March 30, 1913
The following day, Tamayo and Yushiro got ready to leave the house for good, turning it over to James. Tanjiro and Nezuko also got ready to leave, heading off for whatever Tanjiro's next mission was. As Tanjiro ran into the basement to see Nezuko, she ran up to him and practically bear-hugged him. "Ah! Nezuko! You're alright!"
James, Tamayo, and Yushiro all stood together at the end of the hallway. "That's sweet," James remarked to them. "Really sweet. I wonder who exactly she sees us as from her family."
"Well," Tamayo replied, wondering the same thing. "Tanjiro-san said that you must remind her of their father. If I had to infer, she probably sees me as their mother, and Yushiro as one of their deceased siblings."
That inference set off Yushiro, who gave James a dirty look at the implication of him and Tamayo being a 'mother and father' like a couple. "I'm watching you," he very quietly mouthed to him as he pointed at him.
James chuckled, only making Yushiro more annoyed. "No way in Hell I'd make a pass at Tamayo," he thought to himself. "Especially with Yushiro bein' around. I still don't get how she doesn't see how much he's into her."
Nezuko then ran up to Tamayo and James and hugged both of them together, causing both of them to be taken off-guard and give expressions of surprise while Yushiro reacted as usual. "Get off of Tamayo-sama! How rude!"
"She ain't hurt in' no one," James chided him. "Come on." He then watched in amusement as Nezuko turned to Yushiro and patted his head, which only made him more annoyed. "Tanjiro, if what you said about Nezuko bein' placed under that whole mantra is true, then she must perceive us as humans."
As Nezuko ran back to her brother, he replied with, "Absolutely. Anyway, me and Nezuko will be leaving soon. James, you probably haven't seen this, but Nezuko can travel with me if she shrinks down into this box on my back." He then set his wooden carrying box down and opened the door on it. "Alright, Nezuko-chan, let's show James how you do this."
Nezuko nodded and gave a happy, "Mmm mmm!" She then shrunk down to fit into the box, closing the door behind her soon after. The other three found it absolutely adorable, even Yushiro.
Tamayo then turned to James, "Alright, with that, we trust this house to you. Stay here as long as you want, and keep Susamaru under your watch. I'll be sure to study the spell book you gave me as well as your blood samples very intensely." She then handed him the keys. "Be careful, though, since from now onwards, this house won't be obscured through illusions. Be prepared for Muzan to send more demons after this house, and definitely for you and the girl."
"I'll kick 'em to next week," James replied, literally translating yet another English phrase, much to everyone's confusion except for Tamayo. "It means I'll be sure to beat them up real good."
"Ah, right," Tanjiro replied. "America has a lot of fun expressions."
…
March 31, 1913
Late at night, after James had spent a whole day repairing as much as he could at the house, he walked into one of the basement exam rooms, where Susamaru was sleeping peacefully in a bed. He was drinking some reserves of human blood Tamayo had left him, as well as having a sandwich he had made for dinner. It was not much, but it was filling enough to keep him going, especially the blood. As he finished another entry into his journal and closed it, he heard a stirring motion from Susamaru's bed. "Ah, you're finally awake, huh?"
The demon girl stretched her arms and yawned before wiping her eyes to get a better look of her surroundings. "Huh… Where am I?" As she looked to James, her eyes widened with fear and she quickly recoiled from him. "Wha… What the fuck?! What's going on here?!"
"Calm down," James assured her. "You ain't in no trouble anymore. You can say Muzan's name all you want now. You're no longer bound by his curse."
"No longer bound? What?" Susamaru was deeply confused. "What happened?!"
"I freed you from his curse with a spell," James explained. "Now, because you ain't part of Kibutsuji-san's little army, you'll probably be a target for him, so I'd highly recommend y'all stay with me for protection."
"Freed," she said to herself as she looked around her body for any possible injuries or marks. She then closed and opened her eyes several times. "This has to be a dream."
"It ain't," James replied as he got up from his table. "This is real. Your friend's dead, by the way."
"He wasn't really my friend," Susamaru admitted to him. "We had only gone on one other mission before then. Truth be told, he was kinda annoying, and a huge clean freak."
"God damn," James remarked in amazement. "Badmouthing the guy already, barely two days after he died."
"Whatever," she replied to him. "Anyway, what's the deal with you anyway? You can walk in the sun, you hunt our own kind, you interact mostly with humans, what the fuck gives?"
"American demons are different," James explained to her. "They can walk in the sun at the cost of their regenerative abilities and much of the power of their Blood Demon Arts. If I were to lose an arm in the middle of the day, it wouldn't start to grow back until dusk. I theorize we evolved to have this ability, as well as our lesser need for human blood and our ability to consume animal blood, due to the larger ground demons gotta cover in the Americas. Y'all wouldn't last a week in the New World."
Susamaru pouted. "Lucky… But that still doesn't explain why you side with humans."
"I don't side for or against any species or race," James clarified to her as he sat down next to her. "My mission is to protect the innocent and hunt down those who wish to bring them harm. It just so happens that most of my targets are demons. I also was a bounty hunter during the day, and I would arrest humans who committed crimes to collect the bounties on their heads. Some of 'em did horrific shit, like rape or murder."
"Well," she admitted. "I guess I'm stuck here with you."
"Ain't a bad thing," James said back to her. "You'll be safe at least. Now, I highly suggest you start ingestin' some of my blood. I need to see if you can get the same Limited Sunlight Resistance ability I got." He then gave her a small glass vial of his own blood. "Come on, if ya drink it, I got a whole bunch more of these filled with human blood that Dr. Nakamura left for us."
"Fine," Susamaru replied as she grabbed the vial from his hands and downed it as if it were a shot of alcohol. As she swallowed it, she had a puzzled expression on her face. "The taste is weird. It's nothing like the blood I got from Muzan. Anyway, where's that human blood?"
