Chapter Text
At 5pm, on November 12, 2018, Kogane apparates to each member of the Culling Games.
“A new rule has been added by player Kashimo Hajime! Any player may spend twenty-five points to travel between the barriers of any two consecutive zones! Players who would like to travel to a new district need only approach the barrier and speak the name of their preferred destination before passing through!”
Yuuji perks up, blinking at his Kogane as the little cocoon-like shikigami bobs in the air, its spaded tail curling sweetly back and forth.
“Kashimo?” Yuuji asks.
“Fetching player register,” Kogane answers, coming close enough to rub on Yuuji’s cheek before opening the list of active players, and their zones, in the game.
“Er, that’s not what I was - alright.” Yuuji pats Kogane on the head before taking it gently between his hands to look at the list of players.
Kashimo… that was the person in Tokyo 2 who Hakari-senpai and Panda were supposed to deal with, wasn’t it? Kashimo made a second rule, so their points should be lower.
Kashimo’s name is still high on the list of players, along with Okkotsu-senpai’s. They still have over a hundred points.
Yuuji grits his teeth. The number of people they’ve killed… Are they another revived sorcerer? Higuruma had a lot of points as well, but Yuuji had been able to reason with him. Maybe Kashimo would be the same? What sort of person is he? Why is he in the game?
Somehow, Yuuji doubts that he’ll be able to talk it through with Kashimo if they meet.
“Hey, Kogane,” Yuuji passes his thumbs over the shikigami’s round cheeks. The list of players flickers out, and Kogane squints its black eye sockets at Yuuji.
Yuuji switches to holding it like it’s a baby, absently petting its hard shell. “Do players still get sent to a random location when they move between districts?”
Kogane makes a soft buzzing, chirruping noise. It reminds Yuuji of a Kakuna Pokémon. “Yes, players moving between districts are still limited to entrance in the landing zones.”
“Thanks, Kogane. I guess you can’t tell me what direction Fushiguro’s in, huh?” Yuuji’s tired, and sore, and he just wants to find Fushiguro so they can get back to looking for the Angel.
The ‘Game’ is mindless slaughter. Yuuji hates it. He’s tired. He’s had enough slaughter for a lifetime.
Sadly, his only meaning is bloodshed.
Kogane buzzes for a moment, its tail curling and curling through the air. “Would you like to spend one hundred points to suggest a new rule?”
Yuuji doesn’t have one hundred points.
What would happen if he tried?
Yuuji stares at Kogane.
Kogane stares back, expectantly, and curls its tail around the breadth of Yuuji’s forearm.
Yuuji decides it’d be for the best that he doesn’t test his luck.
It’s already bad enough that he can’t find Fushiguro. They’re running out of time before Tsumiki is going to have to join the game, and other players are already suggesting rules. At least Kashimo’s rule benefits Yuuji and the others from Jujutsu Tech.
If he can find Fushiguro, they can regroup with Panda, and Hakari, and then all four of them can look for the Angel to save Gojo.
Yuuji stands from where he’s been sitting on a chunk of concrete and rebar, hidden in the shadow of a box truck with a smashed cab. He’s pretty sure he’s outside a recreation centre, but the place has definitely seen better days.
Frankly speaking, it looks like there was a battle here. Yuuji’s worried if he gets too close to the building itself, he’ll smell the sweetness of rotting corpses. Or, worse, he’ll find someone bloated and gutted in the aquatic centre, if there is one.
When Yuuji’s brain supplies a mental image which is far too detailed of what, exactly, a corpse fat with gas and buoyant on water, would look like, Yuuji shoves it back with extreme prejudice, knowing the memory is not his own.
Sukuna says nothing.
Sukuna has said nothing since Shibuya.
He doesn’t need to say anything.
Yuuji’s teeth grind, and he sets off, away from the centre. There are a number of apartment complexes nearby. Fushiguro might have bunkered down in one of them to make a base.
He’ll be looking for Yuuji as well. Yuuji squints up at some of the complexes, checking for the tallest ones. Barring that; the one which seems easiest to climb will do.
If Fushiguro’s looking, he’ll be utilising Nue, especially now that the Angel could leave at any moment. Yuuji squints up at the sky again. Maybe the Angel would be easier to find from a high place? They might be able to fly; with a name like ‘the Angel’.
Yuuji increases his pace from a brisk walk to a brisk jog, making a bee-line for the nearest apartment building.
The place looks like it got carpet bombed in spots, and he spares a moment of compassion for the people who might try to return home there. He hopes they can recover their lives easily.
The hope curdles in Yuuji’s throat until it tastes sour and stale.
The worst part is that it isn’t even because of Sukuna.
It’s because of Yuuji, and his own growing disenfranchisement.
