The battle between James, Mitsuri, and the invasive projection of Kyojuro was in full swing, and as it continued on, many other projections that would have otherwise attacked James and Mitsuri as intruders had instead fled the scene, scared off by the intensity of the sword fight. James thought to himself, "Everyone else ran off… Good. That means less distractions for us. If they stuck around, we might've had to fight a whole neighborhood of angry projections instead of just one man. Fightin' Rengoku alone is hard enough as it is. I certainly don't want no more people joinin' in."

Mitsuri ran towards Kyojuro with another attack lined up, declaring, "Breath of Love, First Form: Shivers of First Love!" As she whipped her sword around Kyojuro, she continued to feel a slight pain from whatever had wounded her in the first level of the dream, but powered through it, determined to win.

Kyojuro countered this attack with his own move. "Breath of Flames, Second Form: Rising Scorching Sun!" He was able to cause Mitsuri's sword to wrap itself around his own sword before pulling her down to the ground and then pulling his sword free from her's.

Mitsuri said as she writhed in pain on the ground, "Agh, no… Damn…"

"There goes one." It was then Kyojuro noticed that James was pulling out his revolver, and he quickly deflected two shots aimed at him with his sword. "Guns won't make this any easier for you, James!"

"Damn it," he replied. He thought to himself, "He's movin' impossibly fast. Even at his peak durin' his life, I ain't never saw him deflect bullets like that. Somethin's off about all this." He quickly holstered his gun and readied his sword, yelling, "First Form: Unknowin' Fire!"

"Not so fast!" Kyojuro was able to block James' attack once more. "You simply can't beat me!"

"God fuckin' damn it," James yelled in frustration as he was forced back. "Why is this shit impossible?!" He then charged forward again, hoping to strike his former master.

However, Kyojuro again bested him, declaring as he launched a counterattack, "You won't win!"

This time, he was able to swing at James' right arm and completely sever it, causing him to scream out in pain, "Agh, fuck!" As his right arm fell to the ground, James quickly retreated and raced under a shaded building entrance, hoping to find a place where his body could heal without direct sunlight stopping it. "Damn it, my arm… Fucking Christ…"

Mitsuri got up from the ground and yelled, "Colby-san, your arm!" As she looked up at the sky, she realized in her mind, "It's only the evening in this level. James can't heal his injuries in the sunlight. If he can't hold on by the time the sun comes down, he could die from blood loss and get trapped in that Limbo thing he mentioned. My only question now is… Why is Kyojuro-kun able to move so fast? Sure, he's fast, but I've never seen him move this fast against all of Colby-san's attacks, or any attacks really. What's up with this version of him?"

James told Mitsuri as he tried to apply a tourniquet with his remaining arm, "The bleedin's slowin' down a bit, but my arm won't heal fast enough under the shade!"

Mitsuri then readied her sword and told James, "Hang back for a bit to heal. I'm gonna attack!"

Kyojuro readied his sword, preparing for his other former student to soon come at him. "Hit me with your best shot, Kanroji-san!"

"I won't insult your memory by giving it less than my all," Mitsuri proclaimed before charging forward. "Sixth Form: Cat-Legged Wings of Love!" She jumped up in the air and twirled herself and her sword around, cracking it like a whip at Kyojuro multiple times. She thought to herself as she attacked him, "Forgive me, Kyojuro. This is the only way we can succeed."

She managed to cut off Kyojuro's left arm with the attack, causing him to yell out in pain. However, just as Mitsuri tried one last time to swing for his chest and neck, she coughed up a large amount of blood due to her injury from the first level, causing her to falter and fall to the ground in severe pain, prematurely ending her attack. As she tried to get up despite the pain, Kyojuro said to her as he took several deep breaths, "You actually injured me that time…"

Mitsuri said in response as she caught her breath as well, "Agh, fuck… Agh… Yeah… I did…"

"Even so," Kyojuro explained as his left arm suddenly grew back like nothing ever happened. "It won't be enough. I've told you before. Colby-san is inferior. He can't kill me."

