Even if it's a dark, nondescript void of some sort, it must be so nice to have somewhere to PUT your shrine. I had to drag mine out of my bedroom because there was a severe condensation and mold problem beneath the window and my cool table kept getting covered in mildew. Now the tacking strips under the carpet have been replaced, the carpet itself has been cleaned, and I've cleaned out every corner of my table with a vinegar-water mixture to kill all the mildew - I honestly don't know if all of this will be enough to keep the mold at bay. This nasty crap is annoyingly persistent, and I can only imagine how pissed off it would be at my efforts at cleansing the area if it were sentient:
Tsubaki wonders out loud if this is that girl Kagome's doing, but maybe it's just because I've been spraying my vinegar-water mixture everywhere. Sorry about that. Kikyou, still hanging out in her existential BOREDOM, says she told Tsubaki so; Kagome won't be overcome by such a weak curse. Tsubaki snaps over her shoulder that it's nonsense her curse is weak, and this is actually just because Kikyou showed up out of nowhere unnecessarily and distracted her.
Man, am I in Lamps Plus or something? Only there are lampshades EVERYWHERE.
She doesn't just LOOK better. She's obliterated that barrier like she's been hale and healthy as a horse this whole time, which surprises Miroku and Sango hovering nearby as much as me. In the midst of the revealed forested area behind the destroyed barrier, Tsubaki peeks out the door of a building standing in it, having noticed that something has happened to expose her. She sees in the sky Inuyasha leaping straight for her base, come to capture the flag, and she's in disbelief seeing him. Kikyou just stands impassively in the background, but when Tsubaki mutters angrily about how Kagome's arrow must have missed Inuyasha, Kikyou gives her a sharp look.
Like the clueless rube she is, Tsubaki glares at Kikyou out of the corner of her eyes and asks what her problem is now. Kikyou cites what was implied by what Tsubaki just said - that she intended to kill Inuyasha by having Kagome fire an arrow at him. Whoops, probably should have been a bit quieter about your failed attempts to murder the ex-boyfriend there Tsubaki. She twists a bit more toward Kikyou with a smirk and asks if that brings up a bad memory for her, then admits that she did indeed make Kagome fire an arrow at Inuyasha to imitate that time Kikyou did it.
With a steady glare, Kikyou walks straight over the remains of Naraku's dirt-puppet and grabs hold of a fistful of Tsubaki's hair, yanking her head back. I guess this cat fight was a long time coming, but it still feels a bit on the sleazy side. At least they aren't greased up and wrestling in a kiddie pool, though. Kikyou calmly states that she has no intention of interfering in whatever fucked-up shit Tsubaki wants to do to Kagome, BUT...
Kikyou over here threatening me with a good time. Or at least a halfway decent reason for her to be around right now.
Outside, Inuyasha lands with Kagome still astride his back, with Miroku and Sango touching down on Kirara a short distance behind. Kagome, unfortunately, seems to have picked back up sweating and hunching in pain, the shards in her collar bone standing out darkly against it. Tsubaki's concentration has picked back up, I see. Kagome indicates the shrine as where she's feeling the Shikon no Tama, as well as the person who put a curse on her and controlled her. Sounds like a party for sure. Not a very fun one, but a party nonetheless.
The door to the shrine swings open, revealing Tsubaki behind it, not bound by Kikyou's arrows as she was, but facing the Inuyasha gang with her giant white snake coiled this and that way around her body like a carelessly-wound scarf. After a moment of shock at Tsubaki's reveal, Inuyasha snaps at her that she must be this so-called dark miko he's heard so much about.
This inspires not much more than a little confused disbelief from Inuyasha, so Miroku is the one to address Tsubaki's statement, asking her what happened to Kikyou since he saw her go through the barrier. Now THAT gave Inuyasha a bit more to be shocked about, alarmed to learn that Kikyou should be there. Did you not SMELL her, dude? Or is this one of those times when that power goes mysteriously unused? Tsubaki scoffs and tells Inuyasha that it seems Kikyou came to plead for his life, to which Kagome and Inuyasha can only really respond with awkward silence. So Tsubaki continues to shoot off her mouth, supposing that despite Kikyou's official status as dead, she can't move on while her love for Inuyasha remains. Seems to be a point of mockery for Tsubaki, unsurprisingly.
Inuyasha dumps Kagome off next to Miroku and Sango, telling them to take care of her, having found ANOTHER thing to be pissy about on top of the whole curse that's still on Kagome. He steps toward Tsubaki, casually observing that she seems to know an awful lot about them (Kikyou's relationship to him in particular, rather, but who's really paying THAT much attention?). He cites the fact that Tsubaki has been controlling Kagome's actions to the point that she just HAPPENS to have made Kagome try shooting him, and demands to know the truth that Naraku is the one pulling the strings here. She makes no pretense about it, and asks what it matters, and Inuyasha lunges at her with Tessaiga already half-drawn, shouting that she'll get ripped apart with no mercy if that's the case.
