Aaaand her hold on the sword is not good enough that she doesn't fumble and drop it when unexpectedly tackled. Apparently her instinct is to use both hands to clutch the injured tiny child instead.

There is a GIGANTIC PLUME OF ELECTRIFIED SMOKE going up where they were standing, and then it's just Hiten clutching his brother's impaled body and sobbing.

Inuyasha is BUSY.

"Did you just try to get yourself killed?"

He's HERE and he's MAD AT HER and she's NOT DEAD. It has been like two entire hours or something since the last time Inuyasha was actually here and not on the other side of an angry demon, and that has, empirically, been entirely too long.

"I dropped your sword," she blurts. "I'm sorry."

"You think I care about that? Don't get hit by lightning next time!"

- nod. "Right. Uh - thank you."

She shouldn't feel safe. It's not exactly over yet. But there's only one brother left, now, and she isn't alone anymore, and frankly it's hard not to feel tremendously relieved already.

She does turn to look at Hiten, though, because she did just agree to not get hit by lightning.

"Manten..." He's still sobbing... "I swore to be with you forever."

And, still sobbing, he will pry his brother's jewel shards out of his head to add it to his own, and then rip his brother's heart out of his chest and start chomping down on it!

Well that's a reaction.

"He's ingesting Manten's powers to add them to his own," says a familiar voice. "Be careful, lord Inuyasha."

"Thanks for telling me now, you little parasite!" says Inuyasha, striding forwards to pick up Tetsusaiga from the ground where it fell. "Just get back, Kagome, I'll take care of this -"

BREATH WEAPON TIME AT EVERYTHING HE IS STILL VERY ANNOYED

(it turns out that Hiten, wielding Manten's breath weapon and both of their jewel shards, can fire it off with massively less chargeup time and no particular warning)

DARING RESCUE INTERRUPT AAAAAHHHHH APPARENTLY HE NEEDS TO TACKLE KAGOME OUT OF THE WAY AGAIN

You know, she would probably be embarrassed about this, if there were a less excessive amount of lightning around and she wasn't also occupied by holding a small injured child the size of a baby. As it is she's kind of past that. Also past the momentary relief.

"My brother is dead," said Hiten, tears still streaming from his face as his body crackles with lightning.

"My only brother." He hovers forwards, towards Inuyasha, lance in hand.

"I will not let this pass."

Inuyasha puts up a good front. It's part of how you survive; you look tough. 

He also knows when he's up against someone much stronger than he is.

"Kagome, take Shippo, start running, and don't stop."

"Got it," she tells him. And she runs.

"You're DEAD!"

Hiten is charging. He's throwing lightning as he does it and he's faster than he was before and stronger than he was before and now his lightning isn't just individual bolts it's waves of destruction, smashing corridors through the thunderstruck battlefield. He's still not quite so furious to get into hand-to-hand combat, nor does he slow down enough that Inuyasha could get a bead on him with his blood daggers but as he flies circles around Inuyasha hurling blast after blast at him, he causes a lot of collateral damage.

Her sole saving grace, here, is that he's not paying attention to her. His attention is on his brother's killer, not his brother's target.

And Inuyasha is doing his best to deflect these with the Tetsusaiga or dodge them, but - with Hiten's sheer power added to his sheer mobility, there's not much he can do else. 

Well, talk big. He can already do that.

"Really? I'd say - one down, one to go!"

Kagome is absolutely planning to run in a straight line as fast and as far as she can, just like she agreed to. The best thing she can possibly do for Inuyasha is to get away, so that he stops needing to tackle her out of the way of an attack every five seconds. She's not even just running for her own sake; she's also been tasked with evacuating Shippo. If she does anything stupid here, she'll have his blood on her hands as much as she'll have her own. She wants to be someone who Inuyasha can count on to actually do what she said she would, to do the one thing that he needs her to do in an emergency.

So it's not her strategic assessment of the situation that leads her to stop following Inuyasha's perfectly sensible directions. It's her lungs. It turns out that almost suffocating isn't very good for your ability to immediately run long distances, especially when you were already exhausted beforehand. One minute in, her lungs are on fire, she's got a horrible stitch in her side, and she's beginning to worry that she might pass out.

So, against Inuyasha's express instructions, she ducks into one of the newly formed trenches in the earth (of which there are a lot, by this point), and takes another minute to desperately suck in air.

It is kind of obvious that Inuyasha is losing! This is true in that (a) he was losing before and the odds are even more against him, and (b) that Hiten is now stronger, faster, and more explosive! Channels of electricity occasionally go over Kagome's head, either deflected by the Tetsusaiga or dodged by Inuyasha or just an additional bolt aimed as much as a diversion as anything else.

(or, occasionally, supplementally deflected away from Inuyasha's left side possibly inexplicably, though that may take some work to notice.)

"Stubborn half-breed!" BREATHWEAPON! "Mongrel!" LIGHTNING! "Dog-breed scum! BREATHWEAPON AND LIGHTNING!

"Bold words for a dead man! Come on if you've got the guts!"

Catching her breath is going to take a while. Enough time that she can take at least some stock of the situation. 

She doesn't think any of her injuries are really serious. Besides her lungs and her side, her head still hurts, and her tailbone where she fell on Manten, and her neck, and half a dozen minor scrapes and bruises. Nothing to keep her from running. She ought to be mobile again if she can get some oxygen back into her system.

"Are you okay, Shippo?" 

"This is nothing," says Shippo, though his lip wobbles at the same time. "Do you think Inuyasha can defeat him?"

"I don't know. We've got to stay safe so he can focus, though."

Another moment, and she pokes her head up above the trench enough to figure out where the fight is (and where she needs to not be).