November 2, 1913

"So you want me to infiltrate the dreams of this guy?"

"Correct," Kagaya affirmed with a nod to James as the two met after the end of a Pillar Meeting. "We have good intelligence that he knows where this Stonewall Jackson person is. Perhaps if you can get inside his head, you can extract exactly where he is."

"I see," James replied. "I should be able to find his office pretty easily in Yokohama."

"It's hard to miss," Kagaya replied with a chuckle. "And since he isn't a Japanese demon, he'll be easier to find since he'll be around during the day."

"I'll be sure not to kill him in the real world if I don't have to," James assured Kagaya. "He is a human, after all. Am I gonna go with someone else, or am I goin' solo on this one?"

"I want you to get at least Tanjiro to go with you," Kagaya instructed him. "Since he also has experience in dream infiltration."

"He don't have much."

"But he has more than the rest of us," Kagaya pointed out. "And that's what matters."

"You do have a point."

"So with that settled," Kagaya concluded. "I want you to go to Kobayashi Kazuto's office and arrive there by the fourth of November with at least Tanjiro by your side. If you can, try to get his sister or one of his friends to go, too, but it's not an absolute necessity."

"Understood," James replied with a bow while he continued to sit. "I will carry it out. I'll see if I can get Tanjiro's whole circle of friends to come, since they all got experience too."

"Fuck no! I'm not doing dream shit again!" Zenitsu was firmly against the idea of entering into other people's dreams after his experiences onboard the Infinity Train. "You guys can do whatever the Hell you want, but I refuse!"

"Come on," Tanjiro tried to convince him. "It won't be as bad this time."

"What makes you so sure about that?!" Zenitsu could not believe that Tanjiro was quick to be on board with James' plan. "Why the fuck do you want to subject yourself to that?!"

Nezuko then walked up to Zenitsu and told him in an attempt to bribe him, "If you go with James-san, I'll tag along with my brother."

Zenitsu was now conflicted between staying back and going with them, but was also concerned about Nezuko going. "Nezuko-chan, why do you want to go?!"

"This won't be so bad," James told Zenitsu. "Come on, we ain't infiltratin' a demon's dreams. We're goin' into a human's dreams."

"But still…"

Inosuke told Zenitsu in an aggressive tone, "Come on, Monitsu! Say yes!"

Nezuko placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him as she said, "Don't you want to spend more time with me, Zenitsu-san?"

Finally, Zenitsu could take it no more. He took a deep breath and finally caved in. "Ugh… Fine, I'll go with you guys."

Tanjiro jumped for joy and exclaimed, "Alright! Zenitsu's coming with us!"

November 4, 1913

On a beach in Japan, James, Tanjiro, Nezuko, and Inosuke awoke while lying on the sand, surrounded by the crashing waves from the sea and a group of guards armed with swords and rifles. The bright sun in the sky was unusual for November, as was the high heat. In fact, it was as if the summer had inexplicably returned. James muttered to himself, "I think… I think we're here."

Their clothes were soaked in ocean water, and they all could taste sea salt and sand. They had been awoken by a man who shouted at them to get up. "Hey, get up! Come on assholes, get up! Get up!" One of the men then kicked Nezuko in the stomach before yelling at her, "Hey bitch, are you listening to me?! Get the fuck up!"

"Fuck," Nezuko shouted in pain as she stumbled to her feet, casting away her pink haori due to the heat and rolling up her sleeves. "Who the Hell kicked me?"

James got up as well, and asked the guards, "Where are we?"

Tanjiro got up, angry that Nezuko had been kicked, and demanded of the guards, "I better find out real fucking fast who kicked my sister."

Inosuke, who had lost his boar's mask, exclaimed in anger, "Where the Hell did my mask go?! Did you bastards take it?!"

"Shut up," the leader of the five guards ordered them. "Come with us! You better explain why you four washed up on our beach!"

Tanjiro argued with the guards, "Don't kick my sister!"

"Shut up," James admonished him. "Come on! Just go along with them for now! That goes for you too, Inosuke!"

"Aw man," Inosuke replied in disappointment. "I was looking forward to a fight! This is bullshit!"

"Let's go!" The guards forced them to walk with them at gunpoint. "Come on, hurry it up! You guys are gonna talk to our boss!"

The four of them were walked into a meeting room inside a traditional Japanese mansion, where they were sat at a peculiarly Western-style table with chairs around it. The room itself was adorned with traditional Japanese paintings and decorations, and as they sat down, one of the guards told them, "Our boss will be in shortly." All four had received a change in clothes, now wearing Western business attire aside from Nezuko, who wore a regular Western-style Edwardian dress in white.

"I see," James replied, taking the lead in the conversation. "Saito Yoichi, correct?"

"Correct," the guard replied as he walked out of the room.

