As the fight continued elsewhere, Zenitsu and Nezuko both backed each other up as they waited for Daki to strike once again. "The mist is getting thicker, and there's even some snow on the ground now."
"Mukago-chan must have used her Blood Demon Art again," Zenitsu replied to Nezuko. "I can barely see more than a few centimeters in front of me now."
"Zenitsu-san," Nezuko then said to her partner for the fight. "I have an idea."
"What would that be?"
"Use the Sixfold version of Thunderclap and Flash to distract Daki-san," Nezuko instructed him, still referring to her opponent the same way she had while in disguise. "When she comes out with her sashes to strike back at you, I'll burn them and try to burn her."
"Are you sure?" Zenitsu felt a bit uneasy about the plan based on his tone of voice. "This sounds very risky."
"Trust me," she told him. "We don't have many other options aside from that or simply just sitting here and getting ourselves killed. I believe in you, Zenitsu-san."
Zenitsu nodded and took a deep breath. "Okay… Breath of Thunder, First Form…" He then dashed forward to the last known general direction of where Daki was. "Thunderclap and Flash, Sixfold!" Nezuko quickly followed behind him.
Thankfully, Daki was in the same area, so she indeed fought back by using her sashes. "You won't strike me that easily, you fool!" As her sashes were cut by Zenitsu's fast-moving attack, she only formed more to overwhelm him. "Just give up alre- Huh?!"
Nezuko then yelled out as she grabbed a hold of one of her sashes with a bloodied and cut-up hand and gripped onto it tightly, "Exploding Blood!"
"Fuck!" Daki was then caught off-guard by a massive explosion and a sheet of flame that enveloped both her and Zenitsu. As the latter emerged from the flames unscathed, Daki, on the other hand, screamed in a mixture of both pain and fear. As the other two looked on, the flames died down, and a burned and disfigured Daki yelled in their general direction in a fit of rage, "Fuck you! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! You ruined my face and body, you pieces of shit! How dare you disrupt and damage my beauty! I hate fire! I hate it, hate it, hate it! Fires suck!"
"Hey," Nezuko then asked Zenitsu on a hunch. "Do you feel like she has a bad history with fire?"
"What makes you say that?!"
"It's just a gut feeling of mine. When she screamed, it felt like it was more than just physical pain, like she had felt such a pain before and was now having some kind of flashback to it."
"Come to think of it," Zenitsu agreed. "I had that feeling too, actually, Nezuko-chan."
Interrupting their conversation, Daki launched an all-out attack with her Eight-Layered Obi Sash move. "Here I come again!"
"Shit!"
"Get ready!" As a plethora of sashes came down upon them, Nezuko realized she had to use the same technique her brother had learned so long ago once more. She had in fact not used the Dance of the Fire God since her battle with Enmu, but now, she realized she had no choice. She took a deep breath and declared as she swung her sword, "Dance of the Fire God: Waltz!"
Meanwhile, Zenitsu also declared as he prepared to use an even more powerful version of his earlier attack, "First Form: Thunderclap and Flash, Eightfold!"
Both of them battled back all eight sashes as they came down on the duo despite suffering many cuts and scrapes that served to distract them in the hopes they would lose their concentration. Daki yelled in an attempt to demoralize them further, "Stop resisting me! I have the upper hand here! You two are weak compared to me!" It did not work, and after a full minute of battling back the sashes, all of them laid on the ground, completely cut through and essentially dead as both of them caught their breaths and looked at their handiwork laid out in front of them.
Nezuko, having lost her left foot from one of the sashes, quickly regrew it and said to herself, "Agh, damn it… I can feel the pain now…" She had managed to ignore the pain before, but even with her foot back in place, she felt it hit her now. "Agh…"
Daki then ripped up pieces of her sashes in frustration and sharpened them as she ran over to the duo. As she then jumped in the air, she threw eight sharpened needle-like sashes at them, repeating the attack several times as she flew around the duo. "I'll just cut you up more!"
Zenitsu screamed in pain as he felt several of the needles puncture his skin, "Agh, fuck!" He tried to block them with his sword, but he was failing to keep up with the rapid rate of throwing Daki was managing to achieve.