It’s stupid, and childish, to hope that people can go back to living how they did. The existence of curses, the Culling Games, Sukuna’s rampage, all of these things are just swells in the ocean of negative emotions rising to smother Japan.
Yuuji inhales sharply through his nose and shakes the thought loose. It won’t do to think like that. They still have time.
They can still free Gojo-sensei, and he’ll fix things. Gojo-sensei’ll save everyone.
Yuuji jogs up the stairs of the apartment complex, zagging between floors, and making his way to the roof.
The damage is the worst on one particular floor, overlooking the rooftops of a similarly damaged building. Yuuji can make out a vaguely humanoid lump on the roof, and tunes it out from his attention.
Don’t look.
Don’t pause.
Don’t think.
Just act, just do.
Yuuji has to climb, to get onto the roof of the building, and tries to fine tune his senses to hear the sound of any other people, or see their cursed energy.
There’s residuals everywhere, enough so that the paths of other sorcerers and curses have taken are overwhelming in their severity.
Yuuji hunkers down on his heels, and groans, rubbing his palms into his eyes when the myriad trails of cursed energy leaves imprints like so many tunnels in an anthill on his eyelids. There are too many; some strong, most weak.
What would Fushiguro’s be? Would it be strong? Definitely.
Yuuji squints his eyes open again, and narrows his focus, looking only for the remnants of the strongest cursed energy signatures.
The areas damaged by explosions are the most obvious, and the most powerful. There are bursts of equal intensity, but concentrated in a much smaller area on the peripheries of the burns on the nearby buildings. Probably whoever the explosive sorcerer was fighting. That energy seems fresh, plentiful, like whoever it was is still nearby.
Yuuji files that away for later.
If they could survive explosions like that, they must be powerful.
A few of the other paths are significant; one leading out of the apartment building, disappearing into an alleyway quite some way down the street. It seems old, and the residuals with it are so faint as to pass under Yuuji’s radar.
There are odd residuals leading back toward the aquatic centre, small bursts like someone throwing handfuls of confetti, each scrap of paper imbued with a tiny amount of cursed energy.
Could someone so weak have destroyed a whole aquatic centre? Yuuji can’t wrap his head around it.
It doesn’t matter, anyway.
Yuuji shakes his head to clear it.
Still no sign of Fushiguro.
Yuuji wishes he had thought to familiarise himself with Fuhiguro’s residuals beforehand.
Yuuji sighs, and hauls himself up onto the small retaining wall which runs around the perimeter of the rooftop, squinting at the Tokyo skyline.
There are massive skyscrapers nearby, like the one he’d briefly tousled with Aeroplane Chick and Helicopter Dude upon his entrance to Tokyo 1, but none are close enough that Yuuji can clamber across rooftops toward them. He’s not sure how useful getting atop of one would be, as Nue’s not terribly effective that high up, and neither is Fushiguro, for that matter.
Yuuji peers at the nearby buildings, gauging if there are any close enough to jump to comfortably.
He can follow the freshest path of residual energy, at least, and see if that sorcerer is willing to talk.
If not, they’re sure to have some points Yuuji can either ask for nicely, or squeeze out of them.
Yuuji sprints, and jumps to a lower roof, letting his momentum carry him into a roll, and drops from that roof onto a rain awning, jogging to the end to drop off, kicking off a low apartment balcony to slow his fall.
His ankles still sting when he hits the ground, but it’s nothing compared to fighting. In a way, it’s almost thrilling, in the way that Yuuji finds all pain invigorating.
The residuals he’s following remain bright, heading back toward the shopping districts, out of the residential area. Yuuji mentally curses how big the zones are, and resumes his brisk jog, trying to find the source.
When the path loops back onto itself, and then meanders off into a completely random direction, with no apparent rhyme or reason Yuuji abruptly wonders if the person he’s following knows they’re being followed, and are trying to be obstinate.
Unfortunately for them, Yuuji is also obstinate, and it just convinces him he needs to find this person for sure.
The path leads him into an abandoned bar, and there’s a heavy burst of residual energy on the stage there, a busted microphone dragged out of the wreckage and propped on the split wood. There’s more residual energy, nearly in the shape of a person, standing on the stage for an empty crowd of broken bar furniture with the smell of beer soaking into a grimy bar floor.
Yuuji blinks through the dust motes floating in through the windows on the dimming afternoon light, struggling to distinguish them from this person’s cursed energy.
There’s just something… pathetic? About it?
Yuuji feels bad for the assessment, but there’s no way for him to describe the person he’s trailing from their cursed energy other than washed up.
However; it’s going to get dark soon, and Yuuji still needs to find any hint of Fushiguro. There’s no time to be feeling sorry for the downtrodden.
Amai said that there were multiple landing zones; if Yuuji can find the one Fushiguro came through in, he might be able to track him that way.
