^ Chapter 10 - Family ^

Ukogi flew as hard and as fast as he could towards the entrance to the forest, his little lungs inhaling and exhaling as big of gulps of air as possible. He was desperate to try and find any help that could save Zenitsu from the fate that awaited him. Even though the yellow-haired slayer sometimes annoyed him, mostly because they couldn't understand one another, he still cared deeply about him because they had been paired together as slayer and Kasugai crow.

He was finally able to see the edge of the forest and the road leading up to it, which gave Ukogi a burst of energy to push himself further in order to reach his destination. The nearer he got to the edge of the forest, the clearer he was able to see what lay just beyond it, which included a pair of figures that were on approach.

"Here we are, Natagumo Mountain." said Shinobu, her eyes drifting up to the peak of the mountain rising from deep within the forest. "Such a mysterious place…"

Giyū remained silent and stoic, his eyes scanning the upcoming treeline for any signs of what they were looking for. Seeing nothing, he too raised his eyes to the mountain, however he caught something approaching from the western side of the forest.

"See something, Tomioka-san?"

"Something is one word for it...it's small...I can't tell exactly what it is." he replied as he squinted to try and make it out.

Shinobu followed his gaze and spotted the tiny dot in the night sky flying towards them, its size barely growing any bigger as it did. Eventually, once it cleared the first line of trees, they recognized it as a tiny little sparrow that was flying rather quickly, too quickly in fact.

The sparrow seemed to have seen them too, because it was chirping as loud as its little longs could allow while flying straight towards them. Giyū's eyes widened a little as the sparrow couldn't slow itself down and he actually had to catch the little bird before he ran right into him, Shinobu even gasping a little as well.

"A sparrow?" she asked, walking up next to Giyū as he held the bird in his hands as it frantically chirped and fluttered its wings. "I'm certain that sparrows don't occupy the area around Natagumo Mountain...what's one doing here?"

"Chu...chu..! Chu…!" chirped the bird, taking huge gulps of air in between each chirp. "Chu!"

"I...can't understand what it's saying…" Giyū said, blinking once. His answer caused the exhausted sparrow to frown and turn towards Shinobu, repeating it's chirps. "Can you?"

"I can. Honestly, Tomioka-san, I'm surprised you can't…"

"Why should I?"

"Well, even though this is a sparrow, he's one of the Kasugai Crows." said Shinobu with a smile as she took the sparrow into her hands, looking down into its eyes. She gently pet his head with one hand and supported him with the other, her warm and caring smile enough for the sparrow to actually calm down somewhat. "So you're a Kasugai Crow, and your name is Ukogi?"

"Chu!" the sparrow replied, nodding his head vigorously. "Chu, chu!"

"You belong to a Demon Slayer in the forest named Zenitsu?"

"Chu! Chu, chu! Chu!"

Shinobu covered her mouth when she gasped at Ukogi's chirps, Giyū glanced at her as if silently asking her what was it that Ukogi said. She quickly told him what the situation was, and in no time at all the two Hashira sprinted into the forest with Ukogi in Shinobu's hand still so that he could rest.

It didn't take long for the two to come across some of the first casualties inside of the forest. Several Demon Slayers, all of them Mizunoto or higher, were scattered in a small break in the sea of trees with their weapons either close by their bodies or even stuck inside of them. It wasn't hard to guess that they had been killed by their own swords because of the wounds they had, a fact that made Shinobu feel horrible inside. Despite her emotions, she kept a smile as she walked past a couple other trees and found a few more bodies nearby.

Giyū had remained where he was standing upon their discovery of the bodies, his face devoid of any emotion as he looked from one body to the next. Truth be told, this made him regretful that they couldn't have arrived any sooner to try and save some of these young lives. That was the job they had all signed up for however, so he could only offer silent prayers to them.

"Do you recognize any of them?" Shinobu asked, glancing back at Giyū over her unoccupied shoulder. "There don't seem to be any survivors around here."

Giyū remained silent as Shinobu returned to his side, looking up through a hole in the treetops to look at the moon. They had been advised before their departure for Natagumo that there were several rookie Mizunoto that had joined the battle on the mountain, with one of them being the boy that Ukogi had flown from.

Judging by the bird's silence, the bodies here didn't belong to his charge, which meant he was somewhere deeper within the forest.

"The moon looks so lovely tonight…"

"You should follow that sparrow's directions to his charge, Kochō-san." Giyū said, looking at her with the same stoic expression. Ukogi chirped his frantic reply along with flapping his wings rapidly again, making Shinobu calm him down again before nodding.

"I was hoping we could stay together longer and get along, but I understand. Good luck, Tomioka-san."

Shinobu gave him a caring smile before she leaped off as a blur, entering the trees to Giyū's left and going from branch to branch until she was standing from the top of the tree she scaled. She looked to Ukogi, seeing if he had recovered enough of his strength to lead her, and nod her head with him as the sparrow took flight from her shoulder and proceeded to lead her towards their destination.

Giyū didn't spend any more time among the dead either, gripping his sword as he broke off sprinting deeper into the trees. His eyes remained forward, looking ahead of his position at all times for anything that could pop out without warning. While he ran, he wondered if one of the rookies Shinobu mentioned was the boy he remembered encountering a little over two years ago. If he was there, he thought if his sister had been able to overcome her demonic state.

Deep down, he hoped that she had.

"Mizu no kokyū, Ni no Kata: Mizu guruma!"

