November 11, 1913

Susamaru and James trained early in the morning before James was set to go visit the Saito Group's headquarters again, this time staying overnight there. The sun would not yet rise for another two or so hours, so the two were able to be a bit more dangerous with their training since they'd be able to heal their wounds by themselves. James stood on one side of the backyard with his sword, while Susamaru stood on the other end, holding six temari balls in her hands. "Hey dear," she yelled over to James. "Are you ready?"

"Go for it," he yelled back.

Susamaru grinned and told him, "Good luck!" She then threw all six temari at James in a row as fast as she could.

"Breath of Flames." James honed in one the six temari and quickly moved to slice all six in half and deflect them away from himself. As his sword effortlessly moved through the air, he sliced all six temari and deflected the twelve halves he had made into the ground, stopping them from bouncing and destroying anything behind him. "Fourth Form: Bloomin' Flame Undulation…"

"Good job," Susamaru told him from across the yard. "Let's do that again." She then spawned six more temari in her hands. "God, I missed doing this so damn much." She then tossed all six at James, and once again, he used the Breath of Flames to stop all six temari in their tracks. Once all twelve halves dissipated, she asked him, "Wanna do one-on-one sword fights now or do another round of temari?"

"One-on-one will be good," James replied. "Just be careful. You're defendin' two people."

"I know, I know," Susamaru waved off. "Me and our child, I get it." She then reduced herself to just her two normal arms and picked her dual swords up. "Now, can I strike first?"

"Sure. Go ahead, Susamaru."

She then took a deep breath and charged at James. "Breath of Flames, First Form: Unknowing Fire!" Using her dual swords, she swung hard at James, who managed to deflect her attack with his sword and push her back a few feet. "Come on! Is that the best you got?!"

"Third Form: Blazin' Universe!" James then swung his sword downwards, managing to deliver a cut across Susamaru's chest. "How about that?!"

"Agh, shit!" As her wound healed up and stopped bleeding, Susamaru wiped the blood off of her shirt and chest as best as she could. "Not a bad attack, honey."

"Same to you," James commended. "I like a good fight in the mornin'."

"I like to hear that," Susamaru replied with a smile.

James, guessing that she also meant that it turned her on, told her, "When I get back, we can do something better than practicin' together if you want." James then swung back down at Susamaru, who blocked his attack with her two swords.

"I'd like that a lot. I'll be in the mood by the time you come back for sure."

Later that day, James and Yoichi had a meeting with a foreign businessman from Germany. As the three of them sat down, Yoichi talked to the man in French, which they all would use as a neutral language for discussion, asking him, "Did you enjoy the ship ride over, Monsieur Henkell?"

"Indeed," Johan Henkell replied. "Now, who is this other man you have brought?"

James, wanting to ease any sort of tension, told him in German, "I'm a business partner of Mr. Saito. We have worked together for the past week regarding corporate security."

Johan, amazed but also perplexed at James' German, asked him out of surprise, "Are… Are you from Swabia?"

"No," James replied. "My mother was. I'm an American. My Standard German has retained a thick Swabian accent, and I can speak Swabian German as well."

"I see," Johan replied. "So, shall we switch back to French to keep our Japanese friend in the loop?"

James nodded in agreement. "Indeed. Let's go back to French."

Johan then told Yoichi in French, "Pardon us. I was just surprised that your friend here spoke German as well."

"It's fine," Yoichi assured him. "I can sense that you were very surprised at that."

"I was," Johan admitted. "I was not expecting anyone here to suddenly start speaking German, let alone in an accent that's rather rare back in my home country. Anyway, you said to me before I came here that something recently happened that you think I should know about. What is it?"

"It's about my business partner here," Yoichi confirmed. "It's about corporate espionage, and a new tactic on how to commit it."

James then asked Johan, "How often do you remember your dreams?"

"My dreams?"

"Yes."

"Not too much. Why do you ask?"

James then slid a folder containing notes on dreamsharing and dream infiltration across the table to Johan. "What if I told you that people could go into your dreams and extract secrets that you don't want the world to know about?"

"Go into my dreams? That sounds preposterous."

"I thought like that too," Yoichi told Johan. "But then I was the subject of it thanks to Monsieur Colby here. He was able to successfully extract information about one of my clients. In exchange for him keeping the information, he works with me now sometimes."

Johan was baffled. "So you're both in on it? Is this a joke of some ki-?" He then suddenly collapsed onto the table, completely asleep along with James. As it turns out, James had secretly lit a spell scroll on fire to put both him and Johan asleep.

