"So, uh," James asked Kanao, trying to make some conversation with her after a few minutes of silence between them, still holding the revolver to her. "How long have you been a slayer?"
Kanao simply picked up her coin again and flipped it. When it landed on Tails, she sighed. "I've been one since the 1st Quarter Final Selection. I heard there's two more slayers in this forest who were there, too."
"Probably Kamado Tanjiro and Agatsuma Zenitsu," Susamaru replied to her. "Though Hashibira Inosuke mentioned being there, too."
"Inosuke? There were only four people who came out, and none were named Inosuke as far as I can recall."
"He was a bit unofficial according to him," Susamaru explained. "Tanjiro's the one who carries a demon with him in a bo- Aaaaand I shouldn't have said that, should I?" Immediately she regretted letting his secret out to Kanao as James chuckled and shook his head.
"A demon?" Kanao was somewhat curious. "That's against Corps rule-" All three of them were then interrupted when they spotted a creature walking towards them. Initially, it appeared to be a rather large spider, but as it came into view, they all found that it in fact possessed the fully-grown head of a human. Kanao rather neutrally asked the creature, "Hello there. What seems to be your problem?"
James and Susamaru, on the other hand, were horrified by the monstrosity. James yelled out as he aimed his gun at the spider/human hybrid, "What the actual FUCK is that abomination?! Jesus fuckin' Christ, how was it made?!"
"What the fuck?! What the fuck?!" Susamaru stood back, shivering. She was afraid of spiders, and seeing one with a human head invoked an even stronger sense of fear into her. "No, seriously, what the FUCK?!"
"You seem to be lost," Kanao kept talking to the spider/human hybrid, ignoring the fear of her captors. "Did someone turn you into a spider?" The creature nodded, indicating it was once a human. Kanao then stood up and told them, "Don't be so afraid. This creature was human. One of the demons here must have turned them into a spider."
"Hell to the naw," James exclaimed in English. "Hell to the fuckin' naw!"
Then, another interruption occurred, this time in the form of one of the two Pillars, the woman referenced by Kanao earlier, rushing out of the woods and attacking Susamaru, missing her by mere inches with her blade, which had a stinger-like tip at the end. "Motherfucker! You could have killed me right there!"
"Hello there," Shinobu told them both with a fake tone of comfort and greeting. "I see you're holding my Tsuguko hostage. Are you trying to eat her?" Her smile remained despite her talking about such a dark topic.
"Hell no," James shouted back as he aimed his revolver at her. "We ain't tryin' to kill anyone except demons, just like you guys!"
"Don't you know it's impossible for a demon to kill demons?" Shinobu chuckled as she suddenly rushed behind Susamaru. "You're just trying to fool us, aren't you? I wish we could be friends, but that will never happen, I'm afraid."
"Get away from her," James threatened Shinobu as he cocked his gun. "I will not hesitate to kill you. She's my partner in demon-hunting. We've killed three already, and we came up here to kill mo-" Then, James stopped as he seemed to notice something odd crawling on Shinobu. As he scanned it, he also saw two threads beginning to wrap around her. "Oh shit, look out! It's those spider threads!"
Susamaru pushed Shinobu off of her and pulled out a knife James had given her. She then swatted the area above Shinobu, cutting three different spider threads that were about to grab a hold of her. Had she not acted when she did, Shinobu would have been pulled away from them and possibly killed by whoever had tried to grab a hold of her. "How about that?! If we hadn't noticed those threads, you'd be dead right about now!"
Shinobu looked around, amazed that a demon had saved her life. "Well, um, that was rather unexpected."
"I hate you annoying demon slayers so fucking much," then said a young demon woman with pale white skin as she emerged from the forest. She looked to be about Tanjiro's age, and had a few spiders trailing her. "You ruin my family's nice web work. It's no wonder we have to kill you all every time you try to come up here."
"Don't come a step closer," Susamaru ordered her as she aimed the shotgun at her. "Or I'll shoot." James likewise put his revolver away and pulled out his Winchester rifle.
Shinobu was amused by their guns, and chuckled to herself. "Guns are such a barbaric weapon that has little practical use against demons. I appreciate the effort, but let a trained human take care of this."
"Ohhh, guns, I'm soooo scared," the spider demon sarcastically told them. "Whatever the fuck will I do against them?!" She then aimed one of her hands at Susamaru and shot threads from her wrist directly at her. She just barely missed the threads, which landed on the ground and began to dissolve, indicating they were corrosive.
"This must be the last member of the family," Shinobu remarked to Kanao. "After all, everyone else is dead."
"And that is why I'm gonna murder all of you!" This spider demon was rather angry after being reminded of the defeat of the rest of the family. "You took my brother, my sister, and my parents from me!"
Susamaru fired off two rounds at the demon as she dashed to James, causing her to slow down and stumble to the ground. However, she quickly got back up and fired a thread at him, sticking to his clothes as she got up and throwing him into a tree, causing him to scream out in pain, "Fucking hell!" As she then severed the thread to James, she aimed again at Kanao before James fired a round at her, causing her again to fall to the ground and preventing her from attaching a thread to the girl.
Shinobu then grabbed Kanao and pulled her to the side away from them. "Let's stand and watch. Maybe these guys do have it under control!"
The spider demon shouted, "You can keep shooting me all you want, but I'll just heal!" She then used a thread fired from her wrist to grab Susamaru's shotgun and rip it out of her hands, throwing it to the side, where Shinobu picked it up. "I'll deal with the slayers later. I wanna kill these two traitors first!"
