January 10, 1910

A younger Nezuko meekly approached her father, who was putting away a box of supplies outside the home, and quietly asked him, "Papa… Hey, um, papa…"

Tanjuro turned around and asked her, "What is it, Nezuko?"

"I, um," Nezuko replied, cautious and unusually shy as she asked the question. "Well, I… It's about the dance you do every New Year's."

"The Dance of the Fire God?" Tanjiro was curious as to why Nezuko asked about it. "What do you wish to know?"

Nezuko then took a deep breath. "Can a girl do it, too?"

Tanjuro paused for a few seconds before he smiled. "I don't see why not. Are you asking me if I can teach you it?"

Nezuko nodded. "Yes. Papa, I want to know how to do it, too. If something were to happen to Oniichan, I want to be able to take his place."

Tanjuro replied in agreement, "I understand why you're concerned. I'll start teaching you tomorrow, Nezuko." He then patted her head and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "I may grow weaker, but I will do everything I can to teach you it if that's what you desire, my dear eldest daughter."

Nezuko smiled and cheered, "Hooray! Hooray! I'll get to do the Dance of the Fire God!"

…

Present Day

Inside Nezuko's mind, a wintery forest landscape quickly emerged as she stirred awake inside the dream. As she stood up, she looked around her, deeply confused as to where she was. "Where… Where am I? Did something happen to me?" She then looked down at her outfit and noticed it had changed completely. She was no longer wearing a corps uniform and a skirt, but instead was wearing her old pink haori. She also looked at her hands and realized her nails were not claw-like anymore before reaching into her mouth and touching her teeth. "My teeth aren't even sharp anymore… What the Hell is this? What happened to me?"

She then saw a few shapes move in the distance, and heard voices come from them. She quickly ran towards them, wondering who they were, but as she got closer, she heard one of them call out, "Oneechan! Oneechan!"

Nezuko froze in place as she recognized the voice and saw who the two shapes were. "Hanako… Shigeru…" She thought she would have never seen her siblings again after they had been seemingly murdered by Muzan, and the sight of them alive and well drove her to tears of joy. "Oh my God, you're alive!"

"Oneechan," Hanako replied with a question in confusion. "Why would we be dead?"

Nezuko quickly embraced both of them and sobbed. "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… Thank God you're okay… I missed you so much…" She held a tight grip on them as she drew them in closer, her sobbing echoing through the forest.

Shigeru asked her, "You've only been gone for an hour. What happened?"

Nezuko quickly smiled and wiped her tears away as she split up. "It… It's nothing. It must have been a bad dream. That's all. I just had a bad dream that something terrible happened to us."

"Well it was just a dream," Hanako told her with a bright and wide smile. "It's not real, Oneechan."

"You're right… It was just a bad dream… Let's go back home…"

As the three walked back to their home, Tanjiro was waiting out front, dressed exactly how he was before Muzan had come. "Hey there, Nezuko! How was your walk?"

"It was pretty good, Oniichan. I guess it was a long walk."

…

Inside Susamaru's dream, she stood outside on a bright summer day, watching two boys, one younger and one older, playing a game of baseball in the street. She immediately recognized both of these boys to be her brothers from when she was a human. "Huh… Tomoyuki-niisan… Daiki… What's this?"

"Maeko-oneechan," Daiki then called out to her. "Wanna play baseball with us?"

She had not been called by her former human name by anyone in years, much less by her former human family. "Yeah… Yeah, that would be nice." Even though she knew something was not right, she wanted to stay. "Are you guys just gonna toss the ball around, or do you want someone to hit it with you?"

"You can pick up the bat we have over there," Tomoyuki then pointed out on the ground. "It's just a wooden stick, but it works."

"Okay then," Susamaru replied as she picked up the wooden stick and readied herself. "I'm ready!"

Tomoyuki then pitched the ball to Susamaru, who swung with a powerful swing and struck the ball, causing it to fly down the street and land next to a man pulling a food cart. He yelled over, "Be careful, you damn kids!"

"Sorry about that," Daiki yelled over. He then turned to his siblings, telling them, "I'll go get the ball."

Susamaru thought to herself, "I always loved playing sports when I was a human, even if other people thought I was too boyish for doing so. I loved being a girl, and I still do. Who's to say I can't be a woman and also play ball sometimes?" She then caught the ball with her bare hands and tossed it back to Tomoyuki. "Throw it faster! Give me a challenge!"

"Try not to break a window this time," Tomoyuki replied to her before pitching the ball.

…

An hour later in dream time, James was smoking a cigarette after having finished an interesting round of sex with his three love interests. It had been an hour and twenty minutes since he had woken up in the dream, but only 4 minutes in the real world due to dream time dilation. He walked outside, adjusting his pants and looking around before telling himself, "Okay, this has been a fun dream, but I think it's time for me to go." Suddenly, however, he noticed an unusual man walking around the quasi-estate that he had for himself and his family in the dream. He was holding what appeared to be a knife, wore a Confederate Army uniform, and snooped around the buildings. "Huh? Who the Hell…"

The man noticed James staring at him and yelled as he ran off, "Fuck!"

"Hey, get back here! Who the Hell are ya?!" James quickly pulled out his revolver and chased after the man, firing off two shots in his direction but missing.

Finally, as they raced through the forest, James fired a third shot, striking him in the shoulder and bringing him down. "Fuck! Agh, fuck, you fuckin' shot me!"

