Once James and Nezuko landed in Tanjiro's dream, they bolted for the Kamado residence. Nezuko noted to James, "I see he dreamed of the exact same thing as me!"
"Makes sense," he replied as they dashed around a tree. "You both had similar desires to meet your families again!" Then, just as they came in sight of the residence, James collided with a person at a fast rate of speed, causing both of them to fall to the ground. "Fuck! Shit!"
"Fuck!" The other person then yelled at him, "What the Hell?! Watch where you're go-" Then, he recognized James and asked him, "Colby-san?! What are you doing here?!"
"Tanjiro!"
"Oniichan," Nezuko then asked him. "Are you aware you're in a dream?!"
"Yeah," Tanjiro replied as he got up and brushed his haori off to get rid of the snow and dirt on it. "I've been running around and trying to find a way out."
Then, they all heard a familiar voice behind Tanjiro. "Oniichan, what are you doing?"
Nezuko looked over and immediately muttered as she realized who was talking, "Oh shit."
Tanjiro's projection of Nezuko was behind him, and she looked at the real Nezuko and James in confusion. "Oniichan, who are those people?"
"He's right here, mommy!" The rest of the Kamado family, minus the deceased Tanjuro, then ran up the hill towards them. Shigeru told Kie, "Oniichan caught on fire and then ran away!"
"Tanjiro! Tanjiro!" Kie was clearly very worried about her son. "What's going on?!" As soon as she said that, she and the rest of the projections stared at James and the real Nezuko. "Who are these outsiders?"
"For fuck's sake," Nezuko then said to her fake self. "I do not want to have to fight you. Please, step aside and let us take him."
The fake Nezuko then dropped the basket of vegetables she had been holding on the ground before undoing her hair and letting it fall to the ground. "Get out of here, intruder…" Suddenly, she bent down and scratched the snow, her nails lengthening and her eyes turning a bright pink. "I said…" The three of them also noticed that her teeth had begun to sharpen as well as she growled, "GET OUT!"
Tanjiro expressed in shock, "She… She turned into a demon?!"
Kie then suddenly charged at James and Nezuko with an axe, yelling at them in unbridled rage, "Get out of here! Leave my fucking family alone!" She then swung down and just barely missed James before he drew his sword and decapitated her in one strike, an easy move for him since Kie was a human. Her head flew into the air by a few feet before falling to the ground, blood pouring from it and her neck as her body crumpled and fell over.
Rokuta, the youngest of the family, yelled as he cried, "Mama! Mama! No!"
Hanako yelled at James, "How could you kill our mommy?! Why did you do it?!"
The fake Nezuko then jumped the real Nezuko on all fours, growing and clawing at her as she tried to hold her back by jamming the blade of her sword in her mouth. "Get the fuck off of me!" As she tried to push her off, she began to have a flashback to the day she was turned into a demon, realizing that she was in the same position that Tanjiro had been in that fateful day. "To think," she thought to herself. "I'm basically reliving what my brother had to go through…"
She then successfully threw the fake Nezuko off of her. She replied in response, "Get away! Get away' GET AWAY!" She then charged at the real Nezuko again, who managed to cut off her arm and barely dodge a kick from her.
Takeo then yelled at the real Nezuko as he picked up Kiev's axe and ran at her, "Go to Hell!" She replied by spearing him in the stomach almost on instinct with her sword, instantly killing him as she pulled her sword out and once again deflected a blow from the fake Nezuko.
She thought to herself, "Forgive me, Takeo. It was the only way."
As all this happened, James told Tanjiro, "You need to find another intruder! There's someone in this dream that's tryin' to kill your inner core! If he does that, you'll never be able to wake up! They're another American like me, but they have a grey uniform on!"
"A grey uniform! Got it!" Tanjiro then dashed away from the horrid scene, eager to get the image of his family dying in front of him again out of his mind and vision.
