I'll join it if the castle has AC, because my apartment DOES NOT. I now live in the Pacific Northwest, and moved here with the expectation that the summers would not be nearly as intense as those in Virginia. Rather shortsighted for someone who has some rather acute climate anxiety, I must admit. We were all pretty blind-sided by the extreme heat recently, my husband and I caught without so much as a fan anymore, having purged a lot of our more clumsy belongings during our big move across the US. We spent the whole weekend hugging ice-packs and fanning ourselves manually with a folded fan my husband fashioned from one of his composite watercolor sheets.
What does this have to do with Inuyasha? We named the fan Kagura.
Something I'm sure Kouga would want to fight about. Not that there's much he WOULDN'T fight about.
Two-tone brings up a fair point here - where does Kouga plan on looking for Naraku now? Did he pick up a clue that the other visitors to the abandoned castle that the others (especially KIKYOU) somehow missed?
Nah, he thrusts a fist into his opposite palm, expressing his plan to go beat the information out of INUYASHA. It seems reasonable to Kouga's two underlings that Inuyasha might know something, but I'm seriously perplexed. For real, Kouga? You think INUYASHA knows jack shit about what happened to Naraku? I mean, I know you probably smell him here from his recent visit, but really...
He kicks up a dust-cyclone as he speeds off, leaving behind his protesting followers, who whine at him to wait up and not leave them behind. He's not listening, focused on reasoning out how he knows Naraku isn't there; if he were, he'd be out to get those Shikon shards in Kouga's legs without a doubt. Bulletproof logic, right there, though why he NEEDS it is a little confusing. Does he think Inuyasha is going to quiz him when the meet up or something? Grill him on any fallacies he may have used?
Back at the castle, through the corridors, down the steps and below the floor where Kagura was pulled a few chapters ago...
Ugh, it already looks like something a cat coughed up.
Narrow sky transition panel! Kagome hums when Miroku asks her what's wrong as they meander down a road, and she says that she senses a Shikon fragment nearby. Miroku, Sango and Shippou immediately turn at a whizzing sound emerging behind them, and the whirlwind poking up out of the trees in tandem. Inuyasha cracks his knuckles in anticipation of a fight, snarling that it's no wonder he smelled something nasty, and Kagome asks him if he's really angry already. Come on, girl, you know it's a perpetual issue.
Inuyasha lunges forward, complaining that Kouga's come to make yet another pass at his girl, though he fails to listen to a warning call from said girl as he does so.
Did he just bounce off Inuyasha's head to vault over Kagome and land perfectly?? I swear, if these guys got a clue and sold tickets for their antics, they would be swimming in cash.
Kouga gets real up close and personal with Kagome, holding her hands and asking in a serious tone if she's been well. She sweatdrops in discomfort, smiling at the lunatic anyway, as is a lady's cautious way. Veins popping and steam issuing from the top of his head, Inuyasha inserts himself in between them, facing Kouga with murder in his expression. I mean, if looks could kill, right? Kouga casually refers to Inuyasha as his favorite pet name for him, Dog-Turd, and promptly demands that Inuyasha tell him everything he knows about Naraku bouncing without a trace.
Still practically touching foreheads, Inuyasha asks if that's all Kouga came for, and when Kouga responds that there's no possible other reason for his being here, Inuyasha barks at him not to get all friendly with Kagome then. Kouga snaps back a demand that Inuyasha respond to the damn question he asked. Miroku steps forward to admit that they too are searching for Naraku's new location, and Kouga isn't buying it. He asks why Naraku would abandon his castle anyway.
This is Inuyasha's moment, and he's wearing the smirk to match. Scoffing, Inuyasha smugly asks if Kouga really wants to know why Naraku fled. Kouga makes a curious noise at him.
Oh, Inuyasha is REVELING in that shocked expression on Kouga's face. But when Inuyasha boasts at how surprised Kouga looks, Kouga mutters that Inuyasha cornered Naraku that fully, then turns livid to shout in disbelief that such an idiot let him get away under those perfect circumstances. Inuyasha's expression immediately crumples and he recoils in his own alarm at how his proud announcement was turned back on him.
Kouga swivels and face-palms, sighing at how pathetic this is and claiming that if he'd been there, he'd have finished Naraku off. Kagome has to try to soothe Inuyasha, standing in his way with a strained smile, as Inuyasha has a hand on Tessaiga while he yells a threat at Kouga and tells him to cut out that selfish bullshit. He's putting in way too much effort for a sentiment that could just be expressed with a single jerk-off motion in my opinion.
