The entrance of Kagaya Ubuyashiki immediately changed the entire atmosphere of the meeting. All fighting and conflict immediately ceased as he addressed the crowd. "You're probably all wondering why we have three demons here, and who in particular these two standing near me are. I would like you all to welcome James Colby and his recently-freed partner Susamaru. James has been hunting demons in America for 50 years, and has used his existence as a demon to defend the innocent. According to both himself and the correspondence of humans he had allied with, he has a current kill count of 774 demons, or about 15 to 16 per year on average." Every single Pillar among the crowd plus Tanjiro were shocked to hear of James' recorded kill count. He then turned to Susamaru. "Susamaru was originally a demon that was unabashedly a supporter of Kibutsuji Muzan before she was freed from his curse thanks to a series of spells that were unknown to us in Japan, but somewhat widely used in America. She has since devoted herself to fighting him. Both of these demons have saved the lives of at least one of our own by stabilizing his injuries and preventing him from being taken by a spider-like demon, and have killed or have assisted in the killing of four demons in Japan so far."

"Oyakata-sama," Kyojuro asked him, politely raising his hand. "Is there an explanation for this third demon? According to Colby-san, a letter was sent to you by former Water Pillar Urokodaki Sakonji about her."

"Indeed," Kagaya confirmed to the crowd. "Everything James and Giyu said about the letter is true. According to Sakonji, Nezuko has not eaten a single human in the two years she has been a demon, and has been put under a trance that causes her to see all humans and apparently any of the few friendly demons as her own family, and the vast majority of other demons as her enemy. She has indeed killed several demons so far, and displays an attachment to her human brother, Kamado Tanjiro, that is highly uncharacteristic of most demons. As such, he wishes for her to be accepted as Tanjiro's partner, and I agree. I also will ensure that in the unlikely event she does side with Muzan against us, both Giyu and Sakonji will make good on their promise to commit seppuku."

"I want to agree with you," Tengen replied to him, deeply conflicted. "But at the same time, the chance always exists that she will, and if she kills a human, no amount of any of us killing ourselves will bring them back. I still have reservations, Oyakata-sama."

Sanemi by now was agitated and furious. It was as if the corps was betraying its own morals and goals with what was being proposed, and he had to voice a protest. "Oyakata-sama, I apologize, but I cannot accept this!" He then stood up, carrying Nezuko's box with him. "Allow me to prove their insane theories wrong." He then walked up into the shaded porch, careful to make sure Nezuko would not leave her box right into sunlight. As everyone else watched, he set the box down and opened it before taking his sword and cutting open his arm. "I got Marechi blood. I doubt any of these three will be able to resist me!"

As his blood dripped onto the ground and Nezuko got out of her box, James replied to him sarcastically as he rolled his eyes, "Wow, I'm literally shakin' right no-" He then paused when he noticed that Nezuko was drooling from behind her bamboo muzzle, and even Susamaru was on edge. James, on the other hand, was completely unfazed. "Hey, uh, Susamaru, are you okay?"

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, shaking her head vigorously to resist the temptation. "Fucking hell, come on!" She then spoke to Nezuko directly. "Come on, Nezuko! Resist it for us and your brother!"

Indeed, after a few more seconds, Nezuko finally closed her eyes and looked away, yelling from behind her muzzle as she stepped away. Sanemi was in shock. "She… They… All three of them resisted it…" She gave Sanemi a dirty look, probably due to the fact that he had stabbed her twice earlier, and then stepped back into her box, closing the hatch and shrinking down in size as she hilariously gave him the middle finger, which deeply confused everyone except James and Tanjiro. "Uh, what was that?"

"An American gesture," James explained to him. "It basically means 'go fuck yourself.' I was tellin' Tanjiro about it with Nezuko in the room a while back. She must have picked it up or somethin'."

Kagaya smiled, not even angry or disappointed by Sanemi's interruption. "Thank you for proving our point, Sanemi."

"Right," he replied, bowing to him before walking back off the porch, embarrassed about his failure while the other Pillars looked to each other. "Well," he thought to himself. "That was fucking emarrassing. I made a fool out of myself in front of literally fucking everyone."

"I told you," Tanjiro then interjected. "She refuses to eat humans!"