Meanwhile, Nezuko continued to battle her fake self, even managing to chop off one of her arms. "Alright!" However, to her dismay, the arm quickly grew back. "Shit!" Her fake self roared at her as she then caught her arm and ripped it off with her bare hands, causing Nezuko to scream in pain. "Agh! Fuck! No, my arm!"
"Get away!" The fake Nezuko then roared at the fake Nezuko before she ripped her arm to shreds as she devoured it. "You're not welcome!"
Shigeru egged her on, yelling at her, "Kill her, oneechan!"
"Rip her to shreds," Hanako also egged her on with.
Nezuko was horrified to hear her siblings cheer on her opponent, but knew she had to focus on the battle at hand. "I need to finish this!" With her arm beginning to regrow, she realized she would have to use only one hand to wield her sword. She then took a deep breath and declared as she charged forward, "Breath of Water! First Form: Water Surface Slash!" She managed to just barely miss the fake Nezuko's neck, but did cut off half of her head. "Fuck, I missed!" She then aimed at her again, yelling, "Second Form Improved: Lateral Water Wheel!" With this modified attack, she managed to finally decapitate her fake self with a horizontal spin, her head flying into the air before landing at her real self's feet. "And with that, I've won."
The fake Nezuko spat at her opponent as her arm and hand fully regrew. "This isn't over! I'm living in your mind, whether you like it or not!"
Nezuko sighed as she ran to meet up with James and Tanjiro, her regrown arm fully exposed to the climate due to her shirt sleeve being ripped off. "Damn, it's cold here… I hope they've found that intruder."
As she ran, Hanako, Shigeru, and Rokuta all yelled at her, insulting her and telling her to leave. Hanako in particular yelled at her, "Get out of here! You're not welcome! You were never welcome! How could you kill our sister?! You're a monster! You monster!"
As she found them, she realized that they had found the intruder, but were not attacking him. "Hey, what's going on?!"
"We got 'em," James replied. "But… He ain't gonna pose a threat to us anymore."
"He's on our side now," Tanjiro explained to Nezuko. "Tell her, Williams-san."
"Right," he replied in English. The intruder, named Thomas Williams, was a demon who formerly had been a Confederate soldier, and bore blond hair and dull brown eyes. "Well… How do I begin… I found this boy's inner core, but…" He began to get emotional as he tried to continue. "But… There were these people inside leadin' me to it…" He could no longer finish what he intended to say, and began to cry.
James explained in Japanese to Nezuko, "He says that these small beings of light led him to Tanjiro's inner core and pointed to it. He was so moved by what they did that he gave up and surrendered to us as soon as we found 'em."
"These things," Thomas added in English as he continued to cry. "They were so pure, so wholesome… I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't fuckin' do it!"
Tanjiro comforted him despite barely understanding what he was saying, telling him in Japanese as he patted him on the shoulder, "There, there, sir. You're okay. You're okay."
"I'm sorry," Thomas told him in response despite not knowing Japanese. "I'm so sorry…"
"Come on," James then told him in English. "Let's go. Y'all know how we gotta escape this." He then told Tanjiro and Nezuko in Japanese. "Y'all know what to do."
Tanjiro nodded, and drew his sword before holding it to his neck. "Take a deep breath, and cut… Take a deep breath, and cut…" He did as he said and then sliced his neck, splattering blood on the ground and ending his life inside the dream.
"I'll fight with y'all when we wake up," Thomas then replied before he drew a single-shot pistol he carried and aimed it into his mouth, pulling the trigger and blowing much of his brains and a lot of blood onto a tree behind him as his body fell over.
Nezuko muttered to herself, still disturbed that suicide was the preferred way out of a dream, "Fuck! That always makes me jump… Okay, I'll go next." She then drew her service-issued revolver and trembled as she cocked the gun and aimed it at her chin while James looked around to make sure the rest of the Kamado family did not follow them. "Come on, come on, come on… Pull the trigger, bitch, pull the fucking trigger…" Her words of self-encouragement did not make it any easier for her as her self-preservation instincts kept her from pulling the trigger.