"No fuckin' way," James said in shock at Kyojuro's arm growing back. "How… How the fuck did he do that?!"

Mitsuri yelled in frustration, "Damn it, why is this happening?! I didn't expect to have to fight my former mentor and my best friend like this, you know?! I… Fuck it, I can't keep doing this!"

"He's truly unbeatable," James said in resignation. "I knew it all along. I can't beat him. Maybe I am inferior to him."

"That haori you wear," Kyojuro said to James. "It doesn't belong to you. It belongs to me, and only me. You merely wear it like a costume, pretending to be me and refusing to admit that you aren't."

Mitsuri began to cry as she told her former mentor, "Stop… Stop saying that, Kyojuro-kun… This… This isn't you. You would never say that to him…"

James sighed, "He's right, though… I am inferior to him, Kanroji."

Mitsuri then began to realize something in her mind about what both James and Kyojuro were saying about the former. "Wait a minute," she thought to herself. "Inferior… Inferior… If this Kyojuro is a projection of James' mind… It has to be! That has to be it! The reason this version of him is impossible to beat is because…"

"We've failed, Kanroji…"

"No!" Mitsuri then jumped back onto her feet and told James, "Stop saying you're inferior to him! It's making him stronger!"

"Stronger?"

"The reason your projection of Kyojuro-kun is so powerful is because your mind is convinced you can't beat him," Mitsuri explained as she readied her sword. "If you keep thinking like that, it'll only make him stronger! We can't afford that!"

"But…"

Kyojuro then charged forward at both of them, declaring, "It's time for me to finish this once and for all!"

Mitsuri yelled at James, "You need to stop comparing yourself to Kyojuro-kun! You can't live your whole life thinking you're inferior to others, Colby-san!"

"How…" James froze in place. "How can I…?"

"Figure it out!" As Mitsuri moved in to block his attack, she thought to herself, "Colby-san, you need to give yourself more credit. You helped to convince my husband to stop putting himself down for his past, and without that, we wouldn't be married today. Now, let me help you do the same."

…

June 11, 1913

After a minute or two of feeling each other's bodies, Obanai and Mitsuri were now completely nude. Mitsuri laid down on a futon as Obanai supported himself over her with one of his arms. In her head, she began to get self-conscious about her body, something she had not felt in a long time. She also began to think about when she realized she loved Obanai so long ago. "The day I was put under Kyojuro-kun's tutelage and I met you, for some reason, I just couldn't tear my eyes away from seeing you. Over time, I began to wonder if I would ever be able to achieve my goal of finding a man who would want to be with a woman like me. I have pride in how I've grown since I became a slayer, and I owe that to Kyojuro-kun, but… Seeing you always be around me and going on missions made me realize who my heart had chosen."

Obanai noticed Mitsuri was shaking as she tried to partially cover up her chest. "You're shaking a bit, Kanroji-san."

"Please," she told him with a slight tremor in her voice. "We've gone this far. Call me by my first name, Obanai."

"Are you nervous, Mitsuri?"

"I… I am," she admitted as a single tear went down her face. "I've spent so long thinking that no man would want a woman as strong as me that even now, I fear you'd get up and leave like my suitors."

Obanai noticed a scar from some kind of blade on her abdomen and pointed it out to her. "I see you have a scar… And another one right here." In total, he noticed two blade scars on her body. When she tried to hide them as well, Obanai asked her, "What's the point in hiding them? Battle scars are like medals for warriors and soldiers like us. Besides…" He then pointed to the massive scar on his face. "Nothing can top this."

"It feels unfeminine…"

"Bullshit," Obanai replied. "You and your body are plenty feminine. You get emotional quickly and you're one of the kindest people I know." He then leaned in and felt her chest with one hand while also gently moving his hand down her back. "And while I don't want to sound too lecherous, you have an amazing body. You're definitely a woman, Mitsuri." He then sat up and told her. "No one lies their way into as many battles you have fought or scars that you have on your body."

Mitsuri smiled and told him as she also sat up and hugged him, "And this is why I love you." She also admitted, "And trust me, women have their own needs when it comes to sex. Right now, I need you."

