Oh, no, this kid is already taking way too many suggestions. He's already killed most of his family, acted as bait for his sister to steal and betray her friends, attempted MORE murder on those friends, not to mention all the murder he's done on village randos. All this at the whim of a sickly dickbag who just wants to mess with him and the people connected to him. Time to stop up that suggestion box, little man. Gotta close that damn bureau already, because all these incoming propositions ain't working.
Especially when every single slip in the box is from THIS weirdo:
Inuyasha asserts to that bastard Naraku that THIS TIME he's not getting away. Clearly someone hasn't read the over 500-chapter script. He then leaps forward with Tessaiga raised, telling Naraku to prepare to die, but Sesshoumaru rushes ahead of him to slash at Naraku first, claiming that Naraku is HIS prey. Girls, girls... try not to dub a guy you're not going to eat, not least of all because he would taste like mouthful of bitter incel poison, as "prey". It makes you look like a twat.
Naraku bends in the force of Sesshoumaru's stroke, and then releases a giant cloud of miasma at the brothers, who brace against it as it swirls up into the sky, carrying Naraku with it. Sesshoumaru's aura expands and stirs, Inuyasha giving him a wary glance. He sure doesn't look HAPPY.
EXACT face I make when I wake up in the middle of the night with neck pain. Same SFX too. Seems that Sesshoumaru and I have more in common than I thought.
The miasma cloud chuckles at Sesshoumaru darkly, advising him to run to find his little girl instead of transforming to chase him. Sesshoumaru does indeed pause, leaving Inuyasha study him, wondering what in the world this "little girl" business is about. From his cloud, Naraku says Rin is currently in Kohaku's company, and Inuyasha sweatdrops at the familiar name. In fact, as the cloud fades into nothing, Naraku suggests that Inuyasha should know the ominous meaning of this circumstance.
Dammit! Didn't take the suggestion box down soon enough. Rats.
Inuyasha recalls that Kohaku is being controlled by Naraku through the Shikon fragment in his back, as pictured above. You know, just in case this is the first chapter of Inuyasha you stumbled across and you wanted to ask what the fuck a Shikon fragment was instead of how precisely this kid was being controlled. Inuyasha puts away Tessaiga as he muses on the fact that Kohaku would kill anyone Naraku ordered him to, no matter who they were. He glances at Sesshoumaru out of his periphery, asking if even his untouchable brother can be held hostage.
Said untouchable brother is just kind of... staring into space. He seems to have just realized that kidnapping Rin was all in service to buying Naraku time to run away, silently complaining about what an underhanded guy Naraku is. Yeah, if he wanted to be a REAL great youkai, like a certain someone he was trying to emulate, he should have foregone the contingency plan to make a quick getaway in case of emergency altogether and just gotten his sorry ass handed to him. JUST LIKE A REAL WINNER.
Sesshoumaru rises into the sky on his weird furry shoulder-pillow/mane thing, the end of which splits into several, making it even weirder. Inuyasha protests his exit, as if he actually expected the withdrawn Sesshoumaru to just sit down and patiently explain how a little baby human is following him around now because he couldn't keep his magical life-giving sword in his pants. Sheath. Whatever. Meanwhile, Jaken pops out from around a stone he hid behind while the danger was big, chasing Sesshoumaru's figure receding into the sky, begging not to be left behind. He's flattened onto his belly by Inuyasha's foot, so Inuyasha can pick him up by the back of his collar and give him a sardonic greeting. Jaken addresses HIM in panic.
Inuyasha demands that Jaken tell him what happened between Sesshoumaru and Naraku, and Jaken at first refuses to talk to some measly hanyou. Bad move.
Yeah, not sure how Jaken thought mouthing off to the surprise badass in this fight was a good idea. Maybe the rock was big enough to hide all the context of the situation after all.
Back on the remote forest hillside, the horde of youkai that were milling around Kohaku and Rin's hiding place are now actively lunging and flying at Inuyasha's friends. Shippou cries from a crouched Kagome's arms that the horde is coming this way, as Sango and Miroku brace themselves to fight. Sango throws Hiraikotsu, calling its name, as you do, taking out a whole line of the damn things. Miroku whacks one with his staff as he grunts that this bunch is OF COURSE here to keep them from getting to the building beyond.
While Miroku and Sango smash all these damn youkai, Kagome spots a couple of figures running from the building.
He just wants to avoid the embarrassment of having to correct his sister's gushing assumptions that his new buddy is a girlfriend.
But Sango has definitely noticed her little brother getting out of there, calling to him. A fresh wave of youkai tries to flank her, though, and she smacks them around with her Hiraikotsu, screaming at them for being in the way. Because Sango is all tied up in the battle, Kagome moves to get up, mumbling that she's gotta go after him. Shippou clings to her arm, crying out to her in warning, and the both of them end up cringing from the two youkai who are heading straight for them. Miroku yells to Kagome, but he's a bit preoccupied holding off a wave of his own to defend her.
Kagome, where is your DAMN BOW???
It's conveniently gone so Inuyasha can leap out of nowhere heroically and rip apart the flying snakes going after his girl with his claws. And a declaration of Sankontessou for style. Kagome barely shield's Shippou with an arm as she gapes at Inuyasha. She drops to her knees again, stuttering his name, while he shouts over his shoulder, asking if Kohaku wasn't just around. Kagome says they can still make it, since the Shikon shard she's sensing from him isn't far away. Sango now notices Inuyasha from her position on Kirara in the air, and as Inuyasha hoists Kagome up on his back, he calls to her that they're going on ahead - it seems to him that time is short.