Inosuke gasped when Tanjirō came twirling around from the right side end over end like a buzzsaw, a torrent of water coming from his sword to further enhance his blade as he struck the arm of the Father. Despite all of his strength and force that he put behind the technique, the nichirin blade was stopped by the bones of the demon.

Tanjirō grunted at the ineffective blow to the Father, his hesitation lasting long enough for him to be completely open for the demon to throw his other fist at him. Again, by Inosuke, he was stopped by the slayer slashing downward with both swords onto his other arm to protect Tanjirō from being struck. Inosuke grunted and struggled to try and break through the tough bone structure of the Father, but it proved fruitless when neither of them could push in any deeper into his flesh.

The Father threw his arms down and let out a bellowing, guttural roar that threw Tanjirō and Inosuke back, their swords detaching from his flesh. The wounds healed in a matter of moments and he hunched back over, balling his hands into fists as he looked from one slayer to the other, deciding which to target first.

"Dammit, I can't slash him, even if I use an attack!" exclaimed Tanjirō after flipping in the air and landing with both feet down onto one of the river stones. "What am I going to do...am I not strong enough?"

"Don't come near my family!"

"Here he comes!"

Tanjirō tensed up as the Father decided on him as his target and rushed towards him, the river doing little to slow him down. The demon roared at him to stay away from his family as he reared back with his fist yet again, before smashing apart the rock Tanjirō stood on before leaping back to the shore into smithereens.

The Father snarled and stared down Tanjirō, shaking his fist free of any rock dust and water, before taking one step towards him with murder in his eight spider eyes.

"What the hell are you looking at!? I'm over here!" shouted Inosuke, having recovered from being thrown back, as he flew towards the Father demon with both swords crossed over his body in preparation to strike. "Pig Assa-aghk!"

The Father bashed his fist into Inosuke and sent him flying back once again, his body ricocheting and bouncing off the water a couple times over. Eventually his body landed face down in the water and he sunk to the river bed, lying still for a few moments, before he popped back up with a grunt, wheezing slightly from the heavy blow he had taken. Something had definitely been fractured or broken inside, and he saw that a slight laceration had opened up on his left bicep from striking a rock below the water's surface.

"Shit! All that force with just one swipe of its arm…!" grunted Inosuke, wincing under his mask with a slight dribble of blood coming from his busted lip. "It's not good, I'm not at full power! Not to mention, these new wounds...they won't help me at all…!"

Inosuke and the Father made eye contact with one another, before the Father snarled and started running at him now that his focus had shifted to Inosuke from Tanjirō because of the former's intervention. Inosuke, not seeing it advantageous for him to engage the Father again with a blind assault, turned tail and started running through the stream away from the charging demon while trying to think of another strategy.

At the same time, Tanjirō was running just past the first row of trees flanking the coast of the river at the same speed as Inosuke, his hand gripping his sword tightly as he set his sights on a tree up ahead.

"Mizu no kokyū, Ni no Kata kai: Yoko mizu guruma!" he shouted while bringing his blade up to deliver a quick lateral slash. From his sword a thin, crescent-shaped blade of water shot forward from his sword and cut clean through the trunk of a tree ahead of him, the water dissipating once clear of the wood.

Inosuke continued to stay just a few meters ahead of the Father, his right leg starting to hurt from the blow he took from the demon as well, which told him that if he didn't do something here soon he'd have to face the Father head-on.

"Where the hell is Gonpachiro?!"

"Inosuke!"

"Eh?!" gasped Inosuke, looking left as the loud crack of bark came from the tree line. Soon enough a giant tree started to fall towards him, gathering speed as the gap between the trunk and its base grew in size.

Inosuke grit his teeth and ran through the water as hard as he could in order to outrun the tree just in time for the hefty trunk to fall right on top of the Father. He grunted heavily as his body was slammed right into the river bed, pinned beneath the weight of the tree below the water by his head, neck, and upper shoulders.

The water plume caused by the tree collapse settled down after a few moments, the residual spray drifting away in the wind at the same time as a wave of water circulated out from the fallen tree and down the river. A moment of calm fell on the river, the demon seemingly pinned beneath the tree, enabling a frazzled Inosuke to pop up out of the water a few feet away with some water droplets leaking out of his boar head's nostrils and ears.

"What the…" wondered Inosuke, blinking a few times under his mask.

"Inosuke! You okay!?"

"Huh? Inosuke muttered with a slight wheeze, his head turning to see where the tree had been felled, seeing Tanjirō standing on top of the huge stump of the tree.

He was the one who had cut down that huge tree, and judging by how clean the cut was, Tanjirō had managed to bring the hulking tree down with just one stroke of the sword. Inosuke growled at himself and at Tanjirō, thinking of himself as inadequate and his ally as crazy for chopping down that tree as a way to stop the demon from reaching him.

If he had only been more careful when attacking the demon and had better protected himself from the punch, he wouldn't have lost some of his strength. He wouldn't be wheezing as much as he was right then and there wouldn't be any pain or discomfort in his right leg and the blood dripping from the laceration in his arm wouldn't be making his grip slippery.

At the same time, Tanjirō could see that the Father was struggling to free himself from beneath the tree, considering the amount of bubbles and splashes that were coming from where his head was. With his arms pinned the demon wouldn't be able to defend itself if it were to be attacked, this was the chance they were looking for.

