September 19, 1863
A human James Colby, bearing a remarkably different accent than his current southern drawl, marched alongside hundreds of soldiers from the 2nd Minnesota Infantry near Catoosa and Walker Counties in Georgia early in the morning as gunfire and cannon fire flew past them. They were part of the Third Brigade of the Third Division of the XIV Corps, belonging to the Army of the Cumberland. Moving southeast on Reed's Bridge Road, they were to confront Confederate forces nearby that were directly under the command of Nathan Bedford Forrest. As his group marched forward, a man right in front of James shouted, "Here we go!"
James, who had faked his age to get into the army two years prior and was in fact 18 instead of 20 as he claimed, replied back to him, "Abe, be careful!"
"Don't worry about me, Jack! Focus o-" Abraham, a Private First Class in front of James, was then struck with a bullet and fell to the ground dead, some of his blood staining James' uniform.
"Fuck!" James then paused for a brief second before marching again, stepping over Abraham despite his own desire to not do so, knowing that he could not hold the line up. "Damn it…"
"Jack," then said another soldier next to him. "Be calm!"
Then, they all heard their commanding officer blow a whistle and tell his men, "Halt!" James then halted in place and got ready to fire, making sure his rifle was loaded. "Fix bayonets!" James quickly secured a bayonet in place on his rifle. "Ready! Aim!" The whole line then aimed at the Confederate soldiers ahead of them. "Fire!" All at once, the whole line opened fire on their enemies, sending many of them to the ground. "Stand! Charge bayonet!" The officer leading the line then blew his whistle again, causing the entire line to run towards the Confederate position as fast as they could in a bayonet charge.
As James ran towards the line, a soldier right next to him was suddenly cut down by a cannonball, outright decapitating him and spilling his blood all over the ground. James yelled, "Holy shit!" He then continued advancing, eventually reaching the Confederate line just as they were about to fire on them. He stabbed a Confederate soldier in the chest twice before taking his rifle and beating a second with the butt.
A third Confederate soldier yelled, "Get back, yankee!"
"No, you get back!" He then stabbed the third soldier in the eye before pulling the bayonet out and stabbing him again in the stomach. Once he fell to the ground, James advanced on the Confederate line again as they began to retreat. However, as he looked over the horizon, he saw that an artillery line behind them was getting ready to fire. "Oh fuck!"
"Get back! They're loading cannons! Retreat!" His officer's orders were screamed into the air as the Union soldiers began to turn around. Just as they did, a wall of Confederate cannon fire came down on them. A cannonball barely missed James' head and instead cut a soldier in two around the chest right in front of him before then going through another soldier in his abdomen. The officer yelled just as a cannonball took out his horse, "Retrea-" As he fell to the ground, covered in the blood and guts of his horse, he drew his pistol and fired back at the Confederate line until his revolver was empty. Just as he ran out of bullets, he was hit by two bullets of return fire and killed.
James looked over at his captain and yelled in shock, "Captain, no!" A bullet then grazed the side of his head, causing him to yell as he fell to the ground, "Agh, motherfucker!" As he got up and looked around, he saw a man holding his severed arm next to him walk around before he was blown apart by a cannonball, virtually disappearing into a cloud of bloody mist. He then turned around and saw the Confederate line rush towards them, all of them giving off the infamous Rebel Yell. "They're coming back!"
A sergeant noticed James and helped him to his feet as he told him, "Colby! Colby, hurry up and load your rifle! They're coming!"
He quickly rammed some gunpowder and a bullet down his rifle and took aim, firing soon after alongside the sergeant. "I'll have to take charge for now until another officer reaches us!"
"You saw the captain go down too?"
"Yeah," the sergeant replied. "I can't believe they got him like that." He then turned to the other soldiers nearby and barked out, "Fire at them as fast as you can! Fire at will!"
James quickly reloaded his rifle as fast as he could and once again fired at the Confederates ahead of him, trying his best to hold them off. "Please," he silently prayed to himself. "God, let me reload faster…"
"Fire! Fire! Fire!" The sergeant once again took aim with his rifle, but before he could pull the trigger, he too was shot, taking a bullet to the head and falling next to James, dead almost instantly.