Obanai quickly got on top of her, and from there, the two began making love. Initially using their hands, they took their time before moving onto full sex. After a few minutes of pleasuring each other, Obanai told Mitsuri as the two breathed heavily, "I'm ready."

Mitsuri spread her legs a bit and told him, "Me too." As the two then went at it, Mitsuri gave him instructions between her moans. "A little, um… A little faster…"

"Okay." The two were clearly enjoying it, as evidenced by Obanai's breathing becoming harder and Mitsuri's moans becoming progressively louder as she wrapped her arms around his back and held on, digging her nails into his back. At the moment, there was nothing either of them could think about except each other. "Fuck… Aaah…"

Mitsuri similarly cursed, "Fuck, keep going… Right there…"

After a few more minutes and both of them finishing, Obanai looked down at Mitsuri after having closed his eyes. However, instead of seeing her, he instead saw the whole room fade to black. Below him was not his now-girlfriend, but instead him as a child, bent over with his back facing him. He thought to himself, "What… No… Not this…"

In his head, he heard Hebiko's voice talk to him as she slithered over. "Your mother sold your ass out. I paid good money to get to do this."

His younger self screamed as he forced Hebiko off of him. "No! That's a lie!"

"Come on," Hebiko replied as she grabbed a hold of him and licked his face with her tongue. "The first boy in 370 years can be useful in more than one way. You'll go through something similar with your cousins soon. After all, the Iguro family will need more offspring before I eat you. I might as well prepare you."

"Get off of me! Stop!"

"You're gonna fuck me," Hebiko yelled. "And I'll make you like it, you little runt!"

His younger self screamed in fear, "No!"

After this, he heard one of his cousins laugh in the distance before she said to another person with her that he also recognized, "I can't wait to see what he's like. We'll be sure to take turns with him before he's sent off to be sacrificed. It'll be nice to keep the bloodline pure. I just hope his body is grown enough at his age to actually impregnate us."

"Me too," said this other person, another cousin of Obanai's. "The men out there don't come around to us as often as they used to."

Obanai said to himself, "No… Not this…"

Then, his mother came along, and he saw a vision of his younger self taking a knife and stabbing her as he made his escape in the middle of the night. His mother yelled as he stabbed her, "You… Why…"

His younger self demanded of her, "Did you sell my body to Hebiko-sama?!"

"I… Yes… I did…"

His younger self pulled out the knife from her and dropped it in shock, horrified that his own mother had sold him to Hebiko to be raped. "No, you… Why…"

Finally, he heard another voice nearby, that of his only surviving cousin following Hebiko massacring his family following his escape all those years ago. She yelled at him, "It's all your fault! She murdered fifty of our family members because you ran away, you ungrateful piece of shit! You were supposed to be sacrificed! You should have died!"

Obanai instinctively pushed himself away from what he was seeing, yelling, "No! Get the fuck away from me!"

"You should have died! You should have died! YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!"

"Stop yelling at me!"

Then, another voice, this one resembling his own from the present, began speaking as a skeleton dressed in his clothes began walking forwards to meet him. "I am your future. The only thing you have to look forward to is your death as atonement for your family's wrongdoings. You are inferior in every way to every other Pillar. Do you really think you deserve a woman as beautiful as Mitsuri? I certainly don't. Someone as short, as scarred, or as cursed as you couldn't possibly love her properly."

"Stop it, please…"

"Just give up and admit your inferiority to her in every way. It's easier to die and leave her and live and stay with her."

"NO!" Obanai quickly grabbed his skeletal self and wrapped his hands around his neck to stop him from talking. "SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!"

"…Obanai! Obanai!"

Obanai suddenly snapped back into reality as the illusion quickly disappeared. He saw that he had violently pushed Mitsuri away from him and was now choking her. He quickly let go of her neck, causing her to take a deep breath and regain her composure. "I… I… Oh no…"

Mitsuri demanded of him, "What the Hell happened?! Why did you choke me all of a sudden?!"