But Tsubaki is quick to clap back that Kagome will die if he finishes pulling Tessaiga, and he freezes, eyes wide. Tsubaki holds up the blackened Shikon no Tama, or most of it anyway, reminding the fool of a hanyou that the curse is still in effect. She says that while it remains in her hands, so does Kagome's life. Sango leans down to support the still weak Kagome on the ground while muttering half-insults, Kagome and Miroku remaining tensely fixated on Tsubaki. Or perhaps the jewel in Tsubaki's palm, which sizzles a little as a bit of light returns to its surface. Tsubaki glares down and it and clenches her fingers around it.
As much pain as Kagome is in, at least it doesn't look like her thumb is on a completely different plane than the rest of her hand. That would just be awkward.
Tsubaki seems pleased that the jewel in her hand is impure again, and wonders if Kagome, who has reverted back to a limp mass of groaning pain in Sango's arms again, has any strength remaining to re-purify the Shikon no Tama. It takes no time at all for Tsubaki to conclude that Kagome's nothing; the jewel being purified and the barrier being broken were both just a result of Kikyou's interference and distraction. Recalling what Kikyou said about the curse being too weak to beat Kagome, Tsubaki supposes that Kikyou must have just overestimated her reincarnation.
Inuyasha growls at her that she's pulling a damn dirty trick, and Tsubaki scoffs that she'll play this game as dirty as it takes to make the whole Shikon no Tama hers. Another patch spreads over her eye, but not a scaled pattern this time, as she tells Inuyasha will be the first to go down. Says a lot about how threatening Tsubaki REALLY found Kikyou's hot air earlier. What looks like the bust of a menacing dog-fox-creature bursts forth from her FACE like the animal specter of pink eye. Which I honestly can't say is worse than THIS:
Miroku is rendered nearly speechless by this sight, and Sango exclaims in disbelief that Tsubaki was keeping a youkai inside her body. Better than having ghost Lord Byron's club foot in your mouth? Debatable in my opinion.
Well, she's currently in the process of getting distracted again - you probably won't have to work very hard at it, Kagome.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? This one at least wasn't quite as boring as the ones preceding it. It was cool the way Tsubaki revealed her inner youkai, and the design of the creature itself is in a similar style to the others in the story so far: vaguely wrong and bizarre to give a more subtle sense of horror. This thing's bird talons give me the creeps, reminding me a bit of all those cryptids I've read about on the SCP Foundation wiki. All it needs is a strange and not altogether comprehensible set of eerie powers. I'm expecting those to be a tad more blunt in nature, though; if Inuyasha is expected to face off against it, you can bet its method of attack will be mostly physical.
I'm slightly intrigued by Kikyou losing her cool with Tsubaki for a moment. It's hard to know what it means that she shrugs her shoulders at the curse put on Kagome, but bristles when the effects spread to Inuyasha. It's clear she's not hoping Kagome dies due to the curse - Kikyou has said multiple times now how she really doesn't expect for the curse to give Kagome too much trouble, and in fact seems rather confident that it's no big deal for her. The only possible explanation I have for this is that Kikyou, coming from the perspective of one that not only spent her life absorbing reincarnation as a tenet of her Shinto lifestyle but also being conscious of how it works simply by EXPERIENCE by now, is aware of how Kagome's spiritual journey is a continuation of her own and is therefore much further along in potential and power than her past counterpart. She has, after all, acknowledged that Kagome IS her before, and no matter how painful it might be to admit deep down, it's probably very clear to her by now that Kagome will be far greater in strength than she was.
Inuyasha on the other hand is still the same boy Kikyou knew fifty years ago, and she has no real way of knowing how strong he's become. Perhaps due to her bias as one of the dead, stuck in the moment of death where nothing ever moves forward for her, Kikyou isn't capable of conceiving of Inuyasha progressing either. After all, she killed him too on that day fifty years in the past, so that would be all the more reason for her to imagine he's more like her than one of the living. And if he could be felled by her back then, he could also be felled by Kagome or even Tsubaki now in a similar context.
Or maybe she's still got a hankering to kill Inuyasha herself and doesn't want anyone else horning in on her territory. I don't know. It's not like she's going to make good on her threats to Tsubaki earlier. It would no doubt take things a bit far off the track to have Kikyou get in on this fight. Or perhaps just too much to keep track of.
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