At dusk, Akamine station welcomed three rowdy teenagers.
In the front, running, was a kid with a boar's head.
"Hahaha! Tonpachiro, I was the first to ge—!"
Inosuke shot up onto the platform at full speed and was about to turn around to gloat, but suddenly he froze stiff.
"W-what… what is that!?"
Tanjiro caught up to him a few seconds later. Panting, he turned his eyes toward the same spot and was paralyzed by astonishment.
It was an imposing steam locomotive.
"This… this is…" His eyes opened impossibly wide.
Inosuke ran his eyes over the machine from end to end with a mix of fascination and dread.
"Judging by its length and its imposing aura, there's no doubt about it…" he muttered, trembling. "This thing is the Master of these lands… yes, it controls all of these lands."
And taking up a combat stance, he tensed every muscle. "It might be sleeping right now, but don't lower your guard!!"
"Master!?" Tanjiro hurried to grab him by the shoulders. "Inosuke, calm down! This isn't what you're imagining!"
"It isn't?" Inosuke looked at him suspiciously. "Then what is it!?"
Tanjiro's expression turned incredibly serious. With his eyes fixed on the iron mass, he murmured with absolute conviction:
"This air… this sense of pressure… this must be…"
He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with solemnity.
"THE GOD OF THESE LANDS!!"
Inosuke's body shook visibly at the revelation.
"A God!?"
"That's right!" Tanjiro nodded. "I was raised on the mountain and I've never seen something with this much presence! It is, without a doubt, the deity that protects these lands!"
"So that's what it was…"
Inosuke looked at the train again, this time with an almost mystical reverence. "God… have you come to put me to the test…?"
The two of them remained standing, shoulder to shoulder, in front of the train cars, holding a sacred silence.
Zenitsu walked up slowly from behind, his face overshadowed by infinite annoyance. He looked at Inosuke, then at Tanjiro, and his mouth started opening and closing repeatedly without any words coming out.
Finally, he took a breath and let out a shout that almost tore his vocal cords apart.
"This is a TRAIN! A TRAIN!! It's not any kind of GOD!! YOU DAMN COUNTRY BUMPKINS!!"
His roar drew the looks of curious onlookers and, at the same time, the attention of the station's security personnel.
"Hey! Kids! Quit making such a racket!"
A uniformed man came running over, but his expression changed drastically when he noticed the katanas they were carrying.
"Y-You… how come you're carrying those?!"
Zenitsu's face turned pale instantly, "We're done for, done for, done for! The Haitōrei Edict! We've been spotted!"
Without giving them time to react, he grabbed Tanjiro and Inosuke and dragged them along with him in a desperate escape.
"RUN!"
The guard started chasing them, shouting at their backs: "Stop! Don't run!"
…
By the time they finally managed to shake off the officer, the sky had already darkened completely.
Taking advantage of the breather, Zenitsu briefly explained to them the Sword Abolishment Edict. In a few words: the Demon Slayer Corps was a private organization not officially recognized. And in a Japan where carrying weapons was banned, if they got caught with a sword at their hip, they'd end up locked up.
That was the reason why most of the members preferred to wear haori. Being loose-fitting garments, they allowed the katana to be hidden and avoided unnecessary trouble with the law.
The problem was that… Inosuke wasn't even wearing a shirt, much less a haori!
While they were discussing the matter, the steam whistle of the Infinity Train rang out.
"Damn it! It's about to leave!"
"Quick, get on!"
"Oh!"
The three of them shot off toward the platform, chasing the machine that was starting to move. Finally, just before the train picked up too much speed, they managed to clamber onto the last car with one desperate leap.
…
Inside, the three of them stayed crouched down in the hallway, trying to catch their breath.
"I almost died." Zenitsu was patting his chest desperately. "I almost died, I almost died…"
"Is this the inside of the deity?" Inosuke looked around.
"IT'S A TRAIN!"
For his part, Tanjiro was sniffing the air with an expression of absolute bewilderment. "It's strange… I think I'm picking up Marcus-senpai's scent…"
"No way." Zenitsu waved his hand. "If the mission required two Pillars, they wouldn't have sent us. It must be the smell that rubbed off on us this morning at his place."
"Maybe…"
The train was packed with all kinds of people, and being an enclosed space, even Tanjiro had trouble picking out specific smells.
With no other options, the trio began making their way through the cars. After all, their priority was to locate the Flame Pillar, who they were supposed to meet up with.
After passing through four or five cars, they were startled to hear a thunderous shout that echoed from up ahead.
"TASTY!"
They opened the door to the next compartment cautiously.
"TASTY!"