Yuuji hopes the sorcerer he’s chasing after has seen Fushiguro, or knows where some of the landing zones are.
He lopes out of the bar again, and tries not to dwell on this shattered world without people.
When Yuuji passes by a flipped SUV, he tells himself that it’s a piece of debris he sees dangling from the seatbelt, not the ghastly pale, chubby, arm of a child trapped, suspended in the wreck.
He takes a heaving breath once he’s passed, and has a moment to think the air tastes like ozone .
It’s enough of a warning that Yuuji drops into a crouch, prepared to hide in the lengthening shadows while he chases down his sorcerer. Rather than having that opportunity, a burst of static scrambles Yuuji’s ears as a metal bo staff wreathed in electricity passes through where Yuuji’s head was a second before.
“Whoa!” Yuuji springs forward, sprinting as fast as he can to put distance between himself and whoever is holding the bo staff.
That smell of electricity is all the warning he has before they come out of nowhere. Yuuji grits his teeth, and skids out, scratching his palm on shattered asphalt to sweep back around and face his new opponent.
The arc of his swing takes him right into the extended heel of the wielder of the bo staff.
At first, the impact winds Yuuji, and then that person’s cursed energy’s effect takes hold.
Yuuji’s diaphragm spasms, along with every muscle in his core, completely uncontrollably, his heart cramping and clenching as if it’s about to burst. A streak of pain zings straight through Yuuji’s abdomen, and down his arm like a burn, igniting his veins and leaping from his palm into the ground like a discharge of lighting.
The second thing which winds Yuuji is the head that person holds in his hand.
Panda’s black eyes are nearly closed, but they widen in recognition of Yuuji. “Run, Itadori,”
Anything else he might have said is lost as the sorcerer throws Panda’s head away, fabric and blood bursting macabrely over the road where Panda splatters.
Kogane chimes.
“5 Points to Kashimo Hajime!”
Kashimo is watching Yuuji. His eyes haven’t flicked away from him once, staring down at Yuuji where he’s landed a metre away. “This is who you are?” Kashimo asks.
He looks like Gojo.
Yuuji can’t look away from the smear of stuffing and blood on the road.
There is no more cursed energy.
There will be no more soft hugs from Panda’s cursed corpse body. There will be no more smell of sunshine in his fur. There will be no more gentle comfort from a friend, while Yuuji’s list of friends grows shorter and shorter.
Something in Yuuji cracks, like a glass bauble between his ribs. Not broken.
Not yet.
Yuuji hates fighting humans.
He thinks this time, turning his gaze from one, sad, black eye on the asphalt, up toward Kashimo’s face, he can make the exception.
“He called you Itadori, why?” Kashimo easily sidesteps the sweep of Yuuji’s legs, resting his bo staff on his shoulder as Yuuji uses his momentum to hop back up.
“Was that the name of your vessel?” Kashimo’s head is tilted, something almost amiable about him. Like this is fun.
Just a game.
Yuuji grits his teeth. “It’s my name.” He answers, shortly.
Kashimo pauses, his eyebrows furrowing. “You aren’t Sukuna.”
His cursed energy grows, crackling like static in the air around him.
“No. That guy’s sleeping.” Yuuji cracks his neck, and settles into a low stance.
Kashimo’s strong enough that he killed Panda. Yuuji has no idea what happened to Hakari, or if they got separated like he and Fushiguro did. This isn’t going to be easy.
Yuuji mentally adds another tally against Kenjaku in his mind. One more problem from that slimy creep.
“You won’t win against this one without me,” Sukuna speaks up, his tone dry.
Yuuji bares his teeth with a smile. “He’s complaining, actually. He wants to meet you.” Yuuji knows that isn’t true, and feels the level of Sukuna’s irritation rising.
Kashimo’s patience snaps first.
The bo staff sings through the air, catching the falling rays of afternoon light as it comes straight for Yuuji’s head.
The weapon gives Kashimo the advantage; superior reach, and he imbues it with cursed energy. Not ideal, paired with his greater height.
Yuuji makes himself small, dropping his hips to bend under the swing without losing his footing.
By build, Kashimo is similar to Gojo-sensei and Choso. In power? Yuuji generously places him near Choso.
“Brat,” Sukuna presses.
The King is going to have to sulk.
Yuuji inches Kashimo higher than Choso, however, just in case.
Before Kashimo can recover from the tail end of his swing, Yuuji pops back up, putting his weight into driving his knee into Kashimo’s gut.
Yuuji’s aim is a bit off, and his kneecap slams into Kashimo’s hipbone, already hardened with cursed energy. It stings, but Kashimo’s defence is weaker than Choso’s, and Mahito’s, for that matter.
Electricity sparks, jumping between them as Yuuji pulls back.
Yuuji’s thigh seizes with pain as his heel hits the ground, staggering Yuuji.
