Things could change in one second, in one mere moment, in the time one took to blink, to draw breath. She should have known better, she had experienced it already, her whole world turning upside down without a warning, her family dying in front of her very eyes, her whole village turning to shreds, she still had her scars to remind her of how bad things could turn in nothing but an instant but she still found herself hoping for something different. Maybe she was naive, maybe she was gullible, over-trusting, full of hope for a world where good always won… maybe she was just stupid and childish.
Only that afternoon she had been learning the Flame Breathing forms from no other than Rengoku Kyojuro, two days before that she had attended Kanroji-sama’s birthday with Hiroshi and she had had a blast in the party, she had mixed in like the social butterfly she was, she had laughed and she had eaten and she had been happy. She had met so many people she thought she would continue seeing, she had started relationships with fellow corp members, she had seen some of the other Hashira… What was left of all that?
Hiroshi had taken her in a new mission that included the former Flame Hashira, neither her nor Hiroshi had asked why he had been demoted, they much rather get to know about it when Rengoku-san felt ready, the fact that he was willing to teach her his breathing style even when she was probably never going to use it was enough for her, it gave them a good topic of conversation that was not too intrusive and got the dead time to pass of faster.
She knew that Flame Breathing was a very aggressive and taxing breathing style that had been created by alphas with their capability and stamina in mind, if she could not even attempt Mist Breathing she could not imagine herself mastering Flame Breathing in a million years but she liked to practice and the new postures made it fun for her who was prone to find everything boring after doing it for long periods of time, another thing that Hiroshi chided her for, as if he did not had enough things to complain about as it was.
But there was nothing boring in being decimated by demons, and there was nothing fun or exciting in it either. It was a terrifying thing to be involved in, mostly when she was just learning, when the only thing she had to defend herself was a nichirin sword that had not changed colors yet because even when neither Hiroshi nor Rengoku-san said it she sucked at figthing, no matter which breathing style she used.
Mai regretted going, somehow. Any mission in that profession, if one could call it that, was dangerous in nature, Hiroshi’s missions were way more dangerous than the ones she would have had had she dedicated herself to find a sensei that could teach her a fighting style in the traditional way; Hiroshi was not a Tsuchinoto just for the fun of the word, but even then, the kind of mission that the Hashira, or rather the former Hashira, were assigned to were disproportionately more dangerous than the ones they were already accustomed to… and that was something to say in her not so humble and rather uneducated opinion, but she was talking from experience.
She was not sure who had Hiroshi bribed to get her in the ranks without going through the final selection, it was a rather strange occurrence that she was not going to question, she did not wanted to get separated from her friend and she had gotten a nichirin without the need of spending a week in a mountain killing demons of mediocre powers when she could be out there killing the dangerous ones next to Hiroshi.
It was a blatant lie that she regretted that mission in particular, she did not regret going at all, she knew that she would never forgive herself if anything happened to Hiroshi while she was not there and that was one of the many reasons she had to not want to go to final selection. Even if all she could do was to die by Hiroshi’s side or stand with her brand new Nichirin sword dangling uselessly from her hand, utterly terrified, she wanted to be there, to bargain her life for his if she could not do anything else.
But Mai was not stupid, she knew that if Hiroshi was not able to defeat a demon she would not be able to do it either, she would die before she even really tried, but maybe, and only maybe, she would be able to help him if he got hurt, at least until the Kakushi came to the rescue… as long as the demon had been dealt with beforehand.
That same exact scenario was not too far off the mark from the situation they found themselves in on that particular quiet night. The ever-present smile on Rengoku-san’s face might have made her misjudge the danger, maybe it was because she saw a lone demon that did not seem threatening at all despite the feeling in her chest that had advised otherwise, but she had paid no heed to it, a practice she indulged in way to often to emerge victorious on the other side every time.
A dark feeling of dread came upon her as soon as the demon turned to show them its face, or rather its lack of one.
The place where its face should have been was blank, no eyes, no mouth, no nose, nothing, just a terrifying lack of recognizable human features in the expanse of its skin, stretching over an oval and smooth piece of bone. Mai was not sure if something had changed in that faceless face, but there was something that made all the hair on her body stand on end and a chill run down her spine.