"Fuck!" James quickly retreated to several other soldiers standing behind him to reload his rifle. "They shot the sergeant!"
"Damn it," exclaimed one of the soldiers he had run to. "Of course they did! We need leadership here now!"
James then fired another shot at the Confederate line just as they reached them. "Here we go, lads!" James and the other soldiers began to fight off the Confederate advance, with James once again stabbing several enemy soldiers with his bayonet and punching another who tried to get him from behind. "Agh, damn it! Go away!" As the fighting continued, James worked almost on autopilot, fending off as many enemy soldiers as he could before both sides backed off of each other once more.
…
Later that night, James was sleeping in a tent pitched by his unit in an encampment, the sky pitch-black and the stars barely out. As he rolled over on the ground, he awoke to hear three gunshots followed by screaming outside. "Huh? What the…?"
His two tent mates both also woke up. One said to James, "Jack, what the Hell was that?"
"I don't know," James replied. "But it doesn't sound good."
They then heard more gunshots, as well as a man scream, "How are you not dead, you foul beast of a man?!"
"Okay," James said as he reached for his rifle. "I'm getting up and seeing what the fuck's going on out there." He then ran out of his tent, carrying his rifle in his hands, and turned to find a man flying past his tent and landing on the ground after being thrown. "What the-?! What's going on?!"
A man screamed nearby, "We've shot them both ten times! How are they not dead?!"
James then saw several tents nearby burst into flames as he saw a shadow of a man throw something at them that was on fire. He turned back to his tent and told his tent mates, "Robert, Edward, get up! We're under attack! Get your guns!" He then saw two men in Confederate uniforms approach him. He aimed his rifle at them and fired, striking one in the chest but seemingly having no effect. "What the fuck?! I hit you right in the chest!"
The one he hit replied to him, "We're Ghouls, ya dumb yankee!" The one he did not hit then picked up a soldier by his collar and used a knife with his other hand to cut his abdomen up, throwing him down on the ground afterwards to then take a piece of his body and eat it. "George, now ain't the fuckin' time to eat, damn it!"
"I'm hungry, Thaddeus, come on!"
"We're attackin' an encampment! Eat later!"
"Whatever you two are doing, stop it!" James was horrified to see a man eat another man, or at least he thought he was looking at a man. "You two are twisted for eating another man!"
"We're beyond mere men," Thaddeus told James as he drew a pistol and shot him in the shoulder. "We're Ghouls, just like I said earlier!"
Two soldiers, the two who had been tent mates with James, tried to then tackle George and Thaddeus from behind, but George was able to stab both of them with a sword and then decapitate them when they tried to resist after being stabbed. "Fuckin' idiots! They don't realize they can't win against us!" As he kicked their heads away, the fire began to spread all across the encampment, burning tent after tent after tent as screams of terror erupted from those who were burning alive due to the fire.
James, who was lying wounded on the ground, exclaimed, "Go to Hell, you Ghouls!"
"I'd like to see ya send us there," Thaddeus told him as he towered over his body. He then kicked his face in, breaking most of the bones in his jaw and eye socket before stabbing him with a knife. However, when he went to pull the knife out, James managed to grab a hold of his stabbing arm and pull on him before ripping the knife out of his hand and stabbing him. "Agh, what the fuck?!"
Unable to speak, James screamed in both pain and anger as he stabbed Thaddeus again in the arm, their blood mixing as it came into contact with James' wounds. However, a few seconds after it began to mix, James suddenly lost consciousness, his vision going completely dark as he lost sense of where or even who he was. "Raaagh… Aaaaagh… Agh…"
Meanwhile, as George continued to unleash destruction on the camp, Thaddeus looked at James' body and began to step back. "Wait a minute… George, look here!"
"What is it, brother?!"
As George ran over to him, Thaddeus exclaimed in disbelief and frustration at himself, "Aw fuckin' shit, don't tell me…"
James' wounds began to heal on their own as he slowly rose to his knees, his skin now paler and his eyes brighter than before. He began vocalizing through a series of growls, though it was clear he could no longer speak coherent words. "Raghaaaa… Raaagh… Agh… Uraaaagh…"
George turned to his brother and asked him in anger, "You turned him into a fuckin' ghoul?!"