Kashimo shifts his grip on the bo staff and with his leg cramping, Yuuji isn’t fast enough to dodge, so he’ll have to block, and figure out what the hell to do about the electricity.
Yuuji crooks his arm as the butt of the bo staff slams toward his ribs, deflecting it enough to catch the brunt of the jab with his bicep as Yuuji throws himself back.
His fingers go numb from the sparking pain, muscles flexing without his input in his entire arm.
He feels every centimetre of the bo staff where it impacts his muscles, every ridge of the rounded butt.
Yuuji drives his heels into the ground, trying to retreat. The electricity is bad – Yuuji can’t tell if it’s done permanent damage. It doesn’t feel like it, but the way that each successful strike against Kashimo doesn’t seem to do anything except backlash against Yuuji will put the nail in this coffin if Yuuji doesn’t end things quickly.
Kashimo advances after him, arcing the bo staff over his shoulder to bat at Yuuji’s cramping side. Yuuji side steps, having just enough room to do so.
He’s less lucky when Kashimo twirls his bo staff at the end of his swing, and brings the butt down hard on Yuuji’s clavicle.
If Yuuji had fought Kashimo even a month ago, his bones would have shattered at every hit, he thinks distantly.
As it is, Yuuji feels the way the bruise blooms under the metal ridge of the bo staff. Yuuji’s cursed energy protects his bones from shattering, but it does nothing about the static that spreads like mould from the impact zone, clamping Yuuji’s jaw hard on his tongue as the muscles in his neck spasm.
Yuuji leans with the hit, dipping under the elbow Kashimo throws at his head.
“How?” Kashimo asks, his brows furrowing. “How aren’t you Sukuna?”
Yuuji spits out a mouthful of blood, grimacing.
Yuuji plants his foot in Kashimo’s stomach in the brief opening he has, and ignoring the way electricity arcs along the arch of his foot, through his shoe, and kicks Kashimo away from him, out of range of that staff.
The initial kick confuses Kashimo for how comparatively light the impact is, and Yuuji gets the pure enjoyment of seeing his expression twist when Yuuji’s divergent energy hits as Kashimo’s defences lower.
The soft skin of Kashimo’s core sinks in with the impact, and something gives inside him. Yuuji allows himself one moment of joy over the pain Kashimo’s certainly feeling.
For Panda, he tells himself.
A soft curl of pleasure runs up Yuuji’s spine, not finding its origin in him. He ignores it.
The most Sukuna can do is react. Yuuji doesn’t know why he can control Sukuna, and can only guess that it’s because Kenjaku wanted him to be able to. The thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth.
“I’m built different,” Yuuji answers, words flippant and tone anything but.
Kashimo’s head tilts, and he grins. “Of course, you’re holding back the greatest,” He says.
The greatest?
“Kenjaku claimed he was the strongest he’d encountered,” Kashimo says. Yuuji isn’t sure why he’s striking a conversation with Yuuji as he tries to kill him. Yuuji does know, but he doesn’t like that breathless, manic look in Kashimo’s eyes. This is an obsession. “In six hundred years, and all the sorcerers I’d killed, only Sukuna was worthy of mention.”
Before he can process, Kashimo is locking in on him again, raining blows down with the bo staff that Yuuji redirects away from his core, careful not to catch the metal with his fingers or delicate joints.
Kashimo still succeeds in catching the last three fingers on Yuuji’s left hand, snapping them on impact.
The way he smiles when Yuuji breaks his nose with that hand is anything but comforting.
Kashimo snorts out blood, and cracks his nose back into place. There’s a surge of reversed cursed technique as he heals himself, watching Yuuji.
“You aren’t bad,” He glances toward Panda’s smear, and then back to Yuuji, impassive again. “But you aren’t him.”
“I won’t be killed by the likes of you. Where’s Sukuna?”
Yuuji grits his teeth, legs tensing to launch himself at Kashimo, intent on getting too close for him to use that spark plug of his, when Kashimo extends a finger toward Yuuji, palm curled upward.
A bolt of lightning lances between them, and Yuuji scrambles, trying to twist his trajectory, and succeeds, heaving himself out of the way.
Before he can breathe a sigh of relief, Yuuji is treated to the sight of the bolt crackling through the air, homing in on him, and burning a massive hole through his side, along his back.
Sukuna sucks his teeth in the back of Yuuji’s mind.
For a moment after that sound, Yuuji doesn’t feel any pain, and the only thing he can hear is a deafening ringing in his ears, like the tolling of bells.
After that moment however, pain blossoms in an unholy symphony lighting every nerve in his torso on fire.
Yuuji’s feet still haven't touched the pavement after his dodge.
“I told you brat, you’re helpless without me.” Sukuna taunts.
Yuuji doesn’t collapse to the ground when his heels hit asphalt but his vision swims like he’s drunk, and he staggers.