Obanai then collapsed to his knees and slammed the floor with his fists, startling Mitsuri. "I… I didn't want any of this to happen… I didn't mean for so many people to die…"

Mitsuri, now deeply concerned and also realizing what was probably going on, asked him, "You… You didn't tell me the full story about your family, didn't you?"

"I… No… Maybe…"

"Tell me what happened, Obanai."

Obanai then began to recount what he had left out when he talked about his family to her earlier. "I… That snake demon bitch… She held me down, and I couldn't resist her with how small I was. I couldn't do a fucking thing as she raped me!"

"She… Raped you?" Mitsuri was horrified.

"Mitsuri, my love," he then said as he got up and turned away from her. "Hebiko forced me to have sex with her when I was twelve, and after that, some of my cousins took turns doing the same so I would impregnate them before I could be sacrificed. After that, I was determined to make my escape, and when I did, I…"

"You what?"

Obanai held back tears as he cleared his throat. "My mother… I saw my mother, and I…"

"Obanai, you…"

He finally took a deep breath and admitted, "Yes. I killed my own mother, Mitsuri. For a long time, I thought she was the only relative that truly cared for me, but when I killed her, she revealed that she had sold me to Hebiko for sex. I… I didn't even want to kill her… She tried to stop me and awaken Hebiko, and the next thing I knew, my knife was in her chest." As he recounted what he had left out of his past to her, Obanai wiped his face to get rid of the tears the best he could.

"Obanai, I…"

"My only living cousin also told me that I should have died." Tears began falling down his face as he then asked her, "This was your first time having sex, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"I fucked it all up… I hurt you, and I can't forget that. This is why it took me so long to tell you how I felt, Mitsuri." Obanai was heartbroken over what he had done to her, and even began to laugh at himself. "It's pathetic. I had to rely on another man opening my eyes to even tell you how I felt. I've killed so many demons, and at the end of the day, they're technically people too. Why is it that this one single death still affects me? I thought I had buried it, so why did it come back just now?" He then told her, "If you don't want to be with me, that's fair. We can forget this night ever happened, and go back to only being friends."

Mitsuri replied by getting up and hugging him from behind. "No…"

"Why? You deserve a man better than m-"

"Shut up," Mitsuri ordered him as she tightened her grip on him. "I slapped you already for saying that before. I don't ever want to hear you say that about yourself ever again. Stop saying you're inferior to me." She then sighed and rested her head on his neck and shoulder. "Why did you hide that part from me?"

"Because I thought you would be disgusted by the fact that I've been forced into having sex with multiple people."

"That doesn't matter." Mitsuri then pointed out, "Look, I'm a virgin, or at least I was one before tonight, but… If I wasn't, would you still love me?"

Obanai nodded. "Of course."

"Exactly. I don't care if you've had sex in the past, whether you wanted it or not. What matters is that the two of us want to have it with each other, and only each other." She then turned him around and told him, "And besides, tonight is the first night you actually had sex with someone that you wanted. I want to make you feel good, Obanai, and sex is a great way to do that."

Obanai gave a faint smile and realized, "You know what? Yeah… You're right. This really is the first time I've had sex on my own terms."

"And how did it feel?"

Obanai chuckled. "It felt amazing. It felt like I was out of my body for a few seconds towards the end. Before I had that little… Incident… I was in a state of true bliss."

Mitsuri smiled. "I'm glad you felt that way. As for me, I would say the same."

Obanai then remembered that the two of them had not done or used any form of birth control. "Wait a minute… You don't mind that we…"

"That we what?"

"That I didn't pull out or use one of those condom things Kocho has at her estate?"

Mitsuri shook her head and told him. "It's fine."

"But what if you ge-"

"If I get pregnant?" Mitsuri assured him, "I know my body. Trust me. Besides, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing."

"I, um…"

"Listen to me," she said as she cupped his face and gently caressed his scar. "We've already laid bare our weaknesses to each other. We're even now. You've done a lot for me in battle, and I've done a lot for you." She then hugged him again and looked down at him as she said, "I don't know what will happen in the future. Our line of work is dangerous, and we could die at any moment. Right now, though, I just can't get enough of you. I want you to keep holding me, and I want us to make love again." She rather confidently told him as she pointed at his upper chest, "There's gonna be a hundred more times we-… No, make that a thousand more times before we die. That's what I'm thinking about right now."