"I didn't mean to, ya dunce! That bastard musta mixed his blood with mine after he stabbed me!"
Then, they turned to find a third demon behind them that was slowly collecting dead bodies in its elongated arms as its bright green eyes shone through the darkness and the flames. "Master… Food?"
"Yes, that there's food for ya," Thaddeus told the monstrous-looking demon, who was devoid of all clothing and bore long black hair. "Go ahead and eat. Clear out as many of the survivors as ya can, Greeney. We got a little problem on our hands."
"Food, yay!" Old Green Eyes, as he was known to many, cheered in excitement with a low-pitched voice as he happily devoured the body of a dead Union soldier.
George asked Thaddeus, "What the fuck are we gonna do with this mistake?"
"Leave 'em," Thaddeus replied. "He'll start eating the bodies here, and we can pick 'em up and kill 'em later, assumin' he don't commit suicide when he comes to and realizes he's eatin' his comrades."
"Are ya sure?"
"Absolutely. Let's get outta here before more yankees come along and find us."
As the brothers and Old Green Eyes left the camp, James was already eating the dead body of a soldier, driven purely by animalistic desire and being totally unaware of his surroundings or his actions. Finally, as he finished eating the soldier and began eating a second body, he blinked several times and looked around, his sapience slowly coming back to him. "Waaah… Huh… Rah… Haaaah…" Though he could not put his feelings into coherent words, he began to cry as he realized what he had been doing to two of his own comrades. "Raaagh… Na… No… No! NO!"
True to Thaddeus' prediction, James grabbed a revolver off of an officer's corpse nearby and quickly aimed the gun at the right side of his head, pulling the trigger as he tried to end his own life. The bullet was fired and managed to send James to the ground, but all it did was subject him to extreme levels of pain since he was a demon. He screamed into the air as his wound slowly healed, and once he could move again, he tried to commit suicide again, this time by putting the barrel into his own mouth. Once again, the bullet was fired, but all it did was hurt James. The third time, he put it under his chin and fired, but he only succeeded in blinding himself and ripping most of his face off before his face and eyes healed. The fourth time, he aimed at his chest and fired, once again only putting himself in excruciating pain. While on the ground, he tried to shoot himself a fifth time in the forehead, but found that the revolver had run out of bullets, with the last two presumably being fired by the officer he took the gun from.
Unable to end his own life, James simply got up and started running into the forest, trying desperately to get away from everything as he realized that whatever he was, he was no longer human. As he continued to run, not stopping for anything, he could hear other Union soldiers arrive at the camp and try to figure out what had happened.
It took a full fifteen minutes of running before James finally ran into someone else. As he finally collapsed onto the ground from exhaustion and began to cry in despair, he heard a voice nearby call out to him. "Who's there? Who's walkin' through these woods?" The voice was deep, and James could tell it belonged to a black man who was at least a few years older than him. "Who are you?!"
James vocalized, "Aaaagh… Hah… Hah…"
Just as he theorized, a black man carrying a large knife and a rifle walked over to him. The man bent down and looked at James' face, saying to himself, "Who turned ya into a ghoul? Did Old Green Eyes get you?" James had no idea what he was talking about. "You're a Union soldier, ain't ya?" James nodded, desperate for help. "My name's Ezekiel. Y'all can call me Zeke if ya want. I can help ya out of this here predicament ya got yourself into."
James was then helped up by Ezekiel, who vocalized to him, "Zeke… Eze…"
"I'll get ya speakin' again real soon, son," Ezekiel promised him as the two walked deeper into the woods. "I got a little camp nearby, and there, we can sort this all out and take care of business."
"Aaagh… Okay…"
…
Mount Natagumo, Japan, 1909
"I see two of them," said a demon with white skin and hair to another with a similar appearance as they spied on two other demons walking towards the large and dense forest that surrounded Mount Natagumo. "Should we move in?" She looked tense, almost as if someone was right on her tail and watching her every move.