A glance down reveals the white of his ribs along his side, all the skin burned and curling away, the fabric of his uniform cooked into the wound.
It’s not superficial, and the amount of blood caking the ground below Yuuji, soaking down his leg, over his glutes, is alarming.
It isn’t killing him slowly like Choso’s poisoned blood shard in his liver was.
Another hit like that will kill Yuuji quickly.
The only thing that saved Yuuji from dying this time had to be his cursed energy, but he has no idea how.
“Ah, is that what you think? Be grateful, won’t you? I diverted the blow. Hand your body over, and we’ll make quick work of this.” Sukuna says.
Yuuji ignores him, and hovers a hand over the wound. “That’ll always hit.” He says, before Kashimo can.
There’s no other explanation for how the lightning followed Yuuji’s inhuman speed. Kashimo’s reactions can’t be that good.
Kashimo raises his brows, and inclines his head.
For a moment, just a moment, someone else stands in his place in Yuuji’s mind’s eye. He looks like Gojo-sensei, and the similarity only increases when Kashimo smiles. The blood on his face is wrong, because Gojo-sensei would never have his own blood on his face, especially not because Yuuji decked him.
Yuuji takes a deep breath.
“You can’t heal that,” Kashimo says. His eyes haven’t left Yuuji once, tracking from his face, to his hands, to his knees and back as Yuuji readies himself, favouring his injured side. “You don’t even know a reversed technique.”
There’s nothing he can do about the burn over his back, and it screams in agony with every minute twitch of his waist.
Yuuji can smell his own cooked skin.
Obscenely, his gut aches, and his mouth waters. Yuuji pushes Sukuna down, and the feeling recedes.
Kashimo’s injured Yuuji’s left hand and right side. It’s not a great match, and Yuuji’s starting to worry he’ll have heart palpitations if Kashimo hits him on the left breast again.
“What a shocking twist!”
Yuuji blinks.
Kashimo blinks.
They both turn, peering at whoever just spoke.
“Huh?! Dude! Your dick’s out!” Yuuji shouts.
There’s some guy standing maybe four metres away from them, climbing over the twisted metal hunk of a fallen street light, half clad in a tight spandex suit, and half completely bare.
The guy’s cursed energy pours off him, and Yuuji recognises it as the pathetic signature he was chasing before Kashimo caught him.
Kashimo says nothing, eyebrows furrowing as he watches the strange man.
“He’s trying to ascertain that thing’s technique.” Sukuna offers. “Which would suit you, as well.”
Yuuji ignores him.
Of all the times Sukuna’s decided he’s no longer too busy riding out the waves of his orgasmic bliss to pay attention to anything other than his own self-love, it had to be this one. Yuuji wishes he’d go back to stroking his own ego.
Sukuna hums low in his throat, the sound glottal, sticking in between Yuuji’s shoulders like tar.
“Didya get the joke?” The guy prompts, smiling broadly.
Yuuji feels really bad for him. Pathetic is right. “Er, yeah.” Yuuji answers.
It’s not the right move, because he catches movement in the corner of his eye a second too late, and is only capable of crooking his arm up to protect his ear from the swing of Kashimo’s bo staff directly at Yuuji’s head.
“Pay more attention to the more dangerous foe, or hand over your body. We aren’t dying here. Not to him.” Sukuna, for the first time, seems to be growing concerned that something negative happening to Yuuji would actually impact the King himself.
Maybe he’s just creeped out by Kashimo. Yuuji’s creeped out, and he wants Sukuna to be uncomfortable as well.
Yuuji’s elbow nearly inverts from the impact of Kashimo’s bo staff against it, and Yuuji’s vision whites out.
When the metal cracks off his forehead as his arm caves backward from the impact, the electricity stuns Yuuji, sight jittering and thoughts scattering like bugs on a pond.
Yuuji tries to scramble away, pulling himself over cracked asphalt with his broken hand, nails splitting as he topples hard. Kashimo wavers in the air above Yuuji, warping, shifting, crackling, looming closer and closer.
It’s hard to breathe, every inhale sharp and screaming along his side and back where his flesh has been torn away.
Frantic, Yuuji thinks that Kashimo is wearing the wrong colour, but otherwise, with Yuuji’s blurred vision, it’s almost like how he should be executed.
“Brat,” Sukuna’s voice is sharp and clear, outside the cottony static in Yuuji’s head.
Makes sense, he’s not the one who got domed by a tesla coil.
Sunlight gleams bright, stabbing Yuuji in the brain as Kashimo lifts the bo staff above his head, ready to paint the street with Yuuji.
Like Panda.
No.
Yuuji won’t. He won’t die like this, not without at least bleeding Kashimo a little.
