At the next stop for the train, about fifteen American men hopped on board, all spreading themselves out among the various cars and taking seemingly randomized seats. The quantity of passengers boarding at the stop, and the fact they were all foreigners, did seem odd, but nobody thought to make a note of it or raise an alarm as several native Japanese passengers also boarded and took seats.

It was around 9:30 PM when Patrick asked Enmu, "Are you ready?"

"Yeah," he replied with a nod before he drew a revolver from under his coat.

Patrick also drew a revolver and fired a single shot into the air, startling the many half-asleep passengers. He shouted in English, "Nobody fuckin' move! This is a robbery, lads!"

Enmu also shouted in Japanese, "This is a robbery! Stay where you are, and nobody's gonna get hurt!"

Another one of Patrick's soldiers in the same train car also stood up and drew a revolver, shooting an attendant in the back as he tried to rush at Patrick and killing him. "Got him for ya, sir!"

"Good," Patrick replied in English. "Go to the back of the train with the others in the cars behind this one and take control of the caboose, laddie!" He then told the crowd in Japanese, "Now, you all saw what we can do! We are not afraid to kill if we must!"

As Patrick ran to another car towards the front, Enmu told the group with a smile as he pointed the gun at the crowd and showed the mouth on his free hand, "Now… Soldier!"

"Yes?"

"Look away for a minute," Enmu instructed him. Once he did so, he told the crowd, "As I was saying, now I need you all to go to sleep. Just close your eyes and fall into a deep, deep slumber, folks." He then uttered, "Blood Demon Art: Whispers of Forced Unconscious Hypnosis!" In almost an instant, the entire car of 20 passengers fell asleep, collapsing into their seats after having shivered in fear of being shot. Once the last person fell asleep, he told the soldier, "I'm all set. You can look now."

Once he turned around, he asked Enmu, "Now what?"

Enmu then pulled up one of his sleeves and began pulling at his own skin to make a long but thin rope out of it. "Once I'm done with this Connecting Flesh Rope, tie it to every person in this car, and then enter the dream of one of them. It doesn't matter which. Find them and kill them inside the dream. Under my spell, they'll die in the real world instead of waking up, but if you die by accident inside a dream, you'll be fine. Be sure to set a Totem before you go in, something that has a unique quality."

As Enmu walked to another car towards the front, the soldier said to himself, "A unique quality, huh?"

In the caboose of the train, Patrick approached three men who were all sleeping inside it after opening the door before yelling out, "None of you move! This is a robbery!"

Immediately, all three men woke up and looked at Patrick. They all then stood up and held their hands up in the air. The oldest of the three asked him, "What's all this about?! Who are you?!"

"That's none of your concern," Patrick replied. "Now, I want you guys to stop the train as soon as possible. If we get to a station before then, pass through it. I have 15 men on this train on my side as well, and my main partner is taking care of the engineer up front."

The youngest of the men asked the oldest, "Oumae-san, what do we do?"

"We do what he says," he replied. "The last thing I want is anyone getting hurt."

They all then heard screaming from behind them as Patrick turned around and came face-to-face with a fully uniformed Demon Slayer Corps member who was charging at him with a sword. Patrick shot at him once before drawing a sword of his own and clashing with him, holding him at bay with one hand as he bolstered his revolver. "So, one of you guys are on board?"

"I'll slay you," the slayer replied. "You may be a foreigner that's powerful in America, but you're in Japan now! I already killed two of your men!"

"You have?" Patrick then kicked him in the stomach, causing him to fall to the ground before he then shot him in the chest. "Well, it looks like you'll need to bring a gun next time… Oh wait, you won't have a next time!"

"Motherfucker," the slayer spat at him as he felt his life drain away despite his attempts to stand up. "Second Fo-!"

"Shut the hell up," Patrick replied before shooting him again in the shoulder, knocking him down. "Do you think I care about your little breathing trick? I don't. Here's a tip: Don't bring a sword to a gunfight." He then squarely aimed the revolver at his head and cocked it. "Now, do me a favor and say hi to your dead colleagues for me in Hell." When he pulled the trigger, the bullet splattered his blood and brains all over the wall and floor behind the slayer, killing him instantly.

"Oumae-san," said the middle-aged one. "This guy means business!"

"Now," Patrick then told the trio of train workers. "Do as I told you before you end up like our little slayer friend here."

A demon soldier of his then ran in, asking Patrick in English, "Sir, did y'all see that fucker that killed two of us?"

"I took care of him," Patrick motioned to his body for the soldier to look at. "He won't be bothering us anymore. We'll mourn our Southern brethren later. Right now, we have a job to do."

About twelve minutes later, the train had come to a complete halt in the middle of nowhere in rural Japan. Enmu had been slowly siphoning the passengers of their lives by putting them all to sleep, one by one, car by car. The only people they would spare for now would be a few of the crewmates. The rest had been ordered to the rear of the train and out into a nearby forest.