Meanwhile, Nezuko was doing her best to use her sword to block the needles, but several still came through and punctured her skin and uniform, causing her to eventually recoil in pain and fall to the ground. "Agh…"
"Now I have you!" Daki then prepared to swoop in and finish Nezuko off with one final attack. "Here I come!"
Zenitsu shouted as he ran over to block the attack and stop Daki from striking her with a sash, "Nezuko!" Daki then directed a sash to try to grab her and rip her head off, but Zenitsu managed to block it with his sword, splitting it in two as both halves flew past both him and Nezuko. "Come on…" He kept up his sword as the almost endless sash kept coming, almost pushing him back into Nezuko. "For Nezuko-chan!"
Nezuko said to herself, "Zenitsu-san…"
"I'll have to stop him," Daki then said to herself as she then threw a volley of four needles at Zenitsu just as her attacking sash ran out and ended. "I'll strike now!" The sound of all four needles impacting flesh was then heard before a deathly silence fell on the small area that they were fighting in. Once the attack had finally stopped, Daki stood, a hand on her hip as she looked over the damage she had incurred on her opponent through the thick mist in the air. "How marvelous… You're still standing despite what I did…"
In a brief moment of hope, Nezuko looked up to Zenitsu from the ground and congratulated him with, "You did it, Zenitsu-san! Nice jo-" Then, as blood poured onto the ground from his wounds, Nezuko's look of joy changed to a look of terror and sorrow as Zenitsu stumbled and began to fall backwards. "Zenitsu!" She quickly caught him in her arms as he looked up at her, his golden eyes locking with her rose-colored pupils. "Zenitsu…"
Daki remarked, somewhat impressed by how well he had held up, "And now he goes down… It looks like this fight is finally over…"
"Nezuko…" Zenitsu looked up at his combat partner as tears formed in her eyes and began to pour out onto her face, dripping down onto his and mixing with a few tears of his own. "I don't think I'll make it…" He had begun to realize that there was a good chance Daki had just killed him.
"Zenitsu, please," Nezuko begged him through her grief. "Don't die on me. Don't you fucking dare!" She was adamant that he stay alive, but knew she could not help him.
"Before I go," Zenitsu then told her, wanting to get one last thing off of his chest before what he thought would be the end of his short life. "I need you to know something that I've wanted to tell you… For so long…"
Nezuko had a good idea of what he wanted to say as she continued to cry. "Zenitsu, are…"
"I love you," Zenitsu told her as he weakly tried to lift his head up to reach her lips. Nezuko noticed this and beat him to the punch, closing her eyes and locking her lips with his as tears continued to flood out of them. Partway through the kiss, which both believed would be their first and their last at the same time, Zenitsu officially went limp, and Nezuko let him fall back into her arms.
"I… I love you too, Zenitsu…" Nezuko then grew silent as she gently set his body down, believing Zenitsu had indeed died in her arms.
As this happened, Daki had begun to see things in her mind that she could not have recalled at an earlier time. It was as if seeing Nezuko and Zenitsu now was triggering the release of memories that had been suppressed, either by her or by someone else. "This is weird," she thought to herself. "Why does this feel familiar?" She then sighed, admitting to Nezuko, "I have to admit… Of all the slayers I've fought that weren't Pillars, your friend over there was the strongest. He had me worried for a bit, in fact. He wasn't a bad fighter, to be honest. Same with you, in fact. You two were… Were… Were the only non-Pillars who I ever had to use effort to kill." She thought to herself as more memories suddenly entered her mind, "Are these my master's memories…? No. No, they can't be. No fucking way. They're… They're mine?! But how?!"
Nezuko coldly told her as her tears stopped flowing, "Shut the fuck up right now." As soon as she said that, all of the many wounds that had been slowly healing across her body healed instantly, and Daki noticed that her nails began to sharpen and lengthen into claws.
"What?!" As Daki looked on, a burst of heat from a small ring of blood fire hit her and caused her to back up a few feet. "What is this?!"