Yuuji’s vision starts to melt, colours spilling into one another like oil spills; Kashimo’s white hair and clothes smearing together into a cloud.
Neatly bisected by grid lines.
All Yuuji has to do is cut them.
Sukuna’s breath stutters in the stillness, a shaky exhale almost like a laugh.
Yuuji’s hand spasms around the shape of his cursed energy, and he swings wildly. 7:3? Is this what Nanami’s technique was like? Yuuji’s hand is empty, but he can see it anyway.
Is it not cursed energy?
It doesn’t feel the same.
It feels like a kitchen knife, sharp and steel and gone as the energy lashes out of Yuuji.
Three neat lines of red bloom horizontally across Kashimo’s chest, waist, and hips.
The bo staff jerks and impacts the ground, the boom pelts them both with a shower of pavement like shrapnel.
Yuuji jerks away, and time speeds up again, his vision broadening until he can no longer see the grid.
His ears ring like bells and something wet drips down his cheeks, from his eyes.
“Hey! Boy, over here!” It’s the guy who isn’t Kashimo, and he’s in the direction Yuuji was already going.
So Yuuji goes to him, trying to ignore the shaky way that Kashimo has started to chuckle.
“So you do have Sukuna’s technique!” Kashimo’s delight cuts through the fog, as Yuuji slides in beside the weird guy.
“Are you Sukuna, kid?” Weird guy asks.
Yuuji shakes his head no, and tries not to throw up at the way the world shakes. “No, Itadori Yuuji.”
Yuuji’s undereye splits open, and he flinches, waiting for the shock of pain.
There is none.
His cheek writhes open, and a tongue slides over Yuuji’s skin.
“How sweet,” Sukuna purrs, and his mouth closes.
Yuuji feels like throwing up.
“Oh, that’s quite the heckler you have,” Weird guy sounds like he’s trying to make light of the situation, but he’s extended his arm in front of Yuuji, putting himself between Yuuji and Kashimo.
With the other hand, thankfully clad in a glove, he dabs at Yuuji’s cheek with something like involuntary concern.
“Takaba Fumihiko,” Takaba introduces, smiling with a nod to Yuuji and then turning back to Kashimo.
“And you!” Takaba yells, and Yuuji can see even, smooth skin, in the new slits in Kashimo’s gi. “Do you think we’re in a quarry?”
A pin head could be heard, if Yuuji wasn’t sure he has permanent hearing damage from Kashimo rattling his brain.
“Pardon?” Kashimo sounds as confused as Yuuji feels.
Did he mean a quarrel?
“Eh? Because he’s a minor,” Takaba sounds genuinely confused on how they aren’t laughing.
Oh, Yuuji understands the joke now.
Yuuji laughs, half-heartedly. “That’s… not the worst? Your other joke was better.” The guy’s trying, so Yuuji feels bad just staring at Takaba.
“You liked my other joke?” Takaba takes his attention completely off Kashimo to look at Yuuji, elated, grabbing both Yuuji’s hands in his.
“Dude!” Yuuji yells, trying to pull away as Kashimo strikes.
Takaba blinks at Yuuji comically as the bo staff bounces off, warping like a noodle, the tip connecting with Kashimo’s arm and electrocuting him instead.
Kashimo whips away, expression shocked, and shakes his bo staff out. It snaps back into place like nothing happened to it at all. “That technique of yours… Interesting.” Kashimo’s eyes are narrowed. He doesn’t sound interested.
He sounds pissed.
His hair is standing up pretty comically.
“Technique?” Takaba says, like an idiot.
Yuuji winces.
Great.
This guy is stupider than he is.
“Hey, more importantly,” Takaba’s expression switches to a more serious look. “What’s with all you teenagers here? The bar’s after hours, you should be heading home to your family.”
He’s still holding Yuuji’s hands in his.
Lightning arcs from Kashimo to Takaba, as Takaba continues to ignore Kashimo.
Yuuji jerks, trying to launch in between them, but slips, and crashes into Takaba as the lightning does.
It lights up Takaba’s whole body, internally, his skeleton in stark relief as light erupts from under his skin, and he jerks in the air like a rag doll.
Takaba then drops to his feet, smoking, all his hair standing on end.
“Like licking a spark plug!” He chirps.
Yuuji laughs, because what else is he supposed to do?
Takaba still has Yuuji’s hands in his, and his body between Yuuji and Kashimo.
A blow like that blew open Yuuji’s body.
It hit Takaba like an ACME product in Looney Toons.
What the fuck is this guy’s technique? “That… was actually kind of cool?” Yuuji says.
Maybe he should stick with Takaba?
Kashimo spins his bo staff once, thoughtful. Yuuji watches him around Takaba, and pulls the weird man with him so they can both face Kashimo. Yuuji frees himself from Takaba, and drops into a defensive pose. All his injuries ache as Yuuji crooks his arms, his elbow cracking concerningly, and his left hand fingers resisting as he folds his hands into fists.