Yoichi, who was still awake, chuckled to himself in Japanese as he stamped out the remains of the burning scroll under the table and poured a small glass of wine on it. "And now I wait." As he pulled out and checked his pocket watch, he remarked to himself, "Twenty seconds for every second inside. Colby-san told me he would be about five minutes inside the dream, maybe seven or eight, which should factor out to…"

Before he had a chance to finish the math in his head, Johan woke up hyperventilating while James woke up calm and collected. They had spent eight minutes in the dream, or about 24 seconds in the real world. Joann exclaimed to James in German, "What the fuck was that?!"

James replied in German back to him, "We told you it was real."

Johan took a deep breath and wiped his face of sweat. "Oh my God…" He then switched back to French, asking Yoichi and pointing to the folder that James had given him, "So I should take these notes if I want to train my own company to do this?"

"Correct. It'll give you an edge since this is just beginning to spread to other people, Monsieur Henkell."

November 13, 1913

"Thanks for letting us stay here," Tsuyoshi told Reiko and Rinji as he and Tokuhei settled down in a home that the Spider Siblings themselves had just moved into now that they were getting a stable income as official demon slayers. "You guys lucked out with this house."

"Well, the previous owner said it was haunted," Reiko explained. "So that's why he was selling it for such a low price. Personally, I don't know what the Hell he's talking about. Neither of us have seen any ghosts yet."

"Or heard any for that matter," Rinji added. "Either way, we got pretty lucky to get ourselves a house like this, especially considering our odd appearances."

"I was gonna say," Tokuhei asked the siblings. "How do you two get treated by everyone else?"

"People who aren't familiar with us look at us like we got two heads or some shit," Reiko admitted as she sat down in a chair. "I can't say I entirely blame them. I'd be scared as fuck if I walked in on me."

Then, the siblings' joint crow flew down and perched himself on the open windowsill. "Caaw! Reiko and Rinji! Reiko and Rinji!"

Rinji asked their crow, "What is it?"

"You two have a mission! Go five miles east of here to the town of Kawajima and seek out a demon with clawed toes and no hands!"

"Clawed toes and no hands?" Tsuyoshi shrugged. "Not the weirdest thing I've seen on a demon."

"One of you guys can come along with us if you really want to," Reiko told the two of them.

"I'll go," Tsuyoshi raised his hand and replied. "I could use the exercise from the walk."

"Aw man," Tokuhei sighed out of disappointment.

"Stop complaining," Tsuyoshi told him. "You'll get a mission soon enough."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say."

Reiko asked the two of them with a smile on her face, "You two love to bicker, don't you?"

"No," Tsuyoshi and Tokuhei both tried to deny.

"Bullshit," Reiko chuckled. "You two can be so funny sometimes with your constant back and forth."

On the walk to Kawajima later in the evening, Reiko was largely silent as Rinji and Tsuyoshi got to know each other better by talking the whole way to the town. As the three of them took a left at a crossroads, Reiko looked up at the evening sky and towards a patch of trees nearby. As she stared at the otherwise normal-looking trees, she began to hear something behind her. "Huh?"

"Here… Here…"

Reiko whispered to herself, "What… What the fuck? Not this…" She felt a cold sweat break out and run down her neck.

"I'm here…"

"No, please."

"I'm always here."

"No, you're not. You're dead. Go away." Reiko was silently adamant to this disembodied voice in her demand to leave her alone.

Tsuyoshi noticed her talking to herself and turned around, interrupting the conversation he had been having with Rinji. "Huh? Reiko-san?"

"Get away, please," Reiko told seemingly no one as she stopped in the middle of the road. "You're not here. You're dead." She then closed her eyes for ten seconds, took a deep breath in, and exhaled a deep breath out to clear her head and get this voice out of it. "Okay… It's gone, it's gone. The voice is all gone."

Rinji asked her, "Oneechan, what was that?"

Tsuyoshi similarly asked, "Were you just talking to yourself, Reiko-san?" Both of them were concerned and wondered why Reiko did what she did. "Are you okay?"

Reiko took another deep breath and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Let's just continue and get this mission out of the way."

Rinji asked her, "Are you su-?"

"I said," Reiko interrupted him. "I'm fine, Rinji."

Tsuyoshi told Rinji, "She sounds persistent."

"Of course I am. Come on, we're wasting time just sitting on our asses here."

The three then continued their journey towards the town of Kawajima, Rinji and Tsuyoshi still wondering what exactly had happened to Reiko. She, however, knew exactly what had happened, and she knew that she would not be able to hide these hallucinations from her brother or her two new friends forever. "This is the sixth time since I was attacked that I had this happen to me," she thought to herself. "I just can't get their fucking voices out of my head. I know they're not there, and both of them are dead, but… I can still hear them sometimes."