own hands. Heads flying and everything. Inuyasha yells at Naraku that he MADE Kohaku do this, but Naraku just giggles some more and avoids addressing Inuyasha's excellent point. Naraku just says that Kohaku wants to forget, so the benevolent baboon fulfilled his wish and made Kohaku forget. Simple as that. And because Kohaku's mind is a blank slate now, Naraku says controlling him is super easy.
The newly sinister form of Kohaku lurks behind Kagome as she ponders how late Inuyasha is. When she turns to suggest they poke their heads out a little after all, she sees Kohaku looming over her with his sickle raised, stare blank. She says his name in question, the sickle swings down, there's a splatter of blood.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Usually RT is really good with pacing, but every one in a while, she'll break up the chapter in very choppy and jarring ways. I feel like this one could have been rearranged so the flow was a little better, because it felt longer than it should have, narratively. All of the pieces, while they're supposed to be happening simultaneously, or close to it, seem disjointed and disconnected between the sections, like they're happening in very different places as different times, and in that respect I've gotten the impression that Sango has been wandering around looking for Kohaku and Kagome for hours, and Inuyasha and Naraku are talking at least a few minutes longer than they should have been.
Speaking of long conversations, the one between Kagome and Kohaku isn't exactly riveting. Don't get me wrong - this is entirely understandable, considering they just met, are confined in a small space together by circumstances beyond their control, and only have one subject of conversation, considering Kohaku doesn't exactly have access to a past from which he can draw topics and such. Things are bound to be awkward. I just think that the real awkwardness of the situation was kind of glossed-over. It was there, but instead of using it, RT just ignored it and tried to play Kagome rambling on and on straight. In a way, it's kind of funny. An annoying way.
But otherwise, the stakes are engaging, and Naraku enclosing Inuyasha in a barrier was a clever way of making his nose irrelevant without just... turning it off when it suits the plot, like in some other circumstances. Inuyasha himself was a little all over the place in terms of focus and decisions in this one, but on a level, I get it. He's coming right off the heels of what he's lead to believe was a terrible mistake, and is confused about it too, because Kohaku did and does look like a genuine innocent. Though he had his suspicions in the beginning, there was no indicator, no warning sign, that Kohaku was still Naraku's agent. So having to go back in his head to where he went wrong and second-guess himself is slowing him down a bit. It's obvious he doesn't normally have to consider these things so hard. Usually, everyone has their own will that they act under, and value judgments can be made from there. Kohaku is in a whole other gray area, lacking consistent autonomy.
Puppet-master Naraku is playing the whole thing off in a totally believable way too. He's turned Kohaku into an empty marionette, overriding his free will and very personality twice now, and Naraku STILL finds a way to blame Kohaku himself for it. Even when Inuyasha points out that the horrible action Kohaku wants to forget was FORCED by Naraku, there's no acknowledgement of the fact. It's irrelevant that Kohaku didn't MEAN to kill his father and comrades, or that it was a foreign intent working through his body. It's a horrible, awful thing that happened by Kohaku's hands, through Kohaku's eyes and of COURSE he wants to forget the image of being trapped in a murder spree that he wasn't controlling. Naraku argues here that it's that wanting to forget that's the REAL sin, because in tandem with letting Kohaku have a blissfully blank mind, there comes with that vulnerability to more control. If he didn't want to be rid of that memory so badly, he wouldn't have invited Naraku to create an empty space where he could take up residence and trash the place whenever he felt like it. Naraku is a classic abuser, blaming the people he exploits for the very problems that he himself created.
He is just the WORST.
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