Once all twenty of them gathered in a clearing next to the tracks, Patrick had eight of his men line up, all of them holding rifles taken from luggage bags they had brought aboard. He told the twenty crewmates, "Stand at attention!" Once they all stood, facing the eight soldiers and Patrick, he told them, "Do not bother running, folks. You will only make your despair worse."

Old Man Oumae, the old worker from earlier, shouted, "You wouldn't dare!"

"Ready!" The eight men then readied their rifles. "Aim!" They aimed them at the crowd as a few began to look around for possible escape routes. "Fire!" A volley of gunshots then rang out as they fired at the crowd, striking most of them down as Patrick also fired into it with his revolver. A few tried to run, but they were cut down by another round of shots. "Go eat 'em, boys! Take care of your hunger for flesh!"

As his soldiers began to eat the dead bodies of the men they had just shot to death, Enmu approached him. "I got only three cars left to put to sleep."

"Good," Patrick replied, extending a hand for a handshake. "We make a pretty damn good team, Enmu-san." Noticing that he was confused, he told him, "We shake hands instead of bowing."

"Oh, right," Enmu replied, slowly shaking his hand in response. "I forgot about that. My apologies, Cleburne-san."

The August 3rd/4th Train Heist would lead to the deaths of 22 railroad workers and 104 passengers (among them two slayers), as well as the robbery of hundreds of thousands of yen and massive amounts of cargo. The few who survived were held on the train and either forced into servitude by Enmu and Patrick for their future endeavors or sold off to other demons for consumption or slavery over the next few days. Muzan Kibutsuji was pleased with the results, and encouraged the two of them to formulate even more complex plans involving trains as a way to hopefully draw Tanjiro Kamado's attention, or maybe even the attention of a Pillar.

September 6, 1913

After a further month of difficult training, Nezuko was finally ready to take the Final Selection Exam. Early in the morning, as she packed her belongings outside, Sabito and Makomo approached her, the two of them holding hands. "Nezuko-chan," Makomo called out to her. "Nezuko-chan!"

"Yes?"

"We want to wish you the best of luck," Sabito told her with a smile. "You've greatly improved since you first came here, and we want you to know that you have our full confidence as a slayer."

Nezuko smiled. "Why thanks, guys. That means a lot to me."

"Make us proud out there," Makomo encouraged her. "You can do it."

Nezuko then hugged both of them together, surprising them. "I will, trust me." As she tightened her grip on them both, she told them as a few tears fell from her closed eyes, "Thank you so much… Please, tell me we'll see each other again."

"One day," Sabito assured her with a pat of her head. "We'll see you again."

"We promise," Makomo added. "With all of our hearts."

As the three of them split off from each other, Nezuko wiped her eyes and sniffled. "Sorry, I got a bit emotional there…" She then chuckled, slightly embarrassed by it.

"Nezuko," Sakonji told her as she sat across from him. "I am very proud of what you have achieved so far in your short life. You represent hope for the Demon Slayer Corps and all of humanity. You represent a hope that we can finally end this bloodshed and violence. With this, a new era begins for the corps."

"I understand."

"Now," he continued. "There will be those who will doubt your loyalty to the corps, or may even try to harm you due to your status. I advise you to ignore them, and prove your worth by excelling at your job. If anyone keeps giving you trouble, you can always let me or the Oyakata-sama know, and we will put an immediate stop to it."

"I don't have time to dwell on those who hate me for something I did not choose," Nezuko firmly replied. "Not when there are people whose lives need to be saved and a war that needs to be fought."

Sakonji chuckled, admiring her determination. "You and your brother really are alike."

TAISHO SECRET #4

The DSC Leader Assassination of 1882

In 1882, the corps was shocked when Ubuyashiki Ryou, the 95th leader of the DSC, was assassinated by a disgruntled Kakushi armed with a pistol while visiting a train station in a town close to the Ubuyashiki Estate. The circumstances leading up to his murder, however, are even more interesting than the murder itself.

The assassin in question was named Kurokawa Goro, born in 1848 to a poor farming family. His mother had postpartum psychosis and grew to be insane, and died when he was only four years old. Additionally, his four older siblings also died by the time he was ten, leaving him only with a younger sister. His father highly valued hard work and discipline, and instilled these values into Goro, often physically. These traumatic experiences molded Goro into a man who reacted harshly to even the smallest of criticisms. When he was 12, his father was killed in a drunken altercation with a British diplomat who had come to visit his town. Soon after, he enrolled in the Demon Slayer Corps, receiving training for the Breath of Water and passing the Final Selection at 13.

As a slayer, Goro was not particularly well-liked. His peers who passed the Final Selection with him did not appreciate his anger issues, his narcissism, nor his need for total approval from others. At the age of 14, after hearing of the Taiping Rebellion and converting to Christianity, he tried starting a newspaper themed around the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but it failed to attract any attention, and in 1864, the Taiping Rebellion was crushed in China. In 1868, he temporarily left the DSC to enlist in the newly-formed Imperial Japanese Navy and fight on the side of the Emperor Meiji against the breakaway Republic of Ezo in the Boshin War.