The voice, now much clearer, left them stunned.
Their eyes followed the sound until they landed on a man with flaming hair, whose entire body seemed to radiate a burning energy at all times.
He was sitting in the central section of the car, with more than twenty empty bento boxes stacked up in front of him.
At that moment, he was holding a freshly opened bento, still full. He took a generous bite with his chopsticks, chewed it at full speed, and swallowed.
"TASTY!"
Take, chew, swallow, all with a rhythmic flow.
"TASTY!"
He went back for another bite…
"TASTY!"
The trio held a brief silence before continuing forward. When Tanjiro could see the man's face clearly, his eyes lit up.
"Rengoku-san!"
Inosuke and Zenitsu were left dumbstruck.
Swallowing his saliva, Zenitsu pointed a trembling finger at the glutton who kept eating without paying the slightest attention to his surroundings.
"That guy is the Flame Pillar?"
"Yup!" Tanjiro's voice was overflowing with excitement. "He is Kyōjurō Rengoku."
However, the very next second, his eyes drifted toward the person sitting right next to him and he was left completely dumbfounded.
It was a person dressed in casual clothes, with two swords at his waist.
He had his head tilted down, leaning lazily against the window, with one hand resting on the hilt of one of the swords.
His profile was familiar to him… very familiar.
"...Marcus!?"
At Tanjiro's shout, Zenitsu and Inosuke turned their heads in unison.
"Demon Pillar!?"
Indeed, it was Marcus.
After dawn broke, once Rengoku finished handling everything that had gone down with the demon and reassuring Tomi and Fuku, both of them looked for a spot near the station to change. Marcus finally got rid of his shredded pajamas and rested for a few hours before boarding the train at nightfall along with Rengoku.
Now, hearing the three of them call out, he looked at them with a distracted air.
"Ah, you finally made it."
Then, with a barely-drawn smile, he lowered his head to look at his sword again, and unlike him, Rengoku was much more direct: he completely ignored the trio's arrival to focus on his bento, which he kept loudly praising between bites.
The three of them looked at each other, scratching the backs of their heads in confusion.
'What's going on?'
Luckily, Rengoku finished his meal quickly. After one final "TASTY!" as the closing flourish, the trio could finally turn to him, who now gave them the same overwhelming intensity that he had dedicated to his food.
Upon learning that one demon had already been eliminated, but that another was still inside the train, Zenitsu backed away in fright, while Inosuke looked around with a face full of eagerness for a fight.
However, Tanjiro was more intrigued by Marcus's presence.
Sitting across from the two Pillars, he couldn't stop watching him.
"Senpai, what are you doing here? This morning you said you had something to take care of and left… was it to come to this mission?"
"Mm." Marcus didn't even look up.
"Did you know beforehand that there was a mission here?"
"Mm."
"Then why didn't you tell us anything?"
In a tone of complete indifference, Marcus replied: "I forgot."
"…"
Beside him, Zenitsu muttered under his breath: "Why is he acting so weird…?"
Inosuke, on the other hand, wasn't dwelling on it too much. He had his eyes locked on the bento boxes that were still on the table.
"This… can it be eaten?"
"Of course you can!!" Rengoku's cordial laugh rang out.
Seeing that Marcus was talking without even raising his head, Tanjiro couldn't figure out what was going on with him. However, in front of the Flame Pillar, there was one question he couldn't keep holding back.
"Rengoku-san, besides the mission, there's something I'd like to ask you."
"Tell me!"
"It's about something that has been passed down in my family for generations: the Hinokami Kagura!"
Tanjiro took a deep breath before continuing: "During a previous battle, I remembered the dance my father used to perform and, all of a sudden, that allowed me to awaken the Hinokami Kagura."
"You managed to grasp a Breathing technique in the middle of battle!? That's impressive!!"
"I wouldn't really say I grasped it…" Tanjiro scratched his cheek bashfully. "It was just luck."
"Luck is also part of one's strength!"
"Uh… thank you, Rengoku-san."
"You're welcome!"
Although Rengoku responded to everything he said, Tanjiro couldn't shake off a sense of strangeness. Despite being seated right in front of him, Rengoku's gaze never landed on his eyes, but instead always seemed to drift somewhere above his head.
Even so, this wasn't the moment to dwell on details.
"I thought that, since you use Flame Breathing, perhaps you might have some knowledge about the Hinokami Kagura. I beg you to enlighten me, Rengoku-san!"
"Alright!"
Rengoku nodded with all the seriousness in the world.
And then… "I have NEVER in my life heard of such a thing!!"
He answered with all the seriousness in the world!
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Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎
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