The curse nods rapidly many times in succession, holding its breath.

"Now, what can I do to make the brat regret this?"

If he goes back to the brat's friends, he'll switch back right beforehand, and then it'll be useless. So the thing that would probably cause him the most trouble... Sukuna grins to himself.

The thing that would cause him the most trouble would be bringing this curse outside with him and making this a 2 vs. 2.

"Come on," he says, letting go of the curse (who immediately jumps back several feet away from him), "let's go kill some kids." He's already walking, his back to the curse, and he lifts his (now regenerated) right index finger to do a 'come hither' gesture. "Follow me."

The curse—trembling, breathing raggedly, clearly terrified—makes the wrong choice, and tries to send a volley of cursed energy at Sukuna.

Sukuna raises his left hand and stops it. "Ah, shit. Didn't mean to heal this one, too," he says of said left hand. He looks at the curse again. "Don't like walks? I suppose cursed spirits are meant to stay where they're born, most of the time. Fine, fine. In that case..."

And now he's right in front of the curse, and a punch to the skull seems appropriate. "You die here." He grabs the curse's face and slams its head back onto the concrete.

He takes a step back and waits a few seconds, arms folded behind his back. "...what, not getting up? You're not finished already, are you?"

It stirs and tries to get up, slowly.

"That's it! Come on, try harder." He steps onto the curse's chest and oops that's a bit too much force, now the floor is crumbling under them and they're in free fall.

The curse grabs his ankle, though, and tries to spin around and throw him—

—no, now it's missing its arm. Sukuna waves at it with its own served limb, sitting cross-legged on a particularly large piece of falling debris. "Even a cursed spirit would miss their arm, right?"

"What's taking him so long," grumbles Fushiguro under his breath.

Hayashi has run out of things to prepare or check or organize and is coming very close to doing something dangerous and worst of all useless like crying. At least this stress is building up lots of cursed energy again. Maybe if Sukuna comes out and toys with them she'll be able to power another Domain Expansion, won't that be novel.

"You don't have to stay here," she babbles, because she doesn't have anything else to do and that is always when she starts falling apart. "If it's the worst case scenario we don't both have to die horribly."

"He's my responsibility. I'm the one who brought him into this world, if, if someone has to take him down it should be me."

"Realistically speaking if it's Sukuna, there will be no taking him down by either of us, there will be trying to hold him off long enough that he doesn't go on a killing spree before the people actually equipped to maybe fight him show up, and probably that will not involve all that much fighting and a lot more suffering."

"Still should be me."

"I will never forgive myself if I run now, I would be so ashamed that I'd quit sorcery and take up, up, I don't know, gardening, and be immensely unhappy with it, and. We're both such idiots, aren't we."

He doesn't answer, and instead just paces.

His pacing is going to drive her completely insane! She wants to pace, too, but she's not letting herself because it'll tire her out and make everything worse and and and.

When he next is within arm's reach, she reaches out and grabs his hand. She is far too Japanese for hugs but literally any human contact before she maybe dies sounds nice. And this way he will stop fucking pacing.

"Idiots to the end, yeah?"

He stops pacing and looks at her, then squeezes her hand and nods.

"Hey, did you know? We're both classified as special grades, you and I," says Sukuna to the curse who has found itself attached to a wall

(just desserts, asshole)

all four limbs detached from its torso. It starts pulling itself free, then regenerates its limbs one by one as it does.

"Good job, special grade! Hang in there!"

The curse manages to free its last limb, then launches itself in front of Sukuna, its perpetual grin widening.

"You look happy. Want me to praise you?" He scoffs.