James then picked him up by the back of his shirt collar and aimed the gun squarely at his jaw as he demanded from him, "I want to know exactly who the fuck y'all are, and what the fuck y'all are doin' inside my dream. I can tell you ain't from 'round here, 'cause I'd never dream up a random Confederate like yourself. Y'all must be tryin' to infiltrate my dream to extract information from me. Well, it ain't gonna work like that." He then cocked the gun to let him know he meant business. "Answer me, asshole! Who the fuck are ya?!"

"Fine," he told him. "I work for Cleburne! I was sent here to find your inner core and kill it!" He prayed in his head that James would spare him if he told him what he wanted.

James instead then pulled the trigger and killed the man, which would wake him up in the real world. Most of his face was blown off by the bullet to his jaw, and he died almost instantly in the dream, the bloodied mess of teeth, bones, muscle, and skin that was once his face staining the ground with a deep crimson red. "Motherfucker. He must be makin' dreams for us to keep us occupied." He then had a sudden realization that horrified him. "Wait… If that's the case… Oh no!" He immediately aimed the gun at the side of his own head. "I gotta wake up and find the others!"

With zero hesitation, James pulled the trigger and shot himself. In an instant, his vision went black for a few seconds before he awoke back inside the train car he had been sleeping in. As he did, he noticed the man who had infiltrated his dream standing in the hallway. He instantly knew that in the real world, he was a demon and a soldier working under Patrick. "Shit! You're awake!"

"Yeah," James replied before quickly pulling out his revolver and shooting him twice just as he pulled out his knife. As the soldier fell to the ground, stunned and injured by the poisoned sun metal bullets, James quickly grabbed his shotgun from the luggage compartment above and aimed at the demon soldier's head. "Bye, fucker!" With the quick pull of a trigger, the soldier's head was blown off, splattering his blood all over the car before it quickly dissipated along with the rest of his body. Despite the commotion he made, he awoke not a single person in the train car. "Damn… Whatever that bastard did, they put us all in deep sleep. I gotta move fast!" He then reached into his backpack and pulled out a scroll with a spell written on it along with a knife. "Time to use my new spellcastin' method!"

With a swift motion, James sliced one of his fingers in half and then opened the scroll, painting a single line in blood across the whole scroll before pulling out a match from his pocket, striking it on the side of a seat, and setting the scroll on fire. Within seconds of the scroll catching fire, James fell to the floor, asleep once more as his finger healed itself.

When he awoke, James was present in a pitch black void with several openings presented to him. As he looked at each one, he found Nezuko's dream and thought to himself as he dashed forwards into it, "Here goes nothin'!" As soon as he jumped into the dream, he was surrounded by a wintery landscape and a forest. He quickly ran towards the sight of smoke, presumably from the chimney or fire pit of the Kamado residence, and drew his sword in one hand and his revolver in the other, hoping to encounter whoever was about to try to kill Nezuko's inner core. He thought to himself, "I need to reach Nezuko in time!"

Nezuko happened to be outside with her subconsciousness' projection of Tanjiro when he ran up to the Kanao's residence. Nezuko quickly recognized him and yelled out, "Wait a minute, Colby-san, what are you doing here?!"

"Nezuko! Nezuko! This is a dream! You're asleep!"

Tanjiro turned to James and yelled at him, "Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here!" He uncharacteristically picked up a spear from the ground and yelled at him, "If you don't leave, I'll kill you!"

"Oniichan, no! Stop it!"

Nezuko was unable to stop Tanjiro from charging at James and trying to stab him with the spear. "Get out of here, intruder! You're not fucking welcome!"

"Shit," James yelled out as he dodged a strike from him before drawing his gun and firing at Tanjiro, shooting him three times in the chest, the shots ringing through the forest and interrupting the quiet sounds of the flora and fauna around them. "Fuck, I shot him!"

"Oniichan! Oniichan!" Nezuko quickly ran to her brother's body as he fell to the ground, killed almost immediately by James' bullets as blood poured onto the snow and melted it due to the heat. "Why did you shoot him?! Why?!"

James yelled at her, "He ain't real! He's a projection of your subconscious! That's why he attacked me! I was an outsider in the dream!"

"He… Isn't real?!" Nezuko picked up his spear and threatened him with, "How am I supposed to know that?!"

"Because your family's dead, Nezuko! None of this shit is real! The real Tanjiro's in his own dream! These people y'all are with are just projections of your mind!"

Nezuko then dropped the spear and wiped her eyes of tears. "You… You aren't lying… What do we do now?"

"We need to find the son of a bitch who's trying to kill your inner core and kill him inside the dream so he wakes up." James then started walking towards the house. "I ain't gonna hold back against your family if they attack me, and y'all shouldn't either."

No sooner did he say that did Takeo, the next oldest sibling after Nezuko and Tanjiro, charge at him with an axe, yelling at him with an indescribable hatred in his eyes, "DIE, INTRUDER!"

James swiftly and decisively shot him once in the head, striking him down with cold precision. "I wasn't in the mood for killin' kids today…"

"Holy shit… Holy shit… You just shot him! What the fuck?!"

"They ain't real!" James then pulled out another scroll from his backpack and cut part of one of his fingers off to draw a line on the paper within. He then quickly rolled it up again and pulled out a match, striking it on the side of a nearby tree and lighting the scroll on fire. "I figured out an easy way to cast most spells. I just write down the chant needed for it in a scroll, make a line through it with my blood, and then set it on fire. No more havin' to make complicated patterns on the ground in blood."

"I see…" Nezuko then watched in astonishment as a portal opened up. "Wait, what is that?!"

"It allows us to jump to other people's dreams! We're gonna go to your brother's dream next!" He then ran into the portal, with Nezuko trailing behind him. "Hurry it up! We gotta save your brother!"