"Right here," James replied as he handed her another vial. "Enjoy it while you can. Our supplies are limited."
…
April 3, 1913
It had been several days since James and Susamaru had started living in the house together. They had spent many nights repairing the damage done to the house, and James spent most of the day doing further repairs. However, they also set many traps in the house, and laid the groundwork so that others could quickly be assembled, since both of them knew they now had giant targets painted on their backs. James used some of his cash to buy supplies, and by now, they had managed to repair half of the damage. Also, Susamaru had been consuming James' blood on a daily basis.
That day, in the basement, where it was safe for Susamaru to be, James and her performed an experiment to see if the blood ingestion was working. They had also begun to directly inject his blood into her bloodstream with a needle. In one of the rooms was a singular window in which a small stream of sunlight could enter. Susamaru sat on a chair at a table nearby, away from the beam of sunlight and therefore safe. She asked James as he readied a mirror, "Are you ready?"
"Yep," James replied. "Are you?"
"Of course," she nodded. James then took the mirror and aimed it at the stream of sunlight before slowly directing it at a small portion of her arm. For about 10 seconds, nothing happened. Then, a small bit of smoke appeared from the spot, and Susamaru told him, "Agh, fuck, there's the pain!"
"Okay, okay," he replied as he moved the mirror away. "So that's good. You're resistant for about 10 seconds. Maybe with a few more days, you'll be permanently resistant."
"I hope so," she told him with some hope in her voice. "I haven't seen the sun in ten years. I was 16 when I was turned into a demon by Muzan."
"I was only 18," James added. "The Jackson brothers turned me into one by accident while murderin' my platoon. I had been a soldier for two years after I had faked my age to get into the army."
Susamaru was saddened to hear the circumstances of James becoming a demon. "That's awful. I'm sorry you had to go through it."
"I never asked to become a demon," James added. "But I don't regret becoming one. If it hadn't been for that, I wouldn't have met my wife Julia. Alas, if I weren't one, maybe she and my son wouldn't have been murdered."
"Demons here can't bear children," Susamaru informed him with a downtrodden tone. "Muzan won't let us."
"Exact opposite in America," James explained to her. "The Jackson brothers gave their demons the ability to have children because they've used that ability for evil purposes. They defile and rape women, and the female demons on their side even force themselves upon men. Between humans and demons, whether or not the baby is a demon depends on the sex of the demon. If it's a male demon fathering a child with a female human, like me, male children will be demons and female children will be humans. They do this to humans sometimes to both create more demons and to create more food." By now, James was beginning to grow more and more disgusted with the acts he was describing. "Even if the female demon becomes attached to their baby, if it's a human, it gets taken away and eaten by others. If it's a demon, it gets taken and raised to become a killer. They literally will rip a fuckin' baby from her mother to either murder and devour it or train it to be a mindless killer. Those two slave-ownin' pieces of shit have no boundaries to their depravity."
Susamaru's eyes widened in horror. "Holy shit… That's… That's fucked up."
"It is," James agreed as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and then lit it with a candle in the room. After taking a puff and blowing out some smoke, he told her, "It's incredibly fucked up. It's wrong. Tamayo, that woman who was talking to you, was right. The Progenitors are afraid of demons uniting and arguing for a world where we don't have to fight humans, because those fuckers know they'll be murdered by us. I'd love to see each and every one of 'em beheaded by a guillotine like the French* do to their murderers and rapists."
(A/N: At the time of this scene taking place, France still utilized the guillotine for capital punishment. France would become the last West European country to execute someone, executing a torture murderer in 1978. They abolished capital punishment in 1981. Beheadings had been public until the late 1930s, being moved into prisons afterwards.)
Susamaru reacted by becoming even more remorseful and despondent in her expression. "Muzan used me. He promised me that if I just killed more people, I'd become a Lower Moon easily. In fact, when I came to kill you guys, I was operating under the assumption I already was, and that I'd be sworn in as one the day after." She sighed and shook her head. "Now I know I was fucking lied to. He used and manipulated me, and I feel violated." As she paused, she wiped her face, tears starting to spill from her eyes as she looked up at James. "I was stupid… So stupid."
"No, don't say that," James comforted her with a pat on her shoulder. "This ain't your fault. Just as you said, that piece of shit Kibutsuji Muzan used you. He lied to you. There's no one at fault here but him." He then looked to the window nearby. "I told you, we're gonna make sure that cowardly motherfucker dies."
…
April 5, 1913
Three demons, all of whom looked relatively normal and human-like, watched the Nakamura House from a rented inn room across the street. Nobody had suspected they were demons, and they had specific orders from Muzan Kibutsuji himself: Kill Susamaru and James, and take away any top secret documents Susamaru had, of which she was carrying some. Their names were Hayate, Masaya, and Keiji. They all appeared to be in their late 20s, and all had black hair. Hayate and Keiji had blue eyes, while Masaya had red eyes. "Hey, Hayate-kun," Masaya called over as he put down a pair of binoculars. "Don't you find it strange how these traitors aren't leaving this place at all?"
"Well," Hayate replied as he walked over. "I wouldn't if I were them. They probably know some sort of response from our Master is coming. They're not stupid."
"It won't help them," Keiji added as he also walked over to the window. "Not at all. We'll still break in and do our jobs, no matter what they have in store. I bet you my left arm that this will be a piece of cake. Just watch."
"Be prepared to cut it off and give it to us if you're wrong," Masaya remarked to him. "It's not like losing one of your left arms will matter, since you'll just grow a new one."
"I think we all can agree these fuckheads won't know what hit 'em," Hayate replied. "Especially when it's the Demon Bandits!"