"There it is, an opening!" thought Tanjirō, his left hand sliding to the bottom of his sword grip, his right bumped against the hilt. He wasn't going to let this chance pass by, and he wasn't going to allow his blade to stop once it reached the demon's bones. All or nothing, he had to get this demon's head off. "I should be able to chop off that though neck now!"

Tanjirō tightened his grip and widened his stance, focusing on the bubbling water, the line of connection soon appearing in his sights. He had to use his most powerful Water Breathing form, the last of the forms that Urokodaki taught him during their training. That was going to be the only way they were going to beat this demon and make it out alive.

After a moment or two, Tanjirō closed his eyes and steadied his blade to prevent it from shaking. He then slowly began sucking in a breath to fill his lungs to their utmost maximum capacity, enhancing all of his strength and his reflexes to their utmost limits. Tanjirō wasn't willing to make any mistakes here, if he was going to cut off this demon's head, Total Concentration Breathing and his most powerful form were his only chance.

"Huhoogh…" murmured Inosuke when he saw Tanjirō enter his stance, the very air around him making him appear as an entirely different person. Even with the fox mask on, Inosuke could tell that he was serious. "He's got an entirely different air about him now. He's about to do something totally mind-blowing!"

"It's time...to finish him off!" Tanjirō finally thought, his eyes shooting wide open as he leaped from the tree stump and into the water. His target, the Father demon's neck. This was it! "Zen Shūchū...Mizu no kokyū...Jū no kata-!"

"Uraaaaghh!"

Tanjirō gasped mid-air, the water secreting from his blade ceasing as the Father shot up from the water with the giant tree held in his arms above his head like it weighed like a pound of feathers. His sword ended up getting stuck in the wood of the trunk, preventing him from using the trunk to leap back and regroup.

Inosuke tried to warn him of what the demon was going to do, but by then it was too late. With a mighty swing of the tree, the demon created enough momentum to send Tanjirō flying off into the air like a cannonball shot out of a cannon.

"Kentaroo!" shouted Inosuke, his eyes wide below his mask as Tanjirō's body grew smaller and smaller the further he flew away.

"I-Inosuke! Don't die until I get back! That has to be one of the Twelve Kizuki! Whatever you do, don't die!" bellowed back Tanjirō before he turned nothing but a dot in the sky, eventually disappearing entirely past the trees.

The last few words of his sentence weren't able to reach Inosuke's ears, sounding only like empty noise that faded with the breeze that blew over the trees. In that moment, the Father had separated the two slayers from one another, leaving Inosuke completely alone against the hulk of a demon without any support whatsoever.

Inosuke was speechless for a few seconds, shaken by how quickly Tanjirō had been removed from the equation. A chill ran up his spine when a dark shadow fell over him, its source the Father demon as it towered over Inosuke with his fist raised back, ready to drill Inosuke right into the ground.

"Oh, shit!"

Zenitsu hadn't known how long it had been since he was rendered essentially paralyzed by the poison he had been infected with. The purple splotches had spread from his hands and up his arms to his chest and the sides of his face, as well as his bulging veins. His body was aching and hurting from head to toe, but at least he had stopped bleeding from his mouth and nose.

The worst thing about having dried blood on his face leading from his right nostril was that he couldn't really breathe through it that well, though it didn't matter much since it was hard enough to breath as is and he was solely using his mouth to take in air. Every single breath that he took was like red hot pins and needles were being pushed into his lungs, causing his stomach to quiver each time he inhaled.

"It's getting harder...and harder to breath…" Zenitsu thought as he took his next slow and controlled breath. He wished he could at least clean his face of the dried blood, but even if he could move his arms, he didn't think he could even use them because they had shrunken into his sleeves. "I have no feeling in my arms and legs anymore...they're numb…"

Zenitsu's vision had blurred some more, not from tears, but from his own body's suffering and it's slow decline as a result of the poison. The breathing was definitely slowing down the poison's spread through his body, with his arms and legs shrinking at a snail's pace, but he wasn't sure how long he could continue to hold out.

At some point, he would either lose consciousness, or the pain would be too much for him to handle and his lungs would give up on him and allow the transformation to take hold. He would turn into one of several human-spider hybrids that were below the shack looking up towards it, or the moon, without a master now that the spider demon was dead and gone.

Zenitsu took another breath and grit his teeth more when the burning sensation picked up in his right lung, a soft cough exiting through his mouth. The cough was enough to rattle his body with pain and his vision grew spotty. It was getting so hard to breathe, to hold on and keep fighting. He thought that maybe if he closed his eyes to take a short little rest, that everything would be okay.

"Nezuko-chan...I'm sorry…" he thought, his eye lids slowly closing with the moon the only object in his vision. He took one last breath before fully shutting his eyes and exhaled steadily, his numb body relaxing and losing some of its rigidity.

Zenitsu's breathing lost its concentration and focus, and in that monetary slip up, the purple skin splotches seemed to grow in size and his arms shrunk a tiny bit more as the spread of the poison quickened. His mind was blank, devoid of any thoughts, like a pitch black empty space. After a moment of silence, a tiny little voice spoke to him from the darkness, appearing as a little glimpse of light. Again the voice spoke, its volume increasing as the light did as well.

The voice became more recognizable the louder it talked, turning more into a yell that tried to rouse him from his stupor and get him to open his eyes again. Zenitsu's eyebrows furrowed as the voice seemed to scream in his mind, until he repeated to himself with an almost inaudible grunt.