"I have an idea," James then proposed before he turned to Kagaya. "Sir, do y'all mind if, in the course of this, a hole gets punched in your wall?"

"I'm not sure why," Kagaya replied to him, confused. "But if you must, go ahead. Just don't make it too big, James."

"Thank you, sir." James then turned to Susamaru and then the crowd. "Okay, I'll need my partner and Tanjiro to come up here." Obanai sighed and let off of Tanjiro, allowing him to walk up to the porch to meet him. "Alright, now, I am gonna demonstrate how Nezuko here will defend a human from a demon attack, usin' Tanjiro as the human and Susamaru as the demon."

"Wait," Susamaru asked him, confused. "How's this gonna work?"

"Get a bit angry," James explained to her. "Pretend to threaten and attack Tanjiro." Tanjiro stood to the side, wondering what they had in mind.

Susamaru sighed, taking her yukata off once more. "I think it's gratuitous, but whatever." She then gave off a fake roar. "Raaagh, I am a demon, and I am here to cause trouble!" She half-heartedly spawned her extra arms and punched a hole in the wall. "I see a human in the distance! I am hungry, so I must eat him!" Her acting was atrocious, but she did not care at this point.

"Oh no," Tanjiro pretended to call for help. "Somebody help me! A demon is attacking me!" He also was definitely not actor material, and his 'screams of terror' were incredibly unconvincing.

Giyu sighed and shook his head before facepalming, muttering to himself, "They are so fucked."

Just as James thought his plan failed, Nezuko's box violently sprung open as she jumped out and yelled, charging directly at Susamaru to attack her. Susamaru yelled out as she was tackled unexpectedly, "Oh, fuck!"

As she pounced on her, Tanjiro stood off to the side as James ran over to rip Nezuko off of her. "Okay, Nezuko, that's enough! That's enough! She ain't a threat! Come on!" One of Kagaya's children also helped, and they were both soon able to rip her off and calm her down. "Look, your brother ain't in no danger. Susamaru was only pretendin', okay? They're fine."

The reaction of the Pillars to this awful stage play was amusing. Mitsuri tried and failed to stifle her laughter as Obanai told all three of them in disbelief, "I think I speak for everyone here when I ask the following: what the fuck did I just witness?"

Mitsuri thought to herself, "I tried to keep my laughter hidden, but this is just too funny!"

"I may be blind," Gyomei proceeded to roast them in a rather polite tone. "But even I can tell with my hearing if a performance on stage is bad. I pray that you three never seek to become actors, because it will not work out for you. Namu Amida Butsu."

Tengen sighed and gave his opinion next. "Not a single dash of flamboyance to be seen or heard, and on top of that, it was fucking awful, but it got the point across."

"I've officially seen my daily quota of weird," Kyojuro remarked. "And I think I filled it for a good week."

Susamaru replied back to all of them, annoyed, "We'll we aren't professional actors and actresses, you know! Give us a damn break!"

"I think enough has been said about how awful that was," Shinobu then spoke up. "But I think it does prove that Nezuko will defend humans, especially if she was able to perceive an acting job as terrible as that as an actual attack on her brother. I was reluctant before, but I feel compelled now to accept the proposal to let these three into the corps." Ironically, the fact that James' little stage play was as bad as it was may have actually been to the benefit of them.

"If the count of 774 is correct," Kyojuo then spoke up. "That means Colby-san has officially killed more demons than any person who had ever been a member of the Demon Slayer Corps in our entire history, and it beats our traditional record of 324." He then stood up as well, ready to make a proposal. "If we are to accept James and Susamaru into the Demon Slayer Corps, I volunteer to train them in how we hunt demons in Japan."

"While guns and the like are fun to use," James replied to him. "I would love to learn how to hunt them the Japanese way. What Breath Style do you use, Rengoku-san?"

"The Breath of Flames," he explained to him. "My family has used it for many hundreds of years, and I would like to pass it along to people outside our family to keep it going. If you two accept my proposal, you'll learn how to fight with a sword and a Breathing Style in no time. Hell, you may even teach me some new things."

Kagaya turned to James and Susamaru, interested by Kyojuro's proposal. "What do you two have to say about it? I think it could be a good way for you two to grow as slayers."