Obanai smiled and kissed her in response, which she gladly accepted. When the two split, Obanai told her, "You know, I never minded you touching me. If it's you, it's okay."

Mitsuri smiled and told him, "I had a feeling that was the case."

He then laid her back down on the futon and told her with a slightly mischievous smile, "You know, I still have enough energy for a second time."

"Then fuck me again already," Mitsuri replied with a chuckle as she spread her legs. "Show me how much you love me."

"Gladly," he affirmed. "I can't get enough." The two began to kiss once again. Within a few minutes, the two had gone back back to having sex, and this time, it went off without a hitch. Obanai thought to himself as they continued to embrace and make love to each other, "Tonight is the start of a new me. From now on, things will get better with Mitsuri by my side. There is a place for me in this world, and in her soul." Indeed, with help from James and Mitsuri, Obanai was now learning to cope with and then get over his sense of inferiority to others and self-loathing. In the present, Mitsuri would have to return the favor.

…

Present

Mitsuri coughed in pain from Kyojuro's blocked attack, "Agh… Fuck… I…"

When the dust had cleared, it was revealed that Kyojuro's sword had gone straight through Mitsuri and out towards James. She had managed to protect him at the cost of her own life. James yelled in shock as Mitsuri spat up blood, "Kanroji, no! No!"

"You… You need to continue the fight…" Mitsuri gripped Kyojuro's sword and held on, cutting into her own hands. "Fight your insecurities…"

James yelled, "Kanroji, you're gonna die!"

"Don't focus on me… Fight! Avenge me and continue this mission, Colby-san!" Mitsuri struggled through the pain and continued to hold onto Kyojuro's sword so he would not be able to remove it from her body. "Fuck… Damn it…"

"I swear," James promised as she continued to bleed profusely from her wound. "I'll go down in Limbo and save you if I have to! I'll do everythin' I can, okay?!"

Mitsuri then let out a primal scream as she used the last of her strength to whip her sword around and attack Kyojuro one more time, cutting into his body and causing him to weaken his grip on his sword from the pain. "Come on!"

James thought to himself, "She's right… My God, she's right! I've been powering up Rengoku artificially this whole fuckin' time! I need to stop comparin' myself to him! I need to realize that I can beat him!" He then readied his own sword despite only having one arm to work with, declaring, "Ninth Form: Rengoku!" Using Kyojuro's own personal technique, he charged forward, energized and determined to kill Kyojuro's invasive projection once and for all with the most powerful attack that the Breath of Flames had to offer. "Please God," he silently prayed to himself. "Let this attack work!"

Kyojuro shouted in shock as he began to suffer severe pain from the attack, "Oh no! You're cutting through!" He thought to himself in horror, "This is bad! I can't keep up with this! The two of them have me cornered!"

Mitsuri shouted as James struck Kyojuro, "Damn it, keep going! COME ON!" Attacking from the side, James had cut into Kyojuro's neck as Mitsuri continued her own attack, the two of them screaming as their swords finally cut through and slashed Kyojuro apart in two different spots, cutting his body into three parts.

As the invasive projection of Kyojuro died for the final time, Mitsuri stepped back, his sword still in her body, and then pulled her sword out. She then took a deep breath despite her abdominal wound and pulled out her service revolver. "I… I'll see you down in Limbo…" As James watched on, Mitsuri aimed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger, blowing her brains out and killing herself in the second level of the dream. While gruesome, it was the only way to do what needed to be done.

James watched as her body fell to the ground, telling himself as he stood back up from the ground and looked at the devastation the battle had wrought upon the street, "And this… This just made shit a lot more complicated…" Many of the buildings around him had been damaged or even possibly destroyed by the battle. He wondered to himself how he would explain this to the others when they inevitably arrived as he also began to formulate a plan to rescue Mitsuri from Limbo.