His eyes slowly opened again to the sight of the full moon shining above, and by disregarding the pain, he resumed his concentrated breathing to slow the poison down yet again. The chirping insects within the forest sounded muffled and distant to Zenitsu's ears, with the only clear sound his own breathing. Then, his eyes widened when he saw a lone butterfly seem to flutter above him, circling and seemingly fading in and out of existence.

A petite and beautiful woman then appeared from the butterfly, her turquoise and pink butterfly-shaped haori fluttering like the wings of a butterfly as she landed softly on her toes next to Zenitsu. Elegant and beautiful, she smiled softly at Zenitsu and inspired a warm sensation in his chest, a sensation different from the fiery pins and needles.

"Who...is she…?"

"Yoo-hoo~!" Shinobu asked softly with a hand next to her mouth, her warm smile almost like a shining sun in the night sky. "Are you all right?"

Tanjirō managed to right himself in the air as he started to descend back towards the ground after being sent flying by the Father. He looked over his shoulder at the rapidly approaching trees and grit his teeth, his sword at the ready.

"Mizu no kokyū, Ni no Kata: Mizu guruma!" he exclaimed before he used the move in the while facing the opposite direction from where he was falling.

The centrifugal force he produced as he spun end over end managed to counteract the force of gravity and the velocity of his descent just enough that when he hit the tree tops, he had slowed down and managed to recover quicker after impact. The water from his blade splashed over the branches and leaves as he fell through him, his feet eventually hitting the ground below and instinctively trying to stop him from tumbling over.

He hadn't slowed down enough for him to catch himself immediately, so he ended up stumbling a few steps and running into a nearby tree. Tanjirō thankfully caught himself with his free hand before his face could smack into the bark, and he dropped to his knees with a loud exhale of relief.

"I managed to land somehow...wew!" he said, taking a few breaths to steady himself before he picked himself up. His legs were a bit wobbly, but his strength returned in a matter of seconds thanks to his demon blood enhanced stamina. "I don't think I got injured either…"

Tanjirō checked himself over to ensure that was true, but quickly stopped almost as soon as he started since any injuries he would have gotten would have already healed by then, or had at least started the process of healing.

"I never would have thought that being a demon could...well, make me realize just how strong they are...being able to heal themselves after getting injured…"

Suddenly a loud scream came from somewhere in the forest nearby, pulling Tanjirō out of his thoughts and causing him to whip his head towards the sound. It was close, close enough that his nose could smell the source of the voices themselves. There were two people, one of them a female because of the feminine scream, and judging by the acrid odor he guessed that one of them had to be a demon.

Gripping his sword closely by his hip, Tanjirō stood up and remained hunched over while creeping up a little hill towards the location from where the scream came from. The feminine voice called out for the other person to stop what they were doing, before there was another scream.

Arriving at a row of bushes and shrubbery, he crouched behind them next to a tree and gasped silently at the scene in front of him. The demon he and Inosuke had seen run into the forest earlier, before she had called the other giant demon to her aid, was kneeling on the dirt with her hands covering her face as blood dripped between her fingers. She was quivering and crying a little, obviously in pain, while standing just in front of her with a small web of threads stretched between his fingers was the boy demon.

Unfortunately, the element of surprise Tanjirō thought he had was easily shattered when the boy's one visible eye moved towards him and remained there. They stared at one another silently for a few seconds, the demon girl uncovering her face and showing several cuts of different sizes and severity across her face, before the boy finally spoke.

"What are you looking at? This isn't some show, you know."

Tanjirō's jaw clenched slightly before he stood up from his blown cover, his gaze going from one demon to the other. He could see now how similar they looked, and started piecing the puzzle together with how they looked similar to the Mother demon as well.

"Wh-What are you doing?" Tanjirō asked, his gaze settling on the boy once again. "Aren't you two allies?"

"Allies? Don't put us in the same category as something that flimsy. We're family. We're joined by a powerful bond." the boy spoke as he stretched the intricate spider web between his fingers, his gaze falling back to the girl. "Besides...this is between me and my sister. So don't interfere, or I'll carve you up."

Tanjirō's eyes returned to the female demon now identified as the boy's sister, and he felt his heart tighten up at her appearance compared to her supposed brother's. He could smell how terrified she was, as well as the pain that she was feeling from the cuts he presumed the boy had inflicted on her.

He didn't know why she had gotten those cuts, until he remembered what the Mother demon had told him, about how the demon in control of the family would brutalize and harm the other members for stepping out of line and not doing what they were supposed to do. A bad feeling developed in the pit of his stomach and he became more wary of the boy, with red flags starting to go up in the back of his mind.

"This isn't right...whether it's your family or an ally...if you have a strong bond between you," Tanjirō started to say, lowering his gaze from the two demons as his free hand shook slightly while balling up into a fist. He didn't know who either demon was, or had been, but already he was beginning to feel his anger start to rise. "Calling it flimsy if you're not related by blood...that's not true at all!"

Tanjirō stepped away from the tree and towards the two demons by one feet, his hand gripping his sword tighter while he even growled a little bit behind his mask. The boy raised his eyebrow slightly at the different feeling this slayer gave off, how something felt different about him than the rest he had encountered.

"Not only that, but those who have a strong bond give off the scent of trust! But all I'm picking up from you two is the scent of terror, hatred and repulsion! Even I'm repulsed by this!" growled Tanjirō his eyes blazing with growing fury behind his fox mask. "That's not what you call a bond! It's counterfeit! It's forged!"

