"Poison will only get you so far," a demon yelled at Shinobu and Kanao as he fell to his knees, slowly dying from a fatal dose of wisteria inflicted by the former. "It's not the be-all and end-all!"

"You're so full of shit," Shinobu told a demon she was taking care of in the middle of the night alongside Kanao. "And you fucking know it." Her fake smile taunted the demon as he began to fade away.

"You cunt," he spat at her. "Your poison won't save you all the time! One day, you will be destroyed!" As he faded away, he laughed maniacally, his laughter eventually stopping at his mouth disappeared followed by the rest of his head.

"Well, that takes care of that," Kanao told Shinobu as she sheathed her sword. "Shinobu-sama, what's the next order of business?"

"Mitsuri-chan is photographing the scene of that demon's crimes right now," Shinobu replied. "She sure was tired when they called her at Iguro-san's place, I guess." She then pulled a small pocket watch from a pocket in her uniform. "It's about 2:30 in the morning now." She yawned as she looked to Kanao and told her, "Let's start heading back." As the two walked back, she thought to herself, "Kanao doesn't know it, but that was actually a test for an American poison Colby-san wrote about. Sure enough, it works well on demons here. Perhaps using foreign poisons will be beneficial, since demons here can't really build a good resistance to them…"

…

Yesterday

As Shinobu and James worked on a poison together in a small chemical lab inside the Butterfly Estate, the former asked the latter, "How similar is Dutch to German?"

"Well," James replied. "They're both related. They ain't exactly the same, but there's words they share. You speak Dutch, don't ya?"

"Natuurlijk," Shinobu replied in fluent Dutch to him. "Voordat de Amerikanen naar Japan kwamen, was Nederlands de belangrijkste westerse taal van de elite. Ik spreek niet zo goed Duits, maar ik versta er een deel van vanwege het Nederlands."

James looked at her in confusion. He could pick out some words in what she said due to their similarities to both German and English, but was still lost on what exactly she said. "Uh… In English or Japanese, please?"

Shinobu giggled and replied in English instead to show off her skill in the language. "I said that I can speak Dutch because it was the main language of the elite in Japan before the Americans came. I cannot speak German very well, but I can understand some of it because of similarities to German."

"You sound very good," James replied in English. "Of course, the accent is there, but it's all correct." Switching back to Japanese, he asked her, "Anyway, how do you feel about Pillar Kanroji and Pillar Iguro being a couple?"

Shinobu set an empty test tube down. "I think they make a wonderful couple, and I've never seen Mitsuri-chan or Iguro-san any happier than they are now."

James then asked, "Do you think you'll ever find happiness like that?"

Shinobu sighed, realizing such a question would inevitably come up. "Me? No, not really. I'm… I'm not the kind of woman that a man would want. You know that I wasn't always like this, Colby-san. I was rebellious and feisty in my youth."

"Your youth? You're eighteen years old, ma'am. You're still young."

"When you've been a slayer for seven years and counting," Shinobu replied. "A field that has an average life of only five years of work before retirement or death, eighteen feels more like fifty. In any other profession, I'd be young, but here, I'm middle-aged. Eleven, the age I was recruited at, was the absolute youngest we have ever recruited people to fight."

"Eleven? Jesus Christ…" James then remembered the existence of drummers in the Union and Confederate Armies in the Civil War. "Then again, when I was alive as a human, armies were still usin' drummers. There officially were age limits, but most people didn't give a fuck. The youngest drummers I saw were about twelve or thirteen. They weren't supposed to actually fight, but in war, of course, shit happens, and sometimes they had no choice. I thought I was skirtin' the line by fakin' my age and enlistin' at sixteen, but damn, I sure wasn't alone out there."

"The culture inside the corps is so different from that outside it," Shinobu explained. "We've always recruited people in their adolescence from the rural countryside. It's not often we had older people or people from urban areas join us. We have to grow up so much faster here, because if we don't, we'll get killed when we go out to fight. Such is life when you're not only not recognized by the government, but they've tried to shut you down for being subversive for allowing women to fight despite supporting the Meiji Restoration."

"They really fucked you guys over," James could not help but remark.

…

Back on the ship, the battle between Hiro, Ichiro, and the Demon Slayers continued. Muichiro and Mukago had used up all of their poisoned bullets by now, but it seemed to barely have any effect on the two Lower Moons. Rinji had also used up all of his regular bullets. As the Scottish soldier who understood Japanese was telling the other two soldiers with him to retreat, Ichiro formed in front of them and stabbed both of them quickly in their throats and chests, killing them in a matter of seconds. He yelled out in English, "Fucking Hell! They got Jones and Mathers!" He then turned to Muichiro and asked him in Japanese, "Any ideas?"

