Can't be pleasant, that's for sure. Corpses aren't known for smelling sweet even a few hours after death. But they HAD been dead for a few years, so I'm guessing most of the more nasty scent of decomposition was probably long gone before resurrection. I guess that does beg the question, since they have their flesh back, what scent they've kept. Is it musty bones or rotting meat? Inuyasha hasn't really specified anything other than "grave dirt", but that's not a particularly distinct smell to someone without a dog nose. Dirt is dirt to me, so he's going to have to elaborate if he wants to get the concept across.
Dammit, Inuyasha, this is precisely why you always confirm the kill! Especially with zombies!
Inuyasha leaps over the toppled roof, hand at the ready on Tessaiga's hilt as he asks Ginkotsu if he STILL wants to fight. Ginkotsu responds with a gurgle and shooting his grappling hook at Inuyasha, which is as good a confirmation that he's not there to talk out their differences as any. Inuyasha knocks the hook away while drawing his sword, yelling that it's useless. Ginkotsu wordlessly launches several weights from over his back, each pulling a separate wire. They wind around an alarmed Inuyasha, wrapping around his middle and every limb. Once he's landed on solid ground again. Inuyasha tugs on these wires, finding that one wound around his arm was drawing blood, but he doesn't seem upset so much as annoyed.
Ginkotsu slurs that he got Inuyasha, but Inuyasha accuses him of possibly being dumb, because...
I wouldn't say drawing blood isn't WORKING, but Inuyasha is doing a good job treating it like water off a ducks back, at least.
Ginkotsu actually breaks the damn stairs as he tumbles backward down them, the sheer weight of his machinery carving through them. Inuyasha watches and scoffs, halfway through a smug statement of victory when he notices the smell of smoke. He looks back up the stairs to where he sees it billowing from inside the temple, in a state of shock that Ginkotsu's return couldn't produce.
He yells Kagome's name and starts leaping back up the stairs in order to get to her, but pauses when he sees Renkotsu at the top.
Looks like he's revealing a much anticipated eyeshadow palette.
Inuyasha is confused, because he was so convinced that this guy smelled like a regular human before, and Renkotsu notes the bewildered expression on his face, asking sardonically what's up. He correctly guesses the obvious fact that Inuyasha's good nose seemed to indicate that kind monk Renkotsu didn't have a eau de corpse-and-burial-soil whiff on him. Renkotsu doesn't really have to explain the trick, because Inuyasha scowls as an epiphany that it's this PLACE hits him, but Renkotsu gives him the long of the short of it anyway: he chuckles that it was worthwhile to stay in a temple that has burial soil all around it, allowing his scent to blend in. It also didn't hurt that he stole the clothes of the monks that USED to live here, which was enough for Inuyasha's nose to not catch wind of anything funny.
Inuyasha's teeth grind in fury, his next realization coming out as the accusation that Renkotsu killed the priests here. Renkotsu admits that they were the ones Inuyasha saw earlier, the charred bodies he was burying when Inuyasha came in. Inuyasha's nose twitches. Clearly, he has run out of ways to express his pure rage at this deadly ruse.
The flames crackle around Kagome and friends snoozing uninterrupted in the burning temple. Shippou is also still out cold on Kagome's shoulder when Myouga hops up and calls out to him to wake up.
Man, Myouga really got the short end of the youkai-ability-stick, didn't he? Getting flattened every time he helps someone out with it.
As Myouga flutters down from Shippou's palm, Shippou drowsily tries to determine what happened to him. He remembers falling asleep from the smoke incense from the burner that priest brought in before finally noticing the flames licking at the walls and freaking out. He flits between Miroku, Sango and Kagome, wailing at them to wake up, but he's not having much success.
Inuyasha is still growing at that bastard Renkotsu outside, cursing him for setting fire to the temple. Renkotsu describes it as a ceremonial pyre to send them to the afterlife, laughing that Inuyasha's group was just about dead from poison anyway. Inuyasha has heard just about enough, raising Tessaiga over his shoulder and charging, yelling at Renkotsu to get out of his way. An ax on a chain wraps around Tessaiga's blade from below, a projectile launched from a Ginkotsu that managed to pull himself to his feet again.
