The search in the Tama region forest was fruitless.
The forest was quiet, and no demon presence could be felt. However, the silence was broken by a loud roar coming from the direction of the city.
Kwaaaang!
A giant pillar of fire dyed the night sky red. The peaceful streets of Tokyo turned into a battlefield in an instant. The shockwave was powerful enough to shake the trees in the forest.
"Over there! The citizens are in danger!"
Ushiwakamaru, who was scouting from the treetops, shouted urgently.
"Ushiwakamaru-san, please handle citizen rescue and fire suppression! Okita-san and I will pursue the perpetrator!"
At Kanao's quick judgment, Ushiwakamaru nodded.
"Understood! Be careful! It seems they're using firearms!"
As Ushiwakamaru disappeared like the wind, Kanao and Okita sprinted toward the epicenter of the explosion.
As they got closer, the acrid smell of gunpowder, the metallic stench of blood, and the scorching heat stabbed at their skin.
A street engulfed in flames.
On the debris of shattered buildings, at the center, he stood.
A bizarre mix of a uniform and a kimono. In both hands, he held outdated rifles and pistols that didn't fit the era, and on his face, a white mask resembling a wolf.
Twelve Kizuki, Lower Moon Three. Hayro.
"Hahaha! Explode! Bigger! Until he comes!"
Hayro let out a mad laugh as he fired his guns into the air.
Bang! Bang! Kwaang!
"Come quickly! Rengoku!!!"
He wreaked destruction as if he were being chased by something, or desperately searching for something.
Kanao steadied her breathing and was about to draw her sword.
"Flower Breathing…"
But then, Okita quietly raised a hand to stop Kanao.
"Wait a moment, Kanao-chan."
Okita's gaze was fixed not on Hayro's face, but on his feet.
The footwork as he moved around while firing.
It seemed irregular and disorganized, but that unique stance—lowering the center of gravity and moving as if skimming the ground.
Okita's eyes wavered.
"That movement…."
Okita could tell. No, she had to tell.
That wasn't footwork for shooting a gun. It was footwork optimized to draw the sword at the waist and cut the enemy's throat at any moment, used by the wolves of Mibu who prowled the back alleys of Kyoto.
"I'm sure. That guy… was Shinsengumi."
"Shinsengumi? But that demon is using guns?"
Kanao was puzzled. But Okita's expression was filled with certainty, and at the same time, tinged with deep sorrow.
"Yes. But habits ingrained deep in the bones can't be hidden, it seems. Even if he lost his memory, even if his appearance changed… that footwork is a characteristic only members who trained countless times at our dojo possess."
Okita slowly walked toward Hayro.
Her eyes were no longer those of a playful, cheerful girl.
They were the eyes of the genius swordsman called the strongest killer, who had crossed countless battlefields drenched in blood. The eyes of the captain of the Shinsengumi's first unit.
"Kanao-chan. I have a request. Let me handle that guy… please."
"Okita-san…."
"As the captain of the Shinsengumi's first unit, as a Shinsengumi member present here, there's something I must do. Disciplining a lost member is also the role of a captain."
Seeing Okita's resolute expression, Kanao did not try to stop her.
She quietly stepped back, securing the surroundings to ensure Okita's back wouldn't be disturbed.
Okita stood before Hayro, pushing through the flames. In the hot blast, her pale blue haori fluttered.
The character "誠" (makoto) engraved on her back shone clearly amid the flames.
"Are you alone? You there."
Hayro aimed his gun at Okita. His eyes distorted with disgust upon seeing the sword at Okita's waist.
"Demon Slayer Corps? Tch, swords again. I'm sick of it, sick! The times have changed! Swords are nothing but scrap metal now!"
Hayro spat out venom as if denying his own past.
He couldn't remember. Why he became a demon, what his real name was.
All that remained was the defeat and fear that swords couldn't beat guns, and an obsession with gunpowder to bury that trauma.
"Fools clinging to past glory! Idiots playing samurai and dying! I'll teach you! With the power of this gunpowder!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Hayro pulled the trigger. Bullets rushed toward Okita's forehead and heart. An unavoidable distance, an unblockable speed.
But Okita did not dodge.
Clang!
Silver flashed. The incoming bullets were precisely split in half right in front of Okita's nose, scattering to the sides. The split bullets embedded themselves in the wall of the building behind her.
