"Don't you dare!"

Jaken is not, in fact, stronger than she is, but he has a lot more experience fighting, and approximately all of his experience fighting is fighting people bigger and stronger than he is. Kagome is going to go backwards and Jaken is going to have the staff, even if it is going to be a very winded Jaken with bootprints on his stomach. This is his plan.

The thing that screws her up is the bodies on the floor; she can't hold her footing and fight at the same time. She trips on a skeleton and stumbles backwards into the pedestal, losing her grip on the staff in the process.

She leans on the sword to haul herself up again, unthinkingly closing her hand around the hilt.

It comes out the first time she gives it a tug.

She doesn't exactly mean to pull it out. She hasn't considered the possibility that she can. But the sword moves as she pulls herself up, and then slides out easily with almost no effort at all. 

She... has a sword, now. Apparently.

Absolutely

Everyone

In the room pauses to stare at her.

Oh.

"...sorry?"

The first to speak is Jaken. "This is - is - impossible!" he sputters. "If great Sesshomaru couldn't - if even his flea-bitten brother couldn't - how in the seven hells could she do it?"

- But the first to recover from the shock is Inuyasha, who lunges for his brother. "Don't take your eyes off me!"

He misses, because Sesshomaru is now next to Kagome.

"What are you?" he asks with quiet courtesy, "that you could draw the Tetsusaiga?"

- she would really really like to go back to being an insect now actually.

"Uh..."

She isn't anything, is she? Nothing that's relevant - it's not like ancient dog demons are going to leave their magic swords specifically for time travelers - 

"Well, at least he's not interested in you anymore," whispers Myoga, still perched on Inuyasha's shoulder. "This would be a good time to run, you know..."

Inuyasha is DISTRACTED from telling Myoga to SHUT UP MORE by - 

"Get away from her, Sesshomaru! She's not part of this! This is our fight!"

"Alas, brother, as your companion -"

His hand delivers its deadly poison strike, aimed straight at Kagome.

"She is."

Everything where he hit, or very near where he hit, is now an ocean of dissolved bone and acid, excepting only the blade of Tetsusaiga, which is sticking out of the slurry.

Inuyasha will drop to his knees beside the lake of acid. "Kagome..."

"Alas. She was simply a mortal."

"SESSHOMARU!"

And he charges.

"I grow bored with this."

And he spins to strike his brother -

- And, after a moment, disengages, leaping backward from Inuyasha's blow. His fancy fur ruff is torn.

And the breastplate he wears - wore - is shattered, and crumbling to pieces that clatter on the bones below.

"Why so angry, brother? There are a million more where she came from."

"This time, Sesshomaru, I'll rip the bowels from your belly."

I TOLD HER NOT TO COME I TOLD HER I TOLD HER I TOLD HER

"Mortals die, brother. They keep doing that."

Kagome is, in fact, alive.

She's pretty confused about why, but she is. She is, actually, completely unharmed, as far as she can tell, although the sensation of dissolved rock sliding harmlessly off her skin is an extremely weird one. It reminds her a lot of - the fire rat robe, actually, the last time she had something magically protective on that prevented her from sustaining a mortal injury. She's extremely aware that resistance to injuries is not a power that she has on her own, so -

Tetsusaiga. 

Even now, gripping it in her hand like her life depends on it - and she's sure it does - it still feels like a totally ordinary hunk of metal. It barely even has an edge. But it clearly has opinions, of some kind, and one of its opinions seems to be that Kagome shouldn't die today.

It takes her a few seconds to notice that being encased in acid and dissolving rock is still preventing her from breathing. Some part of her would kind of like to hide down here forever, or at least until the fight ends, but - no. 

Sesshomaru is right. She is a part of this, now.

So Kagome stands up, and then takes a deep breath, as the remaining acid trails harmlessly down her to the floor.

For the second time in the past five minutes, every eye in the room turns to her.