About 10 minutes after departing, Susamaru walked into the same forest clearing James had shot into, and began searching in the darkness for whatever he had shot. She was somewhat on edge, but was confident that she could take on whatever James had hit since it was most likely poisoned and weakened. As she scanned the forest around her, she suddenly sensed a presence behind her and turned around. "Freeze, asshole!" However, when she turned around, she found nothing standing near her. "Damn it, nothing…" She sighed and continued walking around the clearing when she felt the same presence again and turned around. "Hey!" Once again, nothing. She grunted in annoyance before scanning and walking around again. The third time she felt the presence, she turned to her left side and found what she was looking for. "Stop right there!"

The demon she found was relatively normal looking, and held a sword. "Your friend shot me twice in the shoulder, and I've been feeling sick ever since!" He then swung at her, barely missing her head.

Susamaru then once again ripped her yukata off and spawned her four extra arms before spawning two handballs in her two right extra arms. She fired off a round of birdshot at the demon before throwing both handballs at him, striking him down and ripping off both of his legs. Once he was on the ground, she shot him again with birdshot, pumping enough poison into him to kill him. "There, now pass on!"

"Raaaaagh," the demon screamed as he felt his insides burn with the poison dissolving them. "Fuck, it fucking hurts!"

Finally, Susamaru used one last handball to decapitate the demon, giving him a mercy kill. "There, now you're dead…" As she reloaded her shotgun out in the open with more wisteria rounds, she suddenly got kicked by an unseen force and thrown to the ground. "Fuck!"

Once she was on the ground, two new demons stood above her. One of the two men told her, "Good evening! It's unfortunate we have to meet under these circumstances, fellow demon."

"I'm not your friend," Susamaru angrily told him as she stood up. "So stop calling me your fellow demon!" She tried to spawn her extra arms, but as soon as she began, her arms failed to appear. "Huh?! What happened?! What the fuck?!" She then tried to spawn a handball in her free hand, but that did not work either. "God damn it, what did you do to me?!"

"That kick you felt was actually me injecting a liquid into you with one of my needle fingers," the other demon replied to her. "This liquid can immobilize a man and render a demon's blood demon art unusable!"

"A needle?! What… Oh no… I'm fainting…" Susamaru then collapsed to the ground. "Fucking hell…" As she passed out and faded into unconsciousness, the two demons quickly picked her body up, ready to bring her to another location. What they did not realize was that by dragging her, they left a trail on the ground to where they were heading, which would prove to be their downfall.

…

An hour after Susamaru left, James woke up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily and looking around to see if anyone had awakened him. He then pulled a pocket watch from his pants and checked the time. To his frustration, he had overslept by half an hour. "Motherfucker! I fuckin' overslept!" He then carefully made his way down to the ground before shouting for his partner, "Susamaru! Susamaru! Where the fuck are ya?! SUSAMARU?!"

He ran to the clearing, but when he arrived, there was no sign of her, much to his horror. Despite his efforts, he could not find her.

"Damn it," he muttered to himself. "Why the fuck did I fall asleep?!" Then, he looked over to a patch of grass on the ground and found that it seemed to have markings on it from something being dragged. Thoughts immediately began racing through his head, fearing the worst for Susamaru. "Please don't tell me that's from her!" He raced down what became a path that had been made by something being dragged on the ground, and hoped that it was not of his partner in combat. However, after a few minutes, he walked into a second clearing and found two demons standing around an unconscious Susamaru. "Hey assholes! Let 'er go!"

Both demons looked over to James. One of them shouted to him, "It's this bitch's partner! Let's get him!" This demon then fired a needle of tranquilizer at James from his hand, but James was able to dodge it, and fired off two rifle rounds. The second demon fired back at him with Susamaru's shotgun, forcing James to take cover. "We got her guns! You're no longer at an advantage!"

"You may have her guns," James shouted back. "But I got training on how to use 'em!" He then fired three more rounds, bringing his rifle down to ten rounds left. "Taste lead!" Then, he was hit by a revolver bullet, striking him in the shoulder. "Fucking Hell!" Though only one bullet was not enough to lethally poison him, it still hurt, especially as his injuries began to heal themselves.

"Come on out," the second demon beckoned menacingly to him. "Don't be afraid of us!"