"We just need to get lucky and strike as fast as we can," Muichiro replied before he noticed that Hiro had appeared behind him using his second BDA technique, known as Future Sight. "Look out!" Muichiro then pushed the soldier aside and slashed at Hiro, cutting his arm off before he used his free hand to punch him in the face. He then kicked him away.

"That was too close," the Scottish soldier called out.

"I guess I'll have to use my new form." Muichiro then readied his sword and took a deep breath. "Breath of Mist, Seventh Form: Obscuring Clouds!"

"Let me help you," Mukago then told him as she readied an attack of her own. "Blood Demon Art: Snowy Mist!" With this, she would further obscure Muichiro with a wave of snow and a cold mist as he charged at Hiro.

His movements were erratic, and initially to Hiro, he seemed slow. However, when he blinked, he suddenly appeared right in front of him. He thought to himself, "How the fuck?! No! I couldn't predict his movements in time!" He was able to dodge the first slash against his neck, but as he tried to run, he blinked again and saw that Muichiro was now right in front of him. "Shit!" He just barely dodged the attack, Muichiro's sword hitting the top of his head and cutting off his scalp, causing him to yell out in pain, "Motherfucker!" By now, he could barely see where he was running due to Mukago's Blood Demon Art, and as he ran into a guard rail, he heard Muichiro's sword come down on him from behind. "No! Nooooo!"

Then, with a quick slash, Muichiro decapitated Hiro, cleanly slicing his head off and instantly killing him. As his head fell over the guard rail and into the bellows of the ship, Muichiro set his sword down, picked up his body, and tossed it over the edge as well. "Serves you right, asshole!"

As the Snowy Mist Blood Demon Art around him disappeared, Mukago and the Scottish soldier walked over to him. The latter was bewildered by what he had witnessed. "How did… Who… How the fuck… How…?"

"No time to explain," Muichiro replied to him as he picked up his sword. "We still have one of those sick fucks left to kill."

Rinji ran over, telling them, "Ichiro ran off! I think he's heading for the top deck!"

"Well then let's find him," Muichiro replied. "It should be night time by now anyway, so you'll be safe up there."

…

Up on the top deck, Ichiro stood at the stern of the ship, looking out to the water in the dead of night and waiting for the presence of the demon slayers and soldiers who were chasing after him. He thought to himself, "This is my last chance to get out of here alive. My brother may be doomed, but I won't let his demise get to me, not yet at least."

"He's right there," shouted a waiter in English from behind him as he pointed him out to an able seaman. "Take him into custody!"

"Sir," the able seaman told Ichiro in English. "We are having you placed under arrest on suspicion of murder on the high seas."

"No," he shouted to them in what little English he knew before he turned into sand and slithered beneath their feet. As the two of them panicked and watched in horror, Ichiro grabbed onto the able seaman's right leg and crawled up it under his pants before his right leg suddenly exploded, causing blood to spill everywhere.

"Fuck," he shouted. "He got my bloody leg! My whole bloody leg is gone!"

The waiter, covered in blood, shouted, "How the fuck did he do that?!"

Ichiro then reverted back to his normal self in front of the waiter and stabbed him several times with a knife, puncturing his chest and neck and instantly killing him. Once the waiter was done, he turned to the able seaman and told him in Japanese, "And now it's your turn to die."

Though he could not understand Japanese, he knew that he was next. "No, no! Please, I have a family in Newcastle! Don't kill me!" The able seaman's cries were ignored as Ichiro stabbed him several times on the ground and then began to dig into his flesh to consume him. As he ripped apart the pieces he ate in his teeth, the man's screams stopped as he passed out from blood loss.

"I haven't had a heart in a while," Ichiro said to himself as he used his knife to cut a hole in the man's chest and get to his heart, which was still just barely beating. With a swift motion, he ripped it out, using the knife to sever arteries and veins that held it to his body, and proceeded to consume it, coating himself in the man's blood as it continued to pour out from him.

"Stop right fucking there," Vijay yelled at him in English as he aimed a revolver at him. "You're finished!"

"Not you again," Ichiro expressed in Japanese with annoyance as he set what was left of the man's heart down on the deck. "That gun won't work on me."

"I can't understand you," Vijay replied. "But I'm gonna guess you said something about my gun not being able to stop you. Well, I hope you comprehend that this gun isn't the only way I have of defeating you!" He then dropped the gun and ripped off his suit coat and undershirt to become bare-chested. "Demonic Technique: True Form!" He then began to change shape right in front of Ichiro, shocking him as his upper body became grotesquely inhuman. His eyes widened, his teeth greatly sharpened and grew in size, his ears enlarged, and his skin turned almost pitch black on his back while retaining its fleshy color on the front. His lips were a bright red, his nails had turned into long claws, and his hair stood up and grew to make it look like a lion's mane. Once his transformation was complete, he growled at Ichiro in a deep and husky voice, "A pathetic fake such as yourself would never be able to achieve this level of power." His pants and underwear had been completely ripped off, and he now stood at ten feet tall.

