"Yeah, I." She looks down, and swallows. "Yeah. I knew better and I did it anyway."

"But of course, this karmic punishment is only temporary..." His purple nails grow into claws and he crosses his arms and grabs onto his shirt. "So I thought to myself, 'how can I make it not?'" His hands ball into fists, and he pulls the shirt apart, revealing the tattoo-like markings along his torso. "The answer was pretty obvious."

So Sukuna punches his claws into his own chest—Itadori's chest—and rips his own heart out.

"—what—what are you—"

"I'm taking this brat hostage."

She is bizarrely distracted by Itadori suddenly shirtless, which is like, the worst time, really, and then she sees what he's doing and hisses in another breath through her teeth.

"You are Ryomen Sukuna-sama, and of course you don't need your heart to live. That would be silly. Ah. That's. Very clever. If he comes back he'll die."

Sukuna tosses his heart aside and claps slowly. "I should kill you last. I like smart people. Ah! And for good measure." He reaches into his pocket and makes sure the finger he grabs from there is perfectly visible before he pops it into his mouth and swallows it whole.

"...seems like you were right, Hayashi-san," says Fushiguro, swallowing dryly.

"Mmhmm." She sounds so pained. And then it's back to chatting with the most famous villain in sorcerer history! "Though, is killing me last really doing me a kindness?"

"Oh! No, no it's not. I'm just amusing myself." He smacks his lips. "You can get scared now."

"He's coming back," says Fushiguro, assuming his shikigami user battle stance. "Even if it kills him. That—that's just who he is."

"He is a dumbass with no sense of self preservation and a bizarre willingness to put things in his mouth," she agrees. "Really sure we don't want to chat more? Really? I promise I am already good and scared."

"Well, I win anyway. And I think I am quite tired of monologuing," says Sukuna, both hands in his pockets.

Fushiguro makes a two-handed bird shadow puppet gesture and says, "Nue!" A huge orange bird-like shikigami emerges from his shadow, except instead of a beak it has a white bony mask with two forward-facing eyes and human teeth.

He runs right at Sukuna.

"Damn."

And then she throws her needles, curving so that when Sukuna inevitably dodges them, they at least probably won't hit Nue or Fushiguro. She will not be running at Sukuna, thank you, she will be staying the fuck away from him.

Ooh, nice, two people trying to hit him plus a shikigami, that is almost not entirely uninteresting! He dodges, though, of course; he doesn't even need to use his hands, still safely stored in his pockets, to dodge most of Fushiguro's hits and Hayashi's nails. He does raise a hand to block a kick and a punch, but he leaves the very strong impression that he's only doing it because straightforwardly stepping away from it would be more effort than it's worth.

The bird-thing flies at Sukuna and tries to hit him with bizarre lightning attacks, but he avoids those just as easily, and says, "A shikigami user who also does close-quarters combat? That's more interesting than I'd expected."

Fushiguro does a single-handed gesture and says, "Orochi," and the huge snake from the other day emerges from his shadow—

—from Sukuna's shadow, faster than all other shikigami Fushiguro's summoned, taking Sukuna into its mouth and rising several hundred feet into the air. "Gang up on him!" calls Fushiguro to his shikigami.

Okay that looks like that is some space for actual setup, she is going to do that trick where she embeds a bunch of needles in the ground, sharp side up. There will be a big fancy barrage later. And then take a deep breath and feel very horrible thoughts and try to make as much cursed energy as possible. Fortunately for her, Sukuna wanted to monologue. She felt a lot of despair during that monologue.

Nue flies in the direction of Orochi's head and starts striking repeatedly at Sukuna with both physical and lightning attacks while Orochi thrashes this way and that and squeezes Sukuna harder and harder.

Oh he's adorable, this is too cute. It'll be a shame to kill his shikigami.

Not that that's going to stop Sukuna, anyway. He sends a burst of cursed energy down Orochi's body and punches his way out while the snake explodes into a myriad tiny little pieces.

And he's on the ground again.

White demon dog... and Orochi... in one day...

He is on the ground and this time, Hayashi leaps towards him, hands in a vertical line.

"Domain expansion:

  "Shattered Reflection."

This will not last long, it will not hold him, and she is going to be running on absolutely fucking nothing after he inevitably breaks it, but what it will do is make all of her needles definitely not miss. Besides, she believes in his ability to make her feel negative emotions. Sukuna gets to experience being a pincushion. With special attention towards eyes. Mostly because she's a bitch who hates him, but, you know. Tactical reasons too, or something.

They hit. All of them, because he's in her Domain. He's blinded and pincushioned and he's—

—laughing?

He takes a step to the side and her domain shatters, his breaking out of it hits it hard enough that it can't stand, and the needles soon drop one by one from his body and he's healed like nothing's wrong. "You're fun. I see why he likes the two of you, now. Maybe I should take you both so he can get a bit of the taste."

The strain of having her Domain shattered out from under her sends her to the ground on her knees. She has never actually had it ripped out away from her before like that. It is sort of like having her metaphysical heart broken in front of her, and it physically hurts. Ow.

"I'd hate to die boring," she wheezes, shaking.

"Let's make use of the open space, why don't we?" he says, grabbing Fushiguro by the shirt and then hopping over to where Hayashi is and grabbing her before launching the two of them.

Very.

Very.

Far.

Whine.

She is alive, but man does she feel this is about to be a mistake.