His other self—fuck it, he’s calling him Itadori—tilts his head slightly toward him, without looking away from Sukuna. “Rip your finger off and feed it to Fushiguro to take over his body.”

Yuuji jolts on the spot, blood sloshing under his feet. “What?!”

“The transfer was successful.” That’s Sukuna, and he doesn’t sound angry anymore, but Yuuji knows from painful experience that the evaluative note in his voice is way, way worse. “I can sense nothing of my power in you. This is just your mewling soul, doubled. How ridiculous. One of you is enough of a waste of soul-stuff.”

The other Yuuji—Itadori—laughs.

It starts out low, just shaking shoulders and throaty noise, but it gets louder and louder, and then Itadori throws his head back and cackles like a movie villain, making the entire grotesque domain reverberate with the sound. It echoes off the giant ribcage above and trembles in the pool of blood below, but it’s Yuuji’s bone and blood that feel like they’re quivering with every howl of laughter.

Opposite him, Sukuna looks disgusted.

That’s pretty hypocritical of him. Yuuji’s heard him laugh like this. No, that was worse. Something about Itadori reminds him more of how Gojou gets sometimes, though Yuuji’s never heard his teacher let loose like this.

The laughter stops as abruptly as it started. In its wake, there’s no expression at all on Itadori’s face.

“Soul-stuff, huh?” he says. Despite his lack of expression, he sounds weirdly amused. “You have no idea.”

There’s no movement.

There must have been. No way can Yuuji’s future self just teleport, no matter how cool and also useful it’d be. He just knows that’s what happened. There was movement. He just couldn’t see it. One moment, Itadori was standing at least ten feet away from Sukuna, and the next, he was in his space, looming over a body that is identical to Yuuji’s in every way except for the inky markings and extra eyes.

Sukuna’s expression is all twisted up with anger again, but it doesn’t hide how his eyes—all four of them—have widened. He didn’t see it either. He also looks very unhappy about having to look up at a version of Yuuji.

“This is real weird. It’s one thing for my own teenage body to look like this, but you…” Itadori lifts a hand and grabs Sukuna’s chin. “You looking like me after all these years—that’s just not right.”

“Remove your hand,” Sukuna says with a blandness that promises swift and vicious retribution, “lest I remove it for you.”

He doesn’t actually wait to do the removing. Almost before he’s spoken, blood spurts in a neat circle around Itadori’s wrist. Yuuji jolts forward, a belated warning stuck in his throat, but his half-formed thought of punching Sukuna away is arrested with the rest of his body as Itadori’s severed hand stops mid-air, bouncing once like the blood connecting it to the mass of exposed bone and muscle at the end of his arm has turned elastic.

The hand is practically yanked into the bloody stump, and in the blink of an eye, the damage is gone as if it never was—no wound, not even blood. If it weren’t for the red drops splattered on Sukuna’s yukata and the tips of Itadori’s own sleeve, there’d be no evidence at all.

“Ow,” Itadori says, his voice dull and flat.

Both of Sukuna’s arms fall to the blood-drenched ground, severed at the elbows.

Yuuji didn’t even—

Sukuna doesn’t make a noise, even though the pain must be agonizing. Yuuji knows just how much it hurts to have his limbs cut off like that. Itadori didn’t make a noise either, when Sukuna sliced off his hand.

Yuuji doesn’t have any sympathy for Sukuna—that bastard deserves worse anyway—but he’s not sure what he’s feeling about his other self. He seems strong. He reminds Yuuji of Gojou.

But there’s something about him that’s just…unsettling. The way he talks, the way he holds himself.

The way his eyes were red when they were briefly turned toward Yuuji.

Sukuna’s clearly less conflicted. He’s already leaped back, putting a healthy distance between himself and Itadori. The bleeding flesh of his arms start steaming and bubbling, and then they’re back, all the way down to clawed fingertips that retreat into normal nails a second later. A rolling motion of the shoulders finds those regrown arms covered in loose sleeves again. That, Yuuji figures, has something to do with Sukuna’s image of himself. Down here, maybe even regeneration works like that. It’s not like any damage is permanent. Yuuji’s died here a few times, never for good.

But that first time, after that vow—maybe it should have been for good.

“That,” Sukuna says, his voice low and deep with a gravity that makes the air in the entire domain feel heavy, “was my technique.”

“Mine now,” Itadori replies blithely. “Don’t be so offended. It’s not like I stole yours. We’re not twin souls or anything. My power doesn’t leech off yours. ’Course, that means yours doesn’t limit mine either.” He glances over at Yuuji; his eyes are still as red as the blood under their feet. “Not sure how it’s going to affect you though. But we’re in the same body. I guess it won’t matter, sooner or later.”

Yuuji’s not sure he likes the sound of that. “That’s kinda—”

Itadori steps to the side suddenly and is obscured by an explosion of blood. “Impatient, aren’t you?”

Yuuji knows that’s not directed at him. Sukuna is still standing where he was, all four eyes narrowed at Itadori. But Yuuji knows he must have sent his technique at Itadori.

A part of Yuuji expects Itadori to retaliate exactly like he did earlier. Instead, he just folds his arms across his chest and steps back into the spot he was occupying before Sukuna tried to cut him in half.

Itadori’s feet, Yuuji realizes, aren’t sinking into the blood. Sukuna’s aren’t either, but that’s how it always is. Yuuji’s the only one ankle-deep in that disgusting mess.

Sukuna must have noticed already. The guy’s an evil asshole, but he’s smart—way smarter than Yuuji.

They’re also talking, and Yuuji tunes back in time to hear Itadori say, “—me again?”

Sukuna looks unimpressed. “What are you?”

“Him, obviously.” Itadori jerks a thumb at Yuuji as if to punctuate the point. Then he takes a single, deliberate step toward Sukuna. “I am you, too—and you are me. But I guess you wouldn’t know that yet, if you ever accepted it at all.”

Sukuna’s expression twists, a rancid mixture of disgust and disbelief and sheer rage. He thrusts an arm out, and even from where he’s standing, Yuuji can feel his power being gathered, a miasmic maelstrom that fills the air with the scent of blood and rot—

And Itadori is there, again, and this time, his hand isn’t on Sukuna’s face but his chest, all five fingers digging like they’re claws. Blood seeps into the cloth, and Yuuji’s breath hitches in his throat as he remembers the wet squelch of his heart in his own possessed fist—

But Itadori doesn’t rip Sukuna’s heart out.

It’s the flesh around his hand that starts bulging and writhing, shredding the clothes Sukuna’s wearing to expose skin that bubbles like some movie witch’s potion, and then the whole thing explodes, showing Itadori in blood and gore, and Sukuna—

Sukuna’s massive and monstrous, with four arms and a toothy maw on his stomach and four eyes arranged in a way drastically different from what Yuuji’s used to seeing on his own borrowed face.

But…his hair is still pink. The same pink as Yuuji’s hair. The same pink as his grandpa’s hair, back when it had some color in it.

Yuuji doesn’t like that.

“Much better,” Itadori declares, giving Sukuna the world’s most obvious once-over.

Sukuna looks—

You’d think it’d be difficult to read the expression on features so different from what you’re used to, but Yuuji finds that he needs no translation for the look on Sukuna’s face. It’s exactly what Yuuji himself is feeling.