"Not yet, Ryoko," Rui told her. "Let them get a little deeper inside. I like the odds of these two…"
"The fact they already have pale skin is a plus," Ryoko, the Sister Spider Demon whom Shinobu would later kill, said to Rui. "Nee-san, what do you think?"
"I think we should strike when they reach that bend in the path," said an older sister who was already dead when the Battle of Mount Natagumo happened four years later.
Once both of the demons went around the bend in the path, Rui told his sisters, "Now!"
The older sister, named Rin, immediately shot out web-like strings to block the path of the two demons, startling both of them as they looked around and wondered what had happened. The sister of the two told the brother of the two, "Rinji, what the fuck was that?"
"I don't know, oneechan," he replied. "But whatever this is in front of us… It looks like a spider's web…"
"That's the idea," Rui then said as the two were startled by his sudden appearance behind them. "You two wandered into our little home, and you two seem like the perfect candidates to be welcomed into my family."
Rinji asked in confusion, "Your family?"
Reiko similarly asked, "What the Hell do you mean a family? Me and my twin brother already have each other."
"So you're already related by blood?" Rui then gave off a rather unsettling smile. "Perfect. That's even better. What are your names?"
"I'm Reiko," the girl said. "And this is my brother Rinji."
"Good. They both start with an R sound just like mine." His two so-called sisters then dropped down from the trees and joined him by his side. "Have you ever wanted to get away from it all and live in a place that's safe from those pesky humans? If so, you've come to the right place by intruding into our home. If you join us, you can become part of the Spider Family, though you'll have to make some adjustments to your appearance and powers. I promise, you two will not regret it one bit."
"Join you? What the fuck?" Rinji was still deeply confused. "I mean… The offer sounds nice, bu-"
Rui then interrupted him by telling him, "You can enjoy personal protection from our master himself due to my status as one of the Twelve Demon Moons. I am currently Lower Moon Six, and I intend to climb higher and higher as the years go by."
"Personal protection, huh…" Reiko then turned to Rinji and whispered to him, "I think we should take it."
Rinji whispered back, "Why? These guys sound creepy as Hell!"
"After what happened last week," Reiko pointed out as the two kept quiet. "Do we really have a choice, though?"
Rinji paused to think about an answer before telling her, "Shit, you got me there."
Rui extended a hand out to the twins, telling them, "Come on. I can make it all worth it."
"Fine," Reiko agreed. "We'll join you. What do we do now?"
"Come with me," Rui instructed them. "We have some body modifications for you two to undergo. When I'm done, you'll be able to wield the power of spiders just like me."
"The power of spiders… If you say so…"
The twins then followed the group deeper into the forest. Neither of them knew it, but both would later wish they had rejected the deal and fought their way out of Mount Natagumo instead of joining Rui's demented 'family' of spider demons. Once all five walked into a forest clearing, Rui told the twins, "Now, just stand still. This will feel similar to when our master demonized you two."
Rinji replied, "Okay then…" Then, in an instant, both felt excruciating pain as they felt Rui's thumbs dig into the back of their necks and inject his blood into their bodies. "Aaagh, fuck! Fuck, my neck hurts!"
Reiko similarly screamed in pain. "My neck! My neck! Agh, fuck!" After only ten seconds, which to them felt like ten hours, both of them collapsed to the ground, unconscious from Rui's injection.
Ryoko asked Rui, "How long will this take? I couldn't remember from the last time we did this to someone."
"We'll come back in an hour," Rui told her. She then told the other sister, "Rin-oneechan, watch these two for me. Bring them to me if they wake up before I come back. I'm rather optimistic about these two, and I'll see to it they become fine additions to our family."
"Understood," Rin replied with a solemn nod as she began to watch over the twins. Once Rui and Ryoko were gone, she silently leaned into both of them and whispered, "One day, we'll make our escape from here together. Do not forget this promise." She then kissed both of their foreheads in a sign of affection. "It may not be soon, but it will come in the future, my brother and sister."
…
Rural Japan, 1911
"Get the fuck out of here!" A man screamed at a demon who was trying to barge into their home in the rural countryside of Japan, trying to fend him off with a pitchfork he used for farming. "Go on! Scram! Leave this place now! Get away, you bastard!"
"You can't make me leave," yelled back the demon, who then broke down the door and stabbed the man in the chest with a knife before cutting out his heart and taking a large bite of it. The man soon dropped dead from his wounds, his blood soaking into the walls and the wooden floor beneath him as the demon commented on the taste of the man's heart, "Chewy and tough… Not great, not terrible, I'd say."
A woman of similar age was heard screaming in another room. "Come on, kids, let's go! Daddy can't help us anymore! We need to leave!"
"The whole family is here… Nice…" The demon then dropped what was left of the man's heart and ran into the other room, finding a woman trying to move her three children out through a window. "More meat!"
"Move, move! Chiyo, let your little brothers go first!" The mother pushed her three youngest kids out of the window first, allowing both to make it out of the house just in time before the demon clawed at her neck, quickly severing the carotid artery and killing her almost instantly.
A younger Chiyo called out in fear and sadness, "Mama! Mama!" She then picked up a metal poker used for a fire pit and screamed at the demon, "Get out of my fucking house!" Her rude tone and crass language had come about due to the stress of the attack, as she normally spoke in a polite tone as her parents had taught her. She then rammed the poker through the demon, only to then be picked up and thrown across the room. "Aaagh, no!"
"You're too feisty," the demon said to her as he walked over. "Too much of a hassle to eat whole… But I can still do this!" The demon then proceeded to scratch one of her eyes and rip it out of her head, causing her to scream in intense pain as she felt herself go half-blind. As the demon downed her eye, he told her, "Stay here and be a good little girl…"
As the demon ran out of the house, Chiyo continued to bleed profusely out of her now empty eye socket and cry out of her remaining eye, knowing that the demon was about to eat her two brothers who had stumbled outside. "No! No! NO! My eye! My parents! My brothers! NO!" Sure enough, she began to hear screaming outside as the demon began to murder her three younger brothers. "No! Daisuke, Hotaru, no! Please, leave my brothers alone! Eat me instead, damn it! Leave them alone! I'm begging you!"
To her surprise, she then heard the sound of wind and what also sounded like thunder before a cry of pain and a slashing sound, followed by another voice that exclaimed, "Damn it, if only I had gotten here sooner! Is anyone here?! Hello?!" Chiyo hesitated, not knowing who this person was and fearing it could be another demon. "I'm a demon slayer! Don't be afraid!"
Chiyo then took a deep breath and exclaimed, "I'm in here! Help me!"
A slayer wearing a normal uniform then ran into the house, exclaiming at the sight of the scene, "Holy shit, this demon destroyed this place!" He then ran into the room Chiyo was in, asking her, "Hey, are you alright?"
"No… No…"
"Let me see your eye," the slayer said as he bent down and looked at her face, only to pull back her left hand and reveal an empty right eye socket. "Holy fuck… Did the demon do this to you?"
"Ye- Yes…"
"I'm so sorry," the slayer apologized. "I should have gotten here sooner." He then pulled out several rolls of bandages from his uniform shirt. "Hang on, let me try to stop the bleeding a bit…"
"Thank you…"
"No, don't thank me," the slayer replied to her, ashamed of his late arrival. "I could have saved your family if I was faster."
"Please stop… Stop apologizing…" Chiyo was being somewhat adamant in her request. "Thank you…"
The slayer sighed as he applied a bandage to Chiyo's face, covering up her empty eye socket, and then helped her up onto her feet. "Here… Come with me. We'll need to bury your family. I have another slayer coming here to help us, but I don't know how long he'll take to get here."
"Okay…"
As the two walked out of the house, the slayer with her told her, "Don't look to your right. I'll bury your brothers for you. I don't want you to see them in the condition they're in." As Chiyo looked away, the slayer walked over to the mangled and disfigured bodies of her three younger brothers and remarked in disgust at what the demon had done to them, "Fucking sickening. This is awful."
