Kagome yells at Inuyasha to dodge it, Sango adding that these kids will blast right through him with their mysterious weapon. But Inuyasha ignores their alarm, surprised to find that the light emitted at him by the children has a SCENT. He deduces that INSIDE the light is the real body, and he can cut it, swinging down his sword to do so as the beams start to converge on him.
Inuyasha smirks and scoffs at the kids, who recoil from his triumphant attitude. They're in for it NOW. And by "it", I mean just a lightning fast knock on the head from Inuyasha's fist, and an instant raised lump as a result. They cry out, their little masks dislodged by the minor violence Inuyasha has inflicted on them, and one of them yelps that he's a fucking bastard. As if he attacked them unprovoked.
Miroku mutters that they were just ordinary children after all, but as she kneels next to the corpses of the youkai from their packs, Sango wonders aloud how they managed to do all this. Inuyasha takes it upon himself to do the OFFICIAL interrogation, demanding the brats confess how they got their hands on the pots on their backs. They're resistant, telling him to shut up, and that they'd die before telling him anything. Wrong thing to say to Inuyasha.
Kagome leans down to lecture a sweating, nervous child about how they REALLY shouldn't carry the pots on their backs, because children doing dangerous things like this will ensure they end up in a bad situation someday. Sounds more like a threat than sound advice. The boisterous leader of the children yells at them to get lost, looking like he's prepared to bolt any second, but his fellows are still on the ground. They maintain that they'll never lose to a youkai with these "goryou-pots", despite the fact that they JUST DID, as Shippou points out shrewdly.
The rest of the children jump up and flee, a couple looking over their shoulders to throw out a promise that they'll get Inuyasha and company for this, and they won't go easy on them next time. Hey, whatever it takes to nurse their pride.
As Miroku and Sango watch the kids scramble off into the distance, the latter comments on how their attitude clashes with their self-proclaimed "gyouja" title. My thoughts exactly. Sango adds that she's doubtful these kids got the kind of special youkai extermination training she did. Miroku says that the brats look a little shabby to be working for Naraku, like they thought at first. Shabby can work, but these kids aren't no Baker Street Irregulars.
Narrow sky transition panel to the mountains among which Gakusanjin's body lays. Kagura floats near his head on her giant feather. She's apparently confirming for herself that Gakusanjin is dead, and admits that it worries her. She's convinced that Naraku stole the fuyouheki off Gakusanjin to give it to his little demonic infant, and thinks it likely that Gakusanjin was going after Naraku to get it back. She's got some suspicions about the motivations of the ones who killed Gakusanjin, but at the very least she supposes that they should be nearby, and could provide her a clue to the baby's location.
She's in her Veronica Mars era and I LOVE that for her.
Meanwhile, Inuyasha and his crew are already hot on the trail of the clues she is after, reproducing yet again that iconic and somewhat overdone travel panel.
At the entrance to the building, light bubbles out and then shoots toward them. Kagome shouts a somewhat unneeded warning about this, and Inuyasha guesses that they have come across the allies of those brats from earlier. Sango is at last alarmed, yelling that there's a whole lot of them. But Inuyasha scoffs, saying it's no problem to just cut the body he discovered in the last scuffle.
Again, the light fades into little weird snake-like creatures falling dead where they were hit, and a great number of little boys stand in the open gateway pointing the openings of their pots toward Inuyasha and company, gaping in disbelief at this guy who killed their brilliant serving youkai. Clearly they haven't ever faced a situation where the pots weren't effective, so they're just flabbergasted. Kagome comments on how the whole crowd of opposition facing them is composed entirely of children as Inuyasha lunges forward, suggesting they just charge on in. The kids turn tail and run at the advancing force they can't handle, calling for Goryoumaru-sama.
The shadowy figure from the previous chapter is sitting in a dark room looking over his shoulder at the paper door, like he's waiting for the right moment to go out and rescue all these children crying for him. It's not the MOST sympathetic picture, even though in the next one, he's using a scarred left hand to restrain his right at the shoulder, which is huge and clawed like that of a bear, with tendrils sprouting out of it somewhere around the wrist. It's still pretty shadowed, though, so that's only a vague impression.
Thankfully, though, it doesn't have to be obscure for long. The children all huddle on Goryoumaru's stoop, Inuyasha continuing to approach them with Tessaiga held in front of him. He's not coming across as super sympathetic here either, to be fair. A voice from the other side of the cracked door tells the kids to stand back.
Inuyasha's group is shocked and horrified by it without the claws and tendrils regardless, and Miroku even holds up his right fist in preparation to rip the sealing beads off his Kazaana, as he and a clearly disturbed Sango declare in disbelief that this guy is a youkai. They bust into the guy's home, terrorize his children, and then look like they're on the verge of killing him for his appearance. What are they? ICE?
The children surrounding him yell at the invaders to get real, insisting Goryoumaru isn't a youkai. Inuyasha scoffs that appearance aside, Goryoumaru's body is absolutely REEKING of youkai. Has just being a youkai become a crime? Shippou and Kirara better watch out... Goryoumaru responds with a similar scoff to Inuyasha's, specifically about the smell of youkai pervading his body.
Meanwhile:
It becomes clear to those at the temple, at least, when these youkai descend upon the roof. Kagome narrates this phenomenon with alarm, and Goryoumaru turns to one of the children, inquiring about their pots. The kid stutters that they were abandoned, because the light inside them was cut. Goryoumaru mutters his acceptance of the situation, then addresses the youkai that he assumes gathered due to the goryou pots being rendered useless.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? I'm a little uncomfortable with how Inuyasha's group looks pursuing this lead. There's this emphasis on Goryoumaru's youkai-ness as a justification for attacking him, and the counter-argument isn't that this doesn't or shouldn't matter, but that he actually ISN'T a youkai, despite all appearances. He was initially being pursued in connection with another youkai's murder and a connection to Naraku, but the dialog toward the end of the chapter indicates that simple prejudice is driving the argument behind the attack.
It's possible that it's an attempt to play off of the children's clear prejudice, trying to get them to abandon and not protect Goryoumaru, but there's no real indication of that. Inuyasha's group seems alarmed and even DISGUSTED by the appearance and smell of youki on Goryoumaru. This is bizarre, given that two of the group are youkai (Shippou and Kirara), one of them is a half-youkai, and their whole reason for locating Moryoumaru was because a YOUKAI was taken out by his little child soldiers. This prejudicial attitude that Inuyasha's group is displaying doesn't come out of nowhere necessarily, since we've seen it sprinkled around, most recently in that side arc with Shima and her youkai suitor/stalker, so I'm not critical of this over a sudden introduction. I might even think it was quite interesting to give the main characters a prejudice if it were to give them fallibility that they would have to overcome.
But, as I mentioned in the cold open, even if I hadn't read this arc before, the similarity between Moryoumaru and Goryoumaru's names ALREADY establishes at least a connection between them, and from there a connection to Naraku. The immediate distrust of Goryoumaru will inevitably end up being justified, and I don't feel like that's any kind of spoiler for that very reason. I feel like RT should have just stuck to the clues leading the group to the conclusion that Goryoumaru is an agent of Naraku, and left this weird emphasis on his youkai appearance aside. Unless she's going to SAY something about the nature of a bias gumming up the way we see people, it might instead lead the reader to believe that our basest prejudices should be honored.
And I have to say, now more than ever, I feel like that's a VERY dangerous thing to even imply.
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