Kwaaaang!!!
A time bomb exploded behind her.
Okita stood unfazed, not a single hair out of place amid the blast's aftermath.
"What…?"
Hayro's hand trembled.
He cut the bullets? Unbelievable. A human, not even a demon, cutting bullets.
"Swords are scrap metal, you say? The reason you say that is because you abandoned the sword. Because you didn't believe in the sword and ran away."
Okita spoke in a cool voice as she took another step forward.
"You, that footwork. Where did you learn it? That stance, who taught it to you?"
"Shut up!! Shut up!!"
Hayro fired his gun more fiercely to hide his confusion. Fragments of forgotten memories stabbed at him like a headache.
'Pathetic. Bushido, still stuck in an anachronism.'
'Then try shooting down a bushidō guy with a bullet! Hahaha!'
'It's fine. Our swords won't lose to guns.'
Feeling a headache from those memory fragments, he shoved the pistol into his own mouth and pulled the trigger.
The bullet pierced his brain once, and he threw away the spent pistol.
"I am Hayro! Lower Moon Three of the Twelve Kizuki! I am a chosen strong one by him, by the demon king Lord! I don't need swords!!"
Hayro summoned shadow wolves as if going berserk, making them swarm Okita.
But Okita cut down the wolves with fluid, natural movements, closing the distance.
"Lord? Does the Shinsengumi attach 'Lord' to someone who isn't even a superior?"
Shiver!
"You've forgotten your name and pride… and become a monster drunk on slaughter. Your sword must be crying."
Memories of the past flashed through Okita's mind.
Comrades who fell amid the gunfire of the Boshin War. Vice Captain Hijikata Toshizo, who tried to hold onto his sword until the end even after being shot.
The sight of their backs as they fought alone and disappeared while she was bedridden.
And as a Servant, she remembers.
'Shut up, Okita!!! Understand, the Shinsengumi doesn't end. Kondo, Nagakura, Saito, this guy and that guy, in the end, none remained. But I am here. As long as I am here, the Shinsengumi doesn't end. Here, I!!! am the Shinsengumi!!!'
In the singularity of the Meiji Restoration created by the runaway Grail, the figure of Hijikata, her friend and vice captain who fought on as Shinsengumi without knowing he was dead, overlapped with Hayro.
Okita came right up to Hayro's nose. Hayro stepped back and aimed his gun, but overwhelmed by Okita's pressure, he couldn't pull the trigger.
She slowly drew her sword, Kikuchi-monji Norimune, and aimed it at Hayro's neck.
"Draw your sword."
Okita's voice was low, but it struck Hayro's eardrums more clearly than the roar of battlefield gunfire.
Her haori fluttered. The haori of oath fluttered, and her attire changed from that of a Demon Slayer Corps member to that of the Shinsengumi.
"Huh? Why would I use such scrap metal… I have a gun! I have this strongest weapon!"
"A gun? Not that toy."
Okita's eyes gleamed sharply.
"By the order of Okita Souji, captain of the Shinsengumi's first unit."
"What?"
"Captain's order!!! Draw your sword!!!"
Okita's shout echoed through the street like thunder.
In that moment, Hayro's time stopped. Forgotten memories. The instincts of his human days suppressed by Muzan's blood.
'Captain…?'
His body reacted on its own. His mind rejected it, but the discipline engraved in his soul responded.
That voice.
The voice was clearly different. But in that voice, in those words, someone overlapped.
The clear, cool shout that always led the charge through enemy lines.
The figure of the genius swordsman he admired and followed overlapped.
It should be a different person, but somehow.
"Ugh… Uwaaaah!"
Hayro's hand trembled violently as he dropped the gun.
And regardless of his will, his Blood Demon Art activated, and an old sword fell out from the shadows.
Seeing it, he reached out.
Toward the rusty, unsightly, yet once his everything, sword hilt.
Okita smiled a sad but kind smile as she adjusted her grip on her sword.
"That's right… that's it."
She lowered her stance. In the form of the captain who was called a killer by enemies, yet cared for comrades more than anyone.
"Nameless member. I'll face you not as a monster… but as a proud Shinsengumi warrior."
From the tip of Okita's sword, blue magical energy began to scatter like cherry blossom petals.