Within a few seconds of this, the main doors to the room opened, and from them emerged the man they had been looking for, Yoichi Saito, the leader of a business conglomerate based in Yokohama who, according to intelligence-gathering by the Demon Slayer Corps, had sold weapons and other supplies to Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson, the 2nd Knight of the Moon, and was in contact with him. They were there to try to find out where he was, since, if the intelligence-gathering was correct, Yoichi knew exactly where he lived. Yoichi sat down at one end of the table, opposite of the group, and asked them, "So, what brings you four here today?"

"We came here to discuss a business opportunity with you," James replied to him. "Apologies for the rough introduction. We got shipwrecked on our way here, and my associates were a bit… Shocked, you can say, from the experience. Thankfully, nobody died, at least that we know of."

"I see," Yoichi replied. "I apologize for the rough handling from our guards. We're a bit on edge right now, since my life has been threatened recently."

"Understandable," James replied. "Someone in your position does need to keep their guard up, and it's because of that that we're here. Tell me, what's the most resilient parasite, Saito-san?"

"Parasite? Like a virus?"

"Correct," James confirmed with a confident nod. "But it's actually not a virus. It's an idea. Once an idea gets into your mind, you can't get rid of it. It's impossible. However, it is possible to steal it without you even bein' conscious."

Yoichi, confused, asked Tanjiro, "What does he mean?"

"What he's saying is that there are ways to enter into people's dreams and steal thoughts and ideas from them," Tanjiro explained to him. "It's a bit complicated, trust me, but I've seen it happen firsthand. It's a new phenomenon in Japan, but in America, people like Colby-san have been doing it for several decades now."

James then asked Yoichi, "What if I told you that what you would consider Magic is simply science that has not yet been fully exposed to humanity?" He then reached into his coat and pulled a single watermarked scroll of paper out from within it. "If I mark this with my blood and set it on fire, I can put myself and whoever I want to target to sleep, and then I can enter their dreams and steal ideas from them. We call it extraction in America, by the way."

"Extraction?"

"Correct." James then set the scroll down on the table. "We are also lookin' into chemical-based solutions for putting people into these shared dreams. The reason I'm tellin' you this is because this is goin' to be massive in the world of corporate and national espionage, and there's a way for people such as you to defend yourself. I can train your mind to subconsciously fight extractors who want to expose your deepest and darkest secrets. We call it a Weaponized Subconscious."

"Why would I listen to you? I don't even know if anything you're talking about is real. Don't I make a good point?"

"Tell me then," James asked. "How did you get here? What kind of transportation did you take? It's an honest question. I'm not tryin' to mess with you."

"Well that's easy," Yoichi initially tried to answer, thinking it was obvious. "I… I…" He suddenly found out that he could not find any answer to James' question. "Why can't I remember? I came here somehow, but… What is this? Do you know why I can't remember?"

"You don't remember because you're in a dream right now," James explained. "And everyone else here aside from me and my associates are not real. They're just projections of your subconscious. Truth be told, we don't know how we got on that beach either. I lied about the shipwreck."

Yoichi noticed that all of the four guards immediately stared at James when he told him that they were in a dream. "Why are you looking at him like that?"

"They're lookin' at me like that because we're intruders in your dream. We ain't here to steal secrets, though. We're here to help you keep those secrets safe. However, to do that, you'll need to trust us. We'll need to know our way around your dreams better than anyone else you know."

Tanjiro added, "He's right. While we can't make any 100% guarantees, what I can say is that we will make your dreams significantly harder to break into at the very least."

Yoichi was keenly interested in their proposal. "Very well." He then got up from the table. "Stay in the mansion for a bit. Enjoy yourselves. I'll be back to give you my answer soon."

As he left the room, all of his guards followed, leaving the four of them alone. Nezuko asked James, "Okay, he's out. What do we do now?"

"We go around and find his secrets without bein' caught," James replied to her. "But first, we need to go back to the changin' room and find our weapons."

"I'm glad that damn meeting is over," Inosuke exclaimed in annoyance. "This damn business suit thing sucks. Can I change out of the fucking thing already?"

"No," James shot him down. "Ya need to keep wearin' it. Your regular outfit sticks out like a sore thumb here."

"A sore thumb?"

"It's an English expression," James replied as he sighed. "It means you'll stick out too much and attract too much attention, Inosuke. Look, just keep the damn suit on for now."

"Fine," Inosuke said as he admitted defeat. "I'll keep the suit on."

Nezuko then asked the group, "Do you think Zenitsu-san's doing alright in the layer above this one?"

"I hope so," James replied before they all felt the house shake somewhat. As the walls vibrated and a few wine glasses on the table also shook, James rhetorically asked, "What's goin' on up there?"

"Whatever it is," Tanjiro replied once the shaking stopped. "It mustn't have been something too bad, since it stopped after just a few seconds. If it was major, we'd still be feeling it due to that time dilation thing you talked about, James-san."