“Maybe we should talk after, Takaba-san?” Yuuji doesn’t take his eyes off of Kashimo this time.
Kashimo is paying more attention to Takaba, expression set serious, until his eyes curve, pleased. “Doesn’t matter then,” Kashimo says to himself. “I’ll just have to wear away that cursed energy.”
Takaba doesn’t seem to hear it, “Backstage? Are you trying to get VIP tickets? Are you my biggest fan, Itadori-kun?”
He sounds happy enough that Yuuji doesn’t want to correct him.
Seriously, how does Yuuji keep attracting this type? The complaint applies to both of them, in different ways.
Kashimo looks how Yuuji feels, his eyes blank as they settle on Takaba.
“Let’s worry about Kashimo first,” Yuuji suggests, again.
Takaba blinks, and nods. With a burst of speed he shouldn’t have, he intercepts Kashimo, as Kashimo rushes Yuuji.
Kashimo’s teeth glint as he locks both palms on Takaba, and electricity crackles and booms between them like peals of thunder.
Takaba’s body jerks, overexaggerated in a way that lets Yuuji know he’s fine, smoke pouring out of his ears. But Kashimo doesn’t let go.
Yuuji has no idea how long Takaba’s technique lasts, and considering Takaba doesn’t even know what a technique is, Yuuji doubts he knows how to judge when his technique will run out and stop protecting him.
“Allow it, brat. Kashimo may be within your reach if he wastes his energy on that fool.” Sukuna’s moving just under Yuuji’s skin, pressing greedy fingers inside Yuuji’s, trying to take Yuuji’s hands.
Trying to curve them around those knives of his technique.
Yuuji’s never seen them before, and he can’t see them anymore. That moment, however, between death and life Yuuji saw the lines Sukuna’s technique draws.
How did he use Sukuna’s technique?
Yuuji scans the area, and catches sight of a broken tail pipe from a sedan with the muffler still attached nearby. Perfect.
It’s close enough that Yuuji’s rush for it doesn’t break Kashimo’s concentration on trying to overpower Takaba, who’s begun to throw his head and foam at the mouth like he’s turning into a werewolf.
The effect is lost by the way he keeps peeking at Kashimo, and asking his opinion on his acting.
Yuuji scoops the muffler and imbues it with cursed energy, and then launches it as hard as he can at Kashimo. Direct hits give a lash back, but Yuuji isn’t sure if it’s because Kashimo’s cursed energy sticks to and climbs other cursed energy.
Kashimo jerks free from Takaba, who bounces away with an absurdly high jump, and a “Wowza!” Kashimo knocks the muffler out of the air, and Yuuji’s hands go numb with static.
Yuuji bares his teeth at Kashimo. “Your shocks follow cursed energy,” he spits out.
It doesn’t matter where Yuuji attacks Kashimo from; so long as he uses cursed energy, Kashimo’s static is going to shock Yuuji.
Well.
That just means Yuuji will have to use less cursed energy.
Yuuji sprints in to close the distance, seeing Kashimo crooking his hands, energy gathering like a thundercloud over his palm.
That sure strike. If Yuuji gets hit again, he’ll die for sure, Takaba is too far to take the hit.
So Yuuji does the best thing he can think of, and tackles Kashimo, wrapping his arms around Kashimo’s ribs and carrying them both to the ground before he can let the bolt loose. Yuuji doesn’t put any cursed energy behind his hit, and hopes it works.
They hit the ground, and that bolt of lightning cracks from Kashimo’s palm to his bo staff as he grips it in both hands and brings the body of the staff down on the burn across Yuuji’s back.
Yuuji grits his teeth, locking his heels under Kashimo’s thighs, even as agony fills him. It smells like pork. Yuuji doesn’t know if he’ll be able to eat it again.
Yuuji gets an arm banded across Kashimo’s shoulders, holding on as Kashimo tries to flip them, and cracks his left fist off of Kashimo’s orbital socket once.
Everything hurts, and his fingers are starting to feel pulpy.
Yuuji slams another hit to Kashimo’s eye, trying to blind him at least momentarily.
There’s no cursed energy behind the strikes, and it hurts to touch Kashimo at so many points, but the currents are lessening, and Kashimo’s struggling is starting to feel more like he’s trying to get Yuuji off, not under.
It’s hard to hit through Kashimo’s cursed energy, but it’s getting easier.
Kashimo gasps when Yuuji’s fist connects properly across his temple, knocking his head into the street.
Kashimo slams the bo staff into Yuuji’s spine again, electricity arcing between them, and Yuuji spasms, his arm band slipping to land over Kashimo’s throat, leaning more of his weight on Kashimo.
Kashimo is human, some distant part of Yuuji hisses.