Was Renkotsu some kind of circus performer before he joined the Shichinin-tai or what? This seems more like a big-top show than a battle at this point.
Renkotsu pulls back on his OWN set of wires attached to Inuyasha, no doubt thrown out with the fire on them on the prior page, chuckling that he's not letting Inuyasha pass. Inuyasha winces against the fire, cursing up a storm. Though his hair appears remarkably untouched by the flames, I'm still imagining that burning hair smell and it's like 1000x worse that what I'm thinking the Shichinin-tai smell like.
I just REALLY hate the smell of burning hair.
After a narrow sky transition panel to the surrounding misty forested hills, Kouga's entourage is speeding along, wolves first followed by the humanoid ones. They seem surprised by something ahead, and Mohawk starts to alert Kouga himself, far in front of the pack, of the smell of fire and smoke. But Kouga snaps he knows, but he's much more worried about the smell of corpses and burial soil.
Then a flash like lighting strikes out before him.
Jakostu stands on a nearby hill, and pulls back the blades of his sword into place at the hilt casually. He asks for confirmation that Kouga is the leader of the wolf tribe, looking more curious than anything. Kouga's two lackeys sweatdrop, Two-Tone muttering that another strange dude has come out of the woodwork. Coming from the fur-clad cave-dwellers, that's a little rich, but also neither here nor there.
Kouga calls Jakotsu a bastard, deducing that he's the ally of that Kyoukotsu defeated not too long ago, owing to the fact that they have the same smell. Kouga asks if he's come for his revenge, but Jakotsu takes a moment to examine Kouga through an unrelenting stare for a couple of moments. He assesses the short loincloth something of a turn-on, but in the end sighs, frustrated that Kouga is STILL not quite his type. Kouga tries to consult with Two-Tone and Mohawk on what this idiot is even talking about, but they both claim to have not the foggiest idea. Their expression tell a different story, though.
Swinging his sword lazily, Jakotsu promises to finish Kouga off quickly. Kouga claims that's HIS line, but he's not really the one with the upper hand here.
Oh yeah, he hasn't heard the punny name yet.
Jakotsu tells him to stop resisting, because he's in a bit of a hurry, having been promised that he can see Inuyasha's last moments if he hurries this little task up. He's not counting on it, but he clearly has some hope despite his lowered expectations. Weirdly, I want to say good for him? Meanwhile, the little bit about Inuyasha's impending last moments catches Kouga's attention, and he's caught in an alarmed disbelief.
Back at the temple, now ENGULFED in flames, Shippou has all his unconscious friends shoved in a pile against the transformed Kirara, who probably did that labor. Shippou has got his hands full with maintaining his foxfire projected out all around them in a protective bubble, trembling little arms flung out. He stutters for them not to worry, that he's here, and promises to protect them with his foxfire until Inuyasha shows up. But he wails, not particularly confident in his ability to hold out that long. This is when Myouga calls out from Kagome's neck that their breathing has STOPPED.
How long can YOU go without breathing?
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? For once, I can say that the many cuts and jarring switches between characters works here. There are many different related things happening with different characters, and it's all important to the bigger, VERY STRESSFUL, picture. Not only is it crucial to know how Kagome, Sango and Miroku are doing while Shippou tries to protect them, it's important to know how tied up (literally) Inuyasha is and how it's preventing him from coming to their rescue, it's important to see Kouga learning that Inuyasha and his group are in danger, and it's important to understand that it's all happening at the SAME TIME. And the constant snapping between all their circumstances builds tension effectively by creating this feeling that you can't pay attention to everything at once; like Inuyasha, you cannot PHYSICALLY handle all of the shit that is going down, and it magnifies the natural anxiety of the situation.
After all, it's very clear, especially by the end of the chapter, that this is the most vulnerable Inuyasha and company have ever been. Even when they've come close to death before, they've still been actively fighting and struggling. Most of the group being lost in unconsciousness and unable to wake up for so much as a snarl at the enemy is SCARY. We have never seen them in such a dire state before, let alone so many of them together, so there's fewer avenues for them getting help. It really makes the reader question their assumption that these characters are going to make it to the other side of the crisis.
I mean, I've read this story multiple times, so my questioning of that fact is diminished to damn near nothing. But for a NEW reader...
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