The demon was smiling, she did not care if it had a mouth or lips to pull into a smile, she was sure that it was smiling somehow, she could feel it in the pit of her stomach; that demon was feeding of their fear or if not fear, of any dark feeling inside of them and, as they stood there, they had many dark feelings inside of them to feed that demon with who grew bigger and bigger if not on size on power, if not on power then in presence, and tried, and maybe even succeeded, in getting into their heads.
It had happened so fast that she was not entirely sure how or even what had happened but her sword slashed through something and Hiroshi pushed her out of the trajectory of… where those human hair strands? She was pretty positive that it had to be related to the demon’s blood demon art which was quite strange since she recognized it as the same exact blood demon art as the child demon that decimated her village some months back.
The blood demon art changed as soon as Hiroshi stood in front of her, coldness seeped into her very bones, the air around them shifted and her sweat became ice in her skin. Her hands trembled and she barely managed to hold her katana even though her strength had abandoned her a moment before.
She could not see what it was, the sound was what warned her that something had happened and she saw Hiroshi twisting and turning in a desperate attempt to stop the ice from cutting through him or even her. Mai knew that she needed to do her part, carry her own weight, at least to distract the demon and, against better judgment, she got on her knees, grabbed her Nichirin sword with both hands and rose to her feet.
Rengoku-san jumped into action, his katana ready to slash the neck of the demon while it looked towards Hiroshi and Mai but the sense of dread grew inside of her, another chill run down her spine and she could feel the demon smiling bigger as it stomped one of his feet into the ground.
A light blue snowflake-shaped compass manifested underneath it and Rengoku-san’s smile was completely erased from his face, he seemed paralyzed with fear and that… that was something neither she nor Hiroshi thought they would ever see. Rengoku-san hesitated and the demon punched his sword, chipping it quite badly.
Hiroshi repositioned his feet under him, she could sense his fear but that had never stopped him before, he was a brave kid and as such he adjusted his grip on the sword and breathed in, reading himself to jump into action and jump into action he did, advancing towards the very thing that had him trembling with his katana ready to slash whatever part of it he could.
But the demon was way too dangerous and way to advance for any of them, Hiroshi was attacking at full speed and it looked like Rengoku-san was doing exactly the same. Mai could not keep up with their speed but the demon, opposite to her, did not seem to be having any problem with it; it still felt like it was smiling, satisfied and amused by their futile efforts.
Mai started to feel more and more preoccupied as time went on, she had leaped into action attempting the first four forms of Mist Breathing, the only ones she had somewhat dominated, but she was nowhere near the level that Hiroshi was and the most she could manage to do was to survive herself; protecting someone else was completely out of reach for her.
The demon did not seemed to need eyes or ears or even a nose, It seemed as if it could guess what her next moves would be: when she used a lower attack, the demon blocked it, when she used an upper attack, it ducked under it, all while fighting, wounding and predicting both Rengoku-san and Hiroshi’s moves and, as if that was not already enough, it still felt like it was smiling at the three of them at the same time.
In a matter of minutes she was already worn down, bruised and bloody all over, to her detriment, she was not the only one. Hiroshi had a deep slash in his right arm that was bleeding profusely, a bloody nose and a black eye; she was not sure if the eye had survived the punch or if he would not recover from that wound, what she knew was that she needed to bandage that slash in his arm soon before it got infected or worse, before he passed out for blood loss and die out of something that she could help with.
But her and Hiroshi were not the only two that had been hurt, Rengoku-san was in a very poor state too, even when he did not seem keen on stopping anytime soon. He had spat out blood, his sword was awfully chipped to a point where Mai wondered if it was able to cut anything at all or a butter knife would have been sharper, and his breath came in irregular bursts. Maybe that was the reason he was not a Hashira anymore, maybe his breathing had been impaired in a different fight and he could not maintain the same level than he did before, in Mai’s head that made a lot of sense but it also terrified her a little because while they were bloody, bruised and tired the demon was just as rested as when they started.
Blood splatter right into her face and she was blinded for a moment. The sound of Hiroshi’s rapid breathing got to her ears for a second and a hand that she recognized as his pushed her back at the same time as a piercing scream was torn from Rengoku-san's throat. She was not sure who had been hurt or how badly since they were all heaving and complaining of different pains but she brushed the blood out of her eyes with the sleeve of her pale blue haori to look back at where Hiroshi and Rengoku-san continued fighting… or rather only Hiroshi since Rengoku-san was laying on the ground surrounded by a growing pool of his own blood.