Yuuji slams his elbow into Kashimo’s eye socket, snarling.
Kashimo killed Panda.
Kashimo could have hurt Hakari too, if he found him.
Kashimo has killed more than fifty people.
In a voice that sounds more like Sukuna’s than his own, Yuuji thinks maybe Kashimo deserves to die.
“Wrap your hands around his throat, crush it,” Sukuna’s voice is a reverential whisper, and the idea isn’t so bad. “He’ll heal anything else, he can’t heal away strangulation.”
Kashimo kicks under Yuuji, planting his heels, and trying to buck him off. Yuuji leans more of his weight on his knees, centering his gravity through his thighs.
Yuuji wraps his hands around Kashimo’s throat, mesmerised, ignoring the constant pain from the bo staff conducting Kashimo’s technique into Yuuji’s spine.
The spasms help him clench his hands harder, anyway.
Kashimo’s pale eyes are wide, lips parted, teeth bared in a rictus smile.
Lightning cracks between them, punching a hole between Yuuji’s ribs, where his stomach should be.
Oh.
Hands catch his shoulders, and yank him off of Kashimo, Takaba shouting something inaudible.
There’s skin under Yuuji’s nails from where he raked them over Kashimo’s neck.
Yuuji can see the grid again, and can feel the knives in his skin.
His head lolls, eyes refusing to leave where Kashimo is pushing himself away from Yuuji, coughing.
There are finger shaped gouges in the elegant column of his neck, in the shape of Yuuji’s hands.
If Yuuji was better at it, he could have pinched and strangled the life from Kashimo faster.
Blood pumps hot down Yuuji’s stomach.
“Okay, okay,” Takaba’s voice grounds Yuuji, and he presses his hands over the twin holes in Yuuji’s stomach.
Like a gaping maw.
Yuuji laughs, delirious with the pain, and the high of being so damn close to killing Kashimo.
“What’s this about, this seems personal!” Takaba sounds anxious, and he’s holding tight enough to Yuuji’s stomach that it kind of hurts.
Yuuji can’t tell how bad the damage is, so maybe Takaba is holding his insides so they don’t become his outsides.
“He wants to play with That Guy.” Yuuji pants, and everything is starting to get heavy.
Yuuji’s legs kick, and he tries to get them under him.
“Brat,” Sukuna’s voice comes from his cheek, and Yuuji didn’t even feel his skin open to accommodate him.
Takaba splutters. “Oh, wow, that?”
Yuuji’s starting to feel slow, tired, and cold.
Kashimo is watching them, a hand on his throat.
He’s pale.
“I’d kill you with my hands,” Yuuji slurs. “I’m not him.”
His voice is too quiet, and every breath heaves blood up over his chin.
It gets too hard to hold his head up, and his chin lolls to his chest.
Takaba’s hands are wet and red and sticky.
Under them, Yuuji’s grid is showing, ripped open where Kashimo punctured him with the lightning bolt. If Yuuji just… mends the lines, he should heal, shouldn’t he? Yuuji raises his hands, and gasps softly.
His left fingers have broken gridlines too, and his elbow’s are warped.
If he can fix them, he can heal.
Yuuji presses a finger between Takaba’s, touching where he’s unravelling.
“All this because of a heckler?” Takaba’s not talking to Yuuji. In fact, he sounds like he’s another room, or several, away.
Not great, because Yuuji thinks Takaba might be taking on most of Yuuji’s weight.
“He’s just a kid,” Takaba’s heartbeat is fluttering against Yuuji’s back.
He’s not a bad person, Yuuji thinks through the muck in his brain.
Yuuji pinches one of the threads of his unravelling, and starts trying to touch it back to its twin.
“Not that one,”
Yuuji switches.
The line mends.
“Good boy, another.” Sukuna sounds too warm, pleased. “Stitch yourself back together. Kill him. Like Mahito.”
That’s right.
Like Mahito.
Kashimo is the kind of thing that Yuuji was born to kill.
Yuuji takes the next strand.
Kashimo might be talking. His shadow is growing over them.
“Man, it’d be hilarious if that guy just went back to wherever he came from, huh?” Takaba laughs, anxiety clear in the sound. “All this would be -”
Whatever else he says is lost as Yuuji connects the next threads. Air stops passing through Yuuji.
Unfortunately, the ground melts away like oil, and Yuuji falls through. Takaba’s arms pass through him, and they gape at one another as Yuuji plummets through the world.
As Yuuji falls, he thinks deliriously that the light of the hole, as it gets further away, looks like a bloody harvest moon in a starless night.
He never hits the ground.
All he can smell is the smoke of his own burning skin.
Yuuji takes a deep breath, once, and tastes blood.
The grid fades away, and Yuuji’s vision blurs until it fades to black.
Sukuna is silent as death.