Kurama, looking so much more invested in this than Hiei, puts forth his own awed commentary that both opponents took clean hits, and this match could end in a draw. But Koto only get to the count of two when her attention is drawn to the edge of the ring, where a set of fingers grip from below the edge. It's Rinku who pulls himself up, grunting, and leaps back onto the platform. His shirt has a rip in it where Kuwabara pierced it with his Aura Sword, but there's no visible wound there in the flesh beneath. It would probably be distasteful to show the child bleeding out.
The crowd cheers that Rinku is back up, and declares that the Jolly Devil Six will be winning this one. Rinku puts his hands over his smarting belly, complaining that he had a LOT more trouble with this battle than he had anticipated, and he has to focus his aura now on patching himself up.
Kuwabara stumbles to his feet, still off the platform, but he's still causing Rinku some anxiety with his tenacity. Rinku can't help but yelp about Kuwabara being back on his feet, asking what the hell this guy is MADE OF. Throwing out a hand toward Kuwabara, Rinku grunts in effort again, and Kuwabara is confused at first.
But Kuwabara is having trouble accepting it. He asks who cares, roaring that he can still fight and straining against his yo-yo bonds. Rinku recoils, shivering as he thinks that he BELIEVES Kuwabara, because he's never seen anyone so stubborn in his life. Meanwhile, Kurama is praising Rinku for being so masterful as to be able to control his yo-yos even when he's not connected to them. Hiei scoffs that they lost by the rules, seemingly only really concerned with the outcome.
The scoreboard announces both in print and by speaker that the first round goes to Team Jolly Devil Six. Finally free of the yo-yos Kuwabara points to Rinku and vows that they'll finish this later, though Rinku grumbles that it's not likely.
Kurama volunteers to go next, and his opponent, a guy with short hair standing at a spiked angle and black scleras, says straight up that he's not an honest fighter like Rinku. He prefers the EASY WAY.
Hiei calls out to Kurama, and when he looks back, tells him not to pull any punches out there because the opposite team have got to start thinking twice when fighting them in the future. Kurama assures him that he knows. Kuwabara appears to be standing tall and perfectly well again when he says to his remaining teammates that there's something he's been wondering about; where Kurama keeps his Rose Whip. Hiei says that it's contained in a simple little rosebud, and smirks as he exposits that ANY plant is a weapon in Kurama's hands, a simple weed on the street liable to turn into a razor sharp blade stronger than steel. When are they going to make out?
The match between Kurama and his black-eyed opponent Roto is begun, and Roto IMMEDIATELY starts in with some trash-talk. He sneers about hearing that Kurama lives with a human, and says that's hard for him to figure, asking if it's some sort of "family" thing with a chuckle. Not sure what he's getting at there, and perhaps Kurama isn't either, because he just... doesn't say anything, looking off to the side. Probably a smart move.
For a single panel, we go to the stands, where Shizuru drawls that the long-haired kid isn't a human, and Keiko seems amazed that she can tell. Wait, hasn't she MET Kurama before? At LEAST when he was in the midst of training Kuwabara for a couple of months? I have a hard time believing that this is an assessment she's made just in the past SECOND.
Anyway, Roto leans down, bracing one hand on the ground while he curls the other out behind him, the middle finger of which stretches and morphs into a long scythe-like extension. He asks if Kurama would be real sad if the human he lived with died, but Kurama just mutters that Roto is a weasel with a sickle.
Kurama zips behind Roto and murmurs to him that he's adequate, but not much better than that, and he'll end this whole thing quickly. Roto's bewildered expression flips back to a smirk when he tells "Suichi Minamino" that his mother's life is in his enemy's hands. Kurama freezes in his chopping motion at the back of Roto's neck in alarm, then leaps backward once more as Roto swings the finger-scythe back toward him. He hasn't escaped - he looks up again with a thin gash dripping blood down his cheek. Hiei looks up at this with mild surprise, but Kuwabara clenches his teeth in his tension, asking through them why Kurama has slowed down.
Roto suggests that Kurama wouldn't like this development, given he's such a devoted "son" and all. He really did his research, huh? Kurama drops his defensive stance and just STANDS there silently, looking a bit put out. Roto chuckles, retracting that massive scythe-like claw, because he thinks he sees what that silence means. He darts over to Kurama and punches him square in the face, voicing his interpretation as Kurama the HUMAN LOVER picking up what he's putting down.
While Kurama's face remains snapped to the side by the hit, he flicks something at Roto's face, that seems to bounce off quite harmlessly. He looks over at where it's landed on the grid drawn on the platform, identifying it as a pebble, the most modest show of defiance from Kurama. Roto raises the fist holding his precious extortion button to make it as visible as possible, and declares that Kurama won't show even a pebble's worth of defiance anymore. He demands that Kurama clasp his hands behind his back and act as his punching bag.
Roto's smirk is a sharp, jagged gash in his own face. He chuckles that Kurama WON'T fight, because he's such a good little mama's boy. He gets right up in Kurama's turned-away face to suggest he COULD sever his arm with his Rose Whip, but the fingers on that arm might twitch just enough to get the job done on dear mommy. He outright laughs, hitting Kurama in the gut.