Suddenly, Kouga's nose picks up something, represented by a starburst effect behind it and his serious hum. Inuyasha has also noticed the intrusion of Naraku's smell when Two-Tone and Mohawk burst out of the foliage nearby, calling to Kouga in a panic. Respectively, they provide pieces of the news that something has come out from Naraku's castle.
Eat your heart out, Yura. Or, comb, in her case.
Sango stutters out a question about what that thing is, and Miroku suggests an offspring of Naraku while Shippou just blurts its one distinguishing quality: hair. Kouga asks his boys for confirmation that this thing came from Naraku's castle, and Two-Tone says this is the thing that crawled out of there alright. Because he didn't smell this thing earlier, Kouga is understandably questioning what the hell is going on here. And Because RT is inconsistent with when she remembers that these characters have a hyper sense of smell, I was ready to just assume it just escaped her again.
The hairball grunts and gurgles about a Shikon fragment, Kouga, Kagome and Inuyasha all staring open-mouthed at it for a moment. Inuyasha regains his senses to jump in front of Kagome and snap at her to get back, reiterating that this giant hairy thing is after Shikon shards, assuming apparently that she couldn't make out the creature's poor mastery of language. Kagome responds with a hilarious "uh, yeah" behind him, which I like to read as sarcastic, even if I know that's not how it was intended.
The monster gurgles again, shooting several locks of hair at Inuyasha. He runs toward it, insulting its fucking bizarre body, but considering it fortunate that the thing can talk. Inuyasha either catches and holds a loop of hair in his fist, or the hair itself catches and wraps around his hand, it's a little difficult to tell. Maybe both? Anyway, Inuyasha yanks back on the hunk of hair his fingers are entangled in.
Brute strength indeed; it's quite the crater that Inuyasha creates slamming this thing into the ground. So much so that it looks like a cliff or something in the next panel when Inuyasha screams down at it to tell him where Naraku is. The hairball gurgles once more, some more hair standing up from behind it to slither at Kagome. Inuyasha turns to yell her name, but it's obvious he's a bit tangled up at the moment.
Kouga shouts over his shoulder that he'll leave the monster to ol' Dog-Turd while he takes Kagome to a safe place, though Kagome responds with a unsettled noise. Inuyasha yells at that self-centered bastard, clumps of hair still clutched in his fists. Those clumps are not secure as it turns out, and begin to detach from the creature.
Okay, not only is this actually a cliff, which materialized out of nowhere based on the view we got of this area earlier in the chapter, but this looks familiar.
TOO FAMILIAR.
Is this the most unintentionally hilarious thing I've seen in this comic thus far, and you're going to have to excuse me so I can learn how to BREATHE again.
...
... And my lungs are working once more. We're good.
Anyhow, as Inuyasha examines the locks of hair still wrapped around his fists, Sango steps forward to comment on how weak that thing was for a Naraku incarnation. Inuyasha begs to differ, asserting that it fell over the cliff deliberately, going after the Shikon fragments. What, did Kouga deliberately run UNDER the monster hanging over the cliff for some reason?
Transition to Kouga still sprinting with Kagome in his arms, who's telling him to hold up, and asking just how far he plans on running. Not far at all, apparently. Kouga says that Inuyasha, the hopeless bastard he is, apparently let the monster get away. Kagome appears a little mystified by this, again making confused noises.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? It turned into kind of a mess there at the end, to the point where even one of the characters was confused. The creature from the castle doesn't appear to have any concrete physical rules to how it behaves, which is a little frustrating. It didn't start out the chapter able to move as fast as Kouga, since it could only keep up with his toadies, but by the end of the chapter Kouga isn't able to outrun it for some reason? We also don't really know why Kouga wasn't able to smell the thing at first even though this fact was specifically pointed out. I can't really remember from my previous Inuyasha readings if there was a reason given eventually, so I'll hold out for an explanation. If I had to guess, it's probably because the monster was in a bunch of tiny disjointed pieces at the beginning, only melding together after Kouga left, so its parts were not detectable as the coherent scent of one whole being.
But, that's just a guess.
There was no way of telling a cliff was in the geography from the previous shots of the landscape we got, so it kind of came across as an add-in when RT realized she needed a plausible way for the monster to get away from Inuyasha. But this solution ended up creating an unfortunate visual parallel between Kikyou and the creature that... I can't unsee now. I'll probably be thinking of this hairy-vagina monster every time I see Kikyou now, which might take away a LOT of the gravity from the character. I'm both saddened by this and truly amused, dreading and anticipating making this reference in future chapters, all at once.
Congratulations RT: you've made my feelings toward your serious priestess lady a mess of a contradiction. I will have you pen for this, by thunder!
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