Both of them looked to each other and nodded. James then affirmed, "We accept the proposal, on the condition that we partake in a Final Selection alone. We feel that it's unfair if we get to skip out on the test that all of you had to undertake."

All the Pillars nodded, understanding their reasoning for why they wanted to go through the Final Selection. "I can see why," Sanemi added, himself even beginning to agree with the others. "But we don't have another Final Selection until the 3rd Quarter. What do you propose, Oyakata-sama?"

"How about this?" He then took a deep breath. "We will drop them both off at the First District Final Selection site alone. They will have to spend two weeks in the forest by themselves with no other weapons than the guns they already have, instead of one week with around 20 to 25 other trainees." Kagaya turned back to James and Susamaru. "Does that sound reasonable?"

"Yes," James nodded. "We promise that we'll make it outta there."

Later that day, as Muichiro and Kyojuro embarked on a mission elsewhere nearby the Ubuyashiki Estate, with James having given the latter a copy of his personal spellbook as a gift for his generosity, he and Shinobu talked once more. "So," she asked him. "You two will depart on April 14th and hopefully be released from the forest on April 28th, right?"

"Indeed," James replied. He and Susamaru would be staying at the Butterfly Estate from the 11th until the 14th. After they came back, they would alternate between the Butterfly Estate and the Rengoku House, as Shinobu was particularly interested in James' use of not only wisteria, but other poisons as well from the Americas, in his ammunition. "Say, Shinobu, I gotta ask, whenever I brought up Giyu or you mentioned him possibly being punished, you became a bit downtrodden. Is somethin' wrong?"

Shinobu sighed, not expecting such a question at that moment. "Nothing is," she told him, despite knowing in her heart that it was a complete fabrication. "It was just general concern about someone I know. Don't worry about Tomioka-san. He's aloof, and he has issues with communicating. I try to correct him, but it doesn't work, and then he wonders why I have to remind him that nobody likes hi-" She stopped herself as she realized she may have let out a bit too much personal information about herself and Giyu. "I… My apologies, you shouldn't have heard that. Don't tell him I said anything."

James, knowing she was lying but not wanting to dig deeper into her and cause her to despise him, nodded. "I won't. I'm sorry I brought it up."

"No, you're fine," she told him, once again smiling. "You were just worried. It means you care and you have empathy, which is more than what I can say about most demons or even sadly quite a lot of humans." In her head, she thought to herself, "For fuck's sake, Shinobu! Why did you reveal so much to him?! He just asked if you were okay!"

Meanwhile, Muichiro and Kyojuro talked among themselves as they set out together down a road, with the former carrying James' spellbook in a backpack. "Do you really intend on using that, Tokito-san?"

"If the demons we end up fighting aren't too much of a hassle," Muichiro replied, staring at the trees all around him. "I may. The Oyakata-sama did want us to try to use something in the book. Perhaps we could use the Progenitor Release Spell."

"We'd have to cut ourselves to do it," Kyojuro recalled from when James was telling him how to cast the spells. "And unlike those two demons, we don't have an infinite amount of blood to draw shapes on the ground with."

Muichiro pointed out, "Who says it has to be the same source for the blood, though?"

Kyojuro stopped and thought to himself, trying to remember if James mentioned anything about using blood from multiple sources. "Huh… Come to think of it, he never said anything about that. Not once did he say we couldn't use blood from multiple people, or even that it had to be only human or demon blood. Still, if it becomes too much of a hassle, I'm just gonna kill the damn thing the normal way. I'm sure the Oyakata-sama will understand."

"Agreed," Muichiro affirmed. "Are you sure about taking those two demons in as your Tsuguko?"

"Well," Kyojuro inferred. "Think of it this way. If they're on our side, they'll be an even more powerful asset in our fight against Kibutsuji Muzan with the Breath of Flames. If they side against us, they'll be up against me, and I'll be sure to kill them before they can harm anyone else. Either way, the threat they may pose is no longer present. I hope that it doesn't have to come down to that, since they actually seem kinda nice, but I won't hesitate if it comes down to me living or them living. I may be painting a target on my back since they can walk in the sun with limitations, but as long as something like an Upper Moon doesn't come along, I should be fine, and even then, as long as I got backup, we should be able to repel even one of them."

"Confidence," Muichiro remarked, impressed by his reasoning. "I like it."