Both demons gasped at Tanjirō's claims, the boy's eyes widening considerably as a chord was struck rather hard deep inside of him. His eyebrow twitched and his right hand quivered slightly, and Tanjirō immediately smelled what seemed like anger bubbling up inside of the boy, but he didn't care what he thought. Demons couldn't stand one another, unless someone more powerful than them forced them to. Even he felt repulsed just by being around the two demons, not just because of the supposed bond they had according to the boy, but because they were just like him physically.

The same feeling even existed between him and Nezuko, he could always feel it, present in the back of his mind just like his hunger towards humans. But his familial bond was so strong, that it overruled that mindset, allowing him to continue to travel and stay by his sister's side. And Tanjirō knew that Nezuko felt the same way, even when she couldn't say so because of the bamboo gag that she had to wear at all times. He could feel it, whenever she was out of her box, like when he helped her hold her hand out in the sun beneath his at the wisteria house. He knew that during those times, even though she didn't show it, their bond was strong enough to withstand their demonic desires and feelings, in order to stay together as brother and sister.

"You…" murmured the boy, his teeth grinding together somewhat as he stared Tanjirō down with quickly growing bloodlust.

Tanjirō readied himself for a fight, before he heard the foliage rustle to his right and his nose quickly picked up the scent of a human before they appeared. It was a Demon Slayer, someone who had managed to survive through the untold carnage that had occurred on Natagumo Mountain.

"Hey, look at that! A demon that's just the right size." the slayer said with a confident grin. "Even I can take down a kid demon like this one."

"Hold on a second!"

"You can just back off!" barked the slayer back to Tanjirō with a grin still. "I want to take the safe route up the ladder. Since once you move up, you get more-"

In silent fury the boy swept his left arm around, the threads of his spider web swinging around with him before they struck the slayer and ceased his talking in the blink of an eye. The threads sliced clean through his clothes and body, the interconnected strands dicing up up into bloody chunks of flesh and fabric that fell along with his relatively untouched lower body into a messy heap on the ground.

Tanjirō was stunned, his anger vanishing for a brief second and turning into terror at how quickly the demon had killed the slayer without even showing the slightest bit of effort. Carved to pieces in less than a second, it was terrifying.

"Hey, what did you say?" asked the boy in a low tone. His gaze slowly moved to Tanjirō as he turned his body to face him, giving the slayer a glimpse at how scary this boy was turning out to be. His expression was relatively blank of emotion, aside from his one visible wide eye, but all of the bells in his mind were ringing like crazy at him. "Say it again...what you told me. What was it that you just said?"

If Tanjirō hadn't been a demon himself, and was still human, he would have been trembling a whole lot more than he was right then. He gripped his sword two-handed defensively as a threat towards the demon, his feet staying rooted to the spot. They actually felt that they were sinking into the dirt from how heavy the air had gotten once the boy's entire demeanor had changed.

"Inosuke, I'm sorry...but I don't think I can make it back to you." he thought as sweat started to accumulate on his forehead. "Just hang in there for as long as possible...I promise I'll be there as soon as I can! I'll definitely save you!"

"Hey, you...what you said just now…let's hear you say it again. Come on." said the demon, his eye visible quivering as he stared so intensely at Tanjirō, it felt as if he were piercing his soul with his gaze. "Say it, will you?"

Tanjirō ground his teeth together as a quick glance to the girl kneeling on the ground wiped her face clear of any last few traces of blood and the tears she was shedding. His mind imagined Nezuko in a position like that, and his anger soon came back with such an astounding resurgence that his knuckles turned white from how hard he was gripping his sword. His fangs grew in size and sharpness, as he lowered his head slightly so that the shadows covered the upper portion of his mask, allowing the demon to get the slightest glimpse of his glowing eyes past the tiny eyehole slits.

"Sure...I'll repeat it as many times as you want." snarled Tanjirō, the fear in his mind now totally replaced with rage. "Your bond is forged!"

Inosuke's breathing had become more labored, with some slight wheezing every so often, from the injury he knew he had sustained to his lungs after getting punched by the Father demon earlier. Ever since Tanjirō had been sent away, he had tried his best to take on the demon with the strength that he had, but no matter what he did, he wasn't able to inflict actual damage to his foe.

Every single time he thought he'd make it through an arm of the Father, his blades would be stopped by the tough and dense bones that he had. And all that got him was getting struck again by the powerful blows of the Father that ravaged his internal organs and bones. From being blown away by each strike, his exposed upper body had received several other more cuts and bruises, allowing more of his blood to leak freely out down his arms and abdomen and further hinder his combat potential. Despite his fighting instinct and his general nature, Inosuke had to retreat into the forest away from the powerful demon. Right now, he was taking cover behind a tree, trying to hide his labored breathing while trying to hide from the Father. He could hear the heavy steps of the demon somewhere behind his position, looking for him like a hungry predator.

Inosuke grit his teeth when the demon looked his way, seemingly not finding where he was, before a growl emanated from his spider pincers as he spotted the blood splotches on the dirt leading right up to his hiding spot. The Father roared again, as if to signal that he had discovered Inosuke, and began to slowly approach the slayer's hiding spot.

"S-Shit! Hiding myself in a place like this...how pathetic is that…" thought Inosuke, growling silently to himself at his weakness. He took a breath and calmed himself down in order to try and think his way through this dire situation. "Still, I gotta come up with a way. How do you slash someone who's sword-proof? What do I do, what do I do? Just how do I slash it?!"