Inside Nezuko's mind, her sadness had given way completely and totally to anger and hatred for her opponent. She was no longer the Nezuko that everyone else knew, her rage empowering her but also blinding her. Her eyes grew more bloodshot and intensely pink-colored as a single horn began to grow from her forehead and a flower pattern emerged on her legs and arms. Once her transformation was complete, Nezuko looked up from the ground, baring her sharpened teeth and large canines at Daki and telling her with indescribable rage, "I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
Daki immediately stepped back, shocked at her rapid growth. "What's this?! She's barely consumed human blood before according to my master, and yet her power level is going through the roof! I can feel the bloodlust inside her." Nezuko continued to growl as she stood up and locked eyes with Daki. "This is no longer a teenage girl! This… This is a powerful demon, rivaling even the Lower Moons!" Nezuko then barreled towards Daki, who quickly ripped off parts of her sash, which sharpened into needles. "I must strike now!"
Once Daki threw four small needles at Nezuko, two of them hit her in the shoulder, causing her to scream and yell, "Shit!" She quickly recovered, however, and expelled the two blades from her shoulder before continuing, forcing Daki to jump over her and land behind her to evade an attack. As Daki landed on her feet, Nezuko called out in a more garbled and slightly unintelligible voice, "Exploding Blood!" This triggered an explosion that engulfed the ground around Nezuko, as it had been covered in her blood.
"Fuck!" Daki quickly backed away from the fireball from the explosion. "What is this shit?!" She then threw several more needles at Nezuko, once again striking her, this time with one even lodging in her eye. Nezuko still managed to expel the needles and heal within seconds, horrifying Daki. "How?!" She then ran around Nezuko, and began to try to form her Eight-Layered Obi Sash, calling out, "Eight-Layered Obi Sash!"
The sash managed to cut through Nezuko, severing both of her arms and one of her legs, causing her to scream in pain and declare, "AGH, FUCK!" However, the pain quickly went away when all three severed limbs regrew. Nezuko then let out another roar as she charged again at Daki.
"Get the fuck away from me!" Daki then tried again to strike her, once again managing to sever parts of her body, and even managing to sever her head, splattering Nezuko's blood all over the building beside her. "Now you're dead!"
Despite going as far as to sever Nezuko's head, a yell of rage indicated that it still did not kill her. "NEVER!"
"What the Hell?! How?!" Daki then realized what Nezuko had done. "She congealed her blood in mid-air," Daki realized in her head. "She survived decapitation! I'm running out of options! If I don't attack again, I'll lose!" She then saw an opening and tried to go for it with her sash. "Now!"
However, before she could finish, Nezuko grabbed onto her arm and gripped down so tightly with her claws that she drew blood, cancelling her attack. Nezuko then made a fist with her free hand, which then was set ablaze with her Blood Demon Art. In her head, Nezuko's thoughts were a mess, largely filled with unbridled rage and aggravation against Daki for killing the love of her life. "Die," she thought to herself. "Die, you heartless bitch! Die, die, die! DIE!"
At the battle with Gyutaro nearby, all five participants stopped and looked in the general direction of the noises being made from the fight between Nezuko, Zenitsu, and Daki. Gyutaro thought to himself, "What is this feeling? I can sense a great deal of bloodlust, but it's not from my sister."
Tengen similarly thought to himself, "Whoever is creating this uneasy feeling over there, they're extremely angry. I can sense it all the way over here. What exactly is going on over there?"
Tanjiro, however, knew exactly what had happened. "Oh no," he thought to himself. "Don't tell me Nezuko lost control of herself… I can sense this bloodlust, and I can even smell it coming from her… What happened that led to her doing this?"
Back at the battle with Daki and Nezuko, the former was struggling to keep up with the latter. "I can't move," Daki realized as she tried to wrestle with Nezuko and get away from her. "Her grip is too strong!" Then, with Nezuko once again growling at her, she made a swing directly at Daki's face, her fist landing right on her nose and eyes and obliterating her head from the mouth up. The punch was so powerful that it was audible for several blocks, and it blew Daki right through four different buildings, with her body finally coming to a rest after hitting a fifth building and stopping just beyond the reach of Mukago's Blood Demon Art, allowing both sides to see each other clearly without the mist getting in the way.
