Back in Yoshiwara, Mukago and Daki sat down and began to talk privately about what had led the former to come back to the latter. "So you came back to get me to leave? Did I hear that correctly?"
"You did," Mukago nodded. "Daki, you don't have to stay here. I can help you get out and make a new life, and I can help your brother, too."
"You know we can't," Daki replied. "And you know I have to kill you, right? My master has you marked as one of our top targets. He wants you dead."
Mukago realized that she was not leaving this area without fighting Daki, despite not wanting to. "Look, I don't want to fight you, Daki-senpai."
"You will have to," she corrected her. "No matter if you want to or not. You know my God damn life depends on it. If I don't, I'll get killed without a second fucking thought. I'm on a Hell of a tighter leash than I used to be anyway with those foreigner demons on my back now."
"I'm begging you," Mukago said as she then began to cry. "You can walk away from all this. Please, Daki, if you stay with Muzan, all it will do is kill you and your brother. He's going to be on the losing side of this war, and when he dies, he'll take you and Gyutaro-niisan with him."
Daki ignored her question as she pushed her away and instead asked her, "Why did you leave us anyway? What prompted that? Why did you leave me?!"
"Huh?"
"Why the fuck didn't you fight until the bitter end and die?!"
"I… I… I wanted to live! I was fucked if I didn't leave! I knew my time as a Lower Moon was coming to an end after Rui-kun was killed! Muzan was going to fucking murder all of us! You saw what he did to the last Lower Moons aside from Enmu, right?! You can't deny it, Daki! I was going to die whether I left that bastard Muzan or not!"
"You're just making excuses," Daki yelled as she pushed Mukago so hard she flew through two walls and then crashed into a third. As she got up, she pulled her sword from under her coat, prompting Daki to remark, "What the fuck… so you came here armed, Mukago?"
"I came here armed to protect myself," Mukago said as she caught her breath and staggered to her feet. As she did, several other employees at the Kyogai House fled in fear. "I thought Muzan had told you I was a demon slayer now. I guess he really doesn't give a shit about you as much as you thought, huh?"
"You traitor!" Enraged, Daki then used her sashes to grab a hold of Mukago and fling her outside of the house and into the air about ten feet. "How fucking dare you!" When she landed back on the floor, nearly putting a hole in it from her impact, she quickly found herself trapped in an obi sash as she was transported to a cavern underground. Upon being dropped onto the floor of the cavern, Daki emerged from another sash and told her, "We'll fight here."
"I don't want to fucking fight you!"
"You have to!"
Daki then cut Mukago's free arm off with a sash, causing her to scream in pain as blood poured out and coated the walls of the cavern, "Fuck, my arm!" Using her uninjured arm, Mukago managed to slash away and cut another obi sash that tried to attack her before her arm began to grow back. She then declared, "Blood Demon Art: Snowy Mist!"
As Daki's vision became clouded with a white sheet of thin snow and a cold mist, she declared, "That trick's pretty God damn old, Mukago! I've seen you do it hundreds of times! How about a trick of mine for old time's sake?! Blood Demon Art: Eight-Layered Obi Slash!" In an instant, eight long sashes of obi emerged from her black hair and rained down on Mukago, whose arm had finally grown back. "Take that!"
"Breath of Mist, Second Form: Eight-Layered Mist!" Mukago attempted to counter her attack with eight rapid forward slashes of her own, managing to deflect most of them. However, two of them managed to make it through and slice both of her arms and part of one of her legs off. "Agh, motherfucker!"
Daki, instead of attacking while Mukago was down, regrouped her sashes and allowed the mist to dissipate before making her next move. "You know, I thought you were coming here to rejoin us and stay on our side of the war! I thought you had finally seen the error of siding with those pathetic fucking humans and wanted to come back to us… And come back to me!"
"I can't abandon them now," Mukago replied as she began to get up and her limbs began to heal themselves. "I simply can't, Daki!"
"I wouldn't be too sure about that!"
"God damn it, stop deluding yourself!"
"You're the delusional one, Mukago!"
"We'll see about that!" She then took a deep breath and declared, "Breath of Mist, Fifth Form: Sea of Clouds and Haze!" Mukago charged forward once her limbs had fully healed, cutting through a bunch of Daki's obi sashes in a flurry of slashes, with the added effect of making it more difficult for Daki to see where Mukago was in the room.
"Where the fuck are you?! I can't see you for shit!"
"Right here!" Mukago then tried to slash off one of her arms with her sword as she suddenly appeared right in front of her, but Daki just barely managed to push her away right as her blade sunk into her arm and got her back on the ground, with Mukago's body leaving a small crater upon impact. "Agh, damn it…"
"Look what the humans need to mimic a fraction of our power," Daki remarked to her as her wound rapidly healed. "You don't need these stupid breathing forms, Mukago. If you had stayed with us and stayed under my tutelage, I could have molded you into my successor once me and my brother moved up the ranks! We'd be Upper Moons together like you always wanted! What's so great about being around humans anyway?! Humans can fuck off for all I care!"
"I… I… I have had children with one of them," Mukago admitted to her, coming clean about her relationship with Muichiro to Daki. "I can't go back to you now. I love the Mist Pillar, and he loves me. Tokito Muichiro is my partner now."
"Tokito… Love… Mist Pillar? Children?! Children?! Fucking children?!" Daki began to fly into a jealous and extreme rage upon hearing of Mukago being a mother. "How the fuck did you have children?! Why did you have them with a human, Mukago?! Why a fucking Pillar of all humans?! Why did you betray us?! Why the fuck did you betray me?!"
"I didn't betra-" Before she had the chance to fully answer her, Daki cut her off by jumping down and punching her repeatedly in the face and upper chest, so enraged by what she had done that she momentarily stopped using her powers in favor of a full-fledged no-holds-barred beatdown. "Daki! Daki-senpai, I-"
"Shut up," Daki spat at her as she continued to punch her repeatedly. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up and don't say another fucking word!"
"Stop! Stop! Please, Dak-" After interrupting her with a punch to the mouth, Daki raised her fist once again to strike Mukago in the face after having already pummeled her. However, as she looked down at her, she began to feel hesitant to strike her again. "Agh, damn it!" She then retreated her fist and took a deep breath, trying to figure out what to do next as Mukago slowly recovered from her injuries. She thought to herself, "Why am I hesitating? I needed to attack her again properly, not just with my fists!"
She remembered what Muzan had told her when word of Mukago's betrayal had reached her: "Find that traitor and kill her." She had almost always listened to Muzan… Almost. Now, though, Daki was proving that almost.
"Agh… No…" She closed her eyes and looked away from Mukago before she turned back around and yelled at her, "Why did you make me do this to you?! You're fighting so you can watch everyone around you die! Think clearly about this! You'll live to see all those humans you know and think you love fucking die and crumble into dust! You'll outlast every single insignificant human in your life, even your children and their father! Everyone and everything you know will be gone!" Not only angry at her, but also desperate to know why she had abandoned her, she then asked her, "What will you have after another 100 years?!"
Mukago, despite being badly beaten, knew in her heart how she needed to answer that question. "You, Daki-senpai… I'll still have you…"
Those words stung Daki like nothing ever before in her life. She stood back up on her feet and looked at her blood-soaked hands, feeling a mixture of disgust, regret, and sympathy for her former protege. "I, uh…" Her emotions began to get the best of her as she thought to herself, "Why am I getting so carried away? I should focus on what Muzan-sama told me to do."
"Daki…?"
She could no longer bear to look at Mukago as she muttered to herself, "Fuck this." She then used an obi sash to bring both herself and Mukago back to the street level, with her dropping Mukago off and then running away as fast as she could. The wind from her fast pace blew the blood on her hands and arms off of her body as she thought to herself, "I was supposed to kill her, but I can't bring myself to do it. I'm… In this moment, I am truly weak."
Mukago looked around as she adjusted to the bright electric lights of Yoshiwara once more and a crowd began forming around her, having seen Daki run off. "Ugh… What happened…?"
…
When Daki made it back to her room, she locked the door and began to sob, unhappy that she was unable to bring herself to do what Muzan had asked of her, but also unhappy that she was being forced to kill her former best friend and at one point girlfriend. "Why… Why can't I do it?"
Gyutaro heard his sister crying and walked in from the other room he had been staying in when she had fought Mukago. "There, there, Daki. I'm here." He hugged his sister and told her, "It's okay, Daki. You'll be fine."
"I couldn't kill her… I can't fucking kill her, oniichan. If I can't even kill her, what makes you think I can take care of those spies who got sent here?"
"You mean those three women who came here a week ago? I'm sure you'll be fine with them." Gyutaro and Daki were, of course, referring to Tengen Uzui's three wives, who had indeed arrived about a week prior to spy on them. "They don't have any special powers, you know?"
"Damn it," Daki muttered. "This shit sucks, oniichan."
They both then heard a knock at the door, with Gyutaro asking, "Who the Hell is it?"
"It's Jubal. I need to have a serious word with you two in the office."
"Okay, okay," Gyutaro replied to Jubal Early. He then turned back to Daki and told her, "We have to speak to Early-san. Come on, get yourself under control."
"Okay… I will…" Daki then wiped away her tears and took a few deep breaths. "What did he want?"
"He didn't say, but it sounds pretty damn serious, you know?"
"God damn it. I'm not in the fucking mood for another lecture from him."
"Me neither, but we gotta do this, Daki. It's our master's orders, after all."
"And so was killing Mukago," Daki pointed out. "Look how that went for me."
…
In the meeting room, Jubal excoriated Daki for letting others see her without a disguise and almost exposing the caverns to the outside world. "What the Hell is wrong with you?! You almost blew our cover wide open, and for what?! Just to settle the score with some old acquaintance that's now our enemy?! What the fuck?! I need you two to stop circumventing me and defying my orders. Muzan put me in charge here for a reason, and that reason was that you two could barely keep a low profile to save your asses! Daki, if you fight that Mukago bitch again, and you fail to kill her, you'll have only yourself to blame when Muzan punishes you!"
Enraged that he had insulted Mukago, she stood up and yelled at him, "Don't call her a bitch!"
Thomas Eaves, who was standing next to Jubal, yelled back, "Hey, who the fuck do you think you're talking to?!"
"Hang on a second," Jubal told him as he held an arm out in front of him. "I got this, Tommy." He then turned back to Daki and took a deep breath. "Okay, okay, fine. I can concede that. I won't call her a bitch, but my point still stands. You need to kill her. Don't hold back the next time you fight. You are more than fucking capable of doing it, Daki." Finally, he turned his attention to Gyutaro. "And as for you, I want you to keep a tighter leash on your sister. Remember, you're the one who actually has the role of Upper Moon Six, and your sister just shared it with you. You need to take charge if you see her do some stupid shit like what just happened. Do I make myself clear, Gyutaro?"
Gyutaro nodded and replied, "Yes, sir."
"Alright then," Jubal concluded his meeting. "You two are dismissed. I don't want to meet with you two under these circumstances again."
As Daki and Gyutaro left the meeting room together, Gyutaro quietly remarked to his sister, "I'm regretting agreeing to be under this guy."
"Me too," Daki agreed in a similar hushed tone. "Between you and me, if the demon slayers send people here to kill us, I'm throwing him and his two cronies out as shields. It's no problem to me if they die. If anything, it would be a service. Now, if you'll excuse me…" Daki then disappeared from view by using her obi sashes.
When she reappeared, she did so in another room that was concealed and locked to ensure nobody could enter through normal means. Inside the otherwise empty room were several obi sashes hanging from the ceiling and a woman with black and blonde hair and a red sleeveless dress who had been tied to them. A single piece of Daki's obi sash covered her mouth. When Daki ripped it off of her, she awoke and asked her, "What do you want?!"
"Sorry for the late visit," Daki told her with a wide and unnerving grin across her face. "I had some business to take care of. So, are you gonna tell me who those letters you sent are addressed to yet, or are you gonna keep staying silent and playing dumb, fucker?"
"How many fucking times do I have to tell you?! I'm not telling you anythi-" Daki then kicked her in the lower stomach, which for her was a very, very light kick, but for the woman she held hostage, was incredibly painful. "Agh, motherfucker! God damn it!" She then spit up a small amount of blood before telling Daki, "Go fuck yourself."
"Listen, Makio," Daki said, calling her out by name. "Look at it this way. You're an allegedly pretty woman who voluntarily came to a district for prostitutes. You didn't need any help from me to be completely fucked, but here we are."
Daki then kicked her again, prompting Makio to scream, "Fuck! Fuck, it hurts!"
"It's a good thing you're not pregnant," Daki sinisterly remarked. "Otherwise I would have easily caused you to miscarry. Maybe I could have even ripped that baby from your womb and had it as a meal."
"If I was," Makio replied to her "I wouldn't have come here for my mission, bitch."
"Yeah, that's the thing," Daki then said as she held her face up to her's. "I want to know what that mission is, and if you don't tell me soon, you can kiss your ass and your life goodbye, bitch." She then rebound her mouth with another obi sash and left the woman to herself. "Don't make a fucking sound. Got it?"