As James looked around, he said to himself, "I really hope those kids didn't follow us here." Then, he heard a gunshot behind him and turned around. To his horror, he realized that Nezuko was still alive. "What?! No!"
Nezuko was indeed still alive, albeit barely. She screamed in pain as blood poured from her face, unable to vocalize words due to her jaw being completely blown off by a missed gunshot that only managed to blow off much of her face instead of killing her. She could not speak, but could scream in pain as chunks of her skin and bone fell from her face onto the snow.
"Holy fuck!" James was shocked to see Nezuko in such a state. "You… Ya fuckin' missed! Holy shit! Okay, okay, okay…" He then drew his own revolver and found he had two shots left. "Nezuko, I'm sorry, but I have to do this." He could see Nezuko attempting to nod as she writhed in pain. "I know, I know, this is gonna make it better, okay? Just hold on." He then aimed the gun at her forehead, the barrel stopping at her skin, and pulled the trigger, killing her instantly and putting her out of her misery by splattering much of her upper head on the ground below. "My turn." James then aimed the gun at his temple and pulled the trigger, shooting himself with his last bullet and immediately waking up from the dream.
…
Once back in the real world, Thomas told the others, "Just tell me what y'all need me to do, and I'll take care of it."
"In here!" Two soldiers then ran in, shooting at the group. "Shoot those fuckers!" Thomas immediately returned fire with his single-shot pistol as James also drew his gun and fired at the soldiers. Their poisoned bullets struck them down with ease, and as Tanjiro and Nezuko screamed awake, James ran up to both soldiers and blew their heads off with his shotgun, killing them.
"Guard the passengers in here from attack," James told Thomas. "We'll let the others know that you switched sides when they wake up." He then told Nezuko and Tanjiro in Japanese, "Go to Zenitsu and Inosuke's dreams and wake them up. I'll go to Rengoku-san's dream and Susamaru's dream." He then pulled another scroll out of his backpack. "This is my last scroll for the Dream Infiltration Spell. Y'all need to smear blood on the inside." He then used a knife to cut his hand slightly to smear blood on it.
Tanjiro nodded and used James' knife to do the same before handing Nezuko the knife. Once she did the same, Tanjiro asked her, "Which dream do you want?"
"I'll go to Zenitsu's," Nezuko replied, and just as she did, Kyojuro suddenly got up and grabbed the Confederate soldier sleeping next to him by the neck, pinning him to the wall of the train with a loud thud. "Holy shit!"
"He must have sensed the intruder in his dream," Tanjiro inferred. "We need to hurry."
"On it," James replied as he lit the scroll on fire and threw it out of an open window. A few seconds later, all three of them collapsed into sleep once more, all of them given assignments and ready to go to work.
Once they fell, Thomas grabbed James' revolver and shotgun, ready to defend himself and the train from attack. As another soldier ran in, aiming his rifle at Thomas, the soldier yelled, "Traitor!"
Thomas fired at him with the shotgun twice, managing to poison him enough to kill him outright. "Motherfucker…" He then checked the shotgun and reloaded it to full capacity by taking ammo from James' backpack after seeing it was down to only two shells. "Sorry for stealin' from ya, Jack." He also grabbed James' rifle, saying to himself, "I need to be more accurate. The last thing I want is to hit passengers with shot." Once he put the shotgun down, he checked the rifle to see it was loaded and found that it was before looking up to find yet another soldier charging at him.
The soldier shot Thomas once in the arm as he yelled, "How could y'all change sides on us?!"
Thomas shot him twice with the rifle, striking him down as his arm wound healed. He then walked up to him and aimed the rifle at his forehead, telling him, "Because I saw the light." He then fired a single shot into his head, destroying much of it and giving him enough poison to kill him. "Okay, that's five solders out of 36 that Cleburne had on this train. I just hope those guys can make it out on time. I can't last much longer on my own."
