Inuyasha Manga: 184 Cocoon of Poison

Oh, is Inuyasha carelessly spraying RAID in an enclosed space like my BOSS tried to do today? I discovered a mouse scrabbling around in one of my boss's lower deep desk drawers while I was in the office alone. When he came back, I told him about it, as well as the fact that when I jumped back in alarm and kicked the drawer back shut, the mouse darted out the back of it and the desk, high-tailing it under my OTHER boss's desk and out of sight. At first, all my boss said was that it was time to bust out the sticky paper again, which in itself struck me as quite extreme. Then of of our fellow workers came in and I relayed the story to her, at which point she started peeking in my other boss's drawers to see if the mouse had taken refuge in there. It had, had even been building a nest out of chewed office paper, and jumped out at my coworker before running around the desk and scurrying through a hole in the other side of the desk.

That's when my primary boss went and got the mother fucking RAID and prepared to spray it in the hole, to which my coworker and I protested, because not only is that severely inhumane to the mouse, but that's LITERAL POISON in the place we spend eight whole hours every Monday through Friday. No thank you.

Thankfully the can wasn't working. Hopefully it doesn't work for anyone in this chapter either.

What? Dude wants ANOTHER oversized weapon? I guess he feels like his other shoulder isn't getting enough of a workout.

Inuyasha thinks this demand for his sword is absolutely FASCINATING, and says that if this guy really wants Tessaiga, he can just try to take it. Way to reiterate what the nameless youkai bandit already said, Inuyasha. Stellar work. He lunges at the bandit leader with Tessaiga held aloft, no doubt quite the feat with its increased weight, and threatens to expose the youkai for what he really is. Miroku quietly frets over Inuyasha probably not being able to master the heavier sword yet, wondering if it will be alright.

Aaaaand he's jinxed it.

As the blades remain in contact, a skidding sound emits from the razor edges, with some mini-blasts puffing out from the contact area. The youkai bandit watches this with some concern, which was warranted, because Tessaiga ultimately cleaves off that extra long bottom point to the axe and causes the youkai bandit to be blown backward, horse and all. His clueless underlings gape at the scene, calling after their boss and amazed that his giant axe has been sliced. The youkai bandit starts to stand, not looking the least perturbed, but Inuyasha still scoffs at him and says this serves him right. Call me crazy, but I don't think this helping was QUITE big enough to give him what he deserves for his behavior.

The youkai bandit comments on how well Inuyasha's sword can cut, like he's seen a demonstration in a shop window while passing by. Inuyasha raises Tessaiga again and starts for him again, telling him to say his prayers if he can see how well Tessaiga can cut. The youkai bandit smirks into his periphery, where the women of the village sit huddled, and says he needs a shield. You know where this is going. He grabs one of the women by the back of her belt, dragging her toward him despite her grappling to move in the opposite direction.

Inuyasha, still in the middle of his trajectory toward the youkai bandit, finds himself caught between alarm and disbelief.

Hey Inuyasha, this look familiar to you? It should. The only difference here is that when this girl hits Inuyasha, she doesn't knock his ass out cold like he did Kagome. He just kind of groans at the impact with his belly, slightly distracted by their collision. When he looks back up a moment later, the youkai bandit is meeting him at his flank with a burst of some kind of spiral burst from his open mouth. Whatever it is, it sizzles and bubbles on contact with with Inuyasha's skin. He winces, because OW.

The youkai bandit laughs that Inuyasha has been showered in his poison dust. Pretty self-explanatory, so the youkai bandit forgoes the typical manga explanation and just takes a heavy swing at Inuyasha with his newly recovered axe. Blood spurting from his new chest wound, Inuyasha swings down Tessaiga with extra anger, calling the youkai bandit a bastard. Again, what appears to be a smaller version of Kaze no Kizu saws through the ground toward the youkai bandit, much to his surprise. Though he's able to dance out of its way, he gets all pissy and retaliates by vomiting not just DUST, but a whole load of nasty goo. As the goo encircles Inuyasha, knocking Tessaiga out of his hands and sizzling at every point of contact, Miroku lets out an impotent "oh no!" over the unconscious body of the poor woman that was thrown at Inuyasha earlier that he had been tending. And probz groping.

I hope you can do a bit better than "oh no!", Miroku.

Meh. I give it a "C".

Miroku groans in his effort to keep the goo off himself and Inuyasha, though it keeps spiraling around the two of them. Eventually they're encased in the stuff, their gooey prison suspended between tree branches. The youkai bandit chuckles that Inuyasha gave him quite the workout. No doubt the cushy life of leading around bandits and pillaging every village they came across was giving him a bit of a paunch.

Speaking of the underlings he was leading around, they've gathered around the scene, stuttering in disbelief at their boss, whose true nature is obviously a tad unsettling to them. The youkai bandit, the end of his goo-sack still trailing out of his smirking mouth, asks these bastards if they aren't scared knowing he's a youkai now. One of the underlings haltingly says that's not the case at all. Sweat flying off their stiff, grinning expressions, a couple others claim to be excited about their invincibility in having a youkai boss. They promise to follow him like always.

Man, the only thing missing is a chant of "four more years" as their youkai boss spins all his utter complete failures as great victories and uses people as props in his reality show speech.

One of the underlings starts kicking at the goo-sack to own the libs mock the suckers encased inside, and the sole of his foot promptly sizzles and burns. He shrieks comically, rolling around on the ground and holding his ankle in agony. The youkai bandit laughs at him, predictably, informing him a bit too late that he just touched a cocoon of poison, and any more careless pokes and prods will melt him. He's pretty sure that nothing remains of Inuyasha and Miroku on the inside, until he takes a closer look.

Wait, so you can see through your goo-sack? Or can the goo turn transparent at your will? Either way... random.