"If it's a fight you want," Susamaru shouted as she spawned all six of her arms, each holding a handball. "It's a fight you're gonna get, bitch!" She then threw all six at her. All six hit her, chopping off one of her arms and taking a part of her skull off. However, Susamaru found that this attack would cause her trouble, as the spider demon used her free hand to attach one of the handballs to her with a thread. "Fuck!"
As she swung it around, she hit Susamaru hard with the handball, throwing her into a tree before James fired two more shots at her. "You'll find the effects of these bullets to be rather good at killin' you real soon!"
As her head and arm healed, the spider demon yelled out, "I'd like to see you prove those words!" She then picked up Susamaru again with a thread and tossed her into the air before pulling down and making her slam into the ground at full speed, sending a small shockwave into the air and putting a hole in the ground.
"Susamaru!" James then affixed a bayonet onto his rifle and charged at the spider demon, just barely dodging a blast of wrist thread, before stabbing her in the lower chest. "Now, tell me, how do you feel?!"
"I feel fi-" Then, the demon stopped talking as a feeling of dread came over her and her expression completely changed. "Wait… What… What's this feeling inside me?! Oh no!" She then stumbled back from James, collapsing onto the ground as she began to cough up blood from her mouth. "Oh my God, my insides are on fucking fire!" As she threw up another round of blood, including chunks of human flesh and clothes, she began to cry, the pain becoming unbearable. "Motherfucker, what did you put in me?!"
"All the bullets in my rifle were coated in wisteria poison," James told her, which deeply piqued Shinobu's interest on the sidelines. "And my bayonet was, too. With each bullet I put in you, you were given another dose of the poison. Now you'll sit here and wither away!"
"Fuck you!" She then let out an ear-piercing scream as she felt her insides literally burning inside her, as if someone was continuously stabbing her in the stomach. "You piece of shit traitor! Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU!" As parts of her body began to fade away and burn off, she screamed again. "NO! I CAN'T DIE! NO! NOOOO!" Finally, she disappeared from sight, the only thing left being her clothes, which laid on the ground. James pulled out a cigarette and lit it up with a match as he stared at the spot where the other older sister spider demon once stood.
As Susamaru stood up, Shinobu walked over to her and handed her back her shotgun. "Thanks," she told him as she used one of her free hands to wipe her forehead of sweat before reducing herself down to two arms. "So, what do you girls think?"
"Wisteria-coated bullets, huh?" Shinobu was now admittedly impressed by James' loadout despite him being a demon. "Now that's something I never thought I'd see. Even so… I don't know how the Corps will react to this news."
"If you want to confirm we ain't gonna hurt no one that's innocent," James explained to her as he handed her a knife. "Cut yourself with the knife and see what happens when you let the blood spill out. That knife isn't poisoned with wisteria, don't worry."
Kanao looked to her, worried for her, before Shinobu smiled and assured her, "I'll be fine, Kanao." She then sighed and put the knife to her arm, cutting into her skin and drawing blood. Once she was done, she handed the knife back. "Okay, is that good?"
Susamaru looked over and told her, "If this was only like 15 days prior, I would have been salivating over that blood. Now look at me. I'm not even fazed." Indeed, neither James nor her reacted whatsoever to the crimson red blood trickling out of Shinobu's arm and onto the ground below. "Impressive, huh?"
"Not bad," she admitted as James handed her some bandages. "But you guys haven't done that with Marechi blood probably. Trust me, I bet you'll be barely able to resist it."
Their conversation was immediately interrupted by a Kasugai Crow calling out from above. As it cawed, it followed with, "The demons James Colby and Susamaru are to be peacefully taken into custody and brought to the Headquarters of the Demon Slayer Corps! Both demons can walk in the sun with some drawbacks, so they can be out in the open!" It then cawed again before giving further instructions. "Also, Kamado Tanjiro and his demon sister Kamado Nezuko are also to be taken peacefully into custody and sent to the same place! All four will be judged for their conduct and existence! Nezuko cannot wall in the sun, so she must be kept in Tanjiro's box during daytime transit!"
"Being called into HQ," Shinobu remarked to them all. "That's never a good sign. I can picture exactly how the Oyakata-sama will react to your friend Tanjiro-san carrying a demon with him."
James asked out of curiosity, "And that will be? Also, what's a Oyakata-sama?"
"Ubuyashiki Kagaya, our leader," Shinobu replied. "Also, this is what he'd probably say." She then cleared her throat and pretended to use a male voice to mimic Kagaya. "I can't even begin to describe how expelled you actually are from the Corps. Also, I got just about every Pillar standing outside my office saying something about wanting to stomp your face in." Kanao could not help but stifle a laugh from her adoptive sister's impression of him. "I do that not out of jest, but of loyalty. He's actually a really nice guy."
"I hope so," Susamaru replied as she put her shotgun away. "Well, I guess that means we're under arrest, James."
"Exactly," Shinobu replied as she pulled two ropes from her uniform pouches. "Now, I just gotta tie your arms up. We don't want you two escaping on us, after all. Susamaru, if you use your other hands and arms, I'll be sure to poison you with my sword faster than you can say you want to escape, so don't try it if you value your life, please." All through the threat, she maintained a smile, which only added to the severity of it somehow. She and Kanao would be taking two demons into custody, basically capturing them, and they assumed Giyu would be taking Tanjiro and Nezuko in as well.