During this war, he was involved in an accident where two boats collided. Everyone on his boat lived, but everyone on the second boat was killed. This convinced him that he was chosen by God to survive. After the Boshin War ended, he returned to being a slayer until 1871, when he resigned from the DSC and went to law school. He managed to (barely) pass a bar exam in 1875 and began work, primarily as a bill collector. Insight into how people tried to avoid paying bills allowed him to begin doing the very thing he fought against, and in 1878, he, his wife, and his two young children fled their home city of Sendai and settled in Nagasaki to avoid arrest for evading bills.

In Nagasaki, he reentered the DSC, this time as a Kakushi, and in 1879, he felt the need to divorce his wife, but found that he did not have a legally valid reason to do so. He came up with the brilliant (obvious sarcasm) idea of hiring and then having sex with a prostitute and having her testify in court, which worked for the divorce, but left him with syphillis. In the same year, he wrote a book about theology that was almost entirely plagiarized from the teachings of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but it failed to sell well.

In 1880, his sister caught wind of his bill evasion, and several bill collectors persuaded her to write a letter asking him to pay his debts. He replied with a letter instructing her to, "Find the nearest 1 yen bill or coin in your immediate vicinity, use it to wipe your ass of shit when you go to the bathroom, and then rub your nose with it. That is approximately how much you are worth to Kurokawa Goro. With that, I hope to end our acquaintance." He never spoke or wrote to her again.

In the year of 1881, he wrote a speech endorsing the selection of a slayer named Yamada Himiko for the position of Wind Pillar, largely because he was infatuated with her despite him being 33 and her being only 16 at the time. He somehow got it into his mind that if Himiko was selected, she would be so indebted to him that the two would fall in love, and that the Leader of the DSC at the time, Ubuyashiki Ryou, would also be so indebted to him for helping him choose such a great slayer to be the next Wind Pillar that he'd promote him to a high-ranking position as a Kakushi.

Of course, this speech was just a bunch of nonsensical rambling, and Ryou chose another slayer to be the next Wind Pillar instead of Himiko. This greatly angered Goro, and his anger grew even more when Himiko rejected him and told him rather loudly that she was expecting a child with another slayer of her own age. Following this, he renounced any faith in the current DSC administration. After years of cloud-chasing and risk-taking, only to be met with disappointment at every turn, he decided that his only other option was to kill Ubuyashiki Ryou as well as Yumeno Shinji, Himiko's now-husband and the father of their child. He could not bring himself to kill Himiko despite his unrequited and obsessive love for her.

Having convinced himself that it was God's will for him to kill Ryou and Shinji, he meticulously planned the assassination for seven whole months, and purchased a revolver with an ivory grip to stand out in a museum one day. He first tried to shoot Shinji, but changed his mind after seeing Himiko and him play with their infant son, so he escaped without them noticing. A few days later, on May 9, 1882, having found out about a trip Ryou was making to a nearby town, he hid in the town's train station and ambushed him as he was about to meet with two other pillars once their train pulled up in the next few minutes. He shot him three times in the back and fled the scene, only to be arrested by police a few minutes later. Ryou died of his injuries two weeks later.

He was arraigned in a regular Japanese criminal court for Ryou's murder, causing, for one of the few times in the DSC's history, cooperation between it and the Japanese government. Goro was ecstatic to hear that Ryou had died, believing he would go down in history as an important figure. In court, he was removed twelve times and charged with contempt of court for yelling obscenities at just about everyone present, including his own lawyer. Halfway through the trial, he fired his lawyer and instead defended himself after said lawyer tried to get the court to find him not guilty by reason of insanity, a first in Japanese law.

What should have been a 3 or 4-day trial instead turned into a 20-day trial due to these interruptions. His closing argument was a long and rambling poem that once again was essentially nonsense about politics and religion. He was ultimately found guilty of murder and contempt of court and sentenced to death by beheading. When the guilty verdict was read, he called everyone present at the trial, "A bunch of unintelligent pederasts, fornicators, and sodomites," a rather hypocritical remark given his past obsession for a young woman that was half of his age and already in a relationship and his own past infidelity.

On September 12, 1882, he was beheaded for the murder of Ubuyashiki Ryou. His final statement was yet another speech full of nonsense that he wrote that very same morning. He had put in a request for a small band of musicians to play when he was beheaded, which was in fact granted. His ivory grip pistol was destroyed several days after his execution to prevent his wish for it to be memorialized in a museum from becoming a reality. Ryou's son, Ubuyashiki Genji, would become the 96th leader of the DSC, only to commit suicide due to stress in 1894, passing the position onto the 97th and current leader, Ubuyashiki Kagaya.