As the dust settled, Daki laid on the ground in the empty room she had crashed into, knocked out by the blow for a few seconds as Nezuko rushed to catch up to her and finish the job, growling the whole way there. In those few seconds, she had seen something inside her unconscious mind, and as she woke up and rose to her feet, she unexpectedly did not resist as her head quickly grew back.
"Onii-chan…"
Just as Nezuko was about to deliver a kick to her to finish her off, she halted in her tracks, her leg just inches away from striking Daki again as she took several deep breaths. For half a minute, Nezuko began to calm herself down, her horn slowly disappearing back into her head and her teeth and nails slowly returning to normal as she did. Once she had become more calm, she asked Daki, "What… What did you say?"
"Onii-chan," Daki replied. "I said that word. Tell me, why did you stop?" Genuinely confused, she once again asked in an unusually somber tone, "Why? Did you not want to seek revenge for your lover?"
Nezuko, slowly starting to regain her senses, asked her, "Wait… So… So you were telling me the truth about your brother?"
Daki nodded. "Yes… I was telling you the truth about my brother." As both of them silently looked at each other, Daki pondered what to do next as she began to piece together the seemingly-random memory flashes she had been experiencing since shortly before Nezuko had gone into a fit of rage. She then asked Nezuko, "Did you not just vow to avenge the boy you love by killing me, or was that an empty promise, Nezuko-san?"
Nezuko, no longer feeling an urge to kill her but still angry, proceeded to punch her across the face with a normal level of strength, knocking Daki back several feet as several onlookers watched and wondered what was going on. "Damn it… Why… Why aren't you fighting back anymore?"
"Because I've realized I've lost," Daki replied, shocking Nezuko.
"This is nothing like you," she replied as she processed what Daki had told her. "It's like I'm fighting a completely different person."
"And now the fight's over," Daki admitted as she closed her eyes. "I can see now that I don't have the protection I need to continue."
"This is not like her at all," Nezuko thought to herself as she drew her sword. "But I have a job to do. I'm sorry, Mukago-san. I can't save your mentor." She then declared as she raised her sword into the air for a final mercy kill, "Breath of Water, Fifth Form: Blessed Rain After the Drought."
Suddenly, Daki opened her eyes, sensing something nearby and then disappearing from view, causing Nezuko's attack to instead hit the floor and cut into it. "I'm sorry, Nezuko," she thought to herself. "I cannot die just yet. I have one more thing I need to do."
As Nezuko looked around, wondering where she went, she asked herself, "Where… Where the fuck did she go?!" She then noticed an injured woman in the same destroyed room as her, with blood dripping from a wound in her arm. "Huh…"
The woman was terrified, having seen Nezuko's earlier rage-filled demon form. "You… What… You…" She slowly crawled away from her, fearful that Nezuko was going to kill her.
Nezuko, meanwhile, began to stare at the blood dripping onto the ground, a desire to drink it or even eat her making an appearance in her mind. "Ugh…" She turned away and closed her eyes, telling herself, "Don't lose yourself… Don't lose yourself…" She then looked at her bloodied fists and sighed. "I need to find her."
…
Hey guys, this isn't a Taisho Secret or a fun little note.
This is serious.
On Archive Of Our Own, there is a candidate running for a position in the board of the Organization for Transformative Works, who runs the website, named Tiffany G. Tiffany G is pro-censorship on the platform and extremely anti-ship, expressing views against sexually explicit content on the archive. She seems to, for example, equate fictional content in stories on the archive to real life crimes and events in their magnitude and impact.
What is most concerning, however, is evidence that she might be connected to the government of the People's Republic of China, which has a history of censoring and banning content within the areas it controls. (Out of principle, I do not recognize the People's Republic as the sole legitimate government of China (including Taiwan), and I refer to it separately.) To top it off, she has said things that can be construed as transphobic or at least inappropriate about transgender people.
If you have donated to the archive on or before June 30, 2022, you are eligible to vote, and I highly encourage you to vote against Tiffany G. Many Mainland Chinese users of the site, who use methods such as VPNs to access the archive due to the fact that the archive is banned in the People's Republic of China, are concerned about the possibility of her becoming a member of the board.
