On the fifth floor of the hotel, James and Enmu walked down a hallway, both ready to attack any threats coming their way as they stepped off the elevator. "Get ready," James warned him as they stepped off.
"Get over here!" A man then aimed a derringer at the two. Enmu and James immediately shot him once each, killing him.
"Damn," Enmu replied. "Are we gonna have to deal with this in the next level of the dream?"
"Possibly," James informed him as they rounded a corner. Just as they did, two men tackled them to the ground.
Enmu quickly punched the man who attacked him and aimed his free hand, which contained his second mouth, and told him, "Go to sleep!" In an instant, the man fell asleep on the ground just as James was able to shoot the man who tackled him and kill him. "That was too fucking close…"
"You ain't kiddin'," James replied as the two dusted themselves off and continued to Room 529. Once the two entered the room, James informed him, "Stay here. I'm gonna nab that Nezuko girl that's infiltrating the dream."
"You got it," Enmu replied as he sat on the bed.
In reality, James was going to get Susamaru, who would pose as Nezuko inside the dream. As he walked out of the room, he saw another man run up to him armed with a knife. James quickly punched him and slammed him into a wall, knocking him out. "Fuckin' bastard…"
As he entered the women's bathroom on the fifth floor, a female projection noticed him and yelled, "What the fuck are you doing here?! Get out!" She then threw a bar of soap at him. "Get the fuck out of here, pervert!"
"Fuck you, lady!" James then threw the bar of soap back at her. "Don't throw soap at me!"
Susamaru quickly jumped out of a stall next to her, having just transformed her appearance to match Nezuko's, and quickly tackled her to the ground. "Shhh, shhh, shhh!" She then pulled a knife and slit her throat, killing her. As she got up from the ground, she looked at her outfit, which matched Nezuko's current DSC uniform, and realized it was now covered in blood. "Oh, for fuck's sake."
"Just leave it," James told her. "It'll make it more believable that you've been fightin' here anyway. These damn projections are gettin' more and more annoyin' by the minute."
"How's my voice as her?"
"You sound just like her, dear," James replied before the two began to move in for a kiss together. Just before they touched lips, James stopped himself. "Okay, hang on. This is weird."
"Why?"
"Well, for one, ya don't look like yourself." James had stopped himself due to a feeling of awkwardness. "And two, ya look like Nezuko, and she's a bit too young for me."
"But I'm not Nezuko-chan, though?"
James sighed. "If I was to disguise myself as Tanjiro, would you want to kiss me, or would that feel weird?"
Susamaru pondered to herself for a few seconds before she replied, "Okay, yeah, I see what you mean." She then reached up and gave him a quick peck on the lips anyway. "But I can still do that!" She giggled to herself before she looked in the mirror. "Wow… I look so much like her… So, what's the plan, dear?"
"I'm gonna restrain you," James explained. "And you're gonna act like I caught you snoopin' 'round in Enmu's dreamscape. I'm gonna then pretend to put you to sleep, and put Enmu to sleep for real. Once he's asleep, you'll wake up from your fake sleep, and you'll put me to sleep in Enmu's mind in a shared dream I create."
"Got it," Susamaru nodded. "Let's go."
…
A few minutes later, James knocked at the door to Room 529. "It's me! Mr. Charles!"
Enmu quickly opened the door and was greeted with James dragging 'Nezuko,' actually Susamaru, into the room. "So, you got her?"
"Yep," James replied. "Nailed the bitch about a floor below. She put up a real nice fight, but my men took care of that."
Pretending to resist, Susamaru shouted as she struggled against the ropes binding her hands and feet, "Fuck you, asshole! Get me outta these fucking ropes right now!" She then spat on Enmu. "How ya like that, you bastard?!"
"I don't appreciate that," Enmu replied with a creepy grin on his face. "But when we're done with you, you won't be able to get angry anymore, because you'll be stuck in a dream for the rest of your pathetic and short life…"
"I'll put her to sleep," James told Enmu. "I have ways of doin' such." He then snapped his fingers and told Susamaru, "Now, go to sleep…"
Instantly, she collapsed to the floor, managing to convince Enmu that she was out cold. "Not bad," he told him. "Looks like I don't have to use my special hand here." He then laid down on the bed next to him. "So, I need to fall asleep now?"
"Indeed," James replied.
"That'll be easy," Enmu told him as he aimed his hand's mouth at himself. "Go to sleep…" In an instant, he fell asleep, knocking himself out cold.
"Get up," James told Susamaru. "Put me to sleep with that scroll I gave you."