Inosuke closed his eyes and growled again as he lifted his hands up to start beating the sides of his head with his fists, trying to jump-start his brain to think of a strategy. He told himself over and over to think hoping for something to pop into his mind, causing him to lose track of the Father just enough for it to stop right in front of his tree and rear back.

Inosuke remembered the threat at the last possible second and quickly sprinted away from the tree before it was punched through by the demon into splinters.

"This is bad! This is really bad!" Inosuke told himself as he ran, the thundering footsteps of the Father following behind him. Because of his wounds, hiding from the demon was practically impossible, since he would either follow the tracks he left behind or smell him out. "Until he gets back, I gotta somehow-!"

Inosuke ran past a couple of trees before he froze up and skid to a halt when he registered his own words and heard them play over again in his mind. He then stomped his feet repeatedly on the ground as if he were throwing a temper tantrum.

"What the hell kind of attitude is that?!" he bellowed before turning around and running at a full sprint back towards the pursuing Father, his mad rush actually causing the demon to hesitate with a grunt and freeze. "Don't mess around, dammit!"

Inosuke then threw himself up into the air, swords raised above his head at the ready to slash the Father. The demon brought his right arm up in order to block Inosuke's attack, leading to one of the serrated blades getting stuck inside of his forearm, just like every other time before that. The only difference was when Inosuke started to use his other sword like a hammer, repeatedly striking his blade over and over to dig the blade deeper and deeper into the demon's flesh.

"Curse you! It looks like I got infected by Tontaro's germs!' snarled Inosuke, his muscles rippling and bulging with each successive brutish strike he made on his own sword. "Messing around like that, that was way too close a call! Using my head?! That's so not mee!"

With one final strike, a crack was heard inside of the Father's arm and with a roar of pain, Inosuke's blade slashed clean through the rest of his forearm and severed his hand from the elbow down, finally causing significant damage to him. Inosuke landed on his feet and grinned behind his mask, looking up at the Father after he had stumbled back while gripping his injured limb.

"All right! Slashed you!" Inosuke exclaimed proudly, standing up and pointing one of his swords at the demon. "It's simple! If you can't slash something with one sword, all you gotta do is pound it with another sword! Khahaha!"

The Father took one step back from Inosuke, his entire demeanor different from when he was stalking the slayer, then turned and started to run away from the slayer. Inosuke blinked a few times under his mask before he growled loudly and gave chase after the demon, shouting at him to stop running and come back and fight him.

"Fight me, dammit! Come baaack!"

The boy demon attacked silently without mercy, using his razor sharp spider web threads as his weapons to try and cut and shred Tanjirō into bits and pieces. One thread managed to create a cut in the cheek of his mask, another into the forehead region below the right ear, while he used his sword to deflect and parry the rest. His expression had remained the same since Tanjirō had insulted the so-called familial bond that he had with his sister, emotionless and blank, yet full of rage and fury towards him for saying those things.

Once Tanjirō defended himself against the attack, having hardly lost any breath or energy from doing so, the boy narrowed his eyes slightly and stretched his webbing between his fingers again. Behind him off to the left, the sister demon stood close watching the two fight without doing or saying anything.

"Just so you know...I won't kill you in one blow. After ripping you to shreds, I'll carve you up." said the boy, his voice monotone and calm. "However, if you take back what you said just now, I'll do you a favor and kill you at once."

"I won't take it back!" growled Tanjirō, lowering his stance somewhat. "What I said was the truth!"

"Rui...something feels weird about him…" spoke up the sister demon, causing the boy to take a pause and turn his head slightly in her direction. "I don't think he's a normal Demon Slayer…"

Tanjirō tensed up and grit his teeth slightly, looking from one demon to the next before there was a brief flash of moonlight, causing him to pull his head back at just the right time for the thread Rui had flung at him to cut through the rope securing his mask to his face. He took a step back to regain his balance, but didn't stop his mask from falling away from his face to reveal his glowing, anger-filled demon eyes and his bared, razor sharp fangs. While the sister demon gasped audibly at the reveal of Tanjirō being a demon, Rui remained silent, his eyes widening only slightly.

"H-He's a demon too?!" stammered the daughter, her shock and Rui's silence allowing Tanjirō to ready himself better and change his grip slightly on his sword.

"It doesn't matter...I'll carve you up and let you burn away in the sun." uttered Rui, his expression remaining the same. "That is...if you take back what you said…"

"Again, I won't! Again, it's the truth! You know who's not making any sense? It's you! You're the one who's mistaken!"

Rui narrowed his eyes yet again, doing his best to keep his anger at Tanjirō's outbursts from showing on his face as he widened the webbing between his fingertips. Tanjirō readied himself for what was to come, his reveal as a demon making it practically guaranteed that the demon won't hold himself back any more against him.

This fight was going to get a whole lot worse.

"Damn! That bastard...where the hell did he go, dammit?!" growled Inosuke while running, his head looking left and right for any sign of the Father.

His lungs were starting to ache from every breath he took, more than when he had been punched in the abdomen by Tanjirō after they exited the Drum House, and it was starting to make his vision spotty. His cuts couldn't properly heal either because every motion he made would cause the hardening blood to break and lead to more fresh red liquid to drip down over the already dried patches of blood on his skin already.