"Go away!" Ichiro then transformed into sand again and tried to run from Vijay, but he quickly grasped the sand on the ground and held up pieces of him.

Despite his attempts to crawl out of his beastly hands, Vijay then yelled out, "Demonic Technique: Boiling Water!" In an instant, hot water emerged from his palms, burning Ichiro and causing him to snap out of his sand form as he screamed in pain. "Time to meet your end!"

Vijay then picked Ichiro up by his neck as he prayed in Japanese, fearing for his life. "Please, Buddha, grant me safety! Please, please, grant me safety!" Then, Vijay grabbed his abdomen with his other hand and proceeded to gruesomely rip Ichiro's head off of his body after pulling at it for a few seconds, killing him instantly. He then threw his body down onto the deck just as some soldiers arrived alongside Muichiro and Mukago.

One soldier yelled out to Vijay, "What happened?! What's going on?!"

"That demon causing you trouble is dead," Vijay told them as he began to de-transform. Once he was back to normal, he brushed his naked body off and looked around. "So, this is a bit awkward. I'm gonna need some new pants. My old pair were ripped apart when I turned into my True Form."

In disbelief, Mukago said to herself in Japanese, "Man, if Indian demons can do that, we got fucking boned in Japan."

The Scottish soldier told Vijay, "We'll, um… We'll get ye your new pants soon enough." He thought to himself as he looked over the rather gruesome scene of Ichiro's first attack followed by his death, "This fuckin' day has been somethin' else, huh?"

…

July 9, 1913

Chiyo and Vèro sat underneath a tree as the evening began to fall onto the forest, counting their kills so far in the Final Selection Exam. "I have six demon kills so far," Vèro told Chiyo. "How about you?"

"I have seven," she confirmed with a confident nod and smile. "Looks like we're already experts at this, huh?"

"I don't know about experts," Vèro replied. "But I'd say we certainly aren't weak." Then, she noticed something behind Chiyo. "Oh shit, Chiyo-chan, move!"

She quickly ducked out of the way of a demon who tried to grab a hold of her, just barely missing his hand as she pulled her sword out. "You thought you could sneak up on us, huh, asshole?!"

Then, a second demon grabbed Vèro by her hair and dragged her on the ground several feet. "Fuck, it got me!"

As Chiyo slayed the first demon with ease, she turned to Vèro and yelled, "VÈRO! VÈRO!"

Vèro used a knife she kept on her to cut her hair and free herself from his grasp, not caring about her appearance at all at the moment. As she fell to the ground, she came face-to-face with an eight-foot demon with massive arms who yelled at her, "Don't get away from me, my meal!"

Vèro then charged at the demon, and as she did, she felt an odd feeling within her. "This is weird," she thought to herself. "My head is telling me to… To eat it?! What the fuck?!" Indeed, as she slashed across the demon's legs, she felt herself salivate, and as she picked up a piece of flesh she tore off, she almost on instinct bit down on it. Immediately, she felt a sharp pain in her chest as her eyes blackened and she collapsed to the ground. "Agh, fuck! My fucking chest hurts!"

"Vèro, are you alright?!" Chiyo then attacked the demon as well, slashing it several times before declaring, "Thunderclap and Flash!" As she did, she charged at the demon at a high rate of speed and rammed her sword into him, but she missed and instead cut off half of his head by mistake. "Fuck, I missed the neck!"

On the ground, Vèro stumbled to her feet as her teeth and nails sharpened, followed by a horn growing out of her forehead. She spat at the demon, "C'est le jour où vous mourrez, démon maléfique!" She then charged at the demon and clawed at its chest with her free hand before aiming for its neck with her sword in the other. Using only one hand, she was able to decapitate the demon with ease, killing it.

As Vèro then collapsed to the ground, Chiyo ran to her and asked her, "Vèro-chan, are you alright?!" The demon's body had begun to fade away by this point.

"I…," she said weakly to her as her horn and claws began to disappear. "I ate part of him, and I became like this… I don't know what's happening, Chiyo-chan… I'm scared…" It was clear in her expression and tone of voice she was frightened by this new development. "What the fuck was that?"

"I… I don't know… But that doesn't matter! You're still Vèro to me!" Chiyo did not want her to see herself as a monster, so she took off her eye patch to reveal her empty eye socket. "Look, Vèro-chan, people thought I was ugly because I was missing an eye. We both are misfits, okay?"

"I see," she replied as she began to lapse in and out of consciousness. "Fuck… I feel so tired… Chiyo-chan, by the way, that's my seventh kill…"

"Vèro? Vèro?! VÈRO!"