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MANGA CHAP. 546 - NARAKU'S WISH

OUR STORY: Chapter opens with Naraku gloating over his victory that left Miroku and Sango in each other's arms, awaiting the fast-arriving moment when Miroku's Kazaana goes out of control and swallows them up, fueling the Shikon Jewel's darkness. There's a brief distant view of the doomed couple. Inuyasha swears he won't let that doom happen, that he's going to beat Naraku and destroy the Kazaana's curse before it takes the couple. He swings Tessaiga to release a Meidou Hell gate to devour Naraku. But Naraku also acts at that same moment, absorbing the Shikon Jewel into himself. Now, he's one with the jewel and spins a huge spiderweb.

Just as he completes his web, the Meidou strikes Naraku but passes right through him without effect and continues on behind him. Inu is astonished that Naraku wasn't swallowed up by the Meidou. Naraku says this is the power of the Shikon Jewel at work. He reminds Inu of how the jewel was burned with Kikyou's corpse and was supposed to have vanished from this world. But he says the jewel used Kikyou's lingering feelings for Inuyasha to transcend space and time, be reborn in Kagome and use her body to return to the Feudal Era. Even shattered, he says, it spread calamity while being reassembled. He says the jewel will never disappear even if he himself is destroyed.

That statement sets Kagome to thinking and she asks Naraku if what he's been doing is what he really wanted to do. She says all the fighting Naraku has done against them only succeeded in tearing Inuyasha and Kikyou apart, set Kohaku and Sango against each other, and turned the love between Sango and Miroku against them. All he's done, she says, is ridicule bonds between comrades, curse people who are in love, and try to rip them apart. She asks why and was that his wish? Naraku asks her what she means. Kagome replies that since Naraku seems to understand the importance of bonds to the human heart, he also understands the pain of losing those bonds. Inuyasha wonders to himself where Kagome is going with this. Inu finds out as Kagome says to Naraku that the Shikon Jewel "didn't grant you your real wish, did it?"

Naraku recoils at Kagome's words as she continues to hammer home her point. She says Naraku has hesitated until now to absorb the completed jewel into himself because he knew that absorbing the jewel would turn him into a true monster. Naraku snaps out of the funk from Kagome's words and snarls that she's a fool for thinking she could purify his heart with words like these. He glares at her, opens his arms and from his chest he shoots a volley of shouki spears at Kagome. Inu jumps in front of Kagome and fires off a Meidou that intercepts and absorbs Naraku's attack.

Inu angrily lectures Naraku, telling him that they had different births but they both are hanyou, carrying within them both human and youkai hearts. He says they could choose to follow either their human or youkai hearts but Naraku tried to have it both ways, choosing to live as a youkai while retaining his human heart. The result was Naraku showed the worst of both sides, and only knew how to curse and hurt people. And that's why Inu cannot forgive him. He says there's no way he'd let such a bastard hurt his friends.

Inu swings his black-bladed Tessaiga again to launch another Meidou, totally intent on annihilating Naraku. But this time something unexpected happens. Instead of one circular Meidou, Tessaiga produces a volley of Meidou crescents that converge on Naraku. Inu is wondering what he just did, as the first of his hellish crescents makes contact with Naraku's midsection... THE END (^_*)