Mai gave Hiroshi a short look to make sure that he was fine and ran towards Rengoku-san to see to his wound. His leg was in a very poor state, if not even worse than that. His bone had been cracked in at least three places and one of the shattered ends protruded like a bloody spike from the meat of his heavily muscled thigh.
Not really thinking about the abundance of blood that was quickly covering her from head to toe, Mai took her own belt off and improvised a tourniquet in his leg. He did not complain, Mai would have been surprised if he had the strength to complain with the amount of blood he was losing by the second.
A shockwave crash against her taking the breath out of her and a loud crack broke the silence of the night. When Mai regained the ability to breathe and turned around to look at the fight, she could not find Hiroshi anywhere, or at least not anywhere near the demon. A lump that she recognized as her friend laid balled up at the foot of a tree and Mai waited for a second for him to jump back up to his feet, but he did not, he stayed there, silent and motionless and she felt the overwhelming terror of the consequences of that fight pulling her down.
The faceless monster advanced towards Hiroshi, Mai could still feel it smiling even when no smile could be seen. On a whim and without giving herself too much time to think it through, Mai took Rengoku-san’s nichirin sword in between her hands, because she could not remember where she had left her own katana, and jumped back to her feet. The fear of dying had abandoned her, the fear of losing Hiroshi was at the forefront of her mind and, probably because of that, she advanced towards a demon she could not defeat with a nicked nichirin blade that would probably break on her if one looked at it a little too hard and a scream she did not know her throat could produce.
She could barely hold her ground for the first attack directed straight at her and she barely managed to receive the lesser amount of damage after the second and third time the demon attacked but her right eyebrow had brusted and the blood got into her eye so she could not open it anymore, she also had a good collection of cuts and scrapes both from the demon and from the environment they were fighting in. She had fallen more times than she cared to count already and the stupid demon seemed to know what she was going to do even before she did so there was no way to take it by surprise.
So she was doomed from the beginning, she had fought with everything she got but she was already living in borrowed time against an opponent that was way more experienced and strong than her so she was not really that surprised when one blow sent her flying against a tree trunk. The one thing that did surprise her was how loud the crack of her ribs breaking could sound to her own ears.
Mai saw the demon approaching and knew that there was nothing she could do to save herself, the only thing she could think of was to pray for whatever that awaited her to be painless and maybe she prayed right because the last thing she saw before passing out was de demon walking towards her and the pain never came and if she was the one to judge, the demon, did not come either.
The first thing he saw when he opened his one unharmed eye were a pair of gentle fiery eyes. For some reason the fact that there were two eyes instead of only one took him by surprise. A Kakushi mask obscured the rest of his features but he seemed kind and was bandaging his head with a very gentle touch.
But there was something he could not understand no matter how much he thought about it: what about the demon? Who had killed it and why was he still alive for that kakushi to be bandaging him up? Had Rengoku-san gotten up and killed it? If that was the truth he was pleasantly surprised and very much impressed but no, if he was to judge by what he was seeing, Rengoku-san was almost where he had landed after that horrible blow to his leg and was being tended by two kakushi. So then who?
He could not believe that Mai had done it, had she? Maybe he had underrated her terribly but he did not think that she had even mastered the first four forms of mist breathing so he did not deem it possible. Was she all right though? He had passed out and had left her unprotected… maybe… no, he could not think like that, Mai had to be just fine, she was good enough, she had to be or he would never forgive himself.
“Is Mai all right?” he asked the kakushi.
“Looks like she will, she is being taken care of,” the kakushi replied.
“What happened to the demon?” he asked again.
“You did not kill it?” the kakushi asked in reply.
The weight of that realization sank in slowly and he felt the way the kakushi shuddered unintentionally. He was not much better, his hand took the tsuka of his nichirin sword ready to protect the kakushi in any way he could, even if it was not much, even if he did not last long, but the blade had snapped in two leaving the tsuka with only a few centimeters of sharp sword and barely nothing to work with.