Miroku asks Inuyasha if he can move, and Inuyasha scoffs that of COURSE he can, reaching out to grab a rope of that goo in front of him and promising to tear apart the whole cocoon. Just then, however, he is struck with a reeling feeling and freezes mid-action. I guess the goo actually turns transparent, because Miroku and Inuyasha can see his foggy image in front of them as it laughs that it seems they can't move about. He's saved the explanation of his poison dust for this moment, when he could tell Inuyasha smugly that it's entered his bloodstream through his actual, honest-to-goodness axe-wound. Inuyasha is dying, little by little.

The youkai bandit demands that one of his underlings fetch the Tessaiga from where it's standing stabbed in the dirt a ways away, reverted back to its less impressive form. As the underling stutters his affirmative and slouches toward the sword, Miroku and Inuyasha gape in horror at Tessaiga being usurped before their very eyes. The underling presents his youkai boss with the sword, and I half expect the youkai bandit to reject it because it wasn't offered on the velvet pillow with the tassels at the corners. He does reach for it, though....

Dude can intimidate and trick a load of drooling morons into following him, but an inanimate object tells him to fuck right off. Awesome.

Miroku notes silently that this was the effect of Tessaiga's anti-youkai warding system. Meanwhile the underling kneeling before his boss asks after the youkai bandit, who examines his smoking hand much like Sesshoumaru did when he touched Tessaiga for the first time. Tessaiga itself stands stuck in the dirt again, because I guess the youkai bandit couldn't have just DROPPED the damn thing? He glares at Inuyasha through his semi-transparent goo-sack, asking what the meaning of this is; why the sword would reject him. He's such a NICE GUY, after all.

Inuyasha answers with a scoff, and the declaration that his Tessaiga chooses its master. It's way out of the league of a low-life youkai like the bandit leader. The youkai bandit hums in momentary contemplation, and gestures to the guy who brought him the sword, who was distinctly NOT burned by touching it. He asks if the sword thought this low-life human bandit was good enough to hold it without consequence then, ignoring the protest of the underling who thinks being called a low-life is quite mean. Do you expect your youkai leader in raping and pillaging to be super polite or something? You should really examine your unrealistic expectations, bro.

Inuyasha doesn't respond to the question, so the youkai bandit draws his own conclusions, which are pretty accurate to be fair; he deduces that Inuyasha is a hanyou. Again, Inuyasha just glares, opting not to respond. The youkai bandit laughs at the fact a mere HANYOU tried to beat him, the great Gatenmaru, in a fight. Oh thank all the gods he has a name. I was getting a tad tired of calling him "the youkai bandit" this whole time. Sounds like it should be on an old west wanted poster.

Miroku sweats about what he can see of Inuyasha's wound over his slouched shoulder, which is still bubbling, and getting wider all the while instead of beginning to heal. Inuyasha is sweating 10 times as much, internally cursing the cut for continuing to bleed because of that poison dust. Miroku frets that keeping up the barrier to keep the cocoon from touching them is taking all he has, and he can't do anything more to help Inuyasha. He wonders just how long he can keep even THAT up.

The underling holds up Tessaiga once again, referring to it in a rather hopeful manner to Gatenmaru. He tells the underling to do whatever with it, because he's not interested in a sword he can't use. The underling stutters his thanks, giggling in glee as he walks away with Tessaiga, right past the old man Inuyasha and company helped back to the village earlier. He's lying bleeding in the dirt, but he knows that some way, somehow, he's GOT to get that sword.

Back in the forest:

They're not the only ones who are too late. Everyone knows that the "if I'm not back in five minutes..." preface should go unspoken in most cases, especially when the one who would be saying it is a half-youkai who should be able to shoo off a mangy band of marauders in less than 30 seconds under normal circumstances. Did you decide to finish a few rounds of poker before you checked on them, or what?

So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm less inclined to believe that the little mini-Kaze-no-Kizu blasts are a one-off mistake this time, since we got another one here. I suppose they COULD have nothing to do with the signature move too, and just be more of a puff of extra youki released with the swing. But I think it bears repeating that I'm not a fan of things that require a bit of a headcanon roundabout reasoning to hand-wave away. The fact that Inuyasha is still visibly having difficulty handling the sword is great on its own, showing with little dialog that he's still at a disadvantage in a fight. Combined with these little blasts, though, the struggle that he's going through is undermined, because a longer range attack that he's supposed to have to concentrate for is still accessible, even if it's just a little. I suppose I should be grateful that it is JUST a little, though. If RT were anyone else, she might have forgotten her own rules completely and just had him firing off the technique left and right without a second thought. At least with her it's a SUBTLE shift in the rules.

Gatenmaru bears a superficial resemblance to Sesshoumaru in demeanor and the way he reacted to touching Tessaiga; just staring at his burning hand in mild interest for a moment or two. He's also covetous of Inuyasha's sword and enjoys throwing people at other people. I wonder if this is intentional, seeing as how we are fresh from joining Sesshoumaru in his quest to learn why Inuyasha's blood sometimes resembles a full youkai's. While there, he also got a little trivia about how intact his own personality would be under dire circumstances, a personality of cold disconnect and calculating. Gatenmaru looks for all intents and purposes a symbolic stand-in for Sesshoumaru in a more "demonstrative" fight, not just for how Inuyasha's transformations work, but also for the relationship Inuyasha has to Sesshoumaru. In a way, Gatenmaru is an effigy of Sesshoumaru's own ignorance of how Inuyasha, as a hanyou, functions. His is the same flat, shallow level of investment Sesshoumaru had in the beginning, and now that Sesshoumaru is starting to acquire more depth with his understanding of the situation, this superficial part of him can be discarded.

Because Gatenmaru is going down. Make no mistake about that.