James then charged out from behind his cover after affixing a bayonet onto his rifle and fired off two rounds before stabbing one of the two demons with said bayonet, the blade going right through him and out the other side. "Die!" He then stabbed the second demon as well before twisting and pulling the blade out of him and shooting him in the chest. "Same to you! Die, die, die!" By emptying the rest of the rounds into both demons, he had managed to pump enough poison into them to kill them.

As both demons withered away and died, Susamaru began to stir awake, the tranquilizer given by the needle demon wearing off now that he was dead. "Ugh… Where the fuck… How…"

"That makes ten demons down," James said to himself as he wrote down in a small notepad. He had kept track of every demon the two of them had killed together to present to the rest of the gang once their two weeks in Mount Fujikasane were over. "Seven for me and three for her."

"Make it four," she groggily told James. "I got the one you shot at."

"Okay then," he replied. "Make it eleven. Seven for me and four for you."

…

April 20, 1913

Muichiro buttoned up his pants as Mukago stood up from her knees and adjusted her clothes. "I'm surprised you took care of me first, Tokito-san. Last two times, it was the other way around."

"I figured I'd favor you since you've been doing this for me," Muichiro replied to her as he looked up at the ceiling in the dark room. It was around 9 PM, and Muichiro had made his limited sexual activities with the former Lower Moon 4 a nightly occurrence. "Even if we're only using our hands or our mouths."

"You don't have to limit yourself," Mukago told him as she wiped her mouth with a cloth. "I'm not afraid."

"I know you aren't," Muichiro replied with a sigh. "It's just… I'm not sure if I want to go that far yet. It's not to insult you. It's just a personal thing."

Mukago nodded. "I see, I see. I understand, Tokito-san. How do you see me, by the way? From my end, there's really no strings attached."

"Same," Muichiro agreed. "I guess I just don't do relationships, especially not ones like Shinazugawa-san and Kocho-san's sister."

"Kocho-san has a sister?" Mukago had never heard of this before.

"She used to," Muichiro corrected her. "Kocho Kanae, or as she was known when she died, Shinazugawa Kanae. She married Sanemi about half a year before she was murdered about two years ago."

"Murdered two years ago, you say?" Mukago then pondered to herself, recalling something she had overheard. "I think I overheard one of the Upper Moons mentioning he killed a Pillar but wasn't able to consume her body due to the rising sun."

Muichiro was intrigued by this, and pulled out a notebook. "Who was it? Can you give me a description?" She had already spilled several key secrets about Muzan and the Lower and Upper Moons to the Demon Slayer Corps, and they would prove vital when the time came to take the fight to them.

"His name was Doma," Mukago told him as he began writing down the information. "He is or at least was Upper Moon Two last time I checked. He had like silver hair and led this super creepy cult despite proclaiming several times that religion could suck his dick." Mukago clearly did not care for Doma based on his description of him. "He's a fucking creep towards the girls among the Upper and Lower Moons, which is saying something considering how Muzan acts. I slept with him a few times, and those few times were enough for him to try to get me to join his cult. He was the only member of the Upper Moons I refused to fuck after that."

As Muichiro finished writing down her statement, he asked her, "You also mentioned a second member of the Twelve Moons who used to be a prostitute earlier. Who was that?"

"Daki," Mukago told him. "She was an oiran. I worked at a post-station, and I was more 'normal' if you could say. Even so, Daki-san and her brother Gyutaro-niisan were probably the only Upper Moons that treated me with any respect due to my own upbringing. Gyutaro-niisan never did anything with me, but Daki-san and I shared those fun little escapades among young women who are fond of each other."

"Those are the two who share the title of Upper Moon Six, right?"

"Correct," Mukago confirmed to him. "They've killed a lot of you guys, but… I feel bad for them, really bad."

"Why is that?" Muichiro was genuinely curious as to how she felt bad for them, having heard of their nasty reputation for killing many demon slayers who had tried to attack them. "They've killed many of us."

"I don't know much about who they were before they became demons," Mukago admitted. "Only small stuff from overhearing them. Daki-san became an oiran at a very young age a long time ago, and something happened that caused Gyutaro-niisan to come to Muzan with her. Whatever it was, it left Daki-san with a fear of fire, so I imagine it wasn't good."

"A fear of fire…" Muichiro then looked to the night sky from a small window in the basement room. "Fire…"