“We should pack up and leave as soon as possible,” the kakushi said, somehow he managed to keep his voice calm and stable, as if everything was under control. “Did it have a blood demon art?” he asked, his voice did not betray anything, he looked fearless and it somehow instilled in him a sense of calmness that he did not think he could achieve in those conditions.
“Yes, I am not really sure what it was, it changed as the fight progressed,” he said, looking at his own hand that was being tied to the tsuka of the katana. They both knew that he was not going to stay still if the demon attacked as much as they both knew that he did not have the strength to hold his nichirin sword as he usually did. “I think that it can channel the blood demon art of other demons,” he explained.
The young kakushi nodded and turned to talk to the rest of the kakushi that accompanied him, two of them were tending to Rengoku-san, trying to stop the hemorrhage of his leg and arguing about the best way to transport him to the Butterfly Estate. Another kakushi was bandaging Mai’s midsection and tried to keep her as still as she could, since the girl had not regained consciousness yet it was not such a difficult task, the difficult task was going to be transporting her without worsening her condition.
“We should leave as soon as possible, the demon might be close by,” the kakushi whispered to the other members of his team who looked at him with wild eyes full of fear.
A chill ran down his spine and his skin broke out in goosebumps. He was just as terrified as the kakushi were, even though Hiroshi could fend for himself in any given day, he was not at his best in that moment, he was pretty far from his best and he had no support, the kakushi could not defend themselves, Mai had passed out and Rengoku-san did not seemed able to even stand. His safety was not the only thing in his hands, not even just his life and Mai’s, everybody’s lives were his responsibility at that moment and he knew for sure that he could not defeat that demon on his own… or maybe he could on his own if the demon could not imitate the powers of the demons that Rengoku-san had faced before.
But playing fake scenarios in his mind would not help him at all, not if the demon actually came before they managed to relocate at a safer location and warn Oyakata-sama that the demon was way too powerful for a simple Tsuchinoto; it seemed to be way too powerful for a former Hashira too so he was not sure what Oyakata-sama could do. Something he would not like to do was to take that kind of decision, he did not envy the head of the demon slayer corps at the slightest.
Hiroshi was either too nervous that he was imagining things or terrifyingly right but he could feel the dark presence of the demon close, too close to comfort, so he tried to rush up things but Rengoku-san’s leg was yet to be bound properly and they were not sure about how to move him even to the closest village without worsening his wounds to the point of no return. For some reason he thought that they should call the Water Hashira, he had been able to keep Mai alive even when he thought it was impossible but he kept that to himself, he had no reason to believe that Tomioka-sama had more knowledge than the kakushi about taking care of wounds.
It felt like electricity running through his body, like the spark of a hunch, like his stomach turning or jumping inside of him, painful and energizing at the same time, a kind of energy that would leave him rather quickly and render him completely useless once it passed through his body. He thought, in the back of his mind, that that must have been the way it felt when one used the last remnants of one's energy reserves in the body and even when it felt like an explosion, it lasted just as long as one, a mere second, a blink of an eye. That second, though, was enough to swing his nichirin and slash through flesh and bone of the faceless demon before its claws could sink into the young kakushi in front of him.
Hiroshi squared his shoulders and repositioned his feet, standing in front of the kakushi and keeping his nichirin in between his hands with whatever strength that he had left, probably the bandage that that same kakushi had applied kept the katana in its place way more than his ferocious will to do it but it seemed that it was enough to fend of the demon even if only for the kakushi’s lives and not for his own.
At the end of the day, scared or not, Hiroshi had promised long ago to lend his life for others, he had done so the day he picked up a nichirin for the first time, the day he was taught how to fight; and he had proven that he was ready to die for the right reasons time and time again, and for some reason he was still alive even when he should have perished one of all those times when he had been saved at the last second… but he had not, and maybe whatever god that was on the other side had allowed him to survive so he could help the kakushi that day, so he could die saving someone and not pointlessly.
But it was not only one kakushi that he had to protect and the demon knew that there was no reason to bother with him when a better piece of human meat was at its disposal so its faceless head turned towards Rengoku-san and the two kakushi that were attending him. Hiroshi might or might not get there on time, before he finished them off, but that did not matter too much, getting there would for sure take a good amount of his energy, which he was already running out of rather quickly, so in the very rare occasion that he did get there on time he and his broken katana would not be of much help neither for the kakushi nor for Rengoku-san.