Kurama lets out a muffled grunt, but that's all. It's enough for Roto to declare he likes, though, and Roto continues hitting Kurama, this time across the face, saying beating on a guy who can't fight back is what he really calls fun. Can't relate, but I'm someone who likes a bit of a constructive challenge in my leisure activities.
Roto suddenly pauses, frowning, calling Kurama scum. That was a real heel-face turn, huh? He re-extends the finger-scythe to poke at Kurama's cheek and complains about not liking the LOOK in his eye. He demands that Kurama look SCARED, but I don't know how THAT'S going to be any more satisfying.
Roto finishes the slash so hard that Kurama's face is whipped to the side again, demanding that Kurama stop LOOKING at him like that. Like what? Like he's been scrolling through Netflix for 20 minutes without finding a single thing to watch? Though Roto's smirk is back, he says he's in a real bad mood now, and is putting the responsibility of doing something about that on Kurama. He's just being a stereotypical abusive boyfriend at this point. How lame.
Lifting his foot demonstratively, Roto commands Kurama to bow down and lick his shoe. He offers to cut Kurama's head clean off once it's clean, and then maybe he WON'T press that button. It's a wonder to me that Kurama's eyes don't roll straight out of his head when Roto asks jokingly if he can refuse, and then answers himself in the negative, because Kurama's precious mommy's life is on the line.
But the answer that comes from Kurama is the opposite - he absolutely DOES refuse. After a pause, Roto asks for him to repeat that, and as he dusts off his jacket casually, Kurama says that's enough, and gives Roto permission to go ahead and push the button. Sounds to me like Kurama has some INSURANCE now that he didn't before, but Roto interprets this differently. He giggles madly that if he heard Kurama correctly, his hypocritical ass told him to press the button, and that makes him not any different than any of the OTHER low-down bloodthirsty demons in this stadium, if being asked to lick a boot is all it takes for him to go demonic again. Kurama just coldly repeats his dare to push the button.
So Roto agrees to push the button, given that they're all death-hungry demons here anyway.
While Kurama snatches the button out of Roto's immobile hand, he prepares to repeat what he, apparently has said so often before: if something seems like an EASY course of action, it's usually the most DANGEROUS. I don't remember him saying this at ALL before this moment, but it IS real rich coming from the guy whose introduction was his quest to trade his life for his mother's health in the simplest little bargain with a hand-mirror ever.
Kurama explains that he countered the coercion that Roto had tried on him by planting a DEADLY VETCH seed on him. I don't know what that is, but it sounds pretty bad when Kurama further exposits that its roots have spread through Roto's body and immobilized him. Roto strains to look down at his chest, where a red bump has raised on the left side of it, just beneath the lapel of his jacket. He recalls the pebble bouncing off his face and realizes it was a distraction from Kurama planting the seed. Always keep them watching your left hand while your right does the real work, as they say.
That isn't even the whole deal. Kurama says that he can say a certain word that will make the plant grow at an EXPLOSIVE rate, no doubt much like how cyclospora is currently affecting a chunk of American colons right now. Kurama says he LIKES facing low-lives like Roto, because then he gets to be as brutal as he wants. And apparently he wants to be REALLY BRUTAL. Roto cries for him NOT to sink to his level, that he LIKES nice guys, and he was just a kid. Already referring to himself in the past tense? That's fucking BLEAK.
Kurama just says "DIE" in response.
So, what did I think of this chapter overall? Before I get to the proper analysis, I have to say I was a little preoccupied by the resemblance between Kurama here and another very popular manga/anime character. I won't be actually STATING that name here, partly because I'm sure everyone reading this knows which character and story I'm talking about given the aforementioned popularity, but also because I refuse to support even in the smallest way the artist behind that character, even by having the name of the work here on my blog where it can be scraped by Google and other search engines. The reasons for this should be clear, but if anyone happening upon this somehow hasn't heard of the controversy behind this person, I would just steel yourself if you're liable to try and look it up. It's not pretty.
ANYWHO, my curiosity about this resemblance I consider to be suspiciously close was piqued, and I decided to look up known influences between the two serializations. So, having done that, allow me to correct my previous statement that Kurama now resembles that character; this depiction of Kurama with the X-shaped scar on his cheek actually PREDATES that character by about two years. The artist actually stated his character was modeled after Kurama. My bad, lol.
Now that we've gotten past THAT, Kurama is showing a MUCH scarier side to him than he has before this point. He's been mild-mannered, demure, and occasionally on the cheeky side, but he's always struck me as containing whole OCEANS of patience and empathy. Case in point, he trained Kuwabara, and that COULDN'T have been an easy task for someone who was any less than perfectly zen most of the time.
But here he is downright MENACING, and while that quiet, patient quality to him carries him through the abuse intended to humiliate him throughout the match, he is only TOO eager to dispatch Roto when it's possible to do so. I'm surprised he even bothered to explain himself beforehand, though I suppose if he didn't, the audience wouldn't have much of a clue as to what happened there. Of course, he DID allow Roto some final groveling, which does speak to the pleasure he implied when he said he gets to be as brutal as he wants. Clearly Roto made an emotional impact on Kurama with his abuse, even if Kurama was VERY good at refusing to show it. Dude wanted Roto to SUFFER.
Really puts into perspective Hiei's little gloat at the beginning about how Kurama can turn any plant into a deadly weapon into sharper perspective. Because anyone dumb enough to piss him off wouldn't even see that shit coming. Spooky.
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