"Better than any armor. You need it, with your frail skin."

Serious nod. She wraps it around herself. "All right. Our puppet master's got to be in the direction that the hair is being pulled from. - that way."

Then he'll pick her up again and SUPERJUMP his way there, dodging strands as they go!

It does not actually take that long before they make it to a rocky glade where the strands get thick enough that SUPERJUMP stops working as a travel method. There's some very dead samurai, covered in cuts and missing their heads, and there's enough blood on the strands there that Inuyasha doesn't need to be warned to stop there.

Oh no.

She's seen people die in the last two days, but not when she wasn't already in the process of panicking (and she's not panicking right this second, huh). It does something weird to her stomach. Probably no help to focus on it, but it breaks through the sense that this is some kind of dream. Whatever this place is, exactly, failure means people will die.

...do they have weapons left on them?

Yup. Swords, spears, bows and arrows, a variety of polearms... If they had horses they've run off, though.

She'll take a bow and arrows. It's... probably not going to help any, but she did kill the crow with an arrow before, and maybe she can hit something very close to her.

"In there. There's a lot of it ahead, be careful."

"I'll manage."

(He will not, in fact, manage.)

It doesn't take them that long before they get to their destination, where the forest leads down to a barren stretch between two high hills.

And an absolutely gigantic sphere of hair, all wrapped up in itself, hung in midair (hanging itself in midair?) from strands that keep it tied to the cliff walls, which - as soon as they get there - begins defending itself very rapidly from the attackers.

Specifically, by trying to grab Inuyasha with much more intelligence than any previous attacker has shown!

"Lots of them coming right at you, from the front! There's some kind of huge nest of the stuff suspended between the cliffs!"

They're actually also coming at him from both sides, above, and below!

" - and from every other side! All around you!"

"That's not very - " he dodges into a wall of hair - slashes it - dodges into a different - 

"Specific!"

(he is by this point rapidly becoming fairly entangled.)

"What a fascinating fly has wandered into my web."

(She does not look particularly like a supernatural monster. She does have a wakizashi and a comb, and is ?flying? by puppetmastering her way along, suspending herself in midair via strands of hair.)

"I can't be specific when you're surrounded!" 

Gah, that doesn't help - 

"Can you see her?"

"Yura of the Hair? Yeah. I can see her."

He's glaring daggers at her, in fact, even if he is entangled.

Yura pulls her puppet-strings, and Inuyasha rises.

"And Inuyasha who seeks the Jewel, and the priestess who keeps his leash. There, now we're all introduced."

She'll pull a jewel shard out of her shirt and twirl it between her fingers.

"Don't expect to get this back, if it's what you're looking for."

(It does indeed look like the one Kagome gave Inuyasha the night before.)

A part of her distantly wants to ask whether he really lost the jewel shard she gave him in just a few hours. Most of her is acutely aware that this is not the time.

"There's hair around her fingers, that she's pulling on," she says, quietly. "If you can get free and cut it off there - "

His opening his mouth to shout down Yura is interrupted!

"Not with you on my back," he'll hiss at her, and drop her on the ground a short distance below.

Well, that's enough warning that she lands on her feet, anyway. She tugs the robe tight around herself, and holds her breath without realizing it.

"Oh? Not bothering to protect your mistress?"

"My what?"

(He's visibly flexing, drawing in his strength...)

"The woman who pulls your strings?"

"Listen, Yura, you need to realize -"

He draws in his strength, and the hair creaks - 

"I'm no one's puppet!"

And the hair around his right arm and his legs snaps and he swings in midair, using the broken strands of hair wrapped around one arm to charge directly at Yura, his other hand's claws extended -

And she pivots aside smoothly, drawing her sword and slashing his right side as he passes.

"You're at least not a very good one," she says disapprovingly. "Hm?"