Inosuke ducked through a few trees and entered a slight clearing inside of the forest, before he took a breath too deep and grunted loudly as his lungs seized up and he coughed loudly. He stumbled forward and fell to one knee, his chest heaving a little before he grunted and forced himself to stand back up with his swords still held tightly.

"I'm tellin' yah...this...doesn't hurt…!" he said to no one but himself, growling more as he tightened his jaw muscles. "What doesn't hurt doesn't hurt!"

Inosuke shook his head and ran a few more yards, entering another small clearing in the forest that seemed to be empty of any other life, causing him to growl in frustration and lower his head. He decided to use his exceptional senses to locate the demon, the scenery around him becoming ultra clear to him as he focused while grunting in pain, until finally he whipped his head back and found the Father up in a tree branch quivering and making nervous sounds.

"You idiot piece of crap! How high did you climb up?!" Inosuke shouted, his eyes narrowing and his grin widening a little. "You're plotting to make me use my head again, huh? In your dreams!"

The Father began to shake and quiver more, his whole body shaking from head to toe in a sporadic and painful looking manner. It got to a point where the demon started to groan and growl even louder than before, enough that Inosuke started to think that it wasn't fear that was causing the Father to shake that bad.

That was proved true when the Father began pulling his own skin off and molting right before Inosuke's eyes, revealing fresh and new green skin with blade-like protrusions sticking out of both his arms and legs. His original teeth were pulled away with the old skin, being replaced by armored spikes of sorts over his head, sharper teeth and more pronounced mandibles.

"D-Did it just shed its skin?!" stammered Inosuke before the Father roared and leaped back down onto the ground.

He towered over Inosuke even more than before, saliva dripping from his razor sharp teeth as all of his spider eyes looked down at the boar-headed slayer as if he were an insignificant insect meant to be squashed beneath him, Not only were his muscles rippling, but veins were bulging all across his arms and his upper shoulders straight up to his trap muscles, flowing with his demonic blood.

Inosuke took a step back as sweat dripped from his brow as he actually started to worry, now that the opponent he thought he had successfully wounded was back to full strength, and even stronger than before. The impressive aura the Father was giving off was enough to paralyze him for the first time in his life, so much that his hands were actually shaking.

"It's no good. I can't win." Inosuke thought, his eyes wide with terror as his arms slowly dropped to his side. He couldn't move his body, the terrifying presence of the demon had rendered him paralyzed through and through. "I'm gonna die...I can't beat this guy."

The Father, seeing the slayer drop his weapons so easily and stand there without putting up so much as a simple defense, snarled deeply as he clenched his right fist and geared up to strike Inosuke down with one fatal blow. This was it for him, the end of the road.

"Don't die!" echoed Tanjirō's words in Inosuke's mind, stirring him somewhat from his terror. "Don't die until I get back!"

The world seemed to slow down around Inosuke as his memories were opened up back to the old woman at the wisteria home as she bid them farewell. Her statements to live their lives with pride and wishing luck to them in battle, they resonated within Inosuke's mind and mixed with Tanjirō's words.

They were finally able to ring true inside of his mind, and almost instantly his heart began to beat faster and he came back to his senses. He gripped his swords tightly again and narrowed his eyes, taking on that confident grin under his mask.

"I'm not gonna lose! No way am I gonna lose!"

At the last second he dodged the Father's death punch and leaped backwards, skipping back a couple other steps before coming to a stop, huffing out some air as he held one sword back behind his head, the other pointing at the demon.

"I'm Hashibira Inosuke of the Demon Slayer Corps! Just bring it on, you dirtbag!"

In the blink of an eye, the powered up demon rushed Inosuke and rammed his shoulder into him, launching him deep into the trees behind him with a loud grunt coming from the slayer. His back collided eventually with another tree, allowing him only a second of respite before the Father was on top of him yet again, reared back for another devastating punch.

Inosuke managed to push himself up off the ground and jumped to avoid the punch, the tree shattering in its wake as Inosuke went up and over the Father until he was upside down behind him. There was his moment to strike!

"Kedamono no kokyū, San no kiba: Kuizaki!" said Inosuke before he swiped his swords at the back of the Father's neck, the killing blow that would end the fight once and for all. The complete opposite happened, when with two loud reverberating pangs, his swords cracked and broke in two against the neck of the demon. "Th-They snapped!"

Given no time to evade, the Father spun around and smashed his forearm into Inosuke's abdomen, sending him hurtling back into a tree and causing several of his bones to snap and pop upon impact. He could up blood that splattered the inside of his mask as he fell to the ground, dropping his broken swords in the process.

"O-Oh, crap! I wasn't able to go on the defensive with my breath attack!" sputtered Inosuke mentally, his body twitching from the pain, before he was picked up by the head and held tightly in the Father's huge hand.

"Don't come near my family! Stay away!" he roared right in Inosuke's face as his huge fingers began squeezing his head like a stress ball.

Inosuke began to sputter and gasp as it got harder and harder to breath from his head being slowly crushed, his vision turning blotchy and his throat closing up. His fingers twitched as he tried to close them into fists and punch the demon's wrist in a last-ditch attempt to free himself.

The Father snarled as he squeezed Inosuke's head even harder, continuing to crush it more and more, and make the slayer see flashes of his life that he wasn't even sure were real or his imagination. There was a woman who was crying, blood on her clothes, and the feeling of air rushing past him as he fell from a cliff while the woman told him that she was sorry, and that he should at least live.

"Wh...Who are...you…" he murmured, with blood oozing out from his lips and his boar head, at the vision of the woman in his mind.

Hurried footsteps approached them from the demon's right and in a flesh his arm from the bicep down was cleaved off entirely, causing Inosuke to fall to the ground and cough and gurgle from the blood in his throat while the severed hand of the Father fell close nearby.

Wondering what had saved him, he moved his head slightly past the hand of the demon to see a figure with a split haori standing a few meters away, his sword drawn and his back facing him.

"Did he...slash it…? Wh-Who is...this guy…" thought Inosuke as he slowly sat up with his shaking arms, fully turning his head towards the newcomer.

His attention returned to the demon when with a loud roar he regrew his severed arm in a flash, then lunged at his new attacker with both arms out as if he were going to tackle him and smother him to death with his hulking strength. Amazed at how fast the demon moved, Inosuke's eyes darted to the newcomer, who remained perfectly calm as he slowly turned towards the demon without uttering a single word.

Like Tanjirō, water erupted from his blade as with what seemed like a single leap he flew past the demon, leaving behind a looping trail of water that circled around the Father's body over his limbs and his neck. Inosuke was utterly blown away when after the water lingered for a few moments, as soon as the young man landed on the ground behind the demon, the Father's body was instantly sliced into nothing but a pile of his own limbs, with his head dropping to the dirt and rolling away from the rest of his body.

"H-Holy crap!" Inosuke thought with wide eyes. "I-I've never seen anyone...as incredible as this guy!"

The young man looked back at the demon as its jumbled up body parts began to turn to ash, his expression as stoic as it was when he arrived, before he let out a little sigh and closed his eyes.

"Now then…"

Giyū turned to look back at Inosuke to see if he was okay, but only just caught a glimpse of Inosuke tipping over and passing out from exhaustion, blood loss, and the pain his body was wracked with. Giyū walked over to him and squatted down next to him, putting a finger to Inosuke's neck to check for a pulse, hoping that the worst case scenario wasn't true.

After a tense moment, he felt a pulse come from the young slayer and he softened his expression, letting out another sigh.

"You were able to survive against that demon...even while being just a rookie…"

Like Tanjirō had guessed, Rui had stopped holding back with his threads in his attempts to cleave him into bloody bits like he had to the unfortunate Demon Slayer who happened upon them. Luckily, with his enhanced agility and reflexes, Tanjirō was able to dodge and avoid all of Rui's threads and retreat back a safe distance from him to recollect and come up with a better strategy.

If he had the ability to use his nose in conjunction with his reflexes, he would be able to better plan for and counter Rui's attacks, but because the smell that lingered over Natagumo Mountain was still present, he couldn't rely on his scent. At least of course, until that smell actually did begin to disperse.

"I can smell it...the acrid odor's starting to fade, so now I can rely on my nose to detect the scent of the threads! I can take him on now!"

At the opposite end of the small clearing, Rui stared blankly at Tanjirō after ceasing his attacks momentarily to think and analyze his opponent. He wasn't wasting time on how it was a Demon Slayer who was actually a demon that was fighting him, his sole purpose was devoted to ending his life in whatever way possible for insulting what he had done with his family.

"He's smarter than I thought. He doesn't flinch back in fear...and despite being a demon, he's avoiding my attacks. Unless he hasn't devoured anyone?" he thought, his eye settling on Tanjirō as he stretched and contracted the webs in his hands. "Not that it matters anyway."

Tanjirō himself stood up from his squat and kneel position that he had entered after dropping down from a formerly intact tree branch, holding his sword off to the side. He was still angry at Rui, angry at what he had done and at what he had said, but he was controlling himself. He still needed to be capable of rational thought and tactical strategy.

"I need to end this now and get back to Inosuke!" he thought before ducking down and running at Rui, taking a few steps and then leaping up into the air.

Rui quickly flung down a swiping thread at him, with Tanjirō gearing back with his blade to use one of his breath techniques to slash through the thread and reach Rui and decapitate him. Expecting the thread to be sliced clean through with the first form, his blade glowed slightly with a blue hue as he swung at the rapidly approaching thread.

His sword struck the thread with a loud ping, causing it to bow backwards only slightly before the blade was cut clean through by the thread, leaving only a couple of inches left attached to the handle.

"Euh?!"

The thread was upon him in an instant.

A/N Ooooooooh here we go bois, the next chapter is the big one! Im super excited for that! :D At the same time, this chapter was a fun one to write too, though I did juggle different chapter titles around for a little bit till I decided on the one you're seeing. Short and simple, and it refers to a couple of things that I'm sure all of you smart and amazing people can recognize :)

I'm going to start taking either 1 or 2 day breaks in between chapters, and once College (yeah im a college student, u g h) starts, those breaks may go longer since I have to focus on IRL stuff outside of writing this amazing fanfic for you beautiful people. Thought to tell you in advance so you don't get worried! :)))

As always my wonderful audience, leave a Favorite, drop a Follow, and leave a review telling me what you think!
And gosh do I sound like a Youtuber when saying this! :D

Translation(s)

Mizu no kokyū, Ni no Kata: Mizu guruma

- Water Breathing, Second Form: Water Wheel

Mizu no kokyū, Ni no Kata kai: Yoko mizu guruma

- Water Breathing, Second Form: Improved - Lateral Water Wheel

Zen Shūchū

- Total Concentration

Kedamono no kokyū, San no kiba: Kuizaki

- Beast Breathing, Third Fang: Devour