He had to try, though, he had to give his best efforts, so he concentrated his energy in running faster than he had ever been able to and he barely got there before the demon could cut a piece out of one of the kakushi. Hiroshi pushed one kakushi with each hand behind his back, but even then they would not make it very far, at the end of the day he had just managed to exchange their bodies for his own, the demon had taken a chunk out of someone and, that someone, was him.
Four long claws carved deep lines into his back, the pain almost sent him to his knees and he would probably never get to know how he managed to stay focused instead of blacking out from the pain. He could only attribute it to adrenaline since his strength had abandoned him long ago and he had kept going with the scraps of whatever stock he had in his body or in his mind, at that point he was not sure if his body kept acting out of will alone or even just imagination and stubbornness.
Before he could turn around and take a stance, the next blow was already aimed at his head with a strength that would turn it into mush rather quickly. If he was right and the faceless demon was imitating the demons they had fought before, Hiroshi did not want to know who he was taking that particular power from because it was scary as it was and the faceless demon was clearly new to it, even when it was trying very hard to get habituated to it fast. The punches, though, were perfectly aimed at his vital spots, almost as if they were directed by magnets, which meant that one mistake on Hiroshi's part would end with him lying dead and cold on the floor.
He thought about his chances as he roughly managed to block the punches aimed at him, his collection of wounds kept increasing and the kakushi had barely managed to move Rengoku-san and Mai a couple of feet away from them but nowhere near close to the distance they needed to put in between the demon and them to be safe once he inevitably perished under the pression of its attacks.
It also seemed to be able to predict any attack from his part, the only ones he did not seemed to see coming were the sloppy ones, the last resource to block a blow before it cut him in halves, when he improvised which meant that he could not put the full power of his breathing technique since they did not belong to any Mist Breathing Form… or rather to any breathing style at all since it was nothing but desperation, recklessness and impetuosity.
A clawed hand sank into his side, barely missing his lung. It seemed like his claws were not as millimetrically controlled as his fists were which was surely a good thing since it allowed him to be still alive. Had he had the opportunity to think about it he would have concluded that the demon that had the aim punches did not have claws but Hiroshi did not have any time to waste, not when his back hit a tree trunk a good couple of feet away from the demon.
His body crumbled to the ground, the wound of his arm throbbed in pain and both his legs and his arms quivered with exhaustion. His feet did not respond to any order and the only thing he could do was to look with the only eye he could open at the faceless demon and how dangerously fast it approached the kakushi and Rengoku-san.
The demon seemed to be highly motivated to eat Rengoku-san once and for all before it even tried to kill and devour the kakushi or even him and Mai, the former Hashira’s body was probably the most powerful of the bunch, the one that would give it the bust of power it so desperately seemed to look forward to.
Steal glinted under the moonlight, two swift strikes cut the air and managed to force the demon to back down a few steps. A pair of fiery eyes settled on the faceless demon, a little bit too open to be settling as a strange look of calmness invaded them, a look that gave the sensation of craziness, a kakushi mask obscured the rest of his features and both hands gripped what Hiroshi recognized as Mai’s unturned katana.
But it was not unturned anymore, the katana was ready to strike and crossed defensibly in front of his body, the blade had turned into all sorts of reddish, yellow and black hues, almost like a broken piece of pottery that had been repaired with liquid gold, beautiful and somehow reminiscent of how the pain of the wound that had broken it before had claim its strength and its beauty, a beauty and a strength that had been enhanced and reinforced to hold itself together once again. Like fire and lava, like burning coal.
“Keep your claws away from my brother,” he said, readjusting his grip on the tsuka and taking a stance Hiroshi had never seen before in any Breathing Style.
It felt almost like a dream, too good to be true, a kakushi taking up arms, a katana suddenly turning into color, a second pair of hands ready to help and try their best. The only thing that Hiroshi could think about when the wind picked up and gifted him a peek under the kakushi mask, at his expressionless face, was how terrifying that young kakushi looked and how strong he seemed, ready to defend Rengoku-san with nails and teeth, with blood and tears, and he hoped that whatever that young kakushi had in store was better than what he had had because he did not wanted to see him perished in front of his eyes when his body refused to cooperate with him.