As Susamaru got up, she opened the scroll up before she drew a knife and cut her thumb. She then painted a line of blood on the scroll before using a lit match James handed to her to burn the scroll up. "Good luck."
"Thank you," James replied as he laid down on the ground and soon after promptly fell asleep, the scroll spell working.
Susamaru then locked the room's door and went to the bathroom, telling herself, "Time to get out of these clothes and go back to normal…"
…
On the third dream level, Enmu and James appeared on a beach in what was presumably Japan. Enmu immediately turned to James and told him, "I think I recognize this place, Mr. Charles. Did that girl intrude in my thoughts that much?"
"Yeah," James replied. "I guess she did. This is her subconscious after all." Because this was actually James' subconscious, he knew that he needed to make sure a projection of Nezuko appeared in it.
As the two walked down a boardwalk next to the beach, packed to the brim with merchants and visitors, they both looked around for Nezuko. Then, as they rounded a corner and headed onto a street, something odd happened to the street in front of them. "Hey, look at that!"
"Shit…" The whole street and all the buildings and people on it was curling up into the sky, and yet nothing happened. To the objects and people on the street, it was as if everything was normal. "She must be architectin' her own dream," James told Enmu. In reality, he had no idea why the street had suddenly curled up. He thought to himself, "What the fuck is happenin' here?"
Enmu then stepped onto the curled-up street, which was now tilting at a 90-degree angle upwards. He walked on it as if nothing was wrong, and as he looked, he saw that from his perspective, 'Mr. Charles' was now standing in an odd way. "I've had this happen before. Come with me, Mr. Charles."
James quickly joined him, leaving behind the normal plane for the vertical one. He then checked his stopwatch, which revealed how much time he has. "Okay," he thought to himself. "About six minutes have passed in here, which is 18 seconds in the second level and about 0.9 seconds in the first level. Exactly 70 minutes have passed in the second level, which means 3.5 minutes have passed in the first level. I hope Tanjiro can hold on for another 6.5 minutes, Susamaru another 130 minutes, and us about another 43.3 hours. I'll need to find a way to kill 43 hours with Enmu before it's time to initiate the Kick Event. That also means we cannot kill the projection of Nezuko in this dream until the very end, or otherwise he'll find out she's not the one dreaming."
Enmu asked him as they passed a bakery, interrupting his train of thought, "How long are we going to be here?"
"43 hours," James told him. "The reason being is that Nezuko had a Kick Event planned in the real world that will go off in about 130 minutes in there. Even though we have to kill her here, we have to wait until it's time for her Kick Event, or otherwise, we run the risk of being trapped in Limbo."
"Oh yeah," Enmu replied. "I remember that. We'll find her and keep her alive for 43 hours, and then we'll kill her."
"Sounds like a plan," James replied as he looked around and noticed something odd. "Wait a minute," James thought to himself as he looked at all the people and realized he could not recognize any of them. "I don't recognize these people. They can't be from my subconscious… Oh fuck…" The horrifying realization hit him like a freight train. "Oh fuck! This ain't my fuckin' dream! This is Enmu's dream! That means I gotta hope he's created a projection of Nezuko to kill…"
…
Back on the second dream level, Susamaru readied explosives in the hotel room, placing them around James and Enmu's bodies as she periodically checked her watch. "Okay… I got 120 minutes to go." Then, she heard knocking on the door. "Who is it?"
As she grabbed a gun, a man on the other side demanded, "Open the door! We know you're in there!"
"God damn it," she muttered to herself. She quickly ran up the door and flung it open, confronting a man armed with a knife and shooting him dead within seconds. "Hopefully you didn't bring your friends." As she was about to shut the door, another armed projection ran up and tried to force it back open, shooting at Susamaru and striking her in the arm. "Fuck!"
As he ran in, Susamaru was able to shoot and kill him. Once her wound healed itself, she stacked his dead body and several pieces of furniture up against the re-closed and re-locked door, hoping to keep any more armed projections out of the room. Once she was complete, one of them shouted from behind the barricaded door, "Open the fucking door!"
"Fuck you!" Susamaru then ripped open her uniform shirt and spawned her four extra arms, also spawning handballs, ready to strike if they somehow came through. "Go away! I'm armed!"
"So are we, bitch! Now open the door already!"
Susamaru then opened the window to the hotel and looked down, seeing if anyone was trying to attack the room from the outside. Thankfully, she saw nothing outside and quickly locked the window back up before she picked up a whole wooden cabinet and stacked it against the window along with some more furniture. "Okay, now I'm fully barricaded. Nobody comes in, and nobody leaves. Please, be ready when it's time, James…"