While they're heading in the direction Kagome's Shikon-sense is leading them, it appears Inuyasha is catching her up on what he learned from Jaken. He confirms for her that the little girl she saw was hanging with Sesshoumaru originally. Though it's a bit unbelievable to Inuyasha that a guy who thinks of humans as mere bugs would take a human child along on his travels for funsies, he knows that whatever is happening here is a bad combination. He reasons that Naraku planted a suggestion in Kohaku to kill the hostage, and Sesshoumaru wouldn't be very likely to spare Naraku's subordinate, because of the nasty sport Naraku made of him back at the castle. Coming from a guy who doesn't know Sesshoumaru has made a precedent of sparing one of Naraku's subordinates before, of course. He's sure Sesshoumaru will kill Kohaku.
Kagome begins to put two-and-two together, which is easy despite her struggles with math back in her timeline. She works out that this little scheme sets up Inuyasha's brother to murder Sango's brother, which Inuyasha rightly assesses as a BAD TIME for everyone. Kagome suggests that they can curb this disaster by getting to Kohaku before Sesshoumaru, and Inuyasha agrees, asserting that no one will be able to stop Sesshoumaru but him.
In the forest ahead, Kohaku and Rin have ditched their snake-dragon ride and Kohaku is pulling Rin along by the hand on foot. Rin asks him why they ran away to this place, and if the wasn't someone outside their hideout when they left, and where they're going now. Kohaku remains quiet, despite Rin continuing to address him. His head is rather preoccupied at the moment.
Preoccupied with MURDER THOUGHTS.
He raises his sickle, pulling Rin almost level with him and looking at her blankly. The all-encompassing order to kill her echoes in his head again as she just stares up at him, looking somewhat confused. A slicing sound effect later, Rin has fallen to her backside, having just avoided his monotonous attempt to behead her. She stutters his name in question, but he only answers with another swing of the sickle that she dodges with her hands over her head and a scream. She tries to crawl away, but simultaneously looks over her shoulder to ask what's happened innocently. Still keeping him in her periphery, Rin gets to her feet and begins to run, thinking his expression has changed. I wouldn't say "changed" so much as disappeared completely.
Rin's flight is cut short when the weighted chain on the handle of Kohaku's sickle wraps around her angle and drags her down, and she falls right on her face. It's somewhat... hilarious? Her fingers on her hands are splayed out and there's a splat sound effect and everything. Not sure this is the appropriate moment for slapstick depictions of falling, RT, but okaaaaaay... Kohaku kneels next to Rin and turns her over; she appears to have been knocked unconscious. He raises the sickle again, but he pauses a beat.
I hope so too, because I think I've had my fill of graphic child death in this comic, thanks.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? The end of the battle was a little abrupt, but that wasn't awful. It makes sense that once it hit Naraku that he wasn't going to be able to follow through with his scheme now that Inuyasha was there, he'd definitely want to make a quick exit. I think Sesshoumaru was a little TOO quickly convinced that he needed to forego pursuing Naraku in order to go after Rin instead, especially when there wasn't any indication that he had picked up on her scent or otherwise knew where she was now. Then again, the guy IS known for just wandering away from fights on his own with the flimsiest of excuses, so that angle might lend a little legitimacy to the situation.
Kagome's missing bow was totally illegitimate, though, and it was annoying that she had to be rendered helpless - whether it was because Inuyasha had to rescue her for some inexplicable reason, or because she had to be free from battle to tag along with Inuyasha running to stop Sesshoumaru, it's a very glaring omission. As conscious as RT seems to be in making her female characters strong and capable, it's moments like these that have me scratching my head, because it seems to kind of move that progressive coding back a little.
Maybe most of the effort here went into showing the audience the multifaceted nature of Naraku's planning because that was the really solid part of the chapter. Not only did Naraku foresee the possibility that his scheme won't necessarily go the way he wants (more than the minimal to ZERO planning our heroes do on the regular), but it also gives us the indirect impression of just how much research Naraku had to do. In all that spying on Sesshoumaru, and Rin's field raids for the opportunity to snatch her, he was doing, clearly he understood how little of an eye he was keeping on Inuyasha or other enemies in the meantime. And he had to have known that if anyone else showed up while he was entertaining Sesshoumaru, there was no way he'd be able to survive a split in his attention. It was a very simple diversion he set up so he could escape from such a situation, but it's refreshing to see a villain with a basic "tactical" mindset that takes into accounts all those uncontrollable angles. Usually the villain starts and ends their planning with whatever they know and the things they didn't even consider is what gets them defeated in the end, so this is a little more engaging as far as how the villain is thwarted goes.
Can we also take a moment to appreciate how innocently Rin views Kohaku's sudden violent attacks on her? She automatically assumes something's happened, and isn't jaded or bitter enough to believe the nice boy she's been bonding with all night would hurt her unless something was wrong. This kid is such a precious cinnamon roll and while she absolutely doesn't deserve this shit, she's just the kind of friend someone like Kohaku needs; someone who intuitively